World of Water (3 page)

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

D
EV 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?

However 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

O
NE 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.