“And then I’ll finally have the house all to my own,” Six Bubbling Thermals signed, cloying. But the mauve worry dissolved into flushed healthy pink as they all began coiling the mucus and storing it in coral tubing. Four Warm Currents stroked the egg sacs gently as they worked, imagining each one hatching into an altered world.
* * *
After they finished with the birth mucus and pricked themselves with a recreational skimmer venom, Three Jagged Reefs made them sample a truly terrible pheromone poem composed at the smelting vents between geysers. The recitation was quickly cancelled in favor of hallucination-laced sex in which they all slid over and around Six Bubbling Thermals’s swollen mantle, probing and pulping, and afterward the three of them drifted in the artificial current, slowly revolving as they discussed anything and everything:
Colony annexation, the validity of aesthetic tentacle removal, the new eatery that served everything dead and frozen with frescoes carved into the flesh, So-and-So’s scent change, the best birthing tanks, the after-ache they’d had the last time they used skimmer venom. Anything and everything except for the Drill.
Much later, when the other two had slipped into a sleeping harness, Four Warm Currents jetted upward to the top of their gray-and-purple spire, coiling there to look out over the City of Bone. Revelers jetted back and forth in the distance, visible by blots of blue-green excitement and arousal. Some were workers from the Drill, Four Warm Currents knew, celebrating the end of a successful work cycle.
Four Warm Currents’s namesake parent had been a laborer of the same sort. A laborer who came home to cramped quarters and hungry children, but was never too exhausted to spin them a story, tentacles whirling and flourishing like a true bard. Four Warm Currents had been a logical child, always finding gaps in the tall tales of Leviathans and heroes and oceans beyond their own. But still, the stories had sunk in deep. Enough so that Four Warm Currents might be able to sign them to the children growing in Six Bubbling Thermals’s egg sacs.
There was no need for Nine Brittle Spines or the council to know it was those stories that had ignited Four Warm Currents’s curiosity for the roof of the world in the first place. Soon there would be new stories to tell. In seven, maybe eight more work cycles, they would break through.
After such a long percolation, the idea was dizzying. Four Warm Currents didn’t know what awaited on the other side. There were theories, of course. Many theories. Four Warm Currents had studied gas bubbles and knew that whatever substance lay beyond the ice was not water as they knew it, not nearly so heavy. It could very well be deadly. Four Warm Currents would take precautions, but—
The brush of a tentacle tip, a familiar taste. Six Bubbling Thermals had ballooned up to join the stillness. Four Warm Currents extended a welcoming clasp, and the rasp of skin on skin was a comforting one. Calming.
“Someone almost started a riot in the plaza today,” Six Bubbling Thermals signed.
The calm was gone. “Over what? Over the project?”
“Yes.” Six Bubbling Thermals stared out across the city with a long clicking burst, then turned to face Four Warm Currents. “They had artificial panic. In storage globes. Broke them wide open right as the market peaked. It was …” Tentacles wove in and out, searching for a descriptor. “Chaos.”
“Are you all right?” Four Warm Currents signed hard. “You should have told me. You’re birthing.”
Six Bubbling Thermals waved a quick-dying laugh. “I’m still bigger than you are. And I told Three Jagged Reefs. We agreed it would be best not to add to your stress. But I’ve never kept secrets well, have I?”
Another stare, longer this time. Four Warm Currents joined in, scraping sound across the architecture of the city, mapping curves and crevices, spars and spires.
“Before they were dragged off, they dropped one last globe,” Six Bubbling Thermals signed. “It was your name, fresh, mixed with a decay scent. They said you’re a monster, and if nobody stops you, you’ll end the world.”
Four Warm Currents shivered, clenched hard against the noxious fear threatening to tendril into the water. “Fresh?”
“Yes.”
Who had it been? Four Warm Currents thought of the many workers and observers jetting up and down the tunnel, bringing status reports, complaints, updates. Any one of them could have come close enough to coax their chief engineer’s name taste into a concealed globe. With a start, Four Warm Currents realized Six Bubbling Thermals was not gazing pensively over the city, but keeping watch.
“I know you won’t consider halting the project,” Six Bubbling Thermals signed. “But you need to be careful. Promise me that much.”
Four Warm Currents remembered the councillor’s warning and stroked Six Bubbling Thermals’s egg sacs with a trembling tentacle. “I’ll be careful. And when we break through, this will all go away. They’ll see there’s no danger.”
“And when will that be?” The mauve worry was creeping back across Six Bubbling Thermals’s skin.
“Soon,” Four Warm Currents signed. “Seven work cycles.”
They enmeshed their tentacles and curled against each other, bobbing there in silence as the City of Bone’s ghostly blue guide lights began to blink out one by one.
* * *
The first attack came three cycles later, after shift. A pair of free-swimmers, with their skins pumped pitch-black and a sonar cloak in tow, managed to bore halfway through the Drill’s protective shell before the guards spotted them and chased them off. The news came by a messenger whom Three Jagged Reefs, unhappily awoken, nearly eviscerated. Bare moments later, Four Warm Currents stroked goodbyes to both mates and took the skiff to the project site, tentacles heavy from sleep but hearts thrumming electric.
Nine Brittle Spines somehow contrived to arrive first.
“Four Warm Currents, it is a pleasure to see you so well rested.” The councillor’s tentacles moved as smoothly and blandly as ever, but Four Warm Currents could see the faintest of trembling at their tips. Mortal after all.
“I came as quickly as I was able,” Four Warm Currents signed, not rising to the barb. “Were either of the perpetrators identified?”
“No.” Nine Brittle Spines gave the word a twist of annoyance. “Assumedly they were two of yours. They knew the thinnest point of the shell and left behind a project-tagged auger.” One tentacle produced the spiral tool and set it drifting between them. It was a miniature cousin to the behemoth Drill, used to sample ice consistency.
Four Warm Currents inspected the implement. “I’ll speak with inventory, but I imagine it was taken without their knowledge.”
“Do that,” Nine Brittle Spines signed. “In the meanwhile, security will be increased. We’ll have guards at all times from now on. Body searches for workers.”
Four Warm Currents waved a vague agreement, staring up at the burnished armor shell, the hole scored in its underbelly. The workers would not be happy, but they were so close now, too close to let anything derail the project. Four Warm Currents would agree to anything, so long as the Drill was safe.
* * *
Tension became a sharp, sooty tang overlaying every conversation, so much so that Four Warm Currents was given council approval for a globe of artificially mixed happiness to waft around the tunnel entrance. It ended being mostly sucked up by the guards, who were happy enough already to swagger around with screamers and combat hooks bristling in their tentacles, interrogating any particularly worry-spackled worker who happened to look their way.
Four Warm Currents complained to the councillor, but was soundly ignored, told only that the guards had been instructed to treat the project site and its crew with the utmost respect. Enthusiasm was now a thing of the past. Workers spoke rarely and with short tempers, and every time the Drill slowed or an error was found in its calibration, the possibility of sabotage hung in the tunnel like a decay scent. Four Warm Currents found a slip in the most recent density calculation that promised to put things back a full work cycle, but sti
ll the Drill churned.
At home, they began receiving death threats. Six Bubbling Thermals found the first, a tiny automaton that waved its stiff tentacles in a prerecorded message: “We won’t need a drill to puncture your eyes and every one of your eggs.” Three Jagged Reefs shredded it to pieces. Four Warm Currents gave the pieces to the council’s investigator.
Then, two cycles before breakthrough, black globes of artificial malice were slicked to their spire with adhesive and timed to burst while they slept. Only one went off, but it was enough to necessitate a pore-cleanse for Six Bubbling Thermals and a dedicated surveillance detail for the house.
Three Jagged Reefs fumed and fumed. “After the Drill breaks through, you’ll let me borrow it, won’t you?” The demand was jittery with skimmer venom, and made only once Six Bubbling Thermals, finally returned from the cleansing tanks, was out of sight range. “I’m going to find the shit-eater who blacked Six and stick them on the bit gland first.”
Three Jagged Reefs had been pulled from smelting after an incidence of “hazardously elevated emotions,” in which a copper-worker trilling about the impending end of the world had their tentacle held over a geyser until it turned to pulp. Staying in the house full cycle, under the watchful eyes and mouths of council surveillance, was not an easy transition. Not even stocked with high-quality venom.
“It’ll all be over soon,” Four Warm Current signed, mind half-filled, as was now the norm, with figures from the latest density calculation. One final cycle.
“Tell it to Six,” Three Jagged Reefs signed back, short and clipped, and turned away.
Four Warm Currents swam into the next room, to where their mate was adrift in the sleeping harness. The egg sacs were bulging now, slick with the constant emission of birth mucus, bearing no trace of black ichor stains. The cleansing tanks had reported no permanent damage. Four Warm Currents sent a gentle prod of sonar and elicited a twitch.
“I’m awake,” Six Bubbling Thermals signed, languid. “I’d sleep better with you two around me.”
“They’ll catch the lunatics who planted that globe,” Four Warm Currents signed back.
Six Bubbling Thermals signed nothing for a long moment, then waved a sad laugh. “I don’t think it’s lunatics. Not anymore. A lot of people are saying the same thing, you know.”
“Saying what?”
“You spend all of your time at the Drill, even when you’re here with us.” The accusation was soft, but it stung. “You haven’t been paying attention. The transit currents are full of devotees calling you a blasphemer. Saying you think yourself a Leviathan. Unbounded. The whole city is frightened.”
“Then it’s a city of idiots,” Four Warm Currents signed abruptly.
“I’m frightened. I have no shame admitting it. I’m frightened for our children. For them to have two parents only. One parent only. None. For them to never even hatch. Who knows?” Six Bubbling Thermals raised a shaky smile. “Maybe the idiot is the one who isn’t frightened.”
“But I’m going to give them an altered world, a new world …” Four Warm Currents’s words blurred as Six Bubbling Thermals stilled two waving tentacles.
“I don’t give a floating shit about a new world if it’s one where you take a hook in the back,” Six Bubbling Thermals signed back, slow and clear. “Don’t go to the Drill tomorrow. They’ll send for you when it breaks the ice.”
At first, Four Warm Currents didn’t even comprehend the words. After spending a third of a lifespan planning, building, lobbying, watching, the idea of not being there to witness the final churn, the final crack and squeal of ice giving away, was dizzying. Nauseating.
“If you go, I think you’ll be dead before you come home,” Six Bubbling Thermals signed. “You’re worth more to us alive for one more cycle than as a name taste wafting through the archives for all eternity.”
“I’ve watched it from the very start.” Four Warm Currents tried not to tremble. “Every turn. Every single turn.”
“And without you it moves no faster, no slower,” Six Bubbling Thermals replied. “Isn’t that what you say?”
“I have to be there.”
“You don’t.” Six Bubbling Thermals gave a weary shudder. “Is it a new world for our children, or only for you?”
Four Warm Currents’s tentacles went slack, adrift. The two of them stared at each other in the gloom, until, suddenly, something stirred in the egg sacs. The motion repeated, a faint but mesmerizing ripple. Six Bubbling Thermals gave a slight wriggle of pain.
Four Warm Currents climbed into the harness, turning acid blue in an apology that could not have been properly signed. “I’ll stay. I’ll stay, I’ll stay.”
They folded against each other and spoke of other things, of the strange currents that had brought them together, the future looming in the birthing tanks. Then they slept, deeply, even when Three Jagged Reefs wobbled in to join them much later, nearly unhooking the harness with chemical-clumsy tentacles.
Four Warm Currents dreamt of ending the world, the Drill shearing through its final stretch of pale ice, and from the gaping wound in the roof of the world, a Leviathan lowering its head, eyes glittering, to swallow the engine and its workers and their blasphemous chief engineer whole, pulling its bulk back into the world it once abandoned, sliding through blackness toward the City of Bone, ready to reclaim its scattered body, to devour all light, to unmake everything that had ever been made.
* * *
Four Warm Currents awoke to stinging sonar and the silhouette of a familiar councillor drifting before the sleeping harness, flanked by two long-limbed guards.
“Wake your mates,” Nine Brittle Spines signed, with a taut urgency Four Warm Currents had never seen before. “All three of you have to leave.”
“What’s happening?”
“You’ll see.”
Four Warm Currents rolled, body heavy with sleep, and stroked each mate awake in turn. Three Jagged Reefs refused to rise until Six Bubbling Thermals furiously shook the harness, a flash of the old pre-birthing strength.
“Someone come to murder us?” Three Jagged Reefs asked calmly, once toppled free.
“You wouldn’t feel a thing with all that venom in you,” Four Warm Currents replied, less calmly.
“I barely pricked.”
“As said the Drill to the roof of the world,” Six Bubbling Thermals interjected.
Nine Brittle Spines flashed authoritative indigo, cutting the conversation short. “We have a skiff outside. Your discussions can wait.”
The three of them followed the councillor out of the house, trailing long, sticky strands of Six Bubbling Thermals’s replenished birth mucus. Once they exited the shutter and were no longer filtered, a faint acrid flavor seeped to them through the water. The City of Bone tasted bitter with fear. Anger.
And that wasn’t all.
In the distance, Four Warm Currents could see free-swimmers moving as a mob, jetting back and forth through the city spires, carrying homegrown phosphorescent lamps and scent bombs. Several descended on a council-funded sculpture, smearing the stone with webbed black-and-red rage. Most continued on, heading directly for the city center. For their housing block, Four Warm Currents realized with a sick jolt.
“The radical tangent has grown,” Nine Brittle Spines signed. “Considerably.”
“So many?” Four Warm Currents was stunned.
“Only thing people love more than a festival is a doomsday,” Three Jagged Reefs signed bitterly.
“Indeed. Your decriers have found support in many places, I’m afraid.” Nine Brittle Spines bent a grimace as they swam toward the waiting skiff, a closed and armored craft marked with an official sigil. “Including the council.”
Four Warm Currents stopped dead in the water. “But the Drill is still under guard.”
“The Drill is currently being converged upon by a mob twice this size,” Nine Brittle Spines signed. “Even without sympathizers in the security ranks, it would be futile to try to protect
it. The council’s official position, as of this moment, is that your project has been terminated to save costs.”
Four Warm Currents realized, dimly, that both mates were holding tentacles back to prevent an incidence of hazardously elevated emotions. Searing orange desperation had spewed into the water around them. Nine Brittle Spines made no remarks about self-control, only flashed, for the briefest instant, a pale blue regret.
“But we’re nearly through,” Four Warm Currents signed, trembling all over. Three Jagged Reefs and Six Bubbling Thermals now slowly slid off, eager for the safety of the skiff. Drifting away when they were needed most.
“Perhaps you are,” Nine Brittle Spines admitted. “Perhaps your theorems are sound. But stability is, at the present moment, more important than discovery.”
“If we go to the Drill.” Four Warm Currents shuddered to a pause. “If we go to the Drill, if we go now, we can stop them. I can explain to them. I can convince them.”
“You know better than that, Four Warm Currents. In fact—”
Whatever Nine Brittle Spines planned to say next was guillotined as Six Bubbling Thermals surged from behind, wrapping the councillor in full grip. In the same instant, Three Jagged Reefs yanked the skiff’s shutter open. Four Warm Currents stared at the writhing councillor, then at each mate in turn.
“Get on with it, Four,” Three Jagged Reefs signed. “Go and try.”
Six Bubbling Thermals was unable to sign, tentacles taut as a vice around Nine Brittle Spines, but the misty red cloud billowing into the water was the fiercest and most pungent love Four Warm Currents could remember tasting.
“Oh, wait.” Three Jagged Reefs glanced between them. “Six wanted to know if you have any necessary names.”
“None,” Four Warm Currents signed shakily. “So long as there are Thermals and Reefs.”
“Well, of course.” Three Jagged Reefs waved a haughty laugh that speared Four Warm Currents’s hearts all over again. The councillor had finally stopped struggling in Six Bubbling Thermals’s embrace and now watched the proceedings with an air of resignation. Four Warm Currents flashed a respectful pale blue, then turned and swam for the skiff.
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