World of Water Read online

  The trick now was to stay on its trail and not get caught. The moment the behemoth or its entourage of Tritonians caught sight of them, it was game over. A creature that could singlehandedly obliterate a township would have little trouble with a Marine catamaran and a pair of manta subs.

  Once it got up to speed, the Ice King travelled fast. Dev estimated it was achieving perhaps fifteen knots, which was remarkable considering just how much of it there was to shift. The kicking of its hind legs resonated through the water, a low, quaking boom-boom-boom. The wake it generated buffeted the manta subs about even at a steady one-kilometre distance.

  Ethel was still coming to terms with the notion that a piece of her people’s folklore had been brought to actual, physical life.

  You’re telling me someone made that? she said.

  The Number Folk are master engineers, Dev said, and crazy with it. They can manipulate the smallest particles of existence, much like we can, but they do it with far less restraint. They’re not afraid of pushing the boundaries. For them it’s a technical exercise. For us, it’s tampering with our own essence. We’re inhibited about it, whereas they don’t care. They go for broke.

  But who would envisage a god as a giant crab?

  I don’t know much about gods. It’s not something my race really concerns itself with anymore. But as I understand it, deities have taken all sorts of shapes and guises over the centuries. Plenty of them have been animals, or part animal.

  All the same – a crab?

  In the stories about the Ice King, is he described at all?

  No. I always assumed he looked like one of us.

  I think – no offence – but the aim here was to produce something a bit more impressive than just another Tritonian. Something alien and unknowable. Something that would intimidate as much as enthral.

  Something that’d be hard to kill, too.

  Exactly. But also there’s the symbol to consider. The Ice King symbol has been around for ages, hasn’t it? Since as long as anyone can remember. It represents the creation myth. And the moment you laid eyes on the actual Ice King out there, you connected the two of them, it and the symbol, didn’t you? The association was instant.

  Realisation dawned on Ethel’s face, exquisitely rosy. Because the symbol happens to look like a crab.

  Meaning a crab would be the logical choice for the Ice King’s incarnation, Dev said. The Number Folk drew on the pre-existing image to determine what physical aspect the god would take, in order to make it instantly recognisable, familiar. Life imitated art. Or rather, life was obliged to follow art.

  How did it get here, then? Ethel asked. It didn’t just appear. It didn’t drop from the sky. Where did it come from?

  Fairly good question. I’ve seen something similar before. Not the same proportions, but the same principle.

  On Alighieri, the last planet he visited before this one, Dev had met a Professor Sunil Banerjee, a zoologist who had aided and abetted a Plusser agent in developing an oversize version of a specimen of the local fauna, the moleworm. The Plusser, going by the intentionally nondescript alias of Ted Jones, had then used the giant moleworm as part of a plot to take over the Diasporan helium-3 mining operation on that world.

  Somebody on Triton had pulled off much the same feat, only on a far grander scale.

  Who and how, Dev had yet to ascertain. More and more, though, he was convinced that there was an active Polis+ infiltrator presence on Triton and that it was better entrenched and embedded than any he had encountered before. Foes in high places.

  Put simply, he told Ethel, it was grown. Either from scratch or using an existing creature. It was cultivated in secret and then, when it was ready, let loose.

  Hard to keep anything so large hidden.

  But not impossible on a world that’s virtually one hundred per cent water and relatively sparsely inhabited. Anyway, the Ice King didn’t have to remain a secret for very long. Once it reached maturity, the sooner people found out about it, the better.

  In order that its worshippers would rally around it.

  Yes. In order that word about it would spread and it would draw the faithful to it.

  So saying, Dev exited the cockpit and went to the sleeping chamber where the insurgent-wannabe kid was being kept. He hooked a hand around the bonds binding the kid’s wrists and ankles together, and dragged him out, roughly but not too roughly.

  Back in the cockpit, he showed him the Ice King.

  There it is, he said. That’s your god.

  The kid’s face was flushed with a beatific golden glow. He’s real. I knew it. I knew it!

  Dev explained that the crab was an artificial being, nothing more. A hoax perpetrated by means of ungilled science. A monstrous fraud.

  But the kid saw only what he wanted to see.

  He came, he said. Rumours started going round. Stories about a commotion in these parts. Upheaval. An arrival. Something huge. It was taken as a sign. An omen. And it was all true. He has arisen. He has come.

  No, that thing came, said Dev. That thing came, and a whole bunch of insurgent types got wind of it, went for a look, and said to themselves, “A-ha! The Ice King. The God Beneath the Sea. Must be.” Because what they found is vast and menacing and ugly and powerful. It fits the bill. It’s everything they’ve been wishing for and longing for. It’s a figurehead they can get behind.

  Blasphemy! the kid declared, affronted. Don’t speak that way about our god.

  Whoops. Too late. Guess I’m doomed now.

  You are. All of your kind are. With the Ice King leading us, nothing can stop us. His might will sweep our enemies aside. He will purge the ungilled and purify the world.

  You’re being played, Dev countered.That massive great crab has been put here simply to give the uprising a focus and an added impetus. It’s here to make the waverers commit. Anyone who was undecided about signing up with the insurgency, won’t be anymore. Who wouldn’t want to be part of the holy army, now that you’ve got yourselves a living, breathing weapon of mass destruction?

  Face it, said Ethel to the kid, you’ve always known the ungilled colonists could beat you in a straight fight, with their superior weaponry and technology. That’s why you and your fellow insurgents were restricting yourselves to hit-and-run tactics. Sneak attacks and vandalism. But not anymore.

  No, not anymore, said the kid with pride. Now, everything has changed. Today is the day we were promised so long ago. Today is the day we take back our world.

  Not necessarily, said Dev. You may find that, come this afternoon, your beloved Ice King won’t be looking nearly so impressive.

  What are you talking about?

  I know people who know people who’ve got a weapon that’s capable of taking out your so-called god, and they’re not afraid to use it.

  Liar. That’s not true.

  You’ll see for yourself, soon enough.

  You’re making it up, the kid protested. Trying to confuse me. Get me doubting. I don’t believe you. It’s a bluff. Nothing can harm the Ice King! The Ice King is immortal. The Ice King is forever.

  Yeah, yeah, said Dev breezily. Just you wait.

  Ethel was finding the kid’s ideological fervour harder to dismiss than Dev was. Dev could see she was itching to hurt him. Her hands were squeezing the manta’s fleshy steering stalks hard, as though she wished to throttle them, and raw contempt glowered on her face in shades of pewter and puce. Her cousin’s killer and a staunch upholder of a dogma she was ardently opposed to – she had every reason to despise the kid.

  Before she could lash out, perhaps even kill him, Dev hustled the kid out of the cockpit.

  Do what you like with me, the kid said defiantly. I’m not scared. If I die at your hands, I die knowing that my god is going to avenge me.

  I’m not going to kill you, Dev said. Can’t you get that through your thick skull? That woman back there – she’s the one you have to worry about on that score, not me. In fact, I may have just saved your skin. Again
. So pay attention.

  The kid looked away in obstinate refusal.

  Dev grabbed his head and forced it back round so that they were face to face again.

  I think you’re a good person, he said. I think that deep inside you there’s a lonely, frightened boy who’s got himself further into a situation than he intended and is looking for an exit. It’s scary where you are and it seems even scarier trying to wriggle free, so you’re staying put. That’s no way to live.

  The kid’s jet-black, saucer-like eyes stared at Dev. Was he getting through to him? Was what he was saying making any sense to him whatsoever?

  Being an insurgent might have seemed like the answer to all your problems, he went on. It might have made you feel grown-up and manly. It might have given you an outlet for all that adolescent angst and aggression. But look what it’s also done. It got you imprisoned and tortured. It’s turned you into a murderer. It’s ruined your life.

  Still nothing from the kid. Except – was that a brief, faint flicker of remorse? A stippling of rueful blue, gone in a moment?

  It’s not too late, though. You can still turn things around.

  How? said the kid. Surly and morose but also, just discernibly, inquisitive, imploring.

  Search me. That’s something you’ll have to work out for yourself.

  They had arrived back at the sleeping chamber. Dev prodded the door to open and shunted the kid in through the irised aperture.

  The kid floated to the floor of the room and lay there on his side, passive in his bonds.

  He was thinking.

  As far as Dev was concerned, that was an encouraging start.

  45

  MAZU SEEMED TO be the next stop on the Ice King’s itinerary. The gargantuan crab was certainly heading in the right direction, maintaining a roughly south-easterly course.

  To Dev this was proof – not conclusive proof but near enough – that his theory about the Ice King was correct. It wasn’t marauding at random. It had purpose.

  That surely indicated that the consciousness of a Polis+ agent had been installed in the creature, just as had occurred with the giant moleworm on Alighieri. The Plusser’s sentience was now infused into the network of ganglia that served as the crab’s brain, and was firmly in command, like the driver at the wheel of a juggernaut.

  Opochtli had been just the latest on the hit list. Mazu would follow, and the Ice King would keep on going, systematically and methodically decimating townships and accumulating worshippers with every fresh conquest until it had an entire regiment of devotees in its thrall. Insurgents everywhere would draw inspiration from it, take heart from its example. Their ranks would keep swelling, new recruits would keep flooding in, until eventually the uprising achieved critical mass and all-out war erupted between indigenes and humans.

  Dev could imagine Polis+’s Mainframe Council rubbing their hands with jubilation over that.

  All this, of course, was assuming the Ice King was allowed to continue its rampage unchecked. Those Sunbakers couldn’t arrive soon enough, as far as Dev was concerned.

  Onward the Ice King swam, Mazu-bound

  Then a drift cluster came into view.

  The Tritonian town floated at a depth of some two hundred metres, borne along by the prevailing current at a sedate, stately speed.

  It resembled, more than anything else, a papier-mâché model of some complex molecule. Spheres of varying sizes were linked together by a lattice of spokes, fashioned from the spinal columns of redback whales.

  The spheres themselves were lumpy agglomerations of coral, cultivated to give them windows, doorways and occasional long towers which served as tethering posts for living submarines. Bioluminescent lighting twinkled both indoors and out, giving the spheres the look of ghostly mobile constellations.

  Each sphere, Dev reckoned, could comfortably house a hundred residents. They were gnarled, globular apartment blocks.

  He could see that the Diasporan settlements on the surface had been built deliberately to mimic the design of a drift cluster. It was clearly the most practical way to organise habitation, both on and under the sea.

  Of the two kinds of architecture on this world, human and Tritonian, Dev knew which he preferred. The drift cluster was just as functional as Tangaroa, Llyr, even Station Ares, but it had an eerie, otherworldly beauty too. It was an undersea fantasy of organic materials, constructed from things that had once had life or still had a life, not a single squared-off corner or smooth contour to be seen, hand-crafted and rough-hewn, fairytale, enchanting.

  Cunning, also. Though large and sturdy and weighing many tons, the drift cluster had neutral buoyancy. Between the porous coral and bone, and their broad distribution, the drift cluster was far lighter than it appeared, yet still heavy enough to remain submerged at a consistent depth. It was poised perpetually, elegantly, between rising like a bubble and sinking like a stone.

  It glided towards the Ice King, moving north-westerly; their paths set to converge.

  The Ice King detected its approach and, as Dev would have expected, made moves to divert around it. The subs following the Ice King did likewise, tiddlers emulating the parent fish.

  The drift cluster, after all, was home to Tritonians. It was not a lair of the hated humans. The Plusser agent within the Ice King had no reason to attack members of the insurgents’ own race. A wise god doesn’t alienate his worshippers.

  Consternation reigned at the drift cluster nonetheless. Like panicked ants from an anthill, the inhabitants emerged in their droves. Some came out to gawp, some to flee, and some to wave weapons at the passing titan. These valiant defenders must have realised that knives, shock lances and tusk spears would be useless against so vast a beast, but better to brandish something than nothing at all.

  The Ice King swam on, serenely aloof and unconcerned. The drift cluster trembled in its wake, but was not affected by its close encounter with a god.

  But then...

  On a whim, or so it seemed, the Ice King turned.

  It’s coming back, said Ethel. Why is it coming back?

  The behemoth sidled up to the Tritonian town, both practically the same size as each other. Its eyes, huge but beady, flicked back and forth beneath the beetling brow of its upper carapace. It was appraising the drift cluster, curious, almost quizzical, as though it was trying to make up its mind about something.

  Then, without further ado, it struck.

  An immense pincer came crashing down, cracking open one of the drift cluster’s spheres as though it were an egg. Dev could imagine how the Ice King had done exactly the same to the domes of Dakuwaqa and Opochtli, rearing out of the water to pound the townships mercilessly with its claws.

  A score of Tritonians were hurled from the shattered sphere, spilling out like the candy in some horrendous piñata. Most swam away in terror, but a few simply floated, stunned insensible, or worse.

  The Ice King slammed its other pincer onto the next sphere along, with the same results. The drift cluster shuddered and lurched. The bone spoke joining the two spheres fractured into its individual vertebrae.

  Just about every Tritonian in the town scattered. The mass exodus spread in all directions except towards the Ice King. Dev saw adults herding small children before them and carrying infants in their arms; others dragged along the elderly, infirm and injured.

  A handful of stalwart defenders remained, and some of these swam down to unfasten a large, tightly-meshed net that was attached to one of the lower spheres.

  The net floated free and, from captivity, a large clump of vegetation unfurled. It was bladderwrack, the same stuff that had snarled up the Reckless Abandon and the Admiral Winterbrook just off Dakuwaqa.

  The Tritonians prodded it with shock lances, goading it away from the drift cluster and towards the Ice King. The bladderwrack obediently went on the attack, extending several tangles of fronds out to the monster, trying to ensnare its limbs.

  The Ice King made short work of it. The bladderwrack did i
ts best, but the gargantuan crab tore the mass of sentient plant matter apart as though it were candyfloss. The drift cluster’s main deterrent became, under the Ice King’s snipping, slashing pincers, just so much shredded detritus.

  The Ice King turned back to the drift cluster and began hammering it again with gusto. Dev was reminded of an infant, brutally and cheerfully dismantling a toy. Outer walls of coral, painstakingly trained in the desired shapes, collapsed into jagged fragments and clouds of powder. The honeycombed architecture inside was laid bare – chambers, tunnels, concourses – itself reduced to smithereens by further tremendous, scything swipes of the Ice King’s claws.

  It wasn’t until the drift cluster was half wrecked that the true artistry of its design became clear. The entire structure began to wallow from side to side, like something in great pain. Then, all at once, the remaining unbroken sections split from one another. The spokes disintegrated. Some of the intact spheres started to rise, while others plummeted. A perfect balance had been catastrophically disrupted.

  The whole extraordinary artefact fell to pieces, leaving the Ice King chasing the unbroken spheres, batting at them before they could get away from it.

  The monster tired of the game pretty quickly and decided instead to eat a few of the drift cluster’s submarines. The zombie creatures were still attached by ropes to an intact tethering pylon, which was reeling through the water in pirouetting freefall. The Ice King wrenched subs off it and shoved them into its mouth one after another, gobbling down a whole smorgasbord of species, following fish with cetacean and cetacean with cephalopod and cephalopod with giant mutant tadpole thing.

  Hope you get a bellyache, Dev thought.

  He was seething with anger, an anger stoked by helplessness and inadequacy. At that moment, all he could do – all anyone could do – was look on from the sidelines while the Ice King pursued its campaign of wanton demolition and slaughter. Until Marines from Station Ares brought those Sunbakers, there was no other choice. The only weapon available to him was the hypervelocity pistol, whose sabot rounds would have been as much use against the God Beneath the Sea as spitballs.