by Sonia Faruqi
Doctor Navi—the Ocean Dominion doctor from the company’s earliest days, a gaunt man with shifty eyes that scurried right and left like a rat’s—had replaced the charred inch of Izar’s bone with a platinum chip that he’d claimed would make Izar’s wrist as strong as an anvil. As Izar examined his wrist now, he smiled dryly to think that he, the wielder of metal, contained metal also within him.
When he looked up, his glance fell on Castor, and he recognized intuitively that it was time. He strode toward the robot. Looming to more than three times Izar’s six-foot-four height, Castor stood in an immense tank of water with a bulletproof glass boundary.
Izar knew Castor better than any man he had ever known. So profoundly did he relate to Castor, in fact, that, to his own bemusement, he had taken a knife and carved a hook-shaped scar into the side of the robot’s jaw to match his own.
His own hands had laid Castor’s flesh with the densest of metal alloys, and his own fingers had shaped Castor’s skin with zinc-galvanized steel, to prevent corrosion underwater. He had ensured Castor’s legs weighed more than one ton each, to enable the robot to retain his balance on an uneven ocean floor. He had slid magnets into the soles of Castor’s feet, in order to attract jewels, and he had also added a sieve of sensors, to separate the valuable materials from the worthless ones. He had inserted suction conduits as nerves inside Castor’s legs, to convey the precious metals and minerals to the cylindrical storage vaults in his vertebrae.
He had crafted and embedded a circular bronze shield of Ocean Dominion onto Castor’s chest, with Castor’s name written atop it. Behind the shield, he had inserted a vault that he’d loaded with hundreds of bullets. They were not ordinary bullets, but bullets that he himself had designed—cylindrical and streamlined, in order to counter water resistance. He had arranged them in concentric circles in Castor’s chest, as though artillery were an art.
He had also programmed Castor with a self-defense instinct. For instance, if any merperson were to touch Castor during a mining mission, let alone try to stop him, Castor would shoot the intruder. Izar had loaded long-range cameras inside Castor’s eye sockets, so that Izar would be able to view the robot’s underwater surroundings on a computer screen and amplify or override Castor’s self-defense instinct by remote control, if necessary.
As a lobster has two different claws, one a crusher and the other a pincer, Izar had given Castor two different arms, one a crusher and the other what he called a dragon. At twice the circumference of his right arm, Castor’s left arm was the crusher, capable of pulverizing strata into sediment in a matter of seconds. Castor’s right arm, the dragon, was intended to blast fire; it was on this arm that Izar’s dreams hung.
Mentally, Izar ran through how he hoped it would work tonight.
Upon the push of a button on Izar’s remote control, Castor would grow instantly hot, like an electric burner plate. His heat would transform some of his surrounding water into vapor. Catalyst chemicals would fly out of the glands along the sides of his neck, tearing apart the oxygen atoms in water vapor from their hydrogen companions, and compelling them to bond with one another to form oxygen gas. The gas would then funnel into Castor’s dragon arm through a one-way distillation chamber inserted in his skin, designed to permit only oxygen gas. The oxygen would spark the combustion chemicals loaded in Castor’s arm: sulfur, red phosphorus, potassium chlorate, and the finest of glass powders—the elements of matchsticks. Castor’s arm would then crook at the elbow, and a blaze would spew forth. Through the continuous cycle of heat, water vapor, and oxygen distillation, Castor’s fire would be self-sustaining, able to continue as long as the combustion chemicals lasted, or as long as Izar permitted through his remote control.
Izar snatched his crimson-covered journal off the floor, then climbed the ladder alongside the tank of water. He disembarked upon the platform above Castor’s head, which resembled a wide diving board but had a steel-grid base. Kneeling on the platform, he looked at the two objects lying there.
The first was a battery. Bending forward at the waist, Izar dipped his arm in the tank of water up to his elbow and inserted the battery in Castor’s skull. The size of a textbook, it fit perfectly, metal sliding reassuringly inside metal. The second object was a remote control. Grasping it with trembling fingers, Izar held it over Castor’s head. In his other hand, he clutched his journal, also above Castor’s head. If his attempt at underwater fire failed, he would drop the journal in the water.
He pushed the button on the remote control.
Heat began to emanate immediately out of Castor. The water roiled in disconcerted ripples, and, in the span of a minute, the air above the tank grew as moist and humid as that in a sauna. A bead of sweat trickled down Izar’s temple, paused over the scar along his jaw, then dripped off and disappeared into the tank of water. Chains of perspiration dribbled down his back, mingling to form sticky sheets.
Castor’s head swiveled side to side. This showed Izar that at least the first part was done; Castor had reached a sufficiently high temperature, and his glands were spraying catalyst chemicals into his surroundings. Next, the process of creating oxygen gas from water vapor also seemed to transpire without incident, evidenced by the streams of bubbles that erupted in the water.
Izar’s hands were so drenched with sweat that the cover of his journal felt slippery between his fingers, like a fish trying to escape. He placed the remote control down on the platform but continued to dangle the journal above the tank. Victory was not yet assured, not nearly—the most difficult part remained.
A thunderous rumble sounded as Castor’s right arm lifted slowly from his side to crook at his elbow. Izar’s jaw stiffened, and he stared at Castor without blinking. In his anticipation, he could not breathe—the fire would blaze forth now or else never—
An orange-red flame pounded through the water. A horizontal cannon of fire, it flowed continuous and consistent like lava, as inextinguishable as a ray of sunshine.
The journal slipped from Izar’s fingers. His other hand caught it just before it struck the surface of the water, and he placed it feebly next to his knees.
He had done it. His relief was so tremendous that, closing his eyes, he swayed on the platform on his knees, as though in a hypnotist’s trance. “Well done, son,” Antares would say when Izar told him. Izar had waited twenty-five years to hear those words.
Izar opened his eyes and gazed at the fire below. A flaming key, it would sear open the door to his future. Within a week, he would set up an assembly line and, using the instructions in his journal, would commence the process of creating thousands of Castors. Each would be a foot soldier in the mission of underwater fire.
Deposits of jewels were richest in the areas where merpeople lived. (Izar had overlaid maps of the ocean floor’s topography with maps of merpeople population centers, and the maps matched precisely.) Castor would turn their homes and gardens to rubble in order to extract the precious metals and minerals beneath. Merpeople would have nowhere to live, nothing to eat. By the end of the year, they would be extinct. Their extinction would be an important side benefit of Castor: Merpeople had killed Izar’s biological parents, and Castor would kill them.
2
A Matter of the Heart
A mermaid hurried through the door of The Irregular Remedy, a baby in her arms.
“What do you want?” asked Rhodomela Ranularia, glaring at the baby.
“I’m here because my son’s tailfin is not flicking yet,” the mermaid replied.
“That’s because he’s too young,” Rhodomela snapped. “His tailfin will start to flick in a matter of months. In the meantime, I recommend you stop obsessing over him and develop some ambition in life.”
With an insulted huff, the mermaid whirled around and departed.
Coralline looked at Rhodomela out of the corner of her eye. Everything about the master apothecary was efficient: her flesh, which formed a bare coating over her skeletal frame; her shoulders, without an extra tendo
n; her nose, with its narrow nostrils; her lips, a line as straight and unyielding as her opinions. In the silence of the clinic, Coralline considered asking Rhodomela about her day but then thought better of it. In her first weeks at The Irregular Remedy, Coralline had tried to get to know her boss in the day-to-day doses of conversation through with which one gets to know anyone, but it had been like trying to befriend a puffer fish. Rhodomela’s replies had been prickly or else she hadn’t even bothered to respond, leaving Coralline’s comments dangling pathetically in the water. Though Rhodomela’s and Coralline’s counters were just an arm’s length apart, there could just as well have been a wall of shale between them.
I’m fortunate to work for Rhodomela, Coralline reminded herself. I’m the only one who ever has.
Upon her graduation seven months ago from Urchin Apothecary Academy, and with her rank as valedictorian, Coralline had applied to all the clinics in Urchin Grove—The Conventional Cure, Modern Medicine, Green Rope, The Lone Linctus, and The Irregular Remedy. She’d obtained employment offers from all except The Irregular Remedy. Every acceptance scroll had stated the same role, apprentice apothecary, and the same compensation—one hundred carapace a week. But Coralline had waited an anxious week before sending in her reply. That week, she’d checked the mailbox every few hours, until the slow-moving, mild-mannered mailman had remarked that no one was ever so eager to see him as she.
Coralline had been about to deliver an affirmative reply to The Lone Linctus, when the mailman had delivered a scroll bearing the lime-green seal of The Irregular Remedy. Coralline had wrenched it from his hands, torn the seal, and unrolled the scroll to discover an interview date and time scrawled at the center of the parchment.
Rhodomela had interviewed her in a bare, shabby, dimly lit office at the back of the clinic. She had asked Coralline the standard questions, but her mouth had tightened ominously at the standard answers. Coralline had felt certain she would be rejected from the job, but a letter had arrived the next afternoon, stating:
Role: Apprentice apothecary
Wages: Fifty carapace per week
Condition of Employment: The employee will be subject to a probationary term of six months. If she passes the probation, she will remain an employee of The Irregular Remedy and will earn a hundred carapace a week. If she fails the probation, she will be asked to leave The Irregular Remedy promptly, with or without reference.
Coralline had yelped. Her mother had emerged from the kitchen at the sound and snatched the letter from her hands. Her amber-gold eyes had swept over the words quickly. “Who does the Bitter Spinster think she is,” Abalone had scoffed, “to make you such a low offer, half that of other clinics, and to subject you to a probationary term? How ridiculous!”
In her only act of defiance against her mother, Coralline had accepted the offer. Even had the wages been half again what they were, she would have accepted it—for it was Rhodomela who had instilled in her the meaning of healing, the day of her father’s haccident.
Coralline and Abalone had brought Trochid to The Irregular Remedy and lain him down on the stretcher next to the door. Rhodomela had injected his arm with anesthetic just above his vanished wrist, and she’d bound a tourniquet of spiny straggle below his elbow. Fresh blood had spurted out, and the pungent smell of it had invaded Coralline’s nostrils, making her waver dizzily. “Be useful!” Rhodomela had snapped. “Hold the tourniquet steady.” Nodding, Coralline had held the red strings of spiny straggle tight, but she had turned her head away from her father’s arm. She’d observed Rhodomela in an effort to distract herself from all the blood and to keep herself from fainting.
Rhodomela had combined smidgens of Clotter Blotter and Un-Infectant in a flask. Bubbles had spewed, then the blend had turned a still, leaden white, smooth as ice. With swift, meticulous fingers, Rhodomela had plastered the paste to Trochid’s stump, arresting the bleeding. In that moment, Coralline had understood why she’d always wanted to be a healer: so that she could save the lives of those she loved.
Now, as Coralline continued to look at Rhodomela from the corner of her eye, she contemplated committing her second act of defiance against her mother. She looked at the two scrolls she’d wedged into a corner of her counter, each tied with a golden ribbon—they were the invitations to her engagement party and wedding. She wanted to give one scroll to Rhodomela, though she was not supposed to. She was supposed to give the other scroll to Rosette Delesse—who worked as an associate apothecary at The Conventional Cure clinic next door—but she did not want to.
Coralline wanted to hand the invitation to Rhodomela nonchalantly, without fuss or ceremony, and she wondered how best to accomplish it. Her glance fell upon the tray on her counter, laden with implements—snippers, vials, labels, a mortar and pestle, scalpels, needles. Coralline always took the tray with her into the remedial garden outside the window. She would invite Rhodomela on her way out into the remedial garden, she decided, then she would invite Rosette once she was in the garden. She squeezed the two scrolls onto the side of her tray.
But if she was entering the remedial garden, she might as well snip some algae and refill one of her urns of medication, she figured. She turned to look at the unit of shelves that ran from floor to ceiling behind her counter. She examined the labels of her white-gray limestone urns: Rash Relief, Cough Cure, Swelling Softener, Bruise Abolisher, Gill Gush, Eyesight Enhancer, Headache Healer . . . She opened the Headache Healer urn; as she’d expected, only a spoonful of the gooey gray glob remained.
She’d prepared the medication at least half a dozen times and could probably recite it from memory, but she wanted to be extra certain; flicking her tailfin to rise toward her higher shelves, she ran her index finger over the spines of her medical manuals. Quick Concoctions for Quick Recovery. Medical Medleys. Heart: The Most Difficult Part. Secrets of the Central Nervous System. Extracting Medical Medleys, she flipped through the thousand-page textbook on her counter until she’d located her favorite recipe for resolving headaches. She scrutinized the short list of ingredients—yes, it was exactly as she remembered.
Gathering her tray, Coralline slipped out from behind her counter and hovered in front of Rhodomela’s.
“What is it?” Rhodomela asked, her serpent-like eyes flickering irritably.
“Nothing,” Coralline mumbled, losing her nerve. She darted out the window into the remedial garden.
The garden formed a crescent shape around half of The Irregular Remedy. Coralline found herself relaxing as she looked out over the dozens of algae. There were green algae, the most humble and uniform of the algae, the colors of their fronds varying from pale green to deep jade. Then there were brown algae, their strands taller than her, equipped with gas-filled bladders that floated the blades upward for easier photosynthesis. And there were red algae, Coralline’s favorite, the colors of their fronds varying widely from scarlet to maroon, pink to purple. Of the three families of algae, together numbering about ten thousand species, red formed the majority because of their ability to photosynthesize at great depths.
Placing her tray on the windowsill, Coralline approached creeping chain, a mat of interlaced blackish-purple red algae. She sheared three blades. Next, she sought the thick, hair-like thalluses of green rope smattering a rock and snipped the four most vibrantly colored fronds. Finally, she snipped just a sliver of iridescent cartilage, admiring its brilliant blue fluorescence. She ground each of the three algae separately in her mortar and pestle, then put all of them in a flask and shook the flask. Only when her arm tired did she hold it before her eyes: Bubbles were sputtering, and sounds were emerging from the flask, as though the algae were whispering to one another. The reaction showed her that the algae were joining, and, through their combination, becoming stronger together than they had been apart. Then, in the blink of an eye, the colors merged completely, and the mixture formed a gray glob. The Headache Healer solution was ready.
Coralline placed the flask on her tray, then grabbed one of
the two invitation scrolls. It was time to invite Rosette Delesse, unfortunately. Straightening her shoulders, assuming a stoic expression, she turned to face The Conventional Cure next door.
Rosette was lingering in the remedial garden of the clinic. Her body formed a long, lithe shape, her eyes sparkled sapphire, and her hair, gathered over one shoulder, shone a passionate, fiery crimson. Her corset was woven of a fine, flimsy net and was precisely the same shade as her skin, such that she appeared to be wearing nothing. Coralline swam over to Rosette and handed her the invitation. Rosette’s fingers untied its golden ribbon to reveal a small square of ivory parchment filled with cursive gold writing.
The Elnaths and the Costarias request the pleasure of your presence,
along with your family,
at the engagement party of Ecklon Elnath and Coralline Costaria,
at noon on the fifteenth of July in the garden of the Elnath Mansion;
and, pursuant, their wedding two weeks after,
at noon on the twenty-ninth of July at Kelp Cove;
please confirm your attendance as soon as possible,
