Surfacing

by Walter Jon Williams

  The trade winds had taken Philana’s hat and carried it away. She ignored it and looked down at him. Her face was pale and beneath the dark glasses she looked drawn and ill.

  “I’m not human, Anthony,” she said. “I’m a Kyklops. That’s what’s really wrong with me.”

  Anthony looked at her. Anger danced in his veins. “You really are full of surprises.”

  “I’m Telamon’s other body,” she said. “Sometimes he inhabits me.”

  Whalesong rolled up from the sea. We and Air Human send one another cheerful salutations and expressions of good will.

  “Talk to the whales first,” said Anthony.

  *

  “Telamon’s a scientist,” Philana said. “He’s impatient, that’s his problem.”

  The boat heaved on an ocean swell. The trade wind moaned through the flybridge. “He’s got a few more problems than that,” Anthony said.

  “He wanted me for a purpose but sometimes he forgets.” A tremor of pain crossed Philana’s face. She was deeply hung over. Her voice was ragged: Telamon had been smoking like a chimney and Philana wasn’t used to it.

  “He wanted to do an experiment on human psychology. He wanted to arrange a method of recording a person’s memories, then transferring them to his own… sphere. He got my parents to agree to having the appropriate devices implanted, but the only apparatus that existed for the connection of human and Kyklops was the one the Kyklopes use to manipulate the human bodies that they wear when they want to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. And Telamon is…” She waved a dismissive arm. “He’s a decadent, the way a lot of the Kyklopes turn once they discover how much fun it is to be a human and that their real self doesn’t get hurt no matter what they do to their clone bodies. Telamon likes his pleasures, and he likes to interfere. Sometimes, when he dumped my memory into the nth dimension and had a look at it, he couldn’t resist the temptation to take over my body and rectify what he considered my errors. And occasionally, when he’s in the middle of one of his binges, and his other body gives out on him, he takes me over and starts a party wherever I am.”

  “Some scientist,” Anthony said.

  “The Kyklopes are used to experimenting on pieces of themselves,” Philana said. “Their own beings are tenuous and rather… detachable. Their ethics aren’t against it. And he doesn’t do it very often. He must be bored wherever he is— he’s taken me over twice in a week.” She raised her fist to her face and began to cough, a real smoker’s hack. Anthony fidgeted and wondered whether to offer her a glass of water. Philana bent double and the coughs turned to cries of pain. A tear pattered on the teak.

  A knot twisted in Anthony’s throat. He left his chair and held Philana in his arms. “I’ve never told anyone,” she said.

  Anthony realized to his transient alarm that once again he’d jumped off a cliff without looking. He had no more idea of where he would land than last time.

  *

  Philana, Anthony was given to understand, was Greek for “lover of humanity.” The Kyklopes, after being saddled with a mythological name by the first humans who had contacted them, had gone in for classical allusion in a big way. Telamon, Anthony learned, meant (among other things) “the supporter.” After learning this, Anthony referred to the alien as Jockstrap.

  “We should do something about him,” Anthony said. It was late— the white dwarf had just set— but neither of them had any desire to sleep. He and Philana were standing on the flybridge. The falkner shield was off and above their heads the uninhibited stars seemed almost within reach of their questing fingertips. Overlook Station, fixed almost overhead, was bright as a burning brand.

  Philana shook her head. “He’s got access to my memory. Any plans we make, he can know in an instant.” She thought for a moment. “If he bothers to look. He doesn’t always.”

  “I’ll make the plans without telling you what they are.”

  “It will take forever. I’ve thought about it. You’re talking court case. He can sue me for breach of contract.”

  “It’s your parents who signed the contract, not you. You’re an adult now.”

  She turned away. Anthony looked at her for a long moment, a cold foreboding hand around his throat. “I hope,” he said, “you’re going to tell me that you signed that contract while Jockstrap was riding you.”

  Philana shook her head silently. Anthony looked up into the Milky Way and imagined the stone wall falling from the void, aimed right between his eyes, spinning slightly as it grew ever larger in his vision. Smashing him again.

  “All we have to do is get the thing out of your head,” Anthony said. “After that, let him sue you. You’ll be free, whatever happens.” His tone reflected a resolve that was absent entirely from his heart.

  “He’ll sue you, too, if you have any part of this.” She turned to face him again. Her face pale and taut in the starlight. “All my money comes from him— how else do you think I could afford the yacht? I owe everything to him.”

  Bitterness sped through Anthony’s veins. He could feel his voice turning harsh. “Do you want to get rid of him or not? Yes or no.”

  “He’s not entirely evil.”

  “Yes or no, Philana.”

  “It’ll take years before he’s done with you. And he could kill you. Just transport you to deep space somewhere and let you drift. Or he could simply teleport me away from you.”

  The bright stars poured down rage. Anthony knew himself seconds away from violence. There were two people on this boat and one of them was about to get hurt. “Yes or no!” he shouted.

  Philana’s face contorted. She put her hands over her ears. Hair fell across her face. “Don’t shout,” she said.

  Anthony turned and smashed his forehead against the control panel of the flybridge. Philana gave a cry of surprise and fear. Anthony drove himself against the panel again. Philana’s fingers clutched at his shoulders. Anthony could feel blood pouring hot from his scalp. The pain drained his anger, brought a cold, brilliant clarity to his mind. He smashed himself a third time. Philana cried out. He turned to her. He felt a savage, exemplary satisfaction. If one were going to drive oneself against stone walls, one should at least take a choice of the walls available.

  “Ask me,” Anthony panted, “if I care what happens to me.”

  Philana’s face was a mask of terror. She said his name.

  “I need to know where you stand,” said Anthony. Blood drooled from his scalp, and he suppressed the unwelcome thought that he had just made himself look ridiculous.

  Her look of fear broadened.

  “Am I going to jump off this cliff by myself, or what?” Anthony demanded.

  “I want to get rid of him,” she said.

  Anthony wished her voice had contained more determination, even if it were patently false. He spat salt and went in search of his first aid kit. We are in a condition of slow movement through deep currents, he thought.

  *

  In the morning he got the keys to Philana’s yacht and changed the passwords on the falkner controls and navigation comp. He threw all his liquor overboard. He figured that if Jockstrap appeared and discovered that he couldn’t leave the middle of the ocean, and he couldn’t have a party where he was, he’d get bored and wouldn’t hang around for long.

  From Philana’s cabin he called an attorney who informed him that the case was complex but not impossible, and furthermore that it would take a small fortune to resolve. Anthony told him to get to work on it. In the meantime he told the lawyer to start calling neurosurgeons. Unfortunately there were few neurosurgeons capable of implanting, let alone removing, the rider device. The operation wasn’t performed that often.

  Days passed. A discouraging list of neurosurgeons either turned him down flat or wanted the legal situation clarified first. Anthony told the lawyer to start calling rich neurosurgeons who might be able to ride out a lawsuit.

  Philana transferred most of her data to Anthony’s computer and worked with the whales from the small
er boat. Anthony used her yacht and aquasled and cursed the bad sound quality. At least the yacht’s flight capability allowed him to find the Dwellers faster.

  As far as the Dwellers went, he had run all at once into a dozen blind alleys. Progress seemed measured in microns.

  “What’s B1971?” Philana asked once, looking over his shoulder as he typed in data.

  “A taste. Perhaps a taste associated with a particular temperature striation. Perhaps an emotion.” He shrugged. “Maybe just a metaphor.”

  “You could ask them.”

  His soul hardened. “Not yet.” Which ended the conversation.

  Anthony wasn’t sure whether or not he wanted to touch her. He and Jockstrap were at war and Philana seemed not to have entirely made up her mind which side she was on. Anthony slept with Philana on the double mattress in the peak, but they avoided sex. He didn’t know whether he was helping her out of love or something else, and while he figured things out, desire was on hold, waiting.

  Anthony’s time with Philana was occupied mainly by his attempt to teach her to cook. Anything else waited for the situation to grow less opaque. Anthony figured Jockstrap would clarify matters fairly soon.

  *

  Anthony’s heart lurched as looked up from lunch to see the taut, challenging grin on Philana’s face. Anthony realized he’d been foolish to expect Telamon to show up only at night, as he always had before.

  Anthony drew his lips into an answering grin. He was ready, no matter what the hour.

  “Do I know you?” Anthony mocked. “Do we have business?”

  Philana’s appraisal was cold. “I’ve been called Jockstrap before,” Telamon said.

  “With good reason, I’m sure.”

  Telamon lurched to his feet and walked aft. He seemed not to have his sea legs yet. Anthony followed, his nerves dancing. Telamon looked out at the sea and curled Philana’s lip as if to say that the water held nothing of interest.

  “I want to talk about Philana,” Telamon said. “You’re keeping her prisoner here.”

  “She can leave me anytime she wants. Which is more than she can say about you.”

  “I want the codes to the yacht.”

  Anthony stepped up to Telamon, held Philana’s cold gaze. “You’re hurting her,” he said.

  Telamon stared at him with eyes like obsidian chips. He pushed Philana’s long hair out of his face with an unaccustomed gesture. “I’m not the only one, Maldalena. I’ve got access to her mind, remember.”

  “Then look in her mind and see what she thinks of you.”

  A contemptuous smile played about Philana’s lips. “I know very well what she thinks of me, and it’s probably not what she’s told you. Philana is a very sad and complex person, and she is not always truthful.”

  “She’s what you made her.”

  “Precisely my next point.” He waved his arm stiffly, unnaturally. The gesture brought him off-balance, and Philana’s body swayed for a moment as Telamon adjusted to the tossing of the boat. “I gave her money, education, knowledge of the world. I have corrected her errors, taught her much. She is, in many ways, my creation. Her feelings toward me are ambiguous, as any child’s feelings would be toward her father.”

  “Daddy Jockstrap.” Anthony laughed. “Do we have business, Daddy? Or are you going to take your daughter’s body to a party first?”

  Anthony jumped backwards, arms flailing, as Philana disappeared, her place taken by a young man with curly dark hair and bright blue eyes. The stranger was dressed in a white cotton shirt unbuttoned to the navel and a pair of navy blue swimming trunks. He had seen the man before on vid, showing off his chest hairs. The grin stayed the same from one body to the next.

  “She’s gone, Maldalena. I teleported her to someplace safe.” He laughed. “I’ll buy her a new boat. Do what you like with the old one.”

  Anthony’s heart hammered. He had forgotten the Kyklopes could do that, just teleport without the apparatus required by humans. And teleport other things as well.

  He wondered how many centuries old the Kyklops’ body was. He knew the mind’s age was measured in eons.

  “This doesn’t end it,” Anthony said.

  Telamon’s tone was mild. “Perhaps I’ll find a nice planet for you somewhere, Maldalena. Let you play Robinson Crusoe, just as you did when you were young.”

  “That will only get you in trouble. Too many people know about this situation by now. And it won’t be much fun holding Philana wherever you’ve got her.”

  Telamon stepped toward the stern, sat on the taffrail. His movements were fluid, far more confident than they had been when he was wearing the other, unaccustomed body. For a moment Anthony considered kicking Telamon into the drink, then decided against it. The possible repercussions had a cosmic dimension that Anthony preferred not to contemplate.

  “I don’t dislike you, Maldalena,” the alien said. “I truly don’t. You’re an alcoholic, violent lout, but at least you have proven intelligence, perhaps a kind of genius.”

  “Call the kettle black again. I liked that part.”

  Two Notches’ smooth body rose a cable’s length to starboard. He exhaled with an audible hiss, mist drifting over his back. Telamon gave the whale a disinterested look, then turned back to Anthony.

  “Being the nearest thing to a parent on the planet,” he said. “I must say that I disapprove of you as a partner for Philana. However—” He gave a shrug. “Parents must know when to compromise in these matters.” He looked up at Anthony with his blue eyes. “I propose we share her, Anthony. Formalize the arrangement we already seem to possess. I’ll only occupy a little of her time, and for all the rest, the two of you can live out your lives with whatever sad, tormented domestic bliss you can summon. Till she gets tired of you, anyway.”

  Two Notches rolled under the waves. A cetacean murmur echoed off the boat’s bottom. Anthony’s mind flailed for an answer. He felt sweat prickling his scalp. He shook his head in feigned disbelief.

  “Listen to yourself, Telamon. Is this supposed to be a scientist talking? A researcher?”…;

  “You don’t want to share?” The young man’s face curled in disdain. “You want everything for yourself— the whole planet, I suppose, like your father.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I know what Philana knows about you, and I’ve done some checking on my own. You brought the humpbacks here because you needed them. Away from their home, their kind. You asked them, I’m sure; but there’s no way they could make an informed decision about this planet, about what they were doing. You needed them for your Dweller study, so you took them.”

  As if on cue, Two Notches rose from the water to take a breath. Telamon favored the whale with his taut smile. Anthony floundered for an answer while the alien spoke on.

  “You’ve got data galore on the Dwellers, but do you publish? Do you share it with anybody, even with Philana? You hoard it all for yourself, all your specialized knowledge. You don’t even talk to the Dwellers!” Telamon gave a scornful laugh. “You don’t even want the Dwellers to know what Anthony knows!”

  Anger poured through Anthony’s veins like a scalding fire. He clenched his fists, considered launching himself at Telamon. Something held him back.

  The alien stood, walked to Anthony, looked him up and down. “We’re not so different,” he said. “We both want what’s ours. But I’m willing to share. Philana can be our common pool of data, if you like. Think about it.”

  Anthony swung, and in that instant Philana was back, horror in her eyes. Anthony’s fist, aimed for the taller Telamon’s chin, clipped Philana’s temple and she fell back, flailing. Anthony caught her.

  “It just happened, didn’t it?” Her voice was woeful.

  “You don’t remember?”

  Philana’s face crumpled. She swayed and touched her temple. “I never do. The times when he’s running me are just blank spots.”

  Anthony seated her on the port bench. He was feeling queasy at havin
g hit her. She put her face in her hands. “I hate when that happens in front of people I know,” she said.

  “He’s using you to hide behind. He was here in person, the son of a bitch.” He took her hands in his own and kissed her. Purest desire flamed through him. He wanted to commit an act of defiance, make a statement of the nature of things. He put his arms around her and kissed her nape. She smelled faintly of pine, and there were needles in her hair. Telamon had put her on Earth, then, in a forest somewhere.

  She strained against his tight embrace. “I don’t know if this is a good idea,” she said.

  “I want to send a message to Telamon,” Anthony said.

  They made love under the sun, lying on the deck in Anthony’s cockpit. Clear as a bell, Anthony heard Dweller sounds rumbling up the boat. Somewhere in the boat a metal mounting bracket rang to the subsonics. Philana clutched at him. There was desperation in her look, a search for affirmation, despair at finding none. The teak punished Anthony’s palms. He wondered if Telamon had ever possessed her thus, took over her mind so that he could fuck her in his own body, commit incest with himself. He found the idea exciting.

  His orgasm poured out, stunning him with its intensity. He kissed the moist juncture of Philana’s neck and shoulder, and rose on his hands to stare down into Telamon’s brittle grin and cold, knowing eyes.

  “Message received, Anthony.” Philana’s throat convulsed in laughter. “You’re taking possession. Showing everyone who’s boss.”

  Horror galvanized Anthony. He jumped to his feet and backed away, heart pounding. He took a deep breath and mastered himself, strove for words of denial and could not find them. “You’re sad, Telamon,” he said.

  Telamon threw Philana’s arms over her head, parted her legs. “Let’s do it again, Anthony.” Taunting. “You’re so masterful.”

  Anthony turned away. “Piss off, Telamon, you sick fuck.” Bile rose in his throat.

  “What happened?” Anthony knew Philana was back. He turned and saw her face crumple. “We were making love!” she wailed.

  “A cheap trick. He’s getting desperate.” He squatted by her and tried to take her in his arms. She turned away from him.