by Sarah Porter
He could never allow himself to hear her song again. But he could watch the song juddering away inside that pearly neck, and better yet he could command its owner. “Now, tadpole. If too much TV is what’s bringing on this lethargy of yours, we can take it away. We can take away whatever is necessary to put some spring back into your step.” He leered to himself at his choice of words. “Get over here.”
As he expected, the sky blue tail reared up from behind her barricade of cushions and flung off a few sullen drops.
The blue of her scales, the blue of the water, interacted strangely with his eyes, scraping them with a distinct electric pain. “Yesterday, Anais.” Blue and gold swished lazily through the water, and he grinned. The tank wasn’t so big; in an instant she was almost at the glass.
“Why can’t you just let me sleep?” Anais spoke these words in a faintly musical whine; almost musical enough to trigger a shock, Moreland suspected. Certainly musical enough to be tantalizing. “If you need to bug me, why can’t you do it later?”
Even sulking and not outstandingly bright, Anais was still enchanting. For an instant he lost track of what he was planning to say. “One salient feature of owning you,” Moreland observed, “is that you talk at my convenience, my dear.” The mermaids’ voices continually prodding at his mind had been keeping him from sleeping. Even when he did drop off, the endless song seemed to scrape all the peace out of his body, leaving him hollow and exhausted. It was better to come here and stare through the glass at the root of the problem: his distasteful, transfixing little pet, his vile beauty.
Her fins were switching. He’d been around her enough to recognize that as a sign of acute irritation. He smiled. “Tell me something. Do you consider yourself—a person, Anais?”
She looked confused, and Moreland enjoyed that as well. “Sure.”
“‘Sure, Mr. Secretary’ or ‘Sure, sir’,” Moreland corrected. “Do you have any idea who you’re talking to? The barest inkling?”
She didn’t answer that, but her tail was flipping faster. They stared at each other. There was something searing and unnatural about the azure of her eyes, something that was more than just blue.
“So you’re not more than a person, or less than a person?” Moreland pursued after a moment. “Just an ordinary girl after all? Despite your many unseemly attributes?”
“I’m not ordinary!” Anais reared back in offense. “Duh.”
“More than a person, then?”
“I guess more.” Anais considered the question with uncharacteristic seriousness. “More. I mean, if I weren’t locked up in this stupid place and people could see me, I’d be a huge star! You said that even Luce . . .”
“Has become an Internet sensation? She has. Before that video of her got out, only idiots and fanatics could have bought into the idea of mermaids existing. And even now any self-respecting adult should be convinced that the video is a hoax, but”—Moreland gritted his teeth— “there aren’t enough adults out there who deserve that label.”
“But—isn’t it real? It looks just like her!”
Moreland ignored that. “The problem is the more. That little something extra you tails take on with your transformation. The more is what’s making people believe that the video is authentic. Even passive magic is worse, is more disgracefully violent, than a bomb. All the mental signals that make up a decent, regular, hard-working life are disrupted. You’re left with nothing but noise, buzzing and whining . . .”
Anais stared, too perplexed for the moment to attempt an answer.
He’d never talked to anyone this way before. He was glad no human being could hear him coming off so half-cocked, like some kind of poet . . . He couldn’t stop himself, though.
“The same more is what makes your kind subhuman, though. The same more that turns grown men into whimpering fools. Do you know what that video proves, Anais?”
For the first time, she looked genuinely frightened. Moreland found it delightful. He glared at her expectantly, his eyes demanding a reply.
“What?” Anais whispered at last. “I mean, what does it prove?’
“What, sir?” Moreland prompted.
“‘What, sir?’” Anais muttered. Her tail was thrashing and she’d backed away from the glass. But she didn’t quite have the nerve to swim back behind her cushions, much as he knew she wanted to.
“Ah.” Moreland grinned. “The video proves that even if, by some untoward miracle, your kind learned to resist their murderous urges tomorrow—even if the mermaids never sang to a human again—well.”
Anais’s eyes were wide. Another first. She was truly anxious to hear what he had to say. Her golden hair spread out in an enormous, shining web behind her shoulders.
Moreland waited another few seconds. “It’s not the singing that proves mermaids have to die, Anais,” he finally crooned. “It’s not the evil in all of you, or even the threat you pose to commerce. It’s the more. It’s what we see in that video, the quality that makes human minds collapse into imbecility. You little abominations don’t have to do anything to commit violence. You just have to be your charming selves. You do see my point, don’t you, tadpole?”
“Just because Luce was stupid enough to let some humans tape her, doesn’t—”
He cut her off. “It’s not just Luce, tadpole. It’s all of you. I’d rather,” Moreland lied, “have both my legs blown off than watch that video again. Do you understand me? It’s only my duty to my country that makes me endure, for one instant, the fact that you tails persist on the same planet.”
Every word he spoke, it seemed to him, followed the contours of the mermaids’ song in his thoughts. Even railing against the mermaids only served to provide their melodies with unexpected lyrics.
He wanted his mind back. That was all. His mind intact and determined, unfurrowed by their awful music. But maybe that was impossible.
Maybe one day he’d open his mouth, in the middle of a speech or an interview on TV, and that hateful song would scroll out in place of language.
“Are you going to kill me?” Anais asked. From her shell-shocked gaze it was clear that this possibility hadn’t occurred to her before. “You—Secretary Moreland, I’m trying so hard to help you! It’s not my fault!”
Moreland amused himself by scowling brutally at her. She cowered. Even if Anais and the others could be restored to human form, wouldn’t they still be tainted to the core? The possibility might be worth pursuing, though, if only for strategic reasons.
After a moment he relented, reversing his scowl into a broad, affectionate smile. “Of course we won’t kill you, tadpole. You’ve become—very special—to everyone in the know. We practically consider you a mascot.”
Anais turned her smile back on, but her eyes still looked worried.
“You haven’t killed her yet?” Anais’s question, reverberating from the speakers, came as an unwelcome disturbance. “Luce?”
“We’ll get her soon enough,” Moreland snapped. “It’s a long coast, tadpole. Doing electromagnetic surveys of the whole damn thing, identifying likely caves—it’s not quick, and it’s not cheap. It’s work.”
“You mean you don’t even know where she is?” Her voice was almost pitiful. Captivity, it struck Moreland, was starting to wear on her.
“We’ll find your little friend soon,” Moreland sighed. In fact, there’d been no sign of Lucette Korchak since she’d interrupted that raid fifteen days before, killing another operative in the process and taking that tribe’s last surviving mermaid away with her. It rankled him to think that she might slip past the Mexican border and escape from him for good.
He was starting to get tired. Anais drifted in place with the water breaking against her lower lip. Sorrow only made her imperious beauty more potent, her azure eyes more haunting. Moreland regarded it as an improvement. Even more intriguing was his impression that grief came as a surprise to her, as if she had never considered the possibility of such an emotion before. Experiencing this much emotion
had come as a surprise to him too, in fact. A very disconcerting one.
Maybe he could sleep. Maybe his sleep would even be restful for once, and the endless song would stop scraping at him like a bow against a violin. He straightened himself to go. “Good night, tadpole.”
“You told me it was morning!”
“Why, Anais,” Moreland scolded. “It’s whatever time I say it is.”
***
In a cave not far from Monterey a man in a sleek black diving suit knelt in crimson water. His arms were wrapped around the body of what appeared to be a girl about nine years old—only the faintly light-slicked, greenish cast of her skin showed that she had ever been anything else. Her head tipped back onto the diver’s shoulder, her bloodless lips hung open, and her wet, caramel brown hair clung to his suit.
Against orders, the diver unfastened his helmet and knocked it off. Bloody water splattered as the helmet thudded down not far from the man’s spear gun. It exposed the face of a wiry young man with sharp cheekbones, a bony nose, and drooping eyes.
“Replace your hood immediately, sergeant! We’re not through here!”
The sergeant didn’t so much as look up. Instead he began fumbling with his gloves. His hurry made his movements awkward and the girl’s limp body got in his way, but eventually he managed to free his right hand and slide his fingers onto the side of her neck just under the jaw. He kept moving his fingers, pressing in different spots, long after it should have been obvious that he wasn’t going to find a pulse. His hand felt numb against the girl’s chilled throat.
“Sergeant Waller!” His major’s voice came out of his helmet in an electrical whine. “You know the procedure!”
“She looks just like Sophie . . .” Sergeant Waller moaned. “Just like . . . before she . . .” Of course none of his comrades could hear him now that his helmet was clanking against the rocks, but he didn’t think about that. It was only the microphones built into each helmet that allowed the team members to communicate with one another.
Without considering what he was doing he pulled the girl closer and kissed her lightly on the forehead.
“You’d kiss a dead rattlesnake, too?” the major complained; a trace of sympathy buzzed behind the static. “These bitches just look like girls. Just picture all the innocent people that damned tail has killed and I guarantee you won’t feel sorry for her.”
“Looks like Waller’s another waste case,” someone drawled. “Probably time to put him down as nonviable, major.”
Waller heard the words, but they seemed abstract and senseless compared to the girl’s cold cheeks and glossy eyelids. He kept kneading her throat. Maybe it was just the lack of sensation in his fingers that kept him from finding a heartbeat.
The major sighed. His helmet changed the sound into a kind of gusty whistle. “Even dead these tails keep doing a number on us.”
Waller only knew that he wasn’t going to leave her. The Operation Odysseus teams made a practice of abandoning almost all of the bodies in the caves, only occasionally bringing back one for dissection—after all, leaving them was a lot easier than trying to explain them. Maybe, just maybe, she’d eventually revive. (Waller didn’t let himself look at the wound in the girl’s chest. Vaguely he told himself that it would only distract him from more important things.) He’d be there when she woke up; if he could just get her somewhere warmer . . .
The major nodded to his men. In a few seconds Waller’s arms were jerked back and the cuffs snapped shut around his wrists. The dead girl slumped into the water as he thrashed, her face shifting down behind thickening veils of red. “Get his helmet on him,” the major ordered. “Gonna have to drag him out of here.”
The drawling man kicked at a submerged form. “This one ain’t turned back yet,” he observed, trying to puncture the darkening mood. “Sushi, anyone?”
No one laughed.
12
Slight Miracles
Everyone had gone back to their home under the warehouse to sleep—all except for Luce and the fifteen mermaids who’d once been queens of their own tribes. Luce wasn’t surprised to find that included Yuan and Imani, since they’d both acted so confident, but there were other mermaids gathered in front of her who didn’t seem like the type: Bex, who had a scattered, disturbing energy around her, and Graciela, who seemed too withdrawn and otherworldly. They gazed at Luce expectantly, and she cringed a little. She’d promised them that they would be able to master the water, but for all she knew that might be a lie. “Once all of you get the hang of it,” Luce announced, trying to make herself believe it, “then we’ll divide everyone else up and the queens will each be in charge of training a group.”
That made sense, didn’t it? Wasn’t that exactly how a real leader would do things? Luce closed her eyes for a second, remembering how well Dana had learned to control the water without Luce helping her at all: well enough to turn her power against Luce in her fury.
“Luce? Are you okay?” Imani was looking at her with worried dark eyes.
Luce tried to look calm and composed, but she could tell that she wasn’t doing a very good job. “I’m sorry, Imani. I was just thinking about . . . something else.”
Luce glanced around for Catarina, but she was suddenly keeping her distance, her eyes lowered sullenly. In her joy at finding her old queen again Luce had temporarily forgotten how difficult and unpredictable Cat could be. Even now when Luce obviously needed her support, why couldn’t Cat stop making everything so complicated?
Luce deliberately turned away from Catarina before she got too upset. Letting herself feel hurt and broken really wasn’t an option now, not with everyone waiting to see what she would do. “Let’s get started. I’ll begin by singing just one note, enough to call up a really small wave, and I’ll hold it. Then when you’re ready, I’d like everyone to try to match my voice. Take your time, and try to . . .” Luce thought about how to describe it. “Try to let your voice kind of spread out on the water, like you’re . . . like you’re touching someone you love. Once you can almost feel the water responding to you, just pull back a little bit.”
Putting her secret experience into words that way made it sound half-crazy, even to her. Luce broke off in embarrassment. But Yuan’s eyes were bright with fascination, Graciela was trembling like a plucked string, and Imani was beaming as if she had just caught a star on her tongue. “Um, does that make sense?’ Luce asked.
How was she supposed to be a general when she couldn’t even overcome her own shyness?
“It makes sense,” Imani said. Her voice curled like something alive, and Luce suddenly felt certain that—how had Nausicaa put it?—that the water would understand Imani at least. “It makes sense the way all miracles make sense.”
The hills hovered like shadows at the edge of the sky while cars flowed like a river of diamonds along the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. Around them the Pacific rocked, its stone dark waves always beckoning them on to nowhere at all, while above the night was blinded by clouds. Like Imani said, it was miraculous. Luce realized how much she’d forgotten to notice ever since . . .
She half closed her eyes, the distant lights blurring in her lashes, and tried to take her own advice. She let out one single soft note like a palm cupping the water’s cheek, like a patiently caressing hand. For several moments she didn’t try to control the water at all, only to feel it, and to feel it feeling her. Until each molecule touched by her voice became a nerve, or a thought, or a moment of realization.
Luce’s arms were wrapped around her chest; she caressed the ocean’s skin only with her song, and soon she shared its sensations. The water woke with a tactile vibration just the way Luce’s own skin had once woken under the touch of a boy whom she couldn’t bear to remember. This was a kind of love, Luce thought as her song fanned softly outward. The water would do almost anything for her because they loved each other.
Other voices were gathering under hers. Luce knew that she should pay attention to how everyone else was doing
; she just couldn’t, not right now. There was a kind of sighing pressure inside her. A feeling she had no name for rose in her chest. Her voice began to lift, very slowly, and a slender wing of sea followed it. It gleamed and circled and finally broke free of the surface. Wherever she was, Luce thought, she was home as long as the ocean kept her in its heart this way.
She felt ready to look around now. As she’d expected, Imani had raised a wave, thin and slight and curling like a question mark, and Bex was making flat little waves jump and fall in sudden spurts, but some of the others were having trouble.
Luce took a moment to concentrate on Catarina’s voice. Cat was singing one high note very beautifully, but Luce got the sense that she wasn’t really trying to beckon the water at all. But the fact that Bex and Imani were making progress at least proved that it was possible.
A skinny blonde in the back whose name Luce couldn’t remember suddenly lifted a knife-shaped wave, then let out a little scream of surprise that sent it splashing down again. Luce smiled to herself. It reminded her of the first time she’d seen the water answer her, when she’d refused to believe what was happening.
Luce let her own note fade away. The others should keep on without her for a while. Instead she focused on listening. Yuan’s timbre was a little off; her voice had a rough magic that Luce didn’t think the sea would respond to. They could work on that, though. Graciela was . . . not paying attention to anything outside her own mind. But her tone was lovely, and Luce realized that the sea was answering her, only with a kind of fitful stirring instead of an ascent. And Catarina: Luce was suddenly sure that Catarina was deliberately singing in the wrong way. She couldn’t begin to guess why, though. Maybe Cat was angry about Luce’s rule against killing?