Bright and Dangerous Objects Read online

  “What does my name mean, Daddy?”

  “Your name, Sol, means . . . your mum knew. Something about a house.”

  I stroked my dad’s cheek, preemptively wiping away tears. “Tell me about Chiyo.”

  My father explained to me that ama diving has been around for two thousand years and it’s a dying trade. In order to try to preserve her knowledge for future generations, Chiyo went to meet a young girl in the village, to teach her how to dive. “You’re a fogey,” the girl said with a groan. “I can’t see what I could possibly learn from you.”

  Chiyo stoically set about showing the girl how to check her tools for the dive. My dad had recently watched a TV programme about Japanese divers, and he revelled in telling me the names of some of those tools, but they haven’t stayed with me. What I do recall is that at some point, Dad said: “There’s a reason the ama divers of Japan are women, Sol. Do you know what it is?”

  “Is it because the men don’t want to do it?”

  “That could be it, pup,” he replied, roaring with laughter. “That could be it. But it’s also to do with body fat. Women store more fat in their bodies than men, and it keeps them warmer underwater.”

  When I heard this, my mind began to wander. I knew men and women looked different on the outside. But it was the first time it ever struck me that their insides might be different. The discovery set something off in me, and the colour of that something was a bright and angry red.

  My dad continued with the story. He told me how excited the girl was when she dived into the water, but how difficult she found it to hold her breath. “Chiyo could hold her breath for over a minute, though. And while she was down there, she saw something glinting. She prised it out from between two rocks and shot back up to the surface.” He gave a dramatic pause. “It was an abalone shell!”

  “What about the girl?” I asked, biting my hand. “Was the girl all right?” I had a feeling that this was going to be a story about how naughty little girls always get their comeuppance, even though I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong lately to deserve such a tale.

  “The girl was fine. Treading water and panting like a dog. Chiyo took her back to the shore, and then she opened up the shell to reveal a large, yellow muscle of meat.”

  “Yuk,” I said through a yawn.

  “That’s what the girl said too. But people believe that eating abalone keeps you young, and they’ll pay top dollar for it. Anyway, this shell was particularly precious, because when Chiyo prodded and poked the creature’s gut, she pulled out a pearl.”

  At this point, my dad stood up, knees clicking, and he started creeping out of the room.

  “Daddy?”

  “Oh, I thought you’d dropped off.”

  “Is that the end?”

  “That’s about the size of it,” he said. “Chiyo and the girl went out diving together regularly after that, yadda yadda yadda. The moral of the story is: don’t judge a book by the cover. Night, Sol.” He shut the door behind him, and I heard his slippers shuffle down the stairs towards the fridge.

  I wasn’t about to go to sleep, though. The angry red was still blazing inside me. I threw off the covers and watched the fan. I watched the fan for so long that the moving blades began to look like a smooth, spherical object. Like I was looking at a pearl. Or a crystal ball. Or a planet.

  8

  “Your rockets are pointed in the wrong goddamn direction!” That’s what the submarine designer Graham Hawkes once famously shouted at people who believed that space was the final frontier. There’s so much left to explore in the depths of our planet’s oceans, he said. Why go elsewhere?

  When you’re on the floor of the North Sea, you can’t see much. You might get the occasional beige flicker: a passing cod or pollock. You might even spot a crab scuttling around your feet. But the mud and murk shouldn’t deceive you. There’s a lot going on down there. And the deeper you go, the better. Once you reach the midnight zone, which is over a thousand metres deep and black as soot—that’s where you find the good stuff. For example, the female anglerfish has a lantern growing out of its head. The other fish can’t believe their luck when they see the bright light. Finally, they think, there’s something in this darkness. They migrate towards it, mesmerised, and when they get close enough, they’re swallowed in a single gulp. I’ve never been deep enough to see an anglerfish. Almost no human has.

  I’m currently in what’s known as the Tartan Field. It’s a network of wells and pipelines, an underwater industrial estate. Until we’ve got an alternative sorted, we need places like this. North Sea oil drives our economy. It heats our homes, fuels our cars, paves our roads. It’s used in life jackets, tampons, ibuprofen. It’s even used to build artificial hearts—it literally keeps hearts beating.

  “You ready for this, aye Deano?” asks Hamish, the supervisor on the dive control team. He speaks to me via headphones, and he can see what I’m doing through a camera on my helmet. He’s watching Rich too. Today Rich is diver one and I’m diver two. Cal is in the bell. We’re working the morning shift, and once we get back to the chamber, the other team will go down.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” I say. I’ve been working for ten hours straight, and I’ve just finished fixing a pump which feeds oil to a platform over ten miles away. Now I’m retreating while it’s powered up to five thousand volts.

  “Make sure you don’t stand on any connectors as you move back,” Hamish says. “Nice and easy.”

  Walking along the seafloor takes time. It’s like wading through treacle, but treacle filled with sharp obstacles which constantly threaten to shred your kit. The most important part, the part that you mustn’t break, under any circumstances, is the umbilical. Like a human umbilical, the cord is twisted to prevent tangles. You need to use the cord to find your way back to the bell, but even more critical than that, you need it to keep you alive.

  “That’s it. Not long until you can go up for your dinner,” says Hamish.

  It’s been a while since I got to witness a pump being tested, and my breath catches in my throat as I wait for it to happen. I imagine the entire North Sea crackling with electricity as I’m fried like a fillet of fish.

  Eventually, Hamish speaks. “Nice one, Deano. That’s all sorted . . . Deano?”

  Looks like I’ll live to see another day. I start to retrace my steps. “Yeah?”

  “That’s all sorted.”

  “Oh, right, sorry. I’m still here. That’s great, Hamish. Cheers for all your help.” Normally I’m delighted after a job well done, but today feels like an anticlimax. Something is gnawing at me. It continues to gnaw at me as I enter the diving bell, and it gnaws at me as I take off my helmet, and it gnaws at me as we head back to the saturation chamber, and it gnaws at me as I eat a large portion of lamb stew.

  After dinner, I lie on my bunk, and I think about James. He’s sent me two text messages, but I’ve yet to reply. I try not to phone too often, partly because of my helium voice, but also because of the lack of privacy in the chamber. It’s not like you can whisper sweet nothings in a place like this.

  I’d never used the L-word before I met James. With him, I found it strangely easy. It helped that he had his own life so sorted: his business, his surfing, his board game nights. He didn’t need me to complete him; he was complete already. He once told me that I was free to leave whenever I wanted. It was about a year into our relationship. I was getting itchy feet. Not because I wanted to be with anyone else—I just missed my freedom. There’s a euphoria that comes with breaking off a relationship. A chance to reinvent yourself, to begin your life anew. I was starting to crave that, and James sensed it.

  “I only want to be with you if it’s what you want,” he told me as we walked home from the pub one night, drunk on an ale called Photon Trails. “If you want to break up with me, I won’t put up a fight.”

  Feeling free to leave made me want to stay. It made me feel free to love.

  Two years on, love and freedom don’t
seem quite so connected. I’m deeply attached to James. I can’t imagine what my life would look like without him. So, if I wanted to up sticks one day and head off to, say, Tibet, I’d obviously need to take him into consideration. And if I wanted to go farther afield . . .

  Because the truth is, I know what it is that’s been gnawing at me.

  Mars.

  I can’t get it out of my head. Even now I’m here, on my dive. It’s every adventure I’ve ever wanted, all wrapped up in one mission. All the training, the physical and psychological preparation. And then, at the end of it all, shooting off the face of Terra Mater, never to return. The idea is so appealing that it makes me want to cry with relief.

  “Yo, Deano?” It’s Rich. He’s peering at me from the bunk above. “You look stoned. Y’all right?”

  “Just thinking.”

  “Ugh, you don’t wanna do that. Not while you’re in here. ’Scuse my feet.” Rich climbs down from his bunk and heads off to the toilet.

  While he’s gone, I look at the Mars Project website on my phone.

  It’s not that I’m worried that James would forbid me from entering the competition. For a start, it’s so unlikely the mission will happen. But there’s a slim possibility it might. And my love for James makes that possibility feel impossible. It’s not the green fields or the deep blue sea that I’d miss. It’s James.

  I scour the competition guidelines yet again. Something that’s been playing on my mind is this: to get through to the next round, entrants must write an essay entitled “Why I Want to Be One of the First People to Live on Mars.” It sounds like a school project for ten-year-olds. How do you know if someone’s cut out to be an astronaut based on some dumb essay? Get them to tackle a military assault course, or put them in a centrifuge, but writing words?

  Google tells me that the Dutch organisation is funded by a few anonymous private investors—that doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence, either. Who’s backing this thing? And why does the Mars Project exist in the first place? To take a giant leap across the solar system? Or to put money in pockets that remain firmly on Earth? I can’t help but come to the conclusion that the competition is a joke. A scam.

  It’s a shame, because if I were to enter it, I know I’d be in with a chance. Saturation divers and astronauts are not dissimilar. We’re both okay with being locked in confined spaces. We both work in dangerous environments, relying on complex machinery to keep us alive. We both know how it feels to be far away from home. And I’m sure you’d get used to missing people. The brain adjusts, I imagine.

  9

  “Surface,” I say. “I’m ready for the checklist.”

  “Let’s start with communications. Diver helmet? One, two, three, four, five. How do you read me?”

  “Five by five.”

  “Auto-generator? One, two, three, four, five. How do you read me?”

  The safety checks go on like this for about half an hour. It’s imperative to make sure everything is just so, and although I won’t be going into the water today, my role as bellman is essential. I’m responsible for the other two. Any problems, it’s down to me to keep us safe. I haven’t brought the malachite Anouk gave me into the diving bell, and of course I don’t believe in lumps of enchanted rock, but still I find myself making a fist, imagining I’m holding it for a moment.

  “Okay, pal,” says Hamish on the intercom, once the checks are done. “I’ll call the divers in.”

  “Right, boys,” I say, once Cal and Rich have joined me. “Let’s get you sorted.” I help them put on their gear, making sure they’re safe and warm. We all become mothers when it’s our turn in the bell. The thought briefly flashes through my mind that I might be pregnant now, and one day the cluster of cells inside me will need me to dress her like this.

  It takes about five minutes for the bell to travel through the moon pool and down to the seafloor. That doesn’t sound like long, but when there are three of us crammed into this humid metal dome, which is not much bigger than a shower cubicle, it feels like an eternity. Once we’ve been lowered, I open the hatch and get the guys into the water. They head off in opposite directions, and I set up my hammock. It’s much more comfortable than sitting on a stainless steel bench for the next few hours. I keep an eye on the valves and wires and lights ahead of me.

  I’ve been taking the pill for eighteen years. I was roughly halfway through a pack when I stopped. I’m not sure if that means I’m ovulating about now, or if I’ll skip that part of my cycle and get an early period. It’s bizarre how little I understand about my own anatomy.

  I’ve heard that women feel more aroused around the time they’re ovulating. Also, apparently, our faces become more symmetrical and our hip-to-waist ratio becomes more pronounced, making us more attractive to potential mates. Is that happening to me right now? I don’t feel aroused or attractive. What if I don’t ovulate for a few more days? How long can sperm live inside a woman’s reproductive system? Surely James’s sperm have either completed their quest or they’ve croaked. Even if they have fertilised an egg, there’s no saying whether the zygote will implant in the lining. Making a baby is a low-chance, high-risk event.

  I touch my abdomen through my diving suit. A baby. Trying to imagine it is so abstract that it barely makes sense.

  I become aware of Hamish’s voice: “Diver two? How’s that valve coming on? What’s your twenty? Diver two? You copy?”

  I check Rich’s breathing supply. It looks normal. “Hamish?”

  “I can’t get a reading on diver two,” Hamish tells me. “Give me a minute.”

  I check Rich’s comms and hot water. They look okay too.

  “Deano, this is surface,” says Hamish. “Prepare for diver rescue.”

  “Diver rescue. Right. Roger that.” I’ve practised diver rescue multiple times, but I’ve never had to do it for real.

  “Deploy the man lift,” Hamish tells me. “Blow the canopy down.”

  I try to keep calm by imagining this is a drill. I release my standby umbilical, which is two metres longer than Rich’s. No matter where he is, I should be able to reach him. If he’s stuck, I’ll have to try and set him free. We’ve all heard about the poor guy on Jet Barge 4, who got his arm stuck in a pipe; it sucked the flesh clean off his bones. And we’ve heard how traumatised the bellman was who found him.

  I put on my helmet and lower myself into the water. I take Rich’s umbilical in my hand. Even though I know what to do, the moment my body enters the water, I falter.

  “Deano? You all set?”

  “Big ten-four, Hamish.” Despite the hot water being pumped around my suit, I’m shivering. I start to follow the umbilical, taking up slack. I’m observing protocol to the letter, but I don’t feel right. I don’t know if it’s a form of dissociation, which would certainly not be unheard of for me—perhaps it’s a way of trying to distract myself from the prospect of coming face-to-face with a co-worker’s corpse—but it’s hitting me like a ton of bricks: I could be killing my baby right now.

  What have I been thinking? Putting my body through all this when there’s the possibility of a new life growing inside me? I’ve known about the risks of diving and pregnancy ever since I started training. Premature delivery, malformed limbs, bubbles in the amniotic fluid. I’ve read about what happened to rat embryos when they were exposed to hyperbaric oxygen. “Foetal wastage” was the phrase used.

  I know about the effects that diving can have on the adult human body too. There are so many things that can go wrong: nitrogen narcosis, barotrauma, pulmonary embolisms, welding accidents, shark attacks, drowning. An American study I once read said that statistically, a commercial diver is forty times more likely to die at work than any other employee. And yet somehow that has never bothered me. Every job has its hazards. I went to school with a girl called Krystal Vickers who got third-degree burns all the way down the left-hand side of her body during a shift at McDonald’s. An entire football team got struck by lightning at a match in the Democratic
Republic of Congo. An Italian stripper suffocated to death while waiting to jump out of a cake at a stag party. Things happen.

  But now I’ve gone and thrown a baby into the mix. A vulnerable life that I’m responsible for. My baby hasn’t consented to the risks I’m exposing myself to. My child shouldn’t have to grow up with a hole in her heart because I timed my sex and my work badly. Things happen, yes, but some of them are preventable.

  “Deano? You got eyes on diver two?”

  It’s so muddy down here, I can barely see my own hands. At last, though, I come to the end of the umbilical.

  “Um, Hamish,” I say faintly. “I’ve found him.”

  Rich is reclining, as if on a sun lounger. He looks peaceful. Too peaceful.

  “Rich?” I squeeze his shoulder.

  His helmet turns. There are air bubbles.

  “He’s breathing,” I say, trying not to let Hamish hear the tremor in my voice. “All right, Rich, it’s okay.” Talking to Rich is a bit pointless as we don’t have a comms line, but it makes me feel better. I open his steady flow valve to give him a bit more air; then I clip my harness onto him.

  Rich’s body is limp, so I have to carry him back. It’s a slow process. Not only is he extremely heavy—even when underwater—but I’ve also got to be careful not to snag his equipment. Sweating, I hoist Rich into the bell.

  “Good work, Solvig,” says Hamish, using my name for the first time.

  10

  “You’re a fucking idiot.”

  It’s the first full-blown argument I’ve witnessed while in saturation. Some of it is hard to make out, as the angrier the guys get, the higher-pitched their voices become. What’s clear is that Dale is really laying into Rich.

  “What made you think you’re cut out for this job?” Dale rants. “In all my years of diving, I’ve never known such a muppet.”