Involution Ocean

by Bruce Sterling

  The situation was critical. One of the anemone’s long thorny tentacles was laid neatly on top of the kitchen hatch. Another was within easy striking range of the tiller. It would be very difficult to change course. Worse yet, in another hour or so we would crash into a nasty-looking fanged promontory, dead ahead. We had to tack.

  Now the hatch to the captain’s cabin snapped open and half a dozen crewmen came up to join Desperandum. One of them was Flack, the first mate. He and Desperandum held a hurried consultation. Desperandum shook his head. His objection was obvious. He had seen the injury of his once-captive anemone; now this leathery monster might be the last of its kind. It was not to be harmed.

  The anemone was quiet now; three tentacles clinging to the braces, four others sprawled limply across the deck. If it stretched hard it might be able to reach the hatch to the captain’s cabin, but it had apparently gone to sleep. The lack of a supporting medium did not seem to bother it I looked north. A faint dust cloud marked the path of the striders, still in full retreat Beyond that, bright sunlight showed a distance-shrunken figure winging our way. It was Dalusa.

  I felt uncomfortable in the rigging. I decided to descend, very carefully, while the anemone was still quiet.

  Most of the crew had joined the captain by now. He was still discussing tactics with his three mates. The crew stood marveling; three of them nervously clutched whaling spades, and Blackburn had one of his harpoons. I began to creep quietly down the ratline. The anemone showed no sign of noticing me.

  I was almost within dropping distance of the deck when Desperandum saw me.

  “Newhouse!” he shouted. His cry alerted both of us, but the anemone reacted faster. A tentacle swung up off the deck like the boom of a crane, directly at me. I don’t know how I did it, but seconds later I found myself poised perilously on the footrope of the main lower topsail yard, clutching the lifts for balance with rope-burned hands.

  “Watch your step, Newhouse!” Desperandum admonished loudly. “You might have poisoned it!”

  Maritime protocol could not have stifled my retort, but my mask was still on. I soon had my trembling under control. “As long as you’re up there, Newhouse, start furling the sails. We have to reduce our speed or we’ll hit the rocks.”

  Interspecies aggression was not my forte but I could see any number of simpler solutions to our problem. I made something of a botch job of furling the sails. It didn’t help much, anyway, as I could only work four of them and the Lunglance had twenty.

  Dalusa flapped nearer. She was flying low, and therefore, she was nearly grabbed by a cunning snap of tentacles. My heart leapt into my mouth. I swallowed with difficulty, returning it to its proper anatomical position. Human blood was reputed to kill anemones; I accepted that, although I did not care to put it to the test. But Dalusa’s was different. She might be lethal, deadly even to Nullaquan sharks whose heavy-duty digestive systems made hors d’oeuvres out of human beings. On the other hand, the anemone might find her eminently delectable, even as I did.

  The anemone seemed restless. It m not often that It got a chance at a tidbit like Dalusa, and the lost opportunity must have annoyed it. Rather pettishly, I thought, it wrapped two of its tentacles around the mainsail yard and ripped it loose with a snap. Another tentacle grabbed the young anemone’s table, tugged it free from the deck, and threw it The men scattered and the anemone, sensing movement reached for them. Its arms stretched a surprising distance, so close to the hatch that several of the men abandoned that means of escape and leapt with commendable energy into the rigging.

  While the anemone was distracted I streaked down the ratline, ignoring my injured hands, and ducked into the kitchen hatch. And just in time, too; as I shut it behind me a tentacle descended on it with such force that a thorn punched through the thin metal with a terrific report.

  I dodged through the storeroom to the captain’s dining room. Desperandum, surrounded by crewmen, was sitting on the table. It bowed under his weight.

  “Fire would work. Harpoons would make short work of it. Killing it’s no problem, it’s at our mercy. What I want is some way to immobilize it.”

  The crew looked at him stonily. I pulled off my dustmask.

  “I think that five good men could wrap it in a sail and have it completely trapped. Do I have any volunteers?”

  I lifted my hand to wipe the sweat off my forehead.

  “Not you, Newhouse. I need you to cook.” He looked at me kindly, his small, wrinkle-shrouded eyes filled with appreciation. “No other volunteers?”

  I broke in before the rest of the crew could be embarrassed by the revelation of their good sense.

  “Captain, I have an idea.”

  “And that is?”

  “We might drug the creature. A minimal dose of human blood should reduce its ability to resist.”

  “Drug it?”

  “Yes, Captain. Drug.” He looked so blank that I continued, “Drugs. Foreign chemicals introduced into its bloodstream.”

  “I know the meaning of the word, yes. That sounds practicable. Crewman Calothrick, bring a basin. I’ve been meaning to have this lanced, and this looks like a convenient time.”

  Calothrick still had his mask on, doubtless to hide his features, frozen in a Flare-blasted grin. By the time he returned with a basin, Desperandum had rolled up the sleeve of his white blouse and unwrapped a long stained bandage on his arm. The amount of infection and inflammation on that single arm would have put two or three lesser men to bed. Flack, lancet in hand, stared at the wound, then at the captain, as if expecting him to drop dead of blood poisoning on the spot. Desperandum refused to collapse, however, and at last Flack made a tentative puncture. I could tell by the crew’s intake of breath. I had averted my eyes; infection disgusted me.

  When the ordeal was over, Desperandum poured the loathsome fluids into a thin black plastic bag and sealed it with a twist of wire.

  “I’ll have Dalusa fly overhead and bomb the creature from a height,” he said. “That flower petal arrangement it has looks vulnerable, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Flack?”

  Flack said, “Yes, sir. Have you a fever?”

  “When I need medical help I’ll request it. Fresh bandages.”

  “Needs open air, sir.”

  “I don’t want any dust on it. Besides, it would stick to my sleeve.” That was undoubtedly true. “Open that hatch a little, crewman. Lively now.”

  The man nearest the hatch opened it a tentative crack.

  “Peek out. You see any of its tentacles nearby?”

  “No, sir, I—”

  The hatch was slammed instantly shut from the outside, rapping the crewman on the head so that he fell stunned down three stairs into the arms of crewman Murphig.

  I looked up at the hatch. There were no thorn holes in it. That was lucky for the stunned crewman, as he had just escaped an instant trepanation.

  “That settles that, then,” Desperandum said. “The creature has shifted position. It can’t reach both hatches at once. Mr. Bogunheim, go to the kitchen hatch and call this lookout in.”

  “Take your mask,” I said. “The anemone punched a hole through the hatch just before I left” The dust-repelling electrostatic field cut off automatically when the hatch was shut, and even now dust was doubtless percolating downwards into the air in the hull.

  Bogunheim returned in a few moments with Dalusa. She -stared rather blankly at the supine figure of the stunned crewman, now being ministered to by Flack.

  “Here,” Desperandum said, handing her the black bag of blood. “I want you to fly over the anemone and bomb it with this. Try to be accurate, Dalusa.”

  “What is contained?” Dalusa asked, shaking the bag. “Water,” Desperandum said, lying so convincingly that I almost did a double take. “While you were aloft did you notice the creature’s latest position relative to the hatches?”

  “Yes, Captain. It had three of its arms over by this hatch—” she pointed with a dramatic flare of wing—“but the other
was unguarded.”

  “Fine. The men will be equipped with spades and nets. We will exit through the kitchen hatch and surround the specimen. Any actions taken will be strictly in self-defense and will involve the least amount of harm possible to the specimen. Try not to let it catch you. Remember your blood will poison it.”

  The men seemed eager to obey this order.

  I went up on deck, armed with a spade, beside Calothrick. In desperate circumstances I thought it would be easier to kill the monster by feeding it Calothrick than by stabbing it to death. Any creature as simply constituted as an anemone would be hard to kill.

  I had high hopes that the blood in Desperandum’s bag would be an overdose. Poison would work, as long as Dalusa believed Desperandum’s lie and carried out her job. I wondered if she had smelled the blood inside when she had her mask off. I had never asked her about the keenness of her sense of smell. What would she do if she knew it was blood? Bathe in it thereby blistering off her entire skin surface, or perhaps sip it, scorching her gullet and earning almost certain death from bacterial infestation?

  But it was all beside the point now. Dalusa sculled swiftly upward on skin-taut, bat-furred wings and dropped the bag with a nasty splatter right onto the rosebud trunk junction of the anemone’s limbs.

  The anemone waved its tentacles indecisively as a gruel of clotting blood trickled down its trunk. Then it vomited, ejecting a thick yellow paste from the hollow tips of its thorn beaks. The paste squished nastily as it squeezed out; the noise lasted about five seconds.

  Then the anemone stopped retching and, with apparent finickiness, flicked its arms and spattered the crew with its paste. A glob barely missed my head. Most of the crew, however, had been hit, as they had been closing in on the beast, with commendable courage. Disconcerted by the barrage of filth, they fell back in confusion. The anemone unstuck itself from the deck, threw out four tentacles, and dragged itself loopily through a group of crewmen. One alert sailor threw a net over the creature, which it promptly stole as it slid overboard to disappear beneath the dust Two of its breathing siphons appeared a dozen yards from the ship, each spitting a plume of dust.

  Desperandum wiped splattered filth from the lenses of his dustmask and looked over the side. “Good! We can still track it!” he shouted. “Lookout!”

  Dalusa had disappeared.

  “Lookout! Dalusa! Where is that woman?”

  There was a crunch and a scream of metal. The impact of the collision threw me on my face. I rolled over next to a splatter of vomit.

  “Hard about!” bellowed Desperandum. “Shoals!”

  The rocks beneath the surface must have been smoothed by erosion, otherwise they would have punched a hole through our starboard hull. As it turned out, we were only dented, and we were able to make the middle of the bay by sunset. It came early here, at a little before one o’clock. Once again the beam from the bay’s inlet was our only source of light Soon eighteen of our twenty-six crew members began to complain of nausea, Including the captain. It did not take Mr. Flack long to determine that the cause of the illness was some microorganism from the anemone. Wherever the vomit had spattered, the crewmen’s skins were alive with clustered scarlet bumps. Those most severely affected began to run fevers. None of the sick men showed an appetite for dinner.

  Except for Captain Desperandum. As young Meggle was ill, I brought in the officer’s meals myself after helping the skeleton crew clean the deck. Desperandum was not badly afflicted. Only the fingers of his right hand had the rash, where he had wiped clean the spattered lens of his dustmask.

  When I brought in the tray Desperandum was talking to Flack. Flack was stripped to the waist; the rash mottled his chest where the contagion had penetrated his thin shirt. His face was flushed, but his physician’s duty to the crew kept him on his feet where a more sensible man would have gotten drunk and gone to sleep.

  “Heard rumors of an allergy connected with anemones,” said Flack. “If it clears up in a week or so we’ll be all right. I’m not trained to treat forgotten diseases, though. Anemones have not been the vector of an illness for three hundred years. There are records in Perseverance, though, and better-trained personnel. I say we should sail there, quickly.”

  I lifted the lid from a shrimp casserole. Steam gushed upwards; Flack turned slightly green. It was one of Captain Desperandum’s favorite dishes, but he dug in with a marked lack of enthusiasm and passed the dish to Mr. Grent. Bogunheim was on deck sick with the men, but Grent, like me, had been lucky.

  “I agree,” said Desperandum, picking up a fork left-handed. “We cannot risk the health of the crew. It’s a bitter disappointment for me; I had intended to make a start on a full study. But shoals, the sickness, and the strider menace … I’ll return sometime later. Soon though.” Desperandum lifted a morsel to his lips and swallowed it with difficulty.

  Flack closed his eyes. “Sir,” he said faintly. “When we reach Perseverance, medical clergy should look at your arm. These things can creep up on a man, sir …”

  Desperandum looked annoyed. He inflicted another mouthful of casserole on himself. “You are a fine medical officer,” he said after he had caught his breath. “But you must realize that my own medical knowledge is extensive, and I was trained in a culture whose medical technology is several centuries ahead of your own. It is solely a question of will, you see, of teaching the body to obey. Over the years I have had some measure of success. Perhaps you would like something to eat.”

  Flack shuddered. “No sir. If I might be excused …”

  “Certainly, Mr. Flack. I forget that you are a sick man.” Desperandum was still eating, painfully, when I left Dalusa was not in the kitchen. Instead I found Calothrick there, rummaging through the cabinets in search of my private stock of Flare.

  “Have you run out again?” I said.

  Calothrick started, then turned and grinned nervously. “Yeah.”

  “I thought you were sick. You’re supposed to be flat on your back on deck.”

  “Well, that … yeah …” Calothrick mumbled. I could almost hear gears mesh in his head as he decided to tell the truth. “I was hit all right and I got part of the rash on my arm. But after I took a blast of Flare, it went away, and I had to rub it to bring it back. See?” He held out his thin freckled arm. The rash did not look very convincing to me, but Flack would probably chalk it up to Calothrick’s off-world physique.

  “So you’ve been relaxing on deck while the rest of the healthy ones are working overtime.”

  “Wouldn’t you do the same-thing? Death, give me a break, John.”

  It was a difficult question.

  “Besides, everyone saw me take that first splatter. If I got well too soon they’d get suspicious.”

  I nodded. “A good point. Except that your being up and about is twice as suspicious. Get back on deck before Murphig sees you’re missing.”

  “He’ll just think I’ve gone down to the recycler to puke,” Calothrick said. “Besides, like you said, he’s too busy working to pay me much attention.”

  “Murphig is healthy?” I said. “I thought I saw him take a splatter right across the leg.”

  “No, he … well, I’m not sure if he did or not, come to think of it. Oh, here we go.” Calothrick brightened as he pulled out a jug of Flare and sniffed it. He took a frightening dose and then pulled a plastic packet out from under his flared sailor’s trousers. It was held to his skinny calf with elastic bands. He started filling it with Flare.

  “I saw it,” I said. “He was hit. You realize what this means? Murphig has that bottle of Flare, the stolen one. He’s cured himself.”

  “Murphig one of us?” Calothrick said incredulously. “Can’t be. He’s too much of a jerk.” Suddenly the packet began to overflow. “Look out!” I said. Calothrick stopped hastily and looked at the small beaded splash on the plastic counter top.

  “But he’s not an idiot; he’d do what you’re doing, faking it. There must be some other explanation.”
<
br />   Calothrick strapped the packet back onto his leg. The Flare didn’t seem to be affecting him as strongly as usual. By now a blast like that was probably only just enough to hold him together. “I’m awful hungry, man,” he complained. “You got anything to eat?”

  “Get back on deck and try to look weak,” I said. “The starvation will help.”

  “Hey, thanks a lot,” Calothrick said resentfully. Then he bent over and licked up the counter top puddle of Flare with his broad, spatulate tongue.

  It seemed that he was hardly gone before Murphig came into the kitchen. He pulled off his mask; we eyed each other warily.

  “You’re looking well,” he said at last “So are you.”

  “I thought I saw you hit.”

  “I know I saw you,” I said. “How’s the leg?”

  “No worse than your neck.”

  “Listen, Murphig,” I said patiently, “what’s on your mind? Food not to your taste?”

  “Let’s quit fencing, Newhouse,” Murphig said. (Were his eyewhites just the faintest shade of yellow? No.) “You were hit, and I was hit, and neither one of us is sick. Fine. So you know it’s psychosomatic. Are you going to tell the captain about it?”

  Confused, I kept silent.

  “If Desperandum finds out he’ll keep us in the stinking backwater until something eats us alive,” Murphig said anxiously. “We’re breaking custom to come here. We’re begging for death, do you understand? This is their game preserve. The men know it. Even Desperandum knows it somewhere inside, or else he wouldn’t be sick. We’re cracking … panicking. The longer we stay in here the worse the men will get.”

  He seemed to expect an answer. I nodded.

  “Even your little winged friend, huh?” Murphig said nastily. “She’s like a bird in a cage here. You know what birds are? Yeah, of course … I saw her crack right after she hit the anemone; she headed east for the shadows. If you don’t get her out of here, she’ll die. You have influence with the captain. Get us out.”

  “We’re leaving already,” I said. “And Dalusa, while no miracle of stability, is probably closer to sanity than you are.”