It left him feeling not fearful but exhilarated. There, he thought. That alone was worth it. If I do nothing else, if I can't make a wave, it was worth coming all this way just to feel that swell.
A board was coming toward him, light as a feather on the surface. Janwin stopped paddling, looked over at him. "Save your legs and mount up, man."
Acorizal spat salt water. "It feels good."
"Sure it does, but don't waste your energy. Your adrenaline's all pumped up. Get on your board, relax, and let it go down."
Acorizal decided to take the advice, clambered onto his board with the ease of long practice, and sat there, his face drying in the rising sun. "When do we start?"
He was watching the monitoring skimmer, bobbing nearby.
"We've already started." Janwin grinned at the other man's expression of surprise. "Some can't stand to wait. Two took off on that last swell." He shook his head. "There's no advantage to going first, but you'll never convince some people of that."
"I never saw them go," Acorizal murmured. "So soon. Isn't it better to wait for a wave that feels right?"
Janwin shrugged. "To some I guess the first wave feels like the right wave."
"Well, I'm taking my time. I'm in no hurry. I've come a long way for this, and I'll be damned if I'm going to rush it."
"Good for you." Janwin nodded approvingly. "You don't get many chances. I prefer to wait too."
Hours passed. One by one the riders took off, to disappear southward. Once something large, white, and full of teeth appeared, to be driven off by a shot from the monitor skimmer's lookout. Reports on the progress of vanished riders were broadcast to those who remained, amplified by the skimmer's sound system.
"Meswith Brookings... four hours, twenty minutes. Bailout clean. Harlkit Romm... three hours, forty-five minutes. Swimout, exhaustion, but otherwise clean." Acorizal knew Romm would score higher than Brookings for bailing out without using his backpack.
"Eryl-cith al Hazram... four hours, thirty-two minutes." There was a pause, then the voice from the speaker added softly, "Bailout failure; wipeout. Body not yet recovered." There was silence for a while, then the voice continued mechanically. "El Tolst, five hours fifty-six minutes. Swimout, collapsed lung, neck sprain, otherwise clean. Jewel Parquella, five hours, ten minutes..."
During the waiting another pair of riders withdrew, were helped silently aboard the monitoring skimmer. The sun rose higher while beneath it three moons jostled for pulling position. Janwin and Acorizal discussed water.
"Normally we could expect double sets," the surgeon was saying, giving the swell lifting them a critical eye. "Three large waves followed by three small. The storm's changed that. We're getting three large, three small, and three or four storm waves larger still but highly variant." He glanced over at his companion.
"Naturally you'd like to catch one of the latter, but they can be tricky. You might get a double wave, one crest on top of another, and that would force an early bailout. You'd get a ride, but too short to score many points."
The sound of an arriving skimmer interrupted their conversation. Besides the surgeon and Acorizal two other riders still waited for a wave. One went away with the swell that rolled under them as the skimmer touched down.
A board appeared on its flank, went over the side followed by a rider. The man mounted, paddled over to join the remaining three contestants. It was Brook-ings. He was lean, much younger than Janwin or Acorizal. His face was flushed and scoured clean, but he was not panting very hard and his strokes were smooth and sure.
"Hello, Brookings. Back for your second?" Janwin inquired. The younger man nodded, looked understandably pleased with himself.
"Caught a seventy-five-footer," he told them. He leaned back on his board, hyperventilating. "The first couple of hours were easy enough. After that you start to feel it in the legs. Then your eyes get snaky. I dec ided to bail out when I found myself seeing a double tube behind me."
"Smart move," said Janwin. "We got your report. You had a good ride on a good wave. Have they found al Hazram yet?"
Brookings looked past them, toward the invisible coast "Not yet. They're afraid his suit might've failed. They told me he caught a storm wave at least a hundred feet five. He was apparently doing fine until he got too fancy. Got too low on the wave and too close to the curl. The wind from the collapsing tube blew him off his board."
"What about his pack?" Acorizal asked.
"Ignited okay but he was so low the crest caught him. He didn't clear it and it broke right over him. If his suit failed they'll never find him." He went quiet for a moment, then sat up straight on his board and began paddling. They were rising toward the sky.
"I like this one... see you." Then the swell had him in its grasp and he was gone.
"We'd better get going," Acorizal observed. "If he's on his second wave..."
Janwin shook his head. "Competition comes second, remember. Survival's first. You've got to feel comfortable with the wave you choose or you might as well turn in your corpse right now."
So they continued waiting. Janwin took off fifteen minutes later. That left Acorizal and the last rider. Swells came and went as they sat on their boards.
Kirsi... I'm glad you're not here and I wish, oh how I wish that you were! His face was getting hot from the midday sun.
The sound of a returning skimmer drifted down to the two waiting riders. He squinted, made out the prong noses of two boards projecting from the racks on one side of the little craft. Two more successful riders re-turning for their second waves. He couldn't wait much longer or it would be too late to try for the required three rides. There was only tonight and tomorrow. He did not want to have to make two rides tomorrow, and not even a saint would try to ride the Monster at night.
Then he saw the swell. It loomed high behind him over his right shoulder, so green it was almost black. It was a huge one, wide as the sky and rising like a bubble breathed out from something vast and patient. But he was not alone and there was courtesy to observe.
He looked anxiously across at the other waiting rider, saw that the man also saw the nearing swell. It continued to rise steadily, bearing down on them like a runaway starship. Acorizal had to force himself to wait.
Abruptly the other rider let out an agonized cry of despair and started paddling for the monitor skimmer, taking himself out of competition for the swell, out of the day, out of the contest. Acorizal turned his head eastward and began paddling furiously, his balpole clipped lengthwise beneath his knees.
He was afraid he'd waited too long. For a long moment he hung suspended atop the swell. Then he was moving forward with less and less effort. He stopped paddling, continued to move, picking up speed and beginning to slide slightly downward. The swell continued to build and a giant green-black hand boosted him toward the sky. Now he could pick out the faint, far line of cliffs that marked the land.
He climbed to his knees from his belly, accelerating steadily. His toes tensed on the slightly resilient surface of the board. He stood, edged back on his rear leg an inch, then moved his front leg to match. The fingers of his left hand tightened on the ignition cord of the backpack.
He felt fine. The ride was smooth and easy, the board responding instantly to his subtly shifting weight and gentle toe-touches on the control studs. The bal-pole he held tightly in his right hand. He stopped rising, hung suspended in midair.
Then he looked down. His fingers tensed further on the loop of the backpack release as instinct almost betrayed him.
Far, far below was the surface of the water, flat and shining like steel in the rising sun. Air ripped at his face; salt stung his eyes. Wind whistled around him. His mind was momentarily numbed by the hundred-foot drop he overhung, but twenty years of practice took over, shifted his body.
Then he was screaming down the face of the gigantic wave, ten, twenty, thirty feet. He leveled off, keeping his weight back but centered, adjusting the airfoil to slow the precipitous drop. The stabilizers k
ept him level as the front four feet of his board hung over emptiness and sliced through the air.
An incredible rush went through him, an indescribable combination of sheer terror and pure ecstasy. To his right was a moving green cliff that towered over his head, thousands of tons of living water. To his left was nothingness.
He grew conscious of the steady, unvarying roar of the Monster, only now it was not terrifying but simply awesome. He was set on the board, had become part of it. He risked a look backward.
Behind him tons of water cascaded endlessly from thirty feet overhead to smash into the withdrawing waters seventy feet below. It formed a vast glassy green tunnel which rising sunlight turned into an elongated emerald: the tube. Wind blew out of it as curling water forced air ahead of the collapsing arc. It sounded a special, higher note in the overall thunder of the Monster.
He held tight to the balpole with both hands, letting loose of the pack release, and adjusted his balance. Then he thought to check his suit chronometer. He'd been on the wave thirty minutes.
Moving slightly backward he luxuriated in the feel of the matchless ride, always watching the curl and the crest high above to make sure no surprises were about to tumble down to crush him. The waves held their shape with remarkable consistency, but occasionally one could collapse unexpectedly, the curl vanishing as the unwary, too-confident rider found himself buried under a million tons of water.
But Acorizal's wave rolled on and on, machinelike, the curl trailing behind his board like a friend urging him onward.
Gradually his confidence grew. He let himself feel out the wave, slipping his board high up on the green wall only to plunge dizzyingly back down when it seemed sure he'd burst through the crest, dropping low almost into the bottom of the curl to stare up at eighty feet of liquid cliff high above.
When he felt secure enough, and he'd been three hours on the wave, he let himself slide backward, back into the tube. It was almost peaceful inside, so numbing was the roar of the breaking curl. The tunnel he rode in was high and wide, the wind powerful behind him. He had to be careful. He did not want to be blown off the board by a collapsing tube, to be swallowed by the tumbling crest.
Something materialized in front of his face, just outside the curl. He frowned, then let the board edge outward. The apparition multiplied into many.
He'd been told of the Trintaglias. They floated just ahead of him, their blue eyes bulging curiously at the strange figure that appeared in their midst. Their air sacs were fully inflated, the taut yellow-pink skin stretched thin as paper. They varied in size from several inches to a foot in diameter, riding the air current that preceded the tube on long, thin fins that doubled as wings.
Occasionally one would dip down to snatch something edible from the water. Some would collapse their sacs and vanish into the wall of the wave; others would drift higher or lower according to internal pressures. Once he reached out and touched one. It jerked away from him, turned to float sideways in the air and regard him wide-eyed and reproachful.
He checked his time. Five hours and thirty-five minutes. He had already managed the second-longest ride of the day. His legs were throbbing, and the gastro-ceriemius of the left was starting to cramp. His eyes were red from the salt spray, while his mouth, paradoxically, was dry from lack of water.
Off to his left, as he moved cautiously out of the tube, he could see the high, running ridge of the continental edge. Ahead, as always, there was only the endless, thundering curve of water.
Another thirty minutes, he promised himself. Another thirty minutes and I'll have the longest ride of the day. He couldn't bring himself to bail out yet, though his legs threatened to fail him and his arms felt like limp weeds. Everything had gone so well. The wave still had size and power and exhibited no signs of weakening. How far did they run, he wondered? He hadn't researched it much, not thinking he'd ever be in a position to care. Could you ride one all the way around the continent? Or perhaps from pole to pole?
Another thirty minutes. Another thirty minutes of wet hell and he could bail out.
The Vaxials almost got him.
Only the fact that one mistook the end of the balpole for part of the rider saved Acorizal. The narrow, eellike head reached out of the wave wall and snapped at it viciously, teeth grinding on the sharp metal. All six longitudinal fins were extended for balance, and the dark red gill slits back of the jaws were pulsing with excitement. An eye the size of his hand stared malevolently out of the wave at the startled Acorizal.
Somehow he kept his balance on the board, but it was a near thing as he instinctively leaned away from those thin, needle-sharp teeth.
The reaction helped him. The Vaxial let loose of the inedible balpole and snapped at the air where Acorizal's shoulder had been an instant earlier. The weight shift caused the board to shoot upward along the wave face. The crest of the Monster came closer with shocking speed.
Acorizal left his feet and threw himself forward. Down, damn you, get your nose downl
The board responded, dipping to slide rapidly downward. It had been a close thing. Acorizal had nearly shot out through the crest. At best he would have flown into the air on the other side of the wave, a good ride completed and the Vaxials circling to pick him off the board. At worst he would have caught the crest with the nose of the board and gone over backward, to fall helplessly head over heels until the entire immense weight of the wave pulped him against the water below.
He continued to race down the front of the wave. Behind him, a pair of blunt, toothy snouts attached to twenty-foot-long snakelike bodies glided through the wave in pursuit. Eventually the Vaxials would catch up to him. They lived in the waves and had no worries about balance.
He readied the balpole as he pushed back into a kneeling position, tried to judge how he was going to strike out without losing his balance and board.
An ugly head emerged from the water. Acorizal leaned, slashed down and sideways with the spiked end of the pole. It made contact with a flat, glassy eye, and blood spurted. The Vaxial vanished instantly.
Lucky blow, Acorizal told himself grimly. He was so tired his hands shook. He scanned the green wall for signs of the other carnivore. Maybe, he thought, it's gone to help the other. Maybe they're mates. He stared, locating wave fish and other creatures but no hint of the Vaxial.
Then there was awful pressure on his back and a ripping sound.
He fell forward, desperately trying to keep his balance on the board despite the weight on his back. He could feel those long, needlelike teeth on his neck, piercing the tough material of the suit and his skin and his spine. He screamed in terror.
Then the pressure was gone. He hadn't seen the Vaxial attack and did not see it go, but it did not reappear. Which was no wonder, if the backpack had gone down its throat.
He held the balpole weakly with one shaky hand as he lay prone on the board and felt at his back with the other. The pack was definitely gone, wrenched from its clips on the suit by those powerful jaws. His eyes frantically scanned the water all around the board, but the creature did not show itself again. After a while the Trintaglias returned, in ones and twos, and he took their presence for a good sign.
He no longer could isolate individual bruises and sores. His body was one continuous ache as he studied the wave. With his backpack gone there was no easy bailout. He could rise to the crest and hope to break cleanly through to the other side, or he could dive into the wall, swim like mad, and then inflate his suit to bob to the surface... if the Vaxial hadn't torn the suit's air chambers as well.
If he misjudged either attempt he would very likely drown. If he wasn't battered to death inside the wave.
One thing he was certain of: he could not get back on his feet. His legs were too far gone. He let the balpole slip away and hugged the board with both arms, not caring if some swimming predator beneath chose to make a meal of his clutching fingers.
He'd had a good ride, one of the best of the day. Somehow his anguished muscle
s would have to hold him tightly to the board until someone on shore realized the danger and sent out a skimmer to rescue him.
Please God, let that be soon, because I have no strength left in me.
He willed himself to stay conscious. If he went to sleep on the board it would all be over in seconds. The board would rise up into the crest as his weight slipped backward, and he would go over the falls, to be thrown a hundred feet downward. At least that would be quick. There would be no drowning. Just a single quick, irresistible weight and then unconsciousness and death.
He shook himself, pulled himself forward on the board. He'd been daydreaming and had risen to within ten feet of the crest. Now he numbly nosed the board downward again, back into the safety of the middle part of the wave. The sonorous boom of the curl followed patiently on his heels.
God, I'm tired, so tired, he thought. Let it be over. I've done what I came for and more. Now I just want it to be over. Where the hell was the rescue skimmer? Couldn't they see he was on the verge?
He would have to do something, he knew. He could not hang onto the board much longer, let alone guide it properly. Both his brain and body were worn out. Only sheer stubbornness had held him together this long.
Diving into the wave was out. He didn't have enough strength left to swim two feet, let alone drive his body through the water. It would have to be a crest break, then.
He started to let the board slip upward. One hand felt down the slick side of the wet suit until it touched on the inflation knob. Once he broke through the crest he'd inflate the suit, hoping the monitoring skimmers would pick him up before the next wave came by. He hoped he could stay conscious enough of his surroundings to inflate the suit at the proper instant.
Everything was a wet blur before his salt-encrusted eyes. Sky and water merged into one. Was he at the crest yet? If he waited too long he'd go over the falls.
Then white washed over him and he coughed weakly. The wave had not waited for him to make a decision. He remembered Janwin's warning about the uncertain actions of storm-generated waves.
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