Pilot of the Deep - Alastair Macleod (summer books .TXT) 📗

Pilot of the Deep

                                                         

     It was the port of Trapani, Sicily; blue sea, ships, boats. The cruise ship had slid in the evening before, all lit up from stem to stern with fairy lights.

 

There was a party that night, dancing to eastern music, laughter. Such a contrast to his own ship; here all was technical equipment, crowding the deck under bright floodlights. His was a large survey ship, the Sea Bed Inspector, equipped with two ROVs for pipeline and sea bed inspection.

 

He went into the control cabin to check the screens. The heavy metal door clunked behind him, shutting out the noise.

Tomorrow they would be out off Malta surveying the Libyan /Italy pipe. He went out on deck to check the hydraulic lines. The larger ROV stood shackled to the deck; a monster in a cage with skids on the bottom to protect from damage. Almost a cube, and about the size of a 4x4,  it needed the tall columnar pillar crane next to it to lift it into the sea, but once there it could glide and dive like a whale. Small but powerful propellers in the side and forward thrusters gave it motion.  Like a crab the ROV had a muscular hydraulic arm on one side for heavy jobs and on the other a more delicate arm for finer work.

 

Cameras mounted fore and aft scanned the seabed, but its eyes were in the control cabin where Ahan sat manipulating the toggles and watching the five screens. A young man, not yet twenty six, he had taken to this work so well; he had a skill, sensitivity at his fingertips.

 

The sound of women’s laughter drifted across the still water of the harbour, lights glinted on the oily blue surface.

She was an Indian ship, The Mumbai Princess. He could see turbaned members of the crew moving among the guests serving drinks.  It was Divali, the Indian festival of light, flickering lanterns and night lights.

 

In the stern of the ship was a golden statue, one of the Hindu goddesses - garlands of bright flowers hung round her neck. She shimmered, reflecting the light surrounding her.

 

Ahan looked down at the sea. Underwater it was dark, only his ROV lit the gloom when it dived into the deep.  The powerful bulbs illuminated his world ahead of him. He manoeuvred the craft with ease.

 

But you had to be careful. The umbilicals that fed life into the ROV and returned signals and pictures to his mind had to be kept free from snagging on wrecks and bits of pipeline structure.

 

Was he like the goddess with his ROV?  Did he bring light into the world

of darkness?  The goddess was already in a world of light and colour

He headed below; time to turn in, it would be a long shift tomorrow.

 

The next morning before they sailed, the skipper came to him at breakfast.

 

“We have had a request from the Mumbai Princess; seems last night that the statue of Lakshmi went overboard.  A drunken Englishman man lost the place and pushed it over.”

 

Ahan looked at the captain, “And?"

 

“The Port authority would like us to recover it. A wealthy Indian businessman is on board, he will pay. Head office has cleared it.”

 

“How big is it?" Said Ahan.

 

“About the size of a man,” said the captain, "but you would have to be careful with it, it’s pure gold.”

 

Ahan took a deep inbreath.

 

“No trouble finding it then.”

 

“We’re on mud here, harbour mud, centuries of it since the Greeks,” said the captain.

 

“The big one then,” thought Ahan, “this might be a heavy lift with all that mud suction.”

 

They attached the umbilicals to the larger ROV and freed it from its deck restraints. The crane swung round and he attached the shackle. It lifted and swung the ROV over the side. There it hovered while he did pre-flight checks.  Each trip underwater was a flight like on an aircraft.

 

He switched on the sonar and the metal detector, checked the cameras. When all was ready he carefully lowered the ROV into the water, stopped and did more checks. Buoyancy, thrusters, lights.

 

He sat down in front of his screens, working through his final checklist.

Then he disengaged the crane and the ROV floated on the surface; then he took it down.

 

The approximate location given by the Mumbai Princess was that the statue was somewhere off its stern. He kept close to the surface until he saw the curve of her hull, then gently went down deeper. It was murky here. He switched on the ancillary lights.

 

At last the instruments indicated he was at the bottom. He began to slowly move the ROV in a search pattern. Objects littered the seabed, car tyres, supermarket trolleys; then he identified on the sonar, a shape, like a man.

 

He crept the ROV closer. He swung the large arm down into the mud which was kicking up, obscuring his cameras. He guided the arm by radar down into the soft black goo. He heard the arm touch metal. Gently he closed the arm round the object and began to pull; as he suspected the suction was great.

 

He used the water jet to blast away mud from the object; slowly it freed and he lifted.

 

Back at his own ship, at the surface, he placed the object in a large wire basket lowered by the crew, but something was not right. This statue was not gold it was green bronze.

 

“Greek,” said the captain on the intercom.

 

Ahan needed a break. He hovered the ROV in the water and went out of the control cabin to inspect the find, now lying on the deck.

 

It lay face down. They turned it over carefully.

A naked man, swimming, the arms clearly in that posture. When he looked at the face he drew back in alarm.  It had his face.

 

“It’s you Ahan, the spitting image,” said a crew member.

 

“Yes, it’s uncanny,” said the captain, "the likeness.” 

 

Ahan stood still, looking.

 

It was if he was looking at himself for the first time, recovered from the mud of centuries.

 

“Well,” said the captain after some minutes, “this is not what the Mumbai Princess was after.

Stow it below lads, we’ll sort out later what to do with it."

 

"Back to the bottom,” he said, turning to Ahan, who still stood, unmoving.

 

They did recover the golden statue of Lakshmi, but only after much searching in the mud. Because of its extreme weight it had gone down five feet and it needed a lot of water jetting to free it.  A long and difficult job.

 

Again he had to carefully lift it into a waiting basket, this time lowered by the Mumbai Princess, where it was lifted aboard to much cheering and joy.

 

The skipper felt there was no need to alert the port authorities to the first statue and told them it was metal debris. Ahan kept the statue of himself in the control room, firmly lashed to a stanchion, his own bronze eyes watching over his modern self and the screens showing pictures of their underwater domain.

 

notes:

 

 

ROV; the letters stand for Remotely Operated Vehicle, the name for an underwater robot, much used by the oil and gas industry.

 

Divali ; a festival marking the end of the harvest season in most of India. Farmers give thanks for the bounty of the year gone by, and pray for a good harvest for the year to come. Lakshmi symbolizes wealth and prosperity, and her blessings are invoked for a good year ahead.

 

One of the legends associated with Lakshmi is that on the day of Divali is that she emerged from Kshira Sagar, the Ocean of Milk, during the great churning of the oceans, Samudra manthan.

 

Those who worship Lakshmi receive the benefit of her benevolent mood, and are blessed with mental, physical and material well-being

 

While Divali is popularly known as the "festival of lights", the most significant spiritual meaning behind it is "the awareness of the inner light". Central to Hindu philosophy is the assertion that there is something beyond the physical body and mind which is pure, infinite, and eternal, called the Atman.

 

The celebration of Divali as the "victory of good over evil” refers to the light of higher knowledge dispelling all ignorance, the ignorance that masks one's true nature, not as the body, but as the unchanging, infinite, immanent and transcendent reality.

 

With this awakening comes compassion and the awareness of the oneness of all things (higher knowledge).

 

This brings (joy or peace). Just as we celebrate the birth of our physical being, Divali is the celebration of this Inner Light. Wikipaedia was the source for these divali notes.

 

Ahan: the name means "one who is the nature of time itself."

 

 

Imprint

Text: alastair macleod
Images: alastair macleod ; "diving man" purchased from dreamstime royalty free photos
Editing: alastair macleod
Translation: title typeset in goodfish
Publication Date: 03-14-2013

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
The goddess Lakshmi symbolizes wealth and prosperity, and her blessings are invoked for a good year ahead. It is said that on the day of Divali, Lakshmi emerged from Kshira Sagar, the Ocean of Milk, during the great churning of the oceans, Samudra Manthan.