Three Times Chosen

by Alan J. Garner

  Not even the Big Apple's iconic lady was spared. The Statue of Liberty, universally symbolising democratic freedom, wrinkled like a squeezed beer can, the pressure of the engulfing waves crushing the hundreds of sheets of hammered copper, fragilely thin as the mere thickness of a coin, riveted to her iron and steel skeleton. Ripped from her island pedestal, her 200-ton bulk (at fifteen storeys in height and wearing size 879 sandals on her car-sized feet, the manmade woman could hardly be deemed dainty) fell into the churning sea, extinguishing forever the torch she staunchly had held aloft for 300 years. By a strange quirk of fate her demise was negated by a surviving relative. Sculpted by Frenchmen and gifted to a toddling United States in a gesture expressing mutual friendship and peace, Lady Liberty had a pair of smaller family members residing in Paris. Of the quarter scale bronze daughter installed on Swan Alley, she lies entombed in the silted riverbed of the muddy Seine, but the fifteen-footer erected in La Jardin du Luxembourg endures to this day. Amid a wilder garden setting of flowerbeds overgrown with weeds and brambles, untrimmed grasses that once were religiously mowed lawns, and idyllic fountains long since run dry, the miniature mould from which the classic American giantess was reproduced and could judiciously be inferred as her “mother” stood cloaked in green finery, her overcoat of disguising creepers hinting that the concept of democracy, while gone, was not forgotten entirely.

  The storming floodwaters did not recede as anticipated and, worsened by the rising ocean levels caused by effects of global warming, cemented New York's submergence, converting the region into a real life Atlantis. But an icon of the city persisted after all others were swept away or demolished, when the upheaval of the wave-spawning sea drowned Broadway and Central Park, not to mention the city's well-publicised subway.

  Miraculously, impossibly, the Empire State Building alone stood firm against the deluge. The pinnacle of a host of towers constructed back in the economically depressed and jobless early thirties, when grateful workers prided themselves in undertaking an honest day's graft assembling like a giant's kitset New York's latest gambles, these high-rises were built to last. With a working life of a hundred years for more modern structures, these venerable skyscrapers lasted amazingly longer. Enduring for two and a half centuries, the “95 ‘shake n’ wash’ reduced them to heaps of steadily degrading rubble.

  Not so the Empire. Cracked beyond repair but somehow remaining foundationally sound, the tiered skyscraper that had at one time held renown as the world's tallest building took its architectural inspiration from the stepped pyramids of Ancient Egypt. The soundness of that basic design was validated by the ESB's durability, though whether it compared to the great longevity of its pyramidal muses only additional time would tell.

  Ignorant of the history surrounding him, Lasbow might have found amusement from swimming back in Time to better the future. Often the past inspired those in the present to live freer. Preoccupied with more immediate concerns, he was about to abandon further exploration when an object lodged in the cracked sill drew his eye.

  At this shallower depth the meagre daylight the overcast sky allowed to pervade the white-capped sea was sufficient for him to spot the flash of alien antiquity in the milky water right under his noseless face. It was a simple plastic figurine of the kind merchandisers brought out in conjunction with a major motion picture release. The film character depicted by the glossy toy, untarnished despite hundreds of years languishing underwater, was lost to time, but a warrior judging by his sword-toting stance.

  And that is what Lasbow found disturbing. The figure was two legged with booted feet and a face at once similar and dissimilar to his. In no way had Minoh been yanking his anchor chain. The ancients of Atlantis were land-walker relations of the Cetari. The connection was irrefutable, the consequences unthinkable.

  Banging at the toy soldier using the hilt of his sword, Lasbow did not quit until he had the legs broken off at the knees. Snatching up the amputee, he returned to the lift shaft and hurriedly flung it down into the belly of the building. He doubted there would ever be an appropriate time for the merpeople to be made aware of their terrestrial roots. For the sea to remain their unspoilt cradle, he was of a mind to perpetuate the royals” closely guarded secret. Exiting through one of the numerous four by six foot windows lining the wall, the Merking swum rapidly clear of the artificial tower of caves. Lasbow had left the building!

  Calling for Dribben as he descended anew, the Merking had a sinking feeling in his gut when silence answered him. Drifting to a standstill, Lasbow was listening so intently for the sounds that might mark the presence of any of the three mermen left stationed outside that the sudden tap on his shoulder nearly made him jump out of his skin.

  Reacting in fright, the turning monarch's swishing sword barely missed shortening Dribben's height and life. Ducking the slashing blow, the unperturbed Retriever shrugged off the attack. “Whoa the seahorse, Merking. Bit jumpy there."

  Consequently not seeing the funny side of the diver's appearance, Lasbow purposely did not lower his sword. “By the Sea God, are you trying to give me a shark attack?"

  Dribben's cold smile was lost in the black depths. “I make it a policy not to bite anything while it's still moving."

  "I'll be sure not to come to a halt around you. I haven't heard the others. Did the kraken show?"

  "From that I'm assuming you didn't encounter it inside anywhere either. The same goes for out here. It's been quieter than a bait-less hook."

  "What of Yaggle and Dulby then?"

  "They're on the other side of the stack. That's probably why we can't hear them."

  "So where were you when I called?"

  "Hurrying back. I did some exploring of my own and found something intriguing you should see."

  "You were supposed to be guarding my rear."

  "Come now, King Lasbow. Think it through. If attacked in there, realistically I wouldn't have had a hope in shell of getting inside quickly enough to bail you out. I said that just to shore up your confidence. Not forgetting the two watchdogfishes above us. They'd have spotted an approaching intruder sooner than me."

  Wanting so much to lash out at Dribben for his dereliction, Lasbow held his tongue and dropped his sword. The Retriever's argument was a valid one. “Whatever it is that took your attention off me had better be good,” he grumped. No need to concede the point openly!

  Doing what he did best, Dribben sounded and the Merking dived with him. Rounding the stack to the seaward side, they again hugged the bottom. Dribben headed Lasbow a short ways offshore before halting. Without being prompted, the inquisitive regent projected his sound-sight past the paused Retriever and gawped.

  Playing out before his revealing sonar imaging, a bed of mussels stretched away into the eternal night of the deep. Cemented firmly to the bedrock by byssal threads—sticky fibres naturally secreted from a gland in the bivalves” foot, oozing as an anchoring fluid which toughened into elastic, storm-proof webbing—the molluscs stuck up out of the seafloor like dragons teeth. You read right. Ten times bigger than a normal mussel, these outsized shellfish stood tall at over six feet, and half that measurement wide.

  Not trusting his clicks, Lasbow swam up to the nearest example and ran his hands over its ridged exterior, the feel of the corrugations beneath his fingertips making it realer. Amazed by the thinness of the colossal shell, he was further surprised at how flexible it felt. Bendy as a blade of grass in a strong wind, but as sedentary as a tree root, these mussels could weather the severest of ocean currents.

  Dribben admired them for the food source they were. “Our mermaids had better retrain themselves from being seagrass planters into mussel farmers."

  "It's still harvesting,” said Lasbow, unworried by the transition required in the immediate future. When the need arose, merfolk could be surprisingly adaptable. “This is a good find, Dribben. Worth abandoning your post for."

  "I'm not wanting your approval, Merking. I went looking for a bit of excitement. It got b
oring waiting around for you.” Closing to float next to Lasbow, the surly diver remarked, “I expected you to spend a lot more time than you did delving into the mysteries of the sea stack. Did you uncover confirmation that this is indeed fabled Atlantis?"

  I found more than I bargained for Lasbow admitted only to himself, shelving the plastic figure into the cobwebbed back of his mind. “This place will more than do as the new home of the Cetari. It affords us shelter and provides sources of food. Inside, I was nearly bowled over by a fish school just let out."

  "With no kraken lurking in wait for an incautious Merking."

  "Thankfully not."

  "Your return was sooner than I envisioned,” Dribben repeated. “Did you fully sightsee the tower?"

  Imagining that the diver guessed he had chickened out, the Merking employed bluster to camouflage his insecurity. “It wasn't practical. There are a goodly number of sharply rising passages in there. I couldn't hope to explore them all unassisted."

  "So the kraken might actually be somewhere in the gut of the stack?” postulated Dribben.

  "If its hugeness in real life matches its exaggeration in legend, I seriously doubt the beast could fit into the one vertical tunnel I did swim up."

  Dribben advanced his argument with all reasonableness. “But its squidlings could. More than one individual is needed to sustain a population. Doubtless we'll have more than one monster to worry us later on. Where you find a daddy, not terribly far away is the mummy."

  That probability had not occurred to Lasbow. Sweeping Atlantis for the mysterious krakens all of a sudden loomed as his highest priority. That warranted a thorough floor-by-floor search of the towering complex. Reluctant to tempt the fate predicted for him by the ghostly white whale, he announced that he would delegate a fully armed squad of Fishers to conduct the sweep upon rejoining the merfolk, and felt cowardly for opting out.

  Oddly supporting that decision, Dribben actually congratulated Lasbow. “Finally it has happened. I thought you were never going to act like a proper Merking. You can't fix every Cetari problem single-handedly by charging at it like a bull shark at a gap. Cerdic tried, and look how he ended up."

  Lasbow defended his initiative. “I prefer to lead by example."

  "Exactly what I'm on about,” clicked Dribben. “Forget the style of leadership you used as Seaguard captain. You're regent now. You have to command differently. There's no need to impress anyone, or try to win someone's loyalty, or become somebody's buddy. Take charge. Don't be afraid to farm out dangerous tasks to other merpeople. Delegate with conviction, King Lasbow. You already have garnered the respect of the mermen. They'll follow you regardless."

  Appreciative of the endorsement, Lasbow asked Dribben, “Have I yours?"

  "Oh, let's not get too carried away,” said the diver, muttering afterwards, “Oftentimes I don't even respect myself.” Sensing the Merking was waiting for more, Dribben begrudged him, “I swore my fealty. That'll have to do you."

  It sufficed.

  Lasbow instructed Dribben to remain behind with Yaggle and stay out of trouble while he and Dulby rejoined the others further down the coast, readying the refugees to make Atlantis their new home. If the monster squid showed its beaked face at all, they were to shadow the brute and do nothing else except watch its movements from afar, then report their findings to the pods of Fishers that would be sent ahead to rummage around the imitation cave system. Dribben hardly needed to assure the leave-taking Merking he was not up for any noble heroics.

  Lasbow's eagerness to depart was seated deeper than making his way back into Ahlegra's arms. By leaving Atlantis in his wake, he craftily left behind the terrible fate Death held in store for him there. Had he not faced his fears like a merman and lived to tell the tale? What more was there to prove by pressing his luck? But there dwelt inside the Merking a mocking sliver of psyche denouncing him as a liar to his true self. Admit it to your heart! it screamed subconsciously. That you are afraid to finish exploring Atlantis on your own in case fate finds you. Hah! You didn't face down Death. You merely swam around it. Avoiding one's doom only makes Death keener.

  That scorning inner demon spurred Lasbow on and, together with his hired muscle, he made the return trip in a little over half the time taken on the outbound leg. Coasting into the tectonically reshaped Delaware Bay, exhausted from not only hard swimming but constantly looking over his shoulder for the tapping hand of mortality, he wallowed in the relief of being back amongst his subjects. Waved on through by a cordon of lantern bearing Seaguards strung out across the bay's thin mouth, the lateness of the hour precluded the returnees being crowded by anxious and curious merfolk.

  Grateful for the lack of a massed reception, Lasbow sent his weary minder off for food and well-earned rest. Looking for Ahlegra amid the settling merpeople as he drifted tiredly through the greying twilit sea, his bleary eyes came to rest on an approaching merman.

  Halloing his slowing monarch, Brost said, “Welcome back, Sire. I trust your fishing expedition went well."

  "We caught a lucky break,” was all that the Merking would disclose. Tomorrow he intended to make a formal declaration when properly rested. “I see you've posted extra sentries at the entrance to the bay. Was there trouble while I was gone?"

  "Just a pesky Porbeagle that needs deterring,” the replacement Seaguard captain revealed. Sharks were a daily nuisance in Cetari life. “The boys are doing an admirable job of shooing the pest away each time it nears. The nosey fish is more of a bother than a threat."

  "They're accommodating you as commander without undue fuss?"

  "We're slowly getting used to one another,” Brost said cagily. The Seaguards acceptance of him as their new boss was an ongoing process. “Yaggle and Dribben aren't with you, King Lasbow,” he observed.

  "They're minding the shore.” Fatigue prevented him from engaging Brost in a more informative discussion. Offloading his sword on to a passing Seaguard member to stow away, he had the captain point out where the Merprincess floated and then parted company with Brost, who resumed conducting his routine evening rounds.

  Predictably, Ahlegra was in the presence of her mother. Upon spying Lasbow making his way toward them, her face brightened and she rushed over to greet him in a modest embrace.

  "Hang with decorum, daughter. Give the merman a proper hug,” Minoh urged her with motherly approval.

  She did, followed by a passionate kiss that blushed Lasbow's cheeks. “Hey, save some of this for the wedding night,” he mumbled, both his hands and mouth full.

  Safe in his clinch, Ahlegra severed the lip-lock and pulled back. “Atlantis is no longer a myth then?” she asked, all her professional and personal hopes pinned on the answer to that one question.

  "There's some housekeeping to attend to, but essentially we have a new home. How do you fancy getting hitched on the threshold?” Her returning kiss nicely replied to that.

  "The place is authentic?” Minoh put to Lasbow, hand feeding him a morsel of the fish she was snacking on. Famished, he chewed on more than that mouthful of bass, his arms locked comfortably about Ahlegra's waist. The knowing glance that passed between Merking and Merqueen confirmed her inference. Retiring for the night wearing a contented smile, she scolded her envying handmaidens to give the pair of kissing gourami a measure of privacy.

  Left to themselves, in between kisses Lasbow reminded his fiancé of his promise to come back to her. “Not even death could keep me from you,” he brazenly stated. She abruptly pushed him away. “Was it something I said?"

  Placing her fingers on his mouth, Ahlegra hushed him. “There is a piece of news you need to hear from me and not through the gossip currents."

  Struck by the gravity of her tone, he took her quivering hand in his. “I'm listening, my princess."

  Fluttering her gill flaps, Ahlegra announced with a regretful sigh, “In your absence, Ochar died."

  Chapter Twenty Six

  The Cetari stared fixedly at Abe Norton. It was no big deal.
Their unblinking eyes meant they could do nothing else but gape judgementally at the manbot, whatever their mood. On this occasion their wide-eyed glowering was drawn from unhealthy doses of anger and resentment.

  "You can't be Him!” Durgay exclaimed, grasping at straws as his seaworld dried up around him. “We swam such a long way to find Nupterus. I can't believe you are the sum of our search."

  "Aren't I godly enough for you? Certainly, I'm no saint,” the manbot conceded, “but when you consider the inordinate number of crimes committed by humanity in the name of religion, my transgressions amount to a piddling pothole in the road of life.” His inhuman hands gripping solidly the flimsy safety railing lining the catwalk spanning the main holding tank, Norton glared back at the caged merfolk with his own manmade eye. “Life is full of disappointments and unhappy surprises. You get over them ... around them, under them. Whatever it takes to push through and move on. I am your maker. Believe it."

  "You've lied to us about who you really are from the very beginning,” challenged Jumo. “Who's to say you aren't still fibbing?"

  "Don't take my word for it. Dog cannot physically tell an untruth. Honesty is as inbuilt a trait of his as breathing saltwater is for you. Computer—go ahead and tell them who made you."

  "ComTechs Bakker, Dutton, Morton, Wheeler."

  "Yes, yes! Technically you're correct. But who was their project overseer? I'll give you a hint, hmm. Short, chromed, and brainy."

  "It was you of course, Norton,” the mainframe replied, too lineal to be insulted by the manbot's scathing wit.

  Persisting in his scepticism, Jumo asked, “How do we know you didn't coach him to say that?” To his fellow Cetari, he suggested quite plausibly, “This whole conversation might well be rehearsed on their part."

  Najoli, to her profound puzzlement, liked the merman's suspicious nature.