The Book of Water (4 page)

First she saw a mass of huge bright boats crowding the sand off to the left. They were nothing like the flat-bottomed scows that plied the rivers of the lowlands back home but they were surely boats, none the less. She’d seen such boats sewn into the tapestries that softened the stone walls of Tor Alte. But she could put no label to the square dark hulks looming to the right like a range of hills. They could be buildings, she supposed, but she saw no doors or windows, only seams and slits in the rusted metal. Fortifications of some sort, she decided. And then, between that grim and faceless wall and the rainbowed hulls of the boats, there was the water. So much water! Now Erde understood the source of the continuous rolling sound of thunder. She knew without being told that she was looking at the sea.

The sight of it lifted her spirits. She had always dreamed of visiting the sea. But the dragon regarded the roaring, tumbling water with evident trepidation. Erde patted his
bony nose reassuringly. Moving water was not his favorite thing. She thought this odd, since in the bard tales, it was the uncharted seas from which the dragons of legend arose to swallow unfortunate sailing ships and their crews. But Erde had learned to think differently about dragons since meeting this one. Her dragon was definitely earthbound, and unlikely to swallow up anything without first asking its permission.

Then, over the din of the waves, she heard shouting. Male voices, several of them. She couldn’t make out the words, but there was no mistaking the high-pitched tone of derision. Around the end of the dark unknown hulk, a man came running. At least, she thought it was a man. It was shaped like one, though he ran with the rangy sure grace of a young colt. But there was something wrong with his skin. It was unnaturally dark, darker than a farmer’s after a summer in the fields, darker even than the gypsies who sometimes pulled their wagons up to Tor Alte’s gates to barter for food and shelter with their exotic trinkets.

The dark man pulled up short when he spotted the bright fleet hauled up in front of him on the sand. Even from a distance, his dismay was obvious. Beside Erde, the dragon tensed. She could feel him stilling, preparing to make himself invisible. He sent her an image of hiding behind the nearest boat. But it wasn’t the running man who was shouting. It was the three others behind him, as dark as he but shorter and thicker. When they spotted the first man, one stooped to snatch up a club. Erde thought they looked terrifying.

—
Now, Dragon! Before they see us!

Erde prepared to dash for cover among the boats. But the dragon was no longer watching the events unfolding on the beach. He sat up very tall, intent on the churning water. A sort of thrumming sang through his body, like the vibrations of lute strings after the music has ended.

—
Dragon, what is it?

—
There! She comes!

—
Who?

—
The one who Calls me!

Erde squinted at the line of dirty froth. Was there someone else approaching along this crowded shore? Then she saw it, the snakelike neck and narrow head, lifting above
the cresting waves. The body was slim and streamlined and surprisingly small, but Erde had grown up with legends. She had no trouble recognizing one when she saw it.

Another dragon was rising out of the waves.

N
’Doch decides he can’t be hallucinating. Instead of the usual speed buzz, there’s music in his head. And it’s pretty interesting music, too. He’s tempted just to give in and listen, when suddenly, he figures it out. He laughs with relief, and right away starts looking around for the hidden lights and camera crews.

A dinosaur on the beach. Yeah, sure.

He knows what’s going on. This is no poisoned-tomato vision, it’s a special effect, got to be.

Of course the vid people won’t know they’ve stumbled on a veteran. Usually they want amateurs for these “true-life” guerrilla shoots, so N’Doch won’t tell them about playing background last year in
War Zone
. He’ll let them see him do his stuff first.

Meanwhile, the special effect continues to stare at him like it wants something important. He’s impressed. It’s very realistic. Not your ordinary robot, then, but some new kind of cybercritter, maybe, or even . . . a cleverly engineered mutant! That means the vid company must have money, lots of it. N’Doch sees this might be his big break. If they’re rolling tape now and he plays his part well, they’ll keep it in and he could be famous. He’ll have to guess what he’s supposed to do. They never tell you in advance, or it wouldn’t be a “true-life” pic. And if he can figure out a way to work in a song, he’ll really have it made.

He springs to his feet, but his legs are still shaky. They don’t really want to carry him the several steps it would take to come within arm’s length of the critter. It, no,
she
—somehow he knows this—shifts her feet restlessly but does
not approach. N’Doch wonders idly, if she isn’t a robot, how the wranglers give the creature her cues.

A deep wave recedes across a stretch of wet sand, revealing the critter’s long flat tail: a blade of muscular flesh, which she coils neatly around her webbed feet as she eases onto her haunches in front of him. N’Doch looks her over, calmer now that he’s settled on a logical explanation for her presence. His legs decided to hold him up, and once again, he is taken by the creature’s beauty.

What seemed from a distance to be shiny fish scales is actually a fine silvery fur as silky as the richest velvet. N’Doch has never touched real velvet, but he’s seen it on TV. Immediately, he longs to touch it. What he covets most are its strange electric-blue highlights. He wonders if it grew this way, or if they’ve somehow wired her for it. And probably she’s bred small so they can fit her into the frame with human actors. Otherwise, they’d need a long shot to see all of her.

Her head, which he’d taken for naked but for her large dark eyes and little seallike ears, is set with a ruff and crest of gauzy iridescent flesh. It lifts lightly as it dries in the sun, softening her sleek profile with curls and complications. The crest trails down her slim neck and along her spine. N’Doch thinks of the gossamer-finned carp he saw once in a rich woman’s backyard pool—the first (and last) time he’s ever been confronted with food just too beautiful to eat.

He can’t settle on any one of the current vid series to connect with this particular situation. It’s been a few days since he’s caught up on his TV-watching. It could be a new story line in an old show, or a pilot for a whole new program. Maybe they don’t even know the story yet, and they’re waiting for it to develop naturally out of the Precipitating Event—how ’bout it?—a man meets a dinosaur on the beach. N’Doch wishes he’d been at
that
story conference. But this must be why the creature looks so impatient. She’s waiting for him to get on with the action.

Since the ball’s apparently in his court, he tries imagining the song he’d write about such a meeting. He decides the first thing he should do is
touch
the creature. They’re sure to love that, him looking like he’s totally amazed and trying to prove what he’s seeing is real. No problem playing it,
either, since it’s exactly where he’s at. But it’s a hard thing, he discovers, to make himself cross the narrow but infinite space of sand between him and the critter, and lay a palm to that blue-lit silver velvet.

Still, his career’s at stake. He manages it. The first impossible step is all it takes to draw him swiftly the next three or four. He reaches out, trying not to look too tentative. The critter’s fur is the softest thing he has ever felt. As he smooths his hand from shoulder to ribcage, he feels a rush of heat and embarrassment because the touch is so oddly intimate. Bemused, N’Doch retreats a step. Again he hears coughing behind him, but now he cannot look away. The creature fixes him once more with her liquid gaze, then opens her wide mouth and sings to him.

It is the music N’Doch has waited for all his life. He doesn’t realize he’s been waiting until he hears it, but there it is, and his first response is tragic: the only
right
music has already been written, and by someone else. His next is relief that it has no lyric. At least it has waited for him to put words to it. He begins to hum along. The melody comes into his head just as it is leaving her throat. He knows already the words he will write, words of awakening and discovery and of a great task to be accomplished, notions he’s never concerned himself with in his music so far, but N’Doch knows better than to argue with inspiration. He slips into harmony. They are a perfect duet. They build a crescendo together, append a short coda and finish on the same drawn-out high note. They stare at each other in silence. Even the surf has quieted to a rolling caress.

N’Doch thinks:
Wow. This is even better than sex
.

Then the creature lifts her gaze above his head and sings again. The bulged reply is so harsh and unmusical that N’Doch whips around, offended.

What he sees first is a white girl standing beside a big rock. He’s perplexed by the white girl, who is very strangely dressed, but mostly by the rock, which is the size of a semi. He can’t remember a rock that big on this part of the beach and it’s not exactly the sort of thing you’d miss. Just as he’s deciding the white girl is part of the production crew and the rock is a piece of scenery, the rock moves. In that instant, it is no longer a rock, but a bronze-and-green beast,
also the size of a semi, and looking even more like a dinosaur than the one that came out of the water. This one even has horns, and claws each the length of a scimitar.

Two of them. Wow. N’Doch grins. Now he’s
sure
the producers have money. He smiles at the white girl, in case she’s one of them, even though she does seem kind of young. But he knows the media are run by young people. He’s been worried about being over the hill at twenty.

When she doesn’t smile back, only stares at him wide-eyed, he sees she must be an actress—she’s thin enough, maybe a little too tall—and the director has told her to be afraid of him. N’Doch thinks she’s doing a pretty good job. He gives her a brief nod which he hopes looks professional. He’s a bit jealous that she seems to know the script and he doesn’t. Her costume is weird, like something out of a gladiator epic. Well, maybe not gladiators, but something with swords, from a much colder part of the world than this one. He tries to figure what country she’s meant to be from. No place is
that
cold anymore, except maybe Antarctica in the winter. The dumb girl’s wearing leather and long sleeves and heavy woven trouser-things and boots, more clothes on her back than N’Doch’s ever owned in his life, and she looks like she hasn’t washed in months. Plus, her hair’s all choppy. N’Doch admits he doesn’t know much about white girl’s hair but he does know a bad ’do when he sees one. He likes the neatly sheathed dagger at her belt, but can’t help thinking how she must be dying of the heat under all that stuff. Right now she’s not doing much but staring at him, but he can see she’s beginning to sweat.

The two cybercritters are staring, too—at each other. N’Doch wonders if they’re supposed to fight. That would account for the strange tension he senses in the air between them. Some kind of communicating going on, he decides, so they
must
be machines, remote controlled by the technicians.

The big brownish one rises from his couch. He takes a few big steps down the beach. The smaller silvery one goes to meet him. She’s quicker, more lithe. Her greater grace makes N’Doch feel proud, though he can’t imagine why, particularly since she moves right past him like she’s never seen him before in her life. And after all that music and touching. He stands aside, miffed. He’s really hoped this
part would be more than a walk-on. Then he notices the white girl is sticking right by her beast as he moves. N’Doch thinks,
Hey, you can just accept what you’re given or you can try to make the most of it
. He turns and follows the silver one up the beach.

The two creatures meet halfway. N’Doch waits, or rather, hopes for sparks to fly. Instead, they halt a few paces apart and bend their long necks in simultaneous bows. The brown one towers over the silver one. His curving ivory horns pass like scythe blades to either side of her blunt, sleek head. The formality of it raises the hair on the back of N’Doch’s neck. It seems so proper somehow, so . . . 
ancient
, even if it is all for the camera.

The big brown one twists his golden gaze back at the white girl. She comes immediately to his side, her hand sliding familiarly up his rough cheek. She smiles shyly at the silver beast, then dips and rises in a gesture of greeting that looks awkward in leather and pants. N’Doch guesses it would look all right if she were wearing some kind of ball gown. He tries picturing her in fancy dress, lots of makeup and jewels, a little less hair or a whole lot more. The effect is not unpleasing. Maybe they’re planning something like that for the finale.

But next, all three of them are staring in his direction. To N’Doch, it feels like an assault. He just knows someone is expecting something of him. At a loss, he spreads his arms and grins, and again his head is full of music, sounds he’s sure he’s been on the point of imagining. It crowds his thoughts, drowns all awareness, of the beach around him, of the thick heat and the subdued crashing of the surf, all this fades before a rush of tone and rhythm and harmony. N’Doch struggles to keep his cool. He’s had his moments of mad musical inspiration, but it’s never come to him like this, fully orchestrated, damping his other senses as it demands his immediate and total attention. His body is actually vibrating like a drumhead. He thinks maybe they’re beaming the sound track directly into his brain. Last he’d checked, this wasn’t possible, but there it is inside him, this sound, this music that’s like someone else’s voice singing in his head. He is helpless to do anything but surrender and listen to it.