by Hotter Edge
He studied the other festival-goers, capturing images for later perusal as he pretended to fiddle with his vid. It was a fairly homogenous crew despite the array of skin tones and ages: reasonably wealthy, relaxed, anticipatory. But which of them were merely excited about experiencing the effects of fresh malac liqueur, and which might be here with darker intent?
The last guests stepped into the observatory, and a soft chime indicated the closing of the portal. The observatory docent pointed the late-comers to empty seats and spoke into the comm. “Thank you all for coming to the first harvest of this year’s Malac Festival. Please prepare for descent. A descent into pleasure!”
Most of the guests had crowded to the windows, leaving the center benches only partly occupied, but a slender body slumped into the seat beside Icere, closer than necessary.
He slanted a glance at Rynn’s daughter. “Are you going to punch me too?”
“Maybe I should kiss you instead.”
He resettled his vid tech and in the process subtly closed off his body language, although her tone was more flat than flirtatious. “I do not think that would be any more wise than your brother’s behavior.”
Kylara raised one delicate brow in a deliberate way that reminded him very much of the Saya. “Certainly no more foolish than my mother.”
He matched her arched brow. “You think the Saya is foolish?”
She pursed her lips. “Perhaps I misspoke. Shall I say instead led astray?”
He abandoned his mirroring and snorted in indelicate amusement. “And you think your mother can be led anymore than she can be fooled?”
The princess abruptly grinned at him. “Point to the outworlder.”
The observatory shifted and began to slide away from the barge. The deck lights, already blurred from the relentless rain, faded completely, and so did the drumming sound as the observatory slid below the waves. The docent began what was obviously a long-familiar speech about the malac mating fields, the discovery of the aphrodisiac properties of the liqueur, and so on.
Kylara patted Icere’s hand, and he was glad he’d donned his full gray vestments including his gloves before joining the evening party. “You look as worried as my mother. The diving observatories are perfectly safe from even the largest malac, as long as you stay inside.”
The observatory was little more than a large oval plasteel room, its transparent walls seemingly too thin to hold back an ocean. As if the fragile-looking walls weren’t bad enough, the floor and ceiling were equally see-through. Worst of all, the floor at the far end of the oblong, where the evening’s divers including Luac were gathered, was actually open to the ocean, the water held at bay only by the air pressure.
To distract himself, Icere focused on the princess’s comment. “I wondered why the Saya didn’t accompany us. It is the first harvest, after all.”
Kylara lifted one bare shoulder, exposed by the asymmetrical cut of her flowing dress. “She turned rutting bivalves into a destination event recognized across the sheerways and changed the fortunes of this planet. But I don’t think she always likes what that means.” She tilted her head. “And mostly, I think she feels badly for the malac.”
The observatory sank into the darkness, and the plasteel groaned. From the opening in the floor, a gout of water burbled. One of the guests in the seats nearby shrieked, and then laughed nervously. Luac went over to the group and spoke, too quietly for Icere to hear from across the space. The guests laughed again, once more relaxed.
Luac went back to his gear and his three fellow divers, a couple of whom Icere recognized from the cantina when he’d first arrived. With their gear—the hollow tube of the pulser and long, bracing staves, not to mention the wickedly curved knives strapped to their thighs—they looked like pirates ready to rampage.
Kylara followed his glance. “Luac’s not a bad sort. Don’t blame him for beating you.”
“I don’t,” Icere said. Mostly because he didn’t consider himself beaten. As if he’d thrash a boy—no matter how deserving—in front of the mother he planned to seduce.
“You can understand how walking in on you and the Saya shocked us.”
He slanted a glance at her. “Next time, knock harder. Then go away when no one answers.”
“Next time?” She rolled her amused blue eyes. “She is our mother. She is always here for us. Always here for everything. Because where would she go? She is this world.”
“Maybe it’s time she was someone else’s world.”
This time, Kylara peered at him with more of her brother’s dark-eyed suspicion. “What, you came here to court her?”
“I came here for the festival.” Which was true enough.
So why did it feel like a lie?
He drew another breath, although he had no idea what he intended to say, but then the observatory came to a smooth halt. A soft musical score that had played behind the docent’s talk fell silent, and the lights came on in the malac field.
The gasp that went around the observatory sucked half the air from the room, or so it felt to Icere as he came to his feet along with the rest of the guests.
He’d caught only a brief, confused glance of the malac that had charged Luac’s trimaran, and it had been obscured by spray. Here in the crystalline depths, with the strategically anchored lighting adding a surreal glow to the scene, the creatures were like something from a nightmare.
As a child, he’d watched his share of old Earth vids, and he remembered seeing oceanscapes with oysters, mussels and clams. But those mild-mannered mollusks were obviously worlds away. The biggest of the bivalves in the illuminated field outside were almost half the size of the observatory. Even the smaller specimens were formidable looking, with their serrated shell lips and the tangle of muscular tentacles protruding from the rear of the shells.
These were no filter-feeding grazers. The malac were carnivorous killers, and they were going into their season of mating frenzy.
In the field, the creatures charged each other as the one had attacked the trimaran, pseudopod limbs flailing, bivalve mouths agape. In the clear water, they seemed almost airborne, lingering aloft as they thrashed at one another. The crack of their shells colliding was muted by the distance through the water, but it wasn’t hard to imagine what such a strike would do to a human even though only the smaller specimens took part in the displays.
A splash at the front of the observatory brought his head around. The first of the divers had slipped into the water. Icere swallowed hard.
Kylara laughed. “I forgot, Luac said you don’t like water.”
“Even less with malac in it.”
“But wait until you get a taste of the liqueur. Stay right here a moment.”
As if he had someplace else he could go in the submerged coffin. But he sank back into his seat. She went over to her brother at the waterlock and clasped his arm. While the other divers threw themselves into the watery hole, Kylara made her brother wait while she checked his equipment. He shook his head, fists on his hips, until she finally handed over the scrubber that would let him breathe underwater. He strapped the palm-sized mask over his nose and mouth and tied on the weights that would prevent him from floating in the buoyant salty water. Then he too was overboard, or underboard. He waved through the transparent floor at the guests, who waved back.
Kylara returned to the center seats. “He’s such a braggart. I worry he’ll forgot something as stupid as breathing.”
“Because swimming out to sex-crazed underwater monsters isn’t stupid.”
She grinned. “When you say it like that… Now, what were we talking about? Oh yes, sex-crazed.” She leaned toward him and touched her fingertip to his lower lip. He recoiled, but she caught his hand when he would have wiped away the warm droplet of water. “Taste it.”
He pulled his gloved hand away. “I’m not interested.” He hadn’t meant to be so blunt, but she had startled him.
Too late, he realized the droplet had already slicked across his skin.
He caught the faintest whiff of salty brine. And then he tasted it, just a hint of musky sweetness. Very much like sex.
“It’s begun,” Kylara said. “Did you know the malac are sequentially hermaphroditic? They are both genders, but not both at the same time. They start out smaller and male. Those are the ones that fight. But as they grow, they become female. When they are large enough, they brood the larvae and secrete the liqueur we are harvesting tonight.”
“The liqueur makes them aggressive?” How would that affect whatever formulation was intended to replace the qva’avaq?
Kylara licked her fingertip. “The malac fight regardless. They are vicious monsters. The liqueur is the only thing that finally distracts them enough to mate. Our biologists have found that malac liqueur triggers mating behaviors in a wide swath of the surrounding hydrosphere.” She looked at him through her lashes.
He stared past her with a flat, uninterested gaze. He did not want the attentions of the Saya’s daughter. As he watched the divers approach the malac field, he catalogued his own internal reactions to the droplet he’d tasted.
Other than a certain amount of nervousness at the sight of the small divers—looking ever smaller as they swam surreptitiously between the rampaging malac toward the recumbent females—he sensed nothing off about his sensitivities: pulse within norms, no untoward galvanic skin response, qva’avaq dormant, penis at repose.
He was a bit disappointed. Though he’d had only a faint touch of the liqueur, well diluted by sea water, he would have thought the raiders would target a more powerful component to replace the crystal they’d lost.
Apparently nothing would replace the qva’avaq. He and his sisters were truly the last of an era.
The image came to him of the Saya as he had left her in her office, framed against the stormy window with the faint indigo of the neurotoxic rings blushing on her skin. Was this how Rynn felt, with her unique heritage? Was she this lonely?
Out in the depths, the first divers had passed between the fighting malac and neared the giant shells of the females. Within the observatory, the guests crowded at the transparent walls, as if they wanted to be just a little closer. On the walls above their heads, vid showed the harvest close up, and Icere realized one of the divers must have a camera. Luac’s long, dark hair floated in the center of the picture as he positioned the pulser near the stony-looking shell.
“Luac has to be careful here,” Kylara murmured. “The rhythm and pressure of the pulser has to trick the female into thinking a worthy male has won his way to her side and is politely knocking. Then she’ll open her shell to take in his fertilizing spray. But one wrong move and she’ll slam shut. Then only a bomb would get her open again, which would destroy the malac and the liqueur. And the diver, of course.”
“I’m surprised your mother lets the Ni-Saya take part in such a dangerous tradition.”
Kylara shrugged. “She realizes she has given him quite a legendary legacy to uphold. This is as close as he can come to proving himself a true child of these waters.” She pointed at the overhead screen. “There, that’s good. See the little puff of glittery fluid coming from the malac? That’s the liqueur. The malac likes his knocking and wants to lure him closer. He’ll be unable to resist.” She gave Icere a sideways smile.
He glanced around at the other guests, but all seemed equally enthralled. If any were thinking about how that irresistible liqueur might be converted to something more oppressive, the terrible plan did not show on their faces.
Whatever they might be hiding, the malac was acting like an open book. The fluted lips of the shell gaped by a hand’s width now, showing the smooth inner lining with its pearly sheen.
“She’s a big one,” Kylara said. “The liqueur is secreted from a soft sachet inside the arch of the shell. Luac will have to get her to open wide so he can get all the way inside.”
Icere shook his head. “And she’ll just let him do that?”
“No. That’s what the staves and dive knives are for. The other divers will prop the shell apart while Luac darts in and cuts the sachet loose.”
He just kept shaking his head.
Kylara grinned again. “Don’t be squeamish. The malac aren’t harmed by the harvest. But she’ll definitely be annoyed. And the males are infuriated at the pulser when they think another male has sneaked past them. Luac and the other divers have to move carefully but fast.”
“I tried to explain to the Saya there are perfectly acceptable synthetic replacements for most dopamine agonists.”
“How’d that go over?”
“Like a rock.”
Kylara laughed, but the sound was lost in the gasp of the crowded observatory as the malac gaped, exposing the shining interior of the shell and the writhing nest of internal tentacles. A bubble of trapped air floated up like a silvered balloon, followed by a scintillating cloud of the liqueur.
The divers sped forward. The two on either side of Luac shoved their blunted staves into the open shell, propping it almost as wide as the Ni-Saya was tall. He swam in as nonchalantly as he would enter a room, unsheathing the knife at his thigh.
Kylara leaned forward in her seat. “Let’s go, brother,” she said softly. “The scrubber removes most of the malac essence from the oxygen mix the divers are breathing, but if they absorb too much of it through their skin, they could get…distracted.”
Distracted? That would be an excellent time for the raiders to steal the liqueur. Icere frowned. Even if the divers were sidetracked, the rapt audience in the observatory would notice anything untoward.
Two of the sparring male malac nearby rotated on their thick tentacles, smaller feelers emerging from between the lips of their shells to sample the released liqueur. A third male charged them both, cracking shells and knocking all three closer to the female. They scuffled, tentacles writhing as they struggled to toss each other away from the wide-open female.
One of the divers shone a strong light into the malac. In his black wetsuit, Luac stood out in bold contrast against the female’s fleshy inner feelers. The observatory’s overhead vid showed his knife, aimed at a soft-looking sphere. The liqueur sachet was wider than his spread fingers and encrusted in the roof of the malac’s shell. At the edges of the vid frame, the malac’s feelers snaked around the wedged staves, exploring the intrusion. Although the inner tentacles were short and slender compared to the ambulating appendages on the outside of the shell, they worried at the staves determinedly.
Behind the divers, the battle between the male malac had intensified. With a power jet of water that raised a scrim of floating sand, the third male malac vaulted over the first two, aiming at the female. It snapped at the diver with the camera, throwing him aside. The vid projected in the observatory spun wildly, and the diver floated, one leg askew.
One of the other divers raced toward their injured comrade.
Without a sound, the first stave buckled.
Kylara jolted upright, screaming a warning that none of the suddenly endangered divers could hear. “Luac!”
The malac’s shell was closing, with the Ni-Saya inside.
Icere was on his feet a split second after Kylara.
Ah. Here then was the distraction.
In the sudden shadow without the diver’s light, Luac’s position was impossible to see except for a flash of the orange piping on his wetsuit. The other diver struggled to hold the second stave, but against the brutal pressure of the bivalve shell, the stave snapped. The jagged end slammed into the diver’s belly, spinning him away.
The slowly rotating vid caught a glimpse of a smashed scrubber, flagged in orange trim.
Kylara raced for the portal in the observatory floor, stripping out of her dress as she ran. The brief body suit underneath revealed her strong musculature, and she didn’t hesitate as she grabbed a stave and strapped a scrubber over her nose and mouth.
The observatory crowd was babbling in fear, and the docent was on the comm to the barge, calling out the emergency.
&
nbsp; Icere followed Kylara, trying to grab a quick look at every face he passed, but most were pressed to the windows, their hands flattened against the plasteel. He grabbed the docent’s arm. “Do not ascend,” he said harshly. “Make sure you speak to the Saya directly. Tell her our friends may have struck.”
The docent shook his head. “I don’t understand—”
“Just tell her.” Icere stripped out of his clothing, wishing for once he hadn’t worn the fitted knee-length tunic and matching trousers. There was no way he could swim in the constricting material. He smashed a scrubber to his face and dove.
Chapter Eight
And sank.
He flailed a moment, feeling like a less graceful version of the malac as his limbs seemed too long and ungainly, finding no purchase in the open water. Kylara was already several lengths ahead of him and pulling away. She would be in the midst of the accident before he found his stride, or his stroke.
His only experience with deep water was a virtual waterfall environment where he’d seduced an imaginary empress. The scenario had been satisfying at the time, but now he realized he hadn’t been paying much attention to the part where they dove together behind the falls. It had seemed fairly easy, unlike his floundering now.
Which left him wondering how accurate the sex part had been.
He forced himself to relax. It would be impossible to face the Saya if he did nothing while her son drowned. And in the distraction of a dead Ni-Saya, any number of liqueur sachets might be stolen with no one the wiser.
He realized he’d been holding his breath and gasped. The scrubber whirred faintly, exchanging his carbon dioxide for oxygen drawn from the liquid around him. The water was warmer than he expected, wrapping around him like a welcome, the high salinity as supportive as the Saya had promised, although his eyes stung.
