Sundowner

by Claremont, Chris

  Through all her gyrations, the little tentacle had never lost its hold on her skin. She fumbled hands towards it, gave as hearty a yank as she could manage (not very) to break its hold. It came free without resistance, but she had no cause of exultation, because something of her went with it, a glittery intertwined strand that radiated energy so bright it was like a little lamp in the deeps. She wanted to howl, she recognized what this was the instant she saw it, the miraculously tangled double-helix of her own DNA, the biological foundation of her very being.

  More tentacles, wrapping her as securely as a mummy, their moves incredibly swift—as though through vacuum—while hers were doddering in comparison. She was the alien here, in every sense, no part of her equipped to survive in this environment. But that reality proved quickly subject to change as other tentacles, a veritable nest of them, too many to count, so fine they made the one that initially tagged her appear a tree trunk by comparison, descended on the helix strands like tiny sharks to a banquet.

  Before her eyes, all the delicate dots of light that were her were gobbled up and carried away. She felt the essence of Self begin to follow, flesh and spirit exploding into bubbles, as though she were some Virtual creation being banished with a wicked special effect. The fabric of her body had no more substance or cohesion than the bubbles of air that marked her descent, and they hurried as quickly away.

  She was nothing. Yet—impossible, she shouted double-voiced in Hal and English, mostly to prove to herself that she still could—she still was. Aware of nothing save her own thoughts, and struck with that realization by a plaintive wonder, Am I dead, then? Is this the way oblivion comes? The Hal in her wanted a fight, Nicole hungered for answers.

  She flexed her tail, adjusting depth with a modest tilt of her flukes to slide beneath a thermocline to a level where her sonar could range more effectively afield. Eyes weren’t much use so she left them closed, the better to scan the rest of the incoming data. Sky above, three hard strokes to the air she needed to breathe, but no necessity for that for a good long while. Emptiness below—and she rolled into a double somersault, to the right and over her nose—to offer a focused ping just to be sure. That explained the deep-water wave action so close inshore; the entire estuary formed the crest of a magnificent abyssal canyon, as though the continent itself were some giant seamount, the open air summit of a vast plateau. She burbled delightedly, still a little fried from fever toxins, at the concept that this might be a variant of Conan Doyle’s Lost World, only for fishies!

  Then, she got a return from her lateral pulses and that notion didn’t seem anywhere near so silly. She was being paced, the same as an interceptor flight would their bogie, a pair off her quarter, another pair behind. The flankers were at her level, the followers above and below. The data was fuzzy, as though they generated their own interference, the only thing she was sure of was size; they put the great whales to shame, and made her feel very tiny indeed.

  She unleashed a series of sonic pulses, a symphony of information—everything she could relate about her situation and her escort—even though she knew from her first instant of awareness that there were no others of her kind to hear. There were songs in this blood sea, but none that she’d ever heard or could easily understand.

  That done, she made her break. Pivot and dive, an air-combat maneuver so extreme it would have torn vehicle and pilot to bits had she tried it in the sky. Doubled back at an angle, to pull her escort into hurried turns to follow, perhaps force a collision. At the very least scramble their seeker pulses until she could put some scrambling layers between them.

  She hadn’t given a thought to what she’d do after that, she merely wanted to get away. But proximity alarms popped throughout her brain and she had to pull up short as something she wanted to register as the side of a mountain rose up before her, forcing her to hurriedly recalibrate all her conceptions of size among these strange creatures. This was to the others as they were to her. She saw tentacles reaching for her and bolted once again, only this time there was nowhere to go. Every course she took, every maneuver attempted, no matter how blindingly fast, found a tentacle to block her way, hemming her in more and more tightly.

  Again, she felt that lightest of taps in the center of her forehead; again, she felt the essence drawn out of her, eyes too poorly positioned this time to actually see the glowing strand of DNA, but knowing what was to come and offering a keen of utter distress as her glorious physicality dissolved.

  Eyes opened, body stirred to move hands into field of view, cry of joy to see arms and legs, all the requisite parts of proper memory. Then, a frantic collapse onto the bobbling surface of the trampoline, fingers clutching frantically at the frame bars as she scanned the horizon but saw only the strange Not-Ground that refused to bear her weight (another part of Self provided the label “water,” which she accepted and integrated without question). At first, she thought it like the water of home, but a trial taste proved it foul to the taste, dangerous to drink.

  Wind ruffled wet fur, making her shiver despite the radiance of the sun. She attempted to sit up, to take better stock of her situation, but each move of hers created an equivalent motion in the platform she was lying on, and she quickly dropped as flat and still as she could, so she wouldn’t be pitched over the side. She yowled dismay, irritation more than actual distress. Strangeness abounded, but she as yet had no doubts about her ability to cope.

  By trial and error, she gradually accustomed herself to safe movement aboard the tiny craft, hampered by the terrible reflection off the surface that forced her to protect her sight by sliding her nictitating membranes closed. She was still able to see, but it was like peering through a curtain of heavy gauze (never a moment’s consideration of the origin of the analogy, or what gauze might be; if it came from her own thoughts, it was part of her self and consequently nothing that need worry her).

  She prowled every inch of the trampoline, extending herself along the narrow pontoons to see what they were—a neat feat of logistics, that, since she was equally determined not to get herself wet—and finally hunkering herself at the foot of the mast to stare upward at the loosely flapping sails.

  She reached an arm, then the other, her expression changing to one of puzzlement. She looked down at herself, as though examining how her legs were folded. The next time, she reached, she extended the motion along her entire body, steadying herself with a hand around the mast while she pushed as high as she could manage on tiptoes. Her hand still fell far short of the top of the mast.

  She settled onto her feet, but stayed erect. This stance felt more natural. The Cat stirred and to keep her balance she caught a line, yelping with surprise as it gave in her grasp; at the same time, the big sail rose a bit on its track. She peered more closely at the lines, pulling the first one again and letting it go, watching the equivalent movement of the sail. She tried them all in turn, very cautiously, as though they were critters with teeth, just waiting for the chance to bite. With meticulous patience, she traced every line and experimented with them—a tug here, an ease there—learning gradually how the various elements fit together. She watched the wind and water, seeing how the action of the one was reflected on the other. She found out about the tiller the hard way, by the bar banging sharply into her ankles. Pulling it back and forth, she discovered, altered the heading of the boat. In the process came the observation that her direction materially affected how the sails filled with air. That, in turn, altered the movement of the boat itself through the water. When the wind came from in front, the sails flapped uselessly and not much happened. After struggling to turn her heading, she got better results.

  The wind curled across her shoulders to fill the sails and she heard the burble of water along the length of the pontoons as she picked up speed. Now that she was going somewhere, she needed somewhere to go.

  Joy turned marginally pensive, her gaze shifting from masthead to horizon and some clue to an answer. Her inattention proved costly, as the air seemed to
pause for breath, the sails flapping in confusion, demanding to be filled. She looked around trying to find some new breeze, the Cat falling off even more, broadside to the swells, putting her at the mercy of the wave action. The surging up-and-down motion went straight to her stomach and added to her distractions. Nothing stayed still or level and the harder she struggled for control—of her body, of the boat—the more it was torn from her grasp.

  The wind finished her. It caught the sails hard, pushing the boom to the limit of its travel and sending the Cat skidding in a shallow diagonal along the down slope of a comber, more like a surfboard than a boat. She tried to put the stern to the breeze, but the elements were in opposition; the more she tried to go one way, the harder she was pushed back, so that when she crested the next swell she was broadside to both wind and water.

  When the last gust caught her at the crest, there was nothing to counterbalance it. She was on the wrong side of the trampoline, with the upwind pontoon riding high. In a heartbeat, the Cat tumbled and she was in the water.

  She was calm, her universe ordered and correct, the sum and substance of her DNA projected before her like the starscape of a nebula. She expanded the perspective until the molecular gaps were an arm’s length apart, then moved among them for a closer look. At the same time, she was aware of all the other myriad aspects of her existence—in that way people are constantly and automatically aware of their bodies—yet saw no need to consider anything directly unless there was a problem. She moved with an easy effort; there was nothing within the range of her perceptions to concern her; Hana—her sole companion—was fine. No problems anywhere.

  She wished she had a comparison strand...

  ...and one appeared, neatly labeled, from her personnel file, taken prior to the Wanderer launch. Even at a glance, she saw there were differences, but she’d known there would be. She grinned at the thought of how temptingly easy it would be to reach out and pluck the proper structure from one image and restore it to the other.

  Even as she watched, gossamer streamers intruded from the boundaries of her vision, snake-wriggling towards her display with a speed and purpose that telegraphed danger. She tried to banish the images, but that system crashed. Called for a defensive array to protect them, only to see the snakes pass through as if they didn’t exist. She attempted direct intervention, but as many strands had come for her as the helixes, binding her too tightly to move, to breathe. She tried to cry out to Hana—a warning, a call for help—but they filled her mouth, her nose, covering her eyes to blind her and stopping her ears to make her deaf. She felt a tremendous weight, had a vision of the great creature she’d encountered as a dolphin.

  Why are you doing this, she tried to say, but thoughts were becoming as impossible as speech, all the corners of her mind invaded, overwhelmed by the tentacles of energy.

  Again, there was that awful sense of dissolution, not the absolute cut-off transition to sleep, but something more horribly gradual. All the boxes of her memory were being shaken out, the contents stolen away, stripping her naked in ways she’d never imagined, reducing her to component parts as a conscious being the same way they had as a physical one.

  She stood her ground until the last, struggling to hold on to what was left her, only to have it collapse in her grasp. She wanted to cry—defiance, denial, a demand for vengeance, a final plea for mercy—but the words lost meaning and then the concepts themselves. She was aware of being—but that could have been merely a forlorn hope, since she had no sensoral input to substantiate it—she was aware

  she was nothing

  She surfaced too fast, without any sense of place, to thunk her head soundly on a pontoon. Instinctively—with a fervent cry of “ow”—she tried to wrap herself around any part of the Cat that was available to grasp and in that same stumbling movement attempt to get her face above the surface.

  Her opening breath was mostly water. While the salt content wasn’t a match for Earth’s oceans, there was still sufficient to make her gag spectacularly. She couldn’t let the coughing last, she needed air too badly, so she consciously broke it off to grab a breath. The pattern went on a few minutes, a serious bout of coughing, then a mighty gasp, followed by more coughing.

  Sodden—Within as well as without, she decided, waterlogged to the effing core—she reached the trampoline on the third try, and let the sun evaporate the upper half of her while the bottom drained back into the sea. The sun was on the horizon and she assumed it was sunset until it moved up the sky. She wouldn’t put it past the critters she’d encountered to be able to alter time, but decided the far more sensible answer was that she’d been out for one or more days.

  Belatedly, she noticed that she could feel her right leg. And move it as well, she discovered as she struggled for a look. The swelling had gone down significantly, so much so that her bandannas had slipped down to the ankle—Damn thing looks positively normal, she thought. The effort of taking that look cost her dear and she collapsed onto her side, tucked into a fetal curl, most conscious of an ache within that had nothing to do with her sore diaphragm and salt-scored lungs. A joyous sadness was her first impression, a sad joy the second, the fact that she was weeping her third.

  She looked at the sea, saw faint movements in the distance that told her the air was beginning to stir, turned her attention to her boat. Paused with a memory that had no place and bundled her jacket over her head for a better view of torso and arms. She put her hands tentatively to her face, but the only hair she felt was what she’d grown up with. She wore the ghost marks—as she’d come to think of them—visible across her shoulder and winding down her arm to merge with the pattern on her hand as neatly as if she’d been born this way. Her right hand, though, was clean, no more stigmata. She couldn’t see her features but assumed that what was on her arm still extended across her face, and didn’t want to check the marks on her hips.

  Aside from that, she felt like herself.

  If only, she thought, I knew what the devil that means.

  Reality—what a (mutable) concept.

  She laughed, taking great and unrestrained pleasure in that basic human sound, while at the same time the physical expression accompanying it was as pure as Hal could be.

  “Hullo,” she tried. English in concept and execution. Then, to be a brat, she announced, “Konichi wa.” And, to finish, a greeting in Trade.

  She took another long look around for a sign of wind, decided it was an acceptable risk to leave the sails full, and sat herself down on the aft pipe of the trampoline. She was cross-legged, at a relaxed attention, and while she appeared to be looking towards the horizon her gaze was actually directed inward.

  “Whoever you are,” she said, choosing to speak in English, though the sentiments were as old as her adopted race, speaking with a relaxed formality that felt right and appropriate for the moment, “Great Old Ones, I thank you for my life. There is no debt between us but a Bond. You are part of what I am, what I have been and yearn to become. Honor have you brought me, honor shall I offer in return.”

  She had to confess, the phrasing worked more eloquently in Hal, but hoped it was the thought that mattered. She saw no sign that she’d been heard but likewise had no doubt the Old Ones were listening.

  No wonder the Hal have always been spooked by the sea, she noted to herself, if This is what lives here. Especially since the deep-water drop-off is so close inshore and so bloody steep. I wonder how many Hal simply... vanished over the aeons before They found one not only capable of listening to Them but of handling what she was told.

  She thought of sharks, and a theory she’d read once that since the species seemed to suffer virtually no effects of age, there could be specimens with phenomenal life spans. The giggle hope, of course—a staple of the supermarket tabloids, along with the Loch Ness monster—being that there might be one out there who dated back to the Pliocene. Jurassic shark, big enough to sink ocean liners. Given the size of the creatures she’d seen here, and the tremendous gravitas
she felt from them, that didn’t seem like much of a joke.

  She had no explanation for what happened but that didn’t bother her, and resolved to offer a small monograph to the Clarke Institute in Sri Lanka about how the technology of a truly advanced extraterrestrial species really was akin to magic.

  The mainsail rattled, a glance confirming an approaching gust, with more beyond. She tightened up her lines and reattached herself to the trapeze.

  The Old Ones left her close to the far shore of the estuary, and the sun was still fairly high when the cliffs hove into view. She had far less trouble with the approach than her launch, because she knew the lie of this land from her sessions in Virtual. Ages ago, part of the cliff wall had collapsed, creating a natural cove—accessible only at low tide—that was the only safe landing along this entire stretch of coast. The drawback was, once in the cove there was no way she could beat her way out; that’d be a challenge for a keel-equipped boat. In the shadow of the giant cliffs, throwing herself into the wind—the worst sailing aspect of a catamaran—she’d never make it. Once the tide came in, she’d be treading water in gale-force surf.

  My final test, she told herself, and found a scrap of memory from her ghost that this was where she’d found herself ashore.

  It was why this spot was the Memorial Mount of Shavrin’s Clan, it was where they learned to walk.

  She was sorry to leave the Cat on the tiny beach, after such good service, but she didn’t have time to break it down, and couldn’t manage carrying it anyway. She stripped it of usable line, not knowing what she might need, and a bunch of quick release shackles to double as improvised carabiners. There was a path—and she couldn’t help wondering if its presence was wholly natural...

  She shouldered her carryall and attacked the cliff, climbing some bits, walking others, making steady headway as the shore disappeared beneath her and the Cat consigned to the deep.