Chapter 4
Dear Schr Clel,
You cannot imagine how much joy I received from your letter. Yet I must apologise immensely for deceiving you into thinking that I am interesting or accomplished enough to merit your attention
Dear Schr Clel,
I intended to respond to your letter three days ago – how time speeds by! – but I have had much to do around my house. You see, I noticed something unusual recently, and ever since then, it has become more difficult to silence those intrusive thoughts that suggest a calamity is close at hand. There are so many things that I must check, and one can never be too careful
Dear Schr Clel,
Please forgive me for neglecting your letter for so long. I can assure you that when I received it, I was most pleased to see that you had taken the time to reply to me. You asked me to describe my life at the Deep House – what an impossible task! But I shall try, for your sake. Imagine, firstly, that you have boarded a small depth-craft to visit us. If you left from the western portion of Boundless Campus (where I believe your Anchorage is located), you would pass first through the most vibrant reef you have ever seen. Should you find yourself growing anxious, with troubling thoughts blossoming in your mind, I would recommend focusing on the intricate details of the Fan Coral – trace each spiny, skeletal sclerite from the root to the tip – and pretending that each bubble you see outside your depth-craft is a pernicious Thought floating out of your head and into the open ocean.
With your thoughts regulated in this way, you might have a spare moment to look up from the coral to the distant depths, where you may glimpse a glimmering sculpture of a Sea Star out of the corner of your eye – a decorative element added by my mother to distract a visitor’s eye from the less romantical collection of water-surveying equipment hidden beneath it on the roof of the house. As you neared, you might observe that the house seems to grow right out of the coral. The exterior is painted as gaudily as the life that surrounds it so that the presence of the house will not disturb those creatures who already call this area home. Only indoors will you find elements that speak to our personal decorative tastes and interests (but I would not ever recommend that you come indoors because it would be most impossible
Dearest E.,
I wish you could send me a thousand shimmering abalones! Sadly, you told Seliara the truth: we are not able to receive personal parcels at present.
I wonder where you will sit to read this? In the library, at Mother’s desk? In the dining room, in the fine company of leftover pie and endless sea views? Curled up in your bedroom porthole? In any case, E., settle in, as I have much to tell you!
All the time that you and I spent poring over the schematics of the Spheres together was for naught, it seems (though it was an excellent opportunity to strengthen our Sisterly bond!), because the actual experience of living at the station is nothing like how it looked on paper. First of all, the “Spheres” themselves are truly enormous – I expected cramped quarters like the Depth Capsule (or an Apprentices’ Anchorage), not high, curving ceilings. There are eight circular units in total, connected by a series of transparent tunnels. Five are our personal quarters – complete with closet-sized washrooms, massive windows tinted slightly for privacy, and stunningly advanced remote communication stations that we have been assured will be operational shortly! The remaining three spheres contain, respectively, a wet-dock with decontamination and medical facilities, a multi-discipline laboratory, and a simple kitchen/recreational area. Comforts enough to sustain us through our season-long residency!
Yet this place is nothing like the Deep House. Features like organic forms, flowing stairways, and multiple storeys that take advantage of the depth in a way unforeseeable abovewaters are all apparently unique to Mother’s architectural style. Here, a surprisingly horizontal complex stretches across the seafloor with little external or internal ornament. Instead, the designers chose to enliven the station with colour – each sphere is illuminated with lights, glass, and shell-shine of its own particular hue. (The colour of my living space, to my delight, is cheerful orange!)
So far, Scholar Forghe – I mean Eliniea, Eliniea, Eliniea, I’m working so hard to correct myself – let’s try that again!
So far, Eliniea has become my closest acquaintance. If you would like to refer to my previous letter, she turned out to be the elegant Intertidal Scholar in pink, much to my surprise. Schr Eliniea Hayve Forghe is no older than I am, and yet she has already accomplished more than most seasoned Scholars. You’ll remember that she was the very first person to survey the Ridge via staffed capsule during the pre-mission assessment. Now she single-handedly runs an expedition before the age of thirty. And here I thought that my presence on this mission made me precocious!
Though she is obviously the only colleague here of my own generation, I felt unsure about whether we could truly become friends – since she is the Expedition Specialist as well as an absolute genius, E. But when I expressed that very sentiment to her during our first morning at the station – when she asked if she might join me for breakfast, as all else were still asleep – she quelled my concerns quickly.
“It will be a lonely mission for me if my position proves such an impediment!” she exclaimed with a confidence belied by the fact that her quivering hand had not yet placed her pink teacup on the table. “The decision is entirely yours to make, of course, and I hope you do not feel as though I am pressuring you to engage with me on a social level! My ‘leadership’ is simply the product of my familiarity with the Ridge. Like all of you, I hold no special authority and report to Chancellor Rawsel of the School of Observation. But I do not wish to alter your thoughts one way or the other!”
By the time she completed this monologue, I imagine her tea had gone cold in her grasp, but she resolutely kept it at a distance so as not to intrude upon my personal space. I found the entire situation immensely charming.
“I would be delighted if you joined me, Scholar—Eliniea,” I said, clearing away the extensive array of cartographic journals I had at the ready to keep me entertained. And join me she did. (She also invited me to call her by the nickname Niea, but there is only so much informality I can stomach!)
In the days since, we’ve breakfasted every morning together, with our conversations progressing from the Ridge and our expedition to our Scholarly careers and then, at last, our personal lives. She paints, stargazes, and cultivates aquaria in her free time; I realised promptly that my only “hobby” is more studying. Still, I have my own topics to bring to our conversations. I have already spoken at length about you, as expected, and our dear home, and even some especially silly Arvist episodes, which were well received! Her character is, in many ways, at odds with mine – she is graceful where I am brusque, optimistic where I am cynical, and wears such diaphanous and pastel-hued finery that I feel like a barnacle in the company of a pearl.
Still, it has been such a long time since I had a friend (who is not a sister, I should clarify!). I find the experience restorative.
What I find less restorative, unfortunately, is my role in the mission itself! I feel rather abashed to admit this, but I think I envisioned the Ridge as – well, you know, an actual ridge, like the sunken seamounts that surround the Atoll Campus, with rough, jagged cliffs towering far above the ocean floor. Now, it is certainly possible that such topography exists just outside our windows. Unfortunately, because we are surrounded by the eternal darkness of the Abyssal Plains, I cannot tell one way or the other.
Everyone else started their projects days ago. Eliniea, as the presiding Scholar of Life, spends hours observing each shadowy shape or luminescent flash of a creature that approaches our windows. Scholar Irye Rux (the Columns player, and our Scholar of Sound) lets down the hydrophone twice a day. Scholar Ylaret Tamseln has astronomical calculations aplenty to keep her busy at present, and certainly Scholar Vincenebras (he decided long ago to fuse his first and last names into one for efficiency’s sake) is able to do… whatever it is that he does. (I jest. He is a Journalist from the Intertidal School of Intuition and shall record our experiences to share with the public.)
—one hour later—
I considered, for one delicious and delinquent moment, simply continuing the letter and pretending that that Schr Rux had not interrupted me by announcing the arrival of a rare Parochial Squid outside the laboratory viewing window – but why bother to create a fiction for you?
Eliniea promises that as soon as we receive a final shipment of equipment (including the fabled underwater camera!) from “up there”, we will embark upon our first mission outside the station – but I’ve had to occupy myself in the meantime. Perhaps it will delight you to know that I have been sketching ideas of what the invisible landscape around us might look like, simply to keep my mind sharp. I would love to create a true geographical rendering of this place – but instead I grapple with pictorial convention while I wait! O, if Arvist could see me now. (I am rather glad he cannot. He may be frustrating – and he should write to you soon, by the way, I guarantee it – but sink it all, that boy’s skill with a brush is incomparable.)
Fortunately, I know that these days of idleness are numbered, and I will soon commence the work of which I have always dreamed. O, how I miss you!
Affectionately,
Sophy
P.S. (written the next morning, moments before I send off this letter) I need say only this – if you do not reply to Scholar Clel’s letter I shall be most disappointed.
To my favourite amateur artist,
I shall supplement this letter with a much longer response at a later date, but at present, I wanted to share some startling news of my own (no new hobbies like painting abyssal seascapes to report, sadly):
Item 1, REGARDING THE STRUCTURE: My discovery during Seliara’s visit continues to haunt me. I cannot stop thinking about how Arvist managed to construct this Structure so quietly! I now carry out daily surveys of the undergarden from Arvist’s room in an attempt to see the “bowl” more clearly (with unfortunately limited results). Last night, it occurred to me that the tool I needed most to understand it was close at hand – Mother’s telescope. I had kept it in her desk in the library as a kind of relic – I will confess to spending a few nights, years ago, clutching it to my eye in the hopes that I would see a fragmented, magnified glimpse of her hair or pores or lashes within it – but it has been a while since I felt the need to touch it. In any case, yesterday I placed the telescope at my eye and pressed the other end to the window. This Structure is truly round, Sophy – perfectly so, as far as I can see. I might put forth the hypothesis that a kind of pattern has been etched into its bowl-like base, but I have also not ruled out the possibility that it was nothing more than dust on my lens.
Item 2, REGARDING MY PROFESSIONAL CORRESPONDENCE WITH SCHOLAR CLEL: I decided this morning (after my rounds about the house) that I would sit down and respond to him at last. So far, I have walked to my writing desk, sat down, removed a sheet of paper, stood up, and returned to pacing the corridors no fewer than three times. When will it end?
Well, this letter will end with an obligatory—
Item 3, THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL: Know that you are most sorely missed, and that I pray your existence under inconceivable amounts of water pressure has not weighed you down.
Please send my best to your new colleagues, especially your new “FRIEND” Eliniea (o Sophy, you are never so subtle as you imagine).
I am grateful you are not alone down there.
E.
Dearest Colleagues,
Do you know how many tides comprise five years? How many sunsets? How many births and deaths and triumphs and failures and seasonal seabird migrations?
Well, no matter how you measure them, the past five years led up to this moment: the first-ever fully staffed deep-sea research investigation, one that will explore the mysteries of the Ridge and the Life that calls it home.
One might even go so far as to include the past hundred years in this journey. When Schr Gavriel Tern first dreamed that people might travel beneath the waves in Year 905, she may never have guessed that her heirs would later use her blueprints to create the first successful Depth-Craft “Capsule”, the venerable progenitor of the great chariot that recently bore me and my colleagues to our destination in the depths!
In fact, if you will indulge me by diving still deeper into the misty waters of Time, one might argue that the calamitous Dive of a thousand years ago – that tragedy that shattered the Upward Archipelago and left our ancestors, the greatest Scholars of every Country and Culture known to the mysterious Antepelagic world, bereft of their Islands in the Sky and adrift on an unknown planet – that event ensured that one day we the Survivors would need to get to know our new world.
And so we have. We have grown from a struggling group of survivors to three thriving Academic cultures, each with its own values, accomplishments, and philosophies.
O, Boundless Campus – that disparate collection of ships and Anchorages, all adrift yet utterly united! Who but thee could create a mobile civilisation upon sea-faring vessels, making fathoms of ocean seem altogether cosy? (And who but thee could organise the Ridge Expedition, overseeing the recruitment of Scholars from across the campuses?)
O, Intertidal Campus – my Campus, I should note – the most ingenious response to our world’s lack of land! Our Intertidal ancestors constructed the great Ring of hand-crafted “islands” to surround the Atoll. Little could they have imagined how much Creativity and Transformation would flourish upon our floating world in the years to come!
O, the Atoll Campus – home to the guardians of the only genuine Landmass known to humanity! While the rest of us innovate upon the water, our Atoll Colleagues preserve ancient practices from the Upward Archipelago on their island home. Agriculture! Terrestrial biology! Floors that never leak!
But even with all the combined gifts and accomplishments of Boundless, Intertidal, and Atoll peoples alike at our disposal, one place eluded all of us for a thousand years…
The deepest (known) trench in the ocean.
Back to the glorious present! Today, our crew of five will pioneer a new way of life – living in true darkness, as do the species that already call this biome home. Assisting us with her great expertise is Expedition Specialist Schr Eliniea Hayve Forghe, who brings unparalleled wisdom from her famous experimental depth-craft residency on the Ridge that led to this expedition in the first place. Won’t you join us as we change the world? Simply detach the enclosed postcard and include the proper payment to experience the Ridge from the comfort of your own chairs.
With abyssal enthusiasm,
Schr Vincenebras, on behalf of the entire Ridge Expedition
Dear Sophy,
Have you truly mailed me an extant copy of The Ridge Revealed? Do you trust me (and our postal service) so deeply? I cannot believe this. That is a piece of history. Surely you want me to send it back to you immediately!
(Such was my initial reaction. Then I reread Vincenebras’ bombastic words and realised that age and circumstance are the only qualities that make this piece of writing so valuable. I particularly appreciate his attempt to “explain” the Dive and the Campuses, as though every single person from the past thousand years does not know every detail about our own origins.)
Thank you for assembling those fragments that E. produced while attempting to draft a reply to Henerey. Your sister was not alone in this practice, of course. Did you know it took my brother fifteen tries, on average, to compose the perfect one-sentence sentiment for a thank-you card? I dread to think how he would have contended with today’s advancements in Automated Post technology. He would likely spend hours writing the perfect two-line witticism, only to see a reply arrive mere instants later! Horrifying.
V.
P.S. My husband desperately wants me to mention that he greatly admires Arvist’s work. Thinks him a proper genius. I, on the other hand, have no opinion either way, as I have never had much of a head for Art.
Dear Vyerin,
Neither has my brother, I’m afraid.
There are many brilliant, remarkable people in the Boundless Campus School of Inspiration, and I never considered Arvist one of them. O, he is talented – immensely so! – and he creates beautiful, meaningful things when he wishes, but he so rarely tries! He also refuses to do anything at which he does not excel naturally, so he never expands his practice like many of his colleagues. He only passed his Scholarly Presentation, I suspect, because one of his three Examiners (the School of Intuition representative) was an Architect who seemed terrified of somehow disappointing the ghost of our mother, or something of the sort.
Sophy
P.S. By the way, of course that Ridge Revealed document is yours to keep, if you wish. My wife and I have multiple copies – one of the “benefits” of our time on the expedition. Feel free to sell it if the historical mystique ever wears off for you.
Dear Sophy,
O the nepotism of Presentations. I wish I had been so lucky.
Best wishes,
Vyerin
P.S. You are too generous. I shall cherish it always.
Dear Vyerin,
I was the lucky one, because I had a prior engagement and could not attend Arvist’s Presentation myself…
S.
O Vyerin – pardon my flippancy in that last note – upon rereading, it occurs to me that perhaps your opinion regarding Presentations and their accuracy was influenced by personal experience of some significance? Many apologies. Sometimes I write too quickly in this format and do not fully understand the emotions at play. Forgive me?
S.
How insightful. (I mean that sincerely. Might be hard to tell.) Yes, I once hoped to become a Scholar, but it proved a poor match for my temperament. Every single person in my family tree – going back hundreds of years, they told us (likely back to the Survivors themselves) – was a Scholar, up through Henerey, and I the first to “choose” a different path, as it were. That is all.
V.
Yet you have become one of the most talented Navigators working today, so I imagine you made the right choice! (Or so I am told. Pardon me for researching you extensively since you sent that last letter.)
S.
I appreciate the compliment, though I do not accept it. It is some comfort that none of this really matters anymore.
Best regards,
Vyerin
P.S. Reread my note and realised it sounds much more morose than intended. I mean all the Scholarly nonsense no longer matters to me as it once did. Navigation certainly does, and always will. Our Society would stop without it. Anyway, it is very late, and I am amazed that you remain awake. (I will soon depart on a chartered vessel run, so this is a typical hour for me.) Rest well this evening and I shall send you a letter from my own records tomorrow (the one that E. finally posted after writing all those fragments) as well as a little surprise. My husband happens to possess the same keen archival senses as you. Over dinner, he suggested that I consult Henerey’s infamous daybook you found at the Deep House to see if he preserved or wrote anything of note around this time. I promptly took Reiv’s advice and explored this relic from my late brother’s “archives”, only to discover a pasted-in Academy notice and a few stray notes. I hope you will enjoy them as well.
With a postscript like that, dear Vyerin, how could I possibly sleep a wink?