The Long Twilight (26 page)

Gon's lungs were bursting. How far above was the surface? He stroked, stroked, eyes bulging, jaws locked, chest straining. It had to be close now; only a little farther. His vision was blurring, shot through with red; his lungs ached, his tissues screamed their torture. Hold on, hold on—

Without his conscious volition, against every conscious instinct for self-preservation, his mouth opened, his lungs heaved convulsively. He felt the icy pressure in his throat, the burning pain as the sea water flooded his straining lungs—and blackness flooded his mind.

O'Royle did not suspect his error until the rush of inch-long crustaceans swirled around him like a flock of startled birds. Then they were gone—and a vast gray-black body hurtled after them.

"Sea-bull," O'Royle grunted. "Deep-sea critter. What's it doing this close to shore?"

He glanced at his compass—and then he saw. He had been holding steadily on course—directly
away
from shore. By now he was five miles at sea, in the dreaded Deep, where the big hunters roamed, looking for red meat

VI

Gon floated in a pink mist of pleasure, wafted from cloud to sunset cloud on a perfumed breeze. At his whim, he sailed effortlessly across the pillow-soft sky, drifted with the gentle tides of air, plunged downward in a dizzying swoop, soared upward again, faster than thought . . .

"It's the dream again," he thought. "The dream of flying. But this time it's real. I
can
fly. I always knew I could, if I could just remember the trick . . ."

He flew on, savoring the total freedom of the spirit and body that expressed itself in soaring high above all mundane cares. Brother Glad, Cruthers, the others, seemed remote, unreal. There had been a thing he had worried about; what was it? It seemed so far away now, so unimportant. Something about a role he had to play in the Plan of the Infinite. Gon almost laughed aloud at the innocence of the conception: that the power that had evoked galaxies from nothingness should require the intervention of a boy to bring about its purposes . . .

Brother Glad had wanted him to go to Meries, the water-world where he had been born, where his mother had died in the birthing; to go down again to the sea, seek out his kin, begin a movement to bring them back to Terra.

Back to Terra! This time Gon laughed, surrendering himself to the inexpressible grotesquerie of the idea. Back to Terra—to live in goldfish bowls, and flatten their noses against the glass, begging the aquarium visitors for crumbs of fishfood? Or to waddle about the dry, dusty streets of the cities, wearing water-filled helmets? Or perhaps to swim glumly about the polluted Earthly seas, on the alert for the mile-wide pelagic harvesting craft. Once caught in their water-sweeps, they'd wind up as organic fertilizer for hydroponic farms!

Gon blinked the tears of hilarity from his eyes—and as he did, he became aware suddenly of a coldness and a pressure against his ribs. He moved to relieve the discomfort and felt a sense of vertigo that made him flail out with both hands to bring himself upright. Smoky, gray-brown opacity swirled before him. He waved it away, and was looking out across a rolling expanse of dun-colored hills, densely grown with tall, willowy plants that waved in the light but irresistible wind—like images reflected in the surface of a pool. The light that shone from the green-black sky seemed to waver, rippling through minutely discernible changes of intensity. It was a weirdly alien landscape—and yet, in some indefinable way, a comfortable one. But—where was he?

He now remembered Brother Glad's invitation to accompany him, the preparations for the trip, the long, eventless weeks in space . . .

And the landing on the deserted shore . . . and the building of the camp . . .

The rolling, phosphorescent sea. Himself wading into the cold, alien surf, Brother Glad urging him on; his first swim, the let-down as no Meried came swarming to meet him, the discouragement, the suicidal thoughts. The one, last try that he had privately promised himself to make, after which—

After? What had happened? Had he been successful or . . .?

He remembered a face, narrow-bluish-green, wide-eyed, purse-mouthed, sleek.

Seryl. He had met her, and—

With a convulsive movement, Gon fought to tear free of the remembered trap—and drifted effortlessly forward across the waving grass-plain beneath him.

I'm flying
, the thought crashed into his mind.
But that was a dream.

But I'm not dreaming now; I'm awake—and I'm flying
. He moved his hands and at once his body responded, angling up and to the left, drifting as lightly as a gas-filled balloon.

Drifting. But not like a balloon; like a fish in water.

Not flying, swimming.

Not breathing air . . . but water.

Gon drew a deep breath, felt the healing coolness flow in, flow out again. He was breathing under the sea. He had lost his mask and mouthpiece, and he was still alive. Lost in the wonder of the miracle, he drifted with the swift current toward the deep sea.

Consciousness was a light powered by a failing battery. As his awareness flickered dimly alight again, O'Royle knew that it was hopeless, that he would never reach the distant shore. He throttled back the wet-jet with a motion that sent new pangs stabbing through his chest, and hung motionless, his body a broken vessel filled with pain.

Pressure waves beat against him; a thing vast as a whale loomed out of dimness, tossing him like a chip in its wake. O'Royle saw the great scarred flank slide past him at a distance of less than three yards, saw the strokes of the mighty flippers that could crush a man with a careless flick, unaware of his presence.

But this monster was aware, he realized as it turned and made a second pass at even closer range. This time he saw the coiled proboscis, the narwhale-like tusks, the spined ears, the great swell of the crested shoulders as the grampus—a mutated Indian elephant—swam straight at him. O'Royle half expected to see the jaws gape to snap him up, but at the last moment, the behemoth rolled, showing a flash of the shark-like teeth studding the wide mouth, modified for flesh eating, not by man, but by natural mutation, here in the adopted environment of Meries. The giant meat-eater was confused by the sterile scent of the protective suit, O'Royle knew; but in another moment, satisfied of his harmlessness, its appetite would assert itself. The next pass would be the last.

He watched it move away, turn with a lazy flick of its modified limbs, hover, measuring him for the kill. He saw the trunk go up, the jaws open. As helpless as a newborn infant, he waited for the final charge.

VII

When Seryl returned with a party of sea-men to the place where she had left Gon trapped, the sea-wolves were still patrolling there; but of the half-man there was no sign.

"They've taken him," Dreen said. "We're too late."

"No—I smell no blood in the water—only a trace from his earlier wounds," Seryl retorted. "He must have freed himself."

"Look—his breathing apparatus," another Meried called, retrieving the tank and attached mouthpiece from the sea floor a few yards below. "Without this, can he live?"

Seryl uttered a choked cry. "Poor half-man! He wished so much to live . . ."

"We must find his body," Dreen said.

"There's a vicious current here; by now the corpse will be far away—if the carrion beasts have spared it," a man said.

"Why venture into dangerous waters on a futile quest?" another questioned.

"You needn't come; but I must try, for the sake of my friend, whom I failed." Dreen swam away, Seryl beside him. The others hesitated, then followed.

The sea-man hailed Gon from a distance, calling in the strange, penetrating under-sea voice of his kind:

"Sheer off! A hunting grampus near!"

Gon hesitated, confused by the warning and filled with an urgent desire to talk.

"No time to waste," the stranger called. "It's occupied for the moment with easier prey; a dryman, poor fool, weighted in his trappings like a mud-castler!"

"A dryman?" Gon queried; but the other was gone in the murk. A land-dweller, about to be killed by a sea-hunter? Could it be Brother Glad looking for him? But the missionary owned no scuba gear—and no one else in the party would have reason to come here.

Cautiously, Gon advanced. A pair of sea-men flashed past him at the edge of visibility. He went on and saw a group of Merieds hovering in the water ahead. As he swam up to them, one, a small, slender female, turned—

"Gon!" Seryl called sharply, coming toward him. Beyond her, Gon saw through an obscuring haze of roiled silt a shape as big as a twenty-man copter, gray-black, horny-hided, massive; flippers bigger than a man's body stroked restlessly, holding its position.

"You're alive—and—" Seryl broke off as Gon swept past her, his eyes on the man-shape drifting in the water ahead. A dryman, as the Meried had said, bulky in a vermilion-dyed dry-suit with a bubble helmet, through which the features of a square, lined face, white-haired, blue-eyed, were visible. The face of Captain Ben O'Royle.

"Father!" Gon shouted. At his cry, the Merieds whirled; the giant sea-thing gave an ill-tempered thrust of its flukes, turning ponderously to face the new disturbance. A big sea-man came toward Gon as if to intercept him, but he veered aside from the out-stretched hand, shot to O'Royle's side.

"Father! Run! Quick!" Gon grabbed at the older man's arm, only then saw that his face was slack, his eyes half-shut.

Gon whirled to the sea-men, ignoring the hovering mass of the sea-elephant, which had swung again to face him.

"Help me! He's sick!"

"Gon! Beware! He'll charge!" Seryl called. She darted forward, raised her tiny spear-thrower, fired from the hip, once, twice, three times full into the monster's face. Gon felt the tiny shocks, saw the darts leap to imbed themselves in the expanse of horny hide above the back-curled trunk as the sea-elephant, head lowered and tusks foremost, rushed at him.

For a frozen instant, time seemed to stand still. Gon hung motionless, peripherally aware of the staring eyes of the helpless sea-men in the background, of the unconscious, suited man beside him, of the curious translucence of the water, of the thumping of his heart, watching the bulk of the leviathan grow as it hurtled straight at him. Then, at the last possible instant, he moved aside—not a wild leap for safety, but a calculated side-step, just sufficient to avoid the forward-lunging tusk of the monster. Instantly, Gon was in behind the spined ear, and with a powerful thrust of his legs, astride the horny back, grasping the umbrella-ribbed dorsal fin, flattening himself to the curve of the great beast's shoulders.

The grampus fought. It plunged, rolled, flailed backward with its trunk. The blows, impeded by the density of the medium, thudded across Gon's shoulders like strokes with a canvas hose. He pressed himself closer, digging his fingers into the tender membranes at the base of the back-flattened ears, his knees locked along the main rib of the fin.

Over and over the grampus rolled; once it slammed the mucky bottom, and for a moment Gon was immersed in murky ooze; but he held his breath, and a moment later his mighty mount was streaking forward at a speed that sent water sluicing back around the clinging rider like the backwash of a torpedo.

As the animal's course veered left, Gon twisted at the tender tissues of the left ear; the grampus angled back to the right. Gon hung on grimly, saw the color of the water changing, lightening. Abruptly, the sea-elephant broke water with a Niagara-like smash of surf; it crashed back then, splashing and hissing, to surge ahead another hundred yards. Then it was humping itself through the shallows like a monster walrus, spewing water from its trunk and mouth. Air was like fire in Gon's lungs as he ejected the water from them. Coughing, he clung, waiting for the blow that would smash him flat; but panicked, the sea-elephant had forgotten the weapons of its trunk and its bulk. It could have plucked him free, trampled him, rolled on him. Instead, it floundered up on the beach, bellowing and snorting. Gon blinked away the film of water from his eyes and saw the survey camp a few hundred yards off to the left. He saw men running out and heard their shouts. Brother Glad appeared, rifle in hand. As Gon raised himself to shout a warning, the creature changed course abruptly, hurling itself toward the sounds. Gon's knees slipped from their grip; the grampus skidded to a halt, lowered its head, and tossed. Gon felt himself going up and over, then falling, to slam against the gravelly sand with a stunning impact. Above him the big bull lowered its head, lunged. The needle-tipped ivories gouged into the sand on either side of Gon; the horny hide of the immense head rasped him, bumping him as the beast strove to gore him, but was fended off by its own tusks.

There was a sharp
car-rong
as a heavy rifle fired nearby. The monster grunted and keeled forward; its weight came crushingly on Gon. The sky went dark, and far away voices shouted through the failing light.

VIII

Brother Glad sat smiling at him.

Beside him, his father, pale but recovered, smiled too.

"They told me what you did, Gon," he said. "You saved my life; but more than that, you taught them something."

"It was a stroke of genius to think of driving the beast on shore," Brother Glad said. "The Merieds never dreamed of such a thing."

"Too bad . . . you killed it," Gon gasped. There was pain in his chest, in his arms, in every bone of his body. "They . . . could be tamed . . . used . . ."

"It's not dead, just drugged," the missionary said. "Our fellows helped the sea-men to winch it back into the water. When it wakes it will be in harness." His smile widened. "They have great plans for capturing more in the same way."

"Gon, the doctor examined you," O'Royle said. "You have a few broken ribs, but you'll be all right. But the curious thing is—water respiration seems to have had the effect of metamorphosizing your metabolism. Your reflex times, muscular tone—everything—has become almost double the Terran norm—or the Meried norm, for that matter."

"It seems to be just what Captain O'Royle called it—a metamorphosis," Brother Glad said.