Impossible Places

by Alan Dean Foster

  “It’s a tanker!” Fredo informed them breathlessly. “The Comco Sulawesi. She was bound for the refinery at Honolulu with sixty thousand barrels of Indonesian crude aboard when she went aground!” He swallowed, his throat dry. “I was monitoring the Coast Guard channels. She’s afire, and the crew’s preparing to abandon ship.”

  “They can’t do that!” Martine Renosa exclaimed.

  “What about the tug at Kahului?” Renssalear’s voice was calm, but tension caused his weathered face to crinkle like brown tinfoil.

  Fredo shook his head sharply. “There’re no ships due in the harbor today, so the crew went over to Hilo for a break. They’re sending three oceangoing tugs from Honolulu.”

  “They’ll never get here in time,” someone muttered angrily. “What the hell’s a tanker doing in the channel anyway? Especially at this time of year.”

  “Nobody’s sure,” Fredo explained. “They think the captain wanted to see the islands close up.” From the back of the crowd someone groaned.

  “Sixty thousand barrels.” John Renssalear had been a commercial diver on wells in the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, working deep water under potentially lethal conditions. It took a lot to shake him.

  “If she breaks up, that much crude could kill all the reefs on this side of the island, all the way from La Perouse Bay up to Kapalua. Not to mention everything around Kahoolawe, Lanai, and maybe even Molokai.”

  “What about Molokini?” someone asked abruptly.

  “Molokini?” Renssalear barely had the energy to shrug. “Molokini’s as good as dead. That oil will smother the coral and turn the diving sanctuary into an underwater desert.”

  “Never mind Molokini,” Renosa growled darkly. “What about the whales?” No one said anything. Everyone knew it was the height of the calving season and that the channel was full of migrating humpbacks and their newborn young.

  “Say, John.” Renssalear turned to Daniel Warren, who was staring evenly at the rising plume of black smoke. “Can you run me out there?”

  The owner of the dive operation cocked his head slightly to one side as he regarded his most valued employee. “What did you have in mind, Dan?”

  “Just run me out there. Maybe—maybe I can do something.”

  Wide-eyed, Fredo looked from one man to the other. “Are you two crazy? That ship’s on fire. She could blow at any minute!”

  “Or not,” Dan Warren whispered. “She might just burn until her tanks burn through.”

  Renssalear didn’t hesitate. “Let me get my gear.”

  The powerful little boat crashed through the swells, heading south toward the burgeoning pillar of doom. They sped around fleeing yachties, dodged the Coast Guard cutter that had positioned itself to keep back curious tourists, shot past the two big lifeboats that looked like fat waterborne grubs and that were carrying the multinational crew of the tanker to safety.

  The emergency ladder the tanker crew had left behind flapped and banged against the side of the stricken ship. Maneuvering with the skill and experience born of many years at sea, Renssalear put the dive boat close alongside. Still, it took three tries before Dan Warren was able to make the short but dangerous leap to the dangling ladder.

  Renssalear backed off, watching tensely as Daniel ascended the treacherously flapping rungs.

  Long moments passed. The Coast Guard was screaming at him on three different frequencies. Renssalear ignored it, acknowledging his radio only when it crackled on a prearranged channel.

  “I’m in the pilothouse, John.”

  Renssalear murmured a silent prayer. “Nice going, Dan. What now?”

  “I’m going to try and back her off the reef. I know it better than that Indonesian captain ever could. I know its bumps and ridges, where the hollows are and every twitch of the current. I know where the sand is deep and where the coral grows shallow. I can feel it, John! Its just something . . . I’ve got in me. Now, give me some space.”

  Renssalear waited as the immense diesels rumbled to life within the belly of the tanker. Props bigger than his dive boat churned the water, sending bottom dwellers like rays and flounder flying.

  At first nothing happened. Then a deeper groaning became audible. Not many people would have recognized that noise, but Renssalear did. It was the sound of a steel keel grinding against coral and stone.

  Spewing smoke like a drunken volcano, the mortally wounded Comco Sulawesi slowly backed off the eastern horn of Molokini. Once safely behind the islet, above the dive site known to locals as the Edge of the World, with 350 feet of water under the hull, Dan Warren turned the injured vessel south and headed for the open Pacific.

  “Put her on autopilot and get off there!” Renssalear shouted into the radio. “I’ll pick you up.”

  “Sorry, John,” came the steady reply. “No can do. I’ve already tried that. The autopilot doesn’t respond. Maybe I can find something to lash the wheel.”

  Time elapsed. Too much time. The Comco Sulawesi cleared the southern tip of Maui and then Kanahou Bay on Kahoolawe, passing through the Alalakeiki Channel on its way out to open ocean. Renssalear followed grimly, battling the rising seas in his small boat.

  Finally, a response. “Got ’er!”

  “What’d you use?” Renssalear shouted into his radio mike.

  “Duct tape.” Renssalear could almost see his friend grinning. “Advanced technology can’t function without duct tape.”

  “I’m going to tie you up in duct tape and mail you off on a forced vacation!” Renssalear wiped a tear from one eye. “I’ll come around and pull up to the ladder. The swells are pretty high. Find a life jacket or preserver and jump in if you have to. Don’t worry, I’ll get to you.”

  “I know you will, John. I’m on my way!”

  Two minutes later the Comco Sulawesi blew up in a spectacular shower of hot metal, burning wood, and flaming oil, bringing to mind for a few minutes the far greater but no more terrifying eruption of Mount Saint Helens. A cursing, screaming Renssalear fought with the wheel of his wildly bucking dive boat, angling it into the backwash and somehow keeping it upright and afloat. Crude drenched his skin, his deck, his equipment, but he didn’t care. He kept wiping it from his eyes as he fought his way to the place on the water where the bloated tanker had floated only moments before.

  “Didn’t need to worry about the damn autopilot,” he muttered to himself as he searched the spreading sheet of burning debris for signs of life. “Should’ve got off when he had the chance. The brave, dumb son of a bitch should’ve got off.”

  It was counted a minor miracle when they found Dan Warren clinging to a piece of shattered decking, badly burned and semiconscious. The Coast Guard cutter that had been monitoring the disaster threatened to burn out its own engines as it put on speed for Kahului Harbor, the medics on board doing their best to subdue the pain and keep their patient alive. But there wasn’t much they could do. They had not been trained to treat the likes of Dan Warren.

  At the hospital they knew him better, but despite their best efforts he continued to lose ground. Or rather, water. While his parents and friends crowded the waiting room and spilled out into the halls and even the street, stricken physicians caucused outside the operating theater.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” one mumbled. “The stuff is all through him. He just ingested too much of it.”

  “His circulatory biomass is dying,” another declared sorrowfully. “He’s suffering from an internal oil spill. All the specialized organisms, the unique quasi-coraline structures—the oil’s killing them all. He needs a transfusion. Of blood.”

  “We can’t do that.” The head of surgery eyed his colleagues, voicing what they all knew. “You know what his system is like. A normal transfusion would kill him as effectively as the petroleum.”

  “I wonder why the solution didn’t work?” muttered another. They had tried replacing Daniel’s singular body fluid with a saline solution blended to duplicate that of seawater. Even the pH was correct to a
dozen decimal points. But it hadn’t worked.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Another doctor was insistent. “We have to try real blood. There’s no other way.”

  “Maybe one.” Surprised, they all turned to the head nurse. “Wait for me.” Running outside, she dialed the emergency room. Everyone there knew what had happened. Everyone knew how Dan Warren had sacrificed himself in his desperate attempt to save the island’s underwater patrimony.

  “Is Jimmy Wakamao there?” she asked. He was. “Jimmy, this is Gena Pukalani. I want you to go up to Point Waihee. There’s a little reef there. Take the ambulance and don’t let anybody or anything stop you. I want you to bring back five gallons of water off the reef, where the current is strong and the water is clear. Yes, you heard me right. Five gallons. Take Steve Portugas with you.”

  While they waited, the doctors continued to do what they could for Dan Warren. They were arguing over whether to proceed with a transfusion of type AB when the ambulance driver and his assistant burst into the conference room. Between them they carried the plastic container of precious seawater.

  “What’s this?” the chief of surgery asked. “We’ve already tried a saline substitute.”

  “A sterile saline substitute,” the head nurse argued. “Dan Warren’s body fluid isn’t sterile. It’s full of life, of living things. It’s the sea in miniature. Only the sea can restore him.”

  “Or kill him,” insisted the doctor who was in favor of trying real blood. He indicated the plastic jug. It smelled of open ocean. “Who knows what kind of toxic microorganisms are floating around in there?”

  The head nurse looked back at him. She was a local, and had more confidence in the sea than did the good doctor only recently arrived from Philadelphia.

  “Nothing more dangerous than has been living in him for his whole life, I’ll bet.”

  Everyone looked to the head of surgery for a decision. If he decided wrongly, he would be accused of letting a state hero die. Finally, he said somberly to his head nurse, “Let’s try it.”

  The clean seawater flushed out the oil. There was damage, but with time and therapy Dan Warren’s system gradually rehabilitated itself. The coraline structures that lined his veins and arteries slowly rebuilt themselves; the unique microspecies once more swam and thrived in the inlets and fjords of his legs and arms.

  The state gave him a medal, and the locals threw the granddaddy of all luaus in his honor. After a while all the fuss died down. There were pineapples to be gathered, and protea to harvest, and golden macs to box and ship. Tourists needed looking after, and gods old and new required the usual propitiation.

  Dan Warren is still there, working out of Lahaina. You can go diving with him if you like. You can’t miss him. He carries the aroma of the sea about him like a halo. His eyes are blue, of course.

  But like no blue you’ve ever seen.

  UNDYING IRON

  When non-SF people ask me what got me started reading SF, much less writing it, I have to tell them it was the Sense of Wonder inherent in so many of the stories. Then I have to stop and explain Sense of Wonder to them; what it is and why it’s always capitalized. Sometimes it’s easy. Other times, no matter how long I talk or how many examples I give, they just don’t get it. It’s like trying to explain Beethoven to somebody who only listens to country-western. The terms of reference simply aren’t there.

  Every once in a while I get tired of trying to give a contemporary spin to stories. I yearn for the innocent reading days of my youth, when every Asimov story widened my eyes, when each new Sheckley I encountered made me gasp with its sheer inventiveness, and when Leinster left me so locked in one of his tales that I was afraid I’d hurt my eyes if I looked away from the printed page.

  But most of all I miss the ability of stories to make my thoughts soar, to make my mind bear witness to wonders no other form of literature can approach. To take me to places and show me things beyond the bounds of this tiny, familiar world we ethnocentrically call Earth.

  Sometimes, I even try to do it myself.

  Ory was frightened.

  She’d been frightened like this only twice before: once when a silimac had torn its way through Corridor Eighty-Eight, barely missing her but killing twenty of the Flatt family, and once when Jonn Thunder had consumed something unwholesome and had gone into convulsions that had lasted nearly a whole week.

  But this was different. Perceiving no threat to her person, she did not fear bodily harm. This new fear rose from the depths of herself, as if she were being poisoned by her own mind. It was new and incomprehensible, this irrational fear that something awful was about to happen.

  She was terrified.

  Drifting aimlessly down Twenty-Four Tunnel, she gazed vacuously at the pale haze that clung to the inner lining and wondered what to do next. Fear had given rise to a throbbing in her brain. Of that she was certain. Still, she had tried to ignore the persistent discomfort. Headaches were a corollary to her specialty. They came and went like feeding time.

  But this one lingered, unresponsive to all the usual treatments. Refusing to dissipate, it impaired her ability to cogently cogitate, robbed her of relaxation time, and had started to affect her even when she slept. It was a dull, insistent pounding that refused to abate.

  I can’t go on like this, she thought worriedly. I have to talk to somebody.

  Selecting a Downtunnel chute, she boosted herself westward. Cousins, aunts, uncles, and nonrelatives waved greetings or shouted cheerily to her as they rushed past. Some were fellow Checkers, others bound on important business of their own. The Brights illuminating Twenty-Four Tunnel glowed softly all around, bathing her in their reassuring refulgence. Colors changed as the Brights tracked her position.

  Ory ran an Alpha shift. More than half her routine checks remained to be made, but she contrived to schedule them so that they would bring her close to Tamrul’s cubicle. With luck, he might have some helpful suggestions to offer concerning headache treatment.

  Used to be, Tamrul could always be counted on to provide satisfactory answers to her questions, but not anymore. The past ten years had exposed the onset of a creeping senility the Philosopher could no longer hide. Knowing of his gathering infirmities, he was still her first choice. Less lucid he might be than in earlier times, but he remained unfailingly kind and understanding. Unlike some of the others, he would not laugh at her, nor treat her with unbecoming brusqueness.

  She slipped out of Twenty-Four Tunnel and headed north to Two Hundred Twelve Corridor. Several Dispatchers accelerated to pass her, barely observing minimum clearance. Full of self-importance, they wore their rudeness like combat medals.

  “Hey, slide over!” she shouted at them.

  “Do you hear something?” the one in the lead queried his companions.

  “White noise,” a companion ventured.

  “With twitchy probes,” another added for good measure.

  They raced onward up the tunnel, chuckling nonstop and holding hands. Dispatchers were incorrigibly incestuous in their relationships, keeping to themselves as much as possible even though their jobs required frequent contact with others. Ory ignored their taunts. It was their way of dealing with individual insecurities. When it came to instigating original conversation, they were not very interesting anyway.

  Two Hundred Twelve Corridor, Section Nine-One. Waving politely to a passing Inspector, she banked around a tight corner and buzzed Tamrul’s cubicle. In the old days he got out more often. Now if you wanted his advice, you had to go to him. No more house calls, he’d posted one day. That did not trouble Ory. A Checker had plenty of freedom. So long as she completed her shift schedule she could roam pretty much where she pleased.

  The Corridor Brights stood down behind her as she buzzed a second time. She could sense him inside, whining to himself the way he often did when he was alone. It was sad to hear. She felt sorry for Tamrul. Not that he was any better or worse than any other Philosopher, but he had always regarded her with more t
han just a polite eye. She felt that he saw something special in her, though he was too formal to come out and say so. Just as well. It could never have worked out. As a Checker, she led much too active a lifestyle for him. They were reduced to delighting in the pleasure of one another’s conversation.

  At last she was admitted. He greeted her with the informality that came from long acquaintance. “Good day, Ory. It’s nice to see you again. What brings you up into my neck of the woods?”

  “Your beneficent face. What else?”

  “You flatter my expression, which I am quite aware rarely expands beyond the mournful. No wonder I like you so much. Sweet Ory, always ready to take the extra step to make others feel better about themselves.”

  Sounds of amusement rose from nearby. A couple of guys from Maintenance were streamlining a recalcitrant photon flow, their compressors humming. Clearly, they found the private conversation a source of unexpected mirth.

  “Moderate your volume, Tamrul.” To show she was not upset with him, Ory offered one of her famous smiles. “Half the Family think you’re senile already. No need to add fuel to the rumors.”

  “You’re right. I should render my verbalizations more circumspectly. I’m too direct for a Philosopher.”

  “And get off this self-pity kick. When did you start with that? It doesn’t become you.”

  “It is simply that I am bored, Ory. That’s all. Do not commit the error of others by mistaking ennui for senility. This old mind is as sharp as ever. But a brain is no different from any other tool. Gets rusty if it isn’t used. I miss the group discussions of the old days.” He made a visible effort to rouse himself from his self-induced stupor.