World of Water (28 page)

Sigursdottir squared her shoulders. It occurred to him that he might have pushed her too far.

“I bet you think that was a stirring speech, don’t you?” she said.

“I was going for impassioned, with a hint of rousing.”

“I’d still be within my rights to halt this boat and not go any further. I have a duty of care to my team. It would be crazy to send them into a firefight they probably can’t win. That’s just not sound tactics.”

“Agreed. But wouldn’t you say you had eight
exceptional
soldiers on board, yourself included?”

“Oh, you sly bastard.”

“Capable of meeting any challenge, however great?”

“Shut up.”

“And isn’t it your sworn responsibility to protect colonists on Triton from harm? Isn’t that the sole reason you Marines are garrisoned here?”

“I hate you, Harmer.”

“Only because you know I’m right. Believe me, I don’t much relish the prospect of what we’re heading into. I’m shitting bricks about it, in fact. Insurgents with enough firepower to level a town and no qualms about using it – what’s to love about that scenario? But if the alternative is sitting on our backsides and doing nothing while Opochtli burns, then that’s no alternative at all.”

Sigursdottir gave him a look that was equal parts resentment and resignation.

“I’ll tell you this,” she said finally. “If Corporal Milgrom was out here right now, she’d go down on one knee and ask you to marry her. That is a woman who loves having the odds stacked against her. She’s been itching for a proper, no-holds-barred scrap ever since she came to Triton.”

Dev mimed a profound shudder. “Marry Milgrom? I’d rather take my chances with a thalassoraptor.”

41

I
DON’T TRUST
him.

This was from Ethel as the manta sub coasted along in the
Admiral Winterbrook
’s wake. She had summoned one of the Tritonians from the other sub to pilot hers while she went topside for the conference. Now she was back at the controls, the other manta alongside, all three vessels bound for Opochtli.

Say that again?
said Dev.

I said I don’t trust him
.

Dev wondered if he had misinterpreted the sentence both times, perhaps got the gender wrong.

The ungilled soldier?
he said, meaning Sigursdottir.

No. Not her. She seems straightforward enough, as far as I can tell. Even honest.

From a Tritonian, that was a compliment indeed.

No, it’s him
, Ethel went on.
The other hybrid like you. The ambassador.

Handler, she was talking about.

Yeah?
Dev injected a note of offhandedness into the remark.

He’s careful about what he says. Too careful.

Maybe he just has trouble with your language.

You don’t seem to, not anymore, and he’s been here longer than you.

I’m a quick learner
, Dev said glibly.

What he was reluctant to admit, even to himself, was that he had his own misgivings about Handler. It wasn’t just the business about the call to Captain Maddox, although that bothered him more than he had let on. Handler’s loyalties should lie with ISS first and foremost, and he shouldn’t have allowed Maddox to bully him into spying on Dev. At the very least he should have confided in Dev, telling him up front that Maddox had asked him to keep an eye on his progress and report back. More troubling than the deed itself was the duplicity involved.

Troubling, too, was the way Handler had gone to fetch the case containing the nucleotide shots when he and Dev were supposed to be leaping overboard. He had put himself in danger doing that, and while it seemed like a brave, selfless act, Dev wondered if it truly was. Mightn’t it have been something else, something more?

A thought kept nagging at him, a correlation between events. If he was wrong, if it was just coincidence, than he had nothing to worry about. If he was right, however, then a conspiracy was afoot and he needed to watch his back. The insurgency wasn’t the only threat to stability on Triton.

You don’t like him either
, Ethel said.

You just couldn’t hide anything from a Tritonian. You couldn’t prevent your feelings leaking through any more than you could keep your cheeks from flushing when you were embarrassed.

Put it this way
, Dev said.
I’m revising my opinion about him. He’s polite, but sometimes politeness is deviousness in disguise.

I think I understand what you’re saying.

Some concepts are difficult to express in Tritonese.

I’m amazed how you ungilled, with those gurgling noises you make, communicate anything at all.

We manage. Now, if you’ll excuse me a moment.

Where are you going?

To see if that kid has come round yet.

Do you think he’ll know something about the Ice King worshippers’ weapons?

Frankly no. But it can’t hurt to ask
.

The kid was awake and attempting to free himself. As Dev entered the sleeping chamber which had belonged to Ethel’s late cousin, he found the youngster struggling against his bonds. The kid froze as soon as he saw Dev, his face turning a surly yellow.

Saying nothing, Dev checked the cords binding the youngster’s wrists and ankles together in front of him. Made of plaited plant fibre, they were strong and tight. The knots looked secure. No amount of straining would work them loose.

Doesn’t look too comfortable
, Dev said.
I imagine your muscles are starting to seize up, being stuck in the same position for so long. They’ll be cramping soon, if they aren’t already. Your hands and feet will be going numb, too. You’d give anything to be untied and able to swim around again.

The kid’s reply wasn’t quite
Go fuck yourself
but it was unmistakably in that vein.

Dev hunkered opposite him. The sleeping chamber wasn’t large, a cartilaginous burrow just long enough to stretch out in, if not quite tall enough to stand up in. Bioluminescent polyps on the ceiling radiated a faint amber glow.

I’d be willing to release you
, he said.
You’re not important to me. Just tell me how your Ice King cronies were able to raze an entire ungilled settlement.

So I am important to you
, the kid sneered.

No. You’re nothing. But if you know something useful, anything, that makes you slightly better than nothing.

I know that the ungilled’s days on this world are numbered. I know that the Ice King lives and you are all going to die.

Okay
. Dev moved towards the door, another of those sphincter apertures that dilated when pressed to permit you to swim through.
I gave you a chance.

Hateful scum! Fish-belly slime! You’re no better than the ones who put me in that tank and tortured me.

And you’re just an ignorant little punk who needs to grow up and learn the different between hating and being right
.

Dev could have been talking to his own younger self. He mused on this irony as he left the kid in the sleeping chamber, face an inferno of insults.

He was satisfied that the kid hadn’t anything to offer in the way of relevant information. Beneath all the bluster and the aggression he was just a scared adolescent who had fallen in with the wrong crowd and knew it, but didn’t have the nerve to extricate himself. One day he would figure it out – if he didn’t get himself killed first playing the tough guy.

Back in the cockpit with Ethel, Dev watched her guide the manta sub into a dense swarm of phytoplankton.

Feeding is necessary
, she said.

The other manta sub joined them, and the two vessels turned cartwheels and figures of eight through the phytoplankton, scooping great swathes of the microscopic organisms into the mouths with the aid of their cephalic lobes. With their eyes modified into cockpits, the mantas were effectively blind, but electroreceptors at the fronts of their heads detected the bioelectric fields of other living organisms.

Replenished, fuel stop over, the mantas chased after the
Admiral Winterbrook
, soon catching up with the catamaran again.

Dev estimated they were now no more than five kilometres out from Opochtli. He scanned the deep, fathomless waters ahead for signs of activity, insurgents’ vessels,
something
.

Perhaps Sigursdottir had been correct. Perhaps they were already too late. The attack was over and the Ice King worshippers had moved on.

Then he saw it.

At first he wasn’t clear what he was seeing.

It was immense. It was a vast black silhouette, ponderously moving.

It seemed to be an island underwater.

Was it Opochtli, sinking? Had the township been demolished and was now slowly subsiding into the sea?

But it was moving horizontally, under its own steam.

It was gigantic and it was
alive
.

Dev felt a prickle of fear. Nothing that big could be an organism. Nature had its limitations. The largest creatures that had ever existed on Earth were all sea dwellers, from the blue whale to the megalodon. But they were still a couple of dozen metres in length at most.

This thing could be measured in hundreds of metres.

Ethel decelerated, bringing the manta sub to a near halt. He didn’t blame her. She looked as alarmed as him.

What is that?
he said.
Have you see anything like it before?

I haven’t. But look at the shape of it
. The colours on her face were several shades paler than they ought to have been. If she had been using human speech, her voice would have trembled.
We know that shape.

The behemoth was flat and round, like a discus. Dev could just make out segmented limbs, principally two great arms tipped with pincers. Oar-shaped legs at the rear rowed it to and fro, while an array of thinner, more delicate legs kept it balanced in the water.

If it resembled anything, it was a crab. But he didn’t think that was what Ethel was getting at. She meant something else, something she evidently felt he would find familiar.

A moment later, he had it.

It could only be the symbol the insurgents had left on the
Egersund
’s forecastle, the one he had made a sketch of and later shown to Ethel, prompting a tirade of disgust and anger from her.

What he had taken for sky, moons and lightning forks – or directional arrows – were actually the carapace, eyes and forelimbs of a crab.

This very crab.

He was looking at a myth made real. A story in the flesh. A god incarnate.

He was looking at the Ice King.

42

T
HE
I
CE
K
ING
was foraging, plucking at objects that floated on the surface and stuffing them into its maw with its pincers.

As the manta sub inched closer, Dev tried to make out what it was feasting on. He had a pretty good idea, and the thought turned his stomach. But he needed to be sure.

Gathered around the gargantuan crab were smaller beasts, an entourage of Tritonian subs, dwarfed by the monstrosity they attended. Ice King worshippers, congregating around their deity.

Beyond them lay Opochtli. Even from below, Dev could tell that the township had been attacked already and now lay in ruins. Flames glittered above the sea’s surface, distorted and refracted by the tempestuous waves. Beneath, debris was tumbling, twirling languidly, a slow-motion snowfall of rubble spiralling down into the dark depths.

The Ice King continued reaping the spoils of the havoc it had caused. It was taking its pick from the bodies floating round Opochtli, scavenging just like any ordinary crab, eating greedily.