The Reef

of crockery, spoons, a pewter inkwell, a child’s worm-eaten wooden top. And, of course, the coins. Both silver and gold were stacked on her worktable. They glittered, thanks toLorraine’s work in the lab, as though they were freshly minted.
    Tate picked up a five-dollar gold piece, a beautiful little disk dated 1857, the year the Justine sank. How many hands had it passed through? she wondered. Perhaps only a few. It might have been tucked into a lady’s purse or a gentleman’s pocket. Maybe it had paid for a bottle of wine or a Cuban cigar. A new hat. Or maybe it had never been used, only held in anticipation of some small treat it could buy at the end of the journey.
    Now it was in her hand, part of so many lost treasures.
    “Pretty, isn’t it?” Lorraine came in. She carried a tray of artifacts newly decalcified and cleaned in her lab.
    “Yeah.” Tate replaced the coin, logged it in her computer. “There’s enough work here for a year.”
    “You sound real happy about it.” Curious, Lorraine tilted her head. “Scientists are supposed to be pleased when they have themselves steady field work.”
    “I am pleased.” Tate meticulously logged the brooch, set it aside in a tray. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’m involved in one of the most exciting finds of my career, part of a team of top scientists. I have the very best equipment, better-than-average working and living conditions.” She picked up the child’s toy. “I’d be crazy not to be pleased.”
    “So why don’t you tell me why you’re crazy?”
    Lips pursed, Tate gave the toy a quick spin. “You’ve never dived. It’s hard to explain to someone who’s never gone down, never seen it.”
    Lorraine sat down, tipped her feet up on the edge of the table. A tattoo of a unicorn rode colorfully over the inside of her ankle. “I’ve got some time. Why don’t you try?”
    “This isn’t hunting for treasure,” she began, her voice sharp with annoyance fully self-directed. “It’s computers and machines and robotics, and it’s marvelous in its way. We’d never have found the Justine or been able to study her without the equipment, obviously.”
    A fresh wave of restlessness had her pushing back from her worktable, pacing to the porthole that was her miserlyview of the sea. “It couldn’t be excavated or studied without it. The pressure and temperature at that depth make diving impossible. It’s basic biology, basic physics. I know it. But damn it, Lorraine, I want to go down. I want to touch it. I want to fan away the sand and find some piece of yesterday. Bowers’s droid’s having all the fun.”
    “Yeah, he’s always bragging about it.”
    “I know it sounds stupid.” Because it did, Tate was able to smile as she turned back. “But diving a wreck, being there, is an incredible high. And this is all so sterile. I didn’t know I’d feel this way, but every time I come in here to work, I remember what it was like. My first dive, my first wreck, working the airlift, hauling up conglomerate. All the fish, the coral, the mud and sand. The work, Lorraine, the physical strain of it. You feel like you’re part of it.” She spread her arms, let them fall. “This seems so removed, so cold and intrusive somehow.”
    “So scientific?” Lorraine put in.
    “Science without participation, for me, anyway. I remember when I found my first coin, a silver piece of eight. We had a virgin wreck in the West Indies.” She sighed, sat again. “I was twenty. It was a very eventful summer for me. We found a Spanish galleon, and lost it. I fell in love and had my heart broken. I’ve never been that involved with anything or anyone again. I haven’t wanted to be.”
    “Because of the ship or the man?”
    “Both. In a few weeks, I experienced absolute joy and absolute grief. A difficult ride at twenty. I went back to college that fall with my goals very well defined. I would get my degree and be the very best in my field. I would do exactly what I’m doing now and keep a logical, professional distance. And here I am, eight years later, wondering if I’ve made some terrible mistake.”
    Lorraine cocked a brow. “You don’t like your work?”
    “I love my work. I’m just having a hard time letting machines do the best part of it for me. Keeping me at that logical, professional distance.”
    “It doesn’t sound like a crisis to me, Tate. It just sounds like you need to strap on your tanks and have a little fun.”She studied the nails