Our first stop was the Salmon Street Springs. Hank and Todd stood watch while Steve and I opened the control box, rejiggering the fountain’s computers to a flow pattern approximating Couch’s design. If this worked, the fountain would sustain Naïda and keep her tied to Portland, though allowing her more freedom than she’d had before. There were enough ley lines and underground streams in this area that she’d still be connected to the city.
Todd cut the lock on the job site’s chain link fence, and we drove the truck up to the house, passing right under the raised claw of the excavator. It waited atop the mound of rubble where the other two houses had been, as though hungry for more. I helped Steve push his way through the house’s defenses, then left him there to talk with Naïda while Todd, Hank, and I hauled tools and materials inside. We set up in the kitchen, close to the sink.
After about an hour we were as done as we were going to be. Steve had built a rough and sloppy pentacle of brick on the kitchen floor, and I’d surrounded it with a circular metal trough of water. A propane burner sat atop each point of the pentacle, unlit, and Todd had rigged up some fans and vanes to send air swirling around the thing in a clockwise direction.
A pipe led from the center of the pentacle to the drain under the sink.
“Doesn’t look like much,” Hank said, poking at the still-wet mortar.
“It’ll do,” said Steve.
As we’d worked, Naïda had sat watching, with worry rolling off of her like cold air from an open freezer. The plan was to temporarily transform her into elemental water, then send her down the drain and through the sewers to the Salmon Street Springs.
Nothing like this had ever been done before.
Hank flicked an empty cigarette lighter, striking sparks, and lit each of the propane burners. Then Todd switched on the fans. The air began to whirl around the room, dragging the water in its trough, and each of the little blue flames moved in a clockwise circle. Under it all the brick pentacle stood firm, lending its strength to the assemblage. I felt the flow of the other world swirling in a vortex around the pipe in the center.
“It’s time,” said Steve, and held out his hand to the undine.
Naïda sat in the corner, shivering, and hugged her knees tightly to her chest. A minor tremor shook the earth. “I am not strong enough.”
I stood before her and placed my hands on her shoulders. “There’s no other way.”
She looked up at me, those dark whirlpool eyes now clouded over with fear. “Hold me,” she said, and flowed up into my arms.
We stood together, drawing strength from each other, until she felt ready. Then, still holding my left hand and looking over her shoulder at me, she extended one foot into the vortex.
The foot began to melt, to stretch and twist, to flow into a new, inhuman shape.
And she screamed.
Even Steve, whose hearing was none too keen these days, clapped his hands over his ears. Naïda’s scream was a horrid, piercing thing that wrenched my gut even harder than her hand clenched mine. The earth juddered and shook beneath us, making the propane flames gutter.
“Stop it!” I shouted. “It’s killing her!”
Hank twisted the valve on the propane tank. The flames puffed out, the vortex stilled, and Naïda’s foot returned to its previous shape. She fell heavily against me, sobbing into my shoulder.
“She was right,” I told my Guild colleagues. “She’s too weak to take it.” She’d endured a week without free-flowing water before I showed up, and hadn’t yet recovered her full strength. If she stepped all the way into that pentacle, there was no way she would survive.
And I couldn’t bear the thought of that.
A warm, wet hand laved my cheek. I opened my eyes. “It is a pity we cannot marry,” Naïda said. “Then at least you and I could be together for one lifetime.”
At that moment three facts snapped together in my head.
The first fact was something about Oregon. After a couple of years of backing and forthing, we’d finally settled on a compromise in the gay marriage debate, and it was now legal for same-sex couples to become registered domestic partners.
The second fact was something about undines. Undines are prone to fall in love with humans, but if they get married, the undine becomes mortal.
The third fact was something about me. I was crazy in love with Naïda, although I hadn’t really grasped the fact until just now.
I explained my idea.
The five of us argued about it for hours. There was no telling what the effect of a same-sex domestic partnership with an undine might be, but Steve knew an awful lot about the other world and he was pretty sure that only one of two things was likely to happen.
One was that Naïda would turn mortal. Portland might not be as prosperous as it was when she was an undine, but as long as she was alive it would be okay. We’d have one human lifetime to find another way to keep the city stable. And Naïda and I would be together.
The other was that I would be destroyed for my presumption.
I swallowed hard. I could run away, the way I’d run from so many other relationships. Or I could risk my life to save the city and get the girl.
“I’ll take the chance,” I said, and pulled out my phone.
“Who the hell are you calling at this time of night?” Hank asked.
“My ex Cindy. She works for the county clerk’s office.”
•
“H’lo?” Cindy muttered, when she finally picked up.
“Hey, Cin, it’s Lou. I need a favor. A big favor.”
There was a long eye-rubbing and sitting-up pause. “How big?”
“Really, really big.” I explained what I needed.
“Ohhh…kay,” she said at last. “But you’ll need to have it notarized.”
I swallowed. “I’ll take care of that. You just bring the form as soon as you can.”
Steve caught something in my face as I ended the call. “What’s wrong?”
I explained the situation. “And I do know a notary…”
“But?”
“You remember Mara?”
“Oh.”
Mara was the one ex I wasn’t on good terms with. We’d stayed together longer than any of my other relationships, but when we broke up…it was Bad with a capital B and that rhymes with T and that stands for Traumatic. But even after all that, I knew she still respected me. And I still trusted her.
Amazingly, her number was still in my phone.
•
“Pick up the phone, Mara, it’s Lou.” I repeated that over and over as Mara’s voice mail message played itself out. I kept repeating it after the beep. I knew she kept her phone machine next to her bed. At least, she had when we’d been dating.
Please be home, I thought. Please please please…
“Lou? Lou, you ham-handed bulldagger, do you know what the fuck time it is?”
“I know what time it is, Mara. Listen, I need something notarized and I need it right away. As in now, this minute. It’s really, really important.”
A long pause. “This had better be good.”
“It’s a domestic partnership certificate.” I swallowed. “For me.”
She literally laughed out loud. “For Ms. Never-Gonna-Date-Again? Who’s the unlucky bride?”
“You’ll have to come here if you want to find out.”
Another pause, then: “All right, where’s ‘here’?”
I grinned into the phone. Mara never could resist a mystery.
•
Cindy showed up half an hour later, with the windows brightening and the city beginning to rouse itself around us. Even in sweats, with her hair all mussed, she was still perky. I’ve never known how she manages it.
“Cindy,” I said after helping her up the steps, “this is Naïda.”
“Whoa,” she said.
While Cindy was still goggling, Mara arrived, in full lawyer drag complete with makeup and heels. “I have got to see the woman who…”
She never finished that sentence. It was a while before she finished any of her sentences, actually. First time I’d ever seen her speechless.
We’d have to swear them both to secrecy, of course. But the life of the city depended on this.
“Okay,” Cindy said after she’d calmed down a little. “Here’s the form. You both need to show photo ID with proof of age.”
I hauled out my driver’s license. For Naïda we used the house’s address, gave 4/1/50 as the date of birth, and made up a driver’s license number.
“You know I could lose my commission for notarizing a false document,” Mara said as she crimped the form with her notary public’s seal.
“If it comes to that,” I said, “we’ll testify before the Secretary of State that you did it to save the city from destruction by earthquake.”
“Yeah, that’ll help.” She slipped the seal back into its leather case. Then she stood, hands on hips, and regarded Naïda seriously for a moment. “Listen,” she said to the undine, “are you sure you want to go through with this? Lou here hasn’t ever made a long-term relationship work. She’s great with her hands, but she isn’t willing to risk her heart.”
“This time it’s different,” I protested. But deep down inside I wondered if I was only fooling myself. I’d been infatuated before…
Then Naïda snuggled up next to me, her warm heavy arm flowing over my shoulders. “I have been alone for too many summers and too many winters,” she said. “I have been ensnared, and I have been deceived, and I have been abandoned, but I know that I can trust this Lou and that she will never let me go. My heart yearns for her as the tides follow the moon.”
I turned and took Naïda in my arms. I had no words.
Steve cleared his throat and pointed out the window. The job site was beginning to stir. I nodded and took Naïda over to where Cindy stood, while Steve and the others prepared the pentacle again.
“Okay,” said Cindy, “I will now sign the form. Then you’ll be all official.” She smiled at me. “I’m so happy for you.”
I swallowed. We hadn’t told Cindy or Mara about the possible consequences. In sixty seconds I’d be married…or dead.
She signed the form.
Immediately I felt the forces of the other world welling up around the two of us. They swirled and coalesced like a waterfall of light, like a whirlpool of gravity, spinning ever closer, ever tighter.
I looked into Naïda’s eyes.
And then came the change.
Suddenly I flowed, I surged, I rolled like the tide. I smelled salt and tasted pure water. My vision shimmered.
Cindy gasped. I turned toward her and felt the currents swirling in my chest.
My coverall felt funny. It slipped away, falling down my body, passing right through my limbs to land in a soggy puddle on the linoleum. A moment later the water ran out of the coverall and back up my legs. My shimmering, transparent legs.
“I can feel…myself,” I said, feeling the air gurgle past my lips. The words were inadequate, but they were all I had to express the joy that overflowed my heart. After a lifetime of working with water spirits, sensing their moods and flows, I had become one myself. I understood my own heart now, in a way I’d never been able to before. And I knew that I loved Naïda with every drop of it.
Naïda too felt my heart’s flow, as I’d always been able to feel hers. “Oh, my love,” she said, and took me in her arms.
We flowed together, becoming a single fluid entity, bonded and encompassed and powered by the strength of our mutual love. Together we were more than strong enough. More than strong enough for anything.
Outside the window, the excavator’s diesel engine coughed to life.
“You’d better get going,” we said to Steve and the rest, “before they tear this house down around your ears. Thanks for everything.”
And then we dove into the center of the pentacle, and down the drain.
We emerged at the Salmon Street Springs, just beginning its daily show. The central jet streamed into the air and we sailed with it, high above the joggers and the bicyclists and the early commuters.
Our people, to protect and nurture forever.
We laughed and danced together atop the fountain’s sparkling waters.
•
Feedback
Lindy Cameron
The airboat splashed to a stop outside the dilapidated façade of 223 Collins Street. I hadn’t said a word but the pilot had rightly figured this was the place to drop me. Even without the five cops providing crowd control on the dock out front, I knew it was the right place, too, coz I’d been here before. I also knew I was about to face one of those dreaded moments when the victim at the scene was someone with whom I’d been acquainted.
I powered up my anti-grav pod, hauled myself into the seat and strapped in. The idiots loitering in the drizzle hoping to catch a glimpse of something dead really pissed me off. I made a close calculation and just cleared the heads of the nearest onlookers. I did shout “look out,” so it wasn’t entirely my fault that half of them ended up face-down on the wet promenade.
“Thought they revoked your licence for that thing,” Officer Jordan said.
“Just a wild rumour,” I said over my shoulder as I hovered towards the lifts.
“Another one?” She smiled. “Lifts aren’t working. Chief said use the fire stairs.”
Oh great. I leant forward to check for downward traffic before I began my ascent. The tightly angled stairwells in these late—nineteenth century buildings were not designed for anti-grav manoeuvring; in fact, they wouldn’t be much use in a fire. At least they’d only burn down to water-level these days. Aggie and I—yeah, my inanimate anti-grav pod does have a name—made our way up to what had once been the nineteenth floor, but was now the fourteenth above high-tide canal level.
The fire door at the top opened directly into the warehouse space of Napper Trading, which overflowed the entire 15,000 squares. Rows of metal shelving stretched in every direction piled with terminals, naru-engine parts, jakka tools, odd pieces of weaponry and satellite components, cranial fittings, vintage hologram projectors, service bots, vid-screens, and even antique radio and TV parts. The reception area was an old Teflon desk with a metre of clear space around it. “What’s the deal?” I asked the officer who was ferreting in the apparent havoc.
“Place has been ransacked,” she said. “I’m looking for clues.”
“Wouldn’t bother,” I said. “This place always looks like a lunatic looking for a whippet screw went through at warp speed. Where’s…”
“Chief’s in the back with the Cutter and the deader.” She pointed.
“The chief? He never leaves HQ.”
“Reckon this case has connections that require his physical participation.”
I hovered in the direction of the chief, the coroner and the body, keeping to the dead centre of the aisles in case I brought a century’s worth of recycled tech down on my head.
The sound of Chief Bascome’s gravelly voice biting off orders prompted two medtechs to scuttle out of the corner office, as if keeping their skin intact depended only on getting out of his reach. This was strange indeed. In six years I hadn’t known him to leave HQ, let alone attend a crime scene.
“You’re scaring the children, Chief,” I said from the doorway to the room where Chief Bascome was leaning over the corpse that lay in the crash chair, and Dr Huang Delta Anne was crawling round the floor.
“Where in Hades have you been?” he bellowed.
“Having my toenails buffed.”
The chief gave me the once-over, from my head to where my feet would be if I had any, and snorted: “And my cat has joined the space cadets.”
I ignored the dig. The casual observer might think the old man didn’t like me, but in truth the chief loves me like a daughter—okay, like the daughter he never wanted, but he loves me nonetheless.
“Why are you so grouchy? After all, that’s my uncle you’re prodding.” I floated over t
o take a look.
“Jimmy Strong’s long past caring; and I didn’t think you’d give a damn,” he stated.
“True.” I looked down at the deceased. Jimmy wasn’t really my uncle—that being a scientific impossibility—but he had co-habited with my aunt Juno for five years until last summer. She’d insisted I call him Uncle, a request I avoided by not calling him anything at all. Poor stupid bastard. He hadn’t been good for much when he was alive, and now he was good for nothing at all. Judging from the muscle spasm in the face that contained his vacant eyes, even his brain would be rejected by the organ banks.
“Where’s he been?” I asked, removing the burnt-out lead from the socket behind his ear.
Delta Anne got to her feet. “No idea. The external black box is scrambled.” She handed me the matchbox-sized Data Locator Unit that, in situations not like this, records a trawler’s route and flags the cords of places they wish to return to. “All I can do now is tell you what killed him.”
“That’s obvious,” I remarked. “The real question is why.”
“Take a guess,” the chief said. “Stupid jerk—wrong place—wrong time.”
“That’s why we have to ask why,” I said. “Jimmy didn’t go trawling, Chief. The man had a phobia about cyspace. He dealt every kind of tech, but only ever hardware. And look at this jack.” I indicated the dodgy skull socket. “This is a bad pirate job. It’s not even fitted properly. Some backyard tech implanted this in such a hurry it’s amazing Jimmy didn’t have a stroke on the way home.”
The chief looked hopeful. “This might be a stroke?”
“No way,” Delta Anne stated. “This is murder. Capra is going to have to find out where he’s been.”
I smiled joylessly. Capra, that’s me. Agent Capra Jane—cybercop, attached to the Southern Indian-Pacific Corps, headquartered in Melbourne City. I trawl the mean streets of Cy-city and the other virtual resorts—the ones that ordinary beat cops fear to tread. And that doesn’t mean they’re gutless and I’m some kind of hero. Far from it. In fact, even I’d agree that statement says a boat-load about common sense versus foolhardiness. They have it—common sense, that is—and I, well I basically don’t give a shit.
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