by Linda Nagata
Stories of sharks were legion in the South China Sea. He thrashed and lashed out, but a mountainous swell was carrying him up again, and the phantom object was gone. He turned his back to the wind and told himself it could not have been a shark. Sharks were extinct, or nearly so.
The top of the swell blew off and wrapped around his head in a choking veil of white foam. Then he was sliding down again, and this time he saw it before he hit: a dark, oblong object just below the heaving surface of the moonlit water. He struck against it; felt the same smooth, unyielding texture beneath his hands. A hull? A blue hull.
He recognized it then. It was the marathon. Had Mother Tiger brought it here? Was this the rescue Ela had planned?
His questions fled as he saw the low mound that contained the hatch. He lunged for it as it went sliding past, and managed to catch the rim. But instead of the hard hatch plate, his fingers found a taut membrane stretched across the entryway. The hatch was already open.
As the marathon’s bow slid toward the swell’s crest he hauled himself over the rim. The membrane irised under his weight, opening just enough to let him wriggle headfirst into the little chamber, accompanied by a cascade of seawater. “Iris!”
He screamed the name of his ROSA, but it was Mother Tiger that answered. “You must bring my Roi Nuoc aboard.”
He lay still for a moment, stunned into silence by this simple command. It was exactly what the ROSA should have said, what he would have expected it to say if Ky had not sown doubt in his mind. “You saved me,” he whispered.
“That is what I am for.”
“But you didn’t save Lien.”
“Help my Roi Nuoc, before they drown.”
An ally or an enemy? There was no way Virgil could decide that now.
He sat up, slamming against the chair as the marathon rocketed down a swell. “Is this our only vessel?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“It is,” Mother Tiger affirmed.
Virgil could not imagine how they would fit fourteen Roi Nuoc inside the Marathon’s tiny cabin. All by himself he filled up the minuscule floor space.
Mother Tiger said: “Phan is outside now. Show him how to come in.”
Virgil looked up at the little hatch as the marathon churned in a trough. The membrane pulsed under the pressure of wind like an arrhythmic heart machine. A stream of water dripped through its center. Phan was drowning out there, along with all the other Roi Nuoc.
Moving quickly now, he opened a floor-level cabinet and pulled out a rope he remembered seeing there. He secured one end to the chair mount, then he stripped off his life jacket and tied that to the other end. “Is Phan still close?”
“Yes.”
Virgil stood, his feet splayed, using the chair and then the wall to steady himself. He held on to the life jacket with one hand; with the other he grabbed a rung of the hatch ladder and pulled himself up far enough to shove the life jacket through the membrane. The wind took it away, but he caught the rope and held on to that, then followed it through until he stood balanced on the lowest rung of the ladder, the membrane clutching tight around his ribs.
He could see Phan in the moon’s bronze light, gliding up the face of a wave. He was downwind, so Virgil let the life jacket pay out. There was no use shouting. His voice would never carry over the gale. But it didn’t matter—Phan had already seen the jacket skipping along the surface of the water. His eyes grew wide and white as they fixed on Virgil. For a moment Virgil thought sure he was going to turn and lunge away from this apparition, half-a-man standing above the wild sea.
But the Roi Nuoc had not been raised to superstitions. Phan lunged for the vest, catching it on his second try. Virgil hauled on the rope as the marathon accelerated over the crest of a swell, sliding down again in dizzy acceleration to splash against the trough. In the quiet interval as they rose on the next swell, Phan reached the marathon. Virgil grabbed him by both hands, then ducked through the membrane, dragging Phan after. They tumbled together to the floor, Phan choking, and gasping for breath.
“There are storage vaults here, and here,” Virgil said, slapping the walls. “Start emptying them. Get ready to throw the stuff out because we are going to need the room.”
Phan nodded, while Mother Tiger announced, “Ninh is outside.”
Virgil lunged for the ladder, resolving to accept the ROSA as an ally, at least for now.
NOW and then as she bobbed at the crest of some great swell Ela would glimpse a bronze half-moon persisting a few degrees above the horizon. Once, its dirty light sparkled across the dark shape of a distant lifeboat cresting on a swell. The boat’s storm canopy was buttoned down tight. It faced the waves as it properly should. Such modern lifeboats were supposed to be unsinkable, so whoever was aboard would certainly survive. She hoped Summer Goforth was among them.
She spun around as the next wave rolled under her. Wind blew spray in her eyes. More fell from the sky. Every half minute or so a great explosion of spray roared upward from somewhere just beyond her short horizon. The next swell carried her even closer to the foaming explosions. From the wave’s summit she looked down to see the foundering ship, lying like a black shoal just beneath the surface, the swells erupting against it in torrents of white foam. In that glimpse she saw something else: a bit of golden brown flotsam. It was caught in the windblown tracks of foam that swirled around the ship. She saw it for only a moment before it disappeared beneath the surface. But as she started to slip down the backside of the swell she thought she saw it appear again, a few meters away from where it had been.
As she crested the next wave she looked for the Roi Nuoc; she hadn’t seen any of them since going into the water. It was as if she had leaped into a different ocean … one much closer to the arctic circle. How could it be so cold?
And why was the dying ship taking so long to seek the bottom? Each swell was carrying her closer to it. Already she could feel the tug of its vortices against her feet. A torrent of salty rain pelted her as another swell burst against the hulk. She choked and slid round, and then she saw the bit of golden brown flotsam again, much closer now, sliding down the face of a foam-addled wave. A ghost white hand emerged from the water beside it, then the object turned. The moon shone over a pale human face draped in sodden hair that gleamed golden in the brassy light. A cry reached Ela’s ears, like the high-pitched call of a seabird. Then she dropped behind the next swell, and the apparition was gone from sight.
But she could not banish it from her mind. That had been Summer Goforth in the water, and without the yellow blaze of a life jacket to hold her up! But why wasn’t she on the lifeboat? She had reached the deck ahead of Virgil. She should be safe with the crew, locked in under the lifeboat’s storm canopy.
Ela waited for the next swell to lift her up—and there was Summer, swimming toward her though it meant fighting the direction of the waves and the downward tug of the sinking ship. Ela felt her own exhaustion, and wondered that Summer had survived this long without a life jacket. But the same currents that she fought went to work for Ela. Kicking hard, Ela went rocketing down the face of a swell. The distance between the two of them closed. They reached for each other with outstretched hands. Ela felt cold skin, and then she had her arms around Summer as a monstrous swell lifted them through an explosion of foam, up over the unseen hulk of the dying ship and suddenly the fountains of foam were receding behind them.
Summer leaned back against Ela, letting her weight rest on the life jacket as she raised her left hand as high as she could above the water. She clutched a set of farsights in her wrinkled white fingers. Her right hand emerged next and she began tapping, no doubt sending an emergency signal to some satellite far overhead.
Ela felt a rush of horror. They must not call for help. They must not give their existence away. If it was known that any of them had survived, the hunt for them would never end.
She grabbed Summer’s arm and dragged it back down again, prying at her fingers until she felt the farsights fall awa
y.
VIRGIL ducked back into the submersible, pulling Lam in behind him. Ninh caught her limp body, drawing her down into his lap, supporting her as she leaned over to retch seawater onto the floor. There was six inches of standing water there already, warmed by the dwindling body heat of the Roi Nuoc.
Virgil glanced up sharply as a whir and a metallic click announced the closing of the hatch. The membrane withdrew, and the drip of water ceased. “Are we done?” he asked as he clung to the ladder, surveying the cramped cabin. Kids were sitting on the console, and on the arms of the chair. Some had slipped into the bulk storage bins. To make room for them all, the life jackets had been cast out, along with the blankets, spare electronic modules, and most of the food. “Is this all of us?”
Oanh had been keeping count. Now she answered from her perch on a shelf just behind him. “This is only thirteen.”
The air was hot and foul, the filters pushed far beyond capacity by the presence of so many. Virgil turned to Oanh, frowning, unsure if he was thinking clearly anymore, or if she was. “But we should be fourteen … right?”
The marathon steadied. Its nasty rolling sprints among the swells ceased so that Virgil knew they must be diving.
Oanh nodded. “It’s Ela who’s still missing.”
“Then why are we diving?”
Oanh couldn’t answer him. Virgil glanced forward at the screens, but he could not see them past the kids crowded on the console. “Mother Tiger? Where is Ela? Can’t you find her?”
The ROSA’s soothing voice purred. “That one cannot be recovered. An emergency beacon has marked her position. If this craft returns for her, it will be seen. Then it will be known that some of you survived.”
“I don’t care,” Virgil said. “Go back.”
Oanh repeated this command, and then several others around the cramped cabin, but Mother Tiger did not to respond.
WHERE was the marathon? Ela held Summer Goforth in the snug circle of her arms and wondered. When would Mother Tiger come to pick them up? Let it be soon.
Summer had fought hard to keep the farsights, but after they had fallen away she seemed to give up. Now she lay limp in Ela’s arms, her only motion an occasional spasm of retching when the wind drove water into her mouth.
Ela dreaded her stillness, fearing each time that she would never move again. She must not lose her grip on Summer. Her life jacket was all that held them up.
She blinked salt from her burning eyes. The sky was brightening. Its light touched new bruises forming against the pale skin of Summer’s face. Ela knew she had been given a life jacket on the ship, but here she was in the water without one. With bruises. No doubt someone had meant for her to die.
It wasn’t hard to guess who.
How long had they been in the water? A long time.
It seemed long anyway.
She glimpsed the half-moon again. No longer did it hang suspended above the horizon. It had sunk, to become the tip of a golden nail protruding from the endless ocean. Time was passing. Her time, and Summer’s. And maybe, all the lifetimes of the Roi Nuoc who had gone ahead of her into the water. Why had the marathon failed to come?
Because Virgil was right, and Mother Tiger had betrayed them.
“No!” Ela refused to believe it. To believe it was to give up.
“MOTHER Tiger!” Virgil shouted, though there was so little oxygen in the marathon’s packed cabin that he could hardly breathe. “If Ela’s alive, we have to go back for her. Now.” He wanted to say more, but there was no air. Maybe they would drown, all of them, in a sea of their own exhalations.
“Be calm,” the ROSA warned. “There are no resources for this.”
“I’ll be calm when she’s here.” But Virgil felt dizzy now, drenched in his own unhealthy sweat. Very soon the bad air would force him to be calm. “Go back up,” he pleaded. “Go now.”
Oanh laid a hand on his shoulder. “We will vote,” she said. “If we go back for Ela, we risk discovery. Who will go back?” She repeated this in Vietnamese and everyone raised a hand, though it was easy to see they were afraid.
“So it’s decided,” Oanh said. “We all will take the risk of going back.”
But the marathon’s course still did not shift. The ROSA did not respond.
“Is our link bad?” someone asked.
“That’s it,” Virgil said. “Of course. We’re underwater now. Mother Tiger can’t have left more than a shell of itself here. We have to get the antenna up, or—”
“Even a shell of Mother Tiger would be able to respond,” Oanh said.
Virgil rubbed his eyes. “Okay then. Okay. Maybe we can take manual control?”
“Do you know how?” Ninh asked.
One of the kids spoke from the console. “There are key sequences here.”
Mother Tiger said, “Don’t use them. None of you knows how to pilot the marathon.”
Oanh scowled. “We’ll learn.”
Ninh nodded. “Use them,” he urged.
“Use them,” Virgil echoed, and then everyone was saying it.
“No,” Mother Tiger said. “I will do as you ask.”
AFTER the moon set, the sky grew brighter, taking on a pearly gray luminescence. Ela felt warmer. Dreams dodged through her mind. In one of them she felt Summer begin to slip from her arms. She woke abruptly, and tightened her grip. How long had it been since Summer coughed?
Ela tried to raise her higher, but the sea slapped her face, driving salt water into her lungs and nasal membranes, setting her coughing again.
She was too tired for this. Much too tired. She no longer had the strength to hold the world together and so it began to dissolve, breaking down into dreamspace.
She tried to blink, to awaken herself just once more, but her eyes were seared with salt and she could see only a nonsensical vision: a dark silhouette sliding down the face of a gray swell. A dream image coming for her. Some part of her laughed in scorn. All the modern people had said this last vision would be a plain white light, but they were wrong. Either that, or Ela could not even manage to die correctly, for this was a black sea god, half man, half serpent. She slid into the trough between two giant swells, and felt herself slide under—
—into a hot, steamy world, low lights shimmering on sweat-covered limbs, stinking breath flowing past her ear and the smell of vomit. Fresh water trickled across her swollen lips, flowed into the salt-inflamed tissue of her mouth, feeling holy. Swallowing was agony. She turned her head and threw up.
chapter
42
THE AIR WAS cooler. Ela’s eyes were closed, her head resting against Virgil’s chest as she listened to the soft beat of his heart, the slow tide of his breathing. For a long time those sounds defined her world. It was a peaceful world now.
When she’d first come aboard the marathon the air had been unbreatheable. Panic had set in as she felt herself suffocating but Virgil had held her close, whispering calming words in her ear, urging her to look inward to a deeper level of awareness, a trance state that would require only a little oxygen to sustain her.
With the help of her hidden LOVs she had done it.
But now she stirred; her breathing deepened. Some sense she could not name warned of something amiss. She opened her eyes, and looked up into Virgil’s sleeping face, shiny with sweat and framed in a tangle of hideous dreadlocks. A stubble of beard had broken past the hormone-treated follicles of his face, while on his forehead blue-green flecks of LOVs were already reemerging. She raised a hand to touch them. “Virgil”—her voice an ugly croak escaping from a throat made raw by salt water—”wake up. Wake up please. We have gone too far south.”
His eyes opened. His gaze fixed on her briefly, a remote glance as he returned from his trance state. Next he looked about the cabin, at the Roi Nuoc occupying every surface, every niche. Their eyes were closed, their breathing shallow, their faces all wearing the sublime expressions of youth deities on an ancient temple frieze. Only Summer Goforth suffered a troubled sleep. Sh
e lay in the pilot’s chair, shivering and muttering in some fevered dream. Virgil frowned at her as if she were something inexplicably out of place. Then his gaze returned to Ela. His eyes warmed. “Can you really tell where we are?”
Ela nodded, touching her own budding LOVs, hard and real on her forehead. Some new sense had awakened inside her and she knew, as if a map of the world glowed inside her head, exactly where they were. “We’ve gone too far south. Who decided we should go this way?”
The Roi Nuoc began to open their eyes.
“Nothing was decided,” Virgil said. “There wasn’t enough air to speak or think, before.” He sniffed, as if measuring the oxygen content. “It’s better now.”
“It won’t be for long. Not when we all wake up. We should be onshore by now. We are going back … right?” They had to go back. Too much had been left behind.
Low voices rustled through the packed cabin as many among the Roi Nuoc voiced their support, but Virgil frowned. His palm brushed Ela’s forehead as if to check for fever. “You want to go back? But there’s nothing to go back to. It’s all gone.”
“No.” Oanh spoke from her perch upon a shelf. Her pink T-shirt was stiff and wrinkled. “The other Roi Nuoc are still in the delta—the ones that never were on the reservation. And maybe the disappeared too. We need to find them.”
“We have to find them,” Ela said. “We can’t let them find us first. They are not free, and most of them are so young. If they are alive, it will not take much to turn them into enemies.”
“But they won’t look for us,” Ninh said. “We must be dead. That’s what will be said about us. No one will look for us to come back from the sea.”
Ela scanned the faces of the Roi Nuoc. They were packed across the floor and up the walls of the marathon’s tiny cabin, but they had their LOVs to keep them calm. She made her confession: “In the water Summer Goforth was using her farsights to call for help. I took them away from her, but maybe someone saw me do it. They will wonder why, no? Why did I do such a crazy thing?”