by Adam Holt
“Yeah, I see the difference. It’s just hard to accept. What if you kill a good guy instead of a bad guy? Or the innocent instead of the guilty? I don’t want blood on my hands.”
“No one does, son, but we may have to make those choices.”
He tousled my hair. “We’ve gotten ourselves into quite a mess, Tully Harper. I hope for everyone’s sake we can steer ourselves out of it.”
Bump, bump, bump.
At that moment, the submarine lurched sideways and rolled over. I smacked my head against the glass and saw stars, but also saw a massive shadow, shiny white teeth and enormous eye peering into the submarine. The Europasarus was back with a vengeance. It had followed us and now it batted our submarine back and forth between its spiked flippers. We bounced like pinballs inside the submarine, all of us thrown forward into an enormous pile. Someone kicked me in the head. I tried to steer us toward the surface but sent us right toward the creature’s mouth. Another lurch sent us backward.
It was the last thing I felt before I blacked out. I could feel my body flopping around inside the submarine. Then the black became red.
When I regained consciousness I wasn’t seeing out of my own eyes. I awoke in a rather strange spot—a sea monster’s mind. I could taste the salt water in my mouth. At the moment I held a rather hard-scaled fish, the one with no fins and the glowing head, between my fins. My empty stomach demanded food, but this fish felt too hard to be eaten. I was growing weak, no longer quick enough to catch healthy prey anymore. I had to go after the wounded and slow. Hunger was driving me mad, mad enough to eat this terrible fish, and this one had something special buried in its belly. Several pink things that would be soft and warm. I had eaten one before on accident and bit into another and spit it out, but now I must eat them or die. Something else was in the hard-scaled fish—I could sense it—some gray thing that would taste better than anything else. It would fill my stomach forever. I must bite through the sharp skin. I will lose teeth but I must eat this fish with a stinger in the back. I must try.
I understood.
Eat or die. She had watched her children starve. She had to fight to survive. There was meat inside, so she bit into metal. She lost a tooth, but bubbles came from the hole in the hard-scaled fish. She bit again. Another tooth gone. This one stuck in the hide of the fish. Maybe it could be eaten. Watch out for the stinger. No stingers. Then she went for a third bite.
No, stop! I thought. You’ll kill us. She hesitated. Something confused her, short-circuited her hungry brain for a second. My thoughts were in her head, just like hers were in mine. Then I was sucked out of the dream and back to reality, where my dad held me in his arms while everyone else scrambled about the inside of the flooding cabin.
Icy water poured in through a hole, which Sunjay tried to plug. Buckshot shoved my backpack into the other hole and applied pressure, but Janice shoved him out of the way.
“Oh, they won’t eat metal!” she yelled, plugging the hole. “Okay, Mr. Surf Fisherman, kill this fish before it kills us!”
“That’s not a fish, that’s a monster!” Sunjay said.
“She’s starving,” I said, shaking myself, trying to clear my mind. “I was in her head. I—”
“Does it flippin’ matter?” Janice said.
“Yes,” I said, “we need a stinger.”
I pushed my dad aside and scrambled to the back of the sub. There were controllers for the nets, the arm, and, yes, a harpoon!
“Buckshot, bring us around,” I said. He took the controls at the front. Wrenching the submarine away from the sea serpent, he spun me toward it.
The shadow towered over our submarine. A magnificent beast the size of a blue whale, its belly exposed to us. I could see its luminescent skin, and just under that skin its thumping heart. My target, its heart, the heart of a half-starved, beautiful sea creature, who had raised and lost many young, who wanted nothing more than to survive. I couldn’t hesitate any longer.
I fired the harpoon. The dart split the water like a bullet, piercing its thick hide. Its eyes widened, mouth opened gasping for breath. The fins flailed for a moment. Then the beast went limp. Its purple skin glowed no longer. I watched it sink into the darkness below, never to rise.
There was no time to think. I pushed myself back to the front of the submarine. Buckshot returned the controls to me.
“We’re pretty deep,” he said. “I can’t see anything out there and the map isn’t working.”
I could see just fine.
“Closer to the surface!” yelled Janice, water pouring onto her head. “Less pressure, less water gets in.”
Janice was, as usual, correct. I pushed the submarine almost to the surface, where the ice met the water. The gusher became a trickle. Our nerves settled.
“Uh, that one is on me, folks,” said Buckshot. “They eat metal. I’m just glad that bad boy didn’t eat us.”
“Girl,” I said, picturing her plummet into the deep waters. “It was a mother.” She hadn’t been bad. She was innocent and starving. She was desperate, and her desperation was the death of her. No, I was the death of her, and if I had not killed her, we would all be dead now. Can you kill, if necessary? I tried to shake off the weight of my dad’s question. This creature wasn’t human, but it seemed like part of the answer.
We found the waterpath again.
Not like we really needed the path anymore. Up ahead, I saw a break in the ice – a light blue patch of water that meant there was sky, not ice, above our heads. We were thousands of feet below the surface, so someone must have hollowed out the ice up ahead.
Now I could explain the first step in the plan, as crazy as it sounded. Who cares? If it takes me one step closer to Tabitha, I’ll walk on water. “You’ll pass through shadow and flame,” the Harper Device once told me. Well, maybe the shadow was past. On to the flame. The light brightened ahead.
“There’s the Chaos,” I said.
ALIEN TRUNKS
Light streamed through the blue waters above the submarine. That didn’t mean we were near the surface of Europa though. I pointed the sub upward. We surfaced and found ourselves floating in the tourmaline waters. Peaky waves rippled on the surface.
Around us a few other submarines bobbed. Sailboats drifted by in the distance. Groups of paddle boarders and swimmers flecked the warm waters.
Surrounding us on all sides were icy walls. They stretched toward the sky. They were at least a mile straight up and colored a beautiful blue-gray. Abo Above our heads was a clear ice dome that arced across the entire sky. It was as if something drilled a perfectly round hole into the ice until it reached the ocean, then capped it with a crystal lid. It was beautiful.
Through the dome we could see Jupiter and its multi-colored rings. The gas giant took up most of the sky, but a sliver of space showed us, in the distance, a bright pinprick of light—our sun—and the monstrous planet above lit the ocean, walls, and dome of Rathmore. It was quite a sight, but what lay in front of us was harder to imagine.
An icicle as wide as the Amazon River reached from the ocean to the dome. It was broad at the base and top but thinner in the middle.
“Ain’t low gravity something else?” said Buckshot, shaking his head. “The city is built like a spiral staircase. That newel is probably two miles tall and a quarter-mile wide.”
“What’s a—?”
“A newel,” said Little Bacon, “is a central post in a spiral staircase that bears the weight of the stairs.”
“See, he’s helpful,” Janice told me.
Around that newel were what looked like stairs, and each step had its own color. It was still miles away, and as we slowly approached, I observed the seven “steps” of the staircase city-well, the sixth step was nearly gone. Its jagged remains looked like a tooth broken off at the base. What happened there? I wondered.
The closer we drifted in the sub, the more Rathmore looked like a city. There were figures the size of ants crawling on the steps. Those aren’t ants, the
y are Ascendant. I started to pick out buildings on each step, some of them tall like skyscrapers, others round like sports arenas. From the ocean we could only see the bottom of the highest steps.
“Stars, are those Ascendant up there?” asked Sunjay.
“Those buildings remind me of my visit to Italy last summer,” Janice said. “Doesn’t that look like a Roman arena? There was a great gelato shop outside one of them...”
“Enough about gelato,” I said. “We need to get down to business.”
“Okay, what’s the plan?” she said. Gulp. I didn’t want to tell them. My dad bought me some time.
“Before Tully explains,” my dad said, “let’s be clear on one thing. If separated, meet here on the submarine in twenty-four hours.”
Everyone nodded and looked my way. Showtime. Oh, man, I don’t want to say this out loud. They’re going to think I’m crazy.
There was just no way to say the plan, so I motioned for Buckshot to hand me the backpack. I unzipped it and out fell the contents: four pairs of swim trunks and one women’s gray one-piece bathing suit with white polka dots. Janice picked it up. I smiled sheepishly.
“You have a backpack full of retro swimsuits,” Janice explained.
“There are bathrobes, too,” I said.
“Fantastic,” she said. “Now what is the plan?”
“See, uh, that is the plan,” I said. “Jason told me, ‘Put on the swimsuits and swim to shore.’ Well, he called them ‘bathing costumes’ but he meant swimsuits because he doesn’t speak the best English—so he said, ‘Cover yourselves in the bathrobes because you have not tasted the ink.’ He said that because we don’t have tattoos. Anyway, then we go into the city and find clothes. Blend in. Get tattoos. Find Tabitha. She’ll be in a purple tower.”
“What about weapons?” asked Sunjay. “We need to defend ourselves.”
“We can’t just pop out of the water in bathrobes holding black staffs,” I said. “Think about it like back on Earth. What if you saw someone come out of the ocean with a shotgun?”
“Bangers, this is a bad plan,” said Janice, throwing her arms in the air. “I can’t wear this swimsuit. It’s January. I’m not bathing suit ready.”
“She’s got a point,” said Buckshot. Janice glared at him. “No, no. Not about you, Carpool. Look at these swimsuits, Tully. Me and your dad are gonna look like them European tourists in their tiny Speedos.”
“Fine,” I said, “then swim ashore naked! It’s not perfect, but it’s a plan, and Jason knows the city better than we do. Like Dad said, we have to stay hidden, play by their rules. Right, Dad?”
My dad stayed quiet. He surveyed the situation. Come on, Dad. Get my back here. Surely he had a backup plan, and when he hesitated I thought he might overrule me with some brilliant idea that would rescue Tabitha and return us to the sub in the simplest way possible, but he pursed his lips and nodded.
“If Tully says swim, we swim,” my dad finally said. “If anyone can make a weird plan work, it’s Tully.”
“Uh, thanks?” I said. My dad grinned.
“Is the air safe out there?” asked Sunjay.
“It’s safe,” my dad said, “as is the water. The Ascendant are much like us, so let’s suit up.”
“Won’t the water be freezing?” Sunjay asked.
“Sunjay, think,” said Janice. “There are paddle boarders and swimmers out there. And remember that geyser that almost killed me? That was heated water breaking through the crust of Europa. The Ascendant must use hydrothermal power. This place is air and water conditioned. I just wish they had better fashion sense.”
No time was wasted. We suited up and stood on the deck of the sub with our robes under our arms.
“In our spacesuits we looked like a five-man wrecking crew, but good golly,” Buckshot said. “I signed up for a lot on this trip, but not free swimming in the ocean.”
“And you made fun of me for over packing,” I said. “If only you had your own swim trunks, right?”
“We’re going to look like idiots crawling out of the water in soaking bathrobes,” he said.
“We’ll see,” my dad said. He rubbed the cloth between his fingers. “Remember, if separated, meet at the sub in twenty-four hours.”
My dad dove in. I forgot we were in low gravity until he did. Watching him jump fifteen feet in the air, do a quadruple flip, and splash far away from us, all with the city of Rathmore beyond him, took my breath away, made me forget about our insane mission for a moment. Where are we? What are we doing? My life just can’t be real, I told myself. But then I thought about my Red Visions of Tabitha. I would see her again soon, and it started with a plunge into alien waters.
“Hang on, Bacon,” I said.
“It’s the only way to hang,” he replied, grabbing a handful of my hair and holding on for his dear Handroid life as we plunged into the warm blue water.
SHORE
“It’s like Ascendant Cancun!” said Sunjay, swimming beside me. “Come to Cancun!” shouted Little Bacon. “Just shout ‘Cancun me, bro!’ into your holophone to see video of the beautiful beaches and festive nightlife.”
“Are you serious?” I said. “Enough infomercials, Little Bacon.”
“Apologies, sir, but I am not myself right now. My last software update included a number of advertisements. I cannot switch them off once they begin.”
Great...I have a talking billboard attached to my head. Why didn’t I leave him on the submarine with the Sacred? Oh, that’s right. Because he can read Greek.
Swimming was almost as easy as walking on Europa, but we had a long way to go and time to view the city from afar. I’m also not the greatest swimmer. Sunjay freestyled right past us. Janice rolled her eyes but watched him. We stuck with the breaststroke.
There was only one beach in front of the steep city streets. All one stretch of sand but divided into different colors, seven in all.
“Make for the grey beach to the far left,” my dad said. “We can blend in.” That made sense. It was crowded—fewer chairs, more towels, a throng of Ascendant playing in the water. The far right beach was almost completely deserted. The beach chairs and tables were dull yellow against the purple sand. I pointed them out.
“Those look gold-plated,” said Janice. “That’s classy, like the French Riviera.”
“Cheap flights to the French Riviera! Just say ‘Bonjour, mon amour!’ into your holophone for a chance to win!” Little Bacon said, before I dunked him under the water.
“Be nice to Bacon,” said Janice, “you say weirder things than that all the time.”
Halfway to our grey beach we could see the sandy shore bustling with Ascendant beachgoers. The beach was stuffed with beach chairs, volleyball nets, and Frisbees that sailed toward the water, only to be caught thirty feet in the air by a jumping Ascendant. People—no, Ascendant—sat on beach chairs and blankets. Further up the beach they warmed their hands around glowing orange poles.
It was like an Ascendant version of Venice Beach. I visited there a few summer ago, and some of the crazy street performers on Venice Beach would love this place. They would fit in, too. Apparently not every Ascendant was seven feet tall and ready to play professional football.
The Ascendant didn’t look like just one ethnicity. That was a relief. I thought Sunjay would blend in best because of his skin tone, but the Ascendant skin tone varied from light to dark. We would be okay. Well, almost okay. We could see all the beachgoers clearly now. Everyone except small children had tattoos scrolling across their skin.
“When we hit the beach, spread out,” my dad told us. “Regroup near that statue beyond the beach.”
Dad and Buckshot went in front of us. They swam through the peaky waves, threw on their bathrobes, and stepped lightly onto the sand, then Janice, then me, with Bacon shoved tightly into my robe pocket. But where was Sunjay? He swam too far ahead.
Immediately I noticed something about our bathrobes. They repelled water like a duck’s feathers.
/> “I think they’re hydrophobic,” said Janice. “My uncle worked on material like this before he built the Upthruster. You can hold it underwater for an hour. When you pull it out, there’s not a trace of water.”
We walked out of the surf and up the steep beach. Alien children, teens, and adults all wandered up and down the gray sand wearing swimsuits or robes like ours. They laughed, talked, and played. Street performers wandered around playing drums and horns. It really wasn’t so hard to blend in at first because of the massive crowd and the carnival atmosphere.
I felt Janice’s hand grab mine from behind. “Stay close,” she whispered. “Keep your head down. No eye contact.”
With my head down I walked through the crowd. Swim trunks, legs, and a variety of tattoos. One tattoo appeared on every Ascendant’s calf: either “I” or “II.” Were those Roman numerals? Well, Ascendant numerals? In either case, the number was not in motion like the rest of the tattoos. They were fixed in place.
We waded through the sea of numbered legs—and were almost past most of them—when I saw him: a boy who looked familiar, about seven years old, like the one in the virtual arena on the Mini-Mane. A flower tattoo bloomed on his face. He stared up at me with a question in his black eyes. He looked at my calf, and I know what he saw. No number. I tried to pull the robe down farther, but it wouldn’t cover my leg.
Keep moving, I willed myself forward, gripping Janice’s hand. We passed broken chairs, men selling fried alien octopus on a stick, young Ascendant dancing and having jumping contests-at least fifty feet in the air-and found a boardwalk with shops on one side and the beach on the other. The beachgoers filed into a line and we did the same. Yes, the towel line! Up ahead, the Ascendant walked up, grabbed a towel from an ancient female Ascendant, and moved on. Janice whispered to me. “Tully, get back to back with me and face the shops. They won’t see that we’re missing the numeral.”