The Chaos Chronicles - The Infinite Sea Part 23

Perhaps configured for aerobraking--?

"/Does it matter what kind of ship it is?"/ /Yeah, actually, it might. If it's a s.p.a.ceship, it could have very different characteristics inside--reactor powerplant, for one thing-- from a seagoing ship. And depending on where it came from, and who was in it... well, we might need to consider the implications of its being here in the first place./ "/Meaning--"/THE INFINITE SEA * 187 /Meaning, who owns it? And are its owners around? If they're going to be fighting over this, it would help to know some facts.

And if the Neri have never communicated with the landers ...

there's really no way of knowing, is there?/ "/Unless we do something about it."/ Bandicut sighed darkly./Yeah. Unless we do something about it./ L'Kell brought them around to the far side of the ship. At least a dozen figures were hovering near the wreck. At the sub's appearance, they gathered in formation and moved to confront the Neri. L'Kell applied power, and with Neri swimmers keeping pace on either side, he began driving in fast, slewing S-curves toward the landers. It appeared they were entering into battle. And as far as Bandicut could tell, they had no weapons whatsoever.HEALING IN THE HOLD '.

THE RUSHING WATERS, the heat, the cold, the cries of pain and hope and despair, the desire to be healed, or to be .i put over the edge into the quiet of death . . .

Ik had never experienced anything like it.

He had felt empathic connections before, and the linkage of stones with Bandicut--and the near-telepathic fury of the ice cav- i :.

erns on Shipworld--but this was different; this was a full link into the body, not just the mind of another. And not just one, but one 1{.

after another, starting with Rencandro. His stones must have learned more from Bandicut's than he had realized, because they had risen to the challenge. It was not quite the full, miraculous healing that ii,,.

Bandicut and his quarx had managed with Lako; but Ik had pushed i',,,.:.

Rencandro and another in the direction of recovery, given them a breath of hope--without actually orchestrating the entire healing, ;'.

which he knew was beyond his abilities. Touching the third Neri, he'd had to retreat in the face of an overwhelming desire to die.

That Neri breathed his last, shortly after Ik broke contact.

He was now working with his fourth, and achieving some suc- cess.

But it was time to withdraw, before he lost too much of his own strength. The warning signs were there--the faintness, the loss of concentration. And the stones agreed. He shivered as he slowly drew away from the Neri. He sat a moment with his hand on the Neri's arm, gazing at the dark, silent face.

*Restnow.*

The stones were right, of course. But it was hard to let go./There are so many more. So many to help./Ik peered at the growing col-*

THE INFINITE SEA * 189.

lection of disabled Neri, brought into the chamber by their fellows.

/How can I rest?/ *

Who can you heal, fyoufailyourself?*

/Hrahh,/ he murmured. To the nearest Neri, he said, "I must pause awhile. I must rest." And he was surprised by how tiring it was even to speak those words.

The Neri buzzed among themselves, and he sank almost involuntarily into a fleeting meditative trance, starting in and out of it even as the Neri voices echoed their raspy echoes around him. The air in the chamber was starting to become depleted, and there were now so many Neri out of the water, on the ledge beside him, that they were using up the air much faster than he would have alone.

Ik searched tiredly until he found S'Cali, who was right beside him, gazing down at the Neri he had just attempted to heal.

"He seems a little stronger," S'Cali said. "Will he live?"

"I don't know," Ik whispered. "But the air is growing bad in here. Can these people recover as well in the water as in the air? I am finding it--" he paused, drawing air "--increasingly hard to breathe."

"I will see if there are some extractors available to freshen the air. If necessary, we can move you. And we can certainly move some of the ill," S'Cali said. He pulled something out of the water, which had been hanging from a line. It was the air supply pack that had malfunctioned and almost killed Ik. "This has been repaired.

You must have struck something leaving the sub. The intake vanes were bent, blocking the flow of water through the air extractor. They have been straightened."

Ik muttered his thanks.

"If you need to sleep, you might be more comfortable in the water," S'Cali offered.

Ik hissed a restrained laugh. "No, thank you," he said. "But I am glad to know that I can put this on, if I need to."

"Shall we leave you alone, then?" asked S'Cali.

"Alone? Please, no!" Ik barked. He hissed, and this time his laughter was a release. "Perhaps one or two of you could stay, with some lights."

"It is done," said S'Cali.

As L'Kell drove his sub into the path of the oncoming landers, Bandi-cut caught sight of more of them, riding powered sleds of some190 * .

kind--one sweeping in from each side, trailing what looked like jet contrails, strangely beautiful in the twilight blue water. The con- trails rose like a curling aurora borealis behind the sleds. He as- sumed that the sleds were armed. After he pointed them out to L'Kell, the Neri grunted, smoothed out his final S-curve, and bore down with full throttle upon the formation of lander swimmers.

.ii Before the sleds could get close enough to harm them, the Neri '.

swimmers were in the midst of the landers. A melee ensued, not so much a battle as a mutual scattering, with the lander swimmers fu- tilely attacking and then trying to get out of the way of the faster and more maneuverable Neri. Bandicut saw some flashes of spears and knives, but couldn't tell if anyone was actually being hit. At last i":'

the sleds, moving a good clip faster than L'Kell's sub, churned in '.

close.

"If those things are armed with bursters--" L'Kell muttered.

He ::;.

veered again toward the thickest concentration of lander swim- mers. The sleds roared past without firing. One contrail, then an- ,?..

other, boiled past the sub's nose. "They don't want to hurt their own people!" L'Kell cried jubilantly. Indeed, the lander swimmers ii ,..

were too close now for explosives to be used safely. L'Kell turned if once more, keeping the sub moving through the midst of the lan-ders. There were two loud clangs on the hull as spears. .h.i.t the sub.

Bandicut craned his neck to follow the landers' movements as i:i.

the sub pa.s.sed them by. "They're fleeing! They're heading up, to- ,,.

ward the surface."

L'Kell made a rasping sound. "We've scared them away! All it took was a show of force!"

Bandicut granted. The landers were indeed ascending, moving as quickly as they could away from the Neri. A few Neri swimmers gave chase briefly, but dove away when lander sleds returned to t;tl guard the retreat. As the landers disappeared into the misty water overhead, Bandicut noted that they seemed to be moving at a cau- tious rate. '714aybe we scared them," he murmured to L'Kell.

"You think they're not fleeing?"

"They're fleeing, but I'm not sure it's just because they're fright- ened.''

L'Kell cut the sub's speed to let the Neri regather around him.

"What do you mean?"THE INFINITE SEA , 191- "They're from the surface," Bandicut said. "They might be running low on air. And I doubt that they have your ability to withstand pressure changes." L'Kell turned his eyes in puzzlement. "Remember I told you it might kill me if I went straight to the surface from your city?" L'Kell had been surprised at the time. The sea-people seemed practically immune to the bends. But if a human tried to make the kind of depth changes that the Neri made routinely--without being "normalized" on Shipworld, anyway, and without stones--he would die in agony as nitrogen bubbles fizzed out of solution in his body. It seemed likely that the landers were vulnerable to the same problem, since it arose from basic gas physics and only a highly adapted physiology could circ.u.mvent it.

L'Kell was steering the sub toward a large, dark gash in the side of the wreck. The ship now loomed before them, and for the first time, Bandicut could see an encrustation of sea growth on its surface.

He squinted, trying to get a better look--and his heart nearly stopped when three landers suddenly flashed out of the wreck, chased by Neri swimmers. Two of the landers made their escape upward, but the third took a spear through its abdomen--and sank, writhing, toward the bottom. Bandicut shuddered, as the dying lander and the pursuing Neri dropped out of his view. He hadn't even gotten a good look at the lander, but he didn't have to, to feel the horror.

"This sickness?" L'Kell said, without mentioning what they had just seen. "It might keep them from returning?"

Bandicut grunted. "It would mean they can't stay down for more than a short time, without getting sick or dying on the way back up. They're probably partway up right now, hanging at an intermediate depth--"

"Waiting to come back down?" L'Kell barked. "We should go after them!"

"No!" Bandicut said, shaking his head. He didn't want a bloodbath on his conscience. "I mean they're decompressing slowly, on their way up. If I'm right, they can't come back down--not right away, and probably not today. Although others might come, I suppose."

L'Kell muttered darkly to himself. "Then we'll station guards, while we investigate inside the wreck. But I hope you are right about this, John Bandicut."192 * .

/I hope I am, too,/Bandicut thought.

Steering the sub into the breached-open hull, L'Kell pointed to another Neri sub, almost lost in the shadows--jammed against an inner wall of the hold. "It's S'Cali's. And look." L'Kell pointed to the nose of the sub.

Bandicut couldn't see much, no real sign of damage. But no light shone within its interior, and there was no movement inside, and-- iil wait a minute. Was it flooded? Yes, there was an air pocket near the .".

top of its viewport. Bandicut grunted, trying not to jump to con- clusions. "The landers attacked it?" he said, not voicing his real fear, .

which was that Ik was inside, drowned. And if not, then where was he?

L'Kell spoke on the comm to several Neri swimmers who had ';i;i'

emerged from the shadows, then reported, "Your friend is alive, in- .

side the shipwreck."

Bandicut's breath went out in a rush. "Is he all right?"

"I.

do not know his condition," L'Kell said. "But you are needed inside.

We must get you in there."

,'ii'

"How?"

Bandicut frowned. "Will the sub fit?"

We'll have to swim. And we should hurry, before any pikarta r turn up." Parking the sub beside the other, L'Kell crawled back to the aft compartment. He brought out a set of gear that resembled {.:.

something from an old Jules Verne holo, with an odd-looking hood and a backpack that looked as if it had been handmade from oldv.:,'

junk. Bandicut shuddered; he'd been hurriedly fitted for the gear i',il, before setting out, but he'd prayed that an emergency requiring it , ,.:.

would never arise. "It is quite safe for our young," L'Kell said, as though reading his thoughts. "There is no reason why it shouldn't serve you just as well."

Bandicut could think of plenty of reasons. "Is Ik wearing

one.

of these?"

"I don't know how else he could have gotten out of the sub."

Bandicut held up the hood./Charlie, old boy--/ "/--old girl--"/ /I hope you're ready to do some emergency resuscitation./ "/Do we know there are Neri in need of resuscitation?"/ /I wasn't thinking of the Neri./ "/Ob."/ With L'Kell's help, Bandicut began to put the thing on.THE INFINITE SEA * 193'

It was unnerving, swimming with a hood over his head that might have been made of leather and transparent seaweed, and a flow of air that was cold and salty and filled with a dozen unidentifiable smells. Bandicut tried to keep up with L'Kell, but without swim fins it was difficult. L'Kell offered to tow him by his straps, but Bandicut waved him off and began boosting himself along the corridor by grabbing wall protrusions and bulkheads.

He had kept his clothes on, counting on a ghostly forcefield created by his stones to keep him dry. Buoyancy control had proved a bit of a problem, until L'Kell had attached some small weights to his vest.

They had left the chamber where the sub was parked, and were making their way down a long, dark corridor into the heart of the ship. There were few sea-growths on the inner walls; apparently the local varieties required light to thrive. Chemoluminescent lamps carried by the Neri provided the only illumination. Bandicut thought he felt a current moving through the corridor. He also thought he saw ghosts and sea monsters drawing back out of sight every time he turned his head./What the h.e.l.l are we doing here?/he thought with a shiver.

"/Is that a rheton'cal question?"/ He didn't bother answering.

They swam some distance, making half a dozen turns in the ship's corridors, until they arrived in a largish s.p.a.ce where a number of Neri were gathered in the water. It was a surreal-looking gathering, a slow dance of dark, big-eyed creatures of the night, caught in the ghostly glow of the Neri lanterns. One other thing caught Bandi-cut's attention--a rippling shimmer off to one side. No--it was overhead. An air s.p.a.ce! L'Kell led him upward, and they broke the surface. Bandicut sculled the water with both hands as he peered around out of the awkward Neri hood. The visor started to fog up, but before it did, he glimpsed a semi-level surface above the water, with several figures on it.

"/Was Ik there? Did you see him?"/ /No./Bandicut felt a gentle push. He was being nudged toward the ledge. He tried to propel himself, and realized that it had been a long time since he had tried to swim with scuba gear on the sur-194 * *