Hidden in Sight (20 page)

Even if Paul hadn't smelled like something overdue for burial, the Prumbin had no need to be pleasant. It was the only e-suit dealer within sight and knew full well what my dear web-kin didn't. Yet.

Other than the aircar returning to the Port City, a suit was Paul's only way to leave Mouda Cove.

“A modicum of patience, Human,” I told him. It was probably less than mature of me to have enjoyed stuffing my friend back into this corresponding garment, but at least he didn't have to endure having his antennae bent.

The thought made my entire body itch. It wasn't so much that I was uncomfortable—my current form would have been flopping on the sand in agonized death throes by now if exposed to air—but I was missing most of my sensory perceptions. Tasting the water recycling around myself, however artificially fragrant, was no substitute for the ocean so close. I held this form simply by promising myself I'd be out of the suit in a few moments.

Paul might beat me to it. He'd put down the piece of luggage we'd bought—too big for our few belongings, but I hoped to remedy that—and was tugging at his neck fasteners again, even though I knew they were as well-fitted as possible. “Patient!” he grumbled—words and tone quite nicely transferred into pulses against the tympana lining my lower arms. “I should never have let you talk me into this—this sightseeing excursion! In case you forget, Old Hound, we aren't exactly safe here.”

“Where would we be safe, Paul?” I fluttered a gesture of
sorrow
with my pre-gills; the suit turned a mournful gray in translation. Then I saw the water just offshore heave itself into a round smoothness as something began rising to the wharf. “There!” I said in triumph, bobbing up and down with excitement. “Our transport!”

“Esen ...” My name seemed to dissolve as Paul's magnified eyes blinked and blinked again.

“Isn't this a sight worth seeing?” I asked.

The wharf, its pylons set deep into the sloping beach, extended from where we stood to a considerable distance into the middle of Mouda Cove. The reason for its length was now apparent, as our transport calmly docked alongside, stern hanging beyond the wharf and bow grinding gently toward us on the sand until sighing to a stop.

We had to look up.

And up. I bobbed almost constantly, colored bright yellow with delight by Paul's frozen posture.
Ha! Thought he'd seen everything by now, did he?

There were bigger things in Prumbinat's ocean, but a Busfish was the largest I'd be willing to stand beside.

I should have expected Paul could take a Busfish in stride. After all, he'd lived with me for over fifty years. Still, even he took a moment to stare at what was, to Ersh's knowledge, the largest sea-dwelling creature to be domesticated. There were other partnerships between the small-scale smart and larger-scale not-so, including the living—and mobile—moss cities of the Ycl, but the Busfish reigned supreme in terms of harnessed biological power.

Size aside, it was a remarkably ordinary creature; Ersh-memory gave it an amusing resemblance to the cod which had been so pivotal in early Human history. Its tall, thin dorsal fin flopped untidily in the air, having temporarily lost the support of water. Antennae and other rigging were leeched to the thickened scales of its back, just in front of the fin. Its eyes were protected by goggles, while its gills were covered by plas domes, much the way a respirator would seal over the mouth slit of a humanoid. The plas on the wharf-side gill-cover was scratched and dented, explaining some of the corresponding damage to the wood. Any metal and the older of its blue-yellow scales were coated in a crust of tyr-barnacles or showed white remnants of glue where previous hitchhikers had been scraped free. My Oieta-self itched with sympathy.

Boarding wasn't for the weak of circulatory pumps. I led the way, having experience in the matter—if not previously in a form that would actually be a food item for a wild Busfish, which I suddenly discovered added a significant level of apprehension. It wasn't exactly panic, but I might not have poled myself down the ramp as swiftly if it hadn't been for a shove from behind. I flashed an indignant red.

Paul chuckled. I thought various dire thoughts about when best to shove him into something's mouth, but didn't slow down again.

The ramp met another which protruded like a tongue from the Busfish's now gaping mouth. Green-tinged seawater trailing lines of froth poured over and around it as the mouth emptied, revealing dripping platforms built over the lower tooth ridge. The upper tooth ridge had been removed—a safety precaution of which I highly approved. My shell would have been no protection whatsoever—and a fleshy being such as Paul? I shuddered, sending a curtain of tiny bubbles rippling past my oculars so I could hardly see where I was poling.

Someone, I assumed my Human, grabbed my suit's upper arms and stopped my forward motion. Just as well, since when the bubbles cleared I was hanging half over the side of the ramp, looking down at the churning waves being forced between fish and wharf. I waved a pole in what I hoped was a carefree and reassuring manner, then poled myself the rest of the way down the center of the ramp.

Only to wind up teetering on a wet, spongy surface that I wasn't going to think about. A surface with taste buds and mucous glands, and no doubt a dangerous enzyme or two in the puddles filling every dimple.

A mouth easily twenty of Paul's strides wide and three times that in length. A removable ceramic mesh covered the hall-like opening to the throat, looking dangerously flimsy for something intended to guarantee the Busfish didn't digest paying customers. Figures in suits similar to Paul's were either clamped in seats on the platforms or moving between them. A few were a reassuring blue, a color my Oieta-self interpreted as calm professionalism.
Attendants.

One of the latter approached me as I teetered—a Prumbin, I assumed, though there were few other clues from the suit beyond that balloonlike width around what would correspond to Paul's waist, hips, and thighs. This close, the suit lost some of its blue under algae stains and glasslike fragments of Busfish scale. “Please turn off your antigrav. Do you want closed or open?” The words were in a monotone that suggested boredom rather than a pattern of speech.

Ah. The moment I'd been waiting for,
I thought. Then I stared up at the pinky-white irregular surface my mind said was the roof of a reliable means of transportation, and my instincts screamed was the roof of a hungry mouth—the inside part, no less. “Closed,” I whimpered, turning beige, white, and gray as if my natural camouflage could possibly help. The fluid in my suit warmed as I dumped heat.

The Prumbin didn't comment, just waited for me to signal my antigrav was off before picking me up and tossing me toward the nearer arc of the platform. There, two other suited figures ignored my worried coloration and started to tie me to a most uncomfortable seat. A humanoid shape in vile green climbed up beside me, seeming to have little problem with either tongue or ridge, and waved them aside. “I'll look after her.”

“Don't you dare say a word about food,” I told my Human as he fastened my safety harness as deftly as if he routinely did such things inside a giant fish. “Not one word.”

I didn't need to see Paul's face to know he was grinning as he fastened himself in beside me.

Next down the ramp was a trio of Oietae—likely spawn-sibs. They paid no attention to me or any of the other passengers, obviously eager to accept the “open” option. Their attendant pulled them to one side, then used a hooked pole to pry up the tongue along that edge. Beneath, a long puddle of seawater beckoned, appealing even with its telltale gleam of fish mucus. The Oietae slithered out of their suits and into this pond, their shells blazing an almost orgasmic orange as they sank beneath the surface.

I envied their pleasure, but not enough to make me play morsel-in-the-maw.

It wasn't long before the Busfish prepared to leave, having consumed its passengers, their luggage, and an awkward though functional pallet stacked with containers of varied size. The Prumbins had eventually wedged the pallet along the back left of the tooth ridge using what appeared a tried-and-true technique of ramming themselves against one side until some containers toppled sideways and lodged under the ridge itself. I hope the contents survived the process, but this cavalier treatment didn't appear to bother the Busfish, which was becoming alarmingly lively as it must have sensed it would soon be submerging.

“This is certainly different.”

“What?” I twisted within my suit so I could focus on Paul. “Oh. Yes.”

“Will you tell me now?”

“Tell you what?”
The Human must be trying to distract himself,
I decided. After all, this had to be an alarming, possibly terrifying experience. Especially as the attendants had started knocking down the braces holding the mouth open and you could almost feel how anxious the Busfish was to slam its mouth shut on those inside—

“Fem Swashbuckly. Esippet. You promised to tell me where you were taking me. I think now's a good time, don't you?”

“Now?” I repeated, torn between looking at Paul, which was polite, or checking the rate at which the braces were being removed, which seemed prudent.

“Now, Esippet. Es!”

Paul's sharpening voice reached me when probably nothing else could have, given Ersh was now part of her mountain. I unlocked my swimmerets, which had somehow taken a death grip on one another, seriously hampering my breathing, and focused on my green-suited Human as though he was the anchor to my part of the universe. “I'm a little nervous,” I confessed.

“I can see that. And it's perfectly reasonable,” he said soothingly. “Keep talking to me. Don't!” This as I craned around to see the last brace dropping onto the tongue, right beside the tips of my poles. “Try not to pay attention to anything else for a minute, Old Blob. Switch to suit-to-suit and we'll check if the com works. No guarantees on privacy, remember?”

I flashed a wan yellow down my sides.

“Good. Here goes.” Paul made the adjustment with his chin; I echoed it with my mandibles. “Can you hear me, Esippet?”

There was no difference in tone or quality I could detect, which made sense: our suits still had to translate sound through both air and water, simply those media were now within rather than without. But his warning about potential eavesdroppers chilled my circulatory pumps; the old familiar cautions had new significance. “Yes, I hear you. How do I sound?”

“Sweet as ever,” he said.

“Silly Human. It's not even my real voice,” I chided, but resolutely kept my oculars from the slowly disappearing beach, wishing I could see more of his dear face than the distorted image of his eyes through the suit's goggles. “I know you are a resilient species, but how can you take this so calmly?”

A kind laugh. “Let's leave it that my biological heritage worries more about the dark.”

“There are interior lights,” I promised.

“Good to know.” A pause. “Feeling any better?”

I tested myself by glancing around the inside of the Busfish before answering. The mouth was closing, no doubt of that. The view beyond was now restricted to the bottoms of buildings, sand, and the retreating ramp. But the movement downward was so gradual as to be almost imperceptible.

I ignored the regrettable conclusion that this gave beings a final chance to jump for their lives.

“Better,” I said with determination.

A well-trained creature, this Busfish, obedient to its handlers now seated before a tiny console I hadn't noticed before. The controls would be relatively simple. Open, close. Up, down. Port, starboard. Fast, slow. The Busfish could do the “how” of each by itself. It could even find its way home.

Mind you, that home wouldn't be anywhere my Human could survive without his suit.
Petty detail.

A spasm, like some Busfish-quake, signaled our transport was starting to wriggle itself into deeper water. The straps held us in place, but those who'd chosen the “open” option were sliding along the tongue. From their actions, I concluded they were either writhing in agony or having fun. Since the attendants ignored them, it had to be the latter, although I couldn't fathom the “fun” in living out one's worst nightmare.

Then, we were under the surface, smoothly, quickly, with all the grace of living flight and all the power of surf rushing to fill the mouth over and between the gaps in its rock hard lips. The covers over the gills must have been retracted, as the inflowing water went down the throat but didn't return. Sunbeams stroked their way past just outside, then faded, then were gone. As I'd promised, the interior of the mouth began to glow—not only with the lights beading each suit, but also those growing on the ceiling and along the platforms, natural symbionts of the Busfish who normally lured their host's prey in to its doom and now reassured its passengers.

Meanwhile, the mouth closed as much as it could. Ocean stopped beating against our suits and teased at them instead, making me long to tear off mine. It didn't help when two of the Oietae scooted past me, still that wanton orange but now with telltale mottlings of aroused black, mingling their swimmerets in what I was shocked to realize was reasonably advanced foreplay. The third flicked his antennae in a debauched manner along my side before following the rest up to the lights. Not spawn-sibs after all. A mating group.

I turned to face Paul, trying and failing to keep my suit from displaying my humiliation with a green matched to his.

“Well. You are cute,” the Human observed, after a long pause.
He'd probably struggled not to laugh at me,
I thought rather glumly.