The Shoreless Sea

by J. Scott Coatsworth

  A forest filled the near distance to the south, aglow with midday light. The Highland Road wound away across the world toward Darlith. The waters of the Rhyl sparkled to the east as it twisted along the upcurving side of the world, reflecting the golden light of the spindle.

  “Can you see the Dragon’s Teeth today?” Raldo pulled himself up next to Dax and dusted off his pants.

  “They’re called the Anatovs now.” Dax was in school and was learning all kinds of things about his world.

  He grinned. Raldo was enchanted by the idea of dragons and knights in shining armor. “Look, out past the Tanys Woods, past the estates. Can you see them?”

  “I like Dragon’s Teeth better.” Raldo squinted, his hand over his eyes to block out the sky glow. “I think so?” He looked up at his big brother. “Have you ever been there?”

  “Not yet.” When he was old enough, he would go see all the amazing things in the world.

  He turned to look north.

  Past the outskirts of Thyre, a grassy plain ran for a few kilometers, broken only by outcroppings of rock. Then the land plunged toward the new sea. Off to the sides, where the world curved, he could see its sparkling waters. It was starting to fill.

  His father had taken him there once. It stretched on to the end of the world, the world wall looming over them like an almost endless cliff. “Now that’s a wall,” his dad had said approvingly.

  The deep ground-shaking rumble of the world as it grew would always stick with him.

  Dax wondered what the world mind was like. His father called it God—the God that built the world for them.

  Someday he would go see God for himself too.

  SOMEONE SHOOK him awake.

  Dax looked up into Kiryn’s face.

  “Sleep.” Kiryn gestured for him to follow. In one corner of the cavern, he’d set up a resting place for the two of them, using their carry sacks as pillows.

  Kiryn lay down, his back to the wall, and gestured for Dax to join him.

  Dax smelled himself. Not the most attractive scent at the moment.

  Kiryn laughed. “Okay.” He patted the ground next to him.

  Dax shrugged. He was tired. He lay down and let Kiryn spoon him. It was more comfortable than he had imagined.

  In just minutes, he slipped back into sleep, and this time he didn’t dream.

  BELYNN SAT against the rock wall, the fresh air from the vents blowing over her.

  Everyone else had gone to sleep, but she was having a hard time letting go of her anxiety.

  She took out the flask she’d recovered from her room and turned it over and over in her hands. She’d bought it in one of the fabrication stores in Micavery, but its history extended way before that moment.

  Or at least the history of her problem.

  She’d never told Kiryn, and because she’d never told him, they’d never shared her secret with her parents either.

  Everyone thought her abilities were stunted. “Different” was the word her mother used, but Belynn saw how she and Shandra looked at her and Kiryn when they thought they weren’t aware.

  The other Liminal kids of her generation could speak to the world mind and each other at a distance, and some of them had other interesting abilities as well.

  But the children of the great Andy Hammond? They were “different.”

  Belynn laughed softly. They weren’t wrong. They just didn’t know how different.

  She wasn’t stunted. Instead, she was too sensitive.

  She could hear all the other Liminals’ voices. Every single one. Every time they spoke to the world mind or one another.

  When she was little, she had simply heard stray thoughts or words now and then. But when she hit puberty, her ability had blossomed, and she lived in her own personal hell of never-ending chatter.

  She should have told them. Him. But she didn’t want Kiryn to feel less-than, since he had no abilities of his own, and he was deaf too. She felt guilty for having an ability he didn’t and for wishing it would just go away.

  Then she’d found a solution.

  A little berry or apple wine and the voices went away. It had happened accidentally the first time, when Mamma had poured her a glass of red berry wine to celebrate Kiryn’s fifteenth birthday. That night she’d had her soundest sleep in months, her head finally quiet like it used to be.

  After that, she learned to self-medicate. She’d sneak off into the wine cellar beneath the estate house and drink just a little wine at a time. It didn’t take much, and she didn’t do it all the time. Sometimes the voices were bearable and she could just tune them out.

  But sometimes they reached a crescendo, whenever there was big news.

  The night the team from Micavery had won the cropper game against Darlith, her head had almost split in two.

  It had been almost thirty-six hours since she’d last had a drink. Her head was quiet, but she suspected that the layers of rock and dirt over them were helping to block out the chatter.

  What would she do when the voices returned?

  Over time, she’d gotten used to her little sips of wine. They had become almost like a friend, consoling her when she needed help. And she’d started drinking more, especially after they came here to Micavery. It was a part of the college lifestyle, after all, and it called to her like a siren.

  I have a problem.

  Kiryn knew about it. He’d caught her drunk a couple of times and had made her swear to stop. But it was hard to let it go. Whenever she tried, the voices came back.

  She felt someone watching her.

  Gordy was lying on his side, staring at her from across the small cavern, face painted pink by the dim light of the sprig of red fern.

  She slipped the flask back into her pocket. “Having trouble sleeping?” Her hands spoke silently for her.

  With a glance toward Dax and Kiryn, he sat up quietly. “Yeah. You too?”

  “Too many things on my mind.”

  His signs were strange—very similar to what she and Kiryn had learned from their parents and the world mind, but with subtle differences. She supposed any language shifted with enough time and distance.

  “What’s in the bottle?”

  She flinched. “Nothing. Just… a little numbing agent, if I need it.”

  He laughed, and then covered his mouth.

  They both glanced toward the sleeping pair, but Dax didn’t awaken. “Is that what they are calling it these days? We just called it hooch. Or licky, if you prefer.”

  She sighed. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Understand what? You’re an adult. You can do what you want.” He scratched his stubble-covered cheek. “Hell, where I come from, we start drinking at ten.”

  She laughed softly. “What’s it like?”

  “It depends on the type. Sometimes it’s bitter, but sometimes it’s smooth as a—”

  “I meant Earth.”

  “Oh. It’s… getting desperate. The world’s coming to an end, I think.”

  She frowned. That made no sense to her. “The Earth… my mother said it was almost entirely destroyed. There was a war—”

  “I wouldn’t know about that. Me and the Red Badge boys kept pretty much to the Old City. Crick and Jacky and me, we came up together.”

  “Can… would you show me?”

  His face twisted up in confusion, and she had to remind herself he was only fifteen on the inside, despite his full-grown body. His mask seemed fainter than before. “How would I do that?”

  She crept across the floor to him. “Let me touch your cheek. Then think about what it was like.”

  He blinked. “Can everyone here do that?”

  She shook her head. “Only some of us. The Liminals.”

  “Liminals?”

  “We’re all the descendants of someone who had the ability to talk directly with the world mind, without a loop.”

  “He must have gotten around.”

  She pinched his side.

  “Okay, okay.”<
br />
  “So, can I…?”

  “Sure.” He closed his eyes, and she put a hand against his warm face. She closed hers, too, and reached into him.

  His memories flashed past, chaotic and intense.

  Standing on a rooftop as a storm pummeled the Old City, lightning striking a building nearby, and the rain falling from the heavens in great cascading sheets lined with silver….

  Putting on his boots on the front porch of his family’s house on the Verge, staring up at the Anatov Mountains in anticipation of a berry-hunting expedition with his mother and sister….

  Pulling off his shirt and pants to dive naked into the seawater in a wide, triangle-shaped intersection beneath a stack of broken tri-dee screens, long since scavenged for parts….

  Tumbling down a hillside with his friend Rafi, picking up dust and dirt and bits of grass in his hair, giggling all the way down….

  Lying on his back on a rooftop—the same one as before?—with his friends Jacky and Crick, staring at the stars. So many stars….

  Belynn let go of his cheek, breathing heavily.

  “What is it? You okay?”

  She shook her head and gulped, reaching for the flask. She pulled it out, took off the cap, and raised it to her mouth.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. No. I don’t need this. She held it there for a moment, the smell of apple wine in her nose, so clear she could taste it.

  Then she put the flask down and recapped it.

  “If you really don’t want to drink it, why not pour it out?”

  “No. Not yet.” She put it away. “I’m not ready.” I’m a coward.

  “What did you see?”

  She wasn’t sure she should tell him. His memories felt absolutely real to her… but she was certain that not all those memories were his. Not Gordy’s.

  Astin’s. The body Gordy inhabited.

  And yet… she trusted him. He felt real.

  “What?” Gordy’s hands were insistent. “Tell me.”

  “I… I don’t think he’s gone. Not entirely.”

  “Who’s not gone?” Then Belynn saw his eyes light up with understanding. “Astin. The man whose body you—”

  “Stole.” He leaned back on his hands, his face turning ashen. “My arrival killed him, didn’t it?”

  “We don’t know that. We don’t know what really happened. Maybe he was already gone. Brain-dead. Maybe he had to be, for you to come here.” She had no idea what she was saying. She just needed to offer him some comfort. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I may as well have killed him.” He turned away and lay back down on the ground with his back to her.

  She let him be. Some things just had to be borne alone.

  GORDY LAY on the ground in silence for a long while, staring at the rock walls of their little haven, tracing the cracks from floor to ceiling.

  He was aware that Belynn watched him, but he didn’t want to talk to her. Or anyone.

  His shame over what he’d inadvertently done ran deep. All his life, he’d never wanted to hurt another soul. Sometimes he’d fought with others. Once he had killed a man who threatened his friends. That’s how life was when you belonged to a New York City tech gang.

  But this was different. It made him sick to his stomach.

  Astin? Are you there? Can you hear me? He didn’t think he could live with himself if he had killed the man who had owned this body before him.

  He hugged himself tightly, hoping someone would respond to him inside his own head. Then fearing that they would.

  There was only silence.

  He lay there for a long time. An hour, maybe two. All alone with his own thoughts and fears.

  In the end, he fell into an exhausted sleep, where no dreams or memories reached.

  Chapter Nine: Voices

  ANDY PUZZLED over the strange signal coming from the Earth’s neighborhood. She’d compiled a complete copy of it now, weak though it was.

  Still, it made absolutely no sense to her.

  It was a long sequence, presumably full of some kind of information. Her limited ability for triangulation, as Forever moved away from Earth’s elliptical plane at an angle, indicated it originated somewhere in the inner solar system, but she was unable to narrow it down any farther than that.

  That alone was cause for excitement.

  Someone had survived the Collapse.

  Or a hitherto unknown alien race had come for a visit and had decided to send a signal Forever’s way, which seemed vanishingly unlikely.

  Or maybe the signal was purely mechanical, the remnant of some business or military venture that had outlived the human race.

  The only way to know for sure was to crack the code.

  She sent a few data phages to scour the archives left to her from Old Earth, hoping for a clue to figure out the origin of the code.

  Shandra’s awareness impinged on hers. “Still puzzling over that?”

  Andy sent an affirmation. “It has to mean something.”

  “Maybe so. But we may have trouble closer to home. There was a murder in Micavery.”

  Andy shivered. Violent crime was rare on the small world, but with the population growing, she supposed it was inevitable. “Who?”

  “Some kid at the college. Details are still sketchy.”

  Andy nodded. “It’s times like these that I’m glad I’m not corporeal any longer. Are Belynn and Kiryn all right?” Though they had been born after she and Shandra had entered the world mind, they were still family… like nephew and niece.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t been able to reach them. I hope so.” Shandra’s hug came through the ether.

  “Me too.”

  KIRYN AWOKE in darkness.

  He reached up. There was dirt above him, just inches from his face. His hands slipped to his side, and he was hemmed in there too. Panicking, he tried to turn, but there was nowhere to go.

  He was buried alive.

  “Help! Somebody help me!” His breathing quickened, and he closed his eyes, pressing his back to the ground as hard as his muscles would allow. He waited for a vibration, the shifting of earth. A footfall, translated through the earth as a gentle bump. Anything.

  There was nothing.

  His heart raced. “Somebody help me!” He beat against the ceiling and was showered with dirt.

  He could hear it fall.

  He could hear his own voice.

  My own voice. This had to be a dream. Wake up wake up wake up!

  Nothing.

  There was another voice. “Help! Somebody help me!” It was muffled but clear enough.

  “I’m here! Where are you?”

  “Somebody!”

  “I’m right here!” How had this happened? Had the cavern collapsed while he slept?

  Then more voices.

  “Help! Somebody help! Somebody help me! Help me!”

  Then a chorus of voices, so loud they shook his dark tomb, causing the earth above to crumble and start to fill in the small space.

  His own panicked voice joined the others.

  “Somebody help me!”

  SOMEONE STROKED his cheek gently.

  He woke, shaking and covered with sweat.

  Dax was looking down at him, concern in his eyes. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” He said it slowly and clearly.

  I can’t hear him. This is real. Maybe. Kiryn gulped. He reached up and felt only air. It had been a dream, then. Nothing but a bad dream.

  It felt so immediate.

  Belynn and Gordy were looking down at him now too.

  “I’m okay.” He sat up slowly. His throat felt sore.

  What happened? She put out her hands, and they touched palms.

  Kiryn’s anxiety dropped a notch. Was I screaming? He looked around the cavern. It was the same as before.

  She nodded.

  I was trapped—buried alive. A bunch copies of me, I think.

  It was just a dream. Look around—everything’s f
ine. She gestured around the cavern.

  “You guys have to stop doing that.” Dax’s voice came through to him clearly through Belynn’s ears.

  Kiryn laughed. He and Belynn had a bad habit of talking privately in public. He smiled at Dax. “You have a beautiful voice.”

  Dax blushed. “Thanks. Tell us.” His signing was slow and spelled out one letter at a time, but Kiryn understood what he was asking.

  “Bad dream.” He shivered. “We need to go.” He got up and dusted himself off.

  “Go where?” Gordy looked ill, his face drawn and pale.

  Probably didn’t get enough sleep. None of them had. “World mind.” He had a plan to get them there, though it would require leaping from a great height. Dax really wasn’t going to like it.

  “Wait.” Belynn pulled him back gently. “There might be another way.” Belynn’s hands were hesitant. There was something she didn’t want to tell him.

  “What is it?” Kiryn frowned. “Tim has been compromised. Maybe other Liminals have too….”

  “I can do it.”

  “Do what?” Kiryn was starting to get annoyed. They were wasting time, and he wanted to get out of these tunnels and caves. The dream had bothered him more than he wanted to admit.

  “I can reach the world mind. I think.”

  He stared at her for a moment, not understanding what she meant. The two of them had been born different, as their parents liked to say. Stunted, though Mom and Mamma never used that term. “How?”

  “Sorry, guys. I have to do this directly with Kiryn. It’s too much to explain out loud.” If I don’t do it now, I’ll lose my nerve. She put her hands on his cheeks and showed him what she meant.

  A whole hidden life unfolded before his eyes.

  A little girl, scared by the voices in her head. Growing up beset by others, hiding the truth from her family. From him.

  He thought they’d had no secrets from each other. Now she showed him how wrong he’d been. That stung. Like a knife plunged into his gut.

  An ability far beyond what she’d admitted to anyone, to him. How she’d learned to numb it with wine. How she’d blocked it out so she could be more like him.