The City of the Bells, Fifteen Kilometers Below

Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge

4454.2.15 Interstellar

Janus, Mick, Lira, Ryler, and Syn stood in the airlock. They were suited up in aspirant suits, just like old times.

“Ready for this?” Janus asked Lira.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“It’s been a little while since you’ve left the colony.”

Lira gave him a flat stare, but whatever she was going to answer was cut off by the opening of the outer door.

The City of the Bells was one of the Cult’s floating monasteries—although, of course, they didn’t call it that. It was a habitat, a place of research, but Janus liked to think of it that way. Each of the undersea colonies was a careful balance of rock, ice, construction, and ballast that kept the giant structures neutrally buoyant and in their proper part of the undersea, hulking and yet fragile at the same time.

It was remarkably like a dome back home.

This brought to mind something that Janus had just been discovering when he was taken away from Irkalla and forcibly immigrated to Krandermore, which was that, no matter how fine the filters or thorough the scrubbing process, every habitat had its own particular smell. The Seraphine’s scent had already faded into the background of his mind, although he suspected it probably had more to do with his brain protecting him from the sweat and other odors of sixty-eight people packed into a metal tube. But as the airlock opened, he was struck by the scent of herbs, light lubricant, and incense.

“We’re just here to swap out cargo and see if we can find replacement crew members,” Lira said.

“Sure,” Janus said.

“No adventures,” Lira said.

Janus smiled at her. “I don’t go looking for adventures, Lira. They just always seem to find me.”

“Why do they call it the City of the Bells?” Mick asked.

Janus looked around the arrival docks, thinking an answer might present itself, but there was no hint. “Not a single bell anywhere. Huh.”

“We can look it up after we shift the cargo,” Lira said. “Come on. We need to get this done before the currents change.”

Janus nodded. They were on the clock. It wasn’t like Irkalla, where they just had to cross the finish line in time, or Krandermore, where falling behind just put them at risk of attack by another team. On Lumiara or, more appropriately, under it, the Alignment wasn’t just a blanket period during which they could make the journey to a Core; it was a series of closing doors. Failing to make one of the time gates would make each subsequent point harder to reach until the trip became impossible—or until they needed to leave the two slower subs behind.

The five of them stepped out onto the docks. Locals and visitors in coveralls glanced at them before returning to their business. There were several other subs docked besides theirs—the City of the Bells was one of the largest monasteries in the undersea and the closest to the borehole during the Alignment. The presence of several other traders ought to make their job simpler, although those same traders would know they were under time pressure to close a deal.

Lira led them through the crowd, following the monastery’s public navigation system. It was good to see her up front and in charge again, Janus thought, even though she’d issued a strict moratorium on adventures.

As for the City of the Bells, its designers had used a shocking amount of glass in its construction. Janus wasn’t sure how thick the stuff was, but in conjunction with extensive surface lighting, he could see dozens of meters into the dark waters, including the bows of the docked submarines and the glowing outline of the city rising above them. And there were bells, dozens of them, hanging in glass steeples. It didn’t so much look like a monastery as an undersea cathedral woven out of light.

“What’s this stuff made out of?” Janus asked.

“Synthetic sapphire,” Ryler answered. “They heat aluminum oxide to over two thousand degrees, and they use the ambient cold and high pressure to contain the reaction. Once they have a pure, uniform pool of molten alumina, they seed a real sapphire crystal into it and grow a single, perfect, much bigger crystal from it. Controlled cooling, chemical polishing, several layers of laminating…”

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“That doesn’t seem worth it when they could just build the place out of polysteel.”

Mick punched him in the shoulder.

“What?”

“Don’t be an idiot, mate. Place is beautiful. Of course, it was worth it.”

“There are decorative bells out there!” Janus said, pointing. “This is an airtight habitat! No one can hear them!”

“Not to mention the bells themselves are underwater,” Syn pointed out.

“Welcome to post-scarcity, Janus,” Ryler said. “We do stupid things because we can.”

“You were born on the same planet I was,” Janus said.

They reached the city’s exchange, and Janus and Mick posted up outside while the others went in.

“Nice,” Mick said.

“What?”

The Hunter shrugged. “This is the best place to spot trouble coming.”

Janus smirked. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “What do you think the odds are that we make it through this stop without a problem.”

“It’s not like this is the Trials.”

“No, it’s worse. We’re doing this for ourselves. That’s got to be tempting fate, right?”

“Yeah…” Mick said, eyes scanning the crowd.

The two of them settled into the relaxed but vigilant stance of veteran aspirants. Janus scanned some of the city’s history, pulling up visitor files from the local network. The bells were apparently more than decorative. They were made of a light alloy that swung easily in the local currents. During most of the year, they stayed mostly silent unless they were agitated by the local sea life or the wake of a passing sub. But during the Alignment, all of them rang several times a week.

Nearly half an hour later, Lira, Ryler, and Syn emerged.

“What’s the problem?”

Lira frowned. “Why would there be a problem?”

“There’s always a problem. They’re refusing to trade. There’s a sudden surplus of widgets. Elsbeth made off with some vital piece of the cargo.”

“Actually, Elsbeth didn’t take anything,” Lira said. “She arranged for a few extra deliveries, paid for with her own credits. She took care of herself without hurting us. I just wish she’d said something.”

“Me too,” Syn said. “Elsbeth was hilarious.”

Janus hadn’t spent that much time talking to the Pugarian. Maybe he should have. “Well, I guess that means we wait while the cargo gets transferred from the subs and the replacement supplies. What do we do while we wait?”

“Pub?” Mick asked.

Lira sighed. “There has to be a more productive use of our time.”

“Sailor’s pub? We need crew.”

Lira looked at Mick in surprise. “That’s actually not a stupid argument.”

Instead of being offended, Mick put a hand in the air.

Janus chuckled and gave Mick the high-five he so richly deserved.

***

The “establishment” Mick brought them to had an old, faded sign that looked like a submarine that had run itself into the ocean floor. The bow was half buried, and the stern was raised and churning the water fruitlessly. It was called the Bottom’s Up Pub.

The inside of the pub felt surprisingly warm. They didn’t have the thermostat turned up; it was just a feeling—the right use of synth wood and copper, with ratty green cushions and small frames with witty quotes hanging from the walls.

The pub had a long, L-shaped bar and several booths, both of which seemed to be crowded with sailors. There were five tables with terminal inlays that had been left empty. Janus was about to ask about them when the host, a young cultist with a fresh-faced and cheerful disposition, said, “Hi folks! Are you looking for a berth, or are you taking on crew?”

“Is that all people do here?” Janus asked.

The host leaned forward and said, “We water our drinks down, and the food’s not that great, but it’s the best place in the Belfry to find new hands or old ones!” He resumed his upright and very open posture. “Does one of you have a captain’s credential?” he asked, glancing at Janus.

“I’m the XO,” Lira said. “Our convoy’s captains are on the subs.”

“You’re part of the Core run crew,” the young man said in surprise. “Finding volunteers isn’t going to be easy.”

Janus raised an eyebrow. “I thought you said you were the best place to find new hands?”

“Or old ones,” the host said reflexively. “All the same, I’ll put out some feelers to a few other establishments.”

“Thank you,” Lira said.

The five of them walked over to a table, and Lira synched her wrist comm with the built-in terminal. Once the nearby sailors realized Lira was hiring, they cleared out a booth for Ryler, Mick, and Syn.

“Janus, you’re with me,” Lira said, her eyes glowing blue.

“You know who we need better than I do,” Janus said, pulling up a chair.

“I do,” she said. “But maybe you’ll distract them, and I’ll learn something.”

“So we’re pulling a Crossroads?” he asked.

“We’re pulling a Crossroads,” Lira said, nodding.

Janus grunted and sat back, arms crossed and chin slightly raised, every bit the brash lead aspirant he’d been what seemed like a lifetime ago.

For the next hour and a half, applicants came in, sat down, and synced their wrist comms with the table. The terminal compared their career credentials and qualifications to the list of requirements the convoy’s captains had put together, and all Janus and Lira saw were what positions the person was qualified for. It allowed them to focus on the things that mattered: who the person was and how they approached real problems. The captains of the Seraphine, Deep Rider, and Chapo would then connect for a more technical interview if the sailors passed Janus and Lira’s first look.

“The food isn’t as bad as the kid at the door made it out to be,” Janus said around a mouthful of battered squid.

“I’m guessing there are plenty of places to get seafood on the station, and far fewer places to hire from.”

Janus nodded, sucking herb and garlic veggie spread from his fingers.

By the time they made it back to the docks, they had ten more experienced sailors to complement the ship’s crew. They’d also had seven more colonists desert—two families and another aspirant.

“Should we try to talk to them?” Janus asked on the docks near the Seraphine’s airlock. “We can’t protect them if they stay.”

“No time,” Lira said.

At last, bells all over the city started to ring out, and peals of different tones and cadences were heard from every steeple. He could see them swinging through the thick, sapphire glass, and even though the sound was the product of cleverly networked speakers, he still felt the currents changing around the massive floating monastery, and there was a beauty to the moment that both moved him and made him sad.

Janus took one last look at the crowd and joined the others in the airlock. As the door sealed shut, he felt like he was leaving a piece of himself behind he hadn’t known existed until it was gone.