Who Knows Where Baikal Goes?
JAMES SHADBOLT
The ice below Harper’s feet squelched with every step, the slowly melting frost already showing signs of leniency. The bag at their side slipped from their shoulder with such a weight that it cracked the ice beneath.
They looked upon an endless ring of blue water before them. It was gently cradled on all sides by mountains covered in snow so clear and white that the sunlight made it practically glow. They looked down to the pebbled shores, where the light faded and the unmoving stones transitioned to the lapis-coloured ice that sat below their feet for many kilometres on all sides.
They unzipped their bag, the zipper getting caught on each and every frosted piece of metal as it travelled down the tattered material. Immediately its contents spewed out from the thin opening: Oxygen tanks; a thick, black wetsuit; flippers and a wrist-mounted diving computer all tumbled to the ground.
A lighter pair of footsteps trailed up behind Harper, their rapid pace decayed into tired steps and the sound of heavy panting.
Harper’s head swivelled at the sound, a sour expression crept up their face as they saw a young child.
‘Matteo!’ They yelled, 'I told you to stay in the van!' Matteo took a step back, in surprise.
'It’s boring in there!' Matteo sounded back, 'Why are we here?' He asked Harper, 'What’s so special about the B- Bike-'
'Baikal.' Harper interjected, 'Lake Baikal, the largest, oldest, and deepest lake in all of Siberia, all of Russia, and the rest of the world. Is that special enough for you?' Harper sneered.
Matteo looked down at his shoes with a frown on his face, until a sense of recognition struck him.
'It’s also where Dad went, isn’t it?' He asked, the melancholy palpable in his voice. 'That’s what they tell us.' Harper nonchalantly replied, 'But we’ll see.'
Harper began to put on the diving equipment, as Matteo watched, his face scrunched with a look of confusion as he reflected on Harper’s words.
A short while later, Harper shuddered as they slid their legs into the frigid water, sitting atop the layer of frost above the lake. The insulated wetsuit offered what little help it could, but the cold was overwhelming all the same. After letting the cold settle, Harper reached a shaky hand for their diving computer.
From its years of immense wear and tear, the device appeared deceptively old, though from what little of the warranty sticker hadn’t been completely scraped off by use, one could see it was less than a decade old. Harper flipped a protective cap on the device and pressed its power button.
The machine flickered to life, its divemap projecting a long route below the icy surface, deep into the lake, yet not even close to its bottom.
Matteo squinted at its screen over Harper’s shoulder, his inquiring gaze shaping into a look of doubting dissatisfaction.
'This lake is huge, and really really deep, how do you expect to find anything here with that?' Matteo asked with an impatience that Harper knew all too well.
'We wouldn’t be out here if I didn’t have a way.' Harper quickly replied, ' I know you were only three when it happened, but do you remember what Dad’s insurance told us after his accident?'
'Something about a shoebox?' He shrugged, 'I don’t remember it much.' Matteo awkwardly replied as he handed Harper their goggles.
'Black box not shoebox.' Harper giggled, 'They said the blackbox hadn’t activated so they couldn’t find the wreck, but lo and behold they emailed me last month, near five and a half years later, saying it had finally sounded off, but they wouldn’t retrieve it because the claim was already settled. Those things have six years of charge time, but only thirty days we can track them for, and we already lost most of that time just putting together this trip.'
'So this is our last chance… for you to find out what happened to him?' Matteo asked solemnly.
‘For us.’ Harper responded, ‘He was your dad too’
‘Of course, but… I mean barely knew him’ Matteo mumbled.
Harper shifted their weight to prepare to slide into the water, they looked at their dive computer, a two hour timer took up most of the screen, a vague map the remainder.
They pulled down their goggles and turned to Matteo,
'If I am not back in two hours, grab the satphone in the van, and call One-One-Two' Harper stated, their voice was coated in a thick air of seriousness.
'But by then it’ll be too late for y-'
'It’s not for me, Matty' Harper cut in, 'It’s so the authorities can come pick you up if something goes wrong.'
Matteo bowed his head in disappointment, Harper turned to face the water and avoid his gaze.
With a heavy splash Harper entered the water, the weights on their suit pulled them deeper so quickly there was barely a moment to adjust to each instance of the gradually growing water pressure. As the depth grew,. Harper felt the tightening grip around their body strengthen as they descended further and further. They pushed themselves to follow their training, all the while every limb, joint and sensation screamed in protest. The water around Harper’s every moving limb felt like rows of tourniquets lined their body, holding each and every little droplet of their blood at bay.
After what felt like aeons, Harper felt a different kind of pressure surge through their wrist. It was their dive-computer, flashing and vibrating violently.
'90M… 90M… 90M…' The number flashed over and over on their wrist. Harper’s eyes darted straight to their map. Immediately they gripped the weights on their belt and began to unbuckle them to halt their descent.
The weights slid from their wetsuit with an almost eager haste, falling far into the murky blackness below.
Harper looked up, their transfixion on the fathomless depth replaced by awe, as only a few hundred metres away, sat atop a delicate rock formation was a large, sunken Ferry.
Harper swam towards the ship, the crushing feeling of the water felt as if it had been replaced by a spacious euphoria that fluttered through every fibre of their being. Large, rusted letters greeted their gaze as they swam up alongside the sunken ship,
'The Marlin'
Harper swam onto the deck of the ship as they let the weights of their diving belt set them upon its main deck, looking across its large metal body for the location of the box..
With each water-slowed step around its premises Harper felt the weight of the ship shift slightly, yet they continued deeper into the facilities of the vessel nonetheless. They first looked around its upper floors to no avail, and much to their confusion, to not even a single sign of the late crew either. Yet as they finally descended to the bottom floor of the ship, something appeared in the very furthest reaches of Harper’s field of view. A dull green light flashed over, and over, deep within the ship’s lowest deck.
Harper pulled and slid themself through rusted doorways and piercings in the hull, the green glow growing and growing until the source finally greeted them. There within a back room of the ship sat an enormous bubble of air that water seemed to be slowly flowing into. At the base of this tiny water-stream sat a small orange crate, the notable green light blaring from a series of bulbs on all sides of the object. There it was, the black box, ripe for the taking.
Harper mused that after all this time, enough of the air must’ve given way to let water in to set off the box. They smirked at the luck and excitedly clambered into the room. Harper began to yank the box from its resting place with an enthusiastic pull, yet it wouldn’t shift from its compartment, Harper pulled again, hearing the gurgling of bubbles and shriek of rusted metal, they noticed the sides of the box had all but fused into its storage vessel.
Harper lined up their feet with the wall and once again pulled with all the force they could muster, and finally they heard a snap of metal and the box loosed with some large clumps of rusted metal still attached.
Harper shifted their shoulders against the newly displaced weight of the excess debris, the box was only meant to be a few kilos, but this was certainly heavier than expected.
Harper paused to try and consider a plan, only for a loud creak of metal to surge from the ship, and a shuddering vibration to knock them off their feet. Immediately Harper began to swim as quickly as they could, yet the weight of the black box made every motion twice as draining. They pushed and pushed and pushed as the ship’s noises grew louder and louder, until a final sound screeched through them and they felt the gravity of the world shift around them, and a wall of the ship came hurtling towards them, only to see blackness…
A short while later Harper awoke, their body sprawled out against a wall in the ship’s engine-room with the black box only a few metres away. They checked their dive-computer,
'115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121 metres-' and on and on, lower and lower towards the many hundred metre lake floor
The gauge lower on their computer glowed red, they saw only twenty minutes of air remaining, not nearly enough to swim all the way back up. Harper sighed into their respirator, a small cluster of bubbles escaping in the process. They banged the wall with frustration.
They thought of themself, of if this had been worth doing. They thought of the questions: Had this been worth it? Had this been a good choice? Would drowning be the worst way to go? But then they thought about their brother Matteo. Would he be okay without his sibling and his father?
'He already had been okay without one of us.' Harper thought to themself.
They knew he had spent more years without his dad than with him. They knew he already hadn’t needed him as much as Harper had. But he needed Harper, and Harper needed to be there for their brother.
Harper stood up, resolute in their motivation to get out. They slung the debris-covered black box onto their diving belt, they began to wade through the ship debris as it fell deeper and deeper.
By the time they had finally freed themself from the ship, they had reached a depth of 135 metres deep, with only seventeen minutes of air left. They looked upwards to the glowing ring of white light far above their view. Harper stared upwards, and began to think.
They knew that swimming up would take too long, even if they tried to float up the pressure-sickness alone would probably make them too fatigued to make it there anyway. They needed a way to ascend over a hundred metres, a depth that had taken them several minutes to sink to, without breathing to avoid the pressure changes. After a long pause, they grabbed their diving tank, and swapped their harness to place the tank in front of themself instead. With one hand they gripped tightly onto the black box, the other reached for the release valve on their tank.
With a harsh twist, air rocketed out from the tank as Harper began to try and blow as much air out of their own lungs as possible, the upward trip caused the severe-gripping pressure to let go with such suddenness that Harper felt like their body had been inflated like a balloon back to normalcy.
The tank hurtled upward as the last of its explosive rise dissipated. Though the distance was shortened, Harper could only endure this suffocating swim for so long. They could feel their throat gurgling as a tint of darkness set in around their view, they could see the surface, they could see, a rope-ladder?
Harper’s vision suddenly returned to a bloodshot clarity as they realised what they saw, it was Matteo, and a litany of other faces staring into the deep at them. Harper tried to swim up with their airless lungs and exhausted limbs, but found a pull at their side dragging them down again. It was the box, its weight was pulling against Harper’s every stroke. Harper pulled it from their belt and held its weight in their hand once again, looking down upon it as their tired eyes focussed against the blackness. Harper’s hands shivered yet their body felt like it was on fire.
Harper looked up again, they looked through the red haze in the vision and pierced into Matteo’s eyes.
Harper looked down upon the box once more, their tears indistinguishable from the all encompassing water, as slowly unfurled their hand.
In that single moment Harper was thrust upwards and with all their might tightly clasped the ladder, as the green glow sunk back into the blackness beneath.
Harper rose from the water, pulled out by what looked like paramedics, their head and lungs screaming, only to note their diving watch still showed that their timer had another ten minutes left. They turned to Matteo with a look of utter confusion.
'I said two hours was going to be too late for you!' He yelled with a satisfied tone. 'Glad you realised it too, you flew like a rocket!'
Matteo paused.
'But what about Dad’s Box?' He asked, concerned.
Harper breathed deeply, only to cough a sea from their lungs.
'I- I realised there’s no point chasing ghosts’ Harper panted, ‘I would have just added to them if it wasn’t for you.’
Harper clasped a soaked arm around their brother. ‘So thanks Matteo, Thanks.'
