skin and the vast array of sounds and sensations caused by looking down at the natural metropolis below in all its diversity. Far from the flat, gently sloping, sandy sea bottom that people imagined, coral reef towered in places, dropped away in others, just like any urban centre. There were valleys and ridges and little caves from where brightly coloured fish surveyed their personal square metre of territory. Long orange antenna poked out from under a shelf and acted as the early warning system of a perky, pincers-at-the-ready crayfish. Anemones danced smooth and slow on the current, their base firmly tethered to the reef, stinging anything that came close but giving the little fish happily living inside it a free pass in return for its nibbly housekeeping.
Swimming over the top of it all, peering down through the glassy water, it felt like cruising above an alien metropolis in some kind of silent-running airship—just the sound of her own breathing inside the snorkel, and her myriad synaesthetic associations in her mind’s ear. The occasional colourful little fellow came up to have a closer look at them but mostly the fish just went about their business, adhering to the strict social rules of reef communities, focusing on their eternal search for food, shelter or a mate.
Life was pretty straightforward under the surface.
And it was insanely abundant.
She glanced at Richard, who didn’t seem to know where to look first. His mask darted from left to right, taking in the coral city ahead of them, looking below them at some particular point. He’d tucked his hands into balls by his hips and she wondered if that was to stop him reaching out and touching the strictly forbidden living fossil.
She took a breath and flipped gently in the water, barely flexing her mono-fin to effect the move, swimming backwards ahead of him so that she could see if he was doing okay. His mask came up square onto hers and, even in the electric-blue underworld, his eyes still managed to stand out as they locked on hers.
And he smiled.
The candyfloss returned with a vengeance. It was almost overpowering in the cloistered underwater confines of her mask. Part of her brain knew it wasn’t real but as far as the other part was concerned she was sucking her air directly from some carnival tent. That was the first smile she’d seen from Richard and it was a doozy, even working around a mouthful of snorkel. It transformed his already handsome face into something really breath-stealing and, right now, she needed all the air she could get!
She signalled upwards, flicked her fin and was back above the glassy surface within a couple of heartbeats.
‘I’ve spent so much time on the water and I had no idea there was so much going on below!’ he said the moment his mouth was free of rubbery snorkel. ‘I mean you know but you don’t...know. You know?’
This level of inarticulateness wasn’t uncommon for someone seeing the busy reef for the first time—their minds were almost always blown—but it made her feel just a little bit better about how much of a babbler she’d been with him.
His finless legs had to work much harder than hers to keep him perpendicular to the water and his breath started to grow choppy. ‘It’s so...structured. Almost city-like.’
Mila smiled. It was so much easier to relate to someone over the reef.
‘Coral polyps organise into a stag horn just like a thousand humans organise into a high-rise building. It’s a futuristic city...with hovercraft. Ready for more?’
His answer was to bite back down onto his snorkel’s mouthpiece and tip himself forward, back under the surface.
They drifted on for another half-hour and she let Richard take the lead, going where interest took him. He got more skilled at the suspension of breath needed to deep snorkel, letting him get closer to the detail of the reef, and the two of them were like mini whales every time they surfaced, except they blew water instead of air from their clumsy plastic blowholes.
There was something intimate in the way they managed to expel the water at the same time on surfacing—relaxed, not urgent—then take another breath and go back for more. Over and over again. It was vaguely like...
Kissing.
Mila’s powerful kick pushed her back up to the surface. That was not a thought she was about to entertain. He was a one, for a start, and he was here to exploit the very reef he was currently going crazy over. Though if she did her job then maybe he’d change his mind about that after today.
‘Seen enough?’ she asked when he caught up with her.
His mask couldn’t hide the disappointment behind it. ‘Is it time to go in?’
‘I just want to show you the drop-off, then we’ll head back to the beach.’
Just was probably an understatement, and they’d have to swim out of the shallow waters towards the place the continental shelf took its first plunge, but for Richard to understand the reef and how it connected to the oceanic ecosystem he needed to see it for himself.
Seeing was believing.
Unless you were her, in which case, seeing came with a whole bunch of other sensations that no one else experienced. Or necessarily believed.
She’d lost enough friends in the past to recognise that.
Mila slid the mouthpiece back into her snorkel and tooted out of the top.
‘Let’s go.’
* * *
Richard prided himself on being a man of composure. In the boardroom, in the bedroom, in front of a media pack. In fact, it was something he was known for—courage under fire—and it came from always knowing your strengths, and your opponents’. From always doing your homework. From controlling all the variables before they even had time to vary.
This had to be the least composed he’d been in a long, long time.
Mila had swum alongside him, her vigilant eyes sweeping around them so that he could just enjoy the wonders of the reef, monitoring their position to make sure they didn’t get caught up in the current. He’d felt the change in the water as the outer reef had started to rise up to meet them, almost shore-like. But it wasn’t land; it was the break line one kilometre out from the actual shore where the reef grew most abundant and closest to the surface of anywhere they’d swum yet. So close, the waves from the deeper water on the other side crashed against it relentlessly and things got a little choppier than their earlier efforts. Mila had led him to a channel that allowed them to propel themselves down between the high-rise coral—just like any of the reef’s permanent residents—and get some relief from the surging waves as they’d swum out towards a deeper, darker, more distant kind of blue. The water temperature had dropped and the corals started to change—less of the soft, flowy variety interspersed with dancing life and more of the slow-growing, rock-hard variety. Coral mean streets. The ones that could withstand the water pressure coming at them from the open ocean twenty-four-seven.
Rich lifted his eyes and tried to make something out in the deep blue visible beyond the coral valley he presently lurked in. He couldn’t—just a graduated, ill-defined shift from blue to deep blue to dark blue looking out and down. No scale. No end point. Impossible to get a grip on how far this drop-off actually went.
It even had the word ‘drop’ in it.
His pulse kicked up a notch.
Mila swam on ahead,
