World of Water

by James Lovegrove

  There was no other visible entry point. The filter plates were too narrow, and anyway would lead only to the manta’s oesophagus and stomach. He prodded the sphincter experimentally, and sure enough, at the touch of his fingers, it dilated, revealing a vertical shaft. He swam in, and the aperture sealed itself behind him.

  A couple of metres up the shaft, he came to a three-way junction. Two narrow tunnels branched left and right – the access ducts to the eye socket cockpits – while a third headed along the manta’s dorsal line, towards the creature’s tail. He took the turn to the left cockpit.

  As he clawed along the duct he tried not to think about the fact that he was inside the body of a living entity. The rigid, uneven walls around him were manta flesh. He was travelling through the meat of the beast via a passageway that had been burrowed out specially for that purpose. Claustrophobia and a vague repulsion warred within him, but they at least took his mind off the pain in his intestines.

  He reached the cockpit just as the cornea succumbed to the pressure put on it by the tentacles. The membrane burst with a sickening rending sound, and within seconds the diamond-shaped pad on the end of one of the tentacles had slithered through the jagged tear and was probing for Ethel.

  She scooped up her shock lance and gave the tentacle a jolt that deterred it, but not for long. It was back, groping for her, within moments. She pressed the lever on the shock lance again, but this time there was no flash, no bioelectric discharge. Either the weapon had run dry or it needed a while to build up its energies for the next shot.

  Dev shouldered in beside her and fired the HVP at the tentacle. From point-blank range, the sabot round practically sheared the pad off. The tentacle withdrew smartly in a cloud of dark blood, the pad still clinging on by just a shred of gristle.

  Ethel showed appreciation.

  Dev said, I’m sorry about your cousin, with a nod at the corpse now curled foetally on the floor.

  A shiver of blue crossed Ethel’s face, so dark it was almost indigo. I’ll grieve when I have time to grieve. Come on! It’s not safe in this eye anymore.

  She slid into the access duct, Dev close behind. They crossed over to the other, still intact cockpit, where there was a control column identical to that in the cockpit they had just vacated.

  The cuttlefish sub hadn’t loosened its grip on the manta sub, but the injury to its tentacle had given it pause for thought. The pilots were trying to regain command of their vessel, frantically pressing the buds and pulling the stalks on their control columns in various permutations. The cuttlefish remained recalcitrant, unwilling to do as told. It had been hurt – the tip of a limb all but amputated – and its survival instincts were at odds with the wishes of its masters.

  The control columns, Dev realised, were patched directly in the creatures’ nervous systems. The animals retained the lower orders of brain function, the ones that regulated breathing, heartbeat, digestion and so on. The pilots ran everything else.

  The subs were, in effect, zombies, with their Tritonian crews providing purpose, motivation and guidance. Yet even mindless, obedient slaves balked when they were confronted with something which caused pain or presented a clear threat.

  Ethel grabbed the largest stalks, a matching pair, and flipped them to and fro. The manta sub seesawed from side to side. Had Dev been standing rather than floating, he would have been tossed violently about. The same for Ethel. As it was, Dev felt the water within the cockpit churn around him while he remained more or less stationary. The wonders of hydrodynamics.

  The manta sub tore itself away from the cuttlefish sub’s arms.

  As the limbs flailed loose, Ethel threw the manta into reverse. The sub glided backwards with a few beats of its vast wings, before Ethel propelled it forwards again, at ramming speed.

  The cuttlefish sub was still drawing its arms together, gathering itself, as the manta sub struck. The manta’s momentum and greater bulk sent the cephalopod spinning away.

  The cuttlefish’s pilots barely had time to regroup and right their vessel before the manta struck again. The leading edge of one wing hammered it straight between the eyes.

  Ethel didn’t stop. She kept butting, battering and bashing the cuttlefish sub remorselessly, giving no quarter, not letting up until the creature was pounded into submission.

  Eventually the cuttlefish just hung in the water, its limbs splayed, showing no voluntary movement. There wasn’t any external damage that Dev could see, but some of its internal organs must surely have been ruptured. Nothing, least of all a pulpy-bodied invertebrate, could endure the kind of punishment the manta had been dishing out and remain unscathed.

  In its eye socket cockpits, its pilots floated dazed and bewildered, only just conscious. Dev almost felt sorry for them. They could hardly have anticipated how brutal and ferocious Ethel’s retaliation would be. Though part-paralysed by the turtle-jellyfish sub’s sting, the manta sub was still formidable, and once it had shaken itself free, it had proved that the cuttlefish sub was no match for it – especially with a vengeful, unforgiving Ethel at the helm.

  Ethel scooped up her shock lance. I’m going out there to finish this, she said.

  You mean kill those two?

  Tempting, but no. They are the ones who can halt the battle. They can call off their allies and lead them in a retreat. I will make them do so. They are bullies, and will quickly comply once I threaten them.

  Dev did not doubt that, but he wasn’t sure there was much of a battle left to end. From what he could see, Ethel’s side were in poor shape. The anglerfish had been sliced to ribbons by the swordfish. The seahorse sub was now in several pieces, gently dispersing.

  Only the other manta sub remained intact, and it was beleaguered on all side by enemy vessels, harrying it. The manta fought back, giving as good as it got, swatting at any opponent who came within reach, but the constant siege was wearing it down. Either it or its pilots were tiring. Sooner or later it would reach the limits of its endurance and, exhausted, fall victim to its assailants.

  Ethel inserted herself into the access duct, only to come reeling back a split second later. Blood erupted from her shoulder, mushrooming outward.

  The Tritonian kid emerged from the duct, carrying a short knife fashioned from some animal’s tooth. Dev noticed ornate decorative patterns carved in the ivory, intricate scrimshaw. He took in this detail even as he moved to intercept the boy.

  In the name of the Ice King! the kid said, slashing at Dev with the knife. Die, ungilled scum!

  Dev seized his wrist and pivoted his hand back against itself. Instantly the knife slipped from his grasp. Dev batted the weapon behind him, out of reach, then wrenched the kid’s arm round and yanked it up behind his back until his fist was lodged between his shoulderblades.

  He hated using this level of force against a minor, but the kid needed to be pacified. His fanaticism made him more dangerous than someone of his tender years would otherwise be, or indeed ought to be.

  The kid kicked at Dev with his heels, trying to worm his way free. Dev increased the compliance hold by driving the kid’s hand even further up his back.

  Then the kid did something unexpected. He performed a back-flip, paddling hard with his legs until he was above Dev, then behind him.

  Dev kept his hold on the boy’s wrist, but now the kid was where the knife had fetched up. He seized it and stabbed at Dev, who had to relinquish his grasp on the boy in order to evade the knife thrust.

  There’s gratitude, he said. I rescue you from a mess that was largely of your own making, and this is how you repay me.

  Shut up! The kid chased up the comment with an insult likening a part of Dev’s anatomy to a string of excrement hanging from a fish’s anus.

  Dev was about to close in on the kid with a view to disarming him once more, when Ethel sprang up behind the boy. Her shoulder was bleeding copiously, casting a pall in the water, but nonetheless she snaked an arm round the kid’s neck and clamped her other hand over his knife ha
nd.

  Holding the knife at bay, she proceeded to squeeze both sets of his gills flat. It was a perfect chokehold. The kid strained and twisted, but Ethel maintained pressure. He kicked at her in vain.

  Soon he was juddering, dancing on the spot. Then his head rolled back.

  Unconscious.

  Dev waited for Ethel to let go.

  She didn’t.

  He’s out cold, he said. You can stop now.

  Ethel answered with a look of steely-blue calm.

  He’s not a threat anymore, Dev said. He’s neutralised. If you keep that up, you’re going to kill him.

  He deserves it.

  Maybe, but he’s still only a boy. Still without a name. Can you do that? Can you murder someone that young in cold blood? Whatever he’s done, whatever his beliefs, you can’t have his death on your conscience. You know you can’t.

  He then projected her name at her, her real name, with its connotations of resolve and justice, the former tempered by the latter. Her ‘emotional autograph,’ Handler had called it. Her true self. He used it imploringly, to remind her who she was, to bring her to her senses.

  It worked. Ethel swept her arm away from the kid’s neck, her face suffused with dun-coloured disgust. The kid’s gills reopened, pulsing in autonomic reflex.

  He was lying in wait, she said. He’d have found that knife in my cousin’s sleeping chamber. It was my cousin’s prize possession, a gift from his father. I’m angry that he caught me unawares. I’m even more angry that he dared to use something so cherished on me, dishonouring the man whose life he ended.

  I understand. But you’ve done the right thing.

  Have I? said Ethel sullenly.

  A spike of pain registered redly on her face. She pressed a hand to the wound in her shoulder.

  At the same time, Dev experienced another of those stomach cramps, this one unusually savage.

  Ethel, seeing this, said, You are hurt too?

  It’ll pass. I think. You look like you should do something to stem the bleeding.

  It’ll pass, too. I think. Besides, there is still a fight going on out there. She retrieved her shock lance. It’s my job to end it.

  Barely had that last statement faded from her face than an almighty explosion rocked the manta sub.

  32

  IT WAS A deep whoomph that reverberated through the water, accompanying a suddenly expanding sphere of brilliance that sprang into life not far above the other manta sub and the horde of Ice King worshipper vessels around it.

  All the subs recoiled from the blast, shunted downward and apart by the pressure wave.

  That’s not one of our weapons, said Ethel to Dev. Unless I’m mistaken, it’s one of your people’s.

  She wasn’t mistaken. Even as the subs recovered from the shock, Dev saw a pair of barrel-shaped objects descend towards them, twirling lazily.

  Depth charges.

  The Admiral Winterbrook was joining the fray.

  Brace yourself, he warned Ethel.

  Nearly simultaneously – ba-bam! – the depth charges detonated. The swordfish sub and the lamprey-like sub were both caught in the blast radius. Their bodies burst wide open, spilling out shredded internal organs and fragments of shattered bone.

  The other Ice King subs were sent reeling, as was the second manta sub.

  In Ethel’s manta sub, she and Dev were hurled against the back wall of the eye socket cockpit. Their limbs tangled with the kid’s and each other’s, and it took a few moments to extricate themselves.

  During that time the scene outside changed drastically. The Ice King subs scattered, careering vertically down into the depths or horizontally off into the black water, out of sight. One of the cuttlefish sub’s pilots had recovered enough to take control of the vessel again and join the frantic exodus. The second manta, meanwhile, limped round towards Ethel’s craft.

  Will they attack again? Ethel asked Dev. A third wave of those metal weapons?

  I don’t know. If the aim was to drive the Ice King guys off, then no.

  You aren’t certain.

  The ungilled up there like to be thorough, and in this situation it’s not that easy telling friend from foe among your people.

  The two manta subs waited side by side, their occupants peering anxiously upwards. Ethel was poised to execute a steep dive at the first sign of another depth charge. She had instructed her colleagues in the other manta to be ready to do the same.

  Seems we’re okay, said Dev at last. They’ve worked out who’s who and they know the bad guys are gone. They’ve stood down from action stations.

  You weren’t confident that would happen.

  I’ve learned to take nothing for granted where combat is concerned. In the heat of battle, anything can go wrong and probably will.

  You’re a fighter. It was more a statement than a question. One whose business is defeating others in conflict.

  She was trying to say soldier, but there was no direct analogue for the word in her vocabulary.

  I used to be, Dev said.

  No, you are. It’s your life. Your nature. I saw it when you took on the thalassoraptor, and also when you were first confronted by the cuttlefish sub. You aren’t just any ordinary ambassador. You’re half us, half ungilled, as with all the ambassadors, but you have talents they don’t. You’re more than they are. More dangerous. More determined. More of a doer than a talker.

  That’s because I’m not actually an ambassador.

  Briefly Dev outlined his status as an ISS field operative and his reasons for being on Triton. He didn’t go into the niceties of host forms and data ’porting, partly because he didn’t want to overload Ethel with extraneous detail but mostly because he wasn’t sure that Tritonese could be stretched to express such concepts.

  The cramping in his stomach had eased a little. Either that or he was adjusting to it. Still, it wasn’t going away. He was keen to get back to the Reckless Abandon and dose up on painkillers at the first opportunity.

  Before that, though, he would pick Ethel’s brains further.

  I realise this probably isn’t the best moment, he said. You’re injured. You’ve just lost your cousin.

  Say what you have to.

  Like I told you, I’m here to stop the insurgency before it gets out of control. Anything you can tell me about the Ice King and the people who worship him, anything at all, would be handy.

  Ethel cast a bitter glance at the still unconscious kid. Her hand was clasped to her shoulder, pinching shut the edges of the wound he had given her.

  He would be able to enlighten you better than I can, she said. What I do know is they’re mad. The worst kind of mad, because they think they’re sane. There’s a legend that the Ice King made the world the way it is.

  Yes, I’ve heard as much.

  They say, too, that he sleeps in the ice at the heart of the world and will awaken when the time is right, in our direst hour of need. Some people claim he’s watching over us all the time, checking on us. The moons that shine down through the roof of the world are, it’s said, his eyes. They judge us constantly, and if we’re found lacking, sometimes the Ice King will conjure up a vast storm overhead, to remind us to behave. Like a parent warning a naughty child.

  The syzygy storm.

  But it’s only a story, Ethel went on, with the Tritonese equivalent of a shrug. The moons are just moons, and the storm is just a storm, if an unusually severe one.

  So there’s no way any of this stuff could be true? There is no Ice King?

  You have to ask?

  I do.

  If he does exist, I have seen no credible evidence.

  His followers seem pretty convinced about him.

  They’re deluded. They’ve taken a fiction and constructed a faith around it. It enables them to justify their actions against your kind.

  Amid the indignation on her face he saw traces of sympathy, but it was not for humans.

  You don’t completely disapprove of what they’re doing, he
said.

  I don’t approve of their methods, the brutality they resort to. Nor do I approve of how their movement can lure in the young and corrupt them, as with this one. All the same I have no great love for you ungilled. I would prefer it if you’d never come to our world. I feel as much of a grievance against you as anyone else does. You don’t belong. You aren’t welcome.

  That’s a shame.

  Isn’t it just.

  No, I meant because I was hoping you’d stick with us – me and my group. We could do with having you along. You know how things work around here and you’re good in a fight. Frankly, we need someone like you onside.

  After what I just said?

  About not loving the ungilled? Yes. Whatever your personal feelings, whatever your animosity towards us, you want a peaceful resolution to the situation, like I do.

  Any kind of resolution would be good, but a peaceful one would be best.

  Well, that puts you, for better or worse, on the same side as me.

  Those blank, black eyes of hers scrutinised him.

  I have followed you quite some distance already, I suppose, she said. And you’ve borne out my initial judgement of you, so far.

  Is that a yes?

  It is. Besides, she added, someone should keep an eye on you. You and the ones with you up there. To keep you from getting into too much trouble.

  Or causing it.

  33

  DEV RETURNED TO the Reckless Abandon long enough to swallow a gulp of analgesic gel and brief Handler on the latest developments. Then he swam across to the Admiral Winterbrook and brought Sigursdottir up to speed too.

  “Congrats, by the way,” he said. “You did absolutely the right thing, dropping depth charges. Targeted the aggressors and avoided any collateral damage.”

  “A commendation from you brightens my day,” Sigursdottir replied drolly. “I can sleep easy, knowing Dev Harmer has complimented me on a job well done. Beats any medal.”