Man from Atlantis

by Patrick Duffy

  “No!” Mark looked at Man-Den who had just spoken. The man’s face had none of the joy of the others. His skin was flushed and his darkening eyes were rimmed with red.

  “She must not!” By now everyone was staring at him. He returned each gaze, one by one, looking almost as startled as they looked by his outburst.

  “The queen must stay with us. She is needed in the city, Ja-Lil,” Man-Den said.

  By now his voice had softened a little, and he stood and walked to the small window overlooking the courtyard. “She has been invaluable to us in your absence, and I should imagine you would want to have her guidance while you adjust for the time you have been away.”

  “My darling,” Len-Wei went to her husband before Mark could reply, “she is only doing what any of us would do. She will lie forever with the one she loves as you and I will one day. Many times others have chosen not to remain apart, and we have always agreed and supported them.” She leaned in to kiss Man-Den’s cheek, but before she could he stepped to where Mark sat.

  “I must speak with the queen immediately, Ja-Lil,” Man-Den said.

  “You may not.”

  “What…”

  Mark had been looking into Man-Den’s eyes from the time he first spoke and now had answered him; not as Ja-Lil, the friend of his son, or citizen but as the king. “She entered her meditation as I left the house, and I will be ready by morning. I will take her life-thought and you will inform the people of her passing.” Mark rose as he spoke. It was not a request he made, and all three of them, for the first time, saw him as the king.

  “Of course, Ja-Lil.” Man-Den now smiled, looking at both his wife and son. “I meant only to pay her my respects and thank her on behalf of the city, as is my office.”

  “Thank you, minister; she will be aware of your feelings when I take her tomorrow. Now I must go.” Mark nodded to Man-Den as the minister bowed to him. Then he kissed his aunt and walked to the door with Roi-Den.

  “I could go with you tomorrow, Ja-Lil. It is my responsibility to always protect your family and your line just as it was my father’s.” Roi-Den gave a wink to Mark as they walked outside.

  “Thank you, my friend, but I do not need protection tomorrow, and we will have time enough when I return.” Mark remembered the many times they had gone out into the ocean together, and although the young man went with him as his friend, he also went as his protector. Neither ever spoke about it and, in fact, Mark had always felt that he would be the one to protect his friend if trouble occurred, but Roi-Den still assumed it as his responsibility. The gratitude Mark felt…he knew he could never fully repay, but he knew also that he would never forget.

  Walking into his mother’s chamber, he knew she had already started her preparations so he took his position at the side of her bed where he would spend the night. He watched as she lay there. She had put on the royal gown she always wore on great occasions of the city and had done her hair the way his father always liked. She lay with her arms folded across her chest and the queen’s amulet around her neck. Time began to expand outward in all directions. He was at the same center of space as his mother and moments pulsed out and away from him.

  When he took her life-thought tomorrow, he would remove the charm with the six small gems of different colors that were imbedded so they could be seen from both sides. He would give it to Tei-La and that would confirm her as the next queen of the city and as his wife. He knelt by the bed and closed his eyes. Soon his thoughts centered deeper and deeper into his memory, and he spent the night somewhere between sleep and awake, reliving the history with his mother and father.

  His eyes opened just as the light in the room was brightening. He wasn’t sure why, but before he rose or looked at his mother, he repeated the entire poem his father had taught him. It was the most personal thing his father had given him, and it felt right to offer it now. He got to his feet and looked down at the queen. The beautiful color of her skin had not changed. She almost seemed to glow and her skin still remained warm to the touch. The only indication that she would not, at any moment, open her eyes and bid him good morning was that her chest no longer rose and fell with her breathing. She had entered that final sleep with a small smile on her lips, and he could tell that the memory she held at the last was of his father.

  He carefully removed the queen’s necklace, placed it around his own neck, and kissed her on the forehead. He knew what he was to do next, but for a minute he hesitated. He had never accepted a life-thought, although the practice was common and many he knew had done so. Roi-Den had carried one from an uncle of his when Man-Den was away on a tour years ago, and he had said nothing about it to Mark—other than it had been completed. Mark remembered thinking how out of character it was for Roi-Den to say so little. Knowing how his friend loved to talk and found almost everything worthy of discourse. Although the transfer was normal, he then realized it was also deeply personal. This transfer was even more so. This was his mother, and he would deliver her to his father and a Nari-Tanta he had never seen. Perhaps hesitation had more to do with his time on the surface and of the importance they gave to life and death.

  The moment passed, and he sat on the side of the bed touching his thumb to his lips. He touched her forehead with it, and then placed the palm of his right hand over the spot. His hand lay there with his fingers under the ringlets of hair gently touching her scalp. There was no specific thought process, no incantation. It was the wanting. He wanted to take and protect the life of his mother. His desire made it so. If there was a feeling, it was the sensation of warmth he sensed in the palm of his hand and, following that, an energy. The energy went from a feeling to having volume, and he could sense it filling him. Also, it had joy. For no apparent reason, he began to smile as the sense of his mother filled his being. Where it went in him, he could not tell, but it was a complete part of everything he was. It took no longer than fifteen or twenty seconds and, when done, nothing seemed to have changed.

  He opened his eyes, which he could not remember closing, and focused on the face of his mother. The glow remained and the warmth, but he knew her life was within him. It gave him a feeling of honor, and it was not solely because it was his mother’s life he held. It was that he was responsible for and to a life, and now he had the mission to see it safely to the Tanta.

  He left the house knowing the Elders would prepare the queen’s body for the royal chamber in the tradition of the city, and he made his way to Tei-La’s home. Man-Den and the Elders had informed the city and every face he encountered reflected the happiness they felt for his mother as they greeted him on the streets.

  “It is so wonderful, Ja-Lil.” Tei-La kissed him several times as he came into the reception chamber of her house. “Every person loved her so. She will be celebrated forever.”

  “When I return today, the city will have their new queen, and I will be as fortunate as my father.” He held her close and felt her push against him as he kissed her again. It was an endless chain of beginnings, with each ending leading to yet another beginning. That’s why he had to see her before he left the city. They were the next beginning—although they had always been—and his parents were ending, although they would always be. There was no other one for him and could never be. “I love you.”

  “I know.”

  She touched his face and kissed him softly, and he left for the exiting chamber without looking back at her.

  He swam out into the open sea with no particular destination in mind. He knew he had to find a Tanta, and it would be they who would communicate with the Nari-Tanta. He had never received the life-thought of another, and now he traveled with his mother’s very life within him. He felt no different; he could not tell by any sensation of her presence. Her actual life was but now did not exist. She was dead but also, within his life, she was alive and in fact would live forever. It was easy to think about these things here in the vastness of the sea. The water
was not just full of living things like plants and fish and mammals, but for him the ocean itself was a living force and he was a dynamic part of that life.

  He traveled in a northward direction, and the sea floor rose gradually until the total depth was only a few hundred feet. Marine life was abundant in this area and it was not long before, in the distance, he saw the rounded head and white markings on the underbelly of a small whale he knew to be a pilot whale. The language was very familiar to him and he clicked in the high decibel range of the species. The small male turned immediately and swam easily to Mark. The communication took only a few seconds and, with the location fixed in his mind of where to wait, Mark swam off as the pilot whale turned to deeper water and disappeared into the grayness.

  Mark had never been to this part of the sea, but his father had described it and the transfer on several occasions.

  “The Tanta will find you only when you have readied yourself. The proper one for you will follow your call,” the king said as he was describing the location of the area. “Once the Tanta has arrived and signaled it is ready, you can approach and complete the transference.”

  He did not need to define the action or the song of the call. All citizens knew the language of the sea from birth, and the rituals came as natural as walking and swimming. Landmarks or topography did not blaze the path Mark followed to the site. He slid along in the water guided by the current, gravity, magnetic pull, the echo bouncing back to him, and a host of other stimulation that he could not put into words. When it all matched perfectly with descriptions given by the small whale, he was in the center of a bowl-shaped area of seabed the size of a soccer field. The walls around it climbed steeply to almost a hundred feet, and the floor was of white sand with little vegetation.

  He had no idea how long the wait would be or how far the Nari-Tanta had to travel to get to him. There was a circle of rocks in the center of the field. Some were small and smooth and round and others slightly larger and on end so they stuck up out of the sand. Mark swam to it and settled to the sand in a seated position, with his legs crossed, and waited. He became less and less aware of his surrounding as he stilled his mind and repeated the calling song of his father and felt it race out into the water in all directions. He would reach the end of the song and he would start the notes of the call again until there was no start and stop but a continual circle of the melody. It was all there together. He was the water, his father and mother were the sand, and the song connected it all.

  At some point, he began to separate things again and, as the rocks and fluttering strands of sea grass came into focus, he was aware of a sound other than his own. He could see it was not so, but it seemed to vibrate the sand all around him. It was low in register and pulsed through the water and through him. It grew in strength and he could pinpoint the source as coming toward him from over his left shoulder. It was a beautiful sound and generated a feeling he could only describe as comfort. He felt like he used to when he would be in his home and could hear the voice of his mother and father in discussion. He couldn’t hear the words, only the distant hum of the two sounds combining and filling the space in the house. He would, at times, feel they were everywhere that there sound was, and therefore all around him. Roi-Den told him of the same feelings, and he knew it was probably common to young people.

  The sound began to modulate, and then the light around the bowl dimmed slightly. He could definitely feel his body vibrating with the deep song as a grayish darkness fell on him. It traveled like the shadow of a cloud that had moved across the sun’s light. He followed it as it raced along the sandy floor, and then he saw the rounded snout of the Tanta glide about twenty feet over his head. It was enormous! He had never seen nor heard of a blue whale reaching these proportions. The width of the darkness it created easily covered over one half of the sandy sea floor. It moved through the water without any physical motion. It slowed almost to a halt directly over Mark as he sat there and began to turn sideways. It hovered, suspended in the water like a huge ship of some sort.

  Even his father had not known how old this Nari-Tanta was. He had delivered his own father’s life-thought to this very being long ago. There were others like this one in the history of the city, and when they died their holdings were transferred to a younger Nari-Tanta and the cycle continued. This giant cetacean was easily over one hundred and thirty feet. He wore the marks of his long life on his skin. The blue-gray hide was covered with many scars and had a yellowish covering on much of it, which Mark knew came from living in the cooler southern waters. His long white-tipped flippers hung down almost touching the sandy bottom, and the large eye looked gently at Mark.

  Mark sat silently looking up into one dark eye. The hum of the Tanta changed and he began to follow the song of Mark’s father. Mark followed the call and rose from the sand and pushed up, coming to rest across that kind gaze. The sound from the whale became the words they heard in their minds. Mark put his palms together and extended them to the Tanta.

  “I am Ja-Lil, son of Con-Or.”

  “Yes.” The voice he heard from the whale was like no other. It came from all around Mark and entered his mind without the foreign feeling that usually accompanied communications from other sea mammals. And at the same time, it felt like it came from within him.

  “I hold Myo-O, wife of the king. She has quit this life to be joined with her husband and reside with Nari-Tanta.”

  The whale held Mark with its gaze for some time before responding.

  “I hold not the king Con-Or nor was I aware of his passing.” This experience was so different from any Mark had had before. He was not sure he heard this last statement of the Tanta correctly.

  “Several years ago, Man-Den from our people brought the king’s life-thought to you here.”

  “It is not so.” There was no surprise or confusion in the voice, unlike what was racing through Mark’s entire being.

  “My father died and Man-Den took the life-thought. To whom would he give it if not to you?” Mark could feel his heart pounding faster as he tried to make sense of all this.

  “I do not know. The answer would be with Man-Den. Leave Myo-O with me until you deliver the king.”

  “Of course.” Mark knew the Tanta was correct and that his mother, no matter what was to happen in the future, should reside here with the line of kings. He knew exactly what to do next for the transference, but so much of his brain was occupied with the shock of what the whale had told him. He would find the answers and he would find his father. These were the vows he made to himself as he swam to where he could touch the large mammal with both hands. Looking into the eye that was half the size of his entire body, Mark put his right hand over the small opening between it and the base of the large flipper. Covering the ear hole, he put his left hand near the bottom of the eye. The moment both hands felt the rough texture of the whale’s skin, he willed his mind to completely relax. It started at the tips of his fingers and moved up and into his hands. The current of energy went through his skin and expanded until he could sense its presence throughout his whole body. It was then that he felt the life of his mother. It seemed to gather itself from all parts of him. As the essence came together, it seemed to gain substance. He could feel her becoming real inside him. When it felt like it might take real physical form inside his skin and rip him apart, it left. He felt it go as it traveled with the retreating energy, along his arms to his hands, and into the whale.

  He knew she was gone. He felt smaller than he had ever been, and in the next instant, he felt normal again. He pulled his hands away, clasped them together, and closed his eyes.

  “She is with me,” the whale said.

  “Yes, thank you. I will bring the king to her soon.” Mark was already backing away from the motionless giant. He could not remember feeling this kind of confusion and anger before. It was not the anger of loss that he had witnessed in Those on the Surface. It was the anger of betr
ayal. Why would Man-Den, the Minister of the Right and Left and his father’s most trusted advisor, not complete the transfer. There was no explanation. There was only what he must do. He swam fast, not really racing, but with determination. The landscape went by without him really noticing it. Was Man-Den lying and had he not even taken the king’s life-thought? If that was so, then it was too late. The life-thought of a person would dissipate into the environment over a short period of time after death. Also, a person could release their own immediately if they willed it as Mark’s young attacker had done. If the king’s life-thought was now gone then the line of the king’s and their history was broken, and at the time of convergence the Nari-Tanta would not be able to deliver. All of this made no logical sense. What could the minister gain by any of these actions? Mark swam on with no answers, only a mountain of questions.

  He traveled along the foothills and over the dark channel that ran east and west for hundreds of miles. He left the ocean floor to clear the hot geysers that spewed highly acidic liquid from the earth’s interior. Dropping again to the sandy bottom, he made his way through the little valleys of low mountains and their jagged outcroppings. Still, he swam with his focus on what he imagined would transpire with his return to the Domed city. Passing under the overhanging ledge, he started to turn toward the sea lane that led to the city.

  He didn’t see what hit him because it came from over his right shoulder. His peripheral vision caught a shadow of the shape just before impact, but he could not react in time. The blow hit him along the side of his chest, and the force of it sent him smashing into the rocky cliffside. What had he seen? Anything? He didn’t know if it had been a shark or an inanimate object. He knew he was not badly damaged, and his mind switched from its overview of his body and tried to focus outward. With his vision blurred, he tried to be aware of where his attacker was going to strike next. From just above him, he saw the large boulder falling through the water and got his hands to his head in time to deflect the downward thrust so it just grazed his forehead.