Three Times Chosen

by Alan J. Garner

  "That didn't stop me thinking you might be joining them. It gladdens me to see you still here."

  "You could've fooled me, Ahlegra.” He could see her starting to shake, a quivering of her slender shoulders telling him better than words that her crumbly anger was a manifestation of deeper feelings. Gliding toward the fragile princess, taking hold of her trembling fingers in his steadying hands, Lasbow searched her fretful eyes. “What's really the matter?” he whispered caringly.

  Ahlegra quite suddenly broke down. Enfolded in Lasbow's reassuring arms, she confided to him, “That first night you were away, headed for Atlantis, I dreamt you weren't coming back."

  Her fear startled him into revealing, “I never expected to return,” which in turn forced him to recount his perturbing encounter with the White Whale. Pulling free of Lasbow's embrace at the completion of his tale, the Merprincess thumped him on the chest. “Ow! What's that for?” he complained, more shocked than hurt.

  "You knew you might not survive the trip, yet you went anyway!” She turned showily, presenting her back to him. “I call that unbelievably selfish."

  Lasbow floundered, unsure what to say. In the end he fell back to the royal cliché, “I'm king. What else could I do but go?"

  The Merprincess remained facing away from him and huffed, “Delegate, like you did today."

  Unable to refute that logic, Lasbow wisely fell silent.

  Turning her head a fraction, enough to see the mulling Merking out of the corner of her eye, Ahlegra asked, “What made you stay instead of resuming your heroics?” Lasbow's continuing silence turned more than the mermaid's head and she swivelled back around. “My turn to ask what's bothering you."

  In a voice made meek by his doubts, Lasbow grudgingly whispered, “I am afraid."

  "Of what exactly, my big and brave Merking?” Ahlegra wondered, her query free of sarcasm. “If it's the kraken thingy, you've every right to feel spooked. But rumour has it you guys found Atlantis pest free."

  It took a great effort of will for Lasbow to face his ignoble honesty. “I'm frightened by my own mortality."

  "You've come to the realisation that you aren't shark-proof, my darling.” Ahlegra's empathic instincts served her well, intimating that she was only scratching the surface of her merman's anxieties. “There's more. I can tell."

  Confronting uncomfortable home truths, Lasbow gazed unseeing out into the twilit bay, passively sensing with his sound-sight the evening stirrings of his merpeople. “Ochar's death can be laid squarely at my tail,” he morbidly said. “Indirectly, anyways. It's my fault she died."

  Brimming with concern, Ahlegra approached him. Lasbow warned her off with a stern, unfriendly glance. He was not done with his self-pitying.

  "That's absurd,” she said, hoping her words might touch him. “Ochar expired from old age. It was simply her moment to go. You might even say that the tide had caught up to the Sea Witch at long last. Living as long as she did isn't normal."

  "I wish you wouldn't call her a witch. It's derogatory and unmerited."

  "I don't mean to sound impersonal, love, but Ochar's dead and buried. She won't care what merpeople call her now. Not that she gave a hoot when she was alive."

  "And I caused her death."

  "How can you say that? You were away up the coast when she passed on."

  Lasbow would hear none of it and carried on along his guilt trip. “I'm responsible for the welfare of every single merperson under my rule. When one of my subjects perishes, I feel it keenly."

  "That's your strength as a leader of mermen. You're not afraid to care about your followers. Donning that crown has made you undeniably powerful, but you aren't always liable for how merfolk live out their lives. Outcomes depend heavily on the choices each of us make, right and wrong. Personal decisions are out of your hands entirely. Like it or not, you don't control everything or everybody. You are not a god."

  "I never claimed to be!” grumped the Merking. “That'd make me a megalomaniac. What I am is the closest approximation we Cetari have to a divinity that listens to and answers their prayers."

  "Be that as it may, even you can't influence how somebody dies."

  Ahlegra unwittingly validated Lasbow's argument. “I did,” he rebutted, recounting how he shamefully fled Atlantis, fearing the unmet kraken and the awful doom it represented. “Denying the White Whale its quarry made it cast about for a fresh victim and it hooked poor Ochar."

  Ahlegra shook her head confusedly. “That doesn't make sense, Lasbow. Going by your reckoning, she was likely dead in the water before you even reached Atlantis. So your actions could not have precipitated her demise, since they took place after, and not before, the Sea Witch's passing."

  "Why must you constantly think ill of her, even in death?"

  "It's not Ochar I detest, rather what she represented."

  "And what might that be ... senility?"

  "Elderliness."

  Lasbow gained upsetting insight into his fiancée's previously baseless prejudice. Ahlegra's personal exposure to older merfolk had been living under the same rocky roof as her abusive, domineering stepfather. Small wonder she resents geriatrics.

  "I take it you won't be looking forward to us growing old together then,” he said, injecting a bit of much needed humour into their sombre discourse.

  "For you, I'll make an exception,” Ahlegra replied, smirking puckishly. “If one thing Mother has taught me, it's not to live in the past. Dwelling on an unpleasant event does no good. Ochar is gone and no matter how much you beat yourself up over it you cannot bring her back, just as I won't change my feelings toward her. You need to focus on the present, my love. Has the White Whale reappeared since your return?"

  "Thankfully, no."

  "That's a starting place then.” She closed with him warily, expecting to be rebuffed. When Lasbow said and did nothing to reject her advance, she neared to within kissing distance of the glum Merking. “Since the whale obviously didn't go away empty-handed, you must now be in the clear. Move on from that."

  Gazing hard at Ahlegra, Lasbow was astounded to see Lorea glaring audaciously back at him. Rubbing his disbelieving eyes returned the softer Merprincess to his vision, but left him with the understanding that beneath Ahlegra's placid exterior lay a mermaid hardier than stone. She was clearly his rock.

  "Now that you know my shame, do you still want to wed a cowardly lionfish such as my sorry self?” he dourly said.

  She wrapped his hands in hers. “I'm not marrying a coward. You faced a terrible dread and conquered it."

  "But I swam away in fear!"

  "Only because it made sense not to press your luck,” she said soothingly. “That speaks to me of a merman with smarts, of a Merking who clears a channel for his willing subjects to finish dredging."

  "I suppose you might be right,” Lasbow grudgingly conceded, too used to leading from the forefront to completely surrender his deeds to propriety.

  "There is yet one fear for you to face,” Ahlegra added.

  Lasbow perked up, eager to prove he would not back away from another challenge anytime soon.

  "The moment is rapidly nearing to confront every bachelor's nightmare ... marriage."

  Grabbing her about the waist, the Merking pulled the astute Merprincess close. “That's one horror I have no trouble going fluke to fluke with. How can I help with the wedding?"

  Ahlegra fixed him with a mock scowl. “By showing up. After all, you are one of the two principal participants."

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  From the engineering room directly below the Kennel, Norton watched his pet anonymously, his only eye fixed on Durgay. Tapping into one of Dog's myriad imaging sensors, he had the live feed relayed to the row of five monitors perched atop a wall mounted console, the black and white picture brightening the centremost screen. Sharp and clear, the telecast only darkened the mood of the separated merman's plight. Disconnected and alone, huddled behind loose cabling in a watery prison of stabbing lights and
unnerving shadows, he looked every inch the condemned man locked in a 1940"s gangster movie.

  "Is there something interesting in the box, Norton?"

  Rotating his head, the manbot addressed the multi-armed, stilt-legged worker droid industriously dissecting the blob of melted hardware sitting on the steel workbench planted in the middle of the cluttered workshop. “That's on the box and it's the only channel worth watching at present. How's the salvage coming along?"

  "Steadily."

  Cutting through the solid mass of fused plastic and metal with a laser cutter attachment, Dog felt something akin to satisfaction. The physical sensations that came from periodically occupying a many-limbed robotic body, as opposed to being perpetually mantled with the formless systems-wide complexities of the Station, actually brought the unique Artificial Intelligence a near sense of enjoyment. Much like Norton's joy at piloting.

  "Can't you give me a more concrete time frame?"

  "Not when I am dealing with gelled alloys and polymers.” After spreading the surface incision apart with inbuilt retractors, Dog's scalpel of concentrated blue light began cutting deeper into the shrunken remains of the missile control station, heightening his contentment.

  Returning his gaze to Durgay's confinement, Abe tapped the screen with a metal fingertip, mulling over how best to exploit his prize.

  Able to talk and work simultaneously, Dog intruded on the manbot's musing. “Television is a human relaxation I cannot comprehend. People transfixed watching grouped pixels for entertainment purposes defies logic."

  "Your bafflement surprises me,” Norton remarked, eye glued to the viewscreen. Durgay, inching out from behind his shield of cables, appeared to be overcoming his innate fears. “You're prime function is as a monitoring unit. It's your job to watch situations continuously at this facility. You are the ultimate viewer."

  "I maintain an electronic surveillance."

  "Assisted by those many, many strategically placed camera lozenges. Face it, Dog. You're a voyeur."

  Ignoring the indictment, the mainframe concentrated on gutting the blob. Slitting open the internal mess of dissolved wiring and circuitry, Dog ripped open the slash wider and reached in. Rummaging around for several long minutes, the touch-sensitive tips of one of his body's six manipulators eventually closed upon a miniature black square no bigger than a matchbox lodged deep inside a maze of gooey circuits. Delicately seizing hold of his quest, Dog unceremoniously yanked the black box out of its cocoon.

  "I have extracted the CPU,” he informed Norton, removing the “brain” of the computer to the tabletop. Frayed wires trailed from the miniaturised unit like severed nerves.

  This time Norton swivelled his entire midsection to appraise the gangly droid and his valuable find. “How does it look?"

  "Surprisingly intact."

  "That's no shock. It's a military grade component. They built them tough enough to survive even small explosions."

  "That may be, but the burning propellant generated a temperature spike in the compartment of almost three thousand degrees. There is a high probability that the central processing unit suffered internal heat damage as a result, compromising, if not destroying, its viability."

  "Extract any operating data that is retrievable,” Norton commanded. “I'll determine the usefulness of whatever information has survived."

  Wiring up flattened diagnostic cables to the superficially undamaged CPU, Dog initiated the series of tests to ascertain just how functional it was. To the amazement of both mobile machines, the results showed 60% of the data stored within remained not only accessible but also apparently usable.

  "But will what's left be sufficient to fire my smart bullet out of the gun barrel?” Abe pondered. “Download junior into a fresh console and get him operational."

  "That will necessitate reconfiguring certain subroutines to make feasible the integration of the foreign subsystems."

  "Are you telling me military computers speak a different version of binary to civilian models?"

  "Only as a security precaution. Would you expect a Russian to understand an American without benefit of an interpreter?"

  The CPU gripped carefully in a set of his lower pincers, Dog stepped over to the single workstation set against the end wall. Originally used by the chief engineer, the mainframe took possession of the mini console and started dismantling it, removing the case to get at the printed circuit boards inside.

  Norton felt oddly disgruntled observing the droid walk the length of the workshop in its stilted, two-legged gait. Thinking of himself as the premier metal walker, he disapproved of the competition. His was an irrational envy. “I'll get back to watching the telly,” he informed Dog. “Buzz me the second you complete the transfer."

  The camera in the submarine hangar panned, catching Durgay taking a wary interest in the parked submersible shaped like a silhouetted squid. Made curious by the prying merman, Norton watched him sidle up to the undersea craft, drawn to its strangeness.

  "Dog, patch me into the personal address system down in the hangar bay."

  Capable of multitasking with the briskness of a busy housewife, the cybernate complied instantly. “It is enabled and can be accessed by your voice command."

  "And while you're at it, power up Sea Dog."

  "In preparation to launch?"

  Leaning closer to the viewscreen, Norton's eye lens flickered with something akin to mischief as Durgay went to poke the submersible's flexible metal skinning. “Nah. So I can play a practical joke."

  * * * *

  The unsettling hum which signified the life lighting up the beast's huge glassy eye also vibrated the water around the titan's girth, making Durgay snatch back his inquisitive hand and hightail it back to the dubious safeness of the tangled cables.

  The kraken was merely slumbering!

  Panicking, with no better weapons than his bare hands, the disgraced Fisher seeking redemption quailed before the fearsome sea monster of Cetari legend. Evading a stalking megashark had been a fluke. Stuck in this nightmarish place alone, deserted by his faith, Durgay rightly despaired.

  That was when the mocking, metallic laughter wafted through the tank.

  "Hah. Not sacred of my pet waking up are you, Em Two?"

  Never taking his frightened gaze off the enlivened leviathan, Durgay clicked with peeved loudness. “Nupterus ... Norton ... whoever, whatever you are, what the devilfish are you playing at?"

  "Keeping your on your toes. That saying would have more meaning had you feet, but you get my gist. Appearances can be deceiving."

  "That describes you rightly enough, you duper. What right have you to keep me from my friends?"

  "We've already covered this. But if you insist on going over it again, fine with me. Repetition remains the best learning method.

  "I made your forbears from the seafloor up and that makes their descendants, you lot, my property too. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, and nobody's more possessed than me. Granted, I'm not the shining idol you were expecting, but I have at my disposal the might you're seeking. Don't forget, Em Two, you came to me. I'm pleased you did, but in doing so the rules have changed. In my realm, the power rests solely in my hands. The faster you get used to that, the better we'll get along."

  "You still mean to help us?"

  "My aid was never in doubt."

  "What of the kraken?"

  "You mean Sea Dog? He obeys me alone. I'll keep him on a tight leash. He won't harm you, Em Two."

  "My name is Durgay, formerly a Castle Rock Seaguardian, of late a rogue Fisher."

  "And now you'll answer only to Em-Two. Of your companions, the first male snared becomes Em-One and the female Eff-One. Identities are irrelevant amongst you. Numbers are the universal language."

  Having no idea what Norton was spouting, Durgay focused on what he could grasp. “You singled me out for a reason."

  "Yes. To pick your brains."

  The Fisher hoped Norton spoke only metaphorically.


  "But that'll have to wait awhile. Meantime, feel free to explore the hangar. Just don't touch anything. Dog hates it when his gadgets are fiddled with. Who knows, you might become pally with Sea Dog."

  Durgay cast his dubious gaze over the manmade kraken. “Don't bank on it. I've never been a dogfish person."

  "We have that in common,” said Norton. “I always was a cat lover."

  * * * *

  "That whole conversation seemed pointless, Norton."

  "And you're such an expert on human relations,” Abe said, facing the droid embodying Dog's computerised consciousness. Leaning against the console, arms folded, the manbot's pose echoed his past humanity. “It's called psychology. Putting the subject at ease, associating with his likes or dislikes, makes him more compliant."

  "I conjectured you might be going soft."

  "I'm built out of titanium, not aluminium. There's no way I'll soften."

  The cybernate actually, disturbingly, laughed. “Abe Norton, every day you are sounding more and more like a machine."

  "That's probably because I'm increasingly feeling like a damn robot ... and acting like one.” As if to prove his unhappy point the manbot plugged directly into the console via his finger point.

  "You could have requested me to access my mainframe for you."

  "I prefer doing stuff for myself from time to time. I like to retain a shred of independence."

  "The word for human stubbornness."

  Regretting encouraging Dog to start thinking deeper, Norton pulled up the data stream he had accessed on the viewscreen adjoining The Durgay Show. Privacy was his motivation to act independently of the pervasive cybernate.

  Reviewing the encrypted information transmitting from the onboard sensor housed in the nosecone of the missile sitting innocuously on its hardened silo launch pad palled Norton's mood. As he had banked on, emergency safety systems dumped propellant from the cracked fuel tank into the missile the instant the fracture grew large enough to register itself as a hazard. But the resulting explosion that destroyed the pump and activated the safety seal averting the mutual destruction of the missile prevented a complete transfer of fuel to the nuke carrier. The rocket's electronic gauge showed the tank only quarter full.