What Their Mother Said

Their mother was still on the satellite call when they got back to the station, but she ended it very quickly when she came out to find both of them standing on the platform looking the way they looked.

"What happened?" she said. She checked them both over with the automatic efficiency of a parent who has raised two children in a research station environment and knows that the look they were wearing usually means something significant.

"Nothing bad," Mara said quickly. "Nobody is hurt. We stayed within limits. We logged the dive. But Mum. We found something."

She showed her the camera footage on the dive tablet. All forty minutes of it. Their mother watched in silence, standing on the platform in the afternoon sun with the wind coming off the water. Her expression did not change very much as she watched, which was a sign that she was taking it seriously rather than a sign that she was not reacting, because their mother's serious face and her calm face looked almost identical to anyone who did not know her well.

When the footage ended she watched the last thirty seconds again. The large structure. The circular symbol. The wave reaching upward.

Then she put the tablet down carefully and looked at the water to the north.

"How clear was the visibility?" she asked.

"I could see the seafloor from the surface," Mara said. "I have never seen visibility like it."

"That is unusual for this depth," their mother said, still looking at the water. "Unusually clear water sometimes indicates a specific mineral composition in the surrounding rock. Or it can indicate." She stopped.

"What?" Sol asked.

"Something else," she said. She turned back to them. "The structures. The material they are made of. Did it look like anything you recognise?"

"Not coral," Mara said. "Not natural rock formation. Dark grey, very smooth. Almost like concrete but older looking."

Her mother nodded slowly. "There are some theories," she said carefully, "about certain deep water sites. Geological formations that do not behave the way normal rock behaves. Formations that show signs of." She stopped again.

"Mum," Sol said. "Just say it."

She looked at him. Then she looked at the tablet with the footage on it. Then she said: "Formations that show signs of having been shaped. Deliberately. By something with intelligence."

The wind came off the water. A seabird called somewhere overhead.

"We need to call this in," their mother said. She picked up the tablet. "This is not something the three of us handle alone. I am going to contact the institute and the marine archaeology board and several other people who need to see this footage today." She looked at both of them. "You did exactly the right things. You documented everything, you stayed within limits, you came straight back. I am very proud of you both."

"Can we go back down?" Sol asked. "With you. Properly."

Their mother looked at the water. "Yes," she said. "But not today. Today we make calls. Tomorrow, if the sea stays calm." She picked up her communication unit and began walking back toward the station. "Come inside. I need you both to write up everything you observed, as detailed as you can make it. Start with the moment Sol noticed the discolouration from the railing."

Sol looked at Mara. Mara looked at Sol.

"Tomorrow," she said quietly.

"Tomorrow," he agreed.

They both looked at the water one more time, at the patch four hundred metres to the north where the colour was faintly different, where something old and extraordinary sat on the seafloor in the extraordinary clear water, patient as it had always been, waiting as it had always waited.