The Killer Koala (17 page)

'How
do I blow my nose in a face mask?'

'Oh,
you just blow,' said Bill. I was beginning to wonder about Bill.

There
were a few more general instructions and he said, 'Now just hop over
the side and we'll practise in shallow water.'

I
am not given to hopping in any circumstances. With half a ton of gear
draped around me, I was incapable of it. But I was managing to lower
myself into the warm waters when Bill said, 'Mind you, don't tread on
a stonefish. They're deadly.'

I
stopped lowering myself.

'How
do I know where one is?'

'That's
the trouble,' said Bill, 'you can't see them.'

I
was beginning to worry about Bill. I tried to raise myself from the
water to discuss the matter further, but it just wasn't possible
without Bill's help, and he was not helping me out. He was in the
water helping me in.

I
stood beside him, waist deep, feeling the crunch of coral under my
feet and waiting for the deadly spike of the stonefish to pierce my
shrinking, precious flesh.

'All
right,' said Bill, 'now just sit down and breathe.'

Consigning
my soul to God and my body to the deep, I sat down and breathed.

It
was surprisingly easy and mind-blastingly beautiful. An amazing
experience. The shock and wonder of being able to breathe under water
was eclipsed by the shock and wonder of the world of the coral
reef
—
the clouds of tiny
glittering silver fish, the multitudinous-coloured fish of every
conceivable shape gliding among the kaleidoscope of coral and the
wonderful waving weeds and the great yellow starfish
—
you've
seen it all on film.

But
doing it, actually being down there among it all, breathing, is
something else. I began to enjoy myself enormously. For five minutes
I was a hell of a fellow, paddling about looking at things with my
back warmed by the sun and my belly very nearly scraping the bottom.
Scuba diving is great
—
in a
metre of water.

After
about five minutes of this bliss, Bill said, 'All right, we'll go
down,' and headed off into the deep water over the edge of the reef.

I
tried to protest that I was happy where I was, but Bill kept going. I
looked around that great waste of water with nary a sight of land and
decided I would sooner go with Bill than stay where I was, alone.
Which was a mistake.

Bill
waited for me a few metres out from the reef and then said, 'Make
sure you don't touch any fire coral
—
the
pain will send you mad.'

'What's
fire coral?'

'You'll
know it when you see it.' Bill stuck his mouthpiece between his huge
white gorilla teeth, grinned at me cheerfully and manically, and
submerged. I was beginning to dislike Bill.

I
contemplated making my way back to the boat, but I knew I couldn't
get on board without help and I didn't at all like being alone in
this endless ocean with God knows what peering up at my defenceless
body and those blasted sea birds hovering, I was sure, in hungry
anticipation.

I
turned my buoyancy knob and sank, breathing conscientiously and
furiously.

Again,
the wonder of it almost submerged my fear. There was the coral cliff,
a mighty wall of waving, shifting colour. The clear, sunshot water
around me was alive with fish. There were some darker moving shapes
further away that terrified me, but then the world of flaming
bubble-strewn colour and life captivated me as I slowly sank down the
face of the cliff.

But
where the hell was Bill?

The
trouble with a face mask is you can only see straight ahead of you.
Bill wasn't straight ahead of me. I tried twisting my head without
much success, then managed to get my whole body to turn around. But I
couldn't see Bill. Had something got him? I was suddenly terribly
alone, sinking down, down, down towards the dark depths where
nameless horrors undoubtedly lurked.

I
decided I wanted to see the sun, and quickly. I turned my buoyancy
knob violently and sank like a stone.

With
the remnants of my reasoning power, I realised I had twisted the knob
the wrong way. So I twisted it hard the other way and started to
shoot towards the surface like a cork.

For
a moment I was almost relieved, then I realised I was holding my
breath. My lungs, I was sure from the pressure in my chest, were
about to start pouring out of my mouth. I twisted the knob again to
slow my ascent and began to breathe like a long-distance runner at
the end of a marathon.

It
took me a long time to achieve a relative degree of calm and when I
did I realised I wasn't going up or down. I had accidentally achieved
neutral buoyancy and was hanging perhaps ten metres below the surface
and a couple of hundred metres above the bottom. But at least I had
time to think. I thought. Where the hell was Bill? I did my turning
trick, but there was no sign of him.

But
what I did see, not three metres away in the direction in which I was
slowly drifting, was a vast mass of blazing red coral which could
only have been the fire coral that Bill had warned me about. He was
right. I did know it when I saw it.

Almost
in control now, I kicked with my flippers to take me away from that
scarlet horror. I moved almost a metre towards it.

'Bill!'
I screamed. Which had the obvious effect of blowing my mouthpiece out
of my mouth. By the time I got it back and had gulped in some
desperately needed air, I was a couple of metres away from and
slightly below the fire coral which jutted out from the main coral
cliff. If I tried to go up I would go straight into it.

I
couldn't understand why I had lost control of directional movement
and I tried again, kicking to the left with both legs. The thrust
sent me directly into the coral wall. Little streams of blood from a
dozen tiny coral cuts streamed from my naked belly and mingled with
the splendour of riotous colour around me. I was rapidly losing
interest in aesthetics.

I
tried to fend myself off the coral with my hands and cut them too.
The fire coral was above, the sharp standard coral was tearing me to
pieces. I didn't seem to be able to move anywhere I wanted to go and
my ears were beginning to hurt. I was not happy.

Then
I saw Bill, gliding expertly towards me with a flipper in his hand.
That was why I couldn't control my direction: I had lost my flipper.
And that was why Bill hadn't been around: he'd been retrieving it. He
slipped it onto my foot, pointed at the fire coral and shook his hand
warningly, then drew me away from the coral cliff. A lot more fish
were swimming around, apparently interested in my blood. Disgusting
thought.

Bill
put his face close to me. He was a bubble-shrouded gargoyle smiling
insanely. I wanted to go home.

Bill
raised his hand, thumb uppermost.

This
was a prearranged signal to ask whether everything was all right, but
I had forgotten it. I took it to mean did I want to go up. I raised
my own thumb and jabbed it vigorously towards the surface.

Bill
nodded, gave another lunatic grin, turned and went down, beckoning me
to follow him.

I
would have cried if it had been practical in a face mask.

I
wanted two things desperately
—
to
get to the surface and not to lose sight of Bill. The two ambitions
were irreconcilable, so I chose Bill. I adjusted my buoyancy knob,
put my head down and kicked and started to glide further into those
strange and wonderful depths after the now relatively distant Bill.

Then
I saw the shark.

It
was a reef shark, a slim and lazily moving grey-black streak of
streamlined power. My mind told me it would not attack. My heart told
me that it was maddened by the blood still streaming thinly from the
small wounds in my stomach and hand and would shortly tear me to
pieces. This would have made me the first man in recorded history to
be slaughtered by a reef shark. It was not what I wanted to be
remembered for.

Keep
breathing, I told myself. The caution was not necessary; I was
panting with fear.

The
shark slipped somewhere out of my range of vision. I was convinced
that it was lurking just behind me. My nudity made things worse. A
bare bottom presented to a reef shark feels acutely vulnerable.

I
could still see Bill. He was not too far below me and was gesturing
excitedly, waving me on down. My feelings for him were now distinctly
ambivalent. On the one hand I wanted to kill him, on the other I
wanted him to put his muscular arms around me and carry me swiftly
back to the boat. I went down to him, determined to communicate my
needs somehow.

I
grabbed him by the shoulder and began making every gesture I could
think of to let him know that I wanted him to take me up out of
there, away from the many deaths that threatened me, including death
from a terror-induced heart attack.

Bill
grinned. God, how I hated that grin. He was pointing at something out
near the edge of darkness that formed the bottom layer of our world.

It
was a large goldfish.

Bill
grabbed my arms and shook his head. He obviously wanted me to keep
still. Convinced that this was because the shark was going to attack
or that something equally dreadful was about to happen and Bill
wanted to be free to protect me, I disengaged myself and kept still.

Bill
went streaking off towards that bloody goldfish.

Why
did he want to investigate a goldfish? The waters were full of fish
of every colour God ever thought of, and a few more. But of course,
it wasn't a goldfish. The thing must have been a long way off when I
first saw it, but now Bill was shepherding it towards me. As it
approached it became larger and larger until it assumed the
proportions of a whale. It was an enormously fat fish with a face of
ancient malevolent evil and a short thick stubby tail. It was like
some gargantuan overweight carp moving slowly like a piscean blimp
towards me, licking, I was sure, its thick blubbery lips.

Some
memory fragment of natural history told me it was a giant groper, but
I couldn't remember whether gropers ate people or not. It didn't
matter. If no groper had ever eaten human flesh before, this one
would still eat me. I wasn't even reassured by the fact that Bill was
prodding it and I kicking it, urging it towards me.

Now
the damned thing was so close it seemed as big as a ten-storey
building. Once it opened its mouth and shut it again as fish do, and
I had a terrifying glimpse of countless teeth and a dark enormous
hole of a throat down which I must soon surely slide. Bill kicked it
again and it rolled its great eyes to one side and looked extremely
disgruntled.

Then,
just off to my right, I saw that damned shark again, or one very like
it. No doubt the waters were swarming with the brutes. This one was
just hovering, slavering at the horrendous jaws presumably, obviously
waiting to pick up any scraps of me the groper might miss. I was not
happy.

I
thought my fear all-consuming but then the most dreadful stab of pain
through my head took my mind off even that. My ears had suddenly
become acutely worse. My eardrums were about to burst. I drifted back
towards the coral reef, forgetting whether or not I was breathing,
demented by fear and pain and wanting to do no more than curse God
and Bill and die quickly. I was in a mess.

Some
last spark of self-preservation induced me to try blowing my nose to
clear my ears. All I achieved was to spit out my mouthpiece.

I
was really demoralised by now, and Bill, seeing me feebly groping for
my mouthpiece, stopped playing with the groper, sped across and
reconnected me with my air supply. I sucked hard. There was no air.
My distress must have by now been obvious even to the insensitive
Bill. He looked at my air gauge unbelievingly. Then looked at me
penetratingly.

I
looked at him hopelessly, and held my breath.

Unhesitatingly
Bill swung back his mighty right arm and plunged his clenched fist
with incredible violence into my soft and yielding solar plexus.

I
remember seeing a great gout of air issue from my mouth and go
rolling in a huge bubble towards the iridescent brilliance which was
the surface of the sea twenty metres away. Then I think I
half-fainted because all I can remember is a hazy breathless rush
upwards in a daze of colour and silver bubbles.

By
the time I was fully conscious, I was lying on my back in the water
near the boat and Bill was holding my head out of the water.

I
loved him dearly at that moment, but there was a great unanswered
question.

'Why,'
I said plaintively, 'did you hit me?'

'You'd
run out of air,' he said reasonably. 'You must have been breathing at
ten times the normal rate. I had to get you to the top. If I'd rushed
you up with a lungful of air you'd have blown apart. So I had to
knock it out of you. Standard procedure.'

'Oh,'
I said.

'You're
all right now,' said Bill cheerfully. 'I've got another tank in the
boat. We'll try again.'