Time's Dark Laughter Part 7

There were four unmarked doors at the end of the hall. Three were locked; one was ajar. He pushed it open and entered the next room.

The s.p.a.ce was large, dark, m.u.f.fled. Drawers and shelves lined the nearest wall. In the corner by the door was the large cylindrical trash receptacle that Josh knew formed a continuous vertical shaft to the underground tunnels, conduits of the underground river. In the far corner, Joshua's eye was immediately drawn to a dim light, and beneath it what seemed to be a large chair; and in the chair, a figure.

Josh walked toward the light.

As he approached, he saw the chair was in fact a throne-oversized, of marble and teak, inset with jewels, veined with gold, littered with cus.h.i.+ons-and the figure that reclined there, a woman.

When he was twenty feet away, she spoke, and he stopped. "Welcome, Joshua, Human and Scribe."

She was beautiful, he could see-at least, what he could see was beautiful. She sprawled in the throne, half-covered in the sheerest silk veil, her pale body limp with suggestion. Yet from the ceiling above, several feet out from the wall, hung a brocade curtain. It stopped six feet from the floor, but since it came down in front of the throne, it acted as an opaque screen to the Queen's face, obscuring both her head and the entire back wall. In the dimly lit room, Josh had the unsettling impression he was being addressed by a headless ghost.

He took two more steps toward the dais on which the throne sat; then halted again in the recoil of his crosscurrent emotions. Her sultry posture aroused all his bottled s.e.xuality, so recently uncorked by the girl-Human's visit to his cell. The fact that her face was hidden from view by the brocade curtain was both seductive and disturbing. The situation was dreadful; he was weak from loss of blood, his mind dulled from loss of Human contact, his senses disoriented by the loss of time. He reeled a little.

The Queen spoke again, through the thick curtain. "I am Queen of The City With No Name." Her voice was deep and layered and almost sounded like many voices in unison.

"There is no queen," Josh insisted. "Gabriel told me it was all computers, it's-"

"Gabriel lied to protect me. There is a Queen, and I am she, as you can see, as you can see. But let us not quibble, let us go then, you and I, for I have sought you these five years and more."

"You've sought me? Why? What do you mean?" This somehow scared Josh more than anything else that had happened-hearing from this mysterious woman that she had been looking for him for five years.

"I will tell you, since you ask, and since you are mine now, for me, for me, and may not flee, as you can see." She laughed then, a raspy laugh, a whispering of laughter, the sere laughter of dead leaves. "These ANGELs, these Neuroman Genetic Engineers, engineered me. That is the story of my species, of which I am the only member. A memberless member. Dismembered before my time; time remembered. Or is it re-membered? Misremembered? I misremember. I, Miss Remember-soon to be Miss Remember. Yet a member is but a part, and I am many parts, and today we have naming of parts, the parting such sweet sorrow. But I digress. Is it perfume from a dress that makes me so digress?"

Surely she was mad. Josh had never heard such ram- bling, spoken with such meaning. "I don't ..." he began.

She stopped him. "You needn't apologize. My story is not always easy to follow, for I am the Kingdom and the Power and the glorious euphorious victorious storious. So they engineered me, these Genetic Engineers, engineered this unique creature you see before you, or almost see, as you can see, to have unique cerebral powers, to rule, to fool, to implement their goals, to realize their dreams. Yet they control me. For they engineered me such that I am dependent on a single, synthetic nutritional source which they alone can make and dole to me. Goal, dole, control. Sole. Soul. Souls.

"Many souls. I have become many souls. He and she and me and we, as you can see, as you can see. Our mind is great, we shall not want, the Word is One. I learned, you see, to join my substantial brain, substantia nigra, locus cer-uleus, bluer than blueleus, to other, lesser brains. So less is more. We kissed, these other brains and I, these less substantial ether others, touched our dura maters, pia maters, grayer matters, fused with wires, used a fuse or two to fuse, confuse, refuse, defuse, infuse, suffuse. As you can see."

She rested a moment here. Again, the hoa.r.s.e laugh.

A certain rhythm to her speech was beginning to hold Joshua's attention, even though he understood barely half of what she said. Her cadence held him still, though, and pulled him along.

"I know things now," she began again. "Things I cannot explain, to your shrunken brain, shrunken brain. I am not the addition of all the minds with which I am in communion : I am their multiplication, I am the sum of their powers to the power of their sum. I-can see!

"Yet still these feeble ANGELs hold the reins, for they control my food. Angels of Mercilessness, I must do as they bid. But soft! What light through yonder circuit breaks! For lo! one day, and I discovered, while scanning some adrenergic connections in the area between my red nucleus and median longitudinal fasciculus, I discovered a recessive trait which the engineers had inadventently engineered. An electromagnetic trait, to be sure, which they couldn't have been expected to expect, let alone to defuse. A trait, a magnificent trait, don't you see, which can never never never be fully expressed in me. Traits which are recessive can hardly be expressive when others more repressive dominate.

"For this trait I am hemizygous: alas the gentle gene is masked by her coa.r.s.er brother, indomitable sibling calling all the tunes, dancing the electron dance . . . this gentle gene in the ion mask asleep in her neuronal dungeon. But if ... but if ... but if she should wake, what trumpets would sound! If she were joined by her true and proper twin, h.o.m.ozygous then, this panting pair, these lurid ladies, mirror sisters of the chromosome, well, then, oh, then what gyral matters would obtain, would obtain, in my brain, swelling brain! No, but wait, stay with me, listen, I'll explain to you the pain and the pain and the pain . . ."

She stopped, panting, sweating, her chest heaving deeply; and though her face remained hidden, Josh could see a languid stream of clear saliva curl hotly down her neck, until it slowed and feathered between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. After a moment of stillness, she continued speaking.

"The pain. The pain of this single isolated recessive gene of mine is the pain of seeing but being unable to touch, of knowing but being unable to act. Because, Joshua, this pretty gene codes for a small, dense section of my brain, a gem of latticed neurons that kens the universe, that understands it All. And had this gene its identical mate, the twain would code for such a brain that would not merely comprehend but would command-would be the universe. Yes! The beast with the piece of pontine matter coded for by two of my one gene would know the heart of time and beat as one with it.

"But how to find this other gene, another creature with the chemistry of my soul? I couldn't tell the ANGELs of my self-discovery-Angels of death, they wish me no greater power than that which I have, the power to see, and to tell. As you can see, as you can see. But see, this jewel of special nerves in special relays sparking their syn-aptic humors to connect with other special nerves in special ways-these patterns are a brief electric symphony, re- flected by a certain type of brain wave, of a certain frequency and amplitude and shape and timbre, which waves are dulcet sometimes, sometimes cras.h.i.+ng, ever-steady rhythmic waves of variable intensity, ever generated by the auld electron dance of that peculiar chip of brain encoded by my special gene. The nature of the gene was neither here nor there to me: it was the brain I craved-the just-so configuration of neurons, which happened to make a just-so brain wave, gentle wave, crystal wave. This wave I wors.h.i.+ped. I a.n.a.lyzed this wave, computerized it, isolated, synthesized. And when I knew its nuances precisely, I put its purest form down on magnetic tape, and transmitted it from megawatt transmitting towers, throughout the land. And you responded, Human flea, as you can see, as you can see."

This last remark was obviously directed specifically at Josh. He replied, "What do you mean? How did I respond?"

"Something there is, in your brain, that resonated to the frequencies I transmitted. You had your 'spells,' and you came, my errant knight."

"My spells!"

"Quite right. When an epileptic with a certain cerebral focus of activity is exposed to lights which flash at the frequency of his firing nerves, this cerebral focus resonates with the lights, begins its rhythmic firing, generates the au-tomaticity of pulsing discharges that is a seizure. So! A boat pa.s.ses through a rippling pond, its waves swell, impose themselves upon the surface, obliterate the ripples, then recede and fade and let the million random ripples that are the pond's waking and sleeping thoughts return. Such was the magnitude of my electromagnetically transmitted waves: they washed away the wind ripples and fish currents of your placid brain, gave you spells and trances and convulsions, and drew you, finally, to the source, as you can see, as you can see."

Josh was dumbfounded. Here, then, was the real cause of his spells. This mad Queen, sending signals his mind responded to. Because of a wave she wors.h.i.+ped? It was beyond all reason. He couldn't sense its implications. She seemed lucid at times, incoherent at times, yet somehow he knew she was leading somewhere. If he could only find her thread.

The Queen went on. "So you came, you came, are yet to come. Others came, with minor spells, their waves were close, but none just like yours: only yours were mine. But still, what means this pulling wave, this tidal force? No less than this: The rolling waves, the medullary waves your wee brain generates share unity with those I send, and hence, and hence! that piece of brain of yours, that cubic-centimeter section is identical to its counterpart in me, and thus it likewise must be coded for by the identical gene! It must! My sister gene, long lost twins, your pauper to my prince, the regent's masked Doppelganger unmasked. It's you! You are my sun gene, my only sun gene, you make me happy when matters gray have fallen black enough that not-to-be is less a question than an answer. But now you are here! You are here!"

She was sweating again, and laughing that troubling laughter of the edge. "I've studied your waves carefully since you've been here, Joshua-integrated potentials, wave slopes and peaks, feedback loops, cycles per second-and yes, there is no doubt, our waves are one, we are of a kind, we are of a mind, there is a crucial cube at the stem of your thinker identical to one at mine. We must, perforce, share that shred of DNA responsible. There, by the by, the similarity ends; but oh, the correspondence!"

"But . . .' so what?" Josh wanted to know. For all of that, he felt no particular kins.h.i.+p to this madwoman-only ambiguous fear, s.e.xual tension, and claustrophobia. His eyes darted left and right, seeking a door.

"So what," she echoed. "So this. Any child of our union will have a one-in-four chance of being h.o.m.ozygous for that gene-of having this recessive trait fully expressed. Think of it, dream on it, by the second fertilization the chances will swell, the chance of swelling my belly, producing a child with this transcendental trait, this golden power, this-"

"What do you mean, producing a child," Josh gasped. "What are you talking about?"

Her body s.h.i.+fted slightly in the throne. "Come, make love to me."

He felt a simultaneous thrill and physical horror at the thought of touching that body. "No," he choked out, backing away.

"You cannot resist," she whispered in a lower voice. "My pheromones are potent, I blossom at will. And well we know that your more primal wave forms are synchronous with mine. As you can see, I send them now, I send my waves, my smells, my heat, my ch'i, I send my love, as you can see."

Her legs fell apart as she slipped down slightly, the weight of her b.u.t.tocks pressing flat on the edge of the seat. The downward movement brought her mouth and nose into view below the level of the curtain. The mouth was soft, full, open, moist; the nose, royal.

Josh took a step forward, his palms sweating. He had never seen such a beautiful form-waiting, wanting him. The air smelled perfumed; the floor felt cool beneath his bare feet. He wasn't used to feeling so heady, though, and it confused him, frightened him, tightened his stomach like wet twine. He walked closer.

Her lips smiled. She rubbed her hands along her flanks, smoothing the perspiration into an even gloss. His l.u.s.t was becoming overpowering, yet still, below the surface was a sick loathing--of the situation, of the compulsion. Briefly, his ambivalence held him back; then quickly, he approached.

When he was three feet from the dais, the angle of his vision allowed him to see up under the curtain, to just above her eyes. Stark, round eyes, purple, violent, seductive, destructive. Compelling. Transfixing. She licked her lips, held out her hands. He stepped up to the throne. He wanted to lie beside her, he wanted to run, he wanted to freeze the searing moment and never draw breath again.

She pulled him to her, drooling heavily. The touch of her flesh burned. Molten ecstasy. He closed his eyes against the fire. He pressed his palms against her swollen b.r.e.a.s.t.s, pus.h.i.+ng sounds from deep within her throat. She gripped his hips, drew him fast between her legs, pulled him in, deeper in. His body swam in rhythms, he opened his eyes. Her head- He saw the top of her head for the first time. There was no skull, only puffy gray brain emerging from the topless cranium, ballooning out the head from a point just above the eyebrows. And huge. Maybe ten times the size of a normal brain, maybe more-it was hard to tell. Hard to tell because of all the cables inserted deep and shallow into the substance of the brain, thick black wires streaming out in all directions, coiling to the floor like a hundred sleeping serpents, writhing along the floor behind the throne until they came together again and exited in a bundle through a port in the wall.

For an eternal moment, Joshua felt frozen to stone.

Then everything came alive again, the horror, the horri-bleness, the flesh, and the heat. She laughed a rasping moan as he exploded inside her, over and over, spasms of release.

When it was done she pushed him to the ground. He lay there, unmoving. It had been like no other experience for Joshua. Intense, surreal, transcending, abhorrent. And now he wanted to be alone for a thousand years.

This was h.e.l.l, surely. How often would she force him to do this? Surely, he couldn't again. He had never wanted to die, and he didn't now, really. He only wanted never to do this thing again, and there seemed to be only one way to achieve that.

Quickly, before she could arouse herself to act, he stood up, staggered twenty steps to one of the waste disposal chutes, opened the lid, and threw himself in.

It was deadfall thirty feet before he hit the electrified grid. The shock knocked him unconscious as he crashed through, and set him spinning so he careened from wall to wall of the rough shaft, breaking his fall enough so he broke only his legs when he hit bottom.

Bottom was a tunnel a foot deep with rus.h.i.+ng water that carried his unconscious body through dozens of branching turns until it finally dumped him out its mouth, over a tumbling falls, and into the ocean.

He was jolted half-conscious by the cold-water plunge but hadn't nearly the wherewithal to fight the riptide, which dragged him miles out. By this time he had inhaled enough water that he started going down. He woke briefly, sensing he was drowning. As he was. He sank completely underwater, though, too weak to struggle, too disoriented to know which way was up. He stopped trying to resist.

He thought calmly of his friends, how he loved them. Beauty, Jasmine, Rose. His brother, Ollie; his dead bride, Dicey; his dead friend, Lon, patient and wise. Life had been good, death would not be bad. He faced it with a sense of profound peace, faintly curious. We are words in the wind, he thought. The Word is One.

He saw before him a beautiful Mermaid, floating calmly, holding out her hands to him. She looked like Dicey; Dicey, waiting for him on the other side of death, waiting to guide him. He smiled. She understood death was no fearful thing, she was to help him, to lead him through its dark gates into the dark land. His eyes were closed, but open. He held out his hands to her, and died.

CHAPTER 7: In Which Joshua Plumbs the Depths.

THE next consciousness Joshua had was of a gentle breeze, a vague suffusion of light, a pleasant, weightless warmth. This was the journey, then: good. It was good.

He opened his eyes. A dazzling blue panorama surrounded him; he rocked calmly within it. Was this the inside of the Great Word? Had he become part of its light? He breathed in deeply. The smell was sweet.

A face appeared before him. His Lady of Death, the Mermaid, the one with Dicey's eyes. Where had he seen her before? She looked so kind and concerned. Nurturing, yet vulnerable. He smiled at her.

"Is this death, then?" he whispered. He expected it was necessary to whisper in the Dark Land; there were no loud noises. But this place wasn't dark at all. It was endlessly bright.

"Thou wert dead, but not now," said the Mermaid. "My people have much knowledge of pulling life from the sea."

Josh felt a little disappointed that this wasn't the Other Side-but this emotion was quickly replaced with curiosity. "Where am I, then? And who are you?"

"I am Kshro," laughed the water creature. "Thou art in the sea of my people, the Selkies. Thou hast rescued me when I was caught in the net in Ma'gas'; and when thou wert netted, I followed thy boat. I waited in the bay for thee, outside the great castle on the cliff-and finally, thou earnest. Only, thou wert broken, and breathing water. So I brought thee here, to my sea, and my people blew the water from thy lungs, and revived thy spirit, and began the mending of thy legs. And now thou art with me."

She laughed again, joyously, her laughter like a summer fountain. Slowly, Josh looked up and down, to try to take in his surroundings, focusing through this new perspective.

He was floating in the ocean, he now saw, on a huge bed of kelp. The day was cloudlessly, blindingly azure. Beside him floated this Mermaid, this Selkie. She was beautiful.

He remembered her now, the creature he had freed from the fishnet in Ma'gas" during one of his post-ictal half trances. She had been suffering abuse by Vampires, and she had reminded him, somehow, of his dead wife, and he had cut her loose. And the next thing he knew, he was in the castle.

He viewed her closely, now, delicately. She looked to be about nineteen. Her hair fell in dark-gold waves around her wide, strong shoulders. Her skin was the color of creamy coffee, her eyes green. The line of her nose was straight and long, her cheekbones high. Her clavicles gracefully curved out of the line of the long, thin neck, and mimicked the curve of the supple b.r.e.a.s.t.s on the well-muscled rib cage. Her belly was covered with fine, downy hair that glistened in the sun and grew thick over her sleek hips until it was a full coat of soft tan fur over her entire lower extremity-a trim, muscular, dolphinlike fishtail.

She lay beside him, smiling angelically, supporting his head above the pontoon of floating kelp on which they rested so he could peruse his domain. About a hundred yards distant he saw an island that ran a mile across and half as deep. The sh.o.r.eline was sandy beach at one end, becoming rocky at the other, pocked with grottos and blowholes. The meager interior of the island was thick with palm trees, birds-of-paradise, tropical vines, and jacaranda. Gulls circled lazily overhead.

Beyond this island was a second island-foreshortened to Joshua, he couldn't decide exactly how far, but it seemed only another hundred yards or so beyond. That island was smaller, more barren. It was too long a distance for Josh to make out any real detail.

He looked to his sides and, arching, to his rear: nothing but sea, and sky, and sea again. He looked down at his legs -and jumped in dismay: his two legs were now one thick, brownish limb, slightly tapered, and fluted at the end.

He gaped in morbid astonishment at the transformation. "You've turned me into a Merman," he cried, twisting away.

She laughed her bright laugh. "No, no-would that it were so. We've only wrapped thy legs together in a binding weed that grows in the bay-so that thy fractures may heal-and wound into the weed an old Selkie tail to cover thy feet, that thou might get around better in the water- though, truly, thou shouldst not move thy legs to mention, but let the sea support them full, and rock them tenderly, as one does a child. Then as they heal, thou mayest swim; and then in time walk like a man. But for now, be a child."

She smiled, bent over, and kissed him on the mouth. He was too surprised either to respond or to pull away; but she ended it herself in a moment and, beaming, rolled over twice in the water. She came up under him-behind him- put her arm around his chest, and began smoothly pulling him backward through the water. When they were out of the kelp bed and in open water, she came around 180 degrees, so that now they were heading for the island.

"Anyway," she spoke again, her head behind his, her mouth near his ear, "thou wouldst not be a Merman; thou wouldst be a Selkie, which is what we are. But thou are not. Thou art Human."

He thought he detected a note of sadness in her voice, but was far too preoccupied with other questions to ask her about it at the moment.

As they rounded the point of landfall, Josh could see it was not simply elliptical; the end turned up, forming a deep natural bay on the side that faced the second island. They drew even with this bay area that separated the two land ma.s.ses. Josh saw it was close to three hundred yards across and appeared to be calm as a small lake. Kshro turned again, pulling him directly between the two islands.

The small one was, in fact, nothing but a profusion of rocks on rocks, beside rocks, between rocks; piled high, strung out to form a microarchipelago. And sprawled out, sunning themselves, or playing like seasoned porpoises, were the Selkies. Dozens of them, male and female: pus.h.i.+ng each other off rocks, diving deep, then jumping in the spray of a thundering wave; or just sleeping carelessly in the sun's warm caress, the tide's gentle lull. To see them so gave Josh a feeling of exhilaration mixed with longing he had not experienced before.

He turned his head in the opposite direction to view the bay of the larger island, the bay they were now entering. Here he received a still greater surprise. For the entire concavity of land that encompa.s.sed the bay-almost a mile from arm to arm-was strewn with s.h.i.+ps along its sh.o.r.e. More precisely, s.h.i.+pwrecks. Some looked recent, some looked as if they had rested there since antiquity. s.h.i.+ps of every time and culture: broken-masted clipper s.h.i.+ps, Chinese junks with crushed hulls, great flat barges and balsa-log rafts, fragments of schooners, splinters of bowsprits, weather-faded figureheads, cast-iron sh.e.l.ls, burned-out spines of hulking wars.h.i.+ps, up-ended steams.h.i.+p wheels, half-submerged cargo s.h.i.+ps, the razor keel of an old luxury liner wedged deep in the sand: nuzzling one another, crunched into one another, rising and falling in the shallows on the quiet respirations of the tide.

As they drew closer, Josh saw that here, too, the Selkies gamboled-swimming circles around the bobbing debris, hiding in overturned wrecks only to spring out, surprising one another amid billows of splash and laughter. Kshro pulled him effortlessly along this sunken, beached, and reefed flotilla to the other end of the cove, at the west side of the island, where the caves and grottos seemed to bubble out of the sea.

Just as they neared a precarious-looking igneous outcrop that hung like a canopy over the water, Kshro giggled into Joshua's ear, "Before thou meetest Luashra, it would be luck to take a turn around the Wheel."

"Who's Luashra?" Josh coughed. Trying to talk as a wave slapped his face, he had aspirated a little water. "And what's the Wheel?"

Instead of answering, Kshro smiled and swam straight toward the center of the bay, toward a point somewhere between the two islands. Halfway there Josh felt himself first subtly tugged, then quickly dragged by the tail of a whirling subsurface undertow-and flung like a skimming stone into the arms of another whirlpool, which spun him twice around its vortex before spewing him, in Kshro's gentle grip, into the invisible clutches of yet another swirling eddy. They were tumbled all around the bay in this manner until, shooting toward the very center of the cove, Josh shouted, a touch of hysteria in his voice, "Does this merry-go-round ever end?"

Kshro replied softly, "Hold thy tongue, Human-and thy breath."

Josh obeyed none too soon, for they were instantly sucked straight down into the silent green ocean. Kshro held Joshua tightly. He kept his arms around her waist, his head on her breast, and was comforted by her rea.s.suring strength. They continued to plummet together, sunlight diffusing through the cool water, until gradually they slowed, stopped, floated weightlessly, and finally began to drift upward once more. Josh looked up. Kshro was smiling down on him.

They rose faster and faster, breaking the surface at last with a gasp from Josh. He looked around to see they floated right where they had begun, near the canopy of stone at the west end of the island.

Josh looked up. Kshro was smiling down on him.

"A perfect Wheel," Kshro nodded with some solemnity. "Now we can go see Luashra."

She pulled Josh under the overhang and into a large open-ended cavern-filled with sea from both ends, filled with sunlight that poured in through a thousand holes perforating the ceiling. The waves sloshed against the walls of the grotto with a continuous slapping echo, while the gusty breezes blew through the holes in the roof like an orchestra of woodwinds, flooding the cave with the music of time.

Near one wall, on a bed of kelp, floated an old Selkie, flanked by two younger ones. Kshro swam quickly over to them, with Josh in tow. As he approached, Josh saw that a shelf of stone ringed the cavern at water level behind the Selkies; and on this rim of floor sat treasure: casks of jewels, chests full of coin overflowing, golden chalices-all dripping wet, washed with every swell that sloshed over the edge, glistening in the suns.h.i.+ne that sifted through the porous arched ceiling.

The Selkie in the middle was an old man. His nails were long, his fur thin, his chest too full. Seaweed twined his beard. And though he looked tired, yet mischief sparkled still, somewhere behind his cataracts.

Kshro spoke to him. "Grandfather, this is the Human who saved my life from the pirates' net before they had their way with me. I have brought him to thee. Chrodeesh bound his legs, for they were broken-so if it is thy pleasure, he could stay with us until he heals." She bowed her head.

The old Selkie spoke to Josh. His voice rumbled like a subterranean rockslide. "What is thy name, boy?"

Josh pulled himself up in the water as well as he could. "I'm Joshua, Human and Scribe."

"Then welcome," smiled the old Selkie. "I am Luashra, the Old One, and I am dying." When he said this, the other Selkies beat their flukes softly upon the water and lowered their heads. The Old One raised his hand. "Kshro is the last of my line. My children, my other grandchildren-they are all dead. Kidnapped by pirates, plagued by Remora, eaten by Nessies. Our colony grows smaller year by year. We are a fading jewel. But now thou hast returned to us one of our prized gems; and see, her l.u.s.ter s.h.i.+nes in thy presence."

"Grandfather!" Kshro scolded, but Luashra only smiled.

"Tact is a disease of the middle years," he said to no one in particular. "It fortunately does not afflict the elderly- as everything else seems to-"

"Now thou art being melodramatic," she scolded again.

"Nor does it greatly burden the young, who know nothing of mortality, and so to whom all drama appears as melodrama." His aides, who supported him in the kelp, laughed silently. Kshro shook her head with great patience. Finally the Old One looked at Joshua again. "Yes, it is my pleasure that thou stayest with us until thy body mends. I will appoint-let me think, whom shall I appoint-ah, yes, I will a.s.sign Kshro, she of tender years, to be thy tutor hi matters Selkish. Now, away, please. I am tired."

He closed his eyes, lowered his head. Kshro swam Josh out of the grotto and back along the necklace of shattered vessels. She moved like a sea snake, slithering over rotting timber and through dangling portholes, trailing Josh along like a favorite rag doll. Halfway up the coast she pulled him into the once plush, algae-soggy captain's cabin of a diplomatic frigate capsized before the Race War. Its deck sloped out of the water at a thirty-degree angle; its bra.s.s fittings were tarnished and green. Kshro and Joshua pulled themselves half-up onto the crumbled planks, letting their fins trail into the water.

"Well," said Josh, having begun to a.s.similate his situation somewhat. "Thank you. For saving my life, and letting me stay until I'm better. It's very kind of you, and I won't-"