by Laer Carroll
Finally she reached the boat and maneuvered around to the ladder fixed to one side of the craft. She sped up her metabolism and time seemed to slow. She went up the ladder and across the deck so fast it seemed fast to her even in slow time. She was nearly to the large control cabin near the front of the boat when one of the men looked around.
He shouted and bent to grab at something invisible below the bottom of the row of windows in the nearest side. She was rounding the open doorway into the cabin by the time he unbent with a rifle in his hands. He had only begun to turn himself and the weapon toward her when she grabbed its barrel and jerked.
He screamed as his finger came out of the trigger guard, perhaps breaking. The sea monster threw the rifle underhanded out of the cabin far into the sea and grabbed the two men by their throats. The unhurt one stabbed her in the belly with a knife, or tried to. The knife turned in his hand when the blade hit her tough skin and gashed him.
She lifted both men on their tip toes and shook them, gently for her. Then she let them down onto the flats of their feet and relaxed her grip to let them breathe.
Their frightened gaze took in the grey unhuman face barely a foot from their faces, taking in its slitted nose and reddened eyes under their heavy brow ridges. She opened her lipless mouth enough to let them see her fangs.
"Call the other two up," she said in English. "Do not try to warn them or I will tear your throat out."
The smell of feces from at least one of them rose to her nose. She released the throat of the one who'd had his hands on the steering wheel enough to let him speak.
He coughed, swallowed.
"Aksel! Jenson! Come up quick!" At least that's what she thought he said. His voice was in a language foreign to her, perhaps Danish.
Moments latter there came a clatter from the stairwell to the rear of the cabin. Sylvia pushed the two men toward the two high chairs they had vacated. One sat. One leaned on the other chair cradling his hurt hand.
The sea monster moved around so that she was behind the two men as they came out of the stairs.
One of the men said something in a questioning tone. The other, seeing the first two men looking upset, turned quickly to see Sylvia. He shouted and tried to plunge below but she was between him and the stairs in an instant. He backed up hurriedly.
The other turned to see her and quickly joined the other men at the front of the cabin, looking at her in great fright.
She did not advance toward them. She was remembering.
When she had killed the three crewmen who had kidnapped Prinny she was only thirty or forty minutes away from taking her to the Ponce hospital. She had still vividly remembered the girl's pale face and her eyes closed in concussive coma. And it was still fresh in her mind that the men and their dead gang boss were going to sell the girl into a sex slavery ring, to be tortured and raped and taught to be a prostitute. Her heart had been twisted in grief and rage. She had been eager to kill the men .
She had been quick with the first two, stabbing them through an eye with a clawed index finger. There had still been enough time for the last man to realize what was happening and run from her weeping in fear and for the loss of his friends.
Sylvia had only needed a few quick steps to catch him and plunge a claw through the back of his skull into his brain. Her claw had made a quiet chunking sound like thumping a melon.
That sound and the sound of his weeping had haunted her for weeks.
These four men had done something just as cruel as the kidnappers had intended to do. They had killed Oberon horribly and tried to kill Miranda. The father and daughter dolphins were people to the sea monster as surely as any humans. Sylvia had restrained herself from slaughtering the brothers when she had fought them in the restaurant only because she wanted them to suffer longer. And there would have been witnesses.
There were no witnesses here. With the tropical depression ramping up toward a possible out-of-season hurricane no one would think it strange if these men, killed and their boat scuttled, disappeared.
But she didn't want to kill them. Her hate had not lessened, but it had cooled.
Sylvia thought a moment longer, then let time catch up to her. She spoke, her voice unhumanly harsh and hissing slightly.
"You have angered the sea god. You have killed his favored children. You will be punished."
"But they were stealing our fish!" said the brother who seemed to be their captain.
"You lie. They have no need to steal. They were being friendly. Do you not know that the children of the sea bring good luck? You turned your luck bad."
The man with the hurt hand released it with his good hand and used it to point at the youngest brother.
"He thought it would be fun! And you—" He turned his gaze on the captain. "—you let him!"
The captain began shouting at him in their birth tongue. He answered back. Another brother, the next oldest to the captain began to berate the captain too.
For a minute the monster watched the three speakers, then turned a blood-red gaze on the youngest. He stared back at her. She ran her tongue over her almost lipless upper lip. He turned pale, swayed on his feet, almost fainted.
The shouters shut up. For a moment. Then the captain began to plead with her in his birth tongue. She turned a stony gaze on him and let him speak. Then she made an abrupt gesture which shut him up.
"You must never harm the sea god's children again. If you do he will not be merciful a second time."
He began to talk over her, perhaps thanking her. She shut him up a second time.
"I will put a hole in your boat. Perhaps you will make it to shore. Perhaps the sea god's storm will let you. Perhaps not. It will be FUN to watch."
She went to slow time and in a few steps was out the door. On deck she crouched and spring up and out, entering the water with hardly a splash.
Underneath the water was grey from the approaching storm. As her body shifted to underwater breathing she searched in the shadow of the boat till she found what might be a good spot. The fingers of one clawed hand bit into the metal enough to give her a good purchase. She drew back the other hand and plunged her bunched claws like a wedge into the boat bottom, opening a fist-sized hole.
Water rushed into the hole, forcing air out of it in a great puff then a diminishing stream of smaller bubbles. She had opened an entry into a false bottom made as a buffer against just such a penetration.
She jack-knifed and sped downward and back toward her go-board. Behind her the boat would be in distress but it was unlikely to founder. But the brothers would have to spend anguish and time and money to get to port and to fix the damage to their vessel.
Would her warning not to harm dolphins protect those the brothers came across? She thought so but she did not know. Fear was not a perfect motivator.
But it had been all she had, if she were not to kill them. It would have to be enough.
Sylvia turned her attention away from the brothers, toward her board. Her esoteric underwater sense extended.
Yes. There it was, a mile or two ahead of her and a bit to one side. The wind above the water was pushing it north and west. She altered course toward it.
Her thoughts turned toward the sex slavers whom she sought. Her anger toward them had changed, as it had toward the brothers. It was as strong as ever, but cold now. In her last contact with the brothers the last fire of her hatred for those who had kidnapped and killed her had slipped unnoticed away.
Sex slavery was a disease of humanity's body. It could not be eradicated totally, any more than disease could be totally eradicated from an ordinary human's body. Every day every healthy person's body was fighting a battle with disease so successful it was not even noticed.
That would be Sylvia's role, to find and kill the worst disease clusters of humanity's body .
Suddenly the sea monster was impatient. She surfaced and began to swim smoothly and rapidly. Reaching her go-board she flopped prone onto it. Then she triggered the water jet
and the SuperSlider option, slewed the board around, and aimed herself like an arrow toward Space Island and the slavers beyond it.
Chapter 22 - Prosties
"Two more and we're done. At least here."
Sylvia Connelly took a deep breath, bent to grasp a big sand bag in the back of a pickup truck, and exhaled as she lifted it onto one shoulder. She stood a moment as if to get her breath and her balance. The hardest part for the sea monster was to appear that she was stressed when she could bench-press small cars.
Wind from the oncoming tropical storm flung drops of rain into her face and whipped her hair around her face. That was another task, to make her hair appear to be wind-tossed. Each of its thousands of strands was alive all along its length. It had taken her a long time not to appear like another Medusa, for each tiny strand was independently mobile.
Under grey skies she took off for the line of similar sand bags lining a good part of Space Island's south beach. The storm would accelerate erosion here and the authorities of ArgenSpace who effectively owned the Puerto Rican island wanted to contain the damage. Teenagers of the island high school had volunteered to help. Many of them surfed off this beach and considered it theirs.
Behind her came two such teenagers: her friends Prinny and her brother Emilio, holding each end of another sand bag. A senior, lately he'd grown into his size and could have handled the bag on his own, but unlike a lot of brothers he was careful of his little sister's feelings.
Not that she was so little. She had grown up quite a bit in the months since her water accident and kidnapping. But she was still a bit gawky with her new body and self-conscious.
This might have made problems for her socially. She was a brain and becoming a tad famous because of her work with dolphins and famed marine biologist Doctor Connelly. But having a solicitous and very hot older brother kept most of the girls in her school from being mean to her .
That self-same doctor dropped her sand bag, exhaling as she guided the heavy weight into just the right place in the long line of bags. A minute later the two teenagers dropped their bag beside it.
"Not bad," said Emilio, straightening and eyeing the bag and the long line. He was a bit of a brain, too. In his case the artist's eyes he and his sister had inherited was in the service of architecture, which he would be studying when he went off to college.
"I think we can knock off now," Sylvia said. She waved at the driver of the sandbag truck, who drove off down the beach to another place which needed her burdens.
The adult and two teens walked toward the nearest tent. In addition to the several trailers and sheds which were permanent more than a dozen temporary structures had been added for this work effort. In one was a large portable kitchen supplying a variety of snacks. Many of those contained meat. Argentina was a nation of ranches and most Argentines were mad about meat dishes.
The three got in a line, chatting about various subjects. Sylvia idly watched the people around them, answering only when spoken to. The crowd, which was getting bigger as more people finished their beach-fortification tasks, was of mostly younger people, many of them teens. All wore bikinis or shorts and tee-shirts, another benefit for the teens. Not a few romances would be started this day.
The racial types were various. Argentines tended to be European, from Italy and Spain and England a few generations back. They were taller and blonder than the Puerto Ricans. Those, the boriquen , had more Spanish and Indian blood and were shorter and darker of skin and hair. On the average; there were plenty of exceptions.
She moved up and ordered a big plate of meat and vegetables, then left her companions behind to get a table (or table corner) and her drink.
As she sat and waited for the sister and brother, who did a lot of body blocking of each other and saying Hellos to friends, she listened to the languages spoken around her. Boricua spoke English as a first and Spanish as a second language. Porteños were the opposite. But both nationalities were equally fluent. That bilingualism made for an easy kinship which she found hard to define. The biologist in her wondered if brain structures had actually changed in some way—
"Is this seat taken?"
Sylvia looked up to see the Australian-Argentine space pilot Leoni standing with a tray of food. She was trim in her bikini, a short woman with a lean but feminine body.
"Not at all. I'm saving two spots for my friends but there's plenty of room. If you sit right away!"
The pilot gracefully took a seat which left space for two more people. Several other people took seats also at the round table and began to chat among themselves.
"Just back from orbit?" Sylvia said before taking a bit of her food.
"Yesterday. We came in a bit early because of the tropical depression. It looked a bit like it might turn into a hurricane and we would have been pressing our perishables a bit close if we'd had to stay up there longer."
"You have hydroponics on the space stations."
"True. But they tend to be a bit bland." So saying she upended a bottle of hot relish over her meat and took a bite.
"You should add a bottle of that to your next flight."
"I wish! I've argued to management that it would be a big morale booster. But so far they have resisted in favor of more 'cost effective' weight." She grimaced and took another bite .
"Hey, Leoni," said Emilio in English. He sat down beside her. "¿Com'estas?"
"Bien. Hola, Princesa mia."
Prinny leaned over and kissed Leoni's cheek, then sat beside Sylvia with her tray. Talk turned quickly to—what else?—dolphins. Leoni listened with real not faked interest in Prinny's work with them.
A few days later Sylvia heard through the Ponce fisher grapevine that the boat of the four brothers she had chastised had limped into an eastern Dominican Republic port. A small worry in her eased.
The next few weeks were busy. Besides her daily work at ArgenSpace she also had to attend a number of evening and weekend events which her celebrity and job with ArgenSpace demanded. There was the upcoming holidays, which included the drudgery and joy of buying a good many presents for her family on the mainland and friends in Puerto Rico. She spent more than a week in Florida visiting her family for Christmas.
In mid-January she and Prinny flew to New York for publicity events for their book on dolphins. They appeared on three different TV shows, two in the morning and one in the evening. They also lectured at Columbia University as part of a Global Diversity series of events.
It wasn't until February that she could turn her attention back to tracking slavers.
She began her search by starting to set up an alternate identity for herself. She bought a year's rental of a middle-sized storage box at the TransAm bus station at the Ponce port for Space Island water taxis and water ferries. The combination lock would open to the date Sylvia had come ashore after becoming a monster .
In it she left a prepaid cell phone powered by a sliver-sized superbattery which would last for years. She also left in it two pairs of shoes, formal ones a shiny gold with a moderate heel and a nice but used pair of her tennis shoes and outfits matching the shoes: a dressy gold short dress and worn tee shirt and jeans. In this way she could enter the bus station, change her clothes and face and figure, and leave looking like someone else.
"Hey, Katrina. How're they hanging?"
The burly prostitute from the Ponce jail holding cell turned toward the sea monster. The woman was dressed in a tight red skirt and white blouse with a deep décolleté. She wore heels and fishnet stockings. Her face was made up tastefully, and her hair style was fashionable. She looked surprisingly sexy for such a mannish woman. But there was something about the way she stood and moved...
There was obviously more to attracting men than just standing like a statue and looking good. Sylvia could do it because she was strikingly beautiful, but less-favored women obviously needed more advantages, and Katrina had those....
Sylvia had found her after walking the streets of Ponce's red light distric
t for over an hour. On a Saturday night bright lights on both sides of the streets winked and flowed and automobile traffic was heavy. More than half the shops and all of the eateries were open late.
The woman blinked at the sea monster for a moment. Then her face lightened.
"Hey, girl friend! I almost didn't recognize you out of your jailbird suit."
Sylvia was wearing all the accouterments of feminine night life. Her dress was powder blue and, while not tight, was close- and well-fitting and flattering. Her heels matched her dress. Her hair was in a stylish chignon captured by a turquoise comb. Gold and diamonds sparkled in her ears and on her slender watch band.
"How have you been?" said Sylvia.
"Business is good since the Argentines have got their act together this last year. Lots of people want to see a spaceship. I bet they're making a mint over on the Island charging for tours."
Sylvia gave a tour herself every two or three weeks and they were always full up. Of course, some of the tourists came to see her.
"I know you're working, so I won't stay long. But I need a favor for a friend."
"Oh, take your time! I'm an independent contractor and set my own hours." The woman grinned at the up-scale way of saying prostitute.
"You're...ah, manager...won't get on your case?"
"Nah. My Rickie is just around to scare any of my customers who might get rambunctious. He's a sweetie to me and the rest of his girls.
"What's the favor?"
"I have a...friend...who's trying to trace who's kidnapping girls for South American sex slavery. Would you be willing to talk to her?"
Katrina became wary.
"Is this friend police?"
"No. She's a private citizen."
"Those people are really dangerous."
Sylvia grinned. "My friend can eat sharks for breakfast. If you think I'm tough, you have to meet her. But neither one of us would want to put you in danger."
"I'll meet her and decide for myself. Those scum are bad for business. They undercut prices for legitimate business people like myself. But tell her to phone me and we'll go someplace private. I wouldn't want the ass-holes to know I'm ratting on them."