Mer-Cycle

by Piers Anthony

  Finally they came to the “patch” reefs that marked their rendezvous. Between these little reeflets and the shore he knew there was only more grass flat.

  “Maybe if someone comes—a boat, I mean,” Melanie said, “we could lie down and be hidden by that grass.”

  Gaspar nodded. “Smart girl. Keep your eye out for suitable cover.”

  They drew up beside a great mound of coral, one of the patches. All around it the sand was bare. “So much for my smarts,” Melanie said ruefully.

  This section was as bald as her head, Don thought, and wished he could get that matter out of his mind.

  “Grass eaters,” Gaspar explained. “They graze, but don’t go far from their shelter. So they create this desert ring by overgrazing.”

  “I would never have thought of that,” she said. “But it’s obvious now that you’ve pointed it out. Penned barnyard animals do the same.”

  “Yes, the absence of life can be evidence of life,” Gaspar agreed.

  The two were getting along together, Don noted with mixed feelings. He had talked with Gaspar, and he had talked with Melanie, but so far there had not been a lot of interaction between Gaspar and Melanie. Yet why shouldn’t there be? It was evident that Gaspar, though surprised by her hairlessness, had not really been put off by it. He had broader horizons than Don did, and greater tolerance. Why should Don be bothered by that?

  “Rendezvous is at dusk,” Gaspar said. “To let him slip into the water unobserved, probably. We’re early, so we can rest a while. Out of sight, if we can. Should be an overhang or maybe a cave.”

  “Is it safe?” Melanie asked. “We aren’t entirely invulnerable.”

  “Not much danger here, regardless,” Gaspar said confidently. “Why would the little fishes use it, otherwise?” He began pedaling slowly around the reeflet. The others, disgruntled, followed.

  There were several projecting ledges harboring brightly colored fish who scattered as the bicycles encroached. Then a large crevice developed, and they rode between sheer coral walls. These overhung, and finally closed over the top, and it was a cavern.

  The area was too confined for riding, and the floor was irregular. They dismounted and walked on inside, avoiding contact with the sharp fringes. Don was reminded of the cave paintings of Lascaux: the patchwork murals left by Upper Paleolithic man some fifteen thousand years ago, and one of the marvels of the archaeological world. Primitive man had not been as primitive as many today liked to suppose.

  But this was a sea-cavern, and its murals were natural. Sponges bedecked its walls: black, brown, blue, green, red, and white, in dabs and bulges and relief-carvings.

  There was life here, all right. The smaller fish streaked out as the men moved in, for their eyesight was keen enough to spot the intrusion even though its substance was vacant. One man-sized fish balked, however, hanging motionless in the passage.

  “Jewfish,” Gaspar remarked—and with the sound of his voice the fish was gone. Sediment formed a cloud as the creature shot past, and Don felt the powerful breeze of its thrust. He appreciated another danger: just as a stiff wind could blow a man down on land, a stiff current could do the same here in the ocean. If his position happened to be precarious, he would have to watch out for big fish. Their bones could tug him if their breeze-current didn’t.

  “Looks good,” Gaspar said. “I’m bushed.” He lay down beside his bicycle and seemed to drop instantly to sleep.

  Don was tired, but he lacked this talent. He could not let go suddenly; he had to rest and watch, hoping that sleep would steal upon him conveniently. It probably wasn’t worth it, for just a couple of hours.

  “I envy him his sleep, but it’s beyond me,” Melanie said, settling down to lean cautiously against a wall.

  “Me too,” Don agreed, doing the same. The real wall might be jagged, but the phase wall wasn’t, fortunately.

  “You’re not stuttering now.”

  “Maybe I’m too tired.”

  “Or maybe you know I’m no threat to you.”

  “I didn’t say that.” But it might be true. Before, there had been the frightening prospect of social interaction leading into romance.

  “You didn’t have to. Now you know why I read books. They don’t look at you.”

  “But people don’t—I mean, they don’t know—”

  “I know.”

  “Well, I read too. Mostly texts, but—”

  “I read fiction, mostly. Once I fell asleep during a book, and dreamed the author had come to autograph my copy, but we couldn’t find him a pen.”

  “You like signatures?” he asked, not certain she was serious.

  “Oh, yes, I have a whole collection of autographed books, back home.” She spoke with modest pride.

  “Why? I think it’s more important to relate to what the author is trying to say, than to have his mark on a piece of paper.”

  She was silent.

  After a moment he asked, “You want to sleep? I didn’t mean to—”

  “I heard you. I wasn’t answering.”

  “Wasn’t what?”

  “Maybe we’d better change the subject.”

  “Why?”

  “You couldn’t expect me to agree with you, could you? I mean, I collect autographs, don’t I? So what am I supposed to say when you say you don’t think they are very much?”

  What was this? “You could have said you don’t agree.”

  “I did.”

  “When?”

  “When I didn’t say anything. I think that should be obvious.”

  “Obvious?”

  “Well, you seem to use different conversational conventions than I do, and it’s unpleasant to talk to someone who doesn’t understand your silences.”

  “Why not just say what you mean? I have no idea what’s bothering you.”

  “No more than I did, when you kept cutting me off.”

  Oh. “I’m sorry about that. I just had this notion it was all men on this circuit, and I thought something had gone wrong, the way my food did. I would have answered if I had realized.”

  “Well, then, I’ll answer you now. I don’t want to be placed in the position of having to defend something I know you don’t like. I mean, if I answered you there would be all kinds of emotional overtones in my voice, and that would be embarrassing and painful.”

  “About autographs?” he demanded incredulously.

  “Obviously you didn’t mean to be offensive,” she said, sounding hurt.

  “What do you mean, ‘mean to be’? I wasn’t offensive, was I?”

  “Well, I shouldn’t have said anything about it.”

  “Now don’t go clamming up on me again. One silence is enough.” He was feeling more confident, oddly.

  “I was trying to hint that I didn’t agree with you.”

  “About meaning being worth more than a signature?”

  She was silent again.

  “Oh come on!” he snapped. “What do you expect me to say to a silence?”

  “I’ve already told you why I don’t want to talk about it any more. You could at least have apologized for mentioning it again.”

  “Apologized?”

  “What kind of unfeeling barbarian culture did you grow up in, anyway?”

  “Primitive cultures are not unfeeling!”

  There was no answer.

  “You’re right,” he said with frustration. “We do have different conversational conventions.” Sane and insane, he was tempted to add.

  And so they sat, leaning back against the spongy coral wall, watching the little fish sidle in again. Don wondered what had happened.

  CHAPTER 4

  ELEPH

  Proxy 5–12–5–16–8: Attention.

  Acknowledging.

  Status?

  Three recruits are in motion, with the fourth incipient. The liability of the third has been established, with what impact is uncertain. The group seems to be melding satisfactorily.

  Such melding is a two-edged
tool. If they unify against the mission, it will be lost.

  I mean to see that they react properly. They will not be advised of the mission until the time is propitious.

  And if that time does not manifest?

  This group must be abolished and another assembled.

  You are prepared to destroy them?

  No.

  Though the alternative is to lose their world?

  I will abolish the group without invoking the mission. The individual members will return to their prior lives.

  And if you invoke the mission, and they oppose it?

  Then we shall have a problem.

  “There it is!” Gaspar cried. “Right on time.”

  Don jolted awake. It was night, and the rendezvous was upon them. He had slept when he hadn’t expected to, and it seemed that Melanie had done the same.

  They scrambled up and walked their bikes out to catch up with Gaspar, who was standing at the mouth of the cave. Then, together, they advanced on the lone figure beyond.

  The third man was Eleph: perhaps fifty, graying hair, forbidding lined face. There was a tic in his right cheek that Don recognized as a stress reaction similar to his own stuttering. Don would have had some sympathy, but for the cold manner of the man.

  Gaspar tried to make small talk, but Eleph cut him short. He let it be known that he expected regulations to be scrupulously honored. Obviously he was or had been associated with the military; he would not bend, physically or intellectually. There was an authoritative ring in his voice that made even innocuous comments—of which he made few—seem like commands. Yet he also telegraphed a formidable uncertainty.

  Don decided to stay clear of the man as much as possible. Gaspar, undaunted or merely stubborn, used another approach. “Look at that bicycle! How many speeds is that, Eleph?”

  Eleph frowned as if resenting the familiarity, though they were on a first name basis by the rules. He must have realized that it was impossible to be completely formal while perched on a bicycle anyway. “Thirty six,” he replied gruffly.

  Don thought he had misheard, but a closer look at the machine convinced him otherwise. It had a thick rear axle, a rear sprocket cluster, three chainwheels, and a derailleur at each end of the chain. The triple gearshift levers augmented the suggestion of a complex assortment of ratios. The handlebars were turned down, not up or level, and were set with all the devices Don had, plus a speedometer, horn, and others whose functions Don didn’t recognize. What paraphernalia!

  “Don here’s an archaeologist,” Gaspar said. “I’m a geologist. Melanie knows the coordinates for our various encounters. How about you?”

  Eleph hesitated, oddly. “Physicist.”

  “Oh—to study the effects of this phaseout field under water?”

  “Perhaps,” Eleph vouchsafed no more.

  It was shaping up to be a long journey, Don realized.

  “Melanie, where next?” Gaspar asked.

  “Twenty five degrees, forty minutes north latitude,” she said. “Eighty degrees, ten minutes west longitude.”

  “Got it. Let’s get deep.”

  Gaspar led the way through the shallows, pedaling slowly so that there was no danger of the others losing sight of his lights. Eleph came next, then Melanie, and Don last. That put the least experienced riders in the middle, out of trouble.

  All four of them would have to douse their lights and halt in place at any near approach of a boat. So far they were lucky; the surface was undisturbed. Once they reached deeper water there would be no problem unless they encountered a submarine. That was hardly likely.

  The barren back reef had come alive. Great numbers of heart-shaped brown sea biscuits had appeared. Delicate, translucent sea anemones flowered prettily. Fish patrolled, searching for food; they shied away from the beams of light, but not before betraying their numbers. Some were large; Don recognized a narrow barracuda, one of the few fish he knew by sight.

  The outer coral reef had changed too. The polyps were in bloom, flexing rhythmically, combing the water with their tiny tentacles, just as Gaspar had said they would. In one way they were flowers; in another, tiny volcanoes; in yet another, transparent little octopi. What had seemed by day to be forbidding rock was by night a living carpet.

  Now Don observed the different kinds of coral in the reef. Some was convoluted but rounded, like the folds of a—yes, this had to be brain coral. From it rose orange-white spirals of fine sticks: yet another kind of flower that Don was sure was neither flower nor even plant. He swerved toward one, reaching to touch it though he knew he couldn’t. As his hand passed through its faint resistance, the flower closed and disappeared, withdrawing neatly into a narrow tube-stem.

  Yet there were dull parts, too. In some regions the coral featured little or no life. It was as if tenement houses had been built, used, and then deserted. But surely the landlords hadn’t raised the rent, here!

  “Pollution is killing the reefs,” Gaspar remarked sourly. “Also over-fishing, sponge harvesting, unrestrained memento collecting, the whole bit. The sea life here isn’t nearly as thick as it used to be, and species are dying out. But the average man doesn’t see that, so he figures it’s no concern of his.”

  “They are wiping out species on land, too,” Melanie pointed out.

  “You think that justifies it?” Gaspar asked sharply.

  “No! I think it’s horrible. But I don’t know how to stop it.”

  “There are just too many people,” he said. “As long as there keep being more people, there’ll be fewer animals. It’s that simple.”

  Don gazed at the barren sections of the reefs. Was it that simple? He distrusted simple answers; the interactions of life tended to be complex, with ramifications never fully understood. Still, it was evident that something was going wrong, here.

  The moray eels were out foraging. One spied Don and came at him, jaws open. Don shied away despite his lack of real alarm, and it drifted back. Melanie, just ahead of him, was veering similarly.

  Then, remembering his own initial reactions, Don looked ahead to see how Eleph was taking it. This was a wise precaution, for Eleph reacted violently. Two eels were investigating him, as if sniffing out the least secure rider.

  Both Eleph’s hands came off the handle bars to fend off the seeming assault. The bicycle veered to the side and crashed into the sand.

  Don and Melanie hurried to help the man, but Eleph was already on his feet. “The phase makes the predators harmless,” Don explained reassuringly. “All you can feel is a little interaction in the bones.”

  “I am well aware of that!” And Eleph righted his machine and remounted, leaving Don and Melanie to exchange a glance.

  Angry at the rebuff, Don let him go. For a physicist specializing in this phase-field, Eleph had bad reflexes.

  “And they say that pride goeth before a fall,” Melanie murmured.

  Don had to smile. Then he seized the moment. “Melanie, whatever I said before, I’m sorry. I—”

  “Another time,” she said. But she smiled back at him.

  Then they had to follow, orienting on the lights ahead.

  Lobsterlike crustaceans were roving the floor, making free travel difficult. Swimming fish were easy to pass, and living bottom creatures, but inanimate obstructions could be every bit as solid as they looked. When a living creature obscured a rocky projection or hole, and the wheel of the bicycle went through the living thing, it could have trouble with the other. Successful navigation required a kind of doublethink: an object’s position and permanence, not its appearance, determined its effect. More or less.

  They coasted bumpily down past the outer reef and into deeper water. But more trouble erupted.

  A blue-green blob with darker splotches rose up from the sand in the wake of a scuttling crab. Gaspar’s light speared it—and suddenly the green became brighter as tentacles waved. It was an octopus, a large one.

  Gaspar slowed, no doubt from curiosity. Don caught up, while Melanie remain
ed behind. But Eleph, in the middle, didn’t realize what they were doing or what was there. He sped straight on—into the waving nest of mantle and tentacles.

  Ink billowed. Eleph screamed and veered out of control again, covering his head. Meanwhile the octopus, who had been traversed and left behind, turned brown and jetted for safer water. Each party seemed as horrified by the encounter as the other.

  For a moment Don and Gaspar stared, watching the accidental antagonists flee each other. Then a chuckle started. Don wasn’t sure who emitted the first choked peep, but in a moment it grew into uncontrollable laughter. Both men had to put their feet down and lean over the handlebars to vent their mirth. It was a fine release of tension.

  When at last they subsided, Don looked up to find Eleph standing nearby, regarding them sourly. Melanie stood behind him, her face straight. Abruptly the matter lost its humor.

  Gaspar alleviated the awkwardness by proceeding immediately to business. “We’re deep enough now. Eleph, do you have the instructions for our mission? We have been told nothing.”

  “I do not,” Eleph replied. The episode of the octopus had not improved his social inclinations. “Perhaps the next member of the party will have that information.”

  Don had thought there would be three members, and Gaspar had guessed four. Evidently there were five.

  Gaspar looked at Melanie. “How long hence?”

  “Sixty hours,” she replied. She had evidently known, but had kept silent, as it seemed she was supposed to.

  Gaspar grimaced, and Don knew what he was thinking. Another two days and three nights before they caught up to the final member of their party and learned what this was all about. Maybe.

  “Well, let’s find a comfortable spot to turn in,” Gaspar said. “Maybe we’ll find a mound of gold ingots to form into a camping site.”

  “Gold?” Melanie asked.

  “From sunken treasure ships. There are a number, here in the channel between Florida and Cuba, and they haven’t all been found by a long shot. Whole fleets of Spanish galleons carried the Inca and Aztec treasures to Spain, and storms took a number of them down. That cargo is worth billions, now.”