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Site content may offend. Content includes horror, murder, torture, lawlessness, military carnage, Anglo Saxon crudities, occasional adult incidents and George Bush |
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"Heineman," said Atlanta, who was still in the sea. She wanted to pass him something. What? Oh. Little boy Loki's model skyship, which had somehow come into her possession. (Poor Loki!) Heineman took it, and then Atlanta extended a hand. Heineman tossed the model down by his feet, and helped drag his sister aboard. A waved buffeted the prau, making Heineman stagger. "Sit down!" yelled Dug Mantis. Hammered by that voice, Heineman sat abruptly, huddling down beside Atlanta. And Dug Mantis turned his attention to the business of getting the sail hoisted. The prau was an intricate mystery of shadows and flaring light, of snaking ropes and rocking water, of ribbed wood and bags of canvas. The adaptive skins, hollow tubular creatures, pulsed rhythmically, excited by the prospect of diving, of melding with humans, of feeding on blood. Flaring light glowed on the whip-thin sensory stalks which fringed their tube-openings. The yellowish white of the sensory stalks writhed, tasting the night air, gathering data. The sight made Heineman feel sick. As the little fleet quested out toward the Spliars, the light from the wreck grew stronger and stronger. By the time they were above the wreck, the diffused light filtering up from below was so powerful that it gave a greenish cast to their faces. The wrecked ship from Barth Banchup Bakchakris, Chalakanesia's first skyship wreck, lay in the depths below, spilling streams of air to the surface. The wreck was huge, its swollen green carapace dotted by the garish orange sunbursts of emergency lights and the flash, flash, flash of red wreck beacons. A luminous monster, any surviving humans drowning in its maw. A little trashed jetsam floated in the bob and buck of the nightsea waves - a blonde wig, a plastic chamberpot, an orange, an inflatable plastic doll. But the Zuzu Magore was still substantially intact. Otherwise there would had been much more garbage in the sea. Even Heineman was sufficiently sea-smart to tell that much. Peering down into the misty realms of flaring light below, Heineman guessed that the topmost portions of the Zuzu Magore were barely three fathoms below the sea's surface. Bleeding bubbles. Bleeding air. There is air down there, so any survivors may still be breathing. But the ship is cracked. The egg is no longer airtight. The bubbles are escaping, and the water will be rising inside. Rising to the gasping mouth, to the -- "Business," said Heineman, firmly, dismissing the horrifying image which had surfaced in his mind. You are an accountant. Right? You are a stable individual. You do not have an imagination. (Let's hope you don't, anyway.) Your role in life is to count things. So let's count. Three fathoms down to the topmost portion of the Zuzu Magore. So the bottom of the skyship would be - how far down? Ten fathoms? More? That was when old man Zinjanthrop arrived. While the praus had been questing outward toward the Spliars, Zinjanthrop had hustled to Eastport by rickshaw, had entered the vug machine at La Lantis, and, liberated into the form of a disembodied head, had free-floated his way across the darkness of the Eastern Ocean. Now he was on site - at least, his head was - and ready to take command. "Report to me!" sang out Zinjanthrop. "Boatmasters - all divers down, all divers up!" The old man would mastermind the salvage operation, and would keep track of who was on the surface and who was down below. That was very important - and difficult. With multiple boats and multiple divers, it was all too easy to lose someone in a wreck dive, to forget they were down there. Heineman knew as much from anecdote, but was only now starting to appreciate how much confusion was involved in the actuality of an emergency wreck dive. "Twelve fathoms of water here," sang out Zinjanthrop. "Boatmasters, sing your divers!" Then the boatmasters began to cry out names, each name accompanied by a splash as a diver hit the night sea, descending from darkness to the light. Twelve fathoms was well within the safe working limit of divers who owed genes to the Mer, particularly when their own resources were supplemented by those of the adaptive skins. The true danger would be from torn metal, burst steam pipes, caustic chemicals, oil, snaking ropes and other debris. And sharks. - Don't even think about the sharks! So thought Heineman. "Hold this!" said Dug Mantis, passing Heineman a diving rope. "Don't let go! Pay it out! Don't let it get slack! Hold onto it until I tell you otherwise!" Heineman nodded. He understood. Dug Mantis was going to dive, and Heineman would monitor his safety rope. Dug's torso was already shrouded with the black torso tube of an adaptive skin. Dug's silverwhite skin gleamed in the night, visible through the vetavetch, the tailored holes cut in the adaptive skin at the level of his floating ribs. "Heineman," said Dug, with a note of warning in his voice. "Don't screw up. I'm relying on you." "I won't," said Heineman, who was hurt to realize how low he stood in his cousin's esteem. Then Atlanta cried out, for Zinjanthrop's benefit: "Diver down! Dug Mantis down!" "Dug Mantis down," shouted Zinjanthrop, acknowledging, confirming. Heineman paid out the rope as his cousin Dug took it downward. The rope was already wet and heavy from earlier use. It was harsh and bristly, offensive to Heineman's fingers. But this is Dug's life you're holding. A human life - and don't you forget it. When the rope went dead, Heineman pulled in the slack. He knelt in the prau, his fingers listening to the rope as a fisherman listens to a fishing line. The rope jerked once, savagely. It was Dug, down below, making sure Heineman got the message: listen up, cousin! Then there was a pause, then the rope was tugged, distinctly, five times. Which meant - what? Heineman knew only a handful of the salvage codes. "Five," said Heineman, speaking to the night. "He's anchored the rope to something solid," said Atlanta, explaining. Graced with that knowledge, Heineman waited, fingers tender on the rope, listening for an emergency signal, the call for help. Soon, the first survivors were brought up alive from the depths - coughing, gasping, hacking out the occasional word of need or despair. One rescued foreigner from Hell screamed in raw agony as an adaptive skin was torn away from his flesh. To Heineman, it was all at least half-familiar - the rocking rhythm of the night sea, the lights of the neighboring praus, the splash of divers, the glimmer of gel-lights descending to the depths, the cadaverous boat-crew faces lit by light from below. He knew all this from stories, at least, for the work of his Family was the work of the sea, diving and salvage, rescue and wreck-work, pressure and depth. Some of his earliest childhood memories were of being on the beach when the boats departed and returned, and of listening to the wild tales told afterwards over feasts of beer and barbecue steaks. But this was his first salvage job, so everything was a challenge, and he soon lost track of the passage of time, too intent on detail to have a firm grasp of the whole. After a while, the pain in his knees told him he had been kneeling on wood for a long time. How long? No idea. He was numb from the night cold, half-hypnotized by the rhythm of the sea-rocked stars. "Here," said someone. It was Atlanta, offering coffee. Heineman took it. One hand for the rope, one for the mug. The coffee was hot, furnace hot and intensely sweet. And strong. In all his life coffee had never smelt so hot or tasted so good. Its richness made him realize how late the night was, and how cold he was. Seeking to ease his cold cramped flesh, Heineman shifted from kneeling to squatting and back again. Suddenly, he realized Dug was standing beside him. Dug had surfaced without signaling on the rope. Must have come up on the other side of the prau. "What the hell happened to protocol?" said Heineman, shocked into anger. "You never signaled! I thought you were down there!" "Heineman," said Dug, too exhausted to apologize or explain. "You've got to go down." "What?" said Heineman. "Down," said Dug. "We need you, Heineman." Dug Mantis was bleeding. He had torn his scalp on jagged metal while rescuing men from the wreckage of the Zuzu Magore. He was injured and exhausted. And there was Atlanta, holding the heavy torso tube of an adaptive skin. Big sister. The face of duty. Accepting the inevitable, Heineman scrambled out of his clothes. The cold night air snatched at his skin. He grabbed the torso tube and wrenched it over him, forcing himself into that clammy embrace. "Heineman," said Atlanta, pulling impatiently at the tube as she tried to rearrange it. "Stand up. And stand still!" Heineman stood as still as he could. Smothered by the encumbering embrace of the adaptive skin. Heavy, claustrophobic, crushed. Atlanta tugged at the skin, making sure Heineman's floating ribs were exposed by the vetavetch, the vital cutaway holes. Then Heineman cried out as the adaptive skin drove its tendrils into his body, injecting itself into his arteries and veins, matching its blood supply with his. Water sloshed and glubbered in the bilges of the prau's V-cut hull, the boat groaning as the creaking swells lifted it and dropped it. The stability of land was just a memory. All around, evolutions of water shaped and reshaped the darkness. Heineman felt small, weak and cold - fit more for hospitalization than for heroism. "Heineman." Atlanta again. This time she had a gel-torch, a cold bubble of blue-green light hanging from a rubber strap. She looped the strap round his wrist, and tied it tight so he could not lose it. "This is the ship," said Dug, holding a child's model of the Zuzu Magore - the property of little boy Loki. "Yes," said Heineman, waiting to receive instructions. "It's canted over, like this," said Dug, tilting the model. "The side that's higher, there's a rent - a rip. Down here. Here. See? The hull's torn open. That's where you get in." "Yes," said Heineman. "Go down the rope," said Dug, meaning the salvage rope which Heineman had previously been monitoring. "You're at the bottom. Got it? Good. Hang on the rope. Face the ship. The rip is to your left. Swim left, and toward the ship." "It'll be dark." "It's plenty bright," said Dug. "The ship, the hole. No problem. Outside, green. Inside, orange. Look for the orange. That's the hole." "Okay." "There are people inside," said Dug. "In the ship. We think. Find out - you'll have to get out of your skin. Then get them inside it. No other way." Heineman understood. The foreigners trapped underwater were not of the sealines, and so could breathe underwater. To escape from the ship they needed the help of the adaptive skins, the biological exterior lungs which, for Family divers, served merely as supplementary sources of oxygen. "Watch yourself," warned Dug. "These crazy foreigners, they've never seen a skin in their lives. Think we're sea monsters or something. Might even fight you. They sure aren't the easiest people to rescue." "But we've got to try," said Heineman, as if hoping that someone would contradict him, would absolve him from his responsibility. "Anyway - where do I look?" "The ship," said Dug, demonstrating with Loki's model. "Like three donuts. Sitting on top of each other. Capped here. Like this. By this half a tennis ball. On top of the tennis ball, this carbuncle." "Got you," said Heineman. "The two lowest levels, they're clear. We think. Probably clear - we searched. Anyway, we're checking. But you, you take the topmost ring, the topmost donut." "From the bottom?" said Heineman. "How about the top? Can't I get in through the top?" "From the bottom," confirmed Dug. "Through the hole. There are emergency exits, but they won't open against water." "Why not?" said Heineman. "Go ask the man who built the thing," said Dug, who never had patience with stupid questions. "It wasn't designed to crash in the sea. Fact is, it wasn't designed to crash, period." Then someone handed Heineman a pair of reef boots. He pulled them on, then climbed out onto one of the outriggers of the prau, and jumped. The command came to him out of his memory:-- "Float!" Float, more. You have to float. Must. Orient yourself. Get used to the water, give yourself time. - Speed kills! Hurry is the worst thing! Remembering these axioms, Heineman floated face-down above the blurred and glowing vastness of the wreck. The adaptive skin was no burden whatsoever now that he was supported by the salt of the sea. And it was starting to make him warm. However, the vetavetch - the gaps where patches had been cut from the torso tube - left his floating ribs naked to the sea. Naked, and cold. As Heineman floated there, his gill-slits began to open. His floating ribs slid apart, admitting the cold tongues of the sea. Then, with an initiating spasm, his water-lung - the water-breathing organ centered beneath his naval - began sucking in the sea. That first liquid convulsion felt a bit like your bowels giving way. Then, settling into a steady working rhythm, the water-lung sucked and pulsed, processing oxygen from the water. An internal masseur, powerful and remorseless, inflicting an overwhelming rhythm on your flesh. Heineman had always hated that sensation of being governed and controlled by something which was not quite himself. As a child, he had imagined his water-lung to be a kind of octopus, an alien organism living in his flesh. In early adolescence, there had been times when he had been so suspicious of this appetite beneath his skin that he had refused to take a bath, restricting himself to showers, or, at times of peak neurosis, to a quick sponge-down. Control - that was the key issue. The water-lung was not under volitional control. Heineman owed genes to the sea, tracing one side of his ancestry back to the Mer. He belonged to the sealines: and, in the manner of his kind, had no control over the functions of his water-lung. It inevitably started functioning as soon as he was immersed in water: it was an automatic survival reflex. The night sea. Awash with green. Stained with orange and blurting red. The prau's outrigger jarred against Heineman's shoulder, almost bashed in his head. It was dangerous to stay on the surface. Besides - everyone must be watching him. Assessing how long it took him to nerve himself up for the plunge. Go,then. Time to follow the rope and its blue-green gel-torch marker-lights down to the depths. He was oriented, he was ready, and to wait further would be cowardice. Heineman dived, but it was hard to fight his way down. Why? Air: there was still air in his lungs. Exhale, then. No! I need - you don't need! By an act of will, Heineman breathed out, voiding his lungs. The big fat bubbles blurped upwards. His life, escaping. No air! He fought against panic. No air? So what? Air is just surplus buoyancy. An inconvenience. You're doing just fine. - Now dive. Don't think. Just do it. Thought threatens insanity. You are alone. The sea extends into darkness, and the darkness is the jaws of a shark. So don't think. Just take it moment by moment. One moment, then the next. Down. Swim down. Follow the rope. With the air gone from his lungs, Heineman found it easy to swim down into the depths, descending through the misty nimbus of light, doing his best to forget about the omnivorous darkness of the open sea beyond. Descending, allowing the rope to lure him down, he took in the hugeness of the Zuzu Magore. As he descended, he heard, or thought he heard, faint sounds of confused mechanical distress from inside that monstrosity. Three bulging donut curves like gigantic rings of fat set atop one another, obese, swollen, gravid. Glowing green curves studded with lurid orange sunbursts, bleeding red light from pulsing wreck beacons. And there was the end of the rope. Knotted loosely to a seabottom boulder. Heineman hauled himself down, twisted, stood. Sand puffed up from his reef boots as he stood on the seafloor, one hand on the rope, looking for the rent, the hole. There! Impossible to miss - a huge orange gash where the ship had torn itself open on one of the rocks of the Spliars. That was the way in. And now could hear, more clearly than before, the asymmetrical tempos of the ship's internal confusion, the bungling percussion of the ship's slow, confused death. Abruptly, the sea groaned, horribly. The ship buckled, collapsing toward Heineman. It was toppling, would roll down upon him, would crush him into darkness, nothingness, would mash him beneath its crippled tonnage, would - |
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zenvirus.com. Copyright © 2002 Hugh Cook. All rights reserved. |
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