by David Garnet
Eliot Ness smiled.
“Forgotten who?” Kiru said again.
“John Wayne. You were with him when the reflexants captured him. The ghostly aliens. Remember?”
“I remember his name was James.”
“He told me it was John Wayne.”
Kiru shrugged. John or James had been lying to one of them. Or both of them. “He told me he was born three hundred years ago,” she said, which was another of his lies.
“Yes, he was.”
“Oh,” said Kiru, and she wondered if Eliot Ness was also lying. “That explains why he seemed so…” She shrugged again.
“Old?”
“Different.”
John or James, Kiru didn’t care. Their time together had been very brief. She’d spent far, far more time with Eliot Ness; although she knew far, far less about him than she did about James.
But James was gone, dead, history, over, part of her past. She didn’t ever think about him. Or hardly ever.
She had never mentioned James to Eliot Ness, but he was aware they had been together on Hideaway, then on the suicide ship.
“You met him on Hideaway?” she asked.
“No, on Earth. But it’s because of me he went to Hideaway.” Eliot Ness paused, thinking. “And it’s because of him I’m going to Caphmiaultrelvossmuaf.”
“James said you should go there?”
“No. I’m sure he’d never heard of the planet. Very few people have. Yet. He was working for me. In fact, he was working as me. That must be why the reflexants arrested him. They thought he was me, so they put him on the same ship to make doubly sure I was killed.”
Kiru shook her head, not understanding.
“And me?” she asked because that was something she might understand.
“You were with him, with John, James, which made you an accessory. You were also with the pirates. They made doubly sure with you, too.”
Kiru did understand, but it was the only thing she did.
“Want some more?” asked Eliot Ness, gesturing toward the table.
She looked down. All her food was gone. She’d eaten it without even noticing.
“No,” she said.
“Clear this away,” said Eliot Ness, as he stood up and slid his seat into the wall. “Strap yourself in and we’ll go into zero gravity. Landing time is fifteen minutes.”
First Earth, her native world; then Arazon, the prison planet; and now Kiru looked out across the surface of her third world, Caphmiaultrelvossmuaf.
Which was wet, as wet as could be. Almost the whole world was covered with water. It was also raining. The rain was pink, drizzling down from an orange sky into the sea. The red sea. The escape capsule had settled on a small atoll, and in the misty distance she could see several more islands. No, not islands, but buildings rising up above the waves.
Turning away from the hatch, Kiru glanced back into the capsule. After the brightness outside, it seemed dark within the cabin, and for a moment Eliot Ness was invisible. Then he stepped forward out of the gloom. He’d stripped off his symsuit and was wearing the same odd outfit in which she’d first seen him: loose dark trousers, long matching jacket, a white shirt, a narrow scarf around his neck. Presumably because of the rain, he was also wearing a hat with a brim. He carried a small black case, which was narrower at one end than the other and probably contained the proceeds of his robbery.
Kiru moved back so he could get by, and he climbed out of the hatch, his shiny black and white shoes touching down on to the red surface of the planet. Without a backward glance, he walked forward until he reached the edge of the water. Fully dressed, with his case in one hand, he stepped into the sea.
“What about me?” said Kiru.
“What about you?” asked Eliot Ness.
“I haven’t got a thing to wear.”
“It’s warm. You don’t need anything. You’re not a native, no one will notice. You’ll get by.”
Kiru watched him wade away through the shallows between the scarlet reefs.
She had come into her own world naked, and now she had arrived naked on an alien world.
Naked and alone. Again.
“Come on,” said Eliot Ness, beckoning to her.
“Me?”
“No, not you. All the hundreds of others in the capsule. Are you coming? Stay there if you want. This isn’t Arazon, Kiru. You’re not a convict here. You’re a free woman.”
If she was free, she didn’t have to do what Eliot Ness said. She could do exactly as she wanted. There were no more orders to obey. She was her own boss.
“Coming,” she said, and she jumped out through the exit.
The ground was soft and damp, and she flexed her toes, luxuriating in the feel of the non-earth. She inhaled deeply, breathing in the fresh, unrecycled air. The rain was so heavy that in under a minute she was soaking wet. She ran forward, enjoying the gentle pull of normal gravity, and dashed into the alien water. It was warm and wet, and who cared that it was red?
Kiru kicked and splashed, slipped and fell, sinking completely under the surface. When she sat up, spitting out a stream of salty water and shaking the drops from her hair, she almost laughed. Almost.
“Good to be alive, isn’t it?” said Eliot Ness.
He’d stopped and turned to face her. The sea was above his knees, but his trousers didn’t look wet, and the rain seemed to have no effect on his hat or his jacket.
“Yes,” said Kiru, “it is.”
“Then make the most of it.” Eliot Ness glanced toward the horizon. “It might not last.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
There was water everywhere.
Water in his mouth, his eyes, his ears, his nose. All over his body. It was horrible. All over his head. It was terrible. All over his hair. It was awful. All over his face. It was—gone…
If it was gone, it meant his head must be above the surface. Wayne Norton spat, coughing up a spluttering stream. His mouth was open, but no more lethal liquid forced its way in. Only air. He breathed in, in, deep, then coughed again, his throat knotting as he spewed up another torrent of water.
He gasped for air, breathed again, and was alive once more.
His eyes were stinging, but he opened them—and discovered he was covered with blood. He may have been alive, but not for long. Blood everywhere. All over him. All around him.
He was in an ocean of blood. Blood was dripping down on to him. It was raining blood. The whole world was red, from the palest of pink to the deepest crimson.
Norton was on his back, gazing up at the sky. The alien sky. The orange alien sky. From which the rain poured down like a shower of orange juice.
He was floating. But he couldn’t swim. His overall was keeping him afloat. He lay totally still, not daring to move in case he lost his equilibrium and slipped back down into the depths where the lifeboat had become a sunken wreck.
The overall had saved his life.
And Grawl had saved his life.
It hadn’t seemed like that at the time. The hand over Norton’s mouth hadn’t been to stop the scream getting out but to stop the water getting in. Then Grawl had pushed him through the hatch, and he’d shot up to the surface.
But where was Grawl?
“Grawl! Grawl!”
Norton turned his head, looking from side to side. The water was relatively calm, but he couldn’t see very far because he was so low down. At sea level.
“Grawl! Make a noise if you can hear me!”
Norton raised one arm above the surface, then brought it down with a splash. He closed his eyes and mouth as he did so, in case the ocean washed over his face. It didn’t, and so he lifted his arm even higher to make a louder splash.
“Like this!”
He watched the pink drops of water drip down his arm. His arm. His skin. Not the overall. He could see his bare arm. His outfit was gone. It must have dissolved in the water.
So what was keeping him afloat…?
Nothing.
As he slowly, car
efully began to lower his right arm, he also pushed down with his left to balance himself. His hand sank below the surface, followed by his arm, then the rest of him—and he rolled over.
“Ahh… gug… gug… gug…”
Norton’s mouth filled with water again. This time he couldn’t spit it out because his head was under the surface. There was nothing but water, miles and miles of red water below him. He’d instinctively closed his eyes and was glad he couldn’t see it.
In a blind panic, he kicked his legs, thrashed his arms, desperately trying to stay afloat. But he was floating, he suddenly realised. He wasn’t sinking because he couldn’t sink. The alien water was very buoyant, and it was keeping him afloat.
Afloat but upside down.
By twisting his neck, he turned his face halfway above the waterline. He still couldn’t breathe because his mouth and nose were full of water, and he couldn’t spew it out because his neck was bent. Instead of coming up, the water went down his throat. He swallowed, coughed, swallowed, choked, sucked in a single gasp of air, then a wave broke over his face and his mouth was full of more water.
As he kicked and struggled, his head became submerged again. He wriggled and writhed, twisted and turned, and when he bobbed back up above the surface again his face was upward.
He lay without moving, eyes shut, doing nothing except breathing.
If there was one thing he’d always hated, it was water. Water and everything in it. Even seeing a goldfish swimming around and around and around in a bowl gave him the shivers. He would never eat fish. Once, when he was a kid, he’d started to eat a piece of fish and found himself chewing a mouthful of bones, tiny and sharp, which impaled themselves in his gums and tongue and throat.
Norton kept breathing, breathing and thinking.
He shouldn’t have moved, shouldn’t have splashed, shouldn’t have shouted for Grawl. Sound travelled faster under water than on land, and who knew what alien creatures inhabited the deeps beneath? A school of deadly fish could be swimming a yard below him at this very moment.
Was that what had happened to Grawl? Had he been swallowed by an alien whale?
Was this to be Norton’s own fate? He’d been born over three centuries ago, crossed half the galaxy, and his ultimate destiny was to become fish food?
No, of course nothing was going to eat him. Even if a whole college of piranha sharks swam by, Norton was equally as alien to them. Alien and inedible. But they wouldn’t find out how bad he tasted until they’d sampled a few bites.
How far was he from land? How long until the tide cast him ashore? Was there any land?
He could be adrift on an endless ocean, a sea which covered the whole planet. (What was the difference between a sea and an ocean?) Or maybe it was just a lake, although that could make it the size of Lake Superior. Or perhaps this might only be a pond. (And when did a pond become a lake?)
It made no difference. He couldn’t swim, so he could float here forever. There was water all around him, but none to drink. It was far too saline, and already he was thirsty because of the liquid he’d accidentally swallowed.
He opened his mouth and put his tongue out to catch the drops of rain. It was fresh water. He gazed at the orange sky, and the rain was cool and soothing on his sore eyes, but it would take a long time to quench his thirst. That was all Wayne Norton had: time.
How much time? The water was lukewarm, so he wasn’t going to die of cold. Which meant he’d die of something else.
While he was considering the possibilities, he felt something beneath the surface brush against his leg.
“Ahhhhh!”
He yelled out in surprise and fear, then became silent, not wanting whatever it was to hear him.
But it was too late. Only a few feet away from him, the water bubbled, and an ugly red head surfaced above the waves.
Norton gasped in horror as a pair of huge crimson eyes gazed at him. The creature’s mouth opened, wide, and orange water dripped from its sharpened teeth. Norton’s heart stopped.
“Good afternoon, sir or madam,” said the hideous sea monster. “Isn’t it a lovely day?”
A talking fish. A talking alien fish.
Norton’s heart resumed its beat, but it had lost all sense of rhythm and hammered away at double time.
“Let’s hope the rain lasts,” added the talking fish.
“Yeah,” Norton managed to say. “Yeah.”
“I came as soon as your ship was observed, sir or madam,” the aquatic alien continued. “I do hope I haven’t kept you waiting too long.”
“Er… no,” said Norton, as he stared at it. “You… you’re speaking English!”
“I’m sorry, sir or madam,” said the creature, “I don’t know that word.”
Norton didn’t have a slate, and he was sure the fish wasn’t using one. With a slate, the original sound could always be heard in the background, with a louder translation superimposed. Here, the alien’s lips were synchronised with what Norton actually heard. This meant it was speaking English, or the twenty-third century fastspeak variant. Away from their planet, Earth people were known as Terrans. So was their language.
But if this sea creature could speak Terran, did that mean Norton was back on Earth? Was that how a lifeboat functioned? It returned its occupants to their native world?
All Norton could see of the piscine beast was its head and neck, both of which were covered in red scales. Water cascaded down the ridges of its skull, there were fins where it should have had ears, and on either side of its throat was a series of gills.
He studied the alien, wondering if perhaps it wasn’t one. Could it be some kind of mutant, a cross between a human and an animal? Dolphins were supposed to be smart. Was this a biomodified dolphin?
“What’s the name of this world?” asked Norton.
“Caphmiaultrelvossmuaf, sir or madam.”
“Do you have twenty-four hours in a day, three hundred and sixty-five days to a year?”
“No, sir or madam, this is a very backward planet. We don’t have days on Caphmiaultrelvossmuaf. Not yet.”
“Does everyone here speak… er… speak the language you are now speaking?”
“No, sir or madam, not yet. My learning has been fast-tracked so I can greet visitors. And you are my first visitor, sir or madam.”
“Forget the ‘madam,’ just call me ‘sir.’ Okay?”
“Sir, okay.”
“You’re here to greet me?”
“Yes, sir, I already told you that. As soon as your ship was seen, I was assigned to you.”
“You mean you’re here to take me to dry land?”
“No, sir. I’m only here to greet you. Oh dear. Silly me. I forgot.”
The alien vanished, its head sinking beneath the waves. A second or two later it was back, streams of water pouring from its cranial crevasses.
“Welcome to Caphmiaultrelvossmuaf, sir,” said the alien. “The owners and management hope you have an enjoyable and profitable vacation, and may I add my own sincere personal welcome as a statistically typical inhabitant of this warm and friendly global paradise.”
“Yeah, er, thanks.”
“If you have any questions, sir, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
“You’re here because my ship was seen landing? No, not landing, but…” Norton shook his head, trying to think of an appropriate word, then wished he hadn’t. More salty water sloshed all over his face as his head moved, and he spat out yet another mouthful.
“Yes, sir,” agreed the alien.
“Have you found anyone else in the water?”
“No, sir. Is there another guest?”
Norton thought of his ex-shipmate. Perhaps he was still trapped in the lifeboat. If so, it was too late. Grawl would certainly have drowned by now.
“No, no,” said Norton. “I was just wondering how many guests arrive the way I did.”
“You’re my first guest, sir. Have you any other questions?”
The alien kept watchin
g him. Norton glanced around, looking for a topic of conversation. But there was only water, red water.
“Why is everything red?” he asked.
“I’m no expert, sir,” said the scaled tour guide, “but I believe it’s partly because of a spectral anomaly in the axial coefficient of light refraction, partly because of the very high aqueous distribution ratio, and partly because of a unique mineral oxide which is held in suspension in every drop of water on the planet.”
“Yeah,” said Norton, “that’s what I thought.”
“I couldn’t help noticing, sir…”
“Noticing what?”
“And I do hope you won’t mind if I mention the fact, sir, but…”
“Mention what?”
“I’m aware, sir, that the most considerate guest will try to fit in with the customs and habits of the planet he or she is visiting, and obviously this is what you believe your good self to be doing.”
This was a fish. There was no reason why he should have understood it, but Norton had to ask, “What are you talking about?”
“You’re not wearing any clothes, sir. We on Caphmiaultrelvossmuaf may not be very advanced by your standards, but we’re quickly becoming more civilised. May I demonstrate, sir?”
“Er… yeah, sure,” said Norton.
The alien suddenly leapt up from the water, its upper half rising above the surface for the first time. Norton had expected a fish shape. Instead, the creature had a torso and arms, two of them, each with webbed fingers. It was humanoid.
And it was wearing a bra.
It was a mermaid, Norton realised.
He watched as the creature plunged head first into the red water, arching itself over. Then its lower half flipped above the surface. Instead of a fish’s tail, the mermaid had two long, red legs with webbed feet. It was also wearing yellow briefs.
Bright yellow bra, matching briefs. This had to be the Caphmiaultrelvossmuaf version of a bikini.
The alien’s head reappeared. “It was a giant dive forward, sir, when we learned to wear clothes,” it said, or she said. “Imagine, sir, clothes to wear in the water! The sheer sophistication of a such a concept is almost overwhelming. We’re so proud, sir, that our little puddle of a planet is to be admitted to the great commonwealth of culture.”