The Anomaly(73)

Pierre got into position against the end of the pool, steadied himself, and between us we hefted the copper ball up onto the platform. I had my hand ready to hold it there, and then gave it a gentle shove back.

It didn’t go far, but it seemed like it would stay. “One down, twenty-seven to go.”

“Like Moll said—let’s find the carbon.”

Within a couple of minutes we’d found a couple of smaller balls, and we got them successfully up onto the platform using the one-hand-each technique. We even started to fall into something of a rhythm, doing what had to be one of the weirdest tasks I’d undertaken in my life.

“Wait,” Pierre said. “I think I’ve found it.”

He had. And how did we know? Because once you pushed the plants aside, the top of the sphere was only just below the surface of the water. It was far more uneven than the balls we’d dealt with so far, suggesting that a lot more of it had dissolved off. But…it was still massive. Of course.

“I…kinda forgot it was this big.”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling incredibly dumb. “Me too. Can you even move it? At all?”

He waded around to the other side and braced his hands against the ball. Gathered himself to give it a shove.

And then disappeared.





Chapter

43



He was there, and then he wasn’t—dropping below the surface so fast it was like he’d blinked out of existence. I called out his name but I knew he hadn’t slipped. I dived under.

It was dark, with the light from the lamp still balanced above barely penetrating. The water was clear, however, almost back to the way it had been the first time we entered the pool. I glimpsed something on the bottom—not a ball, nor one of the pyramids I knew were there somewhere, but an aggregation of material: as though a portion of the plant matter had sunk and started to build into something else. Maybe that’s how it worked. I didn’t have time to care.

The dark ball of carbon loomed in front. Pierre was thrashing around next to it. At first I couldn’t see why.

He made it to the surface, gasped for air—but was immediately whipped back under.

Something was wrapping itself around his legs.

A dark, twisting shape.

As I swam up, I saw another of the same thing, reaching around his waist. I experienced a flashback to something I’d seen painted on a wall—like a spider, but all its legs pointing in the same direction.

I got to Pierre and grabbed his arm. It took him a second to realize it was me. He reared back, trying to fight. When I saw recognition in his eyes I moved in closer, grabbed him around the waist.

Then I felt the sticky, muscular contact of something trying to wrap itself around my arm—something far more powerful than me, pure strength wrapped in flesh.

My feet went out from beneath me as another tentacle grabbed my ankle and yanked it.

Panic fell like a curtain. I kicked out spastically, driving both legs back and forth, not trying to strike anything in particular. I felt Pierre doing the same.

I had no air left now and my head was starting to sing, some deeply scared part of my brain urging me to open my mouth and gasp.

Then Pierre was pulling ahead.

I kept kicking, wriggling, trying to roll.

I felt something on my arm and thought it was another tentacle but it was Pierre, one leg still held fast, but trying to pull me along with him.

Our eyes met, and I nodded:

One—two—

We both slammed out with our free legs. I felt mine plunge into something giving. The grip around my other leg was momentarily less tight and I wrenched my knee up toward my chest, pulling it away. Took a glancing blow to the face as Pierre did his own kicking, scything his foot down again and again. I turned to move out of his way and felt myself suddenly free.

I jammed my foot down against the floor of the pool. The impact jarred my knee but gave me enough momentum to drive myself up and get my head out of the water.

I gulped air and threw my arm around Pierre’s chest to pull him away from the thing under the surface. His head breached, too, mouth already open, coughing water, and I knew then that if the water was still bad we were dead men swimming, but it didn’t make any difference. You keep fighting anyway.

It’s hard, kicking sideways underwater. The water doesn’t want to let you. But I kept at it, pulling Pierre with me, and then suddenly there didn’t seem to be any resistance.

I fell forward, decided to go with it and turned it into a dive, pulling myself forward under the water as fast as I could and trusting Pierre to do the same.

I passed over several more of the creatures on the bottom, the last far larger than any of the previous. I stopped and drove my foot down into it, and then again.

Then I thrashed and gasped my way to where Ken and Molly were standing shouting at the other end. They yanked me out so fast I barked my shins on the ledge.

I rolled out of the way so they could do the same for Pierre, and lay there coughing, panting.

“What the hell happened?” Ken said.

“Squid,” Pierre gasped. “Huge big-ass squid.”

“Seriously?”

“Did it look like we were screwing around?”

“There’s other things growing under there,” I said. I was rubbing at my lips with one hand and my eyes with the other, trying to get the water off. But I could taste it in my mouth, the mineral tang. When I coughed it was wet and phlegmy. Some had gotten into my windpipe, too, and into my ears and nose. “This place is nowhere near done making stuff.”