by Sarah Porter
“And even if they drown people, I know they also might save people sometimes. So I’m here to ask: if that’s you, and some mermaid saved your life before, get up on this Internet and say so. Or if you think a girl you miss is out there with my Luce, get up and say so. They’re pretty much kids. There’s got to be something else we can do. That’s all I wanted to ask you. Okay, thanks.”
The camera veered faster, pointing first at the window and then at the floor. There was a sound that was probably a chair toppling over and the image went dead.
Secretary Moreland slid back his chair and stood up as slowly and imposingly as he could manage. He was a large man, tall and broad, and he tilted over his three nervous deputies as he turned to them. “Why,” Moreland growled very slowly, “did I just watch this?”
A thin man flinched sharply back. “We thought it could be significant, Mr. Secretary. It seems to indicate that someone might have leaked classified information. We were concerned that it could—”
“Of course someone leaked classified information! This”—Moreland grimaced—“this loser didn’t learn about Operation Odysseus by reading the newspaper. That’s my question. Why was this allowed to happen?”
None of the suited men answered, though tiny jerky currents seemed to flow through their arms and feet. Moreland scowled until one of them added, “We’re reasonably confident, Mr. Secretary, that the information wasn’t leaked by anyone in the Department of Defense.”
“I personally feel quite clear on who was responsible for this leak, men. If the miscreant’s identity isn’t obvious to you as well, then you haven’t been paying attention to the subversive drivel that two-bit fanatic has been going around spouting.” The suited men flinched. They were all too familiar, by now, with the uncontrollable rancor Secretary Moreland felt for Agent Ben Ellison of the FBI. If his superiors weren’t so determined to protect him, Ellison would have been dispensed with long ago. “But that doesn’t answer my question, does it? Why was that whiny mermaid sympathizer allowed to go and jabber to Lucette Korchak’s father of all people? If the FBI can’t keep their own agents in check, then the responsibility falls to you. Or didn’t that occur to you?”
There was an awkward silence. “Sir, are you suggesting—”
“I’m suggesting that someone who thinks we can solve the mermaid problem by bringing those goddamn tails mugs of cocoa at bedtime should not be permitted to run around undermining our work!” Moreland’s lips were working as if he was chewing something too big to swallow. “Where is he?”
“Agent Ellison, sir? He’s on a flight back to Washington. Even the FBI suspects that he might have had something to do with this.”
“Not him!” Secretary Moreland shook his head in apparent disbelief at their stupidity. “I mean that ragtag fool who’s putting out these touching appeals to the public, making them think that we’re trying to wipe out every cute little girl who’s ever had her face on a milk carton!”
A few of the mermaids’ faces really might have appeared on milk cartons, of course. But no one said that. “Andrew Korchak?” The skinny man assumed a dismissive tone. “I don’t think anyone knows. He has quite a rap sheet, though. It’s only because this video was released by the same woman who posted the original mermaid tape that anyone has even noticed it. Personally, I don’t see how anyone could take him seriously.”
“Half a million views already? I would think that’s serious enough. If the public starts believing mermaids are real, that’s—at a minimum—highly inconvenient. If they start to think of mermaids as children rather than monsters, that’s worse. If we’re forced at some point to disclose what the teams are doing, we need to be able to frame our activity as what it is: eliminating an unacceptable threat to anyone who has business on the water. If people start thinking that we’re murdering helpless little girls instead of protecting good citizens and their nice babies and their dogs, well . . .”
“Sir, of course that would be an issue, but—”
“So if you’re planning, at some point, to try justifying the considerable trust I’ve placed in you by putting you three in charge of providing whatever land-based support the teams who are risking their lives out there need, you might consider that one of their primary needs is an oblivious public, or barring that, a supportive one!”
“Yes, sir.” The skinny man’s eyes were still carefully blank as he nodded.
“Sir, would you prefer if Andrew Korchak was . . . no longer a possible source of concern?”
Moreland sighed and paced to a window, which rebutted his gaze with its bland beige shade. It was better than seeing the sky beyond, though, and the clouds. Ever since he’d heard that outburst of mermaid song the whole world had seemed to inspect him with a stare at once skeptical and luminous. “That would attract attention. Unavoidably. Of course, if it was the right kind of attention, then that might serve our purposes very well.”
“You mean . . .”
“I’ll handle it,” Moreland announced. Now that his back was turned to them, the three men were free to shoot one another worried looks. Speculation regarding the secretary of defense’s mental health was rampant in the department. “I know exactly what to do. Major Sullivan, I have a few little tasks I need you to take care of first.”
No one dared to contradict him.
∗ ∗ ∗
Moreland felt the throb of mermaid song pressing at the inside of his skull as he paced down the long subterranean corridor. Since no one was watching he allowed himself to give in to it a little, to leap and writhe in midair as he walked. He stopped controlling his face and let it squirm and grimace, and he opened his mouth and let a few misshapen notes pour out. Nauseous excitement was building in his stomach, and his hands were damp and compressed into fists.
What he was about to do was almost unbearably thrilling—terribly satisfying but in a way that galled him and made him jump. He wouldn’t be able to witness the act directly, of course. Maybe that was what irked him so much. The fluorescent lights overhead glazed the marble floor in bands of sickly pallor. He was almost there. Anais would be in front of him in a minute, with her strange shimmer and her stifled voice and her beauty that only became more marvelous as she herself became more miserable.
He couldn’t allow himself to hear her sing again, but what he had in mind was, he thought, the next best thing.
There was the steel door; he typed in the key code that so few people were privileged to know. The keys felt hot and staticky under his rapid taps. Then the door buzzed open and cool blue light came wavering across his eyes. Golden hair unraveled through the water, azure fins stirred. “Tadpole,” Moreland murmured under his breath. “Tadpole, we’re going to have such a delicious little adventure together.”
Then something that he hadn’t noticed moved. How could he have failed to see that man in the lab coat perched on a folding chair and leaning close to the tank’s speaker? The pallid young face wore an expression of rapturous intimacy, but the joyful look was quickly transforming into annoyance at the interruption. For the life of him, Moreland couldn’t remember that young man’s name, but he recalled that he was Anais’s keeper, in charge of keeping her fed and comfortable and indulging her less extortionate whims.
The young man stood up, slapping as he rose the switches that stopped sound from transmitting in or out of the tank. His receding chin and prominent forehead, combined with a large sharp nose, made his face seemed peculiarly unbalanced. His beige hair was thinning and his eyes were narrow and sad. “Good afternoon, Secretary Moreland.”
He didn’t sound at all respectful, though. And he was pouting with unconcealed jealousy. Moreland could barely control his amusement.
“That will be all for now, Mr. . . .”
“Hackett, sir. Charles Hackett.”
“Oh, yes, Anais calls you Charlie. I’d like a private word with our little princess, if you don’t mind.”
Charles Hackett grimaced with open contempt. It was another sign of Ana
is’s power, Moreland thought, that this flunky was so blatantly rude toward someone so vastly his superior. He couldn’t actually disobey Moreland’s orders, though. He jerked toward the exit, hunching angrily. Behind him Anais swirled, her fins twitching, and knocked silently on the glass.
“Or actually, Mr. Hackett . . .”
Hackett turned back, his eyes narrowing sharply as they reached the secretary of defense.
“I have a present for our little mermaid, Mr. Hackett. Please give it to her after I leave.” Moreland pulled from his breast pocket a slim box wrapped in pink paper with a golden ribbon and handed it over while Hackett scowled. Moreland smiled in anticipation; it was a pleasure to speak all the lies he’d rehearsed that morning. “Also, we’re going to have to play that mermaid recording for her again. We have a few more questions about the singers. Tonight when you go, I’d like you to turn off the electroshock system so that she can listen to the recording as many times as she needs to. Understood?”
“Sir . . .” Hackett visibly worked up his courage. “It’s not healthy for Anais to be reminded of all that. Her friends, her . . . her difficult past. She needs sensitive, caring treatment; she needs to be allowed to heal.”
“She needs to earn her keep, Hackett. And she needs to pay us back for letting her live.” Moreland aimed a smirk at Anais, who looked wonderfully alarmed at the sight of him. Aqua light roiled across her arms and throat. “She’ll heal when it suits my convenience.”
Hackett opened his mouth and closed it again and made a kind of undecided movement with his shoulders. Moreland kept glowering at him, and after a few more flutters of silent protest he shuffled out.
Moreland’s hand shuddered a little with eagerness as it reached to turn the speakers back on. Anais retreated a short distance from the glass, her long tail snaking and her eyes bright and plaintive. “Why, tadpole,” Moreland crooned. “I brought you a present. Something I think you’ll enjoy very much. You could at least make small talk with me for a while.”
Anais rippled a little closer. “Hi,” she muttered faintly.
“Hi, sir,” Moreland corrected, then broke into a smile so wide it made his face ache. “I’ve been thinking about you, tadpole. I’ve been wondering if there are ways we can make your time with us more pleasant. You must get so bored all alone in here all day.”
Anais stared at him, simultaneously wary and petulant. “Of course I’m bored.”
“Of course you are,” Moreland simpered. Anais only looked more frightened in response. “That’s why I’m going to give you the opportunity to do a new, exciting job for me. Broaden your horizons, help your country, and”—he leered—“have fun doing it.”
Anais swished with ill-concealed dismay. “What do you want me to do now? I’ve told you everything I know, and you still won’t let me go home!”
“Charlie is going to give you my present later. It’s a cell phone.”
Anais suddenly brightened. “Really? Then I can call my friends in Miami! I can—”
“For the moment, little tadpole, it’s been programmed so that it can only dial a single number.” He felt a restless thrill below his heart as Anais’s happiness collapsed again. “You’ll make a call this evening, say around nine o’clock. Your first job is to collect some information. If a man answers or if you get voice mail, you should hang up. But if a woman answers, you’ll follow the instructions we’re about to go over together.”
Anais considered this, her head bowed so that waves of hair obscured her face. “Then will you let me go?”
“No.” Moreland smiled at her. “You’ll do this for the sheer pleasure of it, my dear. Because asking a few questions is only the first of your responsibilities.”
“I don’t want to do anything for you, then! I’d rather be bored. I don’t even care if you turn my TV off! I’ll just stare at the walls.”
Moreland had to admit it to himself: he adored Anais like this: childish and surly and deeply depressed. It was a shame, in a way, that she would genuinely enjoy her new assignment. “Oh, tadpole,” Moreland whispered, “don’t be silly. This will be fun for the whole family.”
“I don’t care anymore! I—”
“Tell me something, Anais. Don’t you miss your singing?”
16
Joining Voices
Seb watched from the pier as Luce waved good night to him, a little awkwardly, and headed out into the wild night. She had a long swim ahead of her before she would reach the spot where the Twice Lost gathered to practice. As their numbers grew, they all worried more about the risk that someone would spot them from a boat or a plane. Every night they traveled a bit farther from the coast, settling into remote waves and yet still feeling terribly, helplessly exposed. They put as much loneliness around them as they could, as if the night itself could be their shelter.
Even from a distance Luce could hear the music: long, thrumming, sustained tones, scatterings of brighter notes along the surface. The voices had the distinctive, oddly smooth sound that mermaid voices took on when they called to the water, coaxing and caressing. All around Luce the water shivered, and she whipped along in excitement, ducking below hunting sea lions and spinning silver balls of frightened fish.
Soon the water above her head was thick with swinging, glimmering fins, and Luce surfaced. On the dark sea the Twice Lost Army floated. Luce caught sight of Yuan, busy organizing the newer members into small groups under the command of former queens; of Imani, working with a few of the girls who’d been having trouble. As Luce watched, one of them—a mermaid with thick light brown curls and an anxious expression on her china-doll face—lost control of her voice completely. All at once the night throbbed with savage enchantment as the mermaid’s death song took over and leaped higher and brighter. The curly-haired mermaid flung herself backwards in a panic, gasping and thrashing as she struggled to regain mastery of the notes tearing from her throat. If any humans had been unlucky enough to be within earshot, Luce knew they would have had no chance at all of surviving.
Luce was about to race over to her when she saw that she wasn’t needed. Imani was already hovering just behind the frightened mermaid, her dark hands lightly resting on those heaving shoulders. The vehement music calmed a little, and the doll-faced mermaid’s spasmodic movements slowed. Imani was singing in her ear, a soothing, whispering resonance, luring the maddened song back down into a single note, soft and peaceful. A docile little wave curled up in front of them. And then . . .
Then Imani’s voice changed again, bending into a low, bubbling harmony. Her song caught the frightened mermaid’s voice in a way Luce had never heard before. It was as if Imani’s song had entered into that other song and opened it like a flower opening in the core of another flower, forming a concentric swell of music that was somehow greater and sweeter than the sound of any mermaid singing alone.
And the wave in front of them doubled, trebled in size, then abruptly shot skyward and wavered in a gleaming wall with gracefully fluted sides. The moon’s light refracted in each curve until a hundred long golden eyes winked out at them. Everyone stopped practicing and watched in silence. The china-doll mermaid stared in disbelief at the result of her strange duet with Imani, then let out a little shriek. The spell broke, the water tumbled . . .
And Luce’s voice entered the night and caught the falling wave again. Imani glanced over at her, eyes shining with a kind of serene exaltation. Luce could feel Imani’s voice singing into hers and feel her own song blossoming in Imani’s. The sensation was entirely new to her, and also entirely wonderful. The wave-wall grew higher and smoother, its upper reaches forming dancing pinnacles, bright corkscrewing vines.
It took all of Luce’s concentration to stop herself from bursting out laughing in delirious joy. This was what happened when the mermaids merged their power. Her voice felt lighter inside her, and the immense force of that music was much easier to sustain than it had ever been when she sang to the water on her own. Singing together in this way, they seem
ed to multiply their individual power into a marvelous synergy.
A few other mermaids seemed to catch on and joined in. Water rose again, sleeked up through the darkness, then again . . . The sound pulsed through Luce’s head and body until even her bones seemed to sing like the strings of a guitar. She was the heart of the song, but so were all the other singers, and the curling wave-walls bent the night on all sides until they were surrounded by a bright castle made of water and sound at once.
Like Imani had said, it was a miracle: their own miracle, their personal creation.
Luce had long since given up singing humans to their doom, but she had never forgotten the addictive thrill her death song always provoked in her. But this new feeling, she thought, was even better. She was lost in the sound, her thoughts weaving through all the voices at once; only the gentle loft and fall of the waves gave her any sense of passing time. It was impossible to guess how long the strange new song went on, but when the music finally began to fade, the immense golden moon was rolling into the horizon, its disc misshapen by rising fronds of mist. The watery castle seemed to melt very slowly with the lowering music, its walls bowing out and then gently petaling downward.
Quiet; it was quiet. Only the dreamlike roar of the ocean and, far away, the plangent cry of a whale.
And around Luce hundreds of drifting, dimly luminous faces moved with the waves. For a few minutes it was hard to imagine that any of them would ever speak again. They had all known one another more deeply through their shared song than they ever could through words.
“War, Luce?” Imani murmured at last, and laughed a single breathless laugh. “How can this be war?”
Luce knew what Imani meant. She’d never experienced such absolute peace in her life, peace so profound that it became a new kind of shivering excitement.
“A new kind of war, Imani,” Luce said. Her voice was thin, airy, but suddenly she realized that everyone was looking at her. “I promised. I promised you. We can . . . make up a new story; we can find a new way through. We can stop all the death.”