As quickly as it had brightened, his mood soured. He hated that thinking about his daughter had this effect on him. Yet it did, and he couldn’t help it. She was like the equation he couldn’t solve, the missing piece of a puzzle that eluded finding.

  A soft knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. “Come in,” he called gruffly, his irritation tinting his tone.

  The door opened and a pimpled face looked in. “Dr. Ransome?” the boy said.

  Ben tried to remember the young man’s name. Already it had escaped his memory. Crete? he thought. It was a city. Then it came to him. “Rhodes,” he said, trying to sound welcoming. “Come in.”

  Rhodes entered the office and walked timidly to a chair. He looked at it for a moment, like a dog unsure of whether it was allowed on the furniture. Then he sat. He rested his hands in his lap, worrying them together. “Angela said you wanted to see me,” he said.

  “Are you interested in salps?” Ben asked him.

  Rhodes’s eyes looked down in the expression of shameful worry that Ben had noted earlier. He’s not sure what the right answer is, Ben thought. He thinks I’ll be mad if he picks the wrong one. The parent in him badly wanted to tell the young man that it was all right; the scientist in him wanted to wait for the boy to decide. In the end, science won out. He waited, watching Rhodes work through the possible results of the available responses.

  “Not really,” he said finally, not looking at Ben.

  “Me neither,” Ben said. Rhodes looked up at him, surprise and relief in his face. “But don’t tell Dr. Patcher I said that,” said Ben. “She thinks they’re endlessly fascinating.”

  Rhodes rewarded him with a smile that flashed briefly and vanished again beneath the mask of uncertainty. He’s still not sure he’s not in trouble, thought Ben. “What do you know about nudibranchs?” he asked.

  Rhodes shrugged in the ubiquitous teenage response. “They’re snails, right?” he said.

  “They’re slugs,” Ben corrected him. “Would you like to help us study them?”

  Again came the shrug. “I guess so,” said Rhodes. “What would I be doing?”

  “Can you dive?” asked Ben.

  This time Rhodes nodded. “I was certified two years ago,” he said.

  “Excellent,” said Ben. “Then you can come on dives with us. Also, you’ll help Angela and me in the lab. Does that sound all right with you?”

  “Sure,” Rhodes said, his voice devoid of excitement.

  “Or you can stay with Dr. Patcher and her salps,” said Ben, determined to get more from the boy than simple agreement.

  “I’ll take the nudibranchs,” said Rhodes quickly.

  “Good,” Ben said. “Why don’t you go see what Angela is doing. Tell her you need to fill out the research diving forms.”

  Rhodes stood up. As he walked to the door, Ben stopped him with a question. “Rhodes, why are you here?”

  Rhodes turned. “Honestly?” he said.

  Ben nodded, and Rhodes bit his lip. “It was either this or baseball camp,” he said. “And I suck at baseball.”

  Ben made a mental note to find out who Rhodes’s father was and how much he’d donated to the program. But he appreciated the boy’s honesty. “We’re happy to have you,” he said.

  Alone again, his thoughts returned to Caddie. Like Rhodes, she was with him because the alternative was worse. So why couldn’t he talk to her the way he’d just talked to Rhodes? Why had he been able to understand what the young man needed when he couldn’t even begin to understand what his daughter needed?

  Answering that question, if it even could be answered, would have to wait. At the moment he had more pressing concerns. Like what to serve for dinner, he thought, and wondered how hard it would be to roast a chicken.

  CHAPTER 23

  “I feel like a lobster.” Caddie pulled at the neck of her wet suit. “I’m boiling in this thing.”

  “Here,” said Brian. He tugged at the zipper on the back of the suit, pulling it halfway down. “Is that better?”

  “A little,” answered Caddie. “I can’t believe how hot these things are.”

  “You won’t think it’s too hot once we’re in the water,” said Brian. “The water’s probably fifty-three, fifty-four degrees.”

  “Why aren’t we wearing that kind of suit?” asked Caddie, nodding at two divers walking toward the beach.

  “Dry suits?” said Brian. “You don’t really need one. Besides, they’re more complicated. You have enough to worry about. Now let’s go over the reg again.”

  Caddie knelt beside him on the grass where they’d laid out their gear. Brian had borrowed some for her from a friend, and he’d showed her how to put it together. The regulator was attached to the tank, which in turn was strapped to the BC. Brian picked up the reg and handed it to her. Caddie put it in her mouth and dutifully breathed in and out a few times before removing it.

  “That’s pretty much it,” Brian told her. “Oh, except for buoyancy. You’re going to have to learn how to put air into your BC so that you float under the water. That’s what you use this for.” He picked up a thick corrugated hose attached to the front of the BC at the shoulder. It ended in what looked like a regulator.

  “How’s it work?” Caddie asked.

  Brian pressed a small button on the regulator end and the BC puffed with air. “You use this bigger button to let it out again,” he explained, showing her.

  “That looks easy enough,” said Caddie.

  Brian laughed. “You think so?” he said. “Wait ’til you try it underwater.”

  “What else?” asked Caddie, ignoring him.

  “Now we get you in the water,” said Brian. “That’s how you learn. Just do what I show you and you’ll be fine.”

  Caddie, anxious to get going, allowed Brian to help her on with a neoprene hood, which he tucked beneath the neck of her wet suit before zipping her up again. Caddie puffed her cheeks in and out, getting used to the tight feel of the hood.

  Next Brian lifted her BC, holding the bottom of the air cylinder on the back as she slipped her arms through the straps. When he let go, the weight of the tank caused her to almost tumble over. But Brian steadied her, and she recentered herself, bending forward as Brian secured the velcro waist belt. Then he picked up two narrow pouches.

  “What are those?” asked Caddie as Brian slipped the first pouch into an opening on the side of her BC.

  “Your weights,” he informed her. “How else do you think you get under the water?”

  “More weight?” Caddie complained as Brian snapped the weight pouch into place. “This crap already weighs half a ton.”

  “Don’t worry,” Brian said. “You won’t feel it in the water.”

  Caddie was beginning to think that learning to dive was a big mistake. She was hot and sweaty. The hood seemed to surround her like a giant hand, and she suddenly felt like she couldn’t breathe. As Brian slid the second pouch into the other side of her BC, she closed her eyes and tried to breathe. Brian, oblivious to her rising discomfort, began to put on his own gear.

  I don’t want to do this, Caddie thought as she waited for Brian. I want to take it all off. She was just about to tell Brian as much when, snapping the last of his weight pouches in place, he said, “Ready?”

  Caddie nodded. Brian handed her a mask, some gloves, and a pair of fins, which she held in her hand as they walked across the grassy area to the beach. With each step Caddie grew more and more miserable, and when they finally reached the beach after traversing a short flight of stairs, she sat down on the nearest rock to catch her breath.

  “Put your mask and fins on here,” Brian instructed her as he slipped his gloves on and got ready. “I’ll help you in.”

  Caddie pulled on the first glove. Her fingers felt thick and useless, which they indeed proved to be when she tried to pull the second glove on. Determined not to ask Brian for help, she grabbed the end with her teeth and pulled, inching the material over her hand until it was on. I feel like I have paws, she thought, looking at her hands, now twice their normal size.

  “Coming?” Brian asked her. He was standing a dozen feet from her. His mask was on his face, and he was holding his fins.

  Caddie, annoyed at the impatient tone of his question, ignored him as she pulled the mask strap over her head and adjusted the mask on her face. With the mask over her nose, the suffocating feeling intensified, but she fought it down, breathing through her mouth. “Ready,” she said, standing up and joining Brian.

  They walked together to the edge of the water. The ocean was calm and flat, and only the smallest of waves lapped at the sand. When the first one washed over her foot, Caddie tensed for the cold. When none came, she realized that what Brian had said about the wet suit was true. It wasn’t at all cold.

  “Lean on me and put your fins on,” Brian told her.

  Caddie did what he said, balancing herself with a hand on his shoulder while she pulled a fin onto one foot. It went on more easily than she expected, and she tightened the strap around her ankle with a satisfied tug. This is going to be a piece of cake, she told herself as she put the second fin on.

  “Now we’ll walk in,” said Brian. “But you’ll have to walk backward because you have fins on, so you’ll have to trust me.”

  Her arm through Brian’s, Caddie shuffled awkwardly toward the ocean. Unable to see anything, she had to rely on him, which she didn’t like. It made her feel helpless. It’s just until we’re in the water, she told herself.

  She felt the water hit her legs. As they proceeded, it rose to her waist, and then a wave crashed lightly against her lower back. At the same time, she felt water begin to seep into her wet suit. Now she was cold, but only momentarily.

  “Okay, you can turn around,” said Brian.

  Caddie turned, moving her finned feet carefully. She was in the ocean. Although the beach was less than fifteen feet behind her, she had the sensation of being in another world. Water was all around her. She looked down through her mask and saw the sandy bottom. A crab scrabbled away from her fin on tiny legs.

  “We can swim the rest of the way,” said Brian. “Just put some air in your BC so you don’t sink.”

  Caddie, remembering what he’d shown her, pressed the smaller of the two buttons on the inflator and felt her BC swell around her. When it felt full enough, she stopped. Brian had put his snorkel in his mouth, and she aped him, finding it where it was attached to her mask strap and slipping the end in her mouth. Then, falling forward, she swam.

  She’d snorkeled before, but only in warm water. This was different. As they moved to deeper water, the landscape beneath them changed dramatically. The sand gave way to rocks, and then to areas thick with kelp. It really does look like the exhibit at the museum, Caddie thought. It’s beautiful.

  After a minute she felt something tug on her arm and looked over to see Brian floating vertically in the water. She lifted her head, bobbing, to see why he’d stopped.

  “We’ll go down here,” Brian told her.

  “How do I do that?” Caddie asked.

  “Just let the air out of your BC,” said Brian. “Like this.” He put his regulator in his mouth, held his inflator hose up, and pressed a button. Air hissed out, and a moment later Brian began to sink out of sight. Caddie watched his head sink beneath the surface.

  Here goes nothing, she thought as she did as he had. She breathed air in through the regulator as her BC deflated. Then the sky was gone and she saw nothing but water, brown and green. A moment of terror seized her as she realized that she was underwater, but a gasp on her regulator assured her that she could still breathe, and she calmed down. She fell quickly. She saw kelp rushing by her and wondered if she was going too quickly. Brian hadn’t said anything about how to stop the fall, and she seemed to be moving both too quickly and in slow motion through the water. Like Alice down the rabbit hole, she thought as she waited to see what would happen.

  Her feet hit the bottom with a jolt and she stood there, not knowing what to do. She looked around for Brian and saw him hovering horizontally beside her. Behind his mask, his eyes were laughing at her. She started to tell him off, then remembered that she couldn’t talk. Instead, she glared at him and waited for him to show her what to do.

  Pointing to her inflator hose, Brian mimed pushing the button to put air into it. At first Caddie didn’t understand. Then Brian indicated that she should float like he was, and she began to figure out what he wanted her to do. She pressed the button gently, letting a little air in. As her BC inflated, she attempted to hover like Brian was. Instead, she crashed to the bottom, landing heavily in the sand.

  She added some more air, and this time she began to rise up. It was a strange feeling, and she felt out of control. She added too much air and felt herself rising quickly. But Brian grabbed her and, holding onto her, showed her how to let air out of her BC so that she was once again going down. Finally, she was more or less hovering in the water next to him, although she still wasn’t entirely comfortable. There’s too much to remember, she thought as Brian, holding her hand, began to swim.

  She kicked, propelling herself forward. She’d thought that diving would make her feel like a fish. Instead, she felt like a hippo. A completely ungraceful hippo, she thought moodily. And Brian was wrong; she was cold. Also, her ears hurt. She moved her jaw from side to side, as she did when her ears hurt during airplane takeoffs, and the pain subsided.

  Brian was swimming toward what looked like a big pipe. When they reached it, Caddie saw that it was exactly that, an old pipe, rusted and covered with all kinds of sea life. Following it, they continued to swim, Brian on one side and Caddie on the other. He’d let go of her hand, and she now found it a little easier to maneuver herself.

  Despite the novelty, she found herself kind of bored. Apart from a lot of kelp and some fish, there wasn’t much to look at. A starfish, orange against the dark rust of the pipe, momentarily distracted her. But she’d seen lots of starfish (although admittedly they had mostly been dried and decorating the walls of beachside restaurants), and this one was unremarkable apart from the fact that it was alive.

  She looked down, to the side of the pipe, and saw what appeared to be white and black flowers growing in a small patch in the sand. Intrigued, she tried to get closer to them. As she neared, however, the flowers retreated into themselves, disappearing and leaving behind only short, naked stumps like dead fingers. Amazed, Caddie waited to see if they returned. A moment later, one of the fingers expanded and tiny filaments emerged, blooming into a white flower. Caddie reached out a gloved finger and touched it, sending it back into hiding.

  What the hell is that? she wondered. She looked for Brian, wanting to show him the remarkable find. He was a few feet away, waiting. She pointed to the flower-things, and he swam over to look. When he saw what she was pointing at, he shook his head as if to say, “I know what those are.” Then he turned and swam off.

  Caddie wanted to stay and wait for the flower-things to come back. She was surprised that Brian was treating them so casually. She wanted to know more about them. Brian, however, seemed to want to keep going.

  Now as they swam she looked at the ocean with new eyes. It was as if the flower-things had granted her some magic powers. Like those girls in the stories who get grease in their eyes and can see the fairy world, she thought. And she did feel now that she was in some other world, one filled with things she’d never even imagined.

  A crab, its back decorated with bits of shells and strands of kelp, crawled across the pipe. Meeting another crab, it raised its pincers, and the two danced around one another until the second crab, smaller and with a bright orange carapace, seemed to fall down the side of the pipe like a skier caught in an avalanche. It caught itself and sat, motionless, on the skin of the pipe, its tiny mouth working busily.

  It was, Caddie saw, a world of conflicts and intrigues. Its citizens, most of them weirdly beautiful, carried on oblivious to the world above. And she, Caddie thought, was equally oblivious to their world. It had never occurred to her that so much life not only lived beneath the water but went on beneath the water. She felt she’d discovered an entirely new civilization where before she’d seen only darkness and wet.

  She left the little crab behind, seeing something in the sand that she wanted to investigate. What appeared to be a scrap of purple material was waving gently in the current, as if someone had dropped a handkerchief or thrown away the wrapper from a candy bar. Caddie, finding herself annoyed at the idea that someone would do such a thing, intended to pick it up, although it occurred to her as she reached that paper that she had nowhere to put it.

  But it wasn’t waste. It was an animal. At least she thought it was an animal. It didn’t look like anything she’d ever seen. Perhaps half a foot in length, it had a soft purplish body from which extended what she could only think to describe as feathers, although really they were more like flags, flaps of pale pink that covered the creature’s back and fluttered as if a breeze were blowing them. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen, and she hadn’t the faintest clue what it was. It looks like something Stevie Nicks would wear as a shawl, she thought with amusement.

  The creature moved slowly over the sand, doing what Caddie had no idea. She watched as it approached one of the flowerlike things she had seen earlier. With excruciating slowness it touched the thing’s stalk, sending it into retreat. Undeterred, the creature seemed to climb the stalk, its body sliding upward in a series of undulations. Then it stopped. When, a few moments later, the stalk opened and its owner emerged, the creature pounced, its head surrounding the head of its victim.

  Caddie was enthralled. Clearly, the creature was eating. But what was it eating, and what was it itself? She had absolutely no frame of reference for understanding these things, and the complete mystery of them delighted her. When she saw Brian swim up beside her and point in the direction from which they’d come, she left the scene only with much reluctance.

  The swim back was quicker, as if Brian was in a hurry to return to land. Caddie kept up with him until suddenly she felt herself rising quickly toward the surface. She fumbled with her inflator hose, trying to let some air out of her BC, but before she could even find the button she was at the surface. A moment later, Brian appeared beside her.