“I have asked many questions, Tamerlane, but I still must ask more.”
The fish man nodded sombrely.
“What are the intentions of Hellix?”
Tamerlane peered up at the thick, mountainous walls of this hidden cavern, envisioning the world beyond, the rich and watery world of the sea — his sea — teeming with ten-thousand species of life.
“Intend?” he muttered. The gill-slits on the sides of his neck pulsed as if some inside nerve were throbbing. “To survive. To continue our development. Yes, and to shed the last vestiges of humanness. Does that shock you, surface man? That we no longer wish to be human? That we strive to become an integral part of what fate has ordained for us?” He looked at Aladdin, now, with fierce pride shimmering in his strange eyes. “We are of the sea — sea men. Even as the air is your own giver of life, so is the water world to us. We hail and revere her as a mother, for, indeed, the sea is our mother.”
“So does Cinnabar love the sea,” Aladdin quickly pointed out.
Tamerlane shook his large head. “They have spurned the offerings of the water world. It is too late for Cinnabar. At one time, they, too, might have accepted its ways, adapted to its offerings. They heeded not. Now the price for that arrogance shall be paid.”
The threat was real, Aladdin knew. Tamerlane meant every word. These were not merely words spoken by an idyllic old man who had seen much during his long years. He was convinced with fanatic zeal that his enemy must perish for its deeds, real or imagined. One way or another the end was at hand.
“On the surface, we say it is never too late to find a peaceful solution to a grievance.”
“This is not the surface,” his host replied gruffly.
“True. But you yourself just said that at one time Cinnabar might have learned to accept the water world in the way you do...”
“That was very, very long ago, surface man. From the earliest moment on, from the day of the cataclysm itself, they should have foreseen the inevitable.”
“Shara, my pilot, told me that before the eruption, while both your peoples lived on the surface, you were cousins, tribes rooted in the same tree.”
“That is so; we were.”
“Then why? Why didn’t you join forces from the beginning?”
Tamerlane sat thoughtfully. It was a good question, he knew, one he had asked himself so many times during the long years of bitter struggle. Why had the two peoples of the Twin Plates taken such diverse courses through their water world history? Partly it was greed and avarice. The effort of one panicky tribe to ensure its survival over the other. But there was more.
“Do you know of the cataclysm?” he asked Aladdin.
“Not very much. Cinnabar’s history is sketchy. They have removed it from their minds.”
The fish man glared at his companion. “We have not forgotten,” he said. “Nor shall we ever.” He paused, lost in thought. Then, regarding Aladdin again, he said, “It was an event such as no people have ever experienced before. Shall I tell you of it?”
Aladdin’s heartbeat quickened. Here was a chance to hear about the missing link, the period all but lost, during which two nations died, only to be reborn thousands of fathoms beneath the sea. A saga of heroism and survival like none other in the annals of mankind. “Can you tell me the story? Actually recount the way it was? You have written records?”
“Men of Hellix need no records. Our ancestors implanted it into our minds, generation after generation, so that it would never be lost. And now we are born with this memory, this shared knowledge of defeat and triumph.” He shot out his webbed hand and pointed a bony finger toward the black water of the lake. “Look inside the waters, Aladdin. Watch them as I speak. See for yourself, as all comes to life. Erase all other thoughts and feelings from your being. And if you can do this, you shall know — ”
Aladdin looked briefly at Tamerlane, then at the murky surface, so placid, so dark. The old fish man began to speak; the resonant voice grew stronger, filled with conviction and a soft purity that rang inside his brain like some primordial memory jarring itself loose. Suddenly it was almost as if he were no longer sitting upon a rock beside the old fish man at all, but instead, moving across some timeless, nameless void. A black chasm was drawing him closer, and he was unable to stop it from happening, even if he’d wanted to.
“Concentrate, Aladdin,” he vaguely heard Tamerlane say. “Concentrate...”
Aladdin let himself go, floating with the words, listening to the sounds of the old man which as yet seemed to make no sense. Then, to his astonishment, the lake’s surface began to ripple, as though someone had thrown stones. Dancing inside the darkness were formless images, coming to life, vivid with colour. He gasped at what he was seeing. And still Tamerlane’s voice was strong, becoming clearer now, the words stroking like a painter’s brush inside his brain. He gulped and mouthed soundlessly, “I can see it.” Then he said no more. Tamerlane was leading him upon this voyage, and Aladdin was helpless in preventing it.
*
There was an island, a great elongated island sitting like a jewel amid the violet waters of the sea. It was dusk. Crimson rays of a dying sun were streaking over the land mass in incredible majesty. Swallows were arcing below the clouds, wheeling and crying in the flame of the setting sun. Magnificent sailing ships bobbed gently in their quays in the harbours of the quiet island. Fishermen were drawing in their silvery catches, returning to the clutter of tiny villages that dotted the island’s landscape. Across the capital city — far more resplendent than Basra could ever dream of being — the streets were filled with the comings and goings of citizens, weary after a long day’s toil. Orchards and vineyards glimmered in the waning light. The hills and mountains of the island turned colours with the lengthening shadows of evening. The branches of the palm and olive trees quivered in the breeze. Sands from the perfect beaches turned brown and tawny as night tides began to swell. It was a picturesque setting of a fabulous nation, prosperous, cultured, peaceful, and certainly the envy of every other land upon the face of the world.
Suddenly, with no apparent explanation, the sea began to churn; massive waves rolled toward the low-lying shores. The sea changed in colour and an inexplicable heat covered the island. From deep within the bowels of the earth came a low rumbling, like far distant thunder, first intermittently, but then steadily. Aladdin could see the fear, then panic, overtake the multitudes of citizens. They stumbled from their homes, some clutching a few frantically grabbed possessions. Even in the face of this impending eruption of the earth, few realised the magnitude of what was happening. Earthquakes had erupted before; the dormant volcano had not always been silent.
At first, only the grim plume of belching smoke rose from the volcano’s mouth. What followed was an exploding sky filled with pumice, then black ash raining like the thickest fog. Aladdin could hear the screaming of the crowds. White-and red-hot fire shot from the volcanic cone, and then came another explosion, so intense, so horrific, that Aladdin reeled back in fear.
The chamber of burning magma spilled and emptied beneath the volcano. The sea itself poured into this void. Tidal waves were unleashed, and spread over the island. The most fearsome forces in all of nature, they buried the beautiful capital city, striking out across the hills and fur-tile fields.
The awful darkness that came next left Aladdin gasping for breath. The sea was a raging whirlpool, sucking-in the island chunk by chunk, dragging it down, ever deeper down, into a watery grave. A storm of ash fell, and with it, huge shooting stars of flying lava, which lighted up the black sky. Ships were smashed. The entire coast of the island disappeared. As the earth split, chalk cliffs collapsed, and small villages were engulfed in the spreading fissures. Every meter of the island was disappearing forever, so that when the cataclysm was over, nothing would remain. Nothing. Only the sea, returning slowly to its passive state, its waves gently rolling across the vastness, as if an island continent had never existed.
Then his visi
on took him beneath the waters of the sea. He saw great remnants of the island drip, lopsided, some disintegrating before his eyes, others settling far below the surface into the mountains and undersea land mass he knew as the Two Plates. As when a boat capsizes, there was a bubble of air above some of these tumbling tiny islands of rock, an air pocket which jammed between the peaks of the subterranean peaks and slowly settled. Tens of thousands of the island’s inhabitants had died. But there were still numbers of people who had somehow found shelter beneath the vast and expanding air pocket. A second mass of island fell to the east, also sheltered by an almost identical bubble of air. This, Aladdin knew, was Hellix. Its own survivors clung to life exactly as those upon the western island were doing.
The roar of the whirlpool ceased; the last thunder of quivering earth and volcanic tremors gradually came to a halt. What was left below the sea was pitiful. An entire civilisation had been wiped out of existence in a single night. A single whirlpool continued to spin fairly close to the western shelf of the Two Plates. This whirling cylinder would develop into the Funnel, he knew, forever providing alternate source of fresh air to the survivors, as well as an escape route back to the surface. But returning to the surface was impossible, there was nowhere for them to go. Their nation had been obliterated, and the closest land was many hundreds of leagues away. There was no choice but to remain beneath the air bubble and hope to somehow forge a new society — Cinnabar in the west, Hel-lix in the east — upon the destruction of the old. Each was doomed to certain extinction unless it could quickly and successfully adapt to this alien environment.
And adapt, each did, but in its own way. Cinnabar proudly built a human nation below the sea; Hellixians chose to become creatures of their new home. These two philosophies were so disparate they could never be reconciled.
*
Aladdin found himself opening his eyes, still staring into the dark lake. The images were gone, the ripples were gone. As before, black murky water greeted him. Tamerlane was no longer speaking.
“Are you all right?” came the fish man’s voice at last.
Head in his hands, Aladdin turned to his captor. “I... I feel like I was actually there,” he muttered, trying to pull himself back to reality. “As though when the island sank I was a part of it...”
“In a way you were,” Tamerlane told him soothingly. “Mankind’s experience is universal. Shared in ways neither you nor I can explain. It is as if every mortal, both on the surface and in the sea, has some distant memory of that moment. It must be so. For I am no sorcerer as Shaman is. All I did was tell you of the cataclysm — the images and involvement were your own.”
It took a long while for the adventurer to shake off the vestiges of his experience. He was wearier than he could ever recall being. He tried to stand but found his knees wobbling.
“Rest for a bit,” cautioned Tamerlane. “Your physical being has not yet returned, even though your mind has.”
Aladdin nodded. He sat upon the rock, stooped and bowed, awed by his voyage into the past, but not sorry he had taken the journey. When he felt better, he said, “So a quirk of fate caused the two air pockets to fall on opposite sides of the Two Plates.”
“Yes; you might say that. But now I myself wonder if it was a mere accident.” He rubbed his chin, peering up again at the high ceiling of the cavern. “Chance, or divine intervention, Aladdin? Perhaps this is what was meant to be. For my people to one day take their rightful place in the sea.”
“You don’t really mean that, do you? You were as fully human as anyone. I saw that for myself.”
“Yes, I concede that. We were. But you have seen what we have become and into what we are evolving more rapidly every day. Many of our young, Aladdin, our latest generations, do not need any air at all to breathe. Whereas I must periodically return to these pockets of oxygen for rejuvenation, my great-grandchildren function perfectly well in a world of only water.”
“Before the turtle was captured, we saw swimmers without any air tanks at all — ”
“It is only the beginning. Would it disturb you to know that some of our young already show signs of losing their appendages?”
Aladdin’s eyes widened in disbelief, as he looked at his captor, a man he was beginning to like. “You mean they have no arms, no legs?”
“An ape has a tail — a man does not. Human beings need no tails. Soon my people shall have little use for arms.”
“Then what will happen? What will become of you?” Tamerlane smiled. “We shall become what is intended for us to become — a new species, born to the sea, but retaining our knowledge and abilities. The first of our kind. Man-fish.”
Aladdin was staggered by this formulation. At first, it made no sense that the people of Hellix would wish to return completely to the sea. Then, upon reflection, it made a great deal of sense. This was nothing less than the ultimate act of a civilisation which had willingly thrown itself into its foreign surroundings. Man-fish would remain a warm-blooded creature, he knew, and the metamorphosis would not exactly turn him into what sea fish were now. Rather, this would be a highly skilled and intelligent species that lived, not in cities or inside air pockets, but in the salted waters of the ocean depths. A mobile race, truly free, living off the abundance of the sea. An empire, retaining the wisdom of its human ancestors but no longer having any need — or wish — for human contact. The evolution would be complete. He knew that many philosophers and men of science claimed that man’s embryonic beginnings are in the sea. Tamerlane was proving that the reverse of this evolution was equally valid. Mankind could indeed return to his primitive beginnings. Still, this incredible prospect haunted him.
“Is this really what your people wish to achieve?”
“At first it was not,” the old fish man readily admitted. “We sought only survival and accommodation. Not having the tools or science that Cinnabar possessed, we had few options. But the passing of the years has altered our belief in the nature of accommodation. Now we can see the folly of our humanness. We have undertaken this with careful consideration for our young, gradually and painfully allowing them to assimilate into the water world. It has not been easy for us, Aladdin. The sea can be a harsh teacher. But we were resolute. And now we could not turn back even if we wanted to. So, we look forward to the time when Hellix, the Golden Imperium of the water world, is completely unrestricted. When we are no longer constrained in our efforts by needless and useless appendages. True freedom, surface man. That is what we seek. Cinnabar’s time is finite; ours is infinite. I am eternally thankful for this gift of fate, although I shall not live long enough to see it, and indeed it will take many, many more generations to complete the transformation.”
The harbingers of a completely new world, Aladdin thought. Tamerlane made it all sound so reasonable. So — right.
“Why are you telling me all this?” Aladdin asked.
“So that you will understand our position. You must realise that nothing can alter what is happening — and that Cinnabar is doomed.”
Gloomily, Aladdin sighed. “Why did you make me your prisoner? Why didn’t you have your swimmers sink our turtle and have done with it?”
Tamerlane seemed slightly surprised. “Isn’t it obvious? I wanted you alive.”
Aladdin sneered. “Why? So that you can torture us before you kill us?”
“Is that what you think? That you were brought to the cavern to be killed?”
“Weren’t we?”
A genuine look of hurt flickered in his deeply set eyes as Tamerlane said, “We make no wars upon the nations of the surface. You are not my enemy. Since the time of your arrival into the water world, my friends and I have been anxious for the time when we might meet and speak with you. In this respect, your voyage to our restricted area was an unexpected blessing. Albeit unknowingly, you came to us of your own will. Don’t misunderstand; your value to us is minimal. Your knowledge of Cinnabar, its military plans for attack, all mean nothing. Whatever efforts they emba
rk upon cannot save them.”
“Then why did you want me so badly?”
Tamerlane settled into moody reflection. When he spoke again, he said with quiet dignity, “To see a man from the surface. An emissary of our ancestors. To hear of the world above. Little, however, seems to have changed. In some ways l am envious, in other ways not. That’s not important. What is important is that you should know, for all time, the futility of your presence. We did not want this conflict, Aladdin. I had hoped this meeting would have taught you as much. Nevertheless, I still extend a hand of friendship to you. A water-world man to a surface man.”
“A captor to his prisoner,” Aladdin said cynically. “But you are not a prisoner. You are a guest in Hellix.”
“You’re saying that I’m free to leave?”
“With a few conditions, yes.” He smiled coyly, like an old fox who had outsmarted an equally cunning prey.
“What conditions?”
“That when you reach Cinnabar again, you and your surface companion leave the water world forever. Return as free men to the world of sun and moon.”
It was a sorely tempting offer, this chance to be gone from here — a world he had never fully comprehended, and never would. Indeed, he yearned to feel the warmth of sunshine, the glow of moonlight; to sail away with Christóbal and put all this insanity behind them.
“What about the girl, my pilot, Shara?”
Tamerlane’s lips turned down into a frown. “She is Cinnabarian. She knows her fate. She must remain here.”
Aladdin shook his head. “She must be allowed to come with me,” he said with determination.
“For what purpose, Aladdin? There is no hope for her people. I have told you that. Erase the memory of those devils from your mind. Accept your own life.”
The Thief of Kalimar; Captain Sinbad; Cinnabar Page 100