Frederick - The Engulfed Cathederal

by CARL FREDERICK

Illustration by Broeck Steadman

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New things take getting used to, no matter which side youre coming from.

Issuant from the warm, clear waters of the Eastern Mediterranean, six meters of white stone breached the surfacethe pinnacle of a cathedrals spire. Scattered in a roughly circular array around that gothic steeple lay a few score of boats: pleasure craft, houseboats, and a light military vesselan aged La Fayette class frigate.

The cathedral, gradually engulfed as the Earth warmed and the waters rose, had survived its baptism intactexcept for the north transept, the left arm of the cross. The land subsided and the transept crumbled cleanly, leaving a great open archway to the sea. Now, through that arch swam Doctors Paul and Ingrid Ryan: two delegates to the Thirtieth International Conference on Genetics and the Future of Mankind being held in a beachfront hotel.

As he swam through, Paul looked up over his shoulder at the ceiling of his world: the coruscating plane of brightness interrupted by the black embossed outlines of the boats. Near some of the hulls, he saw starburststhe silent splashes of divers descending to attend the ecumenical service. In the far distance, a pod of super-dolphins sped away from this unlikely hub of human activity. He wondered what was going on in those cetacean brains of theirsand he felt oddly uncomfortable not being able to interpret the dolphins body language; reading body language had, of late, become second nature to him.

Paul directed his gaze to his wife swimming ahead. She appeared larger than life, a magnification caused by the properties of light rays refracting at the water/glass/air boundary of his diving mask. He smiled, conscious that he was a physicist among geneticists. Ingrid was the geneticist of the family and hed been invited to the conference as a courtesy to her.

Floating at the clerestory level of the cathedral high above the altar, Ingrid looked stunning, divine; an angel with wings replaced by scuba tanks. Her blond hair undulated with the rhythm of her limbs and her body, unencumbered save for her scuba, flippers, wrist dive calculator, and a bikini, seemed a moving work of sculpture. She was beautifulbut then, in some respects, shed been engineered to be.

She whirled around, facing him, and signed, Beautiful!

He started, then realizing what she referred to, signed The cathedral: Yes. Very beautiful.

Her body language showed humor and he could well imagine her green cats-eyes wide with amusement behind her mask. Those eyes, with their slit-like irises and reflective tapetum lucidum retinas, were

genetic enhancements chosen by her ailurophile mother. But due to a then-unknown gene-linking, those cats-eyes caused her to be born deaf. And the form of deafness couldnt be ameliorated with a cochlear implant.

Here in the water though, deafness was not a handicapquite the contrary. Unlike most divers, rendered mute by the mouthpieces between their lips, Ingrid and Paul could converse. They used Ingrids first language and Pauls third: American Sign Language. At home on their houseboat, Paul, using cued English, relied more on Ingrids lip-reading ability, but because they spent much time together diving hed become fluent in ASL.

Ingrid resumed exploring the upper reaches of the cathedrals nave. Paul followed and then heard the dull dissonance of a cathedral bell sounding through water.

It disconcerted him that he couldnt tell from where the sound came. The physics was clear: Since sound travels four times faster through water than in air, the time difference for sounds reaching each ear is too small for the brain to determine direction. Knowing the science, though, just strengthened his belief that by design, people were ill adapted to the undersea realm. He bit hard on his mouthpiece, recalling Ingrids view that by engineering, people could be made as comfortable in the sea as dolphins.

Again the bell rang, drawing his attention to its significance.

He swam ahead, catching Ingrids attention to sign that the service was about to begin and they should probably drop down to get mooring spots above a front pewso to be close enough for Ingrid to read the Voice-Recognition-to-ASL monitor.

Ingrid smiled with her body. So you dont have to translate for me? she signed. Without waiting for a response, she swam away and downward.

As he watched her descend, he wondered if her abrupt departure had a subtext. They had argued again about children. Despite her deafness caused by genetic engineering, she still wanted children engineered for beauty and intelligence. Shed said that for competitive reasons it was almost required these days. Paul scowled under his mask. He wanted no designer progeny. Tall and attractive are so commonnow that theyre no longer attractive.

Ingrid swam in front of the cathedrals great rose window and became bathed in the reds and blues from the stained glassfrom shafts of sunlight that had traversed vacuum, air, and now, water. Seeing Ingrid against the religious imagery, Paul was reminded of his parents warning that thered probably be trouble if he wound up marrying an unbeliever.

Paul gave an internal shrug and, releasing more breathing bubbles than hed needed to, he followed Ingrid down toward the buoyant tethers. The tethers floated about ten meters above the pews at a depth below the surface that was still safe for the recreational divers.

He could see clearly to the cathedrals floor. No surprise, as the salinity of the Mediterranean is higher than the Atlantic Ocean. That limits algae, which results in higher transparency. The Secchi depth, the depth to which one could see from the surface, was a lot greater than the cathedrals thirty-meter height.

He turned his attention to the front of the cathedralto the little transparent room from which the sermon would be delivered. The air-filled room was like the congregants, also tethered, and floated about eleven meters from the bottom. Paul saw the room rock as a wizened man moved clumsily inside itthe preacher, no doubt. He was heavyset, even paunchy, but at the same time seemed much too frail to have come down to deliver a sermon. Indeed, the man looked in ill health. Paul was impressed by the preachers obvious dedication.

He hoped the sermon would be a good oneand might even give him some arguments to convince Ingrid that designer babies werent a good idea. Yes, he knew the nondenominational service was more public relations than anything else. Still, against the background of this sunken cathedral, a powerful message might well be delivered.

This years conference was subtitled Genetic Engineering in a World of Water. The organizers had arranged the underwater service in an attempt to convince the religious lay public that geneticists werent godless monsters. And polls indicated that what with the super-dolphin fiasco, those religionists who seemed to set the national agenda needed a lot of convincing.

Navy scientists had genetically engineered dolphins for high intelligence, neatly bypassing a half million or so years of evolution. They wanted smart bombs, bombs they could talk to, smart dolphins carrying explosives. The engineered super-dolphins quickly proved they were indeed intelligent; they might or might not have been sentient, but apparently they understood the Navys intentionsand wanted no part of it. They escaped their enclosure and fled to the open seas. Subsequently the Navy dropped the project.

That was years ago but now, just weeks before the Genetics Conference, researchers found that virtually all dolphins in the wild were super-dolphins. They, the Cro-Magnon of dolphins, had replaced the Neanderthal of dolphins. And what with the waters diminishing the land, people were growing afraidespecially of those soulless intelligences from the oceans.