“Wake up, Es.”
So much for that resolution, I grumbled to myself later, but obeyed the voice. “Is she back?” I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. It was still dark. No, I was under something, something soft. I must have burrowed beneath the blankets like my Lishcyn-self into the grass of my box. It was my Human’s fault. Lie down for a few minutes, Esen, I repeated to myself. He must have known this form would fall asleep.
“Of course I’m back, Youngest. What’s the matter with you? Human, is she exceptionally slow to become conscious in this form?”
“I don’t know,” I heard Paul say. “I’ve never seen her sleep—this way—before. But exhausted Human children do sleep soundly.” The blanket lifted. I squinted up at Paul, seeing Skalet past his shoulder. She was wearing clothing that matched ours, brown and plain, though hers fit. Her hair was missing.
That was a surprise. I crawled into the open and yawned at my web-kin. “Where’s your hair?”
“My—If this is a game, Youngest, I tire of it.” She glared at me. “Get her ready.”
When Skalet turned her back to leave the bedroom, I winked at Paul.
I’d puzzled over how Skalet meant to return to the surface, if not via the Busfish. The Prumbins insisted on living transports to Nirvana. How became clear the moment Paul and I followed Skalet through her air lock. Besides the door to the dry corridor, it had a floor hatch, well-concealed, leading into a very old Kraal submersible.
The submersible was docked under her suite at the Happy House, away from any eyes but the beady, non-image-forming ones of wall crawlers. Still, its mere presence demonstrated a distinct lack of respect for the Prumbins’ notions of paradise on the part of both this web-kin and Mixs.
And, I told myself, a willful carelessness for the sake of convenience. Ersh must have been furious when she swallowed this memory. One of those uncomfortable discussions had likely ensued. Skalet the careless. It was something to keep in mind.
“Strap in.”
Paul and I took the bench seats along each side, obeying Skalet and pulling the harnesses over our shoulders—another sign of the age of this craft. I trusted, for Paul’s sake, that she’d had it tested for seaworthiness in the last century.
I found myself studying the back of Skalet’s head, watching her hands as she worked the controls with an economy of motion few true Humans could match. The interior lights dimmed to a rose-glow as she activated the viewports, the color washing away the foreign cream of her skin; shadows repainted her tattoos. For the first time, I saw her as I knew her, as I hadn’t since that terrible day on the Trium Set.
When I thought she’d died.
Moisture prickled my eyes and spilled down one cheek. Surprised, I wiped it away, then stared at my damp fingers.
“Esen?” Whisper-soft.
I shook my head, dismissing Paul’s concern. There was nothing wrong with me beyond this form’s disconcerting ability to feel.
A form the emotionless Skalet wore more than any other. That contradiction kept me from paying full attention as the antique submersible sank below the lowermost buildings along the Brim, then leveled off to move along the Abyss, though normally I’d be fascinated by the life clinging to its walls.
Think for yourself, Esen, I could hear Ersh say. I did my best. After being Lishcyn for fifty years, I’d gained a firm and completely irrational belief that almost any problem could be resolved by shopping. Skalet had been Human much longer, a form I’d begun to understand, thanks to Paul. So what would her behavior today mean, if truly tainted by that form?
She’d sent me away when her identity was first exposed. To avoid my emotional overreaction—or her own? When we’d been together, she’d lost control, badly enough to damage me. Having done so, she’d left, returning only when necessary to leave the Abyss. Remorse?
If I’d learned anything from my time with Skalet, it was the danger of trying to second-guess her motives. Were my own any clearer? The ache in my flesh to reconnect with my own kind couldn’t be trusted. The drive to assimilate new knowledge, to share my own, was an instinct waiting to betray me.
None of this mattered, I decided. What did was that Skalet wanted the ability to move through space, something I couldn’t permit any web-being, let alone one who played at war.
I closed my eyes on the past and leaned back.
“This is where it gets interesting,” Skalet informed us as we stood looking toward the shoreline. Prumbinat’s Port City of Gathergo tumbled over the low hills, no more than a series of dark, boxlike outlines. Flashes in the distance marked where starships came and went. Our goal. I licked salt spray from my lips, gauging the amount of time until sunrise by the lack of stars on the eastern horizon.
“I trust you have a plan?” Paul asked her, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the distant crash of surf. He kept his arm wrapped tightly around my waist, his other hand gripping the side of the vessel. The wind whipped his hair and mine. Skalet, having taken hers off, was immune.
She’d brought us to the surface outside the channel used by the Busfish, a precaution against collision as well as detection by the Prumbin authorities. You’d think a living transport would be better able to avoid accidents, but a Busfish tended to aim itself at anything smaller, in reasonable expectation of swallowing it. The safest tactic was not to get in front of one at any time. After surfacing, Skalet had blown off the roof, turning the submersible into a permanent and ungainly boat, limiting our options to one.
I hadn’t been surprised.
“Let me tell you a story, ” Skalet said, leaning easily against the side of the craft as if she relished its unpredictable rocking. “The Quinn family, having come into an inheritance through a tedious and complicated relationship you don’t need to know, celebrate with an extravagant vacation—having learned of the mystical Nirvana Abyss from an acquaintance. Alas, like most Humans, they find the reality of paradise too damp for their taste and choose to leave on the last transport. They plan to change the passage they’d booked—back to the dreary and utterly unremarkable planet of Adamershome—for a visit to Picco’s Moon to partake of its famed jewelry shops.” One arm waved at the ocean around us. “Sadly, the Quinns are about to have an unfortunate experience with their Busfish, very soon now, being swept from its mouth before docking is complete. Everyone will be most gratified by their survival.”
I stared out at what now seemed a very distant, surf-ravaged shoreline. “You can’t be serious.” The water between was a living darkness, heaving up and down, foaming like a mouth. And I knew what lay beneath all too well. More mouths.
Paul didn’t bother arguing. “Did you steal their suits?” I brightened. Full environment suits were as good as being in a submersible, as long as one avoided the aforementioned very large mouths.
“Yours is stowed below with mine, Human.” A gleam of white teeth in the dark. “But the one belonging to the Quinns’ offspring is too small for you, Youngest. A pity. I suggest you scavenge from it what you can for protection.”
I elbowed Paul in the rib cage before he could erupt in protest. It would do no good. I knew that tone from long ago.
Skalet was enjoying herself.
With Paul’s silent and disapproving help, and the arrival of predawn light, I was able to free a set of goggles and rig a belt of the suit material that would hold a knife. I’d tried Skalet’s own suit. If it hadn’t been so frustrating staring at the fabric inside the chest area while Paul fought to readjust the suit beyond its limits, it would have been funny.
I had allowed myself one comment, midway through the suit demolition. “You could have simply bought three suits, the right size.”
“And justified it how?” Skalet had countered. “Souvenirs? If you bother to remember, Youngest, the Prumbin track suits arriving and leaving, not individuals. It’s the easiest way to know if they’ve lost another tourist to the locals.”
Her reminder had triggered a thought that kept me silent for several m
oments, prompting a curious look from Paul. It wasn’t something I thought he’d understand, even if I’d felt comfortable talking about the distinction between Web and non-Web in front of Skalet.
I’d known since my second bite of Ersh that web-beings were unique among living intelligences, having evolved in space rather than on a single piece of orbiting rock. It was a more fundamental distinction, to me, than our extended life span. I still had great difficulty grasping the attachment other species felt to their place of origin, or their equally strong drive to escape it.
Now, Skalet had inadvertently given me a new difference to absorb. We were the only beings who didn’t have to trust a suit or ship with our existence. A web-being could cycle and survive in any environment. My Human-self feared the swim to shore; my web-self, the true Esen, was in no danger. Not that my present brain found that sufficient reassurance.
I no longer believed I was close to understanding ephemerals. Paul’s risk-taking as a younger being had been alarming enough. To find all species but ours so determined to explore a different world, to meet a different kind of being in its own habitat, that they willingly entrusted their short lives to valves, tubes, and fabric? Where did they obtain such courage? I wondered if the Prumbins had deliberately created a paradise where such risk had to be accepted and overcome.
If so, web-beings didn’t belong there.
At last we were ready. Skalet had begun glowering at me, as if I were delaying on purpose. I didn’t bother denying it. My Human-self was in no hurry to leap into the water. As if the Cosmic Gods had decided to pay attention, the waves had grown, each with white foam now slithering down its muscular shoulder. At close range, they lifted the submersible sharply from back to front. In both directions along the coast, they hurled in endless rows toward shore, in a hurry to pummel and drown any land creature they could catch.
Skalet consulted her chrono. “Any time now,” she said. Paul tugged the filament he’d insisted link us together in a final check and she lifted a brow. “If we become separated,” she warned, “as is likely, wait near the entrance to the shipcity. Without drawing attention.” As this last part seemed directed at me and Paul had the audacity to nod, I ignored them both.
Just as well. I was the first to spot the fin, with its telltale antennae and other hardware. “There it is—the Busfish!” I announced, my voice annoyingly higher-pitched than usual.
I steeled myself to jump over the side, since Skalet’s plan relied on us washing to shore shortly after the Busfish docked, then saw Skalet’s hand reach for the controls. Before I could do more than shout: “Paul!” the submersible obeyed her commands and split along its remaining seams, fragmenting beneath our feet.
Entering the ocean after the boat was something of an anticlimax.
Otherwhere
“THE situation is under control, Pa-Admiral.”
Mocktap braced one booted foot on a boulder near the rim of the mountaintop and surveyed the orange-stained wasteland that was Picco’s Moon, doing her best to breathe slowly. It was hard enough to maintain the illusion of strength without this thin air robbing her lungs. Still, she could see why S’kal-ru had chosen this peak as her hiding place. It was as admirably defensible as it was hideous. “Under control,” she echoed. “Do you have any idea how ludicrous that sounds, Hubbar-ro?”
The Kraal beside her sighed. “I do, Pa-Admiral. Your affiliates seem disconcertingly optimistic under the circumstances.”
Hubbar-ro had been a find she’d gladly attached to her personal staff: talented, ambitious, well-bred, and affiliated. A scoutship captain assigned to S’kal-ru through mutual affiliations within the House of High-bury, he was the only surviving Kraal of rank, besides herself, to have spoken to Paul Ragem and his companion, the creature S’kal-ru had introduced as having affiliations of tenth degree reliability. Nimal-ket. A remarkably lively Ket, given the record of her death Mocktap had unearthed on Ket-Prime.
Hubbar-ro knew only that she, a Kraal of high rank and noble House, had taken an interest in his career and had been properly grateful ever since. Both he and his family had sworn affiliation to the House of Mocktap, several proving their commitment by personal sacrifice in battle. Mocktap trusted Hubbar-ro as much as any of her staff. And as little.
“They were successful in dissuading Tumblers from approaching the site,” he ventured. “There have been no further incursions.”
Mocktap frowned and straightened by pushing her boot against the boulder. She took a moment to tug her battle gear into better alignment before saying: “Rock-based life. Slow and stubborn. You can talk to it until you run out of air, and never be sure it heard a word you said. Ask any trader. I’d be happier if my oh-so-vigilant affiliates had remembered they were dealing with quartz, not carbon. What about the shipcity?”
“The reports we received on our arrival this morning are confusing at best, Admiral. There’s a great deal of starship traffic, docked as well as insystem waiting for room on the landing fields. For the most part, the ships are privately owned commercials. I’ve heard conflicting stories about Tumbler activity. The latest claimed they’d rolled back into the nearest valleys. If you wish, I can take an aircar and verify what’s happening.”
She glanced at his eager, handsome face, noting wryly that the years had touched it very little, except to add a rakish scar along one cheek and begin what would be a distinguished jowl in another few decades. Hubbar-ro was fonder of the table than dueling practice.
They would know him on sight: S’kal-ru, Paul—Esen. Nimal-Ket, indeed.
“No,” she said, adding before he could argue: “Pick someone who still has something to prove. After you finish showing me what we have here.”
“Certainly,” he said, trying not to show his pleasure. “This way, please, Admiral. The lab’s been moved into a structure embedded into the cliffside, damaged but sufficiently intact. It’s down this staircase. They have the mineral samples there.”
Mocktap pursed her lips then shook her head. “Later. I want to inspect our defensive capabilities.” She didn’t quite smile. “And offensive.”
There would be no errors this time, S’kal-ru.
22: Ocean Morning
I FOUGHT nature for pride’s sake—my nature, not Prumbinat’s ocean—battling the urge to cycle into a form that could swim by instinct, instead struggling to implement memories of useful arm and leg movements before more water went up my nose. Warm water, though, warmer than the air. It had felt very pleasant before I’d sunk below the surface and realized I’d have to work at not staying there.
Before I could panic, or cycle, or most likely both, something pulled me up. I broke through a reflection of goggled faces against an almost blue sky and took a grateful gasp of air.
Which turned into a choking cough as the next wave tried to go down my throat.
“Close your mouth, Youngest.”
I obeyed, hoping the goggles translated my glare at my web-kin. Destroying our only vehicle? She’d done it, I assured myself, so we’d have no other choice but to follow her strategy.
Paul was holding me against his suit, its buoyancy enough for us both. His attention was on the fin now approaching at speed. At first, it was the only thing I could see other than the moving walls of water on all sides and the three of us, bobbing up and down. Then, I realized there were larger waves at intervals. At the top of one of those, I could see the shore. It was significantly closer. Though I couldn’t detect any lateral movement, the waves must be pushing us in the right direction.
I began to think this wasn’t such a bad plan, which should have made me ready for the worst.
But I don’t think any of us were ready for the appearance of a second fin, and a third, and a fourth. I stopped counting. A school of wild Busfish! They must have been attracted to their domesticated cousin. Untimely pheromones were always an issue in traffic safety.
We were moving even as these and other nonessential details insisted on parading through my head. Paul
and Skalet were swimming across the pattern of waves, their movements a reassuring synchrony of power and skill, except Paul was also towing me. I finally got my arms digging through the water in a way that worked with, not against, the kicking of my legs.
It wasn’t enough.
The open mouth of a tame Busfish was an impressive sight at dockside. The open mouth of an approaching wild individual engulfed the sky as it prepared to engulf us.
Given that I wasn’t a tasty little Oieta any longer, it seemed remarkably unfair.
The ocean exploded around me. I grabbed for Paul, somehow having hands despite every instinct to abandon them, which would be to abandon him. We clung to one another, on my part with every expectation of being swallowed before my next breath—which was going to seriously complicate the immediate future. I thought furiously. My Human had a suit, which bought us time until the digestive enzymes went to work on its seals.
Then I stared into the gaping mouth, noting helplessly that it did indeed have large, functional tooth ridges both top and bottom. Enzymes were unlikely to be an issue after all.
It turned . . . blue.
Not the blue of sky or tormented ocean.
Web-blue.
Skalet!
Not daring to move, holding form, I clung to Paul as my web-kin assimilated the Busfish.
I knew there were more fins approaching, that this wasn’t going to be enough to save him. I knew her choices. There were only so many sentient aquatics, unless Skalet had discovered and assimilated a new species since I’d last tasted her flesh. I knew she would cycle and escape, choose self-preservation . . . as she had before.
I should have known not to second-guess her.
Skalet’s blue winked into a mountain of gray-black flesh, scars traced white by barnacles and other hitchhikers. She was easily a third larger than the Busfish. She must have assimilated mass from plankton as well. The other fins sank below the surface as the locals took the route of discretion and conceded their prey to the massive Refinne, a being not of their world.
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