Fathomless (29 page)

“Daniel, Aster doesn't know you're here. She doesn't know you're studying in Arkham, or about Geldman's treatments, or even that you've begun the Change.”

“I started years ago. All this time, you've never told her?”

On the sofa next to Eddy, Sean considered retreat; though Marsh's illusion held firm, having Daniel in his face made his shirt collar heave as if from invisible gills. “No,” he said. “So I've got to tell her now, and you've got to give her a chance to get used to the idea.”

“What idea?”

“That you haven't come back the way she's always trusted you would, ready to Change and go down to our deep home. It'll be a shock to her.”

“That I'm still human?”

“That you might stay human. Think about it.”

It seemed that Daniel started to. At least he shut up.

Marsh's collar heaved. “You think I'm the only one standing in your way? Truth is, I'm probably the one least opposed to you meeting Aster. I was telling your friends about our treaty with the Order. Most folks have come to accept it. The restrictions don't chafe much, and they see the benefits. But others oppose it on principle. They think the Order has no right to interfere with us. Some in our own family feel that way, Daniel.”

Daniel said nothing.

Marsh took advantage of his silence. “And what's got the anti-Order folk really stirred up is how the Order's interfering with you. With Abel going to Arkham every day, people got curious. Those porpoises at the harbor jetty? Most were natural beasts, commanded to distract onlookers, so the two Deep Ones illusioned as porpoises could have a good look at you. Maybe test your telepathy and talk. They'd already seen you living with the Order and going to Geldman's. They'd sensed you weren't Changing anymore. They put it all together, and they're saying it's too much, the Order of Alhazred helping you throw the gifts of Mother Hydra and Father Dagon back in their faces.”

Daniel glanced at the pocket doors. “Tom said that, too, how the Change is a gift.”

“The way you're fighting it is the biggest insult you could give around here. At least the anti-Order folks haven't spread the news. They don't want Aster to learn you're a traitor—their words, not mine. Unless you accept the Change, they're not going to welcome you, Daniel. You shouldn't have come to Innsmouth—in fact, I've been worried Arkham's too close. You called Abel a spy? A bodyguard is more like it. Speaking of which, he's waiting to take you to your car. You've got to be back in Arkham before the Order misses you. We can't have people saying that when Daniel Marsh Glass shows up, trouble follows on his heels.”

No, that wouldn't be great public relations. “I'm ready whenever,” Sean said, and Eddy made her willingness even clearer by standing up.

Daniel still held his ground. “When can I come back and meet my mother?”

“I'm not sure, Daniel.”

“It'll be harder for me to come when Sean and Eddy leave at the end of the month. I'll still be in Arkham, but I don't know how to drive. My father thought I was too sick to learn.”

“Transportation won't be a problem. Abel could drive you here. But you might want your friends with you?”

After a moment, Daniel nodded.

“I doubt I'll be able to arrange things before September. What about the winter vacation? Maybe your friends could come back?”

“I could,” Eddy said.

“Me, too,” Sean added.

“Why don't we work toward that, then?” Marsh extended his hand to Daniel. It looked human down to the manicured nails, but could shaking with an illusioned hand seal a bargain?

Maybe wondering the same thing, Daniel hesitated. When he did take Marsh's hand, though, he held on to it. “I've got one more question.”

“That's?”

“Once my mother took me to a beach like the one outside Innsmouth. Dunes and ruined houses, nobody around. Nobody but a man who'd ride me on his shoulders while he talked to her. He didn't come in a car or boat. He swam in to the beach. Then he swam out again and dived and didn't come back up. I should have worried he had drowned, but I remember just accepting it, the way my mother did.”

Marsh smiled as he gently extricated his hand from Daniel's. “That was Innsmouth Beach, you're right. And that was me come to see you. It's good you remember, Daniel.”

Daniel gave a jerky nod and walked out of the parlor. Seconds later, the heavy front door slammed.

Eddy took a couple running steps after him, but stopped when she got to Marsh. “What should we do now?”

“Go back to Arkham. Stay away from Innsmouth. Get Daniel to do the same until I can smooth his way.”

Sean joined her. “What if we can't keep him away, Mr. Marsh?”

“Well, then I guess you'll have to decide how far down you want to dive with Daniel. I'm just warning you, it could get much deeper than clapping eyes on Tom.”

As he walked toward the pocket doors, and Tom beyond, the maid clacked in to show Sean and Eddy out.

*   *   *

Maybe
Sean only imagined that watchers lurked behind every curtained window they passed on their walk down Federal Street, but it was a fact that three more Changers had parked on benches in New Church Green, and that the two least Changed started trailing them. Whenever they got close enough to add their stink to Abel's, Abel made a jabbing sign with his left hand, and they fell back a few pavement squares. In the town center, they slouched against the grocery store wall while Abel hustled Daniel into the shotgun seat of the Civic. From the twitch of his lips, Daniel wasn't catching any warm cozies from the Changers, and he glared back at them until the Civic rolled out of the parking lot.

In his kiwi Bug, Abel followed them to Route 1A. When they passed the gas station, he executed a screeching U-turn, waved out the window, and plunged back onto the road to Innsmouth. Marsh must have given him the night off from babysitting.

“Go to the gas station,” Daniel said.

“I've got enough gas to get to Arkham.”

“I know. Do it.”

“Why?”

“So we can sit in the parking lot until Abel's out of the way. I want to go back to that beach.”

“Dude, that's so not a good idea.”

Stretched out on the backseat, eyes closed, Eddy said nothing, which was what she'd said the whole drive out from Innsmouth.

“I don't know what kind of idea it is,” Daniel said. “I'll figure that out when we get there.”

“You can figure it out in the car.”

“Go back or let me out. I'll walk it.”

“Right, sure. I'm going to let you do that.”

“Go back,” Eddy said, eyes still closed, hands folded across her diaphragm like a tranced-out oracle's. “What is it, five o'clock?”

“Four thirty,” Daniel said.

Actually 4:40 by the Civic's clock. “Your grandfather said stay away.”

“From Innsmouth.”

“The beach is part of it.”

“Sean, just go the fuck back,” Eddy said.

The oracle didn't explain her command. Daniel's eyes bored holes into the side of Sean's skull. “Okay. But we're not hanging around for the sunset. And if Abel's hiding behind a dune to catch our asses, you guys can talk to him.”

However, no one challenged their return—they had the road to themselves all the way to the sandy parking lot at Innsmouth Beach. The tide was receding; at its high point, it had deposited long cairns of seaweed studded with shells and crab carapaces, blue and peekytoe and horseshoe. Keeping to the shoreward side of the cairns, Daniel walked north. Eddy followed on the seaward side and far enough downslope so that the waves washed over her bare feet. Sean took a middle route, tramping through the heaped ocean debris for the distraction of hearing it crunch. He would have headed south, away from Innsmouth. Obviously Innsmouth was what Daniel wanted to see, because he climbed the last high dune and planted himself among the grasses at its top. Sean joined him. The breeze had strengthened enough to keep down the greenhead flies, and they were able to sit in peace and enjoy a postcard-ready view of the harbor and town and Plum Island in the distance.

Eddy stayed on the beach and played this game she'd invented when they were kids. Like the flock of sanderlings that skittered ahead of her, she danced at the shifting seam between water and land, trying to keep one foot in each element. Her score was perfect until a bigger wave surged to her knees. Even though Sean didn't call it, she accepted the loss and trudged up the dune to stand behind them.

Daniel pointed north. “See that black line a ways out, opposite Innsmouth?”

Sean spotted it, a broken arc of rock like the ridged spine of a sea serpent. “That's Devil Reef?”

“Yeah. When we camped here, my mom always watched the tide go out and the reef come up. She told me mermaids lived under it and came out on the rocks in the moonlight. I don't remember seeing them myself, but I bet she did. I bet some swam over to visit her. Crazy. She was telling me the truth, and I didn't know it.”

“The city down there,” Sean said.

“Y'ha-nthlei.”

“If it's like the glass version, it's the most awesome thing ever.”

“No wonder my mom stays there most of the time. That vacation we took, she must have been thinking about going deep. Already wanting it.”

Eddy's feet dislodged sand, making it cascade in rivulets around them. She remained silent, so Sean said, “I bet your mom didn't want to go deep back then. Not while you were a little kid.”

“I was still pretty young when she left.”

“That was after she started Changing. Anyway. Now you know she's alive and okay. And your grandfather's alive, and he's a pretty cool dude.”

“He's as bad as my father in one way. He won't take me to see her.”

“He will eventually.”

“How long's
eventually
?” Daniel fingered a tuft of dune grass. “If people in Innsmouth are down on me for not Changing, I don't see how my grandfather's going to win them over. It sounds like Changing's part of their religion.”

Defying the sand butt her wave-spumed shorts threatened, Eddy sat next to Daniel. Not girlfriend close, but not on the other end of the dune either. “What do you want to do, Daniel?”

He flattened his tuft of grass to the sand. “I want to go look for my mom. I want to go to the reef.”

The back of the sea serpent humped as the sea shrank from the reef. It didn't look inviting, not even compared to Innsmouth. “You know that would be too dangerous,” Eddy said.

“No, I don't. See, Eddy, I never got the feeling anyone in Innsmouth wanted to
hurt
us. Not even the Changers that followed us back to the car. They were pissed at me, but it was like you'd be pissed at a relative who'd screwed up. They made me feel ashamed, not afraid.”

“You don't have anything to be ashamed of. You weren't insulting them by trying to stay human. You didn't even know about Deep Ones when your Change started.”

Daniel tugged at the wiry grass so hard, it sliced the tender web between his thumb and index finger. He sucked the welling cut. “But I know about them now. They want me to stop the treatments. So does my grandfather. So does Tom. I got that much from what he thought at me.”

“Tom wants you to end up like him?” Sean said.

“Didn't you get it? He's not dying. When he gets through the Change, he'll be stronger than ever. He'll live hundreds of years.”

“Do you want that?” Eddy said, maybe too calmly.

Daniel palm-scrubbed a drop of blood that had smeared his chin. “All I want is to talk to my mom, and I'm scared if I wait, something will happen to stop me. I bet the Order has agents in Innsmouth, to make sure they're sticking to the treaty—if Marvell finds out we came, he'll tell my father. Sean, you heard him at that meeting. He thinks it's the Order's duty to do every damn thing my father wants.”

No getting around it: if Marvell could keep Daniel from meeting his mom, he would. “Could you swim out to the reef?”

“Easy, but I'm not Changed enough to go down into the chasm where Y'ha-nthlei is. Scuba divers couldn't, either—you'd have to have one of those diving suits or a sub, it's so deep. But if I hung around on the reef, Deep Ones might come up, and I could tell them who I wanted.”

Eddy scooped sand. “And then they'd deliver your message to Aster, no problem?” She tossed her handful down-dune. “We already know the anti-Order crowd's keeping her in the dark about you.”

“The more reason for Daniel to tell her the truth,” Sean said.

“Mr. Marsh is going to do that. He's going to arrange for Daniel to meet her.”

“Yeah,
eventually.
And over my father's dead body,” Daniel said.

“You really don't think you can talk to your father?”

“Eddy, he told me my mom was dead. He told me she killed herself.” Daniel spread his fingers, flaunting his scars. “He let the doctors do this.”

She looked away, then up again, biting her lips. After a long brave gaze into Daniel's eyes, she nodded. “All right. Talking's out.”

The lower the sun sank, the longer the shadow Devil Reef cast eastward over the gold-spangled ocean, but Innsmouth cast a far longer shadow toward the reef. More than ever, Sean didn't want to go near the town after dark, or out to the rising sea serpent. “Dude.”

Practicing with Deep Ones must have kicked Daniel's telepathy up a notch. “Yeah,” he said. “You guys couldn't swim out to the reef with me.”

“And no seawater for you, anyhow. We'd need a boat.”

“If we went back for the kayaks, Marvell or Helen could stop us.”

Kayaks out that far, at night, maybe versus Deep Ones? Not happening. “I'm thinking a motorboat. And what happens if we go to the reef and no one shows up to party? Is your telepathy up to phoning Y'ha-nthlei?”