The Chaos Chronicles

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  He was now working with his fourth, and achieving some success. But it was time to withdraw, before he lost too much of his own strength. The warning signs were there—the faintness, the loss of concentration. And the stones agreed. He shivered as he slowly drew away from the Neri. He sat a moment with his hand on the Neri's arm, gazing at the dark, silent face.

  *Rest now.*

  The stones were right, of course. But it was hard to let go. /There are so many more. So many to help./ Ik peered at the growing collection of disabled Neri, brought into the chamber by their fellows. /How can I rest?/

  *Who can you heal, if you fail, yourself?*

  /Hrahh,/ he murmured. To the nearest Neri, he said, "I must pause awhile. I must rest." And he was surprised by how tiring it was even to speak those words.

  The Neri buzzed among themselves, and he sank almost involuntarily into a fleeting meditative trance, starting in and out of it even as the Neri voices echoed their raspy echoes around him. The air in the chamber was starting to become depleted, and there were now so many Neri out of the water, on the ledge beside him, that they were using up the air much faster than he would have alone. Ik searched tiredly until he found S'Cali, who was right beside him, gazing down at the Neri he had just attempted to heal.

  "He seems a little stronger," S'Cali said. "Will he live?"

  "I don't know," Ik whispered. "But the air is growing bad in here. Can these people recover as well in the water as in the air? I am finding it—" he paused, drawing air "—increasingly hard to breathe."

  "I will see if there are some extractors available to freshen the air. If necessary, we can move you. And we can certainly move some of the ill," S'Cali said. He pulled something out of the water, which had been hanging from a line. It was the air supply pack that had malfunctioned and almost killed Ik. "This has been repaired. You must have struck something leaving the sub. The intake vanes were bent, blocking the flow of water through the air extractor. They have been straightened."

  Ik muttered his thanks.

  "If you need to sleep, you might be more comfortable in the water," S'Cali offered.

  Ik hissed a restrained laugh. "No thank you," he said. "But I am glad to know that I can put this on, if I need to."

  "Shall we leave you alone, then?" asked S'Cali.

  "Alone? Please, no!" Ik barked. He hissed, and this time his laughter was a release. "Perhaps one or two of you could stay, with some lights."

  "It is done," said S'Cali.

  *

  As L'Kell drove his sub into the path of the oncoming landers, Bandicut caught sight of more of them, riding powered sleds of some kind—one sweeping in from each side, trailing what looked like jet contrails, strangely beautiful in the twilight blue water. The contrails rose like a curling aurora borealis behind the sleds. He assumed that the sleds were armed. After he pointed them out to L'Kell, the Neri grunted, smoothed out his final S-curve, and bore down with full throttle upon the formation of lander swimmers.

  Before the sleds could get close enough to harm them, the Neri swimmers were in the midst of the landers. A melee ensued, not so much a battle as a mutual scattering, with the lander swimmers futilely attacking and then trying to get out of the way of the faster and more maneuverable Neri. Bandicut saw some flashes of spears and knives, but couldn't tell if anyone was actually being hit. At last the sleds, moving a good clip faster than L'Kell's sub, churned in close.

  "If those things are armed with bursters—" L'Kell muttered. He veered again toward the thickest concentration of lander swimmers. The sleds roared past without firing. One contrail, then another, boiled past the sub's nose. "They don't want to hurt their own people!" L'Kell cried jubilantly. Indeed, the lander swimmers were too close now for explosives to be used safely. L'Kell turned once more, keeping the sub moving through the midst of the landers. There were two loud clangs on the hull as spears hit the sub.

  Bandicut craned his neck to follow the landers' movements as the sub passed them by. "They're fleeing! They're heading up, toward the surface."

  L'Kell made a rasping sound. "We've scared them away! All it took was a show of force!"

  Bandicut grunted. The landers were indeed ascending, moving as quickly as they could away from the Neri. A few Neri swimmers gave chase briefly, but dove away when lander sleds returned to guard the retreat. As the landers disappeared into the misty water overhead, Bandicut noted that they seemed to be moving at a cautious rate. "Maybe we scared them," he murmured to L'Kell.

  "You think they're not fleeing?"

  "They're fleeing, but I'm not sure it's just because they're frightened."

  L'Kell cut the sub's speed to let the Neri regather around him. "What do you mean?"

  "They're from the surface," Bandicut said. "They might be running low on air. And I doubt that they have your ability to withstand pressure changes." L'Kell turned his eyes in puzzlement. "Remember I told you it might kill me if I went straight to the surface from your city?" L'Kell had been surprised at the time. The sea-people seemed practically immune to the bends. But if a human tried to make the kind of depth changes that the Neri made routinely—without being "normalized" on Shipworld, anyway, and without stones—he would die in agony as nitrogen bubbles fizzed out of solution in his body. It seemed likely that the landers were vulnerable to the same problem, since it arose from basic gas physics and only a highly adapted physiology could circumvent it.

  L'Kell was steering the sub toward a large, dark gash in the side of the wreck. The ship now loomed before them, and for the first time, Bandicut could see an encrustation of sea growth on its surface. He squinted, trying to get a better look—and his heart nearly stopped when three landers suddenly flashed out of the wreck, chased by Neri swimmers. Two of the landers made their escape upward, but the third took a spear through its abdomen—and sank, writhing, toward the bottom. Bandicut shuddered, as the dying lander and the pursuing Neri dropped out of his view. He hadn't even gotten a good look at the lander, but he didn't have to, to feel the horror.

  "This sickness?" L'Kell said, without mentioning what they had just seen. "It might keep them from returning?"

  Bandicut grunted. "It would mean they can't stay down for more than a short time, without getting sick or dying on the way back up. They're probably partway up right now, hanging at an intermediate depth—"

  "Waiting to come back down?" L'Kell barked. "We should go after them!"

  "No!" Bandicut said, shaking his head. He didn't want a bloodbath on his conscience. "I mean they're decompressing slowly, on their way up. If I'm right, they can't come back down—not right away, and probably not today. Although others might come, I suppose."

  L'Kell muttered darkly to himself. "Then we'll station guards, while we investigate inside the wreck. But I hope you are right about this, John Bandicut."

  /I hope I am, too,/ Bandicut thought.

  Steering the sub into the breached-open hull, L'Kell pointed to another Neri sub, almost lost in the shadows—jammed against an inner wall of the hold. "It's S'Cali's. And look." L'Kell pointed to the nose of the sub.

  Bandicut couldn't see much, no real sign of damage. But no light shone within its interior, and there was no movement inside, and—wait a minute. Was it flooded? Yes, there was an air pocket near the top of its viewport. Bandicut grunted, trying not to jump to conclusions. "The landers attacked it?" he said, not voicing his real fear, which was that Ik was inside, drowned. And if not, then where was he?

  L'Kell spoke on the comm to several Neri swimmers who had emerged from the shadows, then reported, "Your friend is alive, inside the shipwreck."

  Bandicut's breath went out in a rush. "Is he all right?"

  "I do not know his condition," L'Kell said. "But you are needed inside. We must get you in there."

  "How?" Bandicut frowned. "Will the sub fit?"

  "We'll have to swim. And we should hurry, before any pikarta turn up." Parking the sub beside the other, L'Kell crawled back to the aft compartment. He br
ought out a set of gear that resembled something from an old Jules Verne holo, with an odd-looking hood and a backpack that looked as if it had been handmade from old junk. Bandicut shuddered; he'd been hurriedly fitted for the gear before setting out, but he'd prayed that an emergency requiring it would never arise. "It is quite safe for our young," L'Kell said, as though reading his thoughts. "There is no reason why it shouldn't serve you just as well."

  Bandicut could think of plenty of reasons. "Is Ik wearing one of these?"

  "I don't know how else he could have gotten out of the sub."

  Bandicut held up the hood. /Charlie, old boy—/

  /// —old girl— ///

  /I hope you're ready to do some emergency resuscitation./

  /// Do we know there are Neri in need

  of resuscitation? ///

  /I wasn't thinking of the Neri./

  /// Oh. ///

  With L'Kell's help, Bandicut began to put the thing on.

  *

  It was unnerving, swimming with a hood over his head that might have been made of leather and transparent seaweed, and a flow of air that was cold and salty and filled with a dozen unidentifiable smells. Bandicut tried to keep up with L'Kell, but without swim fins it was difficult. L'Kell offered to tow him by his straps, but Bandicut waved him off and began boosting himself along the corridor by grabbing wall protrusions and bulkheads.

  He had kept his clothes on, counting on a ghostly forcefield created by his stones to keep him dry. Buoyancy control had proved a bit of a problem, until L'Kell had attached some small weights to his vest.

  They had left the chamber where the sub was parked, and were making their way down a long, dark corridor into the heart of the ship. There were few sea-growths on the inner walls; apparently the local varieties required light to thrive. Chemoluminescent lamps carried by the Neri provided the only illumination. Bandicut thought he felt a current moving through the corridor. He also thought he saw ghosts and sea monsters drawing back out of sight every time he turned his head. /What the hell are we doing here?/ he thought with a shiver.

  /// Is that a rhetorical question? ///

  He didn't bother answering.

  *

  They swam some distance, making half a dozen turns in the ship's corridors, until they arrived in a largish space where a number of Neri were gathered in the water. It was a surreal-looking gathering, a slow dance of dark, big-eyed creatures of the night, caught in the ghostly glow of the Neri lanterns. One other thing caught Bandicut's attention—a rippling shimmer off to one side. No—it was overhead. An air space! L'Kell led him upward, and they broke the surface. Bandicut sculled the water with both hands as he peered around out of the awkward Neri hood. The visor started to fog up, but before it did, he glimpsed a semi-level surface above the water, with several figures on it.

  /// Was Ik there? Did you see him? ///

  /No./ Bandicut felt a gentle push. He was being nudged toward the ledge. He tried to propel himself, and realized that it had been a long time since he had tried to swim with scuba gear on the surface, especially with no fins and a fogged visor. It was harder than it looked.

  Someone gave him another push from behind, and L'Kell had his straps now and was towing him the remaining distance to the ledge. Then he had his hands up on it, and felt a rocketing boost under his feet. Before he knew what was happening, he'd made an effortless vault onto the ledge. Gasping, he turned and sat with his legs dangling in the water.

  /// Do you suppose this air is breathable? ///

  Charlene asked.

  Before he had time to wonder, several sets of hands began disconnecting his gear and lifting the hood from his head. His first breath was an involuntary gasp; then he caught himself and tried to sample it more critically. It was metallic, and smelled like low tide, but seemed perfectly breathable.

  L'Kell perched beside him as he looked around in the lantern glow. There was no sign of Ik, but a half dozen or so Neri were sitting or lying on the ledge. It was a good-sized chamber, maybe a hold—or more likely, a working room; he could see obscure-looking machines mounted on the walls above his head. Instruments? Tools? Is that what the Neri were salvaging? He wondered if the ship had come to rest upright, or on its side; maybe they were sitting on a wall or partition. If it was a spaceship, he wondered what the bridge looked like. Or if it had a bridge.

  /// John? I think you'd better

  take a look at these Neri. ///

  He turned and looked more closely at the Neri behind him. They didn't look good. "The sick and wounded," L'Kell said. "Can you do anything for them?"

  Bandicut suddenly felt as if he had just landed in a transmogrified war holo, in one of those scenes in a field triage unit, where the wounded are everywhere and the doctors and nurses are desperately trying not to show their despair. "I don't know," he admitted. "Do you know where Ik is?"

  L'Kell was talking to another Neri. Suddenly he pointed. "Down there, I think."

  Bandicut squinted into the water. Lights were moving, and shadowy figures. Moments later, the water broke, and someone surfaced wearing a helmet much like his, and was practically catapulted out of the water by his escorts. Bandicut reached out a hand to steady him.

  "Jesus, Ik, am I glad to see you!" he said hoarsely.

  Ik couldn't speak until he was freed of his gear. "Hrahh!" he cried in return, his voice strained. "John Bandicut! You came! But I thought you were down in the abyss." The Hraachee'an's eyes sparkled with an inner fire of joy.

  "I was," Bandicut whispered, squeezing his friend's arm. He was so happy to see Ik he nearly wept. "But I heard you needed a doctor here."

  He meant it with a trace of humor, but Ik looked around and said soberly, "It is true, my friend. I have done what I can—"

  "You mean you can heal, too?"

  "My stones have learned some things from yours. I hope I have helped some of the patients back in the other chamber. Only time will tell." Ik rubbed his temples with what seemed great weariness. "They brought me out because the air was going bad and they didn't have the equipment they needed to set up air purifiers." Ik turned and scrutinized the air space surrounding them. "We can last a while here, I suppose. And then we will have to put our equipment on again. I don't know how many spaces like this there are in this wreck."

  "Do you know what the wreck is? Is it a spacecraft?"

  "That is my guess. But I do not know for certain. And I do not think that the Neri know. Perhaps, for now, it doesn't matter."

  "Maybe," Bandicut said. "Maybe not." He rubbed the back of his neck, frowning.

  Ik turned to peer at the Neri lying on the ledge. "We should not delay. Many of these people are very ill."

  Bandicut took a deep breath. /Are you ready?/

  /// Ready as I can be. ///

  "Then let's begin," he said. He slid over and touched the arm of the nearest patient on his side. /It's going to be a long night./

  *

  It was an even longer night than he had imagined—perhaps not by the clock, but in the toll it exacted from his mind and body. When he finally looked up and met Ik's gaze, then L'Kell's, he could barely register their expressions. He had labored long and hard, imagining himself a physician working deep into the night in a city hospital . . . and as a Neri healer, striving with inadequate tools to bring together spirit and flesh . . . as one of the shadow-people of Shipworld, probing intricate and mysterious systems . . . as a mage from ancient fairy tales, tirelessly spinning enchantments of healing and power. In the end, though, it was just himself and Charlie, working with the stones. And not far away, Ik working in his own silence.

  Glancing to one corner, he noticed someone sitting between two Neri—a little smaller than the Neri, its face obscured by a mask and an array of tubes and hoses. Bandicut rubbed his eyes, wondering if he was dreaming, in the surrealistic near-darkness. He glanced at his friends and glanced back. The being was still there. Who was it? Or what? A lander?

  The quarx seemed to be tryi
ng to find an opening in his blurry consciousness to speak.

  /// John— ///

  /Yeah,/ he sighed, forgetting the strange sight as quickly as he had noticed it. /You did . . . good work./ He felt a flicker of pain as he said that. They had lost three patients that he knew of. He thought they had healed more than they had lost—five, maybe, or seven. Truthfully, he had lost count.

  /// I think . . . you know . . .

  you had better get to some fresh air. ///

  /Fresh air?/ he thought muddily.

  /// John, I'm . . . John . . .

  I'm trying to compensate,

  but the air has gotten really depleted . . . ///

  He rubbed his eyes again. He was dimly aware, now that he thought about it, that he was breathing shallowly and rapidly. Waves of lightheadedness were passing through him. He was suffocating. So was Ik, probably. Damn. He turned his head to squint at L'Kell, and had trouble getting words out.

  "Rrrrm . . . hrahh . . ." Ik looked unsteady, as well.

  He managed to fumble for the helmet of his breathing gear. It slid away from him and splashed into the water. Sank.

  Dear God.

  /// John, I don't know if— ///

  There was another splash, and the helmet flew back up onto the ledge, propelled by a Neri hand. Someone else grabbed it before he could move. Wait . . . I need that . . .

  There was some jostling around him, and then the hood came down over his head like an oversized hat, and someone was strapping the breathing gear onto his back. He gasped; the air in the hood was no better; in fact, it was worse. He started to grope blindly.

  Something pushed him from behind. He flailed. The water crashed around him, deafening him, enveloping him. Drowning him. Please . . . no . . . I need . . . The water was cold, momentarily overwhelming his insulating forcefield—and jolting him alert for a second.

  He choked, air rasping into his lungs. On about the fourth breath, it started to seem different. Better. He gulped . . . sweet, oxygen-rich air. Panting out the carbon dioxide, he was still dizzy; he was tumbling through the water. Then someone was holding him.