The Future We Wish We Had

TRAINER OF WHALES by Brenda Cooper

Kitha strained to see past the farm’s lights up into the darkness of the sea. Three great blue whales swam overheard, towing white nets full of sea-city products like farmed fish, sponges, and hand-made jewelry. Even harnessed, with the big bulky nets trailing beside them, the whales seemed full of grace and power. Kitha, on the other hand, was heavy in her farming suit, the weights around her waist set to keep her at just the right height to mind the deep-sea kelp that Downbelow Dome farmed. The waving multicolored fronds had once captivated her. She had made games of counting colorful engineered symbiote-fish and checking the great plants for damage and parasites, priding herself on how well she saw every detail of the beds. But now, a year into her new job, the enormity of her lost dreams was heavier than her pressurized and weighted suit.

Her sigh sent a froth of tiny bubbles up from her breather, a trail of precious air leaking along her face. She kicked hard, forcing her eyes down. It was off-harvest season, and all she had to do for the gene-engineered food crop was measure fronds and watch for broken stems.

A familiar attention-code sang into her ear. Kitha tongued her breather away so she could talk. “Jonathan? How was school?” They’d argued this morning, and she wasn’t even sure he’d gone to school.

“Boring, Mom. Can I go to Lincka’s? Her mom is home this shift and she promised to create cookies and set out a game for us.”

Kitha winced. It was good Jonathan wanted to be around an adult. If only he wanted to be around her as much as she wanted to be a good mother. “Sure, honey. But you have to be home by seven.”

“But bedtime’s not until nine!” he protested.

Kitha would be off shift at six, and this meant she’d go home to an empty apartment. She inhaled, biting down on her breather so hard she was afraid to open her mouth in case she’d punctured the damn thing. Having Jonathan had driven her from school, from the biggest underwater city of all, New Seadon, to this godforsaken boring job. But it paid well enough-barely-to keep her ten-year-old boy both in school and far, far away from his father. She glanced up again before she answered, but the whales had gone on, surely halfway to the next sea-city by now. She relaxed her jaw. Her breather still worked. She’d stress-fractured two of them in last six months and was down to one spare. “Eight.”

He must have known by her tone of voice that he wasn’t about to get more time. He just said, “Sure, Mom. See you at eight.” As usual, he sounded disgusted with her.

She sighed again and dove deeper into the brown forest, brushing aside a twenty-foot strand of kelp, careful not to tangle her feet. If only she’d been able to figure out how to finish school herself. She dreamed of becoming a whale-trainer. Up until last year when she took this nothing job and moved to this nothing dome, she’d been on her way to a bio-trainer school. She’d read every book she could find on whales and practiced training techniques on the rather dumb dolphin-bots that watched the perimeter of the fields. She never got close enough to real whales to practice on them. But since she’d given up her dreams for Jonathan, she only watched the great, beautiful beasts. Dreams, swimming out of her reach.

The next hour of her shift seemed to take ten hours. Finally, the half-shift prep tones filled her bubble-helmet. She started back, mouth watering as she thought about the roast fish that waited for her in the common shift kitchen.

Kelp slapped her all along her left side, and she swirled sideways, disoriented. Kelp slapped her right, pushing her back. A warning scream belled out of the speakers in her helmet and then went silent.

An undersea quake.

Downbelow Dome. Surely the warning would keep going off if the city was okay. Or at least an all-clear. The kelp around her still swayed back and forth as if an unseen hand shook its roots. What had her safety manual said about earthquakes?

She pumped her legs, dodging kelp, telling herself it was over and long floating objects in motion tended to stay in motion.

Jonathan. She swam harder, her focus suddenly clear.

Don’t think about having just an hour of air, she thought. Breathe slowly.

Her forward motion stopped; her right leg gained twenty pounds. She swiveled her head. Two long fronds had tangled and trapped her right fin. She bent in half, pulling on loose ends of green kelp that felt slimy even through her gloves.

Not enough give.

She reached for her belt knife, sawing, slowly, seeing Jonathan’s sullen face like a mirror in her faceplate, superimposed over the waving kelp and a school of silver fish.

It took ten minutes to get free.

She kept going. The freed fin had a broken spring, and her right leg had to work twice as hard as her left. The kelp suddenly gave way to open ocean. She grabbed the last stalk for balance, floating. Downbelow Dome glowed like a lamp against the darkness of the sea behind it, and the string of lights between the city and the kelp beds sent a line of comfort knifing through darker sea. Everything looked normal. But there had been no communications from the city since the first alarm. She let go of her breather and licked her lips. “Is anybody there?”

No response, until she heard a soft male voice. “Kitha?”

Her shift mate, Jai. A quiet man who’d grown up here. They’d never really connected, but he worked hard and seemed to trust her to do her part. Guilt pursued her lips. She hadn’t even thought of him, only of Jonathan. “It’s me. What happened?”

“Seaquake.”

“I figured that out. Is the city okay?”

Silence for a moment. Then, “It doesn’t look breached.”

Kitha swam away from her stabilizing kelp stem and looked back toward the wavy line of demarcation between crop and open ocean. Where was Jai?

“Look down.”

She did. Sure enough. He was even pretty close, maybe ten meters below her and a little right. She waved at the figure below her. “My son is in there.” She glanced at her readouts. “I don’t have enough air to swim the whole way. I’m going to head to the shift-break station and see if I can find some. Coming?”

Jai’s answer was to start off toward the station, just out of sight on the right. Kitha followed. “Have you been able to reach the dome?” Kitha asked.

“No. But there’s better com gear at the break-station than in our suits. Have you heard from anyone else?”

“No.” Jai’s huge yellow farm-fins were ahead of her now, at roughly the same depth. “Hey! Slow down. My right fin is zonked.”

“I’ll meet you there,” he said, although the angle made it tough to tell for sure. It looked like the wake behind Jai’s powerful stroked increased. Was he making sure he got the first access to resources if the city was dead? She shook her head. What was she thinking? Jai’d always seemed fair. The city couldn’t be dead, because Jonathan would be dead. Everything would be okay. Had her son gotten his cookies?

A swarm of symbiote-fish darted out, engulfing her.

She swam around a clump of misplaced kelp, and the shift-station hung in front of her: a teardrop caught on a long line festooned with swaying nets and protective glassoleum bubbles full of farming gear. It looked all right. A puff of tiny bubbles jetted down below the hatch, water being forced into the sea. Her body shivered, relieved. At least there was pressure and air. Safety.

In five minutes, she dangled outside the hatch, her right hand holding her in position as she thumped for it to open. She tumbled inside, waiting for the door to close behind her, then went through a second door and stood before a third. Bubbles surrounded her, pressing against each other and popping into bigger and bigger bubbles until she stood in plain air. The third door opened and she ducked through it, stripping her air bottles and fins and weights into a dripping pile by the door and gulping fresh, clean air. She kept the helmet with her, just in case the city called her name.

As she entered the common room, Jai stood by a computer terminal. He was tall and brown. Brown skin, brown hair, brown eyes. “I found a test-sequence.”

“To test what?”

“Well, for starters the shift-station is fine. It’s breathing.”

“But is the city breathing?” If the quake had damaged the dome’s six lungs, it wouldn’t be able to pull enough dissolved oxygen out of the surrounding seawater. Jonathan would run out of air, slowly, and fall asleep.

Jai pursed his lips. “I’m asking.”

Kitha took in a big breath of her own, as if it could feed Jonathan. The dome wasn’t breached. They’d have seen that right away; the gassoleum structure would have buckled and distorted. Maybe there was no immediate danger.

The tiny observation port closest to her looked out on the hundred-foot-tall beds of swaying kelp that fed thousands. She walked over to another port and stared at the dome. It looked fine. Something about it felt wrong. Nothing moved. “Do the transports work?” she asked. One was scheduled to pick them up at the end of the shift, but that was four and a half hours away. Normally, transports and bots and even swimmers came and went through the dome’s three-lock system doorways regularly, a stream of commerce and recreation.

Jai’s voice jolted her. “Three of the lungs are damaged. The city went into safety mode.”

So no one could get in or out. Including them. Half the lungs meant less air than the station needed. The lock-down would make it last longer. Not forever.

“Are there any transports available?”

Jai shook his head.

“Can we talk to the city?” she asked, knowing the answer was still no.

“I think the whole communications system is down. I just hope everyone inside is okay.”

She glanced at him, furrowing her brow. “Are there casualties?”

He turned to face her. “Probably. Look, this is a pretty simple interface, but I’m no communication tech. Can you just sit down?”

She must have stared at him in shock because he lowered his voice. “Please. Sit by the window and tell me if you see anything strange.”

She had no more than returned to her position at the porthole when the station silenced. The lights flicked off. An emergency tone screamed into the room, something automated. She grabbed for the wall, steadying herself. The string of lights between dome and pod had winked out. She looked behind her. The great kelp beds had faded into the dark sea.

Jai began pushing buttons. The tones silenced. Inside lights came back on, and the air circulators roared to life. The beds and the outside lights stayed off, so the dome sparkled even brighter and seemed further away. The outside path of lights between the city and the kelp farm had felt like an umbilical cord, and Kitha gasped at the loss.

“It must have been automatic. They must have needed to save power and kept everything off.”

“Look!” Kisha pointed. Three bright lights bobbed through the darkness, heading for the dome. “The whales!”

“Sure,” Jai said, “they always come back from their run about now.”

“But… but they won’t be able to drop their load. No one will come outside to unharness them if the dome’s locked down.”

He shrugged and turned back. “I’m more interested in getting there,” he said.

That suited her. She needed to find Jonathan. “Can you raise anybody yet?”

A high, tense laughter escaped his lips. “I was trying. All the systems just blinked out.” He must have heard the sharp tone in his voice. More calmly, he said, “They’re coming back.”

She frowned and returned to the porthole. The three bobbing lights were almost at the dome now. Surely they’d be confused. She racked her brain for an answer. Whale trainers and handlers talked to their charges via a translator that made haunting, high sounds audible from hundreds of feet away. The whales heard better than humans. Sonar. At harvest time, the whales came all the way up to the shift-station, bumping against the rope, while nervous humans tied cargo nets to specially made plastic harnesses. So surely there was a way to call the whales here.

Before she could ask, Jai said, “The tests on the dome are complete. A girder fell on three of the lungs, and they can’t open. Diagnostics suggest they might work okay if we get the weight off of them.” He called her over to the terminal, pointing. An exterior camera showed a mess of metal fallen to the sea floor, leaning against the dome, crushing the left bank of sea-lungs. “Here.” Jai drew a circle around a spot a few meters away from the oblong bellows of the lungs where a metal spike had skewered an antenna. “This is probably what ruined their voice communication. No way to tell from here whether or not they got a mayday out.”

“But won’t the other cities come look, anyway?” she asked. “We’ll be quiet, and that will be wrong.”

“I don’t know. I don’t have any information about the seaquake. It could have damaged other domes, as well.”

“We have to do something,” she said. “We might be the only people on the outside of the dome.”

“I don’t even know how to get there,” he said.

She walked over to the storage cabinet and opened the door. Racks of air bottles sat neatly stacked, ready for the next shift, and the next, and the next. They were replenished once a week, and this was only midweek.

He grimaced. “I don’t want to leave you alone. Can your broken fin get you all the way there?”

She hadn’t even thought of that. “Maybe there’s more here.”

“People bring their own gear.”

“What about the whales? Can we call them here?”

His eyes widened. “Probably. They come for harvest. But I don’t know anything about whale handling.”

She grinned. “I do.” She glanced out the porthole. “They’re still there. Any idea where we can find a translator?”

He shrugged, then pointed toward the cabinet full of air bottles. “In there?”

Kisha bent down and looked on the bottom shelf. It was empty. “They’re small. In a drawer?” She began pulling open drawers and cubbies, glancing outside every few minutes to make sure the three lights still hovered around the dome.

Nothing.

She looked out again. No lights. Just the diffuse sunlight that penetrated down here, fifty meters below the sea surface. At least it wasn’t night above them in the world of air and sun. Had the whales gone? How far would the sounds go? “Give me a boost?”

Jai came over and helped her balance with her feet on the bottom shelf. She felt around on the top of the cabinet. There! Something. She hooked her hand around a leather strap and pulled. “We found it,” she breathed, looking down at a round ball the exact right size to hold in her fist, encased in a glassoleum shell to keep it safe from water. Four little blue plastic levers protruded slightly on one side. Four times four commands. But the easy ones were just one lever. Come had to be basic. She knew what to do. It had been in one of her books. She even sang it to Jonathan. One to come and two to wait, three to lift and four to lower. There was more, there was a whole damned language, but she didn’t know it.

Were there even any whales to call? She glanced back out the porthole. The three lights once more hovered above the brilliantly lit city. She breathed a sigh of relief. “They must have just been around the other side.” Now what? “OK. I’ve got to go outside. The sound will only travel well through water.” She reached for a new air bottle.

She smiled as Jai reached past her and grabbed a fresh air bottle for himself.

Ten minutes later, she and Jai clung to the rope just above the shift-station. She thumbed the first lever and a clear, mournful whale song filled the water. A shiver touched her spine. As beautiful as the sound was, she knew humans only heard part of it, and that badly, filtered by bubble-helmets. Yet the smallest portion was beautiful enough that she and Jai reached for each other’s hands.

She let go of the rope, so Jai held on for both of them. They kept their silence, and her own breathing seemed loud and intrusive against the whale-song.

The lights of the three whales didn’t seem to be getting any nearer. Was there something else she should do? Whale training was more than just pushing a button or everyone could do it. Her prep classes had been psychology and some of her reading talked about building a bond with the whales.

“We might have to go to them.” She tried an experimental swoop with her damaged fin. Her right thigh protested. Some piece of her safety training ran in the back of her mind. She turned off the translator for a moment. It seemed sacrilegious to talk over it. “Aren’t there emergency sleds? The kind you’d use if I got hurt in the beds and couldn’t swim and you came for me?”

“And they’re motorized!” Jai grinned. “How come I didn’t know you were so brilliant before?”

How should she take that comment? It didn’t matter. Getting to Jonathan mattered. She followed Jai up-rope to a glassoleum bubble dotted with emergency symbols. Directions for opening the bubble were painted on the shell. Jai pulled a lever and water and air began changing places just like in the locks, the tempo of the exchange exact so that no pressure differences were introduced.

The sled was a simple backboard cupped to hold the injured worker, straps, an air tube and spare helmet, and handholds. She was strapped in moments later, feeling foolish but grateful for any way to get to Jonathan.

She clutched the translator to her as they traveled, excruciatingly slowly, toward the brilliant light of Downbelow Dome, their own small find me light illuminating just a few feet of water in front of them. She lay down in the sled, keeping it as aerodynamic as possible, while Jai trailed his long body behind her and the sled. Every once in a while, she heard the swish of his fins behind her as he added his strength to the tiny motor. The sea floor spun by slowly, seven meters or so below them, rocky and full of waving sea-trees and sponges specially adapted to use the human-provided light to grow unusually large at this depth.

As they came closer, the whales’ dark bodies and lighter bellies began to resolve below the harness lights. When the sled was halfway there, she flipped on the come lever again, watching the whales for any sign they heard her. The translator ball in her hand glowed a soft orange. Proximity?

One of the lights began to grow bigger. A whale was coming toward them. She wanted to crow in relief, but held her tongue, listening. The translator would surely tell her what the whales were saying. If they said anything.

The other two whales stayed by Downbelow Dome.

The translator glowed brighter. Was it trying to talk to her? How would it? She searched the little ball, somehow pressing something that sent the whale song thrumming through her speakers. Then English-translated whale: “Turn it off!”

Oh. Oh! She thumbed off the lever. It must have been like yelling at them. She tried speaking at it. “Thank you.” The ball stayed quiet. The whale kept coming, larger than she thought from this angle. Fast. She leaned toward it, unafraid, the sheer beauty of the behemoth making her want to sing. She squeezed the translator tight to her and a voice spoke in her ear, and she nearly dropped the ball. “The whale expresses confusion.”

It must respond to pressure. She squeezed the ball. “Confusion?” she asked.

“The dome is not responding to it. It needs to drop its cargo.”

“So I don’t need these levers? I can just talk to you?”

“They’re handy if you need to give an emergency command.”

All right. “How can I help it know what to do?”

The translator apparently wasn’t smart enough to answer her question the way she’d phrased it. “What does the whale need?”

“Go to the docks. Help them drop their cargo. Then they’ll leave.”

The whale turned slowly away from her, making a circle. Waiting. Three bulging nets hung from its harness. “I need the whales to help me.”

Jai stayed silent, keeping them on course, letting her work it out. But their com was open. Surely he heard the conversation. She made sure to hold the ball loosely and safely between her fingers. “Jai? Do you have any idea how to get the whales to help the city breathe? If we just help them unload, they’ll leave. I don’t know how to make them stay.”

“Maybe we can find something to attach the whales to the girder. I need to see the damage.”

“They’ll stay together.” The dome loomed up now, more than twice as big as it had looked from the shift-station. They were over halfway there. She squeezed the ball. “Ask the whales to wait for me by the dome.”

Sound belled out from the ball, filling her helmet and the sea around them. The whale she had been talking to (she had been talking to a whale!) beat them to Downbelow Dome by at least ten minutes. As the dome loomed large and silent and bright above them, Kitha said, “Doesn’t it feel like we’re visiting an artifact?”

Jai grunted. “Like an archeological dig.” She heard the fear in his voice, and wondered if she sounded as bad. Who did he love that was inside, silent, hopefully alive?

The whales bunched, never still. Their harnesses provided air, so they didn’t need to breach to breathe, but breaching was instinct, and every migratory and work path allowed for trips to the surface. Surely their time was running out.

Jai must have felt the same. He was all business as soon as they rounded the huge bright arch of the dome and began to approach the lungs, and the mess that lay on top of them. Kitha thought he might leave the sled on the sea floor and set her free to swim, but he kept her in it, strapped in, and they glided through tumbled bars and floors of steel that had once been a strong structure that stored transports and materials, the goods brought and sent by whales, and the underwater ships of visiting dignitaries. In a way, she liked still being on the sled. It somehow made the tangled landscape seem more like it belonged to a dream. This close, shadows and movement from inside touched the dome’s surface even though the glassoleum had been dialed to its most opaque setting to keep warmth inside it. People lived in there.

Kitcha clutched the translator. “Tell them thank you. Ask them to wait for longer. We will need them.”

It pulsed in her hand and then sang. The low, mournful notes seemed a perfect backdrop to the destruction they saw. Glassoleum and plastic had all weathered the quake well; metal had snapped and fallen.

The lungs were the size of the biggest whale, slightly squatter. They peeled disassociated oxygen from the water and fed it carbon dioxide, breathing the water like mammals so they could be plants in the dome itself, where they exhaled oxygen and inhaled carbon dioxide. They were grouped in two sets of three to minimize damage. A dome could live in lockdown on three lungs for days. The domes were safe. Everyone said so. Her boy was in there.

A long squared metal post lay across three of the lungs, holding them down. The lungs lay quiescent under it, undoubtedly turned off. Shreds of one lung covering floated around one end of the pole, but the other two looked whole and undamaged.

Now that they were here, it was easy to see what they had to do-get the whales to help them lift the large square metal pole that kept the lungs down. But how to do it? Kitha glanced up at the milling whales. They would have to be willing helpers. Psychology, she mused. There was no way to use food. Blue whales sieved the sea for plankton, which was more of a problem than a solution. Surely they were hungry by now, left on-shift past their time. The only thing she knew they wanted was to get rid of their burdens and get free-go eat and breach and play and be whales finished with their hard work. Best get the mechanics down first.

She asked Jai, “Do you see anything we can tie to a harness?”

He was silent for a moment. She thought with him, racking her brain. “What about the harnesses themselves? If we get one off, will it be long enough?”

“You’d have to get the whale right down next to the metal. There wouldn’t be enough torque. It might get hurt.”

Well, that was no good. “What about the lines that hold the lights up?”

“Maybe. But they’re attached directly to the dome.”

“Isn’t there some kind of failsafe?” she mused. “What if a whale ran into them? Or a transport?”

“Some kind of quick-release?” he asked. “I don’t know. I don’t have any idea how to trigger it.”

She didn’t have any other ideas. “We’ll just have to go look.” Her hands clenched in sudden anger. “Why won’t the damn city talk to us? Surely they can see we’re out here.” Her voice had an edge.

He waved a hand at the communication antenna that had been destroyed, as if to say “they just can’t,” but before he could get a verbal answer out, the translator spoke. “I can talk to the city-if anyone in there is using a translator. Someone may have thought of it.”

Wow. “Can you?” she asked, stuttering.

“Would you like me to?”

Damn all literal devices to hell. Her answer came out through clenched teeth. “Yes. Please.” And before she could formulate another question, a tinny machine-voice sounded in her helmet. “This is the emergency whale communications system. Hold on.”

She waited. Minutes passed. Shadowy movement passed between the lights inside the dome and the shell.

The whales circled faster, as if trying to tell her something.

“Whale trainer Jerzy Hu here. Great idea. We have you on-camera.”

She glanced at Jai. A broad smile showed through his helmet and he lifted one hand as if in benediction. She grinned and blushed. Lucky, mostly, and the fact that she’d even tried. She’d never met Jerzy, but she was ready to make the woman her new best friend.

“Can anyone come out and help us free the lungs?” Surely they could see what needed to be done.

Jerzy’s voice in her ear. “The dome is closed. It’s automatic. It won’t let us out. We’ve been trying. It seems to think even one lockfull of lost air will kill us all.”

There were a thousand things she wanted to ask. “Is everyone okay in there?”

“Almost everyone. A building fell. Three people died and we have about twenty injured.”

Jonathan. “My son. Jonathan Horner. Is he okay?”

A laugh. “He’s been a pest ever since the dome closed with you outside it. He’s okay.”

Kitha wanted to talk to him so badly it hurt. But the whales! “Jerzy. How do I get the whales to help us? We need rope or chain or something, and then maybe they can help us lift this.”

“We’ve been working on that ever since you called that whale. That was Kiley, by the way. The other two are Penelope and Lisa.”

She’d never thought to ask the translator the whales’ names. “Thanks, Jerzy. Did you come up with any ideas?”

“The trick will be getting them not to take off. Kiley’s the key-he leads that pod. But you have to get him to like you.”

“I like him. I love him. What do I do?”

“Swim up to him. You’ll have to guide the whole thing. Send Jai down to the communications building. We know it’s a wreck, but there should be wires used to move the antenna around when we need to work on it. At least one will be attached to the antenna.”

Jai was already directing the sled down. “Okay. But what do I do to make a whale like me?”

“Be yourself,” Jerzy said. “He’ll bond with you or he won’t. Whales make up their own minds about who they’ll accept as a trainer.”

Great. The sled bottomed out and Jai’s hands began to unstrap her, clumsy in his big pressure gloves.

“Oh… and don’t be afraid of him,” Jerzy added. “Be positive. Whales like the positive.”

She floated free of the sled. Jai was already heading for the wreck of the dome’s communications equipment.

“Jerzy, I’m going.”

The woman’s voice was warm and encouraging. “Good luck.”

Kitcha kicked upward. Should she ask Kiley to come to her? The whale wasn’t far away. Maybe she’d start by just coming near and then waiting. Her stomach had gone to water. She had to succeed.

About halfway up the tall curve of the dome, Kitha kicked a little bit away, holding the translator ball in two hands so she wouldn’t drop it, being careful not to squeeze it. Who knew how much power it had?

She traded water, her right leg working harder than her left, watching the three whales. She picked out Kiley as much from the shape of the bundles attached to his harness as from anything else.

She watched him, willing him to come to her.

The whales milled. The smallest one started to break up and move away, toward the surface, but Kiley called out to it, a short sweet sound that turned the beast back down. He circled her, keeping his distance.

She squeezed the ball. “ Jersey. What do I do?” Her voice shook.

“I can’t help you. He doesn’t like me.”

Kitcha groaned. What would she want? Heck, what did that matter? She didn’t think like a whale. She was kelp-farmer. The lowest of the low, except maybe the janitors. “Jerzy, do they like you to come to them?”

“Trust yourself.”

Okay. She’d stay put. Show respect.

Kiley circled her again, a little closer; then he turned away, his great tail undulating through the water, lit from the underside by the city’s own interior brightness.

Had she failed? She held her breath, willing him to turn and come back.

The other two whales began to follow him.

She pressed the come button, surrounding herself with sound.

And turned it off. She remembered the last time.

The three whales turned in unison, as if responding to some unspoken command. A water ballet of big, blue creatures. Kitha drew in a breath at the sheer beauty of their coordination. Kiley flicked his tail and moved to the front, swimming so closely by her that she saw the barnacles lining his mouth. She transferred the ball to her left hand, flicked her own tail-her fins-pain shooting up her right thigh. Kitha grabbed a handle on the harness with her right hand. Kiley pulled her gently along. “Tell him thank you,” she said.

Sound belled out from her hand, a long, gentle nosie, softer by far than the come signal.

She looked down. Jai was attaching something to the big girder down below. He’d found a line.

“Ask Kiley to swim over clear ground.” She tucked the translator into her pocket, and then twisted to look at the nets. The latches that held the cargo nets in place were easy to see. She waited while the great whale swam few meters past the dome, then lifted the latches, scrunching close against the whale’s body as the nets fell free, tumbling to the ground, bouncing once, twice, and then resting. She should have had Kiley go slower and lower. Hell, she was learning. Now that he was free of the nets, she slid up on Kiley’s back. She laughed, suddenly deliriously happy. She, Kitha, rode a whale! She must have bumped it, because the translator seemed to laugh with her for a moment. Kiley sped up, taking her up and around the dome, fast, a big circle. She freed a hand and grabbed the translator. “We have to wait,” she said. “Ask him to go down.”

Sound. And instant compliance. Kiley liked her. She wanted to lean down and pet him, but one hand held the translator and the other held fast to the harness. She leaned down and kissed him.

If she was specific, the whale did what she asked. She got Kiley positioned so Jai could tie the free end of the rope to the harness, and then turned the whale. She had to be sure she didn’t damage the lungs or the dome.

Or the whale?

Kiley seemed to understand. He bunched under her, gathering himself, and then he whipped his tail up and down so powerfully that the backlash in the water pushed Jai away. The metal bar rose easily, upending and landing with a puff on empty sea floor.

The lungs lay still and quiet. “Are they broken?” Kitha asked Jai.

Jerzy answered. “You were magnificent. And no. They’ll come on all by themselves. At least the two that aren’t torn. They’ll need to finish running diagnostics.”

“All right. What’s the smallest whale’s name?”

“Penelope.”

Kitha stripped Penelope and then Lisa of their cargo, being more careful to drop it carefully. The whales immediately took off, swimming in unison again, their great tails moving up and down to the same beat. Kitha thought she might never have seen anything more beautiful.

Jai swam up next to her and took her hand, waiting with her until the whales had disappeared from sight.

Behind them, the city drew a deep breath.

She squeezed Jai’s hand and headed toward the dome. Locks were already disgorging people and machinery to finish what she and Jai had started.

Just inside the lock, Jonathan waited beside a tall, smiling red-haired woman who must be Jerzy. He raced into her arms, warm and wriggly. “I’m so proud of you, Mommy!”

A tear dripped down her cheek as she held her son close.