The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

‘Aye!’ Nyradur replies from inside the tiny engine room. ‘I did it before we lowered the boat into the water. And the rear trim tank shouldn’t cause any problems. If it does, I’ll eat my hat.’

Early Bird begins to sing. The steam pressure in its pipes rises, the engine hums and the walls crunch benignly. I check the pitometer and the depth meter; they seem to be in order. I handle the many levers in front of me, without pulling them, like a phantom preparing to play his organ. I bend over the controls, lick my finger and clean a smudge off the front porthole. The best thing about the new suit is how easily I can move in it. On the other hand, the helmet is boisterous. I put it beside the ladder that leads up to the top hatch.

‘This should be enough stoking for now,’ I say.

‘Understood, Miss Audunsdottir!’

Puffing and panting, Nyradur sits down beside me and strokes the sweat off his forehead, without taking his hat off. Even with his small features, the space in the sub’s nose – or beak as I like to call it – becomes close-fitted with two persons at the front. Behind us are two more seats, but the maximum occupancy in my submarine is five, which has never been reached.

‘Let us set forth!’ I humour and twist a small reel beside the wheel.

‘Aye. Cross our fingers?’

‘Cross our fingers.’

Water pours into the ballast tanks. The wharf, the boatshed, and the forest gradually disappear, replaced by the under-surface wasteland. When we are close to the bottom I twist the reel back halfway, we gain control of the buoyancy, the turbine begins to spin and the propeller drives us forth.

*

The welling water plays a woeful song about the life that thrived in it before the time of the aluminium plant. What we see now out of the front porthole is nondescript. Specks of dirt and dust meander around, once in a while human trash strokes the portholes, and dead kelp and badly coloured pond scum is scrounged up from the bottom as we travel deeper.

Occasionally, Nyradur uses the cyclic stick beside his seat to control the two light projectors on top of Early Bird’s beak.

The cogwheels in the paracamera grind their tiny teeth together. We haven’t seen much so far but nonetheless I take pictures of everything I think to be distinct, like unusual stripes in the sand and broken stones. It’s better to use this expensive apparatus rather than not, the obscura stone can hold around a hundred pictures.

Our exploration down the river is for the most part uneventful. It’s not until we get closer to the lake that I can interest Nyradur with something.

‘There, I saw the pile of animal bones,’ I say loudly and point at something out the porthole.

‘Where?’ He steers the light projectors with the stick.

‘Over there, in the curve that leads to the crag. The crag is part of a long and steep cliff which extends down to a deep valley, the deepest part of the river, one hundred and twelve meters if my memory serves me right.’

‘What’s down there?’

‘Darkness, mostly. Your predecessor and I didn’t see anything signal last time.’

‘But doesn’t the original tale tell of how the serpent was sunk where the river is deepest?’

‘Yes – but there was nothing there. Not last time, anyway. And the time before that. And before that…’

‘Do you want to head down there now?’

‘No. Better to save the suit.’

‘Do we continue?’

‘We continue.’

We have yet to explore the eastern part of the river but my impatience draws us to the cave orifice, where the cliff ends in the mouth of the river, near the lake. The current gets a bit harder, thus we anchor and float only about five meters under the surface.

Nyradur scratches his cheeks eagerly like he would scratch a beard. An old habit, I guess. ‘It looks dangerous. If you lose your footing and slide deep down the pressure will be the end of you.’

Through the turbid water I gaze into the abyss, and it gazes back. ‘I know. I know,’ I utter, still gazing, ‘but it isn’t that steep, you see? You’ll see me the whole time. If the serpent goes in and out regularly, traces of him must be at the orifice. Something biologic. Proof.’

Nyradur gives me a sceptical look and I look back at him determined.

‘Are you really gonna dive now?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ I answer without hesitation.

‘We haven’t even entered the lake. What if you don’t find anything down there? Your stuff would need a complete overhaul and you say you don’t have any money left.’

His reactions surprise me. ‘Why do you have these worries? I paid you in advance, you’ve gotten the cash in your pocket and the only thing you need to do is to follow my lead.’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Nyradur voice clangs a bit too high in Early Bird’s beak. ‘I’m a mechanic with rich experience in handling the primitive machines in my world – and some in yours. You have advanced much further because most of the people you humans call wights do not want to be dependent on technology, they see it as destructive, they are satisfied with magic because it is in tune with nature. I’m here to learn. Human technology, especially high-tech stuff that doesn’t pollute much, is magic to my dwarven eyes. We dwarves possess very little magical energy, unlike elves, for example. If you prove the Lagar Serpent’s existence you’ll be well-set for continuous research, and I want to follow you there. I want to carry on working for you, if you’d be okay with that…’

‘Of course!’ I say after staring at him for a couple of seconds. ‘I’m sorry.’

He brings out my folder. ‘I believe in this, I really do. All your sources, all these stories, all this work – are you really gonna sacrifice it all for a slapdash dive? I