World of Water Read online

Dev waited, braced for Handler’s reappearance. Sink or swim. Any moment, he expected to feel the ISS liaison’s hands fastening on his ankles, tugging him down. He took deep breaths in anticipation. He knew that he shouldn’t have to, but he wasn’t going to leave anything to chance.

  There had been a problem with the host form’s assembly, after all. Those sustainability issues. What if the gills failed to function?

  Handler burst up from the water right behind him, breaking at such speed that he almost completely cleared the waves.

  As he fell back, he brought his hands down on Dev’s shoulders and plunged him under, amid a welter of bubbles.

  Far under.

  Metre after metre, Dev went down, Handler pushing him mercilessly.

  Dev resisted. Couldn’t help it. He thrashed with arms and legs, struggling towards the surface.

  But Handler had all the advantages. He was above him, pushing down with powerful frog kicks. He was in his element; Dev was not.

  The rippling sunlight patterns above rapidly receded. The further away it got, the more desirable it seemed to Dev – and the more unattainable.

  Panic set in. He fought it, but failed.

  Ten metres down. Fifteen.

  He needed to breathe. He needed to be free.

  He punched at Handler’s wrists, but the ISS liaison’s grip was firm, inexorable.

  The water darkened. The daylight dimmed.

  Dev was convinced he was about to drown.

  4

  THEN SOMETHING INSIDE him clicked. Some insight. Some instinct.

  As though a door was opening in his mind.

  Relax, it seemed to say. Go with it. It’s all right.

  These weren’t the feelings of a dying man accepting his fate.

  Dev inhaled.

  It went against common sense, against everything the human part of his host form knew was safe behaviour.

  He sucked in seawater. A great, cold, brackish draught of it rushed down his throat...

  ...and out through his neck.

  A surge of respite as oxygen suffused his bloodstream. A sensation of rightness, of wellbeing.

  His panic subsided. He drew a second liquid breath. There was a knot in his trachea. He could feel it. Some sort of valve or sphincter which clenched automatically, preventing the water from flooding his lungs.

  A third breath, and he was almost no longer aware how unnatural it was to be gulping in water and pumping it out through gills.

  Handler, sensing that Dev was calming down and had got the hang of aquatic respiration, let go of him.

  Dev floated freely amid slanting beams of amber sunlight. He looked up at the underside of Tangaroa. Silhouetted against the sky, it resembled a schematic of a solar system, worlds of assorted sizes orbiting a sun. Massive anchor columns descended from several of the domes’ bases, stabilising the town like a yacht’s keel. Directional vents in the columns drove water through the waves to counteract the ocean currents and keep the township from drifting out of position.

  His vision was sharp. He touched his eyes, to discover that the membranes had snapped into position. Although they’d looked milky in the mirror, they gave him perfect sight in the water.

  He began experimenting with swimming. Normally he would have to battle to keep from rising, but his host form had no problem maintaining depth.

  Some kind of swim bladder, he assumed. A gas-filled sac which expanded or contracted according to the ambient pressure, standard in most fish.

  His feet were webbed as well as his hands. Even the gentlest of kicks thrust him along faster than he would have expected. Hard kicks, coupled with arm-strokes, propelled him through the water like a torpedo.

  Somersault. Barrel roll. Pirouette. He was immensely agile in three dimensions.

  Dev the fish-man. Freaky, but he liked it. The bonuses outweighed the essential weirdness.

  Handler swam up beside him. Dev accessed the host form’s commplant in order to talk to him.

  Offline. No signal.

  He tried again but got the same error message.

  The commplant didn’t work underwater. It couldn’t get through to any of Triton’s telecommunications satellites or insites.

  So instead Dev shot Handler a big cheesy grin and gave him a thumbs-up.

  In response, a pulse of light rippled across Handler’s face, starting at the jawline and ending at the hairline. It was blue-green in colour, with hints of yellow at the edges.

  Bioluminescent display.

  Wonders would never cease.

  What surprised Dev most, however, was that he understood what it signified. It wasn’t simply a show of light; it had meaning.

  It was saying: See? Nothing to worry about.

  Dev nodded, then looked quizzically at Handler and gestured to his own face. The implication was obvious. Can I do that too?

  Colour swirled across Handler’s brow, more blue than green this time, stippled patterns interleaving.

  Of course you can, the ISS liaison was saying.

  Dev made an exaggerated shrug. How?

  Don’t think, just feel, was Handler’s bioluminescent reply.

  Dev frowned. It seemed easier said than done.

  There. Handler pointed to Dev’s face.

  Dev had been conscious of a slight tingle accompanying the frown, a sensation akin to blushing.

  Result, Handler said.

  Success made Dev exultant, and his face tingled again, more intensely now. He saw the glow of his own bioluminescence reflected in Handler’s eyes. It had a pinkish tinge.

  The lights were as much an expression of an inner state as a method of communication. Tap into whatever you were feeling and it would show on your face. Combine feelings and you could generate concepts, phrases, sentences, the subtleties of which were fleshed out by their context.

  It was a foreign language, but the easiest foreign language to learn, ever. You could translate it without effort, because the vocabulary was universal: emotions.

  Dev conveyed to Handler that he was pleased to have mastered his host form’s planet-specific adaptations, but now he was eager to head back to the surface and get on with his mission, whatever it might be.

  Handler’s answer was an incongruous flare of bright red with purple streaks.

  Alarm. Fear. Horror.

  The ISS liaison gesticulated.

  Something behind Dev.

  Dev spun round.

  A dark shape was moving through the water, ascending from below. With purpose.

  It was large, with a streamlined profile. A creature built for speed. For attack.

  An apex predator.

  And it was heading straight at them.

  5

  DEV FELT THE buffeting turbulence of frantic activity at his back. Handler, beating a hasty retreat.

  He followed suit, hardly needing to think about it. If Handler was scramming, so should he.

  They thrashed towards Tangaroa. Handler was the more adept swimmer, by far the quicker. He scooped his way through the water as though boring a tunnel for himself. Dev was lagging behind.

  He darted a glance over his shoulder. The predator was still in pursuit.

  He made out a tapered head, questing back and forth. Twin ridges of erect dorsal plates. Crocodile-like limbs. A mighty, sinuous tail.

  The beast seemed ancient, a reptilian thing from some long-gone geological epoch. Unchanged by evolution because it was fit for purpose already and could not be bettered. Perfectly suited for the catching and killing of prey.

  Teeth glinted like rows of ivory daggers.

  And it was even bigger than it had first appeared. Seven metres from end to end, he estimated. Its head alone was two metres long.

  Tangaroa still seemed far away, too far to reach in time, an impossible goal. The creature was gaining on Dev. He could feel it displacing water as it hurtled towards him.

  Redoubling his efforts to escape was the only option.

  Or was it?

  H
owever hard he swam, the creature would still overhaul him. It was inevitable.

  What he could do was turn and meet it head-on. He doubted it would be expecting that. How many of its victims actually charged at it rather than away? None. None would be so insane.

  Dev flipped around and made a beeline for the oncoming sea beast.

  This was suicide. He didn’t even have any weapons on him.

  But he would be dead for sure if he continued trying to flee. This way he stood a chance, if a slim one. At the very least he might be able to inflict some pain on the creature before he became its dinner. Hardly a victory, but it was perhaps the most he could hope for.

  They barrelled towards each other, Dev and the monster, like knights in a joust. A maw gaped. It looked big enough to swallow a person whole.

  The creature was probably thinking it had never been presented with such an easy meal. Its prey was volunteering to be eaten, practically swimming down its gullet.

  At the very last instant, Dev diverted. He jinked sideways and the reptilian monster shot past. Darting out a hand, Dev managed to latch onto one of its dorsal plates.

  All at once he was being dragged along, at startling speed. He clung on for dear life. The dorsal plate was as thick as a roof tile, with a finely serrated edge that cut into his palm. He ignored the pain, refused to let go.

  The creature could not figure out where its prey had gone. It was lethal but not terribly smart. What need did you have for quick wits when you were so huge and powerful?

  It careered on, oblivious to the fact that it had picked up a passenger. The other swimming human was ahead, so the creature wasn’t too bothered that the first had somehow disappeared. Plenty more fish in the sea, as it were.

  Handler was by now close to Tangaroa. Thirty more metres, just a few strokes, and he would gain safety.

  But the predator was swiftly narrowing the gap. Dev estimated it would catch up with seconds to spare. Handler wasn’t going to make it.

  Not unless Dev did something to waylay the creature.

  Something even more rash and foolish than playing chicken with it.

  He let go of the dorsal plate and watched the bulk of the creature rush by below him until he was level with its tail. Then he grabbed hold again, with both hands this time, right at the tail’s very tip.

  The creature might not have noticed a hitchhiker riding on its back, but it couldn’t fail to miss one dangling off the end of its tail.

  Especially if that hitchhiker began to work against the tail’s lashing motion, using himself as a counterweight. When the tail swung one way, Dev hurled himself the other.

  The sea beast soon realised its propulsion was being inhibited. It twisted round to see what the problem was. A baleful eye the size of a bowling ball fixed on Dev. Dragon fangs were bared.

  The creature lunged for him, but once more its limited intelligence worked against it and in Dev’s favour. Its head couldn’t quite reach the end of its tail. It began to go in circles, chasing after the prey that was attached to it but tantalisingly untouchable. Its mouth snapped repeatedly at Dev but missed each time, sometimes by only a few centimetres.

  Round and round they went, at a dizzying rate, like a living centrifuge. As long as Dev kept his grip, the creature would not get him.

  The trouble was, he could not hold on forever. And he was starting to feel sick. He was trapped on the worst carousel imaginable, and the moment he got off, he would be dead meat.

  Oh, for a gun. A knife. A nano-frag mine, why not? Since he was wishing for the impossible...

  He glimpsed two shapes looming from the depths. He couldn’t be sure he had seen them at all, whirling helplessly as he was. Might have been some trick of the eye.

  No, they were there. Closer now.

  More of the creatures? Allies of this one? Family? Coming to see what the commotion was about?

  They would have no trouble snatching Dev off the creature’s tail. The only question was which of them would get there first and win the privilege of consuming him. Maybe they’d share him. Grab a leg each. Split him like a wishbone.

  Mission fucked before it had even started. Ten minutes from host form installation to termination. Must be some kind of ISS record.

  On the next pass, Dev got his first clear view of the new arrivals.

  They weren’t the same creatures after all. They were something else.

  Humanoid. Scaly. Finned.

  Tritonians.

  Both of them were carrying what looked like weapons.

  Both of them were zeroing in on Dev and the creature with grim, deadly intent.

  6

  ONE OF THE Tritonians seized Dev’s wrists and plucked his hands off the creature’s tail with almost indecent ease. Dev was swept away from the monster, which immediately lunged after him in a rapacious fury.

  The other Tritonian swam in above the creature, matching its course and speed. It raised a weapon – a kind of spear with a knobbly, striated texture, reminding Dev of a narwhal tusk.

  The spear slammed down, piercing the creature in the back of the neck, just behind the head. The blow was a perfectly judged, aimed at what must be a weak point, a chink in the armour.

  The creature spasmed, its legs splaying out in all directions and its maw going slack.

  The Tritonian withdrew the spear and shimmied out of range as the creature went into paroxysms. Death throes. It coiled and whipped, while blood billowed from the wound, enveloping it in a dark cloud.

  The Tritonian who had wrenched Dev free now let go of him. Dev paddled a couple of metres away, then turned to face his rescuer.

  The indigene was taller than him by a couple of handspans, and slender, with delicate, elongated proportions. There were no obvious sexual characteristics, but the narrow shoulders and pointed chin told him this was a female. Some instinct, a gut feeling from the Tritonian half of him.

  She wore a tunic like a one-piece swimsuit made from a sort of leathery hide stitched together with cord and held in place by shell clasps. The scales that covered her skin were small, fine and pale pink, with a silvery sheen. Thin, wafting fins of the same colour ran down from the nape of her neck to the top of her spine and along the backs of her limbs.

  At her breastbone was a raised design etched in her skin, a cutaway of a nautilus shell showing its logarithmic spiral and the chambers within. The keloid scarring was precise but pronounced. The detail of the design was exquisite. The pain it must have caused in the carving would have been exquisite too.

  The weapon she bore was not a spear like the other’s. It looked more sophisticated, like a cross between a lance and a rifle, manufactured from a blend of organic materials. Coral for the handle and firing mechanism, something rigid yet pulpy for the rest.

  She brandished it at Dev defensively, its tip level with his belly. Dev floated inert, wary, careful not to make any sudden movements. She seemed angry and he had no wish to antagonise her.

  The other Tritonian swam over to join her. He was clad similarly but broader-shouldered, thicker-jawed – male. Slung over his shoulder was a sack made from strands of some sort of seaweed, plaited into a web. It held several dead fish.

  Together, side by side, the pair of them surveyed Dev. Their eyes were round, black, lidless and inscrutable.

  Dev did his best to thank them for saving him from the creature. After his brush with death his thoughts were in turmoil, his heart racing, but he tuned in to the gratitude he was feeling beneath it all. The emotion was sincere and he embraced it.

  His face tingled, his cheeks especially. He wondered what colours were dancing across his skin. He hoped they meant what he thought they meant.

  The Tritonians remained blank-faced, their eerie dark stares unwavering. It occurred to Dev that he had made an error of judgement. They might not communicate using bioluminescence. That or he had expressed himself incorrectly. Could be he had even insulted them by mistake. Your mother’s a walrus, something like that.

  H
e resorted to dumb show, pointing downward to indicate the slain beast, then to himself, and finally patting his chest as though in relief and heartfelt appreciation.

  Still no response from the Tritonians, and Dev felt like a prize chump.

  They continued to face one another, Dev and the two indigenes, for another half-minute or so.

  Then the Tritonians turned and slowly, solemnly, swam away. Dev watched them go until they became indistinct blurs, lost in the marine murk.

  It was, he realised, his second ever encounter with a sentient alien species. At least, unlike every Plusser he had met, these two hadn’t been trying to kill him. Standoffish they might have been, but compared with Polis+ they were downright friendly.

  7

  “I’M SORRY, I’M sorry, I’m sorry.”

  This from Handler as he helped Dev out of the water and back onto the platform of the ISS outpost at Tangaroa.

  “A thalassoraptor,” he went on. “Only the most dangerous animal on the entire planet.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Yes. The theory is it was one of the dominant land species back when Triton was a big ball of ice. It managed to adapt as the ice thawed over millennia, and became a sea dweller.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “Thalassoraptors rarely come this near the surface. Their usual haunt is the mesopelagic zone, about a thousand metres down. We were incredibly unlucky to bump into one.”

  “We both survived the experience, that’s the main thing.” Dev slumped on the platform, glad to feel the warmth of the sun on his face and a solid structure beneath him. Glad also to revert to breathing the traditional way.

  “By the skin of our teeth,” said Handler. “Last I saw of you, you were right behind me. When you didn’t emerge, I had no idea what had happened. I was terrified the thalassoraptor had got you.”

  “It was a close-run thing.”

  “I should have thought to take a repellent with us. A sonar pulser, an electric prod, something. Just in case. I’m so stupid.”