If that was the case, then what could have happened to change things? What was different that had caused skirmishing to blossom into full-scale hostilities?
Me.
No, that couldn’t be. She had done nothing. Only arrive, and that not of her own free will. She could not possibly be responsible for the unprecedented upsurge in aggressive spralaker activity. The cause had to lie elsewhere. It had to.
She could not bear to think otherwise.
Despite making a strenuous effort to put the unsettling notion out of her mind, she was still thinking about it that evening (evening being a relative term at such sunless depths) when she began to take notice of a phenomenon as peculiar as it was welcome, and which related directly to the question she had posed earlier to Chachel. As she continued to slowly descend, along with the others she ought to have been getting colder. But for the last hour or so the surrounding water had been growing warmer. That made less than no sense. You didn’t get more comfortable the deeper you went.
She heard the roaring before she could see the source. Faint at first, little more than a background hum, it rose gradually in volume to become a dirge, a bellow, and finally a sustained tectonic chant. Swimming just a few feet above the gray, gently undulating sea floor she reached down to touch the ground. The rocky surface was unmistakably warm to the touch, and noticeably warmer than the surrounding dark water. In addition to the heat it was emitting, the rock was transmitting subtle vibrations. She lifted her gaze. Somewhere not far ahead, the Earth was howling. These increasingly intrusive geological incongruities did not appear to trouble her companions in the least. They showed no reaction to the rising temperature or noise.
Catching up to Glint, she swam alongside the manyarm hunter. Like his fellow cephalopods the cuttlefish was a free-swimming bundle of red and green lights, a tiny tentacled blimp who occasionally cut loose with a burst of blue-white light that gave him the appearance of an escaped advertisement for some otherworldly cinema.
“Black smokers ahead,” he explained in reply to her question. “Phenomenal protrusions they are. Generating heat, and interesting smells, and supporting all manner of wondrous beings. I wish we had some on the reef: we could make more metal. But you find them only down deep.”
Black smokers—what little she knew about them had been gleaned from sporadic encounters with relevant science articles. Volcanic vents spewing all manner of superheated gases and fluids from inside the Earth precipitated out exotic minerals that condensed in deep cold to water to form stalagmite-like towers. The creatures that dwelled in similar infernal conditions in her world were so bizarre as not to be believed. What might their counterparts here be like?
She soon found out.
Not knowing what to expect, she envisioned a dozen or so erupting chimneys. As revealed in the lights of the expedition, the reality was quite different.
She was unable to count the number of smokers. By the dozens, the thundering towers stretched off into the dark distance, sending an equal number of black plumes fuming impressively upward. It was the Devil’s own calliope, belching superhot mineral-laden black smoke and water. While Chachel and Glint and the rest of the party continued toward them without pausing, she hesitated.
“We’re not going into that hell, are we?” she asked Arrelouf , one of the group’s two female merson soldiers.
“Into and through it, I would imagine.” The glowing necklace around her neck casting her features in soft relief, she smiled thinly. “Are you afraid, changeling?”
Irina considered. “Yes. Yes, I’m afraid. Superheated sulphides and poisonous gases have that effect on me.”
“I don’t understand your wordings, but it’s good to be afraid.” With a quick scissor kick the other woman darted forward. “It keeps one from going to sleep at the wrong time.”
Aware that by now most of the expeditionary force had passed her by, a resigned Irina hurried to rejoin them. The stentorian escaping-steam thrum of the smokers was frightening, but far less so than the prospect of being left behind in the black of the deep.
Clouds of phosphorescent blind shrimp swirled around the smokers, ribbons of living red and white that prospected the algae that in turn thrived on the rich deposits of minerals. Here in the complete absence of sunlight there was life abundant. Other bizarre creatures scrambled to make a living among the storms of shrimp, including a number of spralakers. But these were small, scattered, and few in number. Their pale white half-blind selves posed no threat to the travelers, though they invariably ran to hide when the group came into view, and hurled undersized curses at them once the mersons and manyarms were safely past.
“Be careful!”
Strong fingers wrapped around Irina’s left arm and yanked her painfully in that direction. Looking around, she saw Poylee glaring back at her.
“I’ll thank you not to grab me like that.” Irina’s tone was hard and flat.
“Fine. Next time I’ll let you boil.” With a couple of kicks, the merson moved away.
Boil? It took Irina a moment to spot the crevice she had nearly swam directly over. Little more than a crack in the earth, it had only just begun to precipitate out the accumulating mineral deposits that would one day lead to the formation of another tower. Cautiously extending an arm, she let her fingers flutter forward—only to hastily pull them back. The temperature of the narrow jet of water emerging from the unobtrusive vent was in the hundreds of degrees. Because the aperture was unobstructed and not laden with the usual dissolved dark minerals, she hadn’t noticed it. Had she continued swimming in the same direction she would have passed right over and through it—and received a severe scalding.
As the expedition moved deeper into the forest of smokers, some of which towered hundreds of feet overhead, it took her several moments to find Poylee again.
“Why did you do that?” She searched the merson’s face, seeking nonverbal explanation. “Why didn’t you let me burn myself?” She lowered her voice. “I know you wouldn’t object to that, even if I’m not sure why.”
The other woman was silent for a moment. Then, “I don’t want you to die. I don’t even, really, want you to be disfigured. That’s not who I am. I just wish, I want—I’d rather you just wouldn’t be.” For the second time in the space of a few minutes, she swam off into the darkness. Leaving Irina to follow more slowly and wonder why she should feel guilty for “being.”
It wasn’t long before a new noise rose above the constant, continuous rumble of the hydrothermal vents. The sound was familiar yet foreign. The nearer the group came to it the more recognizable it became. Yet Irina was still unable to identify it. There was an edge to the collective din that reminded her of something so commonplace that she was simultaneously intrigued and frustrated. Very shortly it revealed itself to the group. Awareness did not keep several of the mersons from smiling, while she found herself grinning from ear to ear.
The chattering was the communal laughter that emanated from a colony of twenty-foot long tube worms.
And why shouldn’t worms laugh, she asked herself as she finned forward? Were she to find herself trapped by birth and circumstance in one place, unable ever to move and forever fastened to rocks that had coagulated from the sulphurous blood of Hell itself, would she not seek relief in the form of laughter? Crimson plumes protruding from long white tubes alternated sieve feeding with a collective cackling as the worms strained hydrogen sulphide, carbon dioxide, and oxygen from the surrounding water to feed the trapped internal bacteria that supplied them with nourishment. Waving slowly back and forth in the confused currents like thick pulpy reeds, the colony acknowledged the arrival of the travelers with a burst of sarcastic hilarity.
“Look at them, flesh from the surface!” commented one worm.
Bending forward in a perfect arc, another thrust its beak-like red plume in Irina’s direction. “All those unnecessary protuberances. Not streamlined at all,” it observed.
“Have to chase their food,” chortled an
other. “All those pieces of body hanging off. Disgusting!”
Her companions might be used to such insults, but Irina was not. “You’re criticizing me? You’re a worm. A very big worm, to be sure, but still just a worm.”
The one that had curved forward to examine her now straightened. “‘Just’ a worm? Are you so ignorant you know so little? Why, don’t you realize where you’d be without worms?”
She ground her teeth. “No. Why don’t you tell me where I’d be?”
Two of the bright red plumes faced one another. “Wormless!”
This time several members of the expeditionary force joined the tube worm colony in shared mirth. Aware that she’d been had, Irina wondered if the subcutaneous lighting Oxothyr had given her was strong enough to mask the flush she felt spreading over her cheeks. These giant deep-sea Riftia might be capable of complex speech, but their sense of humor was decidedly lowbrow.
She was gratified to see that Oxothyr had little patience for such juvenile jollity. “We must get to Benthicalia. It is a matter of the greatest importance.” An arm gestured forward. “Landmarks hereabouts are scarce, as smokers tend to look much the same.”
“Like us, I suppose,” commented one of the worms sardonically.
“Contrary to what you might think, we are quite distinguishable from one another,” insisted the first speaker’s neighbor.
“How?” As soon as she asked, Irina wished she hadn’t.
But the tube worm surprised her with a straightforward reply. “By our respective senses of humor, of course. Since we are all approximately the same size, shape, color, and asexual, status within our colonies is determined by one’s ability to make the others laugh. Not as easy as you might think, since besides feeding it is our principal activity. I ask you, flesh-thing, what is more valuable, more welcome, and more gratifying than a new joke?”
“I see your point,” she admitted, relieved not to have been made the butt of one again.
To emphasize the urgency of their situation, Oxothyr pointed with three arms. “I believe this direction to be the right one, but I would appreciate any correction you feel is necessary.”
“Benthicalia,” one of the worms murmured, swaying slowly from side to side as it spoke. “We have heard of it. There are worms there, too, and many smokers. Travelers this way are rare, but they do tell tales. We cannot visit our cousins, but others can visit for us.” The red filter-head dipped close to the hovering octopus. “You are indeed set on the correct path, manyarm. Keep straight and you will come to Benthicalia in due course.” Straightening, it concluded with easygoing solemnity. “We will not keep you long, but it would be very discourteous of you not to pay for this valuable information. We must do a trade.”
Drifting over to Arrelouf, Irina could not contain her curiosity. “They have no buildings, no goods of any kind. At least, none that I can see. What could we possibly trade with them?”
Arrelouf eyed her as one would a child, then remembered that this changeling had little knowledge of the realworld.
“Why, jokes, of course.”
Despite the darkness, the danger from the superheated venting taking place all around, the nauseating omnipresent stink of sulphur and other noxious materials being ejected from the ground, and her own uncertainty, the ensuing half hour that was spent among the field of giant tube worms was among the most relaxing, and certainly the most unexpectedly entertaining, she had yet experienced in the surrounds of Oshenerth.
— XVI —
A little laughter lasts a long time in the way down deep, Irina discovered. A useful thing to recall whenever the small group of determined travelers found themselves crossing open plains. The scattered smoker forests became a welcome sight. Their oppressive roaring was offset by the presence of so much more life than was encountered elsewhere, and by the welcome heat the hydrothermal vents generated. One could grow accustomed to such a place, she decided. Everywhere around the pillar-like smokers a multitude of lifeforms were in constant motion, struggling for survival amid perpetual noise, darkness, and moisture. Not so very different from Seattle in January.
It was impossible to tell time. In the absence of sunlight night and day became meaningless, abstract terms. The travelers rested when a majority showed signs of fatigue and moved on when that same majority felt sufficiently refreshed. Food was taken communally. While they were capable of eating on the swim, it was safer to settle down in one place and alternate mealtimes. As Chachel tersely pointed out to her, two kinds of dangers haunted the deep: those you could see, and those that lurked just beyond the range of the lights the expedition generated. When they stopped to sleep, mealtime was another interlude that required the posting of guards—both around the group and above it.
She was beginning to think talk of such dangers exaggerated. For one thing, dark depths would find far fewer sharks on patrol. Though their other senses allowed them to hunt perfectly well in the absence of light, the sleek carnivores preferred to see their prey. While a big hungry seven-gill might pose a genuine menace, in her world at least, such species were more scavenger than predator. What else might lurk in the depths of Oshenerth just beyond her range of vision she did not know.
When an example finally did present itself, it was not at all what she expected. Doubtless because it was a creature that was completely outside her experience.
They had paused to rest among a cluster of the hissing, fuming, mineralized towers, careful not to drift too close to jets of superheated water that could boil a merson or manyarm alive, when the smoker serpent came coiling out of the darkness like a giant worm emerging from an obsidian apple. The deepwater predators Irina had seen so far had ranged from merson-size to tiny. The smoker serpent was huge.
As it coiled toward them, mersons ducked behind the hardened pillars of smokers, careful not to make contact with the hot rock itself. The manyarm members of the expedition obtruded their siphons and scattered in all directions, trailing bioluminescent tentacles like sprays of fireworks.
Clutching roughly at her, a hand pulled Irina back behind the crumbly black column of a dormant smoker. “Are your brains as feeble as the rest of you?” A grim-faced Chachel glared at her. “Hide, run, keep out of its way! Or would you rather be food?”
“I—I’m sorry.” Abashed, she didn’t look at him. “It’s just that I’ve never seen anything like it and …”
Gripping his spear tightly, he peered cautiously around the pillar. Stretching more than a hundred feet from snout to tail, its narrow body highlighted with luminescent spots flashing scarlet, the smoker serpent was not difficult to follow.
“I’m sure its insides are equally fascinating,” Chachel whispered tightly, “yet I have no wish to view them personally. Stay here.”
She complied without argument. Though she had already tested herself in battle against the spralakers at Siriswirll, this was a very different environment featuring a decidedly more imposing adversary, for all that there was only one of it.
Other than the radiant red bioluminescence that illuminated its flanks, the body of the smoker serpent was nearly transparent. A glass dragon, she thought. As it twisted and writhed among the stone towers, when available light was just right and strong enough she could clearly see its internal organs through the pigmentless flesh. Darker blood pulsed through veins of translucent tubing. She could also see light gleam from its foot-long upper and three-foot long lower fangs, each of which was as slender as a rapier and as sharp as a needle. Evolved to catch and hold oversized prey in a single bite, once impaled on those dreadful daggers even a large, powerful fish would be unable to escape.
Huge, perfectly round, and glowing a soft blue-green, the conspicuously convex eyes were as big around as truck tires and as vacant of intelligence as the forest of smoking columns they were presently scanning. This was no chary scavenger, she decided as she shrank back further behind the protective pillar. The red-limned serpent was vigorously stalking prey. At the moment, that meant her and her
friends.
In the weeks gone by, she had seen many marvels. Here was one she would have been content to avoid, and wished would go away. Maybe the rapid, jerky movements of its would-be prey would frustrate it and cause it to go elsewhere, she told herself hopefully.
Then it looped with unexpected speed around one of the tallest smokers, struck like a snake, and caught one of Glint’s counterparts in its trap-like jaws. Bayoneted on the outsized lower fangs, the unfortunate cuttlefish warrior screamed and went completely white. Even in the course of the clash at Siriswirll Irina had never heard such a scream. It sounded like that of a child mixed with the yowl of an injured cat.
From their hiding places near the scene of the attack, every merson in the group popped into view. They were joined by the rest of the manyarms who, bows and smaller spears at the ready, came rocketing in out of the darkness where they had sought refuge. One weapon after another struck the serpent’s wildly undulating flanks, which leaked blood only slightly less dark than the water around it.
Enraged and hurt, the serpent lunged furiously at its multiple attackers. Swimming in to strike and then darting quickly away, mersons and manyarms worked together to decoy and evade the gaping, slashing mouth. The desperate semaphorings of the unfortunate cuttlefish still skewered on the teeth of the serpent’s lower jaw grew increasingly more feeble.
Diving down on the creature from above, Chachel took careful aim and, approaching dangerously close, with all his strength thrust his spear straight down into the back of the serpent’s skull. The thin bone was incredibly resistant and the spear point slid off to one side, missing the brain. But enough nerves were severed or damaged to send the monster into a paroxysm of fury. Black smokers collapsed as the spasming body smashed into their deceptively fragile sides. Hardened mineral deposits splintered and powdered, filling the otherwise perfectly clear water with coarse debris that made it difficult to see.
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