Sight Unseen

by AnonYMous

  No point wasting a single minute.

  The night was clear and full of stars, the breeze cool and fresh, the beach soft and familiar underfoot. Before a camera crew, Vitalis, clad in a tactical suit, shook hands with the dozen or so officials who had come as witnesses and apologized for the inconvenience of the hour.

  At five minutes to midnight, her husband arrived on a stretcher, also clad in a tactical suit. Her hope faltered—under starlight, his face looked like its own death mask. But then she gripped his wrist and felt his pulse, weak and erratic, but there nevertheless.

  The official timekeeper gestured to her: it was time. Vitalis kissed her husband on the forehead, walked to the edge of the water, and placed her hands on the sand. A gentle wave lapped over her fingers, bracingly cool. Almost immediately, behind her, streaks of silver light shot high into the stratosphere.

  That was not the Elders, but one final salute from her people. She could only see the flares from the settlements nearest her, but all over the planet they were going up. She had seen them once before, when she was a little girl—the last time a Chosen One had walked into the sea.

  The day before she was announced as a candidate to be the next savior of Pax Cara.

  The prince’s staff placed him on her back. The surfaces of their suits could range from a texture that was nearly frictionless to one that would allow them to climb up walls. They were both set to the latter, so that the prince would adhere to her without her having to hold him in place.

  He was disconcertingly light, even with the package strapped to his back, which would inflate to a lifepod that would bring him back to shore, after he had undergone the maximum dose of radiation.

  His head rested on her shoulder. His face had been turned aside to avoid accidental suffocation. She reached up a hand and touched his hair.

  Another set of flares shot up, their brilliance drowning out the stars.

  The sea parted.

  Chapter 8

  Vitalis raised her arm in salute. Everyone, even the prince’s staff, sank to their knees. She nodded at the chamberlain and the head physician, then turned to face her destiny.

  The sea shimmered, a silver-blue glow like starlight. The sand that had been exposed by the parting of the waves shimmered too, a faintly luminous boulevard edged by walls of water.

  “Here we go,” she said softly, to her unconscious lover.

  Unconscious, but alive. And that was good enough.

  The sand was soft beneath her heels, but not so soft as to make walking a chore. The water to either side of her rose: knee height, waist height, shoulder height, higher than her head.

  The tactical suit now covered her head too. She half debated whether to turn on night vision, but decided it against it. The farewell flares were still going up; she saw well enough through her faceplate.

  It was difficult to tell whether the sea was parted all the way to the Elders’s Temple—or just far enough to reach the vanishing point. She looked back. A few hundred feet behind her, the sea had closed and was closing in—but at a rate no faster than she was advancing.

  For a moment she thought she might start to feel claustrophobic. But while the path disappeared shoreward, it grew wider to either side. She had the odd sensation that she was taking a nighttime stroll through ancient ruins, the sky their only roof.

  This part of the world had been selected as the location of the Chosen One’s training ground, and the spot of his/her departure, because of the exceptional gentleness of the seabed. After some time, though, she came to the conclusion that she wasn’t walking on the seabed. Even an exceptionally gentle seabed couldn’t be this smooth, without any bumps or dips whatsoever.

  She scraped her soles against it—a perfectly glassy and polished surface, but with a barely perceptible give. Straying from the center of the path, she put a hand to a wall, which was now more than fifty meters high. That, at least, was only seawater, cool and dense.

  Beyond the wall of water loomed dark, undulating shapes that seemed to stretch all the way to the surface. A kelp forest? Marine parks were popular on Pax Cara, though they were invariably manmade, and depicted the undersea environments of other planets, rather than those of the planet’s own, of which Pax Carans knew very little.

  “I used to think the Elders were the remnants of a more advanced civilization,” she murmured. “But now I wonder if my training mates are right after all: perhaps They are gods. Forgotten, diminished gods, but gods nevertheless.”

  Her husband made no response.

  Her tactical suit had been constructed to enable survival under the most hostile conditions—somehow its designers were under the impression that the Chosen One ought not to die right away, but only after a long, futile struggle. His was the near cousin of a field hospital. The two suits had been synced. At her command, her reading field displayed his current condition.

  “Hmm.”

  She wasn’t a fully qualified physician—most of her training dealt with the treatment of traumatic injuries. But the report was unambiguous: he was in better shape than he had been earlier, before they started.

  Her heart thumped. It might just work then, for him.

  She walked faster. And faster.

  Without getting tired.

  In her training, she had marched a great deal while carrying thirty-five kilos on her back. But he, emaciated as he was, still weighed at least fifty. And she must have been walking for a solid hour by now.

  Perhaps it helped that the seabed and the artificial surface beneath her feet were at an angle. It was always easier going downhill and there was no greater downhill slope on Pax Cara than from sea level to the deepest oceanic trench.

  Ahead the seabed dropped away.

  She stopped.

  The people of Pax Cara had never conducted a systematic exploration of their oceans, but they weren’t completely ignorant. Expeditions had been carried out in the very beginning, before the Elders had made Their presence felt. It was known, for example, that in this part of the world, the continental shelf extended more than five hundred klicks from the shore.

  And she was approaching its edge.

  How had she covered more than five hundred clicks in an hour? Was the artificial surface under her feet something of a walkway, carrying her along at far greater velocity than her normal walking speed?

  Now that walkway became steps almost as steep as a ladder. And she must have been descending for a quarter of an hour before she remembered her original source of wonder: that her husband didn’t feel heavy on her back.

  His weight hadn’t changed—fifty kilos was still solid cargo. But the change she sensed in herself—it was like the difference between a child lifting a boulder and an athlete doing the same. No, an even bigger difference. The difference between a child lifting a boulder and a giant excavating machine doing the same.

  Just so . . . effortless. Everything was effortless.

  The farewell flares had ceased a while ago. There was no moon. And the glimmer of the steps and the seawater walls, while pretty, should have been too weak be of any use, the way one couldn’t use only gold or silver to illuminate a room, no matter how brightly they gleamed under the sun.

  Yet she saw perfectly well. And not only the path, but each ripple of the walls, which were now quite some distance from her.

  Steps turned into a flat, downward boulevard, which turned again into steps, which again turned into a flat, downward boulevard.

  She was running, flat-out sprinting, and loving the sensation: it felt as if she were flying.

  But wait. Was she jostling Eleian too much?

  “Don’t slow down. I was enjoying myself. As a mode of transport you are smoother than some state gliders I’ve been on.”

  “Eleian!” She came to a dead stop.

  At some point in the past hour, she had pulled off the head cover of her suit—or she’d have known about this latest improvement in his condition. Hurriedly she readjusted the adhesiveness of their tactica
l suits. But before she could take hold of him and carefully set him down, he leaped off.

  She goggled at him. “You jumped. You jumped just now.”

  “I know!”

  He peeled back the head cover of his suit. She’d thought he’d looked wonderful right before his collapse . . . Well, he hadn’t, in retrospect—or only so compared to his usual self. But now he was radiant by any standard.

  He enfolded her in a tight embrace. He still felt far too skeletal, but goodness his arms were strong.

  She pulled him to her with just as much strength and rested her cheek against his shoulder. “How long have you been conscious?”

  “I’m not sure. For a while I thought I was dreaming—in the dream I was on a state glider, of all things. I opened my eyes and still thought I must be dreaming.” He pulled back a little and looked around. They appeared to be in the bailey of an immense and faintly luminescent castle that had been constructed with walls of water—a dreamscape if she ever saw one. “Then I remembered the scene from The Quiet Girl where the sea parted for your predecessor, which jolted me awake completely. That was when I realized that I was on your back and you were running at superhuman speed.”

  He touched a tactical suit-covered hand to her face. “If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn that you are the one parting the seas.”

  “I’m not. But I’ve been carrying you for what—close to two hours?—and it became easier and easier. And I started running because it felt so good. Oh, and I haven’t told you yet, but I think we are on some sort of a conveyor belt. Even if we sat down now and had a picnic, we’d still be moving at a blistering pace. In fact, I managed five hundred clicks in my first hour and now we must be—”

  She looked up and gasped.

  The last time she’d tilted her head all the way back to check her depth, it had been at the edge of the continental shelf, and the seawater walls had been about five hundred meters high. Which had been a jaw-dropping view and made her feel like an ant at the foot of a great monument.

  But now the sea must be at least five thousand meters deep. The area the seawater walls enclosed had become exponentially larger too. The prince’s entire island could fit into this space with ample room to spare.

  “I’m . . . I’m not sure how far I’ve come in the last hour.”

  The continental landmasses referred to as the three continents of Pax Cara were actually one large continent, half of which was divided into two distinct regions by a huge mountain range, and the other half connected to the rest by an isthmus just wide enough to allow for a road running through its very middle without violating rules about building too close to the coast.

  Given that only geosynchronous satellites positioned permanently over the continental landmasses were allowed and that all of them were on one side of the planet, the global positioning system on Pax Cara was not very good. And even if it had been decent, Vitalis was prohibited from carrying any devices that could receive such signals.

  But one thing was certain: they had come far.

  “No wonder the Chosen Ones could reach the Elders’ Temple in less than a day,” she marveled. “I’m beginning to think we’ll get there soon. Very soon.”

  His expression turned sober. “Sooner than you want to?”

  She shook her head. “The sooner we get there, the better it will be for you. Look at you, I already can’t tell that you’ve ever been unwell. Imagine, if you spend any time near the Temple, you might live a thousand years.”

  He cupped her face. “A thousand years means nothing. Another hour with you means everything.”

  She gazed upon him. This minute meant everything: She saw an entire future for him, a life lived incandescently.

  A smile rose to her lips. It suffused her entire soul. “So . . . we walk slowly?”

  *

  Walking slowly turned out to be an impossibility. Simultaneously they picked up their pace, first to a vigorous march, then a jog, then an outright sprint exactly as she had been doing earlier—and they held hands and laughed as they ran.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever run in my life,” he told her, delight in every syllable. “This feels incredible!”

  “Trust me,” she told him. “I’ve run plenty in my life and it has never felt this good.”

  And surely, they must be racing down a descent that was steeper than seventy degrees. A slope that on land they would have needed pitons and ropes to negotiate. Yet now they shot past as if on wings, like planets careening inside the gravity well of a star, yet held safe by their own mass and velocity.

  She loved the speed, the strength in her legs, and the warmth of his hand in hers.

  Yes, she would call this happiness.

  In fact, happiness seemed almost too shallow and ephemeral a word for the profound steadiness in her heart. For a joy so immense it could alter the trajectory of galaxies.

  She wanted to run forever beside him and never stop.

  *

  They stopped and stared.

  Sometimes there was nothing to do but stare, especially when one found oneself before a monument that rose from the very deepest trench of the sea all the way to the surface, ten kilometers up.

  It seemed to be black in color, until it seemed to be translucent. Its surface was at first perfectly smooth, and then, the next moment, fully covered in lines and glyphs. In shape it appeared to be an obelisk, a needle stabbing toward the sky; a blink of an eye later and Vitalis was sure it had never been anything but a tiny slice of the surface of an unimaginably colossal dome.

  The sun was rising, gilding the very top of the monument. She shivered. Now she couldn’t remember why she had been rushing headlong toward this point. Toward the end.

  Wordlessly they sat down, their arms wrapped around each other.

  She had no idea how much time passed before she remembered the package on his back. She detached it and handed it to him. “This inflates into a lifepod. It doesn’t have transmitters, but it can orient itself by sensing the magnetic field, and it has nanopropellers that will take you back to Pavonis Center in approximately two days. Onboard you should find enough food. Water will be filtered from the sea and it might take an hour before you get your first liter.”

  He gazed at the package for a moment, then set it aside with a slight smile. “Got it. Now tell me what you did while I was incapacitated.”

  As if they were once again sitting on a flower-strewn meadow at the heart of a sunlit valley, a sumptuous picnic laid out before them, she told him about their trip, his long coma, and the constant hubbub around the preservation tank. He listened attentively, as if he too had forgotten all about the looming monument in their midst. And when she brought up the episode of Captain Odyssia and the Renegades she and his chamberlain had watched together, he laughed and asked her if the holodrama had committed any more atrocious errors against realism and common sense.

  She grinned. “Aha, now that you mention it—”

  His expression changed.

  “Are you all right?” she was instantly alarmed.

  He gripped a hand on his upper arm. “I’m fine. But the sigil, it feels different.”

  She felt a strange sensation on her own upper arm, pinpricks of heat and pressure—but she busied herself peeling open his tactical suit. At first his sigil didn’t look any different, going through its usual changes. But as they watched, it underwent a third reshaping, this time forming something that was unmistakably a symbol, a design that seemed to depict a river rejoining itself at the source.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I feel as if I should, but I don’t.”

  She felt the same. The symbol seemed infinitely familiar; but try as she did, she couldn’t remember where or when she must have seen it.

  An indescribably melodious chime—music of the spheres, if she’d ever heard it—made them turn toward the monument.

  An exceedingly normal-sized door had opened at the base of the monument.

>   Everything around them was clearly visible, but beyond the door, though the space appeared well-lit, nothing could be seen at all.

  Welcome, said a voice that echoed in her head.

  It was a language Vitalis had never encountered before, nor was she aware that she heard syllables—or sounds, even. Whoever “spoke” seemed to convey meaning directly.

  She was on her feet, as was he, their hands tightly clasped.

  She swallowed and waited for further instructions—or questions with regard to the prince’s presence. But all she heard was, It is time.

  She pulled him to her for a swift, fierce embrace. “Let’s make sure you are safely in the lifepod—and I’ll ask Them to be careful with you.”

  He looked into her eyes. “I won’t need the lifepod.”

  She stared at him, realization arriving as if the walls around them had collapsed, trillions of tons of seawater crushing her underneath. This was the decision he had made the morning after their wedding, when she returned from her abandoned escape. He never meant to say farewell to her at the gate of the Elders’ Temple, but always intended to accompany her to the very end.

  Tears blurred her vision. “But I can see an entire life ahead for you, a wonderful life.”

  His eyes, too, shone with tears. “I’ve already had a wonderful life and I wish to spend the rest of it with you.”

  “But your people—” Tears fell freely. “Your chamberlain, your physicians, they are all praying for your return.”

  He wiped away her tears. “Not my chamberlain or my physicians. They know—and soon my people will know too—that I have made up my mind: if the Pax Cara radiation rejuvenated me, I would go to the very end with you. They would only expect me to return if there was no improvement, I never regained consciousness, and was put into the lifepod either to die or already dead.”

  Please enter.

  “Did you hear that?” he murmured. “It’s time for us to go forth.”

  She was stronger. She could overpower him and confine him to the lifepod against his will. She could give him decades, perhaps centuries, of luminous life, and he would achieve a greatness beyond anything he could have imagined.