Underwater, now. This space, near the surface, at this time of day with the sun well up, was filled with a wavering light. As Ha dropped to the bottom, she saw a silver school of fish, a flash in her peripheral vision. Other forms darting, here and there. The mesh bags were on the bottom. They had disturbed the sand, pushed small clouds of it up into the otherwise clear water. Ha rotated, looked up through the lens of the surface at the scattered sun, then turned to the work, opening the bags.

Glass bottles, dozens of them. All colored—mostly green, but some in various shades of blue, and a few yellow-tinted. She had found them in a set of bins at the side of the hotel. They were left behind, trash from when the hotel itself, with its incongruous palms and its awkward saltwater pool, had been abandoned. Ha had sorted out the clear bottles and the brown ones, brought only the ones that were bright, and whole. Now she drew the bags open and swam in a circle, plotting out the location.

The sand here was a good canvas—featureless and bright, nearly smooth. She began to lay bottles out, defining the edges of the symbol.

As usual, there were a few minutes at the beginning of this dive when Ha was still “in the world,” as she thought of it. Still remembering things from earlier in the day, still chasing thoughts.

For the last few days, following the latest voyage of the submersible, she had been working almost without stopping. Evrim would interrupt her to bring food, coffee, but otherwise she had worked every possible hour on the footage they had recorded, sketching symbol after symbol out on palimpscreens and into terminal notebooks. But most of the symbols were so completely abstract, she could not possibly imagine their connection to the world.

Once Altantsetseg had dragged her out for a walk on the beach.

“You need to pause. You need to rest your mind so when you return it can work better.”

But Ha had resented every moment outside in the sunshine, had paced the sand almost without speaking. The symbols were always in her mind. She was aware, at all times, of the mechanism of her thoughts—placing the symbols in sequences, trying to work out an underlying grammar. She and Altantsetseg had walked together in silence, but Ha’s mind had remained on her task, on the problem. Finally, Altantsetseg had sighed, and turned them back to the hotel.

“Sorry,” Ha had said. “I just can’t stop working on it right now.”

“I understand. I can’t just stop myself from thinking about things, either. It’s not our talent, I suppose—either one of us.”

Ha could not shake the feeling, later, that there had been some missed opportunity in that moment—that Altantsetseg had wanted to tell her something. But she had not been present, had not been there to listen.