Pale Boundaries

by Scott Cleveland

  Terson clutched the impeller engine back to the turbines. They spun up raggedly, spitting water through the exhaust ports. Suddenly the surface ten meters to starboard thumped and geysered foam. Another geyser erupted fifteen meters to port, this one sending shards of coral whistling through the air. He heard the scream of another shell and understood: the helicopter was spotting for the ship, firing blind from the other side of the island.

  The jets roared, spewing clouds of greasy black smoke, but the boat moved. He shoved the throttle forward and shot away as a barrage of shells splashed around him, heard a crash aft as the loose containers struck the rail and spun into the wake. The reef ahead rushed toward him with unimaginable speed. The nose began to lift but just when it seemed he would make it the bow hit a coral protuberance with a sickening crunch. The impact hurled the boat into the air where it hung, balanced between gravity and the jet’s raw thrust. Slowly, the jets prevailed. The hydrojet accelerated, wobbling drunkenly. A stream of tracers flashed past, but the gunship fell behind, unable to match the boat’s speed.

  Terson flew west without instruments, following the sun as it fell below the horizon, every moment a battle to keep the craft level and true. Wind screamed through the shattered canopy; the damage done to the hull made the craft pull to starboard constantly. Without GPS the autopilot would not engage.

  A warning chime startled him a few hours later. The fuel gauge showed full, which was impossible, but enough of the sensor circuits worked to sound the alarm as the fuel level fell. When it ran dry the hydrojet would plow full speed into the ocean and make a quick end of him.

  Why he opted to land instead he did not know. Certainly a swift death was preferable to drowning or starvation on the high sea. Nevertheless, Terson did his best to bring himself down in one piece.

  Water rushed through the hole in the bow washing loose objects out through the aft gangway. The deluge swamped the boat before it came to a halt. Terson dashed down through the main cabin as the bow sank. It reached his waist as he splashed past the dead petty officer. He caught the second lifeboat canister as he scrambled to the stern and threw it in the water. It inflated dutifully and Terson stepped in as water rushed up around his ankles. The hydrojet went down nose first with a short hiss as the jets went under.

  Terson sat in the lifeboat, bobbing gently in the vast, dark sea.

  EIGHTEEN

  West of the Humboldt Archipelago: 2709:08:34 Standard

  A sea vulture wheeled in a high, wide circle with half a dozen of its flockmates, eyes fixed on a strange object floating in the ocean below.

  The vulture had evolved to soar, as evidenced by its six-meter wingspan and comparatively small body. It rode air currents like a sailplane, wings locked open by a bone spar-and-notch in its shoulder, an energy efficient adaptation that allowed it to remain aloft for weeks at a time but at a high cost in terms of take-offs. Flapping its wings to regain flight burned up precious reserves, and as a result it instinctively limited its landings to the necessities of rearing young and feeding.

  The opportunistic scavenger subsisted almost entirely on small fish snatched from the water on the fly using its long neck and beak. Occasionally, however, it chanced upon the floating carcass of a large aquatic denizen or, once in a great while, a land animal swept out to sea by rip tides or coastal floods.

  It was the enticing possibility of such a meal that persuaded the flock to pause in its journey, but caution prevented them from falling to immediately. Calories obtained by landing had to exceed those expended during takeoff later and of course there was the issue of predators that lured their own prey into striking range by feigning death.

  The flock’s spiral tightened over the space of hours, sharp eyes alert for such deception as they came nearer. Finally, satisfied that all was what it seemed and the rewards worth the risk, the lead vulture flexed the muscles that slipped its wing spars from their notches and alighted clumsily on the water. The others exercised a selfish caution, waiting to see what happened to the first of their number before they, too, left their natural element.

  The vulture kicked its wide webbed feet to circle the object, puzzled by the scent of neoprene, but decided it was of no account and approached to examine the creature within with one flat, black eye, then the other. It did not smell rotten, but the vulture recognized the sores resulting from the ravages of sunburn and salt. The creature had not yet expired, then. So much the better; the flock would not have to contend with competitors attracted by putrescence while they fed.

  It extended its neck and pecked at one of the weeping sores experimentally. The creature didn’t react, so the bird struck more boldly, this time lifting out a tiny gobbet of flesh, which it gulped down while blood welled up in the wound. The rest of the flock landed, screeching and jostling each other as they paddled toward the feast.

  The vulture moved in close to defend its right to the prime feeding position and turned its head to warn off a flockmate who ventured too close. At that instant, the creature lunged with a scream and seized it by the neck just below the head, turning aside the long, sharp beak and leaving the vulture with no weapon but its great wings, which it beat furiously to escape.

  The rest of the flock shrieked and took to the air, ramming and beating each other with their wings, leaving behind feces and drifting feathers. The captive vulture redoubled its effort, dipping its great wings in the water like oars, dragging the creature that held it from its floating perch into the water. Escape seemed certain, but once off its perch the creature produced a lower pair of appendages, which it wrapped around the vulture’s body, hindering the motion of its wings and freeing the upper pair to twist its head around on the long neck.

  The vulture’s trachea twisted shut; pressure built at the base of its skull. A spike of numbness shot through its body with a crack and its primitive consciousness vanished from the world.

  The bird’s neck proved more flexible than Terson expected. He twisted the head over three hundred and sixty degrees before the bones cracked and the wings extended in a quivering death spasm.

  He caught the rope along the outside of the raft and hauled himself in, collapsing on his back in the bottom from where he saw the rest of the flock wheeling in a circle overhead, gaining altitude. A pair lingered hopefully as he plucked his catch, but flew away when it became apparent he would neither drop dead nor throw the remains of their unfortunate companion overboard.

  Terson stripped the skin off with his teeth and bit out ragged chunks of rubbery meat from which he sucked the moisture and fluids. His hunger pangs, which had faded two days before, resumed at the promise of food but he spat each bite into the bottom of the raft. Digestion used up more water than it released and the human body could go far longer without food than it could water, though Terson did not intend to expire from a lack of either.

  The life raft’s manufacturer, however, appeared to have just such a fate in mind when it stocked the craft with a laughably sparse “survival kit” that did not include food or water. The sunscreen ointment proved to be water-soluble and washed off in a squall the second day. Without any means of propulsion the compass was useless. The finish on the plastic signal mirror began to react with salt water the moment the packaging was opened, turning dull and ineffective. The rest of his material wealth consisted of three fishhooks with two spools of line, which until that moment he’d been unable to use for lack of bait, and a surprisingly sophisticated emergency locator beacon that was sure to come in handy if he chose incarceration over death by exposure.

  Once again Nivian culture had shafted him. It shouldn’t have surprised him that the supplies were rudimentary, given that law-abiding operators never ventured far from rescue, making the locator beacon a more than adequate safeguard. It was Terson’s own fault for not anticipating the deficiency and correcting it in advance.

  He allowed himself two mouthfuls of raw meat after extracting as much moisture from the tissue as he could and jettisoned the remains of the
ungainly carcass, hoping that whatever scavengers it might attract wouldn’t be the sorts inclined to investigate the raft as well.

  He baited a hook with a piece of meat and dropped it over the side, bobbing the line up and down with only a vague notion of what was supposed to happen. Line fishing had always struck him as an impractical means of obtaining food, and most of the people he observed engaging in the activity appeared to be men using it as an excuse to escape from their wives. He played the line out farther and farther as the sun’s rays intensified overhead.

  Terson’s only source of shade was a pair of trousers washed out of the hydrojet as it sank which he’d ripped apart at the seams after discovering the sun lotion’s shortcomings. Sewn back together with a hook and line in a solid sheet and draped over his head and back, it afforded some degree of protection, although not enough to completely eliminate further sunburn. The only true relief came at night when he curled under his makeshift blanket shivering and waiting for the sun’s return.

  The wind had maintained a steady tack northeast at ten to fifteen knots. He estimated the raft moved at roughly half that in the same direction, though without charts he had no idea where it might take him. Assuming, of course, that he wasn’t in a current traveling a different direction at a greater speed, in which case he might yet find himself back in Alpha continent’s coastal waters. That unlikely circumstance seemed to be his best chance of survival, though how long it might be before it happened and his condition at the time were impossible to guess.

  His reception was more certain: incarceration or death. Bragg’s perception of what occurred aboard the hydrojet before Terson’s arrival was filtered by the police officer’s own conspiracy theories, of course, and his explanation was nearly incoherent, but the events Terson witnessed for himself went a long way toward convincing him that Bragg was more correct than not.

  Terson had never heard anything that hinted at the Coast Guard being a shoot-first organization when it came to travel violations. Certainly they responded in kind if fired on, and failure to heed an order to heave to came at one’s own peril, but even then they fired to disable, not to kill. The fact that they approached the island already expecting a violent confrontation indicated their certainty that whoever they found was in need of arrest, not rescue.

  Distracted by his ruminations, Terson missed the first experimental nibble on his line. Something took the bait with full force and fled, drawing the line taut and dragging it through his fingers, spool dancing wildly at his knees. In his surprise he set his grip tighter and felt the filament tear his flesh like a dull knife. He let go with a curse; the spool hopped over the side, vanishing into the water with a splash.

  He gritted his teeth against the pain while blood dripped from his fingers into the water where it dissipated like smoke, mingling with that of the two men he’d killed. For the officer, he felt no remorse, but the young sailor…he balled his hands into fists, squeezing hard to accentuate the sting. He wished like hell it hadn’t happened, but the feeling of guilt for spilling innocent blood was strangely absent. He remembered being sick at what he’d done, but acute emotion was distant and disconnected. For all Terson knew, this was exactly what a murderer felt like.

  He cut ten meters of line off the second spool but this time wrapped it around the ridiculous signal mirror before baiting the second hook and tossing it over the side. The water was startlingly clear, allowing him to follow the gobbet’s progress as it descended so he wouldn’t be caught by surprise again.

  Long rays of sunlight danced in the depths, flickering in and out of existence with the movement of surface ripples. The only constant feature was the sharp-sided shadow of the raft, forming a deep, perfectly proportioned shaft that vanished into the depths like a hole in the water.

  A flicker of motion caught his attention as a ribbon-like fish with tentacles at both ends of its body approached his hook. Terson tightened his grip on the mirror, prepared to snag the creature when it gulped down his offering. Another movement drew his eyes to the right in time to see something rush up from below, something dark, swift, and massive, growing larger by the second as it by-passed the crumb dangling in the water, heading for the source of the filament, instead.

  Terson fell back with his forearms raised to deflect the attack, screaming, as a black snout exploded from the surface in a spray of brine. It towered over the raft for a heartbeat, blocking the sun, and descended with a boom as its belly slapped the water, generating a wave that nearly capsized him. Terson buried his face in neoprene as a torrent of spray spattered across the raft, his heart in his throat.

  Then silence.

  The sea calmed and Terson slowly lifted his head to find a submarine floating quietly a dozen meters from the raft, water running from its deck. The vessel was small, but still three times the size of the hydrojet, painted a solid flat black without any identifying markings like an EPEA boat. His stomach knotted; of all Nivia’s policing agencies, the EPEA was the one he could count on to gun him down in his tracks without so much as a word.

  His concern was well warranted; he heard a hatch groan open and three men appeared atop the submarine’s conning tower, two of them armed with automatic rifles. Another hatch opened in the hull at the base of the tower from which two more sailors emerged. Terson squeezed his eyes closed, and shook his head—either the submarine was considerably larger than he first thought, or it was crewed entirely by dark-complected midgets.

  His eyes did not deceive him, he discovered. The tallest of the two sailors by the conning tower, now swinging a weighted line over his head, stood barely taller than Terson’s elbow and the other, bearing a long boathook, was a good ten centimeters shorter yet.

  The lineman sent the weighted end of the rope unerringly over Terson’s raft to plunk in the water less than a meter away on the opposite side. Terson caught hold of the line before it slid away and looped it around the raft’s edge rope so they could pull him in.

  Terson crawled aboard but once on deck the toll on his body from a week without significant food or water made itself agonizingly evident. His legs cramped and shook uncontrollably when he stood. The deck felt like it was spinning beneath him and he would have fallen if the lineman hadn’t steadied him with his stout frame. The sailor pointed at the deck emphatically, speaking in a high, rapid tongue that was so much gibberish to Terson’s ears, though the meaning was clear: sit down before you fall down!

  He obeyed, and the sailors turned their attention to the raft, leaving the armed men above to guard him. Terson took advantage of the opportunity to observe them more closely. All of the sailors had tightly curled hair cut almost to the scalp. Their skin tone varied from the lineman’s light chocolate to the nearly midnight black of one of the riflemen. Their facial features were uniform: slightly flattened, each dark brown eye displaying a prominent epicanthic fold. All wore light tan dungarees. Black braid and small gold insignia decked out the uniform of the third man in the tower.

  The lineman apparently reached the same conclusion as Terson regarding the usefulness of the raft’s contents and returned carrying only Terson’s blanket while his partner untied the line and pushed the raft away from the hull with his boathook. One of the riflemen raised his weapon at command from the officer and fired a burst into the raft, deflating it with an explosive pop.

  They helped Terson descend the ladder into a passageway clearly constructed with a full-stature crew in mind. The two sailors bore him aft through a deserted corridor past dogged hatches. He saw no sign of other crewmen, though he could hear voices.

  They turned into a short side-corridor after a few meters, pausing long enough to spin open the dogs on a featureless hatch that led to a tiny, bare, cabin that was nonetheless expansive compared to the living quarters of a T-108. The only appliances were a stainless steel sink and toilet against one wall and a pair of thin mats on the floor—the brig, apparently.

  Terson hesitated. He looked over his shoulder where the two sailors gazed
back at him warily, correctly reading his train of thought. For the first time since his arrival on Nivia, Terson’s size alone was a significant advantage. The sailors knew that, too, but Terson’s obvious weakness balanced it, putting them back on equal footing where numbers shifted the outcome of a physical altercation back to their favor.

  The two riflemen arrived as if on cue and took up station by the hatch.

  Terson sighed and stepped through. Lineman followed him in, indicating that he should disrobe and sit down on the toilet. Boathook appeared with a pail of hot water and a pair of washrags as Terson complied. They moved the mats aside, revealing a drain in the floor, and proceeded to scrub him down under the officer’s watchful gaze, unfazed by his nakedness even to the point of cleansing the intimate areas Terson preferred to take care of himself.

  Rinsed and dried, they let him knot a towel around his waist and slathered him down with an antiseptic-smelling ointment that stung his blisters but soothed his sunburn like magic. The officer, satisfied they’d done what they could for him, ordered them out and pulled the hatch shut.

  Panic rose in Terson’s throat when the dogs clanged and he fought to calm himself. The nearly bare room and locked door were frighteningly reminiscent of his incarceration at the Commonwealth’s hands, but he recognized that he was far better off than he’d been an hour earlier. He was helpless, but reasonably comfortable and in no imminent danger if their care of him so far meant anything. He had no choice but to trust them and wait to see what happened. It left one simple question: who the hell were these people?

  A narrow slot opened at the bottom of the door just then and a metal tray bearing a scoop of plain white rice and raw, unfamiliar vegetables slid through. Terson resisted the urge to gulp it down and ate with slow, measured bites to avoid getting sick by overloading his digestion. A short time later a bundle of cloth came through the slot that turned out to be his trousers, re-sewn and almost as good as new, flimsy slippers with drawstrings at the ankles and a loose pullover shirt made from pieces of three or four khaki uniforms.