Authors: Susan Sizemore
There. That was desk.
She dashed around - bossylovedthing - Adrew - to the desk.
She turned over a squigglemarked - words - page, snatched up a stick and began to feverishly draw. Adrew came to stand behind her. He watched over her shoulder but silently left her to her work.
Megere was covered in sweat that added to the already salty dampness of her skin and clothes when she stepped back to show him her drawings. The odd ovoid creature she'd drawn was fairly detailed. The rest were stick figure drawings.
"Is that a whale?" Adrew asked.
She shook her head.
"Do the cartoons indicate that the octopi wish us to set sail to have a look at the thing that is not a whale?"
She nodded.
While she did the concept of speech snapped back into place so strongly it left her with a sharp pain in her head. She took a deep, gasping breath, then spoke, feeling as if she had not done so in years. "They say it fell from the sky. They don't know what it is. They have a guess, but don't want to say until we've had a look at it too. They are very - upset, confused." She grew dizzy with the near-panic of the octopis strained world view. "Humans are hard enough for them to believe in."
As the cabin whirled around her, Lord North noticed. He picked her up and carried her into their bedroom.
"We have to hurry!" she told him.
"The ship has to hurry," he said. "I'll inform Ram of our new course in a moment."
He stripped her clothes off her, laid her naked on the bed and put a blanket over her. Star jumped up to keep her company.
The responsibility was the admiral's. She could rest now.
"May I express a concern, sir?" Captain Ram asked.
Megere and Lord North were standing at the rear rail of the quarter deck, looking out to sea. She'd slept a few hours, then worked a while in the sickbay before coming up to join him in the wait to reach the octopi's designated destination. Late afternoon sunlight sparkled off the water and the ship's foaming wake.
They turned at Ram's question. North walked over to join the captain.
"Please continue, Captain," North said.
Ram nodded gravely. "As you know, sir, I am not comfortable with the idea of humans interacting with the inhabitants of the oceans." There was an ominous tone in his voice when he added, "They interact with our Framin enemies as much as they do with us."
Megere kept quiet, but her belief was that the octopi interacted with whoever sailed the ocean, be they Ang, Framin or from the many other countries that made up the island world.
"It is my belief that the octopi are neutral in our conflict," Lord North responded. "I know of incidents where they have rescued sailors from both sides. They do seem to have a concept of battle among themselves, so they are not ignorant of why we sink each others' ships."
"What if they are now taking sides? What if they are leading the
Ironbound
into a Framin trap? The Ang Empire cannot afford to lose this ship."
"I loathe the idea of losing any ship," North answered. "But I do not think we are being lured into danger from the Framin. Some other danger, perhaps," he conceded. "But my interpretation of the matter is that the octopi want our opinion of some phenomena they have never encountered before. I do appreciate your concerns, captain. Keep on the crew on the alert for any sign of danger."
"Aye, sir."
Captain Ram did not look completely satisfied, but he accepted his commander's words.
Megere chose to return to her own part of the ship. There were only two patients at the moment, both on the mend. So after a quick check of the sickbay, she settled down with Doctors Redcat and Vine for the three of them to go over and discuss recent entries in the medical journals each of them kept.
"Anyone listening to us would likely be bored," she said after an hour of so. Half of her mind had been on the familiar sounds and movements of the ship. She could tell when the
Ironbound's
anchor dropped into the water.
"I can't think why anyone would be bored," Dr. Vine replied, a humorous sparkle in his eyes.
There was a knock, and Admiral North's yeoman came in. He said, "They are ready for you now, Dr. Cliff."
Megere did not like the sound of that. It only now occurred to her that she would be required to go into the ocean again. Should she swear at the octopi or Adrew North? North, she decided, he would understand the anatomy concepts with far less trouble than the sea creatures.
"And he's going with me," she muttered under her breath as she followed the yeoman. Not that she had any way of fulfilling this decision.
She didn't have to worry about it because the first thing she saw when she came onto the main deck was Adrew North, stripped down to his shirt and trousers. His feet were bare.
He turned his wide, infectious grin on her as she approached. "Don't stare at me, gel. Look over the side."
She approached the rail with some trepidation and looked down at the water, and then up, and up. There it floated, a shining black teardrop at least three times the size of the
Ironbound
, which was the largest ship in the Fleet. Deeply indented swirls and squiggling patterns indented the creature's ebony skin.
"Your drawing of it was quite accurate," North said, coming up beside her. "Except you did not manage to convey that its markings have a faint silver glow to them."
"The light is not so bright as I remember - as the octopus remembered." Megere was quite in awe of the creature now that she saw it with her own eyes. "I really had no understanding of how truly
huge
it is."
"There are octopi waving at us," he said. "Calling us to join them."
Megere sighed. "I've noticed that."
He put a hand on her shoulder. "What's happened to your sense of adventure, Dr. Cliff?"
"I think I might have left it in the sickbay."
"Or in your other sailor suit?"
She had taken the time to change into an outfit for swimming.
"We best get this over with," he said, and led her to the boat waiting to be lowered into the water.
And down they went.
The sailors on the oars rowed them as close to the creature as the octopi would allow, which left them closer to the
Ironbound
than to the beast. The glowing black sides of the thing loomed up over them. The amazing sight reminded Megere of the high cliffs from which her family took their name. Except the south eastern cliffs of Ang's main island were made of bright white chalk, not black glowing - flesh?
A large octopus rose from the water. It tapped a tentacle on the side of the boat.
"Sounds impatient," Lord North said.
He stood, and gave Megere a hand up. Sailors gave their harnesses a quick, thorough check. After getting a thumbs-up from a crewman, she and North jumped into the water. They were clasping hands.
The octopus grabbed hold of them and towed them within a few feet of the towering black bulk of the creature. Looking up at it, Megere tried to calm the compulsive fear that it was going to roll over, crushing them like the sinking hull of a foundering ship.
"Well, doctor?" North asked. "What is that thing?"
Despite the fact that they were chin deep in the ocean, and their bodies firmly circled by large tentacles, she managed to give him a scathing look.
"Why don't we ask the octopus?" she said.
The octopus agreed. Megere wasn't sure how she knew this, but she did. She might have thought communication between their species was getting easier, if pain slashing through her head didn't accompany the knowledge. She lived with the pain, as it came with the apologetic knowledge that the octopus did not have the time to be gentle.
The star whale was dying.
Could the airswimmers do anything? Did they know what it was? Why was it in the water? Had they seen the fall? Did the airswimmers make the whale fall from the sky? Why?
The questions came at her like a cannon bombardment. Megere shook and shuddered in the tentacle's grasp.
She had no answers to the questions. What she had was her own knowledge.
I am a healer. Perhaps I can help it.
Too hot to touch. Too strange to touch. We tried. We died.
Their grief at their own losses flowed through Megere.
Megere tasted the salt tears as they ran into the salt water already wetting her face. This was her last awareness of self. The whole world became seeinthedark octopus images.
Too angular. Hard inside. How to move with angles?
"Dr. Vine, her eyes are open."
Airswimmer meaningsounds.
Translate.
No. Remember.
Know.
Dr. Vine. Face popped into memory.
Soundmaker who?
Blink. Blink. Airswim. Move angledhardlimb.
Megere sat up. She turned her head, and recognized Dr. Redcat standing next to the bunk.
"Ah," she said, and knew that she said, and what the sound meant though it meant very little.
Dr. Vine's hand passed in front of her face. "Dr. Cliff? Can you see? Can you hear?"
She managed to say, "Yes." Though the sound came out in a rather bubbling way. She raised her hands, looked at them, then rubbed her temples. Though it took her three times to find them. "I will not go through this again," she said. "He cannot make me do this again." Speaking of he. "How is Lord North? Where is Lord North?"
"In the bunk beside you," Lord North answered for himself. "Whisper if you must speak, my head is being hammered from the inside."
Megere looked at Dr. Vine. "How long has he been awake? And himself?"
The next thing she knew North was pulling her to her feet.
"Nooo...!" she complained. Her wail trailed after her as he pulled her from the sickbay.
Down a corridor, up a stairway, through his office, into the bedroom, and finally closed the door behind them. Gently.
"We tell no one about this. Do you hear me?" he demanded, before she could quite orient herself to where they were.
She did not comprehend his words. "What?"
He sat them down on the bunk and put his arm around her shoulders. She relaxed against his lean body. Star curled up by her thigh. She absorbed her world. After a while it was all normal again.
"Star needs a bath," Megere said. After a few more moments she looked at North. "What do you mean tell no one?"
"Ah, good. You're back."
"You recovered very quickly, my lord."
"Jealous?"
"Extremely." She detached herself from this comfortable safe nest and tested her ability to airswi-walk. No dizziness, no disorientation. Good. She reached the door, then turned back to face the Lord of the Admiralty. "What did you learn from the octopus?"
"I was passed on to a different octopus than you communicated with," he told her. "This one actually witnessed the creature fall from the sky. It would seem Mr. Flint was wrong about the Passing Ones."
It took Megere several moments to recall the evening when they had watched the lights arcing in the sky. He'd told them there were legends on his home island which said the Passing was a migration of living beings. He'd been right about that. He'd been wrong about--?
"Ah, yes... he said that no evidence has ever been found of one of the Passing Ones falling on land or sea, or burning up in the high air. He was wrong, I suppose. But shouldn't it have burned in the air? Only the largest of iron meteorites ever make it past the edge of the air."
"Recall how large the creature was."
Megere nodded, remembering a black mountain streaked with silver. It had been a teardrop island floating on the sea. Yet, it had been...
"A living creature." The words almost swamped her senses. "There is nothing that can live beyond the highest edge of the air."
"So we have always been told. So the world will go on believing," he added.
"What an odd thing to say. You are joking, I trust." Despite her calm words, she feared he meant what he'd said. "The world must know about this."
He stood. "It is the last thing the world needs to know."
"The octopi wanted us to know about this," she protested.
"That does not mean they want the rest of humanity to know. They were confused and concerned. They wanted a consultation. They have had one. My octopus and I came to the conclusion that the animal that fell from space had nothing to do with their species or ours. It was from some sort of migratory herd, nothing more. Space cows, my dear."
"And how did the pair of you come to that conclusion?"
"My confidant had shared thoughts with two of his folk who died trying to communicate with the alien creature. I cannot explain exactly what the octopus tried to show me. Herd animal proto-thoughts is the best I can explain it. We will never know why it fell to the sea. At least the octopi are satisfied that humans were no more involved in what happened to the creature than they were. They would be very angry with us if we did anything to endanger their water. We do not want the octopi angry with us. Now let us humans move on and let the octopi dispose of the creature's carcass as they see fit. What goes into the ocean belongs to them. We have a treaty with them to that effect."