She tilted her head slightly as she regarded him. “Do you mean that?” she said. Then she shook her head. “No, I couldn’t. It’s not my business. You’ve already been assigned enough tutors.”
“Blind men, according to you,” he pointed out. “I want to learn, Shara, as much as I can in the time I have. It’s the only way I can ever be of service to your home. If I’m to be spending my time here at the Academy, recuperating, then let’s put it to advantage. There’s so much I still can’t comprehend about this world of yours,” he admitted. “Open my eyes for me, Shara. So far, everyone’s been so guarded with me. Questions half answered and, often as not, never answered at all. Be my teacher, Shara.”
She seemed reluctant at first; she bit her lip, and grew slightly pensive, as if knowing she were about to do something expressly forbidden. “All right,” she said at last. “If you’re really being honest, then I will be, as well. What is it you want to learn?”
“Everything. Everything about Cinnabar — and about Hellix, as well. Your history, your wars, your triumphs and failures. So that when I do leave here, I’ll at least know the truth. The full truth.”
“The truth can be painful, Aladdin.”
“Not knowing it is worse. Do we have an agreement?”
“All right. An agreement.”
He smiled, not at all displeased to have the fiery, enigmatic girl be his guide again. “Where do we start?”
“At the beginning. Tomorrow, after you’ve slept. I may get myself into trouble for doing this, but perhaps you’re right; perhaps it’s time to see the world the way it really is.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Frogs,” muttered Aladdin.
He stood beside Shara, as both of them stared down into the glass tank, one of dozens that lined the walls of the antiseptic research labouratory. They were near the top floor of the Academy, and he could hear the hum of auxiliary motors, as they pumped in cool air through overhead vents.
“There are more than eight hundred known varieties of amphibians,” the girl told him as he peered inside the enclosure. Big rocks and floating peat moss added a dimension of realism to the miniature, artificial world inside the glass. The water was shallow, and along one smooth glass wall a long, rough-scaled species was climbing up without hindrance.
“That one is commonly called a sledge,” the yellow-haired scientist informed him. “Look closely and you’ll see the adhesive toe-discs, which allow it to cling to any surface. Like any amphibian, it’s predominantly aquatic, but you’ll find them just about anywhere on land as well. Frogs are a highly adaptive species. They seem to adjust to anything. Some, I believe, even live in trees.”
Aladdin looked at the girl quizzically. “How do you know that? You’ve never even seen a tree.”
Shara smiled. “Cinnabar wasn’t always under the sea,” she reminded him. “And even when we were surface dwellers, our science far surpassed your own. Flying frogs, they’re called. Because of their uncanny ability to leap among branches.”
The weary adventurer scratched his hair. Frogs who acted like monkeys!
“As I was saying, we’ve classified every subspecies very carefully, studied them all at great length in environments as similar to their own as possible. There are wood frogs, leopard frogs, even hairy frogs. We call them that because of the richly supplied blood vessels, which cover their bodies like hair, but actually serve as a natural aid in skin respiration.”
“Sounds like you’ve been quite thorough. What ever happened to plain old ordinary frogs?”
This time she laughed. “We have enough of those, too. Tailless amphibians are remarkable creatures.” She turned away from the tank and regarded her companion evenly. “All with one thing in common: the ability to adapt.” Aladdin listened with fascination to the girl. Poking his face close to the glass wall, he and the climbing sledge stared eyeball to eyeball at each other. “Why all this attention to frogs?” he asked, standing straight again and glancing around the chamber overridden with fish tanks.
“Not just frogs — all amphibians. As to why, because of the lessons they can teach. From them, we can perhaps discover the evolutionary future of Hellix. Here, Aladdin; come and see this.” She moved lithely away from the enclosure and led him to another, smaller tank, situated between two empty ones. Aladdin looked inside. There was only a single occupant. Superficially, it resembled a lizard; it had a tail and small, weak-looking limbs. Its skin was moist and scaleless. Smooth. It moved slowly amid the wet vegetation and shallow water. When Shara passed her hand over the glowlight directly above the tank, it dashed away from the sudden brightness.
“Salamanders avoid light,” she said. “They burrow in mud, hide in caves, even in the air pockets of our near-surface mines. What’s most interesting about them is that they can regenerate a lost limb or tail as easily as humans grow hair. They feed mostly on worms and snails; we try to keep them happy and content.” She demonstrated by dropping a few live squirming worms into the tank. The salamander came out from the shadows of the rocks and stared at its supper.
As Shara talked of the constant experiments undertaken at the Academy, Aladdin recalled his confrontation with the Hellixian swimmer. Amphibs, the Cinnabarian military called them. Amphib units. The use of that expression hit home. His assailant — as incredible as it seemed — bore a striking resemblance to the creature in the tank. “Are you saying that Hellixians, your enemies, are evolving into these? Salamanders?”
“No, not exactly,” she said with a shake of her head. She rubbed the residue of dampness on her hands onto the apron over her white tunic. “Not salamanders or frogs. But amphibians, yes. Their evolution never ceases to amaze us. Some of the changes are quite rational; others have us totally baffled. You see, their genetic make-up is constantly in a state of flux. A selection of mutations. The weak die, the strong survive. And with each passing generation those mutations seem to increase. A biological clock that has sped up a thousandfold. Hellixians of today are completely different from Hellixians of, say, my greatgrandfather’s time. At this rate, it’s impossible to tell what they’ll be like a hundred years hence. One thing, however, we do know: time is running in their favour and against us. When they came to the sea they were identical to us — air-breathing human beings. Now they’re — “ she groped for the right worlds, “they’re half-human. Something that as yet has no clear definition. So we study Amphibs rigorously, searching for clues.” As Shara walked to the antechamber behind the labouratory, Aladdin followed mutely. Many questions floated in his mind, but he was not yet able to formulate them.
Aside from a few musty and lifeless display tanks, the antechamber was empty. He looked inside the glass enclosures. They contained skeletons. Tiny skeletons of what could only be sea creatures.
“These fossils were discovered many years ago along the sea beds. Have a long look, Aladdin. Tell me if you find anything unusual.”
He leaned forward, and looked into the tank. Each skeleton had been painstakingly reconstructed; the backbone was long and primitive. The creature looked like an eel or snake, certainly aquatic. The skull, elongated hindlegs, and short tail resembled a frog. Still, his overall impression was that of a fish, despite the peculiarities. “But a fish doesn’t have limbs,” he said aloud to Shara.
“You are a fast learner,” she told him with a smile. “Amphibians, we think, evolved millions of years ago from lobe-finned fishes like this one. Muscular fins were supported by bony elements, which we’ve compared to amphibian limbs. Even functional lungs and an opening to the roof of the mouth were similar to those of surface vertebrates.”
“A fish that crawled and walked,” mumbled Aladdin incredulously, ‘it’s hard to accept.”
She nodded. “Unless you have any better explanation,” she teased.
“Of course I don’t. But reason tells me that a fish can’t walk! Even millions of years ago...”
“Is it really so strange? Think, Aladdin; aeons ago, when our world was youn
g and mankind just a gleam in the eye of God, when the first species of sea dwellers came onto land, isn’t it possible that some might have developed abilities permitting them to live in either world? To be multi-functional?” He noted the sparkle in her grey eyes as she spoke excitedly of the possibility. “Part fish, part breathing animal. Extinct now, but king of its world in its own time.”
Aladdin had difficulty trying to follow the bewildering concepts and possibilities she was putting forth. At first, these notions seemed preposterous to him. But then, on reflection, he realised that the possibility of Cinnabar’s existence had, not so many weeks ago, seemed equally incredible. Grudgingly, he had to admit that perhaps the scientists of Cinnabar had discovered many truths which men of the surface had not yet even contemplated.
“Is the moral of this lesson, Shara, that Hellix is adapting to the sea in its own way?”
Her smile deepened at the adroitness of her pupil. “Precisely. In ways no one can guess. We can only conjecture, and we’ve been wrong many times in the past.”
It took a while for him to digest this, and when he did, after they had left the labouratory and walked side by side along the winding narrow corridors of the upper deck, he said, “A few days ago you told me that the leaders of Cinnabar are blind. That none of them accept the truth of things. But from what you’ve shown me, I think you’re not blind at aril. Your scientists know very well what’s happened, and your constant search for better ways to deal with what you’re up against makes me feel more optimistic than ever.”
She stopped her slow walk and looked at him. “Your lessons aren’t over yet, Aladdin. I’ve shown you aspects of our civilisation which have, so far, permitted ills to deal with the situation. You’ve seen only half a truth, Aladdin. Nothing more.”
“And what’s the other half?”
She measured him sharply. “Maybe one day you’ll learn it.”
Aladdin took her by the arm as she started to turn from him. “Take me out again in the turtle,” he said. “As far away from Cinnabar’s frontiers as we dare go. I want to see things for myself, Shara. Draw my own conclusions. Will you guide me?”
The girl was hesitant. “It’s against the rules... you know you’re still too weak for a voyage, anyway. Perhaps another — ”
“Today, Shara. I’m as well as I’m going to get. Show me first-hand what this world of yours is all about. No one will stop your turtle; you have all the independent clearance you need. Not even the military can stop you. Take me out again.”
She looked deeply into his dark eyes, impressed by his determination to learn all he could. “Are you sure you’re ready for this? It could be dangerous.”
“I’m ready.”
“All right. Then where do we go?”
He showed no emotion as he said, “To the final frontier preserve, beyond the Outer Circle, as close to Hellix as any mortal man dares to go.”
Chapter Twenty
“Without tanks we cannot breath. Without face masks we cannot see.” Shara fiddled with the control board of the turtle as she spoke. Aladdin sat beside her in the co-pilot’s seat, listening as the thrusters were activated. “As you’ve already learned,” she went on, “the deeper a human being descends, the greater the pressure on him. Our swimmers have always been hampered by bends — not dissimilar to what happened to you during the fight. But with Hellix, it’s been different.” She turned on her lights and, through the windshield, the dark sea became a pod of brightness. “Because of the radical alterations in their bodies, they’ve found themselves able to move at great speeds across the various depths. Unhindered by the constantly changing pressures.”
“What permits them to do that?”
Shara settled-in more comfortably, flicking switches on the panel, turning the turtle over to the temporary automatic guidance system. The Academy, dark and shimmering, was left in the turtle’s wake. “We haven’t yet discovered the answers to your question,” she said. “All we can say with assurance is that somehow their biological makeup is changing faster than we can comprehend.” She looked over his way, her seriousness reflected in her voice and emotionless features. “Shared by our scientists has been a long standing belief that a species, human or otherwise, can evolve in only slow, gradual steps, each change taking tens of thousands of years to complete. Hellix has forced us to change that view. Everything about her is a contradiction to our carefully derived assumptions, and — believe me, Aladdin — it’s caused a great deal of fear among us. There were always a few dissenters among our scientists, men who believed that it was possible for life forms to make such sudden leaps in adaptability. It seems they’ve been vindicated, at least m the case of Hellix. Our enemies have been accumulating new and inexplicable characteristics at such an alarming rate that they now differ from their own predecessors to such an extent that they could be classified as an entirely different species.”
The implications of what she was saying to Aladdin were staggering. Human beings — unchanged both in Cinnabar and upon the surface since long before recorded history — had before that time, evolved into something not quite human at all. Men who actually were evolving into fish — or was it fish who were evolving into men?
“Over the centuries we saw what was happening, debated it, and our military found ways to combat it. But in truth we only deluded ourselves, Aladdin. We refused to face the logical conclusion which would one day inevitably be reached.”
“And what conclusion is that?”
Here Shara bit her lip, avoiding his eyes. “That Hellix would one day gain parity with us, then overtake us, and finally — ” she didn’t complete the thought, so Aladdin completed it for her. “Finally rule beneath the sea.”
As the turtle sailed into ever deeper and blacker waters, Shara slowly nodded.
“It’s inevitable, Aladdin. We’ve known it all along.”
“Not according to Rufio or Flavius. Or even your father.”
She laughed hollowly. “Man is a peculiar animal,” she said quietly. “Even at the door of death, he finds hope.”
“But you don’t think there is any?”
“In the long run, no. Cinnabar has had its reign of glory. A long reign, Aladdin. Now we are in decline. It doesn’t matter what new strategy the lords of the Pavilion or the boys in the military devise. When the enemy developed the ability to swim with little air for hours, our science countered with new tanks that permitted our own forces to do the same. When Hellix began utilising the sea as its ally, we also found ways to bring its creatures into our fold.”
Aladdin thought of the rescue dolphins, the mutant sea horses, and the fleet of transports and fighting craft, which Cinnabar had developed so successfully. According to Shara, none of these achievements would make a difference — not in the long run, anyway. No matter what advance was accomplished, the forces of Hellix, through natural, not scientific, adaptation, would soon counter it. A no-win situation in which the best Cinnabarians could hope for was to bide their time — stall a year here, a year there — and trust that somehow they could maintain the precarious balance and keep their civilisation flourishing. He remembered the faces of the people in the city, the quiet fatalism that surprised him amidst so much wealth and abundance. Shara’s words were explaining much, he realised, and, perhaps for the very first time, he was truly gaining an insight into this puzzling world.
Aware of what he might be thinking, Shara added, “All of Cinnabar wears a mask, Aladdin. No one wants to believe that he is doomed, that his children or grandchildren-to-be can have no future. So we go on as normally as we can. The War Room fights its wars, our commanders employ their strategies, and our politicians argue and debate. But they’re never really doing anything other than kidding themselves.”
The turtle was passing the Green Line now, approaching the murky outer reaches of the Outer Circle. From porthole to starboard, he could see the hump of an unlighted military craft hovering along the ocean bed. Its blinkers flashed at the turtle, and Shara
returned her message in kind. Authorised clearance for the voyage, return expected well before darktime. Deep sea fish, strange and bizarre creatures, scurried away from the approaching pod light.
“So you see,” Shara said, after the brief interruption, “your coming was at best a noble and grand gesture on my father’s part. Like Damian and so many others, he still dreams of a victorious solution. A way to survive, no matter what the odds.”
“You don’t agree it’s at all possible?”
She shrugged her shoulders, banking the turtle sharply to avoid an outcropping of dark rock. The craft picked its way through valleys and resumed again in the open. The seabed below was a vast field of unmined minerals: manganese nodules rich in copper and nickel.
“The help you can offer us, Aladdin, is far too limited at this stage. We’ve long since passed the crossroads. Desperate times call for desperate measures; my father’s journey to the surface was a thin thread of hope. It is possible that because of your being here, we might win a few more battles. Maybe there are tricks that you and Christóbal can teach Rufio and old Flavius. But we’ve already endured ten thousand battles — most of them dwarf the skirmish you saw. You’re here to buy us a little more time, that’s all. In the end, though, nothing will have changed. It’s too late.”
Aladdin folded his hands in his lap and stared disconsolately ahead. “I hope you’re wrong.”
“I do also. I suppose that hope never dies. But what I believe, deep down, won’t go away. I’ve seen the tide turn too swiftly.” She laughed caustically. “If Rufio could hear me now, he’d probably accuse me of high treason. Cinnabar has little patience with dissenters, you see. We can’t afford it. If too many of our citizens should begin not only to see the truth of our situation but to speak openly about it, then our hopelessness would only accelerate.”
“Then why wasn’t positive action taken years ago?”
“What sort of action?”
The Thief of Kalimar; Captain Sinbad; Cinnabar Page 96
