Secrets of the Fire Sea by Stephen Hunt Page A

the commodore ordered his two steersmen to follow the tug’s example and head for the mouthof one of the titanic brass carvings of octopi, cuttlefish and nautili wrought into the underwater base of the island’s submerged basalt cliff-line. Nandi saw that they were entering a long tunnel illuminated by a strip of green lights running along its side. The tunnel ended in a door which irised open to admit the Purity Queen into a large dark space which started to drain of water and descend at the same time, a lifting room and dry-dock combined. As their descent drew to an end, the front of their lifting room opened out onto an underwater anchorage giving Nandi her first look at the great harbour vault of Hermetica City. The warm green stretch of the underwater pool was bounded by the concrete arc of the harbour at the opposite end of the chamber where hundreds of tugs similar to the one that had guided them were moored inside gated locks. From above glowing yellow plates partially hidden by wisps of condensation cast a diffuse light over the port’s warm waters. If Nandi hadn’t actually been present during their underwater approach, she might have taken the subterranean vault’s walls for a cliff-side and believed that they had simply sailed into one of the mountainous harbours back in the Kingdom’s uplands rather than entering Jago’s underground civilization.
    ‘We’re the only vessel in harbour,’ said Nandi, staring around her at the quiet lock gates, power houses, travelling dock cranes, sheds and warehouses. At least, they were if she discounted the idle tugs of the Jagonese home fleet. It was a lonely feeling.
    After the Purity Queen had moored up, the commodore ordered all hatches open and reached for his jacket. ‘Best take yours too, lass. It’s warm enough during the day in the vaults, but at night they vent in air from the plains above to make it cooler underground.’
    ‘Just like the real world,’ said Nandi.
    ‘It’s different enough in Jago, lass,’ said the commodore. ‘I’ve never had a liking for this place. If it wasn’t for your blessed professor twisting my arm, I’d be Pericur-bound and leaving Hermetica City’s underground vaults to the Jagonese with a welcome-they-be for them.’
    Nandi looked at the customs officials joining the tug crew on the dockside outside the bridge, a gaggle of velvet-cloaked functionaries pushing past the sailors in their rubber scald suits. ‘You don’t like living underground?’
    ‘You can’t be claustrophobic in my trade, lass. Maybe it’s the crackle of the wild energy they’ve tamed to power this place, or the dark creatures from the interior you’ll hear singing and whining outside the city walls up on the surface. Maybe it’s just that the more they try and make this place seem like home, the stranger it seems to me, but I’ve no love for this island or the shiver I feel when I walk its sealed-up streets.’
    Out on the dockside the collection of velvet-cloaked officials had been joined by green-uniformed militiamen whose main function seemed to be to keep back the townspeople filtering through the otherwise deserted harbour front. Nandi and the commodore were the first out onto the gantry that swung across to the Purity Queen ’s deck, Nandi fishing in the pockets of her short tweed jacket for the letter of introduction she had been given. Sealed in red wax with the crest of Saint Vine’s college.
    By the time the police had finished warning the commodore of the penalties if he were to take onboard any Jagonese passengers without senate-stamped exit visas, Jethro Daunt and his curious jerking steamman friend had followed Nandi out, no doubt enjoying their first taste of solid land for weeks. More and more Jagonese were heading for the line formed by the police, presumably the hopeful emigrants that the PurityQueen ’s master had just been warned of, waving and calling at the crew coming out of the u-boat, brandishing money, papers, or