Oshenerth (24 page)

The chattering was the communal laughter that emanated from a colony of twenty-foot long tube worms.

And why shouldn’t worms laugh, she asked herself as she finned forward? Were she to find herself trapped by birth and circumstance in one place, unable ever to move and forever fastened to rocks that had coagulated from the sulphurous blood of Hell itself, would she not seek relief in the form of laughter? Crimson plumes protruding from long white tubes alternated sieve feeding with a collective cackling as the worms strained hydrogen sulphide, carbon dioxide, and oxygen from the surrounding water to feed the trapped internal bacteria that supplied them with nourishment. Waving slowly back and forth in the confused currents like thick pulpy reeds, the colony acknowledged the arrival of the travelers with a burst of sarcastic hilarity.

“Look at them, flesh from the surface!” commented one worm.

Bending forward in a perfect arc, another thrust its beak-like red plume in Irina’s direction. “All those unnecessary protuberances. Not streamlined at all,” it observed.

“Have to chase their food,” chortled another. “All those pieces of body hanging off. Disgusting!”

Her companions might be used to such insults, but Irina was not. “You’re criticizing me? You’re a
worm
. A very big worm, to be sure, but still just a worm.”

The one that had curved forward to examine her now straightened. “‘Just’ a worm? Are you so ignorant you know so little? Why, don’t you realize where you’d be without worms?”

She ground her teeth. “No. Why don’t you tell me where I’d be?”

Two of the bright red plumes faced one another. “Wormless!”

This time several members of the expeditionary force joined the tube worm colony in shared mirth. Aware that she’d been had, Irina wondered if the subcutaneous lighting Oxothyr had given her was strong enough to mask the flush she felt spreading over her cheeks. These giant deep-sea Riftia might be capable of complex speech, but their sense of humor was decidedly lowbrow.

She was gratified to see that Oxothyr had little patience for such juvenile jollity. “We must get to Benthicalia. It is a matter of the greatest importance.” An arm gestured forward. “Landmarks hereabouts are scarce, as smokers tend to look much the same.”

“Like us, I suppose,” commented one of the worms sardonically.

“Contrary to what you might think, we are quite distinguishable from one another,” insisted the first speaker’s neighbor.

“How?” As soon as she asked, Irina wished she hadn’t.

But the tube worm surprised her with a straightforward reply. “By our respective senses of humor, of course. Since we are all approximately the same size, shape, color, and asexual, status within our colonies is determined by one’s ability to make the others laugh. Not as easy as you might think, since besides feeding it is our principal activity. I ask you, flesh-thing, what is more valuable, more welcome, and more gratifying than a new joke?”

“I see your point,” she admitted, relieved not to have been made the butt of one again.

To emphasize the urgency of their situation, Oxothyr pointed with three arms. “I believe
this
direction to be the right one, but I would appreciate any correction you feel is necessary.”

“Benthicalia,” one of the worms murmured, swaying slowly from side to side as it spoke. “We have heard of it. There are worms there, too, and many smokers. Travelers this way are rare, but they do tell tales. We cannot visit our cousins, but others can visit for us.” The red filter-head dipped close to the hovering octopus. “You are indeed set on the correct path, manyarm. Keep straight and you will come to Benthicalia in due course.” Straightening, it concluded with easygoing solemnity. “We will not keep you long, but it would be very discourteous of you not to pay for this valuable information. We must do a trade.”

Drifting over to Arrelouf, Irina could not contain her curiosity. “They have no buildings, no goods of any kind. At least, none that I can see. What could we possibly trade with them?”

Arrelouf eyed her as one would a child, then remembered that this changeling had little knowledge of the realworld.

“Why, jokes, of course.”

Despite the darkness, the danger from the superheated venting taking place all around, the nauseating omnipresent stink of sulphur and other noxious materials being ejected from the ground, and her own uncertainty, the ensuing half hour that was spent among the field of giant tube worms was among the most relaxing, and certainly the most unexpectedly entertaining, she had yet experienced in the surrounds of Oshenerth.

— XVI —

A little laughter lasts a long time in the way down deep, Irina discovered. A useful thing to recall whenever the small group of determined travelers found themselves crossing open plains. The scattered smoker forests became a welcome sight. Their oppressive roaring was offset by the presence of so much more life than was encountered elsewhere, and by the welcome heat the hydrothermal vents generated. One could grow accustomed to such a place, she decided. Everywhere around the pillar-like smokers a multitude of lifeforms were in constant motion, struggling for survival amid perpetual noise, darkness, and moisture. Not so very different from Seattle in January.

It was impossible to tell time. In the absence of sunlight night and day became meaningless, abstract terms. The travelers rested when a majority showed signs of fatigue and moved on when that same majority felt sufficiently refreshed. Food was taken communally. While they were capable of eating on the swim, it was safer to settle down in one place and alternate mealtimes. As Chachel tersely pointed out to her, two kinds of dangers haunted the deep: those you could see, and those that lurked just beyond the range of the lights the expedition generated. When they stopped to sleep, mealtime was another interlude that required the posting of guards—both around the group and above it.

She was beginning to think talk of such dangers exaggerated. For one thing, dark depths would find far fewer sharks on patrol. Though their other senses allowed them to hunt perfectly well in the absence of light, the sleek carnivores preferred to see their prey. While a big hungry seven-gill might pose a genuine menace, in her world at least, such species were more scavenger than predator. What else might lurk in the depths of Oshenerth just beyond her range of vision she did not know.

When an example finally did present itself, it was not at all what she expected. Doubtless because it was a creature that was completely outside her experience.

They had paused to rest among a cluster of the hissing, fuming, mineralized towers, careful not to drift too close to jets of superheated water that could boil a merson or manyarm alive, when the smoker serpent came coiling out of the darkness like a giant worm emerging from an obsidian apple. The deepwater predators Irina had seen so far had ranged from merson-size to tiny. The smoker serpent was huge.

As it coiled toward them, mersons ducked behind the hardened pillars of smokers, careful not to make contact with the hot rock itself. The manyarm members of the expedition obtruded their siphons and scattered in all directions, trailing bioluminescent tentacles like sprays of fireworks.

Clutching roughly at her, a hand pulled Irina back behind the crumbly black column of a dormant smoker. “Are your brains as feeble as the rest of you?” A grim-faced Chachel glared at her. “Hide, run, keep out of its way! Or would you rather be food?”

“I—I’m sorry.” Abashed, she didn’t look at him. “It’s just that I’ve never seen anything like it and …”

Gripping his spear tightly, he peered cautiously around the pillar. Stretching more than a hundred feet from snout to tail, its narrow body highlighted with luminescent spots flashing scarlet, the smoker serpent was not difficult to follow.

“I’m sure its insides are equally fascinating,” Chachel whispered tightly, “yet I have no wish to view them personally. Stay here.”

She complied without argument. Though she had already tested herself in battle against the spralakers at Siriswirll, this was a very different environment featuring a decidedly more imposing adversary, for all that there was only one of it.

Other than the radiant red bioluminescence that illuminated its flanks, the body of the smoker serpent was nearly transparent. A glass dragon, she thought. As it twisted and writhed among the stone towers, when available light was just right and strong enough she could clearly see its internal organs through the pigmentless flesh. Darker blood pulsed through veins of translucent tubing. She could also see light gleam from its foot-long upper and three-foot long lower fangs, each of which was as slender as a rapier and as sharp as a needle. Evolved to catch and hold oversized prey in a single bite, once impaled on those dreadful daggers even a large, powerful fish would be unable to escape.

Huge, perfectly round, and glowing a soft blue-green, the conspicuously convex eyes were as big around as truck tires and as vacant of intelligence as the forest of smoking columns they were presently scanning. This was no chary scavenger, she decided as she shrank back further behind the protective pillar. The red-limned serpent was vigorously stalking prey. At the moment, that meant her and her friends.

In the weeks gone by, she had seen many marvels. Here was one she would have been content to avoid, and wished would go away. Maybe the rapid, jerky movements of its would-be prey would frustrate it and cause it to go elsewhere, she told herself hopefully.

Then it looped with unexpected speed around one of the tallest smokers, struck like a snake, and caught one of Glint’s counterparts in its trap-like jaws. Bayoneted on the outsized lower fangs, the unfortunate cuttlefish warrior screamed and went completely white. Even in the course of the clash at Siriswirll Irina had never heard such a scream. It sounded like that of a child mixed with the yowl of an injured cat.

From their hiding places near the scene of the attack, every merson in the group popped into view. They were joined by the rest of the manyarms who, bows and smaller spears at the ready, came rocketing in out of the darkness where they had sought refuge. One weapon after another struck the serpent’s wildly undulating flanks, which leaked blood only slightly less dark than the water around it.

Enraged and hurt, the serpent lunged furiously at its multiple attackers. Swimming in to strike and then darting quickly away, mersons and manyarms worked together to decoy and evade the gaping, slashing mouth. The desperate semaphorings of the unfortunate cuttlefish still skewered on the teeth of the serpent’s lower jaw grew increasingly more feeble.

Diving down on the creature from above, Chachel took careful aim and, approaching dangerously close, with all his strength thrust his spear straight down into the back of the serpent’s skull. The thin bone was incredibly resistant and the spear point slid off to one side, missing the brain. But enough nerves were severed or damaged to send the monster into a paroxysm of fury. Black smokers collapsed as the spasming body smashed into their deceptively fragile sides. Hardened mineral deposits splintered and powdered, filling the otherwise perfectly clear water with coarse debris that made it difficult to see.

Kicking backward, waving both arms as she tried to clear the water in front of her, Irina sought to distance herself from the rapidly clouding chaos. It was as if a cave was suddenly coalescing around her, reducing her vision and threatening to clog her gills. She started to cough. Brushing frantically at her neck, she tried to keep the water she was breathing as clean as possible. Inhaling ancient volcanic grit would be as harmful to her new gills as it would have been to her old lungs.

Worst of all, in the thickening rain of ash and gravel she couldn’t see what was going on around her. Unlimbering her own spear from the scabbard on her back, she prepared to defend herself against anything that might come at her from out of the gloom. She was not ashamed to admit later that when something reached out of the grainy murk to touch her right shoulder she screamed as loud as she could. It was the first time she had screamed underwater and she was surprised at how shrill it sounded in her own ears.

The appendage that had made contact belonged to a brightly glowing Glint.

“Calm yourself, Irina-changeling. It’s over. The hunter proves himself yet again.”

Around her the dark ocean fumed and boiled. “It doesn’t feel like it’s over,” she responded. “Or look like it.”

“There is no current here.” The luminous cuttlefish moved up alongside her. “Though it looks to be the same consistency and weight, much of the material of which these pillars are formed is lighter than normal rock. The broken bits will take some time to settle to the ground. Come.”

She followed but did not put away her weapon. Only when the twitching but expiring body of the smoker serpent came into view did she halfheartedly slide the spear back into the holder strapped to her back. As the rain of dark grit began to thin, she was able to see the rest of the monster’s body. It lay stretched out between and among those smoking towers it had not smashed to bits in the course of its death throes. Chachel’s spear, she noted, was still sticking out of the back of the creature’s skull.

Sathi and another, larger squid were slowly and respectfully easing the dead body of the ill-fated female cuttlefish up off the pair of stilled fangs on which she had been impaled. The stockier cephalopod’s corpse was dark now, the bright internal lights dimmed. Her ten arms hung limp, like a basket of dead eels.

Irina had witnessed cephalopodan funerals before, following the fighting at Siriswirll. Feeling even more the alien outsider than usual at such moments, she had kept her distance.

Though the dead soldier was half again as long as her, two-thirds of its length was made up of tentacles. These now hung loose and lifeless as the corpse was carried through the water by an octopus and squid. Only the glow from their internal lights enabled her to see the body. When the female had bled to death in the mouth of the smoker serpent, so had her bioluminescence. The usually compelling, complex cuttlefish eyes were as dark as the surrounding water.

Disposing of the body would have been a solemn enough occasion near the mirrorsky, where the ceremony would have been brightly lit by shafting sunlight. Here in the inky depths it was as if death pressed close all around. Irina could not have stood aside even had her presence gone unrequested. Far better to attend a funeral and be in the presence of others than to linger too long with total blackness clawing at one’s back—and the back of one’s mind.

Words of praise and remembrance were intoned. Both mersons and manyarms took turns speaking of the dead female’s bravery, of her dedication to her extended family and her contributions to the social life of the Sandrift community. When Irina’s turn came she spoke simply, raising her voice just enough to enable herself to be heard above the steady roar and rumble of the surrounding smokers.

“Huysalee fought so that I could live.” Having scarcely made the acquaintance of the dead fighter, she had nothing more to add. But the looks on the faces of the attending mersons and the color changes that flashed through the bodies of the hovering manyarms indicated that she had done just fine.

It was then that she noticed Chachel was not present. Reluctantly, she swam over to where Poylee was hovering parallel to the ground and remarked on the hunter’s absence.

Waving an arm at the all-encompassing darkness, it was impossible to tell if the merson was annoyed at Irina’s presence, by her question, or was simply disgusted with Chachel.

“He’s out there somewhere, scouting. He should be here. But I suppose someone has to keep watch, even at a time like this.”

Irina looked around. It was pure reflex, since there was nothing to see in the darkness except her companions and the occasional burst of light from some phosphorescent algae or lifeform clinging to the smoking towers.

“By himself?”

Poylee rolled her eyes. “No, of course not. That ridiculous cuttlefish friend of his is with him. Chachel can carry light enough, but he still can’t see as well in the dark as a manyarm.” Her tone was reproving. “You should know that by now. Haven’t you learned anything in all the time you’ve spent among us?”

Irina did know that, and she had learned much. One of the things she had learned was that there was no point in arguing with or getting into a fight with Poylee, whose inexplicable animosity gave no indication of subsiding. Having explained several times that there was nothing between her and the hunter Chachel and that she had no interest in him, she saw no point in repeating the disclaimers yet again. The eccentric notion that such a relationship existed had not merely found a place to fester in Poylee’s mind, it had taken up permanent residence there.

When the last admiring words had been spoken, the expedition’s manyarms gathered together on one side of the deceased cuttlefish. Coming up behind or beneath them, the mersons took firm hold of their multi-limbed companions. This bracing support enabled the manyarms to unleash the full power of their propulsive siphons without blasting themselves in the opposite direction. The combined watery thrust sent the increasingly pale corpse tumbling off into the darkness, the dead Huysalee’s arms spinning around her like a slow-motion pinwheel.

Only when she had passed completely from sight did the surviving manyarms abandon their formation and begin to gather up their belongings. The final send-off was unexpectedly poignant.

It was only later that she was able to catch up to Glint. Swimming easily alongside the softly glowing cuttlefish, she voiced an old concern that her Oshenerth surroundings had made new again.

“Tell me, Glint: what does your kind think happens to the essence of a person after they die?”

The cuttlefish cocked one eye at her as he jetted along. “That’s easy. They get eaten.”

“No, no,” she corrected him, “I don’t mean the body. I mean the soul, the spiritual part. Do manyarms believe in such a thing? My people do.”

The luminous cephalopod did not answer immediately. When he finally did, it was clear he had given the matter more than his usual thought.

“I think such a belief may be a consequence of living in void. If there is nothing around you to hold reality together, nothing you can feel, I can see how such a belief might take hold. But here below the mirrorsky we are always in contact with actual matter.” He gestured thoughtfully with a tentacle. “If there is such a thing as the essence of which you speak, I believe it would be touchable, or capable of being sensed—or eaten.”

She still felt that Glint was not fully comprehending the concept she was trying to express. Probably Oxothyr would have a better grasp of the nature of the individual soul. Having heard what the cuttlefish had to say on the matter, however, she was not sure she wanted to discuss the notion with the shaman. She had always been comfortable with the belief that everyone had a soul and she did not want to take a chance on being argued out of it. Not in this cold, dark place where she felt that the belief was both necessary and reassuring.