by Dan Simmons
I floated there a second, watching the hawking mat until someone on the platform grabbed it. I had childishly hoped that the carpet would swoop around and come back to me, lift me out of the sea, and carry me back to the raft a klick or two north of here now. I had grown fond of the hawking mat—fond of being part of the myth and legend it represented—and watching it fly away from me forever like that made me sick to my stomach.
I was sick to my stomach. Between the wounds and the salt water I’d ingested—not to mention the effect of salt water in the wounds—the nausea was real. I kept floating there in the salty sea, kicking to keep my head and shoulders above water, the heavy automatic held in my two hands.
If I was going to swim, I had to shoot the handcuffs apart. But how could I do that? The steel band between the manacles was only half the thickness of my wrist; no matter how I contorted, I could not get the muzzle of the weapon around where I could sever the band with a bullet.
Meanwhile, the dorsal fins were circling away from their feeding on the lieutenant. I knew that I was bleeding badly. I could feel the heavier wetness at my side and on the back of my arm, where the salty blood was spilling into the salty sea. If those things were anything like the saberbacks or sharks, they could sense blood for kilometers. My only hope was to kick toward the platform, use the pistol on the first fins to come near me, and hope I could reach one of the pylons and pull myself out or yell for help. That was my only hope.
I leaned back, kicked, rolled onto my stomach, and started swimming north, toward the open ocean. I had been on the platform once this long day. That was enough.
34
I had never before tried swimming with my hands tied in front of me. It is my earnest hope that I never have to try it again. Only the strong salinity of this world’s ocean kept me afloat as I kicked, floated, flailed, and thrashed my way north. I had no real hope of reaching the raft; the current began running strongest at least a klick north of the platform, and our plan had been to keep the raft as far away from the structure as we could without losing the river within the sea.
It was only a few minutes before the colored sharks began circling again. Their shimmering, electric colors were visible beneath the waves, and when one moved in for the attack, I stopped trying to swim, floated, and kicked at its head in precisely the same way as I had seen the late lieutenant hold the things at bay. It seemed to work. The fish were undoubtedly deadly, but they were stupid—they attacked one at a time, as if there were some unseen pecking order among them—and I kicked them in the snout one at a time. But the process was exhausting. I had started to remove my boots just before the first color-shark attack—the heavy leather was dragging me down—but the thought of kicking bare feet at those fanged, bullet-shaped heads made me keep the boots on as long as I could. I also soon decided that I could not swim with the pistol in my hands. The saberback things were diving during their actual lunges at me, coming up from beneath seemed to be their preferred mode of attack, and I doubted whether a bullet from the old slug-thrower would do any good through a meter or two of water. Eventually I tucked the pistol back into its holster, although I soon wished I had dropped it altogether. Floating, swiveling to keep twin dorsal fins in view, I finally pulled off my boots and let them slip away into the depths. When the next shark attacked, I kicked harder, feeling the sandpaper roughness of the skin above its tiny brain. It snapped at my bare feet but moved away and began circling again.
This is the way I swam north, pausing, floating, kicking, cursing, swimming a few meters, pausing again to twist in circles waiting for the next attack. If it had not been for the combination of the brilliant moons and the saberback things’ glowing skin, one of them would have pulled me down long before. As it was, I soon reached the point where I was too exhausted to try to swim any longer—all I could do was float on my back, gasp for air, and get my feet between those white teeth and my legs every time I saw the colors flashing my way.
The knife wounds were beginning to hurt in earnest now. I could feel the deeper slash along my ribs as a terrible burning combined with a stickiness down the length of my side. I was sure that I was bleeding into the water, and once, when the dorsal fins were circling far enough out that I could ignore them for a moment, I lowered my hands to my side and then pulled them out of the water. They were red—much redder than the violet sea glowing in the light of the great moon that had now cleared the horizon. I felt the weakness growing in me and realized that I was bleeding to death. The water was becoming warmer, as if my blood were heating it to a comfortable temperature, and the temptation to close my eyes and move deeper into that warmth grew stronger each minute.
I admit that each time the ocean swell bore me up, I kept looking over my shoulder for some sign of the raft—for some miracle from the north. I saw nothing there. Part of me was pleased at this—the raft had probably transited the farcaster portal by now. It had not been intercepted. I had seen no skimmers airborne, no thopters, and the platform was only a diminishing blaze to the south. I realized that my best hope was to be picked up by a searching thopter now that the raft was safely gone, but even the thought of such rescue did not cheer me. I had been to the platform once this day.
Floating on my back, twisting my head and neck to keep the colored dorsals in view, I kicked my way north, rising with each great movement of the violet sea, dropping into wide troughs as the ocean seemed to breathe in. I rotated to my stomach and tried kicking more strongly, my handcuffed fists straight ahead of me, but I was too exhausted to keep my head above water that way. My right arm seemed to be bleeding more fiercely now and seemed three times as heavy as the left. I guessed that the lieutenant’s blade had severed tendons there.
Finally I had to give up swimming and concentrate on floating, my feet kicking to keep me up, my head and shoulders above water, my fists clenched in front of my face. The saberback things seemed to sense my weakness; they took turns swimming at me, their great mouths open to feed. Each time I pulled my legs up and kicked straight out, trying to strike their snouts or brainpans with my heels without having my feet bitten off. Their rough skin had abraded the flesh of my heels and soles to the point that I was adding more blood to the sphere that must surround me. It made the dorsal-things wilder. Their attacks came closer together as I grew too tired to pull my legs up each time. One of the long fish ripped my right pant leg off from the knee to ankle, pulling a layer of skin with it as it moved away with a triumphant stroke of its tail.
Part of my tired mind had been pondering theology during all this—not praying, but wondering about a Cosmic God who allowed Its creatures to torture each other like this. How many hominids, mammals, and trillions of other creatures had spent their last minutes in mortal fear such as this, their hearts pounding, their adrenaline coursing through them and exhausting them more quickly, their small minds racing in the hopeless quest of escape? How could any God describe Him- or Herself as a God of Mercy and fill the universe with fanged things such as this? I remembered Grandam telling me about an early Old Earth scientist, one Charles Darwin, who had come up with one of the early theories of evolution or gravitation or somesuch, and how—although raised a devout Christian even before the reward of the cruciform—he had become an atheist while studying a terrestrial wasp that paralyzed some large species of spider, planted its embryo, and let the spider recover and go about its business until it was time for the hatched wasp larvae to burrow its way out of the living spider’s abdomen.
I shook water out of my eyes and kicked at two of the dorsal fins rushing at me. I missed the head but struck one of the sensitive fins. Only by pulling my legs up into a ball did I avoid that snapping maw. Losing my buoyancy for a moment, I went a meter or more under the next wave, swallowed saltwater, and came up gasping and blind. More fins circled closer. Swallowing water again, I struggled with my numb hands underwater and came up with the pistol, almost dropping it before propping it against my chin. I realized that it would be easier just to leave the mu
zzle under my chin and pull the trigger than to try to use it against these sea killers. Well, there were quite a few slugs left in the thing—I had not used it during all of the excitement of the last couple of hours—so it would remain an option.
Swiveling, watching the closest dorsal move even closer, I remembered a story Grandam had me read when I was a boy. It was also an ancient classic—a thing by Stephen Crane called “The Open Boat”—and it was about several men who had survived the sinking of their ship and days at sea without water, only to be stuck a few hundred meters from land by surf too high to cross without capsizing. One of the men in the boat—I could not remember which character—had moved through all of the circles of theological supposition: praying, believing that God was a merciful Deity who sat up nights worrying about him, then believing that God was a cruel bastard, and finally deciding that no one was listening. I realized now that I had not understood that story, despite Grandam’s Socratic questions and careful guidance. I thought that I remembered the weight of epiphany that had fallen on that character as he realized they would have to swim for it and that not all of them could survive. He had wanted Nature—for this is how he now thought of the universe—to be a huge glass building, just so that he could cast stones at it. But even that, he realized, would be useless.
The universe is indifferent to our fates. This was the crushing burden that the character took with him as he struggled through the surf toward survival or extinction. The universe just does not give a shit.
I realized that I was laughing and weeping at the same time, shouting curses and invitations to the saberback things that were only two or three meters out. I leveled the pistol and fired at the closest fin. Amazingly, the soaked slug-thrower fired, the noise that had been so loud on the raft now seemed to be swallowed by the waves and immensity of the sea. The fish dived out of sight. Two more lunged at me. I shot at one, kicked at the other, just as something struck me hard on the neck from behind.
I was not so lost in theology and philosophizing that I was ready to die. I swiveled quickly, not knowing how badly I had been bitten but determined to shoot the goddamn thing in the mouth if I had to. I had the heavy pistol cocked and aimed before I saw the girl’s face there half a meter from my own. Her hair was plastered to her skull and her dark eyes were bright in the moonlight.
“Raul!” She must have been calling my name before, but I had not heard it over the gunshot and the rushing in my ears.
I blinked saltwater away. This could not be real. Oh, Jesus, why should she be out here, away from the raft?
“Raul!” Aenea called again. “Float on your back. Use the gun to keep those things away. I’ll pull you in.”
I shook my head. I did not understand. Why would she leave the powerful android on the raft and come after me by herself? How could …
A. Bettik’s blue scalp became visible over the next large swell. The android was swimming strongly with both arms, the long machete clamped in his white teeth. I confess that I laughed through my tears. He looked like a cheap holo’s version of a pirate.
“Float on your back!” shouted the girl again.
I turned on my back, too tired to kick as a shark-thing lunged at my legs. I shot between my feet at it, striking it square between its black, lifeless eyes. The two fins disappeared beneath the wave.
Aenea set one arm around my neck, her left hand under my right arm so she was not choking me, and began swimming strongly up the next huge swell. A. Bettik swam alongside, paddling with one arm now as he wielded the sharp machete with another. I saw him slice into the water and watched two dorsal fins shudder and swerve to the right.
“What are you …,” I began, choking and coughing.
“Save your breath,” gasped the girl, pulling me down into the next trough and up the violet wall ahead of us. “We have a long way to go.”
“The pistol,” I said, trying to hand it to her. I felt the darkness closing on my vision like a narrowing tunnel and did not want to lose the weapon. Too late—I felt it drop away into the sea. “Sorry,” I managed before the tunnel closed completely.
My last conscious thought was an inventory of what I had lost on my first solo expedition: the treasured hawking mat, my night goggles, the antique automatic pistol, my boots, probably the com unit, and quite possibly my life and the lives of my friends. Total darkness cut off the end of this cynical speculation.
I WAS VAGUELY AWARE OF THEIR LIFTING ME ONTO the raft. The handcuffs were gone, cut away. The girl was breathing into my mouth, pumping water out of my lungs with pressure against my chest. A. Bettik knelt next to us, pulling strongly on a heavy line.
After retching water for several minutes, I said, “The raft … how? … it should have been to the portal by now … I don’t …”
Aenea pushed my head back against a pack and cut away rags of my shirt and right trouser leg with a short knife. “A. Bettik rigged a sort of sea anchor using the microtent and the climbing rope,” she said. “It’s dragging behind, slowing us down but keeping us on course. It gave us time to find you.”
“How …” I began, then started coughing salt water again.
“Hush,” said the girl, ripping the last of my shirt away. “I want to see how badly you’re hurt.”
I winced as her strong hands touched the great gash in my side. Her fingers found the deep cut on my upper arm, ran down my side to where the fish had taken the skin down my thigh and calf. “Ah, Raul,” she said sadly. “I let you out of my sight for an hour or two and look what you do to yourself.”
The weakness was overwhelming me again, the darkness returning. I knew that I had lost too much blood. I was very cold. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Quiet.” She tore open the larger of our medpaks with a loud ripping noise. “Hush.”
“No,” I insisted. “I screwed up. I was supposed to be your protector … guard you. Sorry—” I cried out as she poured antiseptic sulfa solution directly into the wound on my side. I had seen men weep at this on the battlefield. Now I was one of them.
If it had been my modern medpak that the girl had opened, I am sure I would have died minutes if not seconds later. But it was the larger pak—the ancient FORCE-issue medpak we’d taken from the ship. My first thought was that all of the medicines and instruments would be useless after so long a time, but then I saw the blinking lights on the surface of the pak she had laid on my chest. Some were green, more were yellow, a few were red. I knew that this was not good.
“Lie back,” whispered Aenea, and tore open a sterile suture pak. She laid the clear bag against my side and the millipede suture within came to life and crawled to my wound. The sensation was not pleasant as the tailored life-form crawled into the ragged walls of my wound, secreted its antibiotic and cleansing secretions, then drew its sharp millipede legs together in a tight suture. I cried out again … then again a moment later as she applied another millipede suture to my arm.
“We need more plasma cartridges,” she said to A. Bettik as she fed two of the small cylinders into the pak injection system. I felt the burn on my thigh as the plasma entered my system.
“Those four are all that we have,” said the android. He was busy working on me now, setting an osmosis mask in place over my face. Pure oxygen began to flow into my lungs.
“Damn,” said the girl, injecting the last of the plasma cartridges. “He’s lost too much blood. He’s going into deep shock.”
I wanted to argue with them, explain that my shaking and shivering was just a result of the cold air, that I felt much better, but the osmosis mask pressed everywhere against my mouth, eyes, nose, and did not allow me to speak. For a moment I hallucinated that we were back in the ship and the crash field was holding me secure again. I think that all the salt water on my face at that moment was not from the sea.
Then I saw the ultramorph injector in the girl’s hands and I began to struggle. I did not want to be knocked out: if I was going to die, I wanted to be awake when it happened.
I thrashed for another few seconds, weeping tears of frustration now. After all that effort, to slip away while unconscious. Goddamn it, it wasn’t fair … it wasn’t right …
• • •
I AWOKE TO BRIGHT SUNLIGHT AND TERRIBLE heat. For a moment I was sure that we were still on the sea of Mare Infinitus, but when I worked up enough energy to lift my head, I could see that the sun was different—larger, hotter—and the sky was a much paler shade of blue. The raft seemed to be moving along some sort of concrete canal with only a meter or two to spare on either side. I could see concrete, sun, and blue sky—nothing else.
“Lie back,” said Aenea, pushing my head and shoulders back on the pack and adjusting the microtent fabric so that my face was in shade again. Obviously they had retrieved their “sea anchor.”
I tried to speak, failed, licked dry lips that seemed stitched together, and finally managed, “How long have I been out?”
Aenea gave me a sip of water from my own canteen before replying. “About thirty hours.”
“Thirty hours!” Even trying to shout, I could do little more than squeak.
A. Bettik came around the side of the tent and crouched in the shade with us. “Welcome back, M. Endymion.”
“Where are we?”
Aenea answered. “Judging from the desert, sun, and the stars last night, it’s almost certain that we’re on Hebron. We seem to be traveling along some aqueduct. Right now … well, you should see this.” She supported my shoulders so I could see over the concrete lip of the canal. Nothing but air and distant hills. “We’re about fifty meters up on this section of aqueduct,” she said, lowering my head to the pack again. “It’s been like this for the last five or six klicks. If there’s been a breach in the aqueduct …” She smiled ruefully. “We haven’t seen anyone or anything … not even a vulture. We’re waiting until we come into a city.”