Asimov's SF, January 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Tish is up at dawn the next day and outside not much later, ready to begin. Before they can hunt the leviathan, they have to dismantle half their space ship and turn it into an ocean-going vessel. Tish wants to get it done, to get out there on the ocean, to do her job and ... well, she doesn't know exactly what comes after that, hopes in fact that she will be a different person after, someone who has left her past behind. She doesn't sleep anymore, except in random snatches. She dreams every night. Usually the dreams are all about blood and screaming and running, just running with no hope and nowhere to go and—but last night the dreams were quiet, peaceful with a deep voice that spoke so smooth and true it set up a humming underneath her breastbone. She couldn't understand anything the voice was saying; she couldn't find its source. But she knew it was all right, that everything always, forever would be all right.

  She is already tackling the hold latches when Fallon and the rest of the crew join her. The old hands fall in without a word; Kelly climbs the hull like he was born among the trees of AlphaTerra and rigs a line for lowering the smaller sections. Kelly lost four fingers hunting leviathans—not lost to the leviathan, lost when his ship was boarded by another crew bent on swiping the thing that makes leviathan worth hunting far beyond the price of oil—iridescent crystals found, when one is lucky, in the liver of the creatures. An entire crew's fortune for a lifetime can be made on just five leviathan crystals.

  Frisco-Wallace runs a servocart out of the main hold and directs Patrick and toaLua to start loading. Everyone has a job, space-born animosity falls away. Tish feels good for the first time in a long time; sweat clings to the small of her back and plasters her short hair against her neck. She wishes this—just this—could last forever.

  They finish stripping the ship by noon. The holds lie exposed, metal girders give the ship shape with no covering, like an ancient beast gone to bones. The upper levels are still intact—bridge and sleeping quarters. The three main holds carried the snap-in, titanium and polyalloy superstructure for their ocean-going ship. Two of the six main engines and half the electronics, along with another bundle of shipped parts, will complete the new ship. If they don't return intact, their space craft will never leave the planet.

  If they don't return with a leviathan, they will have no reason to leave.

  Tish works with toaLua in the afternoon, scaling the snap-in superstructure and holding the light strong framing pieces while he tightens them in. He stares at her without speaking. In an old life, she would have snapped at him, “What! Why are you staring?” But there is something about it, as if she deserves to be stared at, as if everyone and especially he knows who she is and what she's done. His gaze isn't accusatory or angry, though, simply assessing.

  As the afternoon progresses, their smooth rhythm acquires a familiarity all its own and she doesn't quite notice, or pretends not to, at least, when he starts touching her more often than he needs to. It feels right, the touching, part of the lifting and moving and building.

  Fallon calls a halt at sundown and pronounces himself satisfied with their progress. “If this weather holds, we'll be on the ocean tomorrow,” he says. Tish knows that he is as happy as it's possible for him to be. He will have managed Pretoria—getting there—and the ocean—getting on it—while there is still half a season's hunting left. Tish considers celebrating this simple fact with the others tonight down at the portside bars. But ... she stops halfway along the path from the harbor back to the skeletal remains of their space ship ... she can't. She just can't and she can't explain it to them.

  Someone approaches her from behind. A hand on her shoulder, and toaLua is speaking softly in her ear, “You are fine?"

  She knows that she should shake him off, but she doesn't. It feels good, as it did earlier this afternoon, someone touching her again. She wants that, desperately, wants back the things she's lost. She closes her eyes and leans into his hand, just for a fraction of a second—a second can't make a difference, she tells herself. She opens her eyes and takes a step away from him. “I'm fine,” she says.

  “I will come back with you,” he offers.

  She shrugs and doesn't tell him yes or no. He adjusts his stride to hers and they walk in something approaching companionable silence back to the ship. The others have all veered off to the dockside bars and it's just the two of them, alone. At some point, he puts his hand on her wrist and she doesn't shrug him off.

  She does and doesn't realize that he is drawing her away from the main path, down toward the beach, back to the water. The double moons are high in the sky already and the beach glows, as if the sand is lit from within. The tide is half-high and the water, washing ashore in shallow waves, sounds urgent and relentless. Tish is assailed by a rush of longing so great she can hardly bear it. She grabs toaLua and pushes him onto the sand. Grabbing his shirt in her fists and pushing it up, she presses her face against his muscular chest and breathes in his scent—sweat lain over with some spice she doesn't know.

  He laughs and grabs at her. “You always want,” he says. She doesn't know what he means. She doesn't care. She wants for this moment to exist separate from the past, separate from the future. She wants to have no guilt, no hopes, no debts to pay or pasts to redeem. Just here. Just now.

  The waves break. She kneels in front of toaLua and pulls her shirt over her head. He grins at her and reaches for her hand. Their coupling is slow and languid, out of rhythm with the waves and yet somehow in harmony with them too. Half-tide rises to nearly full; water licks at their ankles. Tish dreams without knowing that she's sleeping.

  She is in water. She is naked and floating and so relaxed that she feels as if the world has emptied out her insides and left nothing but peace behind. She waits because that's all she has to do. Wait. Just wait.

  Then he comes. He is huge, but huge is not the right word. Big, large, enormous, giant are words that describe nothing. They are inadequate to the task of description, as if they have never had meaning. He is larger than suns, more massive than solar systems, infinite beyond universes. He pauses and looks at her with his giant eye, but he doesn't want her. She is too small, too broken.

  She cries and only realizes after she begins that she is not crying because she will not be able to touch him, will not be touched by him. She cries because her life has come here, to this. She cries because the past cannot be changed, because she didn't understand this when it mattered, because she will never be huge like ancient suns, because....

  “Forgive me.” The voice is unexpected. Human and yet not-human. It rumbles against her chest, hums against her bones. It is ancient and young, hollow and vigorous. It vibrates hard against her and she doesn't know what it means. Forgive him? Forgive what? He has done nothing to her or for her or with her. He moves and the water he displaces is so massive that she finds herself riding a wave that builds and builds and carries her higher and higher as if somehow, simply by staying, she will touch the roof of the world.

  “Forgive."

  She opens her eyes. toaLua is above her, brushing her hair from her face. The tide has come up high enough that waves wash over their legs. “What?” she blinks her eyes and levers herself up awkwardly on her elbows.

  “I'm sorry,” he says. “You were crying."

  She brushes her hand across her cheek and pushes herself away from him. “I'm all right,” she says, though he has not asked her a question.

  A picture flashes into her head: her sister running—running—toward her, lifting her—she must have been young, though she does not remember when this happened—and spinning her around in her arms. “We're free!” her sister says in the picture in Tish's mind. But they weren't. They just didn't know it then.

  * * * *

  She rises and picks her shirt off the ground, shaking sand from its folds. The double moons have arced halfway across the sky. They are near full and the light they cast shines silver on the ocean and flat gold on the ochre sand. toaLua comes up behind her. He doesn't say anything, but he puts his
hands on her waist and leans close to her. An evening wind lifts off the water, cooler than the surrounding air. It plays at the damp ends of Tish's hair. She wishes this moment would last, the quiet and the calm ocean, the lifting breeze, the touch of another person.

  A sharp shout breaks the moment. Tish and toaLua step apart. Laughter echoes just beyond the dunes and they lunge back to their clothes, struggling into trousers and boots. Tish ducks her head sideways, unwilling to look at him now, not sure what she was thinking when she came here with him, wanting nothing except to get back to the bright artificial port lights, back to the world she knows, where the past defines her, where she touches nothing and prays every morning when she wakes that nothing will touch her.

  It is two more days until Fallon declares the ship seaworthy and files for permission to launch. The inspection takes an additional half day. The crew, left with nothing much to do, spends the afternoon on the beach at low tide. Apon has brought a bottle of spirits she's been hoarding the entire trip.

  “Leviathan!” she shouts and tips the bottle up and drinks until liquid trails out of the corners of her mouth and down her chin. She passes the bottle to the others and everyone takes a drink. The bottle comes to Tish who is sitting a little apart from the others, but still within the glow of the bonfire they've built. She tips the bottle up and feels the fiery liquid burn down her throat and lick like fire to the tips of her fingers and toes. She remembers years ago a beach bonfire with her sister, sitting in the near dark as the season shifted out of summer while her sister explained in plain and simple terms how the world was about to change.

  Apon grabs the empty bottle from Tish's hand and flings it deep into the surf. It is her invitation to the leviathan—a message to tell them she is coming.

  Fallon rises and makes a speech. toaLua slips around the circle and slides in behind Tish. She lets him touch her; she welcomes the distraction. The evening fades into a soft blur. Tish remembers walking on sand, water lapping at her feet, the touch of a hand, rock still warm from the afternoon sun. Not thinking ... not dreaming...

  “Forgive me."

  She is on the beach. The sky sparks with a thousand thousand pinpricks. The sand is a lighter shade of dark than the night sky, the ocean darker still, flashing silver occasionally in the moonlight. The waves are utterly silent and unreal. Tish turns around and her breath catches in her throat.

  Her sister is standing behind her.

  She starts to reach out but stops. This can't be real. Her sister's hair whips across her face and she brushes it away.

  “Forgive me,” her sister says.

  Tish feels a sharp pain deep in her chest, like something has stabbed her right between her ribs. She can't catch her breath, just short gasps, as if she's drowning. Her sister's dress billows and flutters, though Tish herself can't feel the wind. The dress is a deep, deep red, like crimson, like the last time she saw her sister, like—

  She wakes up screaming on the beach.

  She looks around and she is alone, half a mile or more from where they had the bonfire. Her shirt is lying wet on the sands behind her. She grabs it and pulls it over her head without even bothering to shake loose the sand. Her hands are shaking and her head is pounding though she doesn't think it's from the drinking. She closes her eyes and images spin, kaleidoscopic behind her eyes. She falls and doesn't even realize it until her back thumps into the packed sand.

  He is there, in every image, so big she can't really see him. Her sister is there too, sometimes in the crimson dress, sometimes in white, sometimes just there, like she was when Tish was young. But he, he is unchanging. And Tish knows that he knows that she is coming.

  Back at the ship the loading is nearly done.

  “You okay?” Fallon asks her.

  “Are you fine?” toaLua echoes, his head tilted to the side as if he actually cares, though she knows that he doesn't. How could he care? He doesn't know her. She's not even sure she knows herself. Her sister stayed and fought. Tish ran away. That's her story and she's sticking to it. Her story is all she has.

  * * * *

  Five days at sea and they have seen nothing. At least, they have seen massive schools of fish, several different species of aquatic mammals, birds that live all their lives on the ocean. But they have spotted no leviathan. Apon says this is not unusual. Fallon says he expected it.

  Tish can feel the leviathan; she dreams about him every night. It's the same one every time, though she doesn't have any idea how she knows. She can't ever see all of him, he is too huge—his eye alone is higher than the tallest tower she has ever seen—but she knows that it is him. She can feel him when she's awake, as if he is right underneath the boat, a silent massive shadow that doesn't show on any scanner, hundreds of feet below them, maybe, but there, like a weight that only Tish can feel.

  The ship, which they have named Hunde, is equipped for a six month journey, putting them, if they are not successful early on, back on land at the tail end of the season, risking massive storms and sea and crashing waves on the rocky shore. The ship is designed for limited sub-surface travel—useful only in desperate emergencies and not very useful then.

  Three weeks out and Tish spends her days in the crow's nest, high above the decks. He talks to her, even when she's awake—or thinks that she's awake. His mouth is so huge, the sounds pitched so low, she can't hear him, can't understand, but she knows that he's speaking. And she knows that what he's saying, if she could only hear it, would both make her whole and destroy her.

  Her sister is in her dreams, too. Tish tries not to see her, but when the leviathan comes, she can no longer look away. Her sister wears black, her hair swept back, and she is laughing. She looks as she always looked to Tish, except that she has grown. She is the size of the leviathan, though the leviathan is so big that Tish can't see him and her sister is knowable—compassionate and brave.

  “We had to do it,” her sister says to her. “I hope you understand. I hope that you forgive me.” Tish wants to run away. She doesn't want to hear it. But every night she dreams, every night her sister comes, and every night Tish wakes, crying, because the past will never change.

  * * * *

  “Shadows."

  Frisco-Wallace says one word and Fallon is there immediately. They have been at sea six weeks. They have seen evidence of two other ships, one on its way back to port with enough leviathan crystals to bankroll an army, one returning with nothing. Fallon has become short-tempered. He stalks the deck day and night as if staring unceasingly at the horizon will bring the leviathan to him. He only comes inside to gaze at the trackers and run numbers on the screens in his cabin.

  “Where?” he asks. “Are you sure?"

  “They're just shadows,” Frisco-Wallace says with a shrug. “But, damn, they're big."

  The crew, which has been slumped in inactivity, moves with enthusiasm to their jobs. Fallon pulls Tish aside.

  “Are you ready for this?” he asks her.

  “I can do it,” Tish tells him after a short silence. She figures she should be excited, her heart pounding in her chest. This is why she is here, what she has come for. To go out alone into the ocean and call the leviathan. But Tish knows something Fallon doesn't. She doesn't have to call the leviathan. Because the leviathan is calling her.

  That night, toaLua breaks out a hoarded bottle of whiskey and comes to her quarters, knocking shyly on her door. She has been avoiding him since they put to sea, not purposefully, but because she keeps forgetting that he's there. The sound of the leviathan grows louder all the time and she can't always see or hear what's right in front of her.

  When she first met toaLua she thought him nothing more than a brash boy relying on an abruptness that he somehow manages to make charming. But now she recognizes kindness in him and a certain awkward gentleness. He would love her if she let him, despite the fact that he sees in her what she refuses to see in herself. “Trouble follows you,” he told her their first night at sea when he found her on the deck,
head lifted to the stars.

  “I ran away,” she said, turning to face him.

  toaLua's eyes were dark against the moonless night, his face caught in planes and shadows. “No, you didn't,” he said calmly. He reached out to her, but she tripped on a carelessly stored emergency buoy and the clatter brought Fallon and Apon and Frisco-Wallace up on deck to see what was happening.

  Tonight, after they have consumed two-thirds of the whiskey, after the others, all except Apon, have drifted below deck, Tish puts her hand on toaLua's knee. “I know,” she says. “But ... but I can't—” The words choke in her throat.

  toaLua's hand closes over hers. “When you come back,” he says. “Then you will tell me how trouble follows you."

  Tish nods, but in that moment, just the way he says the words—"when you come back"—she realizes that there is some doubt in her mind that she will actually return.

  She launches at first light. The crew are all on deck to watch her leave, half of them busy, like they don't want to care too much that she is heading out, that succeed or fail, it has all come to this, that Tish will call the leviathan and it will come, or not, that nothing they do will make a difference right now. toaLua has climbed the mast and is perching in the crow's nest. She doesn't look, but she knows he's there, that he will watch her until he can't see her any longer. She knows now that he is a better man than she first thought him. But she can't care for him or see any path into the future that involves her and toaLua anywhere but here, on this planet, right now.

  She knows that she should be frightened, alone on the big ocean waiting for the big creature, who could swallow her whole if it wanted to. But she feels ... calm, as if days and months and years have led to this. She is headed toward the shadows they saw on the scanner, but she knows that it's unnecessary. The leviathan is beneath her, has been there all the time.