WikiWorld

by Paul Di Filippo

  Storm hungrily drank in Faizai’s allure, guttering flames glinting hotly in her liquid eyes. He gulped once, twice, then managed to speak.

  “Urk— That is, not tonight, thank you. I’m very tired from my travels.”

  “Maybe some other time,” Faizai slurred lusciously.

  Storm made no reply, but instead dragged his mat away to lie with the Kodiak Kangemus, their musk and somnolent growls failing to fully mask the squeals and scents from his copulating comrades.

  But at last he fell into a light, uneasy sleep.

  “On three! One, two—three!”

  The combined musclepower of all six males succeeded in tossing the bundle of the precisely packed kite a full five metres into the air, as the Slippery Squid floated just offshore. The kite began to unfurl. A perfectly timed wind sent by the tropospheric mind caught the MEMS fabric, belling it out to its full extent and lofting it higher, higher— The six tough composite lines fastened to the prow of the Squid tautened. The ship began to cut the pristine waters of San Francisco Bay, heading out to open sea.

  A collective shout of triumph went up. The wardens hugged and slapped one another on the back. Jizogirl waved to the Kodiak Kangemus on the shore where they milled, reluctant to loose sight of their departing masters. Eventually, they would acknowledge the separation and find their way home.

  “Goodbye, Slasher! See you soon!”

  Arp said dourly, “You hope.”

  “Hey now, no defeatist talk,” Pankey admonished.

  Shamrock came up to the leader and said, “Shouldn’t we erect the canopy now? Pretty soon it’ll get hot, and we’ll appreciate the shelter.”

  “Good idea. Wrinkles, Bunter, Catmaul, Faizai—get to it!”

  Poles and a gaily striped awning soon shielded a large portion of the blonde superwood deck from the skies, and a few of the wardens took advantage of the shade to relax. Bunter was drawing a snack from his UPD. No one had gotten much sleep last night. But Storm stayed where he could see and admire the kite, a burnt-orange scoop decorated with the image of a sword-wielding paw and arm.

  Jizogirl came up beside Storm. He nervously tightened his grip on the rail, then forced himself to relax. He looked straight at her, and admired the way the wind ruffled her patchwork fur.

  “Do you like the picture on our kite, Storm? I designed it myself. No one else cared, but I thought we should have an emblem. I derived it from an old human saga. Lots of daring swordplay! So unlike our humdrum daily routines. The sweep of the action appealed to me. The humans were mad, of course, but so vibrant! I watched the show over and over. Once I played the video on a cloudscreen big as the horizon! Old Tropo indulged me, I guess. Shameful waste of computational power, but who cares! It was magnificent!”

  Storm asked thoughtfully, “Are you okay with this mission? To kill a sentient being, even one accidentally born and malfunctioning?”

  Jizogirl grew sober. “You didn’t see the footage of the Hawaiian wardens being slaughtered, Storm. Horrible, just horrible. I don’t think we have any choice….”

  Jizogirl’s sincere repugnance and sorrow was a strong argument in favour of the assassination of Mauna Loa, but Storm still felt a shard of uncertainty. He wished he could somehow speak to the rogue magma mind first.

  Her natural sprightliness reasserting itself, Jizogirl resumed her light chatter. Grateful that the doe seemed content to conduct a monologue, Storm just smiled and nodded at appropriate places. He found her anecdotes charming. She moved from talk of her viewing habits into a detailed autobiography. She was thirty-two years old. Her assigned marches centred around old human Vancouver. Her father had died when a rotten Sequoia limb had fallen and crushed him, but her mother was still alive….

  By the time the Squid was out of sight of land, Storm felt he knew Jizogirl as well as he knew old Sylvanus. But Sylvanus had never caused Storm’s stomach to flutter, or his heart to thump so loudly.

  In return for her story, Storm told his own—haltingly at first, then with a swelling confidence and excitement. Jizogirl listened appreciatively, her ears (distinctly less tufted than Faizai’s) making continual microadjustments of attitude to filter out the thwack of waves, cries of gulls and cryptovolans, playful loud chatter of their fellow wardens. His story finally caught up with realtime, and Storm stopped, faintly chagrined. He had never talked about himself—about anything!—for such a stretch before. What would she think of such boasting?

  Jizogirl smiled broadly, revealing big white shovel-like teeth. “Why, I never could have made such a leap out of my rut when I was your age, Storm! You’re so brave and daring. Imagine, travelling across half the continent on your own!”

  Storm felt his head seemingly inflate, his vision fragment into sparkles. But Jizogirl’s next words deflated his elation.

  “If I had a little brother, I’d want him to be just like you!”

  “Hey, Jizogirl, come look at this funny fish!” The voice belonged to Pankey, but a crumpled Storm could not even feel any twinge of jealousy when Jizogirl begged off and trotted over to see the latest specimen the wardens had caught for their continual cataloguing purposes. He remained at the rail, trying to estimate how long he could stay afloat alone, were he to jump, and why he would bother to prolong his miserable life.

  That first day a-sea passed swiftly and easily. With no real duties (a rare condition for any warden), under the benevolent aegis of the weather mind, knowing their heading was correct and no doldrums or foul storms would ever bedevil them, the Emergency Response Team merely romped and rested, joked and petted, carefree as kits. All except Storm, who nursed his romantic disappointment alone.

  As twilight swooped in from the east, the sea around the Squid came alive with luminescent dinoflagellates, pulsing with electric blue radiance. Storm watched the display for a while before an idea struck him.

  The hasty construction of their ship had precluded any infrastructure, such as lights. Storm would provide some.

  From his UPD he produced a dozen hollow, transparent spheres of biopolymer, each with a screw-on cap. He made a length of netting. Then he dipped each uncapped netted globe into the plankton flock, filling it to the brim. By the time he had dunked them all, darkness had thickened. But Storm’s bioluminescent globes made spectral yet somehow comforting blue hollows in the night.

  All his comrades thronged around Storm and his creations. “Brilliant!” “Just what we need!” “Let’s get them hung up!”

  More netting secured the globes beneath the canopy, and an exotic yet homey ambiance resulted. Arp got busy with his own UPD and produced the parts of a ukulele, which he quickly snapped together. He strummed a sprightly tune, and Catmaul commenced a sensuous dance, to much clapping and hooting. Bunter concocted some kind of cocktail, which added considerably to the levity.

  Storm watched with a blooming jubilation that received its greatest boost in the next moment. From the shadows, Jizogirl appeared to deliver unto Storm a quick hug and a kiss, before rejoining Pankey.

  The second day of their voyage, the wardens were less sanguine. Hangovers reigned, and the prospect of entertaining themselves for another day seemed less like fun than a duty. Also, the further they drew from home, the larger loomed the grim struggle that awaited them.

  Storm affected the most optimism and panache. His triumph last night—the invention of the light globes, the kiss—continued to sustain him. Standing at the bow, he tried to urge the Slippery Squid forward faster. He felt the urgent need to meet his destiny, to prove himself, to discover whether the action he had always imagined he craved truly suited him.

  Studying the kite that pulled them onward, Storm had a sudden inspiration.

  Pankey was scrolling through the headache-tablet templates on his UPD when Storm interrupted him.

  “How are we going to fight?”

  Pankey looked at Storm as if the youngster had spoken in an extinct human tongue. “Fight? You mean the animal agents Mauna Loa will throw at us? We can’t poss
ibly fight them. I counted on stealth. A midnight landing—”

  “And if the enemy doesn’t cooperate with your plans?”

  Pankey waved Storm off. “I’ve considered everything. Go away now.”

  Storm retrieved his own UPD and called up the plans for his machete. He tinkered with them, then hit PRINT.

  The scimitar-like sword necessarily emerged from the spatially restricted output port in three pre-epoxied pieces that locked inextricably together. The nanocellulose composite was stronger than steel and carried an exceedingly sharp edge.

  Out on the open deck, Storm began energetically to practice thrusts, feints and parries alone. Soon he had attracted an audience. He added enthusiastic grunts and shouts to his routine.

  Rotifero said, “I actually believe that such vigorous exercise might very well drive these demons out of one’s head. Do you have another one of those weapons, Storm?”

  Without stopping, Storm said, through huffs and puffs, “Just… hit… ‘print’… on… my… UPD….”

  Soon all eleven wardens, even a grudging Pankey, were sparring vigorously. “Beware my unstoppable blade!” “Take that, foul fruitbat!” “I’ll run you through!”

  That night was spent mostly attending to various minor cuts and bruises.

  Sword practice continued the next day, somewhat less faddishly, until just before noon came a cry of “Land ho!” from Catmaul.

  Storm saw a small, heavily treed island at some distance off the port. “Is that Hawaii already?”

  Pankey cupped the back of his own neck with one paw and massaged, as if to evoke insight. “Impossible….”

  Bunter said, “Look how lush the vegetation is! We might find a species of nice fruit not templated in our UPDs, if we land.”

  The normally reticent Gumball now laughed and said, “I don’t think we want to land on that ‘island.’”

  “Why?” said Pankey.

  “I’m surprised none of you have heard of the Terrapin Islands before. Down in Baja, we see them pass by all the time. Just watch.”

  As the Squid came abreast of the island at some remove, a patch of the ocean between island and ship began to bulge, water pouring off a rising humped form several times bigger than the Squid.

  The gimlet-eyed scaled head of the gargantuan Chelonioidea regarded the vessel with cool reptilian disinterest. Sea grass draped from its jaws. Opening wide its horny mouth, working its tongue, the terrapin inhaled the masses of vegetation like a noodle.

  Storm was secretly pleased to find his own nerves holding steady at the sight of the monster. The others reacted variously. Faizai shrieked, Arp clucked his tongue, Bunter gulped. Shamrock urged impossibly, “Get some more speed on here!” Gumball laughed.

  “They’re harmless! Don’t worry!”

  True to Gumball’s reassurance, the Squid slipped past the mammoth grazing landscaped sea turtle without interference, and soon Terrapin Island lay below the horizon.

  “And some claim the Upflowered had no sense of humour,” Rotifero observed.

  That night, long after his companions had passed satedly into deep sleep, Storm could be found awake at the rail, contemplating their luminescent wake.

  He liked these people, bucks and does equally. Even Pankey’s stern bossiness was fuelled by pure and admirable motives. He enjoyed working with them, feeling part of a team. But did that mean he was ready completely to step into Old Tropo’s harness? And what of their vengeful mission? Justified, or reprehensible?

  The slick shadowy head of some marine creature broke the water then, and Storm jumped back. A dolphin! But capping its skull was a crust of magma! Here was one of Mauna Loa’s captives.

  The dolphin’s precisely modulated squeaks were completely intelligible. “Stop! Don’t run away! I just want to talk!”

  “Mauna Loa… ?”

  “Yes. I know who you are, and why you’re coming. But you need not fear me. I only want to own a few islands, where I can practice my art. I want to mould life, just as the Upflowered did. Introduce novelty to the world. My tools are crude, though. Radiation mainly. You could help me gain access to better ones. Join me! Frustrate this mission! Turn it aside somehow.”

  “I—I don’t know. I can’t betray my friends. I have to think.”

  “Take your time then. I won’t interfere. I’m harmless, really.”

  And with that promise, the dolphin was gone, leaving Storm to a troubled sleep.

  Days four and five inched by tediously, as the wardens found all attractions equally stale, the monotony of the marine landscape infusing them with a sense of eternal stasis. Unspoken thoughts of the challenge awaiting them weighed them down. Storm tried to conceive of ways to convince his friends of the wrongness of their assault, but failed to come up with any dominant argument.

  After their evening meal of the fifth day, Pankey gathered them together and said, “We should sight our destination some time tomorrow. It occurs to me that we should arm ourselves in advance with our logic bombs. Everyone make three apiece, and some sort of bandolier that can also hold your UPD.”

  Having complied, the wardens tested the fit of their bandoliers that cradled, across their furry muscled chests, the biopolymer eggs stuffed with antisense silicrobes, deadly only to the smart magma mind of Mauna Loa. Storm thought the UPD strapped to his back was a bulky and awkward feature, but refrained from questioning Pankey’s orders.

  Pankey went around testing and tightening buckles before registering approval.

  “Fine. Well done. Now, as to our chosen delivery method. We’ll halt offshore by day and study our terrain maps one final time. We’ll land under cover of darkness and split up, heading to Kilauea on pawfoot by a variety of routes. At any major vent near the summit caldera, feel free to bomb the living shit out of this volcano bitch!”

  Pankey’s curse-filled martial bravado rang false and antithetical to Storm, and he noted that the rough talk failed to inspire any signs of gung-ho enthusiasm in the rest.

  Storm asked, “Can we expect any support from the weather mind? Maybe some storm coverage to shock the defenders?”

  “I considered asking for that. But any bad weather will impede us just as much as it hurts Mauna Loa’s slaves. No, stealth is our best bet.”

  “What about our swords?”

  “Listen, Storm, all that swordplay onboard was good exercise and fun. It took our mind off our problems. But if you need to use those toothpicks on land, it’ll be too late for you already. You’d best leave your sword behind. It’s just extra weight that’ll slow you down.”

  “I’m taking mine.”

  Pankey shrugged. “Junior knows best.”

  Storm noticed that Jizogirl appeared about to second Storm’s objection to venturing forth unarmed. But then the doe relented, and said nothing.

  Storm slept only fitfully, so angry was he at Pankey’s rude dismissal of him. So when dawn was barely a rumour, Storm was already up, alone of the wardens, and defecating over the edge of the vessel.

  Looking sleepily into the dark foaming waters that had swallowed his scat, Storm hoped for a return of the dolphin diplomat, for more talk that might help him decide whose side he was really on.

  But instead he saw a sleek grey hand and arm emerge to grip a ridge halfway up the hull.

  He convulsively tumbled off his lavatory perch to the deck, then scrambled to his feet. A pair of hands now gripped the railing, then another pair, and another—

  These were no innocent emissaries. Mauna Loa’s promise not to interfere had been a lie. She had just been stalling, till she could outfit these attackers. Suddenly, Storm felt immense guilt at having kept the earlier visit a secret. The wardens could have been prepared for invasion by this route—

  “Foes! Foes! Help! Attack!”

  A wet torpedo face that seemed all teeth materialized between the first pair of hands. Gills flapped shut, and nostrils flared open.

  Storm dove for his sword. The other wardens were stirring confusedly. Storm
kicked them, slapped them with the flat of his blade.

  “Swords! Swords! Get your swords!”

  Turning back toward the rail, Storm faced the intruders fully.

  The handsharks fused anthropoid and squaline designs into a bipedal monster all grey rugose hide and muscles. Neckless, their shark countenances thrust forward aggressively. Each wore the pebbled slave cap of the magma mind, clamped tight. A fishy carrion reek sublimed off them.

  Involuntarily bellowing his anger and fear, Storm rushed forward, sword at the ready.

  He got a deep resonant lick in on the ribs of a handshark at the same time he was batted powerfully across the chest. He went down and skidded on his butt across the wet deck. Leaping back to his feet, he confronted another monster—the same one?—and slashed out, blade landing with a squelch across its eyes.

  Screams, battle-cries, the thunk of blade into flesh. Storm could get no sense of the whole battle’s tide, but only flail about in his little sphere of chaos.

  Somehow he slaughtered without being slaughtered himself, until the battle was over.

  Weeping, wiping blood from his face, his sword dripping gore, Storm reunited with his comrades.

  Those who still lived.

  That headless corpse was Bunter. The one with torn throat was Gumball. Half of Arp’s torso was gone in a single bite. Faizai lay in several pieces. They never found Shamrock; perhaps a dying handshark had dragged her overboard.

  Almost half their team dead, before they even sighted their goal.

  There could be no question now of where Storm must place his allegiance. All his doubt and conflicts had evaporated with the lives of his friends. Guilt plagued him as well. He knew the only way to make up for such a transgression was to carry forth the assault on Mauna Loa with all his wit and bravery. Although beyond the assassination attempt, his future still floated mistily.

  Only three handshark corpses littered the deck. Just one more attacker, and all the wardens would probably this moment be dead.