by John Ringo
"So I'm just the latest?" Elayna asked. "I'd sort of figured; he was . . . pretty good. Actually, darned good."
"A lot of that is because of Bast," Rachel replied. She popped up over the reef to see Antja taking a bite out of one of the lobster tails. "Aren't we supposed to be sharing with the town?"
"I've got too much to carry back," Antja said, reasonably. "If I eat some, I carry it in my stomach."
"We can switch out bags," Rachel replied. "I'm never going to fill this one at this rate."
"Works," Antja said, finishing off the lobster tail and wiping her hands on her scales. "These things are a lot better cooked, though."
"So, why's it Bast?" Elayna said. Her tail was flipping back and forth savagely as she shoved an arm deep into a crevice. "Hah, gotcha ya bastard."
"Bast considers it a solemn duty to train her current boy-toy," Rachel replied, dryly. "And she's been doing a lot of training with Herzer."
"It shows," Elayna laughed. "Although it took him a few minutes to figure out the differences in anatomy. After that it was great."
"Herzer has two great skills in life," Rachel said. "Fighting and . . . the other. I wish I could appreciate either one."
She snagged another lobster and carried it over to Antja, who was dragging what had been Rachel's bag behind her. It was more than half full.
"How do you do that so quickly?" Rachel asked.
"I've been doing it since I was a kid," Antja replied. "My parents were mer and they had me as a mer; I've been bugging my whole life that I can remember. For that matter, I've hunted this reef before; I know where they tend to hang out. Try over there," she said, pointing to a patch of reef that looked identical to the empty one that Rachel had just been working.
When Rachel approached the reef she could understand half of Antja's success; the ledge under the rock was packed with bugs from side to side, their antennae waving at her angrily. She reached into the mass and snatched one out while the others skittered from side to side, trapped by her body and the shallow ledge. As fast as she could reach she pulled lobsters out and wrung their tails. Some skittered by her, turning to use their powerful tails to skim over dangerous open ground, but she heard Elayna whoop behind her and dive on them.
In moments she had over a dozen tails lying on the ground among the scattered bodies of the lobster.
"So it's a trick," she said, smiling, as she gathered up the tails.
"Sure, isn't everything?" Antja replied. "I think that about does it. Three bags full as they say."
"So, you were born as a mer," Rachel said. "Did they, what? Did they crack the can under water? Some sort of underwater uterine replicator? What?"
"No," Antja said, in a tone that showed she didn't want to discuss it.
"Sorry," Rachel replied, hurt. Given everything that they had been talking about it seemed a harmless enough subject.
"I'm sorry, too," Antja said. "I just don't want to talk about it, okay?"
"Okay," Rachel said. Then she paused and her brow furrowed. "Antja, after the Fall, all the controls on the landsmen, well, let me make this plain, the landswomen, reproductive system turned off. We had an awful time with the first . . . menstruation. Did yours?" she asked, delicately.
"Yes," Antja said, tightly. "On the other hand, they designed mer better than 'normal' humans; we, thank God, don't menstruate."
"But, you are fertile?" Rachel asked, realizing that she'd just tiptoed into a minefield as Elayna came over a rock with a set expression on her face. "You and Jason could have a baby? Elayna, for that matter, might be carrying Herzer's?" She looked over at Elayna who had a stricken expression on her face as if that thought had just occurred to her.
"Yes, we are," Antja said. "I wish you would stop pursuing this line of questioning."
"Sorry," Rachel said, "call me incurably curious. Just one more: Antja, what happened to the babies?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Daneh had spent most of the day working with the mer healers. They had no trained doctors but a few of the mer had been familiar with basic first aid and had been pressed into service. Unfortunately, in the saltwater environment there was not much that could be done. The flip side was that many of the standard infections were unable to gain a hold.
Mostly what they had to deal with were poisons from the various denizens of the deep, rashes from running up against the wrong coral and the occasional shark bite. She was shown one such, a nasty gash on the mer-man's tail that had been clumsily stitched up. She gave a brief class on proper suturing, something that she had learned only after the Fall, and suggested some poultices for the rashes. They had about done the rounds when Germaine, one of the healers, drew her aside.
"Mistress Daneh," the mer-woman said, nervously. "There's something I need to show you, one case we'd like some help on. But Bruce said we weren't to tell you about it. You can't let on that I did this."
"I won't," she said. "Where is it?"
"It's a bit of a swim," the mer admitted. "I'll see if I can find a delphino that will give you a ride."
She came back some time later with one of the delphinos.
"This is Buttaro," Germaine said.
"Daneh, lady," the delphino spit. "Help baby?"
"Yes, I will," Daneh said. "If I can."
"Hold fin," the delphino said, rolling so that she could grasp the dorsal. "Go."
The delphino stayed low to the reef as they headed for the inlet overlooked by the lighthouse then turned towards where the spring was. On the far side of the spring it took a breath though its blowhole and then dove towards the bottom where there was a crack in the rocks.
The way led through a twisted series of tunnels and then Daneh saw blue light ahead. They surfaced in a cave.
She had noticed that some of the mer were pregnant, but had not seen any babies. As she entered the cave her ears were assaulted by the sound of at least a dozen, mostly crying. There were more than babies in the vaulted, but crowded, cave. Mer-women swam around the rocky shelves, leading some of the older infants in water games.
Germaine surfaced by her and looked at her pleadingly.
"Mer can't breathe water at first," she said, coughing out a lungful of water. "They don't have the mass to fight the cold and their lungs aren't strong enough. They have to be born on land. They have to stay on land for a year, generally, until they can live in the water."
"This is one hell of an Achilles' heel," Daneh said, quietly. "I can see why you didn't want us to know about it. You'd better hope like hell New Destiny doesn't."
She led the way to one of the ledges but was confronted by an angry mer-woman.
"Germaine, I can't believe you brought a landie here!" the woman snapped.
"Daneh is a doctor, Rema," Germaine replied, just as hotly. "Would you rather that Maturi die?"
"No, but . . ."
"I don't know if I can do anything," Daneh said, soothingly. "But I will try. And I promise that I will do nothing to endanger your babies."
The woman looked at her questioningly, then shrugged.
"Do what you can," she said. "For all it's worth."
Germaine led her to the ledge and then climbed out awkwardly, crawling to the rear where a very young mer-maid cradled a child in her arms.
Daneh took one look at the baby and made a reasonable diagnosis, but she wanted to be sure. She looked at the mer-maid and held out her arms for the baby.
"Daneh is a doctor," Germaine said. "A real doctor. She might be able to help."
The girl looked up at her pleadingly, then handed the baby over.
Daneh walked carefully through the crowd of mer-folk, packed nearly hip to hip on the small ledge, to where the light was better and examined the baby closely. It, she wasn't sure if it was a he or a she because of the recessed genitals, was clearly a newborn, but the baby was far under what should to be normal weight and had a yellowish tint to the skin. It was sleeping but when she rolled back one eyelid it woke up and gave a pitiful mew of dis
pleasure. The whites of its eyes were yellow as well.
"It's not serious," she said, returning to where the girl lay. "I think. If we can get it out of this cave. Is this a he or a she? I can't tell."
"He," Germaine said. "What is it?"
"Childhood jaundice," Daneh replied. "I'm relatively sure. It's definitely jaundice. In adults that comes from damage to the liver but in children it can manifest from birth."
"He's never been strong," the girl said, her mouth working. "And he's been that color."
"He needs sunlight," Daneh said, looking around the gloomy cavern. There were only a few slits that let in light. "Which clearly is in short supply. It helps if he can be given oil from fish livers, if I recall correctly. But sunlight alone might cure him."
"Just sunlight?" Germaine said, aghast. "Are you sure?"
"No," Daneh snapped. "I don't have medical nannites to make a diagnosis, nor do I have any to effect a cure. But I've seen it before and we had items at Raven's Mill that permitted me to research a similar case. And sunlight alone worked for her."
"He can hold his breath well," the girl said. "But if he swallows water he won't be able to cough it back out as weak as he is."
"Mer children, we have learned," Germaine said, "have a much stronger breath hold reaction than normal human children. But it's a long swim."
"Where would you take him on the surface?" Daneh asked.
"There's a sheltered cove that we use to wean the children to the outside," Germaine replied.
"Not far, I take it?"
"No."
Daneh stripped off her mask and placed it on the child's head where it conformed as well as to an adult. The mer-baby didn't like the sensation and gave off a tooth grating yowl of fear, thrashing his head from side to side.
"It's okay," Daneh said, putting out her hand. "He can use it to breathe on the way out. But, please, bring it back to me," she said, gesturing at the blue-lit water. "There's no way that I can make that swim on my own."
"Thank you," the girl said, crawling over and touching her on the leg. "Thank you."
"Thank me when he gets well," Daneh said, squatting down to hand the child to Germaine who was already back in the water. "It will probably be a week or so. And he may have sustained some permanent liver damage. And there's a possibility with infantile jaundice of brain damage. But if we caught it in time, he should be fine."
"Thank you," the girl said again, slithering over the edge of the rock into the water and heading for the entrance.
"You might not be so bad after all," Rema said from the water's edge.
Daneh walked over and dangled her feet in the water, looking around the sound-drenched cavern.
"Like I said when I surfaced," she sighed. "This is one hell of an Achilles' heel."
"Let me tell you a story from the bad old days," Rema said, hoisting herself out and sitting with her tail flapping in the water. "Fur seals give birth once a year. They congregate in colonies up in the Arctic. When the pups are born their fur is milk white, ice white to blend into the ice they are born upon. It's also very soft."
"I'm not going to like this story, am I?" Daneh asked.
"No, you're not," the mer-woman replied. "Well, at some point this was discovered by man. And men would go up into those seal rookeries and use clubs to bash in the heads of the seal pups. Up on land, there wasn't much that the mothers could do."
"I was right, I didn't like the story," Daneh said, looking around the cavern. The mer-babies were apparently born with almost gray tails, but over time they took on the whatever shade they were meant to have as adults. She could envision the genetic coding still. She shook her head and sighed again. "You need guards. Guards with legs."
"And give our hearts into the hands of the guards, you mean?" Rema asked. "You see our problem. Who watches the watchmen?"
"There's one group that, at least in this generation, I would trust with this treasure," Daneh said. "But only one group. And only in this generation."
"And what do we pay them with?" Rema asked. "Sex with mer-maids?"
Daneh laughed and waved her hand at the expression of fury on the mer-woman's face.
"No, it's not that," she said, still chuckling. "It's just that the only representative of that group has, unless I'm much mistaken, already been paid in that coin."
* * *
Elayna had invited herself along so it was a fairly large group: the three riders, Herzer and Bast, Elayna, Jason and Pete who took off, strapped to various dragons.
"Delphinos were signaling that there was a group of tuna feeding somewhere to the southwest," Jason called as the wyverns reached cruising altitude. They had fed skimpily and were hungry for more.
The group headed out in the indicated direction and soon saw the feeding school, spotting it first by a large flock of birds overhead.
"There's more than tuna down there," Herzer called as they swept low over the assembly. The school of fish—it was hard to call them bait fish since most of them were fair-sized eating for a human—was absolutely huge, stretching for nearly a klick in one direction and a half a klick in the other. The fish were mouthing at the surface creating a pattern of circular ripples while at the edges the larger predators churned the surface into froth.
"Mackerel," Pete called. "And there's everything on them. Sailfish, marlin, tuna. Hell there's probably wahoo and barracuda in the mix!"
"We can just fill this net with mackerel," Jason said. "Mackerel's good eating. Getting them back is going to be the problem."
"Dolphins," Koo called. "Or maybe delphino, bearing in from the northeast."
"How do you want to do this, Jason?" Joanna called.
"This was Herzer's idea," Jason pointed out. "The riders are going to have to stay up at the surface. And God only knows what's down there. Can they swim that long? How do we get back? Is something going to eat them?"
"Joanna, can you hold out on breakfast for a while?" Herzer yelled.
"Not happily," she replied. "But if you want me to play shark guard, I will."
"And you're positively buoyant," he said. "The riders can hold onto you if they get tired."
"I'm only buoyant up to a point," she replied. "But I see the logic. The wyverns can feed first."
"Then we get one or more of them back so the riders can hold onto them," Herzer said. "If the delphinos will let us, we'll ride back with them, the dragons following. Maybe the dragons can pull the net, maybe the delphinos. We'll scoop some of the mackerel for them, making their hunting easier."
"That's how we usually handle it," Jason said. "But with lots less fish."
"Well, let's get down, get the mer unstrapped, talk to the delphinos and get the net deployed."
* * *
The scene underwater in the bait school was a maelstrom. The sounds of the cavitation of literally millions of fish filled the water with a sound like thunder. Scales from dead and damaged fish rained down in a continuous silver-glittering cloud. And in every direction fish of various sizes were swimming chaotically. Besides the sound and the movement, the colors of the fish were confusing. A group of sailfish, swimming past faster than a dragon, were changing hue along their sides, rippling with blue and yellow stripes as they passed. Narrow, torpedolike fish that Pete identified as wahoo were marked the same way. The mackerels themselves changed hue constantly, presumably to make it harder for their predators to fix on any one fish. The chaotic patterns, the sound, the enormous sense of movement were oddly terrifying.
Herzer finally tore his eyes away from the spectacle and grabbed onto Joanna's spread wings. The delphinos had clustered in her shadow and he saw more forms clustering in the depths. As he watched a mackerel, squirted out of the school by the press of the predators, dart across towards the shadow and presumed safety. One of the forms rose in a way that at first seemed slow and lazy, then suddenly sped up, slashing in for a strike on the bewildered bait fish. The form turned out to be a massive marlin that quickly darted back into the deeps,
the tail of the mackerel sticking out one side of its beak.
"I don't know where to start," Jason admitted.
"Don't really look at it," Herzer said. "Unfocus. Just let it all be a blur."
The dragons were clearly having some of the same problems but it hadn't slowed them much. They darted into the swarm, just a few more large predators to feast on the plenty, and started picking off fish at the edge, mostly the predators that had come for the mackerel.
Herzer had come for tuna, primarily, but they were running so fast it was hard to keep an eye on them. They would go by so fast that even by panning his head it was hard to see them as anything other than a blur. Their tails were a blur; they seemed to move faster than a hummingbird's wing.
He found himself getting overwhelmed again and took his own advice, grabbing a corner of the net as Jason spread it out.
"Right," Jason said, finally. "We'll just head into the school. When I give the word, Herzer and Elayna just try to hold steady and Pete and I will swing it around." He looked at the wall of fish of every conceivable size and gulped some water. "Follow me."
Pete and Jason headed straight into the baitball, through the wall of predators. Herzer saw one yellowfin tuna that was bigger than Bast slam into Pete as he neared the mackerel but Pete was merely buffeted for a moment and kept on heading in. Jason was at the top of the net and Herzer could see clearly when he entered the baitball because he simply disappeared.
The net in their way immediately affected the mackerel and a large slice of them, ten meters or so long and a few meters deep, turned aside and formed their own ball as predators slashed into them. Herzer tried to pull the net to a halt at the edge of the main ball but it was wriggling madly in his hands. A tuna slammed dead into his side and both of them rebounded from the impact, shaken. He stuck a hand out and jammed it into the momentarily drifting tuna's gills and was rewarded by a panicked frenzy for his troubles. The tuna, which was not much smaller than he and probably weighed more, thrashed against his side, dragging him off in an upward spiral. He got his hand free and grabbed the net with flesh and metal hands, striving with all his might to kick his way out into the open water. By this time he had been dragged fully into the mackerel and their flashing bodies were all he could see. They swarmed all around him, butting into his side, face, legs, like a thousand maddened cats. Suddenly his head crested the water and try as he might he could not get the net to budge; the weight of the fish in it, their frenzied fighting, Pete and Jason pulling on it, all combined to simply tow him through the water.
