Humanx - Cachalot Part 29

"No." He was grinning. "Slip on your mask and smell just a little. Inhale as much water as you can without choking."

"You're crazy." She was giggling.

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"Just once," he begged. "Quick, before it dissi- pates."

"Well . . ." She raised the mask, breathed in a tiny amount of water. It set her coughing as she hurriedly replaced the mask and cleared it.

But she hardly noticed the cough. Her head was swimming. She drifted dazedly, feeling as if someone had just increased her olfactory sensitivity a thousand- fold. She was no longer swimming in salt water but in perfume. Her body was smothering under the concen- trated scent of a million wildflowers.

Unperturbed, the pseudoworm fluttered gracefully away, disappearing into a crevice in a turret of emer- alds.

"Lord!" she gasped when she could finally breathe easuy again. "That's the most incredible fragrance I've

ever smelled in my life."

"That's a Ninamu Pheromonite. They aren't com- mon, but they never have any trouble locating each other." He started downward. "Incidentally, that could have been the reason for the town's anchoring here."

She followed him, still stunned by the overpowering

aroma.

"As I said, there aren't too many of them, but even

one like the individual we just encountered would re- lease enough essence to make it worthwhile for an en- tire town to spend a few weeks hunting for him. I believe that a centiliter of the essence costs about half a million credits on the open market. You just

got dosed by five times that."

"Surely," she murmured, her thoughts dreamy, "it's not sold that way. No one could enjoy it."

"I wouldn't know," Sam said. "I expect it's diluted.

But aromatics aren't my business."

They had descended some thirty meters. Sam lev- eled off, swam down a narrow natural canyon. The light at this depth was barely evident. The normal

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spectrum-spanning colors of the hexalates were ho- mogenized to a uniform dark blue.

"I guess there are some rich enough to afford to use it straight," Sam was saying. "Though they don't swim in half liters like we just did. No one smells that bad."

He chuckled. "A very tiny amount would be sum- cent."

"You couldn't measure it small enough to use it straight," she argued. "It has to be diluted. There can be such a thing as being too overpowering."

She looked below them. A bottom fish was crawling across the crystal sands. It walked on its lower fins and sported a trunk like a tiny elephant, which it used to probe at the sand for the small creatures dwelling therein.

"What's that one called, Sam?" There was no re- ply. She looked around. "Sam?"

He had vanished. Seconds ago he had been swim- ming parallel to her and just behind. She turned, kicked hard. Perhaps he had made a turn behind some hexalate protrusion. But the canyon was steep and relatively smooth-sided.

She stood treading water, hands on hips in a most unhydrodynamic pose. "You're not being funny, Sam."

She was still drowsy from the effects of the perfume.

"I'm going back to the s.h.i.+p."

Something hard and unyielding wrapped around her ankle. She felt it keenly through the gelsuit, gave a little scream, and tried to pull free. She couldn't, but when she looked down, it was to see Sam grinning at her behind his face mask. He was leaning out of a modest hole in the reef wall.

"Don't go back just yet," he said easily, ignoring her furious expression. "I've something to show you. Why did you think I brought you down here?"

More curious than angry now, she followed him as he disappeared. She could touch both sides of the tun- nel by extending her arms. Her suit light showed that

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CACHALOT.

CACHALOT.

127.

the roof and the floor were equally close. Of course, if Sam could fit through...

They swam for several minutes. Then the tunnel angled upward slightly. It was completely unexpected when she broke the surface.

"What on earth? ..." A soft hissing sound came

from nearby.

"Air cylinder from our chemical stores," Sam said.

"Switch off your light."

She did so, blinked as her eyes adjusted, and then sucked in her breath in surprise.

Lining the curving ceiling of the cave were a thou- sand creatures that resembled starfish, only they boasted rune dancing tentacles and a single greenish eye in the center of their bodies. At the tip of each tentacle was a glowing jewel, and the arms and cen- tral body sparkled with lambent dust.

Each animal was a different color from its neigh- bor: green, crimson, argent and gold, white and pur- ple. Doubflessly the larger lights on the end of each weaving tentacle were used to attract prey when the cave was filled with water, as it would normally be.

She had the feeling they were outside on a clear night.

Only now she could actually reach up and touch the stars. The ghostly firmament, constantly s.h.i.+fting to some instinctive ch.o.r.eography, hummed down to her as the ma.s.sed creatures chatted at one another.

"Never . . . I've never seen anything so beautiful."

First the perfume, now this, she thought. The stars were moving, crawling across each other as the ani- mals hunted for better places on the ceiling.

"I don't understand ... the air ..." Hesitantly she lifted her mask. Not only was the air breathable, but it was fresh and sweet.

"There's enough pressure from the cylinder to hold the water back for roughly half an hour," he whis- pered to her. "The chromacules can survive much longer than that without it."

He was behind her now, treading water easily, his enormous arms enveloping her around her shoulders, hands locked in front of her. The fresh oxygen, the crawling, semaphoring stars on the ceiling, and the lingering aroma of the Pheromonite combined to over- whelm her. The tenseness that had been with her in varying amounts since she had first landed on Cach- alot left her completely. What was more, some of that other, permanent tenseness faded away.

"You know," he was whispering in her ear, "the water's not that cold."