by Murray, Lee
Shiv swam along the narrow highways made straight by the sides of the enormous Homeworld ships, heading east. The morning’s strange Virtual Experience session lingered in his thoughts. For the first time, the Originals had requested his group to observe Earth. No more second hand information, he’d been able to see the planet for himself. Specifically, the Polar Regions. It had been a thrill to put all his theoretical knowledge into clear, visual perspective. The variety of wildlife and potential food sources was plentiful and fascinating, but Shiv hoped there were no plans to send a foraging party to the icy waters of the regions they observed. They weren’t ideal environments for his people. So why the interest?
What was even more confusing, the visuals focused on land-based data: quantities of ice, the rate at which the ice caps were melting, the devastation caused by global warming, the pollution meted out by human contact, and continuing climate change.
As far as Shiv could see, humans were doing an excellent job of destroying the natural resources available to them. Even in the last decade, human endeavours on land and sea had affected the composition of the sea, raising temperatures, killing coral reefs and altering nutrient balance. Perhaps the Originals had plans to help the humans restore balance? But how? They’d never bothered to make contact with humans previously. In fact, they considered them an inferior race. So why start now? Shiv hoped they’d be shown actual humans at work. He was curious to observe their daily habits. In his report to the professors he’d said as much, causing some concern. His emotive pleas and queries hadn’t been appreciated.
Shiv passed a central meeting area, a space purposefully cleared for the citizens of this part of the city to commune, train and study. A few scattered citizens rested, on a break like him.
Past the last dwellings, the waters grew steadily lighter and shallower, and pancake coral and sponge proliferated. A myriad of bright tropical reef fish relished the shallower waters, and small sea snakes darted around him, some nibbling at his scales. It was good to be away from the dark corridors of the city.
According to Alben, the ship should be somewhere near here. Shiv kept swimming, powering his tail and using his arms. He rose over a crop of coral to find the ocean depths falling away once more and, below him, the ship. Alben hadn’t been imagining things. Shiv slowed his pace.
Squat and long, it had an extra section at its bulbous end, as if it needed additional space. He swam close, put a hand on the hull and felt a warm vibration. There were processes and machines keeping it in working order. Despite its strange location, it was in use.
He reached the large circular area at the back. Rare windows dotted its exterior. Putting his eye to one of the small portholes, he peered inside. Nothing. What was this ship doing so far beyond the city centre?
Behind him, something moved, and he spun to attention, expecting a predator. Instead, he met the milky gaze of an Original. Mottled patterns pulsated across her bald scalp, and she emanated a vibration. It scratched across the edge of his awareness like finger nails down metal. He made his mind go blank.
“Scholar Shiv,” she screeched. “You provided insights in the VE today.” Shiv suppressed a wince. Why couldn’t their leaders speak quietly? He flicked his tail in answer and put two hands to his forehead in respect.
“You will be a good candidate,” she continued, her voice a high-pitched monotone. She didn’t seem surprised to find him here.
Shiv straightened. “A good candidate for what?”
The Original’s mind shoved him in annoyance, but she answered: “An assignment. Be here at first light tomorrow. And don’t worry about your friend Alben, he’s been taken care of.” She pressed her lips together and swam away.
Shiv’s stomach turned over. They’d been watching him. Of course they had. They probably even knew what Alben had told him. But what did they want of him? And what had happened to Alben? He had no choice. He would be here at first light to find out.
Six guards joined Shiv on his morning swim back to the ship. They followed him, swimming in pairs, narrowly fitting between the towering walls of the ancient ships. A huge ocean sunfish accompanied them, snacking on jellyfish. Shiv didn’t dare to greet it. It seemed to be enjoying their company until one of the guards turned in irritation, speared the beautiful creature and ate it as he swam, discarding its bones once he’d sucked them clean.
Shiv had expected the Original to be there. But his only greeting party was a portly professor.
“I am Juder,” he said. “You’re to follow me. This is a confidential assignment allocated to you because of your non-conformist nature...”
Shiv coloured violet.
“Please take no offence. It is this kind of personality we need.”
“What type of assignment?” asked Shiv and then bowed his head.
“In a hurry to ask questions,” said Professor Juder, his teeth bared in contempt, although his tail flicked in reinforcement. “Interesting.”
Shiv followed the Professor up to the ship’s entry door and hesitated. While the Professor entered the flooded holding area, Shiv waited outside for his orders.
“Professor?”
Juder turned.
“You don’t mean for me to go aboard, do you? I’m a scholar. I’ve never actually activated my lungs before.”
“You have special dispensation. Come forward, please.”
Professor Juder manhandled Shiv into the cramped holding area and strapped his upper body and tail into place. He leaned in close to Shiv’s ear and whispered. “Now try not to freak out, old wave. It hurts a bit the first time and nothing will work properly, but you’ll get used to it.” The professor turned to strap himself into a similar contraption. Something whirred then clicked, followed by a toning alarm.
“What’s that?” asked Shiv.
“Transformation and decompression alarms. Homeworld superior technology. You’ll appreciate it when we resurface, I grant you,” the Professor replied. For a moment, he looked nonplussed, shook his head and coloured slightly violet. “There’s a suitable transition environment we can use on the other side before we get to work. Stop talking now.”
Shiv’s heart beat in time with the alarm. Resurface? What was that about?
Before he had time to think further, the straps around his arms and tail tightened and an excruciating pain gripped his chest. His normal breathing impulses stuttered and he choked. He couldn’t breathe! He struggled against the straps. Why had he agreed to this? Were they trying to kill him? Because of what Alben had told him? Or was this reconditioning? He’d heard the rumours. He tried again to breathe, sucking and pulling, but his gills were blocked as if lined with sand. Needles of pain made their way from his tail to his head until his vision blurred. His surroundings dissolved away.
9
Shiv sucked in his first dry rasping breath. The interior of the old world ship glared with bright light and shiny surfaces. Dense, dark water bubbled against the small, oval windows of the vessel as if the depths pressed for information. His world, now out of his reach.
He was in a compact space, the floor wet and smooth like rock. He sat, wedged against a wall, the straps released. Where his tail had been, two limbs protruded. They were thin and scaly but he now had two distinct legs. His privates splayed between them, exposed on the outside of his frail body. Conscious of his vulnerability, he tried to move his legs, but they were heavy and unresponsive, like rubbery kelp. His arms were still strong, though. He hefted himself away from the wall and edged towards what must be the access to the rest of the ship, dragging his new limbs through the puddles of water. He could hear voices.
A rush of dry, warm air heralded the door opening, sliding to one side. A burst of blinding light fell like a spotlight, encircling Shiv in its glare. A rush of foreign smells and sights bombarded him with information. He put a hand up to shade his eyes and over balanced, landing hard.
Professor Juder hauled him upright. “Well, Shiv, your first change. How does it feel?” He spoke
out loud.
“Like gull shit,” he replied the same way, his voice hoarse. “I feel like I’ve been eaten by a great white and spat out, only to be devoured by a giant squid. Does it feel like this every time? I can’t feel my tai…legs.”
The professor cleared his throat and spat a gob of watery phlegm into the water at his feet. “No, old wave, it gets better. It’s only the first time that hauls you over the coral. After that, it doesn’t hurt so much, and you get used to all this damn dry air.”
The professor dragged Shiv into a brightly lit corridor and loaded him onto a stretcher. Medics joined them, guiding the stretcher. As they walked, Shiv stared at the unfamiliar ceiling; so many angles and lines. Tubes and cables traced the edges of the corridor, bunched together along its boundaries. They led to a large space surrounded by smooth, angular surfaces. Tools Shiv didn’t recognise decked out the shelves and hung from hooks. So many things he had no word for. The medics prodded and poked him with needles, mercifully dulling the pain and his senses until his eyes became heavy and he fell into a deep sleep.
Much later, woken and helped into clothing by Juder, he forced himself upright and began to practice. Walking on two legs was an awkward waste of time and a totally inefficient method of transportation. It took so long to get anywhere and Shiv’s legs shook whenever he attempted a step. After many hours, he collapsed into a contraption the medics called a wheelchair.
“I don’t know why our ancestors chose to walk on two legs back on the Homeworld,” he told the Professor. He couldn’t get used to using his voice.
“They transformed with ease, water to air or air to water, because our home had a suitable atmosphere, you know this.”
Our home? Shiv wondered why a fifth generation descendent of those who first arrived on Earth still referred to a far-off planet he’d never seen, as home.
“Plus, they could use their skin to breathe. We can’t do that on board a ship. If they wanted to, they could have lived under the water the way we do now, but they quite liked air breathing by all accounts. These ships try to replicate that environment, but they aren’t perfect.”
Shiv grunted. He’d seen the pictures in the VE but still didn’t really understand. And he didn’t see the appeal. His throat was constantly dry, talking felt foreign and he’d spent the morning drinking copious amounts of desalinated water to try to get the taste of recycled oxygen out of his mouth. It wasn’t working.
“When will I get to see the project?” He still couldn’t understand why he’d been chosen. Why give a scholar the privilege? He rubbed his aching head and swallowed with a sore throat.
“All in good time. You should be ready soon.”
Shiv grimaced and wiped the sweat off his brow. He stared at the moisture on the back of his hand. After spending his whole life submerged, the idea of being able to wipe liquid off his body felt odd. What was he doing here?
“Professor, we have a problem in the tanks!” One of the short, white-coated female medics skidded into the room and just as quickly, spun and left. “Please follow!”
Juder bolted for the door. “Not again. Stay here!” he shouted back over his shoulder as he disappeared down a narrow corridor.
“Not likely,” muttered Shiv. He swivelled the chair’s wheels and headed after him.
Shiv propelled the chair along the smooth flooring, hardly slowing at the curves. The corridor turned hard to the right and he cornered on one wheel, skidding to a stop in front of a large door. He panted hard, his throat raw. He’d seen the others open doors by placing their palm over a square pad. He tried but it didn’t respond. He peered through a small window into the room beyond.
The medic dashed by, shouting, then stopped by the door, blocking his view.
Could this be the project?
“Let me in!” he shouted.
The medic didn’t hear him, but at that moment, she rushed forward. Shiv stared through the window in wonder. Set into the side of the ship, an enormous, transparent tank divided into large segments filled almost the entire room. A menagerie of creatures stared out from its confines. In one section, a deep sea pig fish bobbed in the water. A gigantic isopod hoovered along the bottom. The spiky quills of a blue dragon floated, its gas-filled sac keeping it hovering at the surface. But next to that floated a much larger creature. With a wide face and a long, brown beard, it was clear this wasn’t a fish, or one of the people either. Huge, well-defined muscles bunched across his shoulders. Bushy hair lined his brow bone and fell in waves from his head, and when he opened his mouth, Shiv noticed small, square teeth like he’d seen in images of humans. This was, without doubt, one of the Merfolk. So, Alben had told the truth.
Another shudder and Shiv pressed his nose against the window, trying to see past this creature to the neighbouring tank. Another, smaller, body thrashed there, lolling its head in circles and stirring sediment. A Merwoman. She swam to the top of the prison, thwacking her strong tail against the glass. The impact of the displaced water threatened to crack the tank apart and he could see the panic on his colleagues’ faces. To one side, the medic prepared a sedative. But how would they administer it? Would they have to transform and get in there with her? Shiv didn’t envy the job; the creature looked wild and dangerous. She swam at the side, butting her head into the glass, coming away in a cloud of blood. Her long hair whirled away from her face, revealing eyes wide in terror.
Juder approached the tank in a rush, armed with a long needle. He thrust the needle through the glass barrier and into the woman’s side. She let out a piercing screech, like the sound of a shipwreck hitting the rocks. After several moments, Shiv realised the noise echoed inside his mind. Her screams turned to yelps and faded to moans as her body succumbed to the drugs and floated still. Scars criss-crossed her body, countless wounds, healed over time and reopened in the search for what? His eyes filled with liquid, and when it spilled down one cheek, he tasted salt.
Juder turned away from the tank with a look of satisfaction, his lips pinched together in a hard smile. His eyes met Shiv’s and he approached the door.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. He grabbed the back of the wheelchair. “You’re still recuperating…”
“How many do you keep?” said Shiv quickly. “Why are they here?”
Juder ignored his questions, wheeling him back towards the living area.
“How did you get the needle through the glass?”
Juder remained silent. He pulled down a retractable table and chairs and helped Shiv take a seat before fetching food and water.
Pink spots dotted Juder’s white coat. Sea water and blood. Shiv could see the syringe casing still sticking from the Professor’s pocket.
“Why are we keeping Merfolk in tanks?” he repeated. “It’s obviously not to keep them fresh for supper.” The woman’s pain still echoed around his mind.
Juder frowned. “Shiv, please refer to your training and, despite this unfamiliar circumstance, be prepared to observe objectively. The Originals need information from these Merfolk that will benefit us all. I will answer your questions, but please avoid all emotive judgements.” Shiv felt himself flush violet at the reprimand and went to flick his tail in agreement. His legs simply flinched, then lay still.
Shiv waited while the Professor took a long drink and wiped a hand across his mouth. He leaned his head back and applied a dropper bottle of liquid to his eyes, sighing as the moisture eased them.
“Yes, what you saw are Merfolk—the name we’ve given to the pods of large mammals we occasionally hunt for food. While most are eaten, in recent years we’ve put upward of two hundred specimens aside to study. We’ve taken blood and skin samples, sequenced their DNA, tested their pain tolerance…”
“Their pain tolerance?”
“It’s important to know how much experimentation a creature can withstand before passing out, or worse, dying. We’ve used stimulation of the trigemnal nerve to ascertain this in the Merwoman. She exhibited an extreme reaction. Sometime
s we take them out of the tanks so we can watch them transform.”
Shiv hid his surprise. “They transform to a humanoid form?”
“Yes, it’s surprising. But we’re still not sure of the biomechanical or chemical processes that cause it. It isn’t the same as our own, that’s certain. We’d hoped to use that information to augment our own ability to transform in unpalatable atmospheres.”
Shiv knew he must mean Earth. So were the Originals planning to resurface? Hadn’t Juder said as much? Surely, it would be more beneficial to study the statistics collected by the VE about humans, rather than Merfolk? Besides, even if they could communicate, they were still no more than sophisticated beasts.
“Unfortunately, they don’t usually last long. The woman, however—” he gestured in the direction of the tank room “—refuses to die.” He made a low noise in the back of his throat and it took Shiv a moment to realise the Professor had laughed. No bubbles. “She’s a real fighter.”
“So you haven’t found the information you need?”
Juder raised his brow bones to reveal dark, deep set eyes. “Well, that’s where you come in, Scholar. The Originals have plans, big ones. The fact is, we may be a long-lived people, but we aren’t exactly filling the nurseries with hatchlings. The Originals are tired of the wet and they want more territory. Knowledge about these Merfolk may help us survive topside. When they transform on to dry land, their lungs sustain them. We want to know how.”
“The Originals want us to join the humans?”
“I’m not sure they want to join them, so much as overtake them.”
Shiv’s eyes widened. “They want to invade dry Earth? But how could they do that? The atmosphere won’t sustain our people for more than a minute.”
The Professor sighed a wheezy breath. “In my opinion, we’ve learned all we can from these Merfolk—we only have two left anyway—but the Originals think your observations might help. Plus, they say you might be able to talk to them.”
