Surfacing

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Let me alone for a while,” she said. Bright tears filled her eyes.

  Misplaced adrenaline ran charges through Anthony’s body— no one to fight, no place to run. He picked up his clothes and went below to the main cabin. He drew on his clothing and sat on one of the berths, hands helpless on the seat beside him. He wanted to get blind drunk.

  Half an hour later Philana entered the cabin. She’d braided her hair, drawn it back so tight from her temples it must have been painful. Her movements were slow, as if suddenly she’d lost her sea legs. She sat down at the little kitchen table, pushed away her half-eaten lunch.

  “We can’t win,” she said.

  “There’s got to be some way,” Anthony said tonelessly. He was clean out of ideas.

  Philana looked at Anthony from reddened eyes. “We can give him what he wants,” she said.

  “No.”

  Her voice turned to a shout. “It’s not you he does this to! It’s not you who winks out of existence in the middle of doing laundry or making love, and wakes up somewhere else.“ Her knuckles were white as they gripped the table edge. ”I don’t know how long I can take this.“

  “All your life,” said Anthony, “if you give him what he wants.”

  “At least then he wouldn’t use it as a weapon!” Her voice was a shout. She turned away.

  Anthony looked at her, wondered if he should go to her. He decided not to. He was out of comfort for the present.

  “You see,” Philana said, her head still turned away, “why I don’t want to live forever.”

  “Don’t let him beat you.”

  “It’s not that. I’m afraid…” Her voice trembled. “I’m afraid that if I got old I’d become him. The Kyklopes are the oldest living things ever discovered. And a lot of the oldest immortals are a lot like them. Getting crazier, getting…” She shook her head. “Getting less human all the time.”

  Anthony saw a body swaying in the smokehouse. Philana’s body, her fingernails trailing in the dust.

  Pain throbbed in his chest. He stood up, swayed as he was caught by a slow wave of vertigo. Somewhere his father was laughing, telling him he should have stayed on Lees for a life of pastoral incest.

  “I want to think,” he said. He stepped past her on the way to his computer. He didn’t reach out to touch her as he passed. She didn’t reach for him, either.

  He put on the headphones and listened to the Dwellers. Their speech rolled up from the deep. Anthony sat unable to comprehend, his mind frozen. He was helpless as Philana. Whose was the next move? he wondered. His? Philana’s?

  Whoever made the next move, Anthony knew, the game was Telamon’s.

  *

  At dinnertime Philana made a pair of sandwiches for Anthony, then returned to the cabin and ate nothing herself. Anthony ate one sandwich without tasting it, gave the second to the fish. The Dweller speech had faded out. He left his computer and stepped into the cabin. Philana was stretched out on one of the side berths, her eyes closed. One arm was thrown over her forehead.

  Her body, Anthony decided, was too tense for this to be sleep. He sat on the berth opposite.

  “He said you haven’t told the truth,” Anthony said.

  Anthony could see Philana’s eyes moving under translucent lids as she evaluated this statement, scanning for meaning. “About what,” she said.

  “About your relationship to him.”

  Her lips drew back, revealing teeth. Perhaps it was a smile.

  “I’ve known him all my life. I gave you the condensed version.”

  “Is there more I should know?”

  There was another pause. “He saved my life.”

  “Good for him.”

  “I got involved with this man. Three or four hundred years old, one of my professors in school. He was going through a crisis— he was a mess, really. I thought I could do him some good. Telamon disagreed, said the relationship was sick.” Philana licked her lips. “He was right,” she said.

  Anthony didn’t know if he really wanted to hear about this.

  “The guy started making demands. Wanted to get married, leave Earth, start over again.”

  “What did you want?”

  Philana shrugged. “I don’t know. I hadn’t made up my mind. But Telamon went into my head and confronted the guy and told him to get lost. Then he just took me out of there. My body was half the galaxy away, all alone on an undeveloped world. There were supplies, but no gates out.”

  Anthony gnawed his lip. This was how Telamon operated.

  “Telamon kept me there for a couple weeks till I calmed down. He took me back to Earth. The professor had taken up with someone else, another one of his students. He married her, and six weeks later she walked out on him. He killed her, then killed himself.”

  Philana sighed, drew her hand over her forehead. She opened her eyes and sat up, swinging her legs off the berth. “So,” she said. “That’s one Telamon story. I’ve got more.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “I’d just turned eighteen.” She shook her head. “That’s when I signed the contract that keeps him in my head. I decided that I couldn’t trust my judgment about people. And Telamon’s judgment of people is, well, quite good.”

  Resentment flamed in Anthony at this notion. Telamon had made his judgment of Anthony clear, and Anthony didn’t want it to become a subject for debate. “You’re older now,” he said. “He can’t have a veto on your life forever.”

  Philana drew up her legs and circled her knees with her arms. “You’re violent, Anthony.”

  Anthony looked at her for a long moment of cold anger. “I hit you by accident. I was aiming at him, damn it.”

  Philana’s jaw worked as she returned his stare. “How long before you aim at me?”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “That’s what my old professor said.”

  Anthony turned away, fury running through him like chill fire. Philana looked at him levelly for a moment, then dropped her forehead to her knees. She sighed. “I don’t know, Anthony. I don’t know anymore. If I ever did.”

  Anthony stared fixedly at the distant white dwarf, just arrived above the horizon and visible through the hatch. We are, he thought, in a condition of permanent bafflement. “What do you want, Philana?” he asked.

  Her head came up, looked at him. “I want not to be a tennis ball in your game with Telamon, Anthony. I want to know I’m not just the prize given the winner.”

  “I wanted you before I ever met Telamon, Philana.”

  “Telamon changed a few things.” Her voice was cold. “Before you met him, you didn’t use my body to send messages to people.”

  Anthony’s fists clenched. He forced them to relax.

  Philana’s voice was bitter. “Seems to me, Anthony, that’s one of Telamon’s habits you’re all too eager to adopt.”

  Anthony’s chest ached. He didn’t seem able to breathe in enough air. He took a long breath and hoped his tension would ease. It didn’t. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not… a normal situation.”

  “For you, maybe.”

  Silence hung in the room, broken only by the whale clicks and mutters rising through the boat. Anthony shook his head. “What do we do, then?” he asked. “Surrender?”

  “If we have to.” She looked at him. “I’m willing to fight Telamon, but not to the point where one of us is destroyed.” She leaned toward him, her expression intent. “And if Telamon wins, could you live with it?” she asked. “With surrender? If we had to give him what he wanted?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I have to live with it. You don’t. That’s the difference.”

  “That’s one difference.” He took a breath, then rose from his place. “I have to think,” he said.

  He climbed into the cockpit. Red sunset was splattered like blood across the windscreen. He tried to breathe the sea air, clear the heaviness he felt in his chest, but it didn’t work. Anthony went up onto the flybridge and stared forward. H
is eyes burned as the sun went down in flames. The white dwarf was high overhead when Anthony came down. Philana was lying in the forepeak, covered with a sheet, her eyes staring sightlessly out the open hatch. Anthony took his clothes off and crawled in beside her.

  “I’ll surrender,” he said. “If I have to, I’ll surrender.” She turned to him and put her arms around him. Hopeless desire burned in his belly.

  He made love to Philana, his nerves numb to the possibility that Telamon might reappear. Her hungry mouth drank in his pain. He didn’t know whether this was affirmation or not, whether this meant anything other than the fact there was nothing left to do at this point than stagger blindly into one another’s embrace…

  *

  A Dweller soloed from below, the clearest Anthony had ever heard one. We call to ourselves, the Dweller said. We speak of things as they are. Anthony rose from bed and set his computer to record. Sings of Others, rising alongside to breathe, called a hello. Anthony tapped his keys, hit TRANSMIT.

  Air Human and I are in a condition of rut, he said.

  We congratulate Anthony and Air Human on our condition of rut, Sings of Others responded. The whooping whale cries layered atop the thundering Dweller noises. We wish ourselves many happy copulations.

  Happy copulations, happy copulations, echoed Two Notches.

  A pointless optimism began to resonate in Anthony’s mind. He sat before the computer and listened to the sounds of the Deep Dwellers as they rumbled up his spine.

  Philana appeared at the hatch. She was buttoning her shirt. “You told the whales about us?” she said.

  “Why not?”

  She grinned faintly. “I guess there’s no reason not to.”

  Two Notches wailed a question. Are Anthony and Air Human copulating now?

  Not at present, Anthony replied.

  We hope you will copulate often.

  Philana, translating the speech on her own, laughed. “Tell them we hope so, too,” she said.

  And then she stiffened. Anthony’s nerves poured fire. Philana turned to him and regarded him with Telamon’s eyes.

  “I thought you’d see reason,” Telamon said. “I’ll surrender. I like that.”

  Anthony looked at the possessed woman and groped for a vehicle for his message. Words seemed inadequate, he decided, but would have to do. “You haven’t won yet,” he said.

  Philana’s head cocked to one side as Telamon viewed him. “Has it occurred to you,” Telamon said, “that if she’s free of me, she won’t need you at all?”

  “You forget something. I’ll be rid of you as well.”

  “You can be rid of me any time.”

  Anthony stared at Telamon for a moment, then suddenly he laughed. He had just realized how to send his message. Telamon looked at him curiously. Anthony turned to his computer deck and flipped to the Dweller translation file.

  I/we, he typed, live in the warm brightness above. I am new to this world, and send good wishes to the Dwellers below.

  Anthony pressed TRANSMIT. Rolling thunder boomed from the boat’s speakers. The grammar was probably awful, Anthony knew, but he was fairly certain of the words, and he thought the meaning would be clear.

  Telamon frowned, stepped to gaze over Anthony’s shoulder.

  Calls came from below. A translation tree appeared on the screen.

  “Trench Dweller” was probably one of the Dwellers’ names. “Bubbleward” was a phrase for “up,” since bubbles rose to the surface. Anthony tapped the keys.

  We are from far away, recently arrived. We are small and foreign to the world. We wish to brush the Dwellers with our thoughts. We regret our lack of clarity in diction.

  “I wonder if you’ve thought this through,” Telamon said.

  Anthony hit TRANSMIT. Speakers boomed. The subsonics were like a punch in the gut.

  “Go jump off a cliff,” Anthony said.

  “You’re making a mistake,” said Telamon.

  The Dweller’s answer was surprisingly direct.

  Anthony’s heart crashed in astonishment. Could the Dwellers stand the lack of pressure on the surface? I/We, he typed, Trench Dweller, proceed with consideration for safety. I/We recollect that we are small and weak. He pressed TRANSMIT and flipped to the whalespeech file.

  Deep Dweller rising to surface, he typed. Run fast northward.

  The whales answered with cries of alarm. Flukes pounded the water. Anthony ran to the cabin and cranked the wheel hard to starboard. He increased speed to separate himself from the humpbacks. Behind him, Telamon stumbled in his unfamiliar body as the boat took the waves at a different angle.

  Anthony returned to his computer console. I/We are in a state of motion, he reported. Is living in the home of the light occasion for a condition of damage to us/Trench Dweller?

  “You’re mad,” said Telamon, and then Philana staggered. “He’s done it again,” she said in a stunned voice. She stepped to the starboard bench and sat down. “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “I’m talking to the Dwellers. One of them is rising to say hello.”

  “Now?”

  He gave her a skeletal grin. “It’s what you wanted, yes?” She stared at him.

  I’m going over cliffs, he thought. One after another.

  That, Anthony concluded, is the condition of existence.

  Subsonics rattled crockery in the kitchen.

  Anthony typed, I/We happily await greeting ourselves and pressed TRANSMIT, then REPEAT. He would give the Dweller a sound to home in on.

  “I don’t understand,” Philana said. He moved to join her on the bench, put his arm around her. She shrugged him off. “Tell me,” she said. He took her hand.

  “We’re going to win.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  She was too shaken to argue. “It’s going to be a long fight,” she said.

  “I don’t care.”

  Philana took a breath. “I’m scared.”

  “So am I,” said Anthony.

  The boat beat itself against the waves. The flying yacht followed, a silent shadow.

  Anthony and Philana waited in silence until the Dweller rose, a green-grey mass that looked as if a grassy reef had just calved. Foam roared from its back as it broke water, half an ocean running down its sides. Anthony’s boat danced in the sudden white tide, and then the ocean stilled. Bits of the Dweller were all around, spread over the water for leagues— tentacles, filters, membranes. The Dweller’s very mass had calmed the sea. The Dweller was so big, Anthony saw, it constituted an entire ecosystem. Sea creatures lived among its folds and tendrils: some had died as they rose, their swim bladders exploding in the release of pressure; others leaped and spun and shrank from the brightness above.

  Sunlight shone from the Dweller’s form, and the creature pulsed with life.

  Terrified, elated, Philana and Anthony rose to say hello.

  The End