Waking Storms (43 page)

Hadn’t she once tasted something like this before? Luce fought down the hideous memory, water stained and sticky as orcas leaped, as a tiny hand floated by...

Maybe the tribe had deserted this cave, though. It was oddly silent as Luce reached the spot where the rocky walls widened. The pollution was getting thicker, too: the water was actually
red.

Luce gasped with the first shock of understanding, then gagged as the blood-drenched water flooded her mouth. She broke the surface sputtering, spitting, trying to get that taste
out
...

It
couldn’t
be real. It couldn’t.

A milky leg floated right in front of her, toes wrinkled and grayish pink. It was bobbing by itself in the filthy water, and Luce saw the ragged flesh where it had separated from its body, pale bone protruding like a snapped-off branch. Luce spun, trying somehow not to see—

That open neck, blood still burbling slowly up through dark tubes. A pink, gleaming bubble swelled at the top of one tube, filled by the air still rising from a dead girl’s lungs. Luce twisted again.

Rivulets of crimson dripped down the rocks. A chest wound gaped wide between flat, childish breasts; Luce thought she saw the heart ... There, a pile of intestines hung from a pale brown stomach ... Inches away two blue eyes stared into nothingness, but the face below them was missing...

There were no tails anywhere, though. For half an instant Luce persuaded herself that no mermaids had died, that Anais had ripped apart a group of humans. Luce was still telling herself that when she turned and jumped wildly back as she saw Rachel’s weak, babyish face. It was split open down the middle, fragments of her skull sticking to her cheeks, and her blond hair was clotted with blood. That elegant brown foot belonged to
Jenna;
those pale curls led to Samantha’s severed head...

No,
Luce thought. It couldn’t be true. The mermaids could defend themselves. If anyone attacked them they would sing. Their enemies would all drown...

Get out of here,
Luce told herself.
Get out get out get out.
She couldn’t move, couldn’t scream.

They’ll come back! Lucette, go!

The red water turned and whipped past her, the fouled tunnel streaked, then opened. Gray shapes approached: sharks, drawn by the stench. Luce lashed her tail, racing, the soursweet taste of blood still glutting her mouth. She gulped in mouthful after mouthful of salt water and spat it out again, trying to cleanse herself. It didn’t help, though; nothing helped, nothing could
ever
help. She was in the wild open sea near the cliffs, but the sea was corrupted, slimy with death. She ruptured up through the waves and inhaled, staring frantically around at the endless night...

It’s starting,
Luce thought, but she barely understood the words.
It’s starting, it’s starting...

Something black and fast. On the water’s surface, not below it. Luce didn’t even hear it coming until it was almost on top of her, until the helmeted men on board were shouting, hefting huge black guns—until a pointed silver blade whizzed past, nicking her shoulder. A line of blood appeared. More filth for the water.

Without thinking about what she was doing, Luce screamed to the sea. It answered her, rising into what might have almost seemed to be a natural rogue wave sixty feet tall if it didn’t leap straight for the black boat. It came at the men, furious and purposeful, and Luce could hear their small tinny screams drowned out by her own enormous voice, shriek and song at once. The boat was thrown high above her so fast that she could barely follow it, rolling upside down as it slammed into the cliffs. Its hull crunched like a mussel shell, and kicking men dropped into the suddenly outracing swirl. There were rocks in the water; they might survive...

“Why should she care? All of them were murderers. The mermaids lay slaughtered, and these men were responsible.

No.
She
was. The guilt was hers. She had known in her heart that this moment was coming. If she’d only listened to Dana, to Nausicaa, only led the tribe away in time, instead of letting herself be fooled by some human’s thoughtless words...

It’s starting,
Luce told herself again. She was swimming underwater so quickly that all she could feel was speed. This time she understood what that meant.
The war. It’s starting. We’ll have to fight...

How could they fight, though, when the humans had found a way to block the power of their songs?
Those helmets...

Everything was broken; everything was destroyed. But she couldn’t collapse, couldn’t allow herself to give in and die.
South. Go south; warn Sedna. Warn everyone...

She had to find Nausicaa.

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to the following authors, whose wonderful books taught me a great deal and also informed
Waking Storms
at many points: Sylvia A. Earle’s
The World Is Blue
provided me with an invaluable overview of ecological problems affecting the oceans.
The Climate Crisis
by David Archer and Stefan Rahmstorf was also helpful in this regard. Because I’ve never seen pack ice or nilas myself, my descriptions were largely based on what I learned from Barry H. Lopez’s magnificent
Arctic Dreams.
Nausicaa’s references to whaling, especially to hunting blue whales with exploding harpoons, were drawn from Philip Hoare’s
The Whale.
Alaska Geographic’s book
The Bering Sea
offered background information on declining seal populations in the region and the consequent behavior of orcas deprived of their usual prey. An excerpt from Dick Russell’s
The Eye of the Whale,
published in the
New York Times,
inspired the description of the gray whales’ migration. Any factual errors or whimsical deviations from accepted reality are entirely my responsibility, not theirs.

Gratitude is also due to everyone at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, especially to the Best Editor Ever, Julie Tibbott; to the Best Agent Ever, Kent D. Wolf; and as always to the Awesomest Husband of All Time, Todd Polenberg.

1
The Tank

“Hello,” the young man in the lab coat purred into a round speaker, his hands fidgeting. Ripples of azure light reflected on his cheeks. “Are you awake?” There was no response. He stood with a few other stiff-backed men, among them the nation’s secretary of defense, in a room divided in half by a wall of thick—and perfectly soundproof—glass. Behind the glass was something that resembled the kind of fake habitat found in a zoo, like an enclosure for keeping penguins or seals. Bubbling salt water filled most of the tank to a depth of about five feet, but on the right there was an artificial shore of baby blue cement sloping down into the water. That was where the resemblance to a zoo display ended, though. A giant flat-screen television blazed high on the wall above the tank’s deep end, playing what appeared to be a reality show about rich teenagers. Flouncy pink satin cushions were heaped along the shore just above the waterline, and a large white dresser decorated with golden scrolls perched on a ledge at the back. Various electronic gadgets were scattered on the cement, but beyond the clutter the tank gave no sign of being inhabited. “You have a very important visitor today, so . . . your full cooperation . . .”

The crowd behind him shifted impatiently, and the young man flinched as if he could feel their disapproval pricking his skin. “Getting on with it! I’m going to be turning on your microphone so you can talk to these men. But I have to warn you . . .” Far back in the tank something sky blue and pearlescent flicked up for a moment from behind a pile of cushions. For a second the young man’s voice grated to a halt, and he stared urgently before he mastered himself enough to keep going. “We’ve programmed the computer to recognize any hint of singing. If you try anything, it will send out an electric shock automatically. A pretty severe one. All right? I’d like you to be on . . .” There was that blue flash again, and a trace of rippling gold. “On . . . your best behavior, please.” He turned to look at the secretary of defense and offered a tight, ingratiating smile. Then he flicked a switch in a small control panel set into the glass beside the speaker. “Please meet the United States secretary of defense. Secretary Moreland?”

Moreland leaned toward the glass, an odd expression rippling over his heavy reddish face with its sagging jowls. His white hair shone like meringue above his gleaming pate. “Anais,” he snapped, then waited, scowling, for a reply. It didn’t come. “I’d suggest you get your damned tail over here. You’re our little mermaid now.”

The sky blue tail rose above the water again, twitching irritably. Pinkish iridescence shone on its scales, and the cushions stirred as a golden head shifted up into view. Dreamy azure eyes turned to gaze through the glass. Several of the men stepped forward as if involuntarily, and others visibly braced themselves. She shook herself, and her inhuman beauty came at them like a living wave. Moreland’s smirk tightened, and his upper lip jerked sharply higher to expose his perfect teeth. “Hello, there.”

“Hi.” She examined Moreland’s crisp, expensive suit with a trace of approval. “Are you really important?”

It was hard to tell if Moreland was leering or snarling in response. “Oh, I’d say so.”

“Then I only want to talk to
you.
” She scanned the other men disdainfully. “Having all these people staring at me makes me feel so shy!”

She didn’t look shy, but Moreland nodded almost indulgently. He made a quick motion to the young man in the lab coat, who hurried to tap at the control panel, cutting off Anais’s sound. “Do you mind, gentlemen?” Moreland asked.

“We can observe through the monitors in the next room?” the lab-coated man asked anxiously. “She is—I mean—I am her primary handler, and I should know—”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” Moreland’s lip hiked up again. “I don’t think you should observe. I’d like to allow
her
”—he cocked his head toward the tank, where Anais, piqued at not being able to hear what they were saying, was now swimming toward the glass—“a chance to confide in me. Privately.”

“But—of course you’re aware, Mr. Secretary, that she’s suffered some very serious trauma. Those mermaids she was living with, all . . .”

“A fragile flower,” Moreland agreed, grinning horribly. “I’ll use my most delicate touch.”

The young lab-coated man didn’t look particularly reassured, but he still nodded. “The blue switch controls sound going into her side. The red cuts her off over here. Given the precautions we’ve taken, though—”

“Thank you, Mr. . . .”

“Hackett. Charles.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hackett. I’ll let you know when I need your assistance.”

Anais was tapping, though inaudibly, on her side of the glass. She was supporting herself in the deepest water with a slight circulating motion of her fins so that her face and shoulders floated just above the surface. Her hair rippled and shone around her, and she looked sulky and eager. Hackett gave her a coy little smile and a wave as he turned to leave. “Even
without
any singing,” one of the men observed as they walked to the door, “she’s still remarkably . . .”

“Remarkably?” one of his companions asked archly, eyebrows raised.

“Compelling, I would say.”

“I’d use a different term, frankly.”

Secretary Moreland didn’t watch them go. Instead he was staring fixedly into Anais’s blue eyes, though the look on his face didn’t exactly suggest attraction. It was somewhere between caressing and murderous, and a smirk kept tweaking his lips. Once everyone was gone he reached to flip the sound back on, still keeping his gaze locked on Anais’s face. “Better now, tadpole?”

Anais pouted. Her lips were slick with strawberry pink gloss. “You have a problem.”

“I’d say there are some other—you really can’t call them people—some other nasty animals who have much bigger problems these days. You should be very, very thankful that we’re taking such good care of you. When you could be in the same mess as your little killing-machine friends . . .”

Anais shrugged impatiently, sending a quick surge through the water around her. Her hair lapped at her shoulders. She was wearing a sparkly, sky blue tank top that matched her tail almost perfectly, and diamond studs sparked in her ears. “I don’t care about that! Charlie told me about that boat of yours that got trashed.”

“Charlie?”

“Mr. Hackett. He said there was a big wave that came out of nowhere and, like,
totaled
the boat with your guys on it, after . . .” Anais suddenly seemed a bit uncomfortable. “After . . . I surrendered. I knew you’d want to
talk
to one of us, if we just acted nicer. And—”

“That wave didn’t come out of nowhere, I think, tadpole. You shouldn’t assume that Mr. Hackett’s information is entirely reliable.”

“That’s what I’m trying to
tell
you!” Anais was getting exasperated. “I just didn’t want to tell . . . Mr. Hackett because I didn’t think he could really do anything. I figured it all out. You can go and kill mermaids without the
singing
stopping you now. Right? But you don’t have any way to stop her from bashing your guys with those waves. You
have
to kill her. Soon! Like, right now she’s the only one who knows how to do that, but she’ll probably start teaching everybody else, and then you won’t be able to get rid of mermaids anymore at
all
. . .”