Underwater Business

Three days into the mission, Clive discovered the periscope.

It was the most interesting thing on the submarine, which wasn't saying much — the competition was a broken vending machine and a dartboard with no darts. But the periscope was different. It was tall, it had handles, and when you looked through it, you could see the whole ocean.

Clive waited until the bridge was empty — 3 AM, when even submarines sleep — and pressed his eye to the lens.

Water. Darkness. The occasional fish, looking startled by the periscope's light. And then — something else. A glint. Deep below, barely visible, but definitely there. Something shiny, catching the light in a way that rocks don't.

"Squawk," Clive hissed. "Come look at this."

The parrot fluttered down and squinted through the eyepiece. "Could be anything. Shiny rock. Dead fish. Submarine trash."

"Or treasure."

"Or treasure," Squawk conceded. "But probably trash."

Clive went to the captain. He burst into her quarters with the energy of someone who'd just discovered fire, which was not appreciated at 3 AM.

"Captain. I found something. On the ocean floor. It's shiny."

The captain, to her credit, did not throw him out. She rubbed her eyes, put on her boots, and followed him to the periscope. She looked. She looked for a long time.

"Interesting," she said. "It's not in our mission parameters."

"But—"

"However." She straightened up. "An agent's instincts are rarely wrong. We investigate."

The submarine descended. The ocean got darker, then darker still, until the only light came from the sub's own floods. They passed through a coral reef that looked like an underwater city — towers of colour, fish darting between them like commuters, anemones waving like they were trying to flag someone down.

"Careful through here," the captain ordered. "These formations are tight."

Clive watched through the viewing window, his nose pressed to the glass. He'd never seen anything like it. The reef was alive in a way that made the surface world seem dull. Everything moved, everything glowed, everything was trying to eat or avoid being eaten.

A pod of dolphins appeared alongside the submarine, matching its speed. One of them swam right up to the window and looked at Clive. Just looked at him, with those smart, dark eyes, like it was trying to figure out what a sheep was doing at the bottom of the ocean.

"Fair question," Clive muttered.

The dolphins led them — or at least, they swam in the direction the submarine was already going, which the crew chose to interpret as guidance. They found a passage through the reef that opened into an underwater cavern.

The cavern was enormous. The walls glowed with bioluminescent algae — soft blues and greens that pulsed slowly, like the cave was breathing. Strange creatures drifted through the water: translucent jellyfish, fish with lights on their heads, things that didn't look like they should exist.

"This is it," Clive whispered. "This is the treasure."

It wasn't gold or jewels. It was the cave itself — a place so beautiful and so hidden that finding it felt like enough.

Then the whale showed up.

It came from below — a shadow so large it blocked out the bioluminescence. The submarine shook as the whale rose beneath it, and for a horrible second Clive thought they were about to be crushed. But the whale didn't crush them. It lifted them. Gently, impossibly gently, it carried the submarine on its back, rising through the water toward the surface.

Nobody spoke. The entire crew stood at the windows, watching the ocean rush past as the whale carried them upward. When they broke the surface, the whale exhaled — a spout of water that caught the sunlight and turned into a rainbow.

Clive climbed out of the hatch and stood on the hull. The whale was still beneath them, its massive body visible just under the surface. The ocean stretched to every horizon. The sky was so blue it hurt.

Squawk landed on his shoulder. For once, the parrot had nothing to say.

The whale carried them for miles before gently setting the submarine down near a small island — a green dot in the middle of all that blue. Then it sank back beneath the waves and was gone.

Clive stood on the hull for a long time after that, watching the water where the whale had been.

"You know," he said to Squawk, "for a day that started with me pressing random buttons at 3 AM, this turned out alright."

"Don't get used to it," Squawk said.