The table had four chairs, and every chair was tied to the floor.
Amet leaned closer to the craft’s viewing window. Behind the table, pale shapes moved through a lighted room. Little floats hung from the chair backs like green fruit.
“They’re waiting for guests,” he said.
Ilru slowed the craft. “Or they don’t want the furniture floating away.”
She was the pilot. He was the explorer whose face appeared on the videos. The company paid her to bring the sealed diving craft back intact. It paid him to give people a reason to watch.
For two months, he had shown empty seabeds and one very large worm. His audience had begun making worm jokes before he said hello.
Now there was a city.
Lights curved along a ridge. Water moved through open doorways. Long-limbed residents slipped between buildings, carrying baskets that folded around their bodies. No human expedition had found this place before. Amet’s main camera recorded its wide, shining outline.
A resident approached the craft and waved a flat panel. Ilru kept the craft still. They could not breathe the surrounding water; they could stay here as long as the sealed cabin’s supplies allowed, but she would not spend those supplies on guessing games.
The resident pointed at a pipe along the lighted room’s outer wall. A broken stone slab lay across its mouth.
Amet pointed his small portable camera toward the figure. The panel showed a red cross. The resident pointed at the camera, then the cross again.
Amet lowered it.
The figure held up a little metal cup and made a green circle on the panel. It offered the cup toward the viewing window. The circle stayed green.
“Yes and no,” Amet said.
“Perhaps,” Ilru answered. “Let’s see what else they show us.”
The resident drew the blocked pipe. Then it pointed through a closed glass pane beside the workshop. Beyond it was a separate nursery chamber, kept partly full of air like the craft’s cabin. Small bodies swam in a shallow tank there. A narrow stream still drained out of the tank, but no water came in from the blocked pipe. Its level had fallen below a pale mark on the wall.
“It wants the slab moved,” Ilru said.
Amet checked the view. “We could do that with the arm.”
“We can reach it without putting the craft against the wall. That’s what matters.”
She guided the craft’s outside arm. The resident moved aside. The slab rose, releasing a cloud of silt. For a moment the camera showed nothing but brown water.
Behind the nursery glass, the tank began filling. The small swimmers rose with it. One turned upside down, something Amet couldn’t imagine a human child doing so casually.
Ilru put the stone down on a clear patch. The resident lifted both arms, then drew a green circle around the craft on the panel.
Amet raised his little camera again. The red cross returned.
“It might only mean don’t film them,” he said.
“Then ask. Don’t make it mean what you want.”
The resident swam to a door beside the pipe. A green circle appeared beside it. Behind the door was a docking ring much like the craft’s own.
This city had known visitors who needed air, even if those visitors had not been human.
Ilru checked the ring before coupling the craft. When the chamber closed, water drained from it. The craft’s instruments tested the air. Only after they showed it safe did she open the inside door.
“You can go into that room,” she told Amet. “I stay here. We leave while we still have a comfortable supply.”
The dry room smelled sharp and clean. Tools hung above a workbench. Some had handles sized for the resident’s long fingers; others had no handles at all. Moving water threw shadows across the ceiling through a thick pane.
A picture above the bench showed a tool rusting in water, then the same tool being worked on in air. Amet understood why this room was dry.
The resident came through another door, breathing with small folds along its neck. On its panel it drew its own shape and marked it with three strokes.
Amet drew his own shape and wrote AMET beside it. The resident copied the first letter, badly, and laughed. At least he thought the bubbling sound was a laugh. He made the letter again. It pushed his hand aside and improved its own version.
He still did not know how to say its name.
Along one wall, a row of bright marks surrounded pictures of other residents. He lifted the portable camera. The red cross flashed before he pressed record.
Amet sat back on his heels. He could keep filming anyway. The device was small. He could tell the company he’d secured the story of the year. The resident could not reach into his memory card and erase it.
Through the outer pane, one of the little swimmers rose from the nursery tank, pressed its hands against its chamber’s glass, looked at him, then dropped back into the water.
He turned the camera off.
He drew a rough view of the whole city on the panel and pointed at his device. Red cross.
He showed an earlier wide frame on the camera screen. The resident circled the windows and marked another cross. Amet closed that frame. Those pictures would not go into his report.
He tried the workshop’s pipe alone, cropping out the homes behind it. The resident studied the small screen. It pointed to the workshop, touched its own chest, then drew a green circle around the cropped picture.
“This bit,” Amet said into his link to Ilru. “Their own workshop. Not the city.”
“Keep the frame,” she answered. “Don’t let the office turn it into a tour.”
They made one short recording. Water flowed through the cleared pipe. The resident stepped out of the shot. Beyond the camera’s narrow view, the city remained bright and busy.
Amet thanked it with a small bow. It copied the bow, then went back to its workbench. Ilru was ready to leave.
At the surface that evening, Amet began his broadcast beside the craft. Ilru checked the charging line while he spoke.
“We found people,” he said. “They let me show you one workshop. They asked me not to show their homes.”
He played the little pipe video. A stream of comments filled the screen. Where was the good stuff? Had he really gone all that way for plumbing? When would the hidden footage come out?
There was wide footage in his camera. He could almost hear the company’s excitement if he promised it.
“This is the part I have permission to show,” he said.
People began leaving the broadcast. Ilru closed the craft’s storage hatch, still checking each catch. On his screen, water kept flowing through the pipe.
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