Chapter Twelve – Bubble Passage
A great, rending, gasping sob burst from Carrie. Alive. Dave was alive.
What’s it doing? What’s it saying? The words are strange. Those are noises, not words. Urghh, make it stop.
Carrie stifled her weeping. If Dave was alive, where was he? The custard ocean had swallowed him, and there was no way he could breathe in it.
“Excuse me, excuse me.” Carrie tried to interrupt, but the oootoons were too interested in discussing the phenomenon of her crying. She stood. “That’s enough,” she yelled. “Shut up, won’t you? For once, just bloody shut up.” The voices dropped to murmur level. Carrie detected a few exclamations of How rude! but ignored them. “My friend, where is he? What have you done with him?”
Does she mean the other one? I think she means the other one. Where is he? What did we do with him? Does anyone know where the other one of the murderous aliens is?
Carrie shut her eyes and clenched her fists. “Please, would one of you, or some of you, bring him back?”
Hey, you’re not having him. You can’t have him, he’s ours. If we give him back, you’ll start eating us again. He’s our hostage, like the others. We’re not stupid, you know.
“Okay, okay. If you won’t bring him here, at least take me to him.” Carrie regretted the words as they left her mouth. What was she saying? How did she know the oootoons weren’t lying? If she allowed them to take her, they could drown her easily. Land was her only place of safety.
No, that isn’t a good idea. Come closer. Come over here and we’ll take you. Two—we’ll have two of them. Don’t bother. What good is that going to do us? Come closer, we can’t reach you there. Tendrils of custard sea oozed up the sand towards Carrie. She stepped back, then hesitated. What choice did she have but to trust the creatures? It was the only chance she had of reaching Dave, and she was desperate to see him and know that he was okay.
Knees trembling, Carrie took a step, then another. Custard snakes slithered over her shoes and up her calves.
Closer, closer. We can’t reach you, said the voices.
Carrie took another step, and gasped as she was suddenly knee deep in warm custard.
Deeper, deeper.
Thigh deep, then in up to her waist Carrie went, her heart thudding. She imagined how terrified Dave must have been when the custard overwhelmed him. She looked back at the shore, which seemed so dry and safe.
Under, under, under, chorused the voices.
Taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, Carrie plunged into the ocean, recoiling from the slimy feeling. She gripped the translator. As the oootoon ocean closed over her head, she panicked and tried to swim to the surface to breathe, but she no longer knew which way was up, and if she opened her eyes in the opaque liquid she wouldn’t be able to see. Besides, swimming in it would only make her sink. She was enveloped in warm gloop, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Just when Carrie’s lungs began to ache and she was giving up hope that the oootoon would keep its word and take her to Dave, the custard drained from her face and the rest of her body. She wiped her eyes and opened one a slit. A dim light surrounded her. She could make out a smooth yellow wall a metre away. Opening her eyes, Carrie saw she was in a custard bubble, and the liquid was glowing with some kind of phosphorescence. She exhaled before taking a test breath. The air smelled sickly sweet.
But where was Dave?
She let out a small squeal as a semi-liquid protrusion rose from the floor and lifted her off her feet. It became a custard chair like a sloppy bean bag, and she sank into it as acceleration pushed her deeper into the liquid. Reaching out to touch the wall of the bubble, she was sprayed by custard. The bubble was moving rapidly. She could still hear the voices of the oootoon, but they were a hum of incoherent sound, like a massive crowd of chattering people passed at high speed.
How long would it take to reach Dave? she wondered. It seemed ages since the custard had taken him. He must be hopping mad by now, thought Carrie, or terrified. A scary thought occurred to her. Did the custard know humans needed oxygen to survive? Had the air in Dave’s bubble run out?
She wondered how deep beneath the surface she was. Oceans on Earth were miles deep at their deepest points, but the pressure down there was crushing. She didn’t feel as though she was very deep. Either she was still close to the surface or the custard was maintaining normal atmospheric pressure around her. Maybe if she angered the oootoon the bubble would collapse and she would be crushed to death.
Her stomach lurched as the bubble decelerated. Pushing a finger into the wall created a lazy wake. She must be nearly there. She steeled herself against what she might see and forced images of Dave’s suffocated body from her mind. The wall before her thinned and then dissolved. Her bubble had broken into another, and there was Dave.
He leapt up. “Carrie, I thought you were dead.” He hugged her tightly.
“Well, I’m not,” squeaked Carrie. “But I may soon...”
“Sorry.” He released his grip. “I thought I’d never see you again. Never see another human being.” He rubbed a knuckle in his eye. “I thought—”
“I’m the one who should be sorry, Dave.” She grabbed his arms. “I wanted to say I’m sorry you’re here and involved in all this. I should have told Gavin I wasn’t interested. I should have demanded he left me alone. But I thought it was all a dream, you see. Even after I got up the next day and saw all that stuff on my kitchen table, it didn’t seem real.”
“It’s okay, Carrie. It’s my fault, too, for being a nosy parker. I should have gone home instead of poking around in your kitchen and looking at your things.”
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t mind. Look, on my way over, I was worrying about the air supply in here. Have you felt dizzy or sleepy or anything?”
Dave shook his head. “Every so often a bubble of air pops open above me and a hole appears in the floor to grab a bubble to take away. The custard seems to understand I need fresh air. Anyway, how did you get here? What’s going on?”
Carrie gasped, realising she hadn’t heard the oootoons’ voices for a while. Where was the translator? She must have dropped it when Dave hugged her. She looked down and saw it half-submerged in the floor. As she touched it, the voices started up again in her head.
“I discovered something. The ocean we’re in, it’s alive,” she said.
“What? I assumed it was being controlled.”
“No, listen.” She held the translator out to Dave. “It’s full of voices communicating telepathically, but they hear us best if we speak.”
Dave’s eyes bulged as his fingers made contact with the translator. Catch them. Keep them. Crush them, shouted some of the voices, but these were only the loudest, not the majority. Quieter voices speculated on who Carrie and Dave were, where they had come from and why they were there. Other voices explained that Carrie had eaten their citizens. Actually scooped them up and ate them!
“Urgh...This is impossible to listen to,” said Dave, grimacing. “Is there a way of turning this off?” He traced the surface of the translator with his fingers. “Ah, there’s something here.” He pressed an invisible bump, and the voices stopped. “So it was because you ate some of it the ocean attacked?” Carrie hung her head. Dave’s brow wrinkled. “Wait, is this the other alien the placktoids are fighting with?”
“Must be. Gavin called them oootoons, I think. It would explain the explosions in the ocean.”
“So why are the placktoids attacking the oootoons?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Your terrifying boss said some of the placktoids were missing.”
“Did he?”
Dave tilted his head and glared at Carrie. “Yes, weren’t you listening?”
“I must have missed that part.”
Her friend grasped his hair with both hands for a moment, then let go. He leaned towards her. “Carrie, this could mean life or death to us. I, for one, want to go home. You need to pay attention.”
“Yeah, that’s a bit of a weak spot with me. I’m more of a visual person, you see. When I read something I remember it, but when people talk to me...”
“Well, do you think you could fix it? Because I intend to get off this planet.” Dave’s lips drew to a thin line.
“All right, there’s no need to go on about it.”
He held up the translator. “Let’s talk to the oootoons and see if we can find out what’s been going on.”
“Okay.”
He held out the device and Carrie grasped it as he turned it on.
ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK, screamed the voices.