Medusa's Children

CHAPTER TEN

During the ride out to the northern rim of the farm Tarrant had used an ultra-fine saw to split the bullets in six cartridges. This had rendered them useless for anything but close-range shooting, but he had the comforting knowledge that he was now equipped to punch fist-sized holes through any sea creature, no matter how large, which came near his boat.

Reaching the end of the channel, he made a tight turn to the east and cut his motor. He looked along the slowly undulating line of the boom and, as he had expected, there was no sign of intruders or anything else out of the ordinary. One of the first things he had learned about hunting, whether for game or enemy aircraft, was that no quarry was ever obliging enough to show up exactly where anticipated. He nuzzled the boat to a halt at the first set of boom connectors and tied a length of wire around the plastic pins.

The warm green smell from the hectares of protein-rich soup was overpowering as he began a slow advance to the next joint, and by the time he had reached the fifth he was heartily sick of the whole project. In his impatience he approached the joint at too great a speed and had to brake by leaning over the side and grasping a connector loop. The boat swung wilfully around its prow and he found himself at full stretch just above the water, clinging to the slick plastic with his hands while trying to draw the boat back under him with his knees.

He was so intent on the struggle that it was several seconds before he became aware of the round, plate-sized object shimmering under the surface of the water just below his face. He stared down at it for a moment, bemused, then it moved slightly, and there was movement all about it, and he realised he was looking into the eye of a big squid.

Tarrant was unable to suppress a moan of panic. He contracted his body violently, trying to snap shut the menacing space between the boat and the boom, but it closed with agonising slowness, and all the time the great, rueful eye gazed up at him from a distance of less than an arm’s length. As he was on the point of recovering his balance the eye abruptly disappeared, the water heaved and he tensed for the encircling slap of a tentacle. The dreaded contact did not take place and in another instant he had thrown himself backwards into the boat.

He scrambled to his feet, picking up the rifle at the same time, and lunged to the opposite gunwale. Three of the monstrous and now-familiar shapes were spearing away to the north, the fluttering of their lateral fins churning the clear water. One of the squid was larger than the others and Tarrant recognised its mottled colouration. He threw the rifle to his shoulder for a quick shot, then froze with his finger curled around the trigger as he saw what had lured the squid away from him.

There were five people in the water less than a hundred metres from his boat.

Tarrant gaped at the swimmers in dawning appreciation of their danger. Appalled and baffled, he turned to the boat’s controls, selected maximum speed and swung north in pursuit of the squid. The little craft surged forward responsively, but the tentacled shapes were lost to sight beneath a welter of reflections and he had no way of knowing how far they were ahead of him.

“Look out!” Tarrant had a feeling his voice was being carried away in the sea breeze. “Look out below you!”

The swimmers came on steadily and he saw that three of them were women. Suddenly one of the men went beneath the surface and reappeared a second later in the grasp of a dark brown squid. A woman screamed as the water around the others began to boil with submarine activity.

Tarrant shut down his motor and skidded the boat into the edge of the group, colliding with the squid which had taken the man just as it was turning over to dive. The monster was visible alongside for perhaps a second, but Tarrant’s aerial gunnery training made the shot an easy one. Holding the rifle in one hand, he blasted a hole through the conical forebody. There was an explosion of inky fluid, followed by a raucous bark, and the squid released its victim.

Holding the boat in the tight circle, Tarrant sought another target. He glimpsed a massive, complex form slipping away beneath his stern and pumped two shots at it, sending foamy white trails far down into the water. The squid vanished from his view and all at once the sea was calm again, except for the sporadic movements of the man who had almost been lost. His unnaturally white skin was marked by a number of circular red blotches.

“Get him up here.” Tarrant pointed at the injured man and gestured for the others to lift him on board. They swam to aid their companion and Tarrant was jolted to see they were naked except for narrow belts at their waists. He caught hold of the man’s arm and dragged him over the gunwale, noticing as he did so that although the stranger appeared to be well nourished he was extremely weak. His lack of strength suggested he had been in the water a long time, yet he bore no traces of sunburn or exposure. While Tarrant was laying him out on the deck he stared about him in silence, through slitted eyes, seemingly fascinated by everything he saw.

“Next,” Tarrant said to the group in the water, and a slim red-haired girl was offered up to him.

She was even weaker than the man had been, apparently semi-conscious, and was unable to assist herself into the boat. Tarrant had to lift her in his arms and a pounding awareness of her nudity surged through him. It was accompanied by a feeling of guilt over taking advantage of her distress, but as he was putting her down beside the man he could not help examining her body in the bright sunlight, fascinated by all the ways in which femininity asserted itself in the topography and proportions of the human frame.

He felt the boat rock slightly and turned to see that another girl had managed to draw herself up on the gunwale and was looking at him. She was a brunette in her early twenties, with an oval face which might have been beautiful except for its extreme pallor and a squeezed look about the eyes which suggested her sight was very poor. She gave him a direct, knowing smile which disturbed his pulse.

“Help me,” she said, moving her shoulders in a way which made it clear that she was a perfectly developed woman. Tarrant went to her and assisted her into the boat. A part of his mind was puzzled by the way in which her obvious physical well-being contrasted with the lack of strength which made it impossible for her to stand up unsupported. She leaned heavily on him as he helped her lie down beside her companions, and—incredible though the idea seemed—he was almost certain she was unconcerned about the necessary bodily contacts. As soon as she was stretched out on the deck beside the red-haired girl she screened her eyes from the sun and smiled at him again. Tarrant felt a dryness develop in his mouth.

He turned away quickly and helped the remaining swimmers aboard. They were a prematurely greying woman in her thirties, and a fair-haired boy in his late teens. As with the others, they gave every appearance of fitness, yet virtually collapsed on the deck and lay breathing deeply like athletes at the end of a strenuous race. Tarrant picked up his rifle and scanned the waters on each side of the boat, satisfying himself that the big squid had been driven off. He turned back to the rescued swimmers and, now that the sense of urgency and danger had been removed from the situation, suddenly became aware of how closely the scene before him resembled his orgiastic imaginings.

“What happened?” he said, anxious to talk. “Was there a shipwreck?”

“We come from the second place,” the injured man said, frowning with pain, and Tarrant belatedly remembered he had a medical kit. While he was fetching it from its cabinet, he was struck by the fact that although the stranger had spoken fluently his pronunciation had been unusual. Curiously, it reminded him of archaic speech from 20th century films and radio recordings.

“What’s your name?” Tarrant opened the white-painted box and took out a container of antibiotic powder.

“Lennar.”

“Where is this second place you come from?”

The man rolled his head sideways and glanced at his companions. “It is another place. Not on Earth.”

“I don’t get you.” Tarrant began to wonder if he was dealing with a case of delirium. “How long have you been in the water?”

“We have always been in the water.”

“Sorry?”

Lennar breathed deeply before speaking the strangely accented words. “The second place is made of water. It is all water.”

“You’d better get some rest,” Tarrant said quietly. “I’ll patch you up now and get you ashore as soon as I can.” He moved to begin dusting the oozing circular wounds, but the man drew back in obvious alarm.

Tarrant showed him the plastic container. “It’s just a general purpose antibiotic.”

Lennar stared into Tarrant’s face for a moment, coming to a decision, then he relaxed and allowed himself to be treated. Tarrant took some cotton and had begun cleaning the wounds which ran in a diagonal line across Lennar’s chest when he noticed the circular patches of old scar tissue on his shoulders and arms. He stopped work for a moment, wondering, and touched the scars.

“What did this?”

Lennar’s lips quirked. “The Horra and I are old enemies.”

“Is that what you call the big squid? The Horra?”

“That is their name.”

“I didn’t know they had a name.” The pressure on Tarrant’s subconscious became greater. “Nobody around here had even seen one until yesterday.”

“The new current has brought them here from our world.” Tarrant started dusting the fresh wounds. “And your world is made of nothing but water?”

“That is correct.”

“Then how did you breathe?”

“There is some air there, but the air and the water do not remain separate. The big bubbles move slowly and we capture them in cages strapped to our heads.”

Tarrant looked closely at Lennar and saw horizontal indentations such as might have been made by straps running across his forehead. He turned to the rest of the group, pleased at having an excuse to gorge his eyes on the women, and was able to pick out similar markings on their foreheads. In addition, the fair-haired youth had several old, circular scars on his chest and thighs. The brunette smiled again as Tarrant’s eyes met hers, and it was apparent that she was not discomfited in any way at having her nakedness on display before him. Astounded at his own brazenness, he allowed his gaze to travel down her body and back to her face. Her smile grew warmer. Tarrant swallowed and looked away, trying to recollect his thoughts.

The Bergmann Hypothesis!

That was what Will Somerville had begun to outline for him only a few hours earlier, but at the time Tarrant had been able to recall little more than the name. Now, his memory goaded by new knowledge, he could assemble fragments of the fantastic theory. The Earth’s overall temperature had risen sharply by the end of the 20th century, and eventually this had led to a major reduction in the size of the polar caps. It had been calculated that the water set free should have caused the sea level to rise far enough to inundate vast tracts of land. In the event, the polar caps had shrunk as predicted, but there had been no significant rise in the level of the sea, and the land areas had remained as they were.

Had this occurred during the crest decades of the 20th century it would have resulted in scientific detective work on an unprecedented scale, but a hundred years later the peoples of the Earth had more pressing problems on their minds. Nature was restoring her balances by means of careless and casual genocides, and few people had time to concern themselves about a non-event such as the ancient coastlines enduring as they had always done.

Ulrich Bergmann had been an exception. He was a Scandinavian geophysicist who had achieved short-lived and dubious fame by asserting that in prehistoric times there had been a superior technological civilisation—indigenous to Earth, or an interstellar colony—which had taken measures to stabilise the sea level. His theory was that, positioned in perhaps a dozen places around the globe, there were huge underwater regulators. These were “matter transmitters”, fitted with sensors and automatic controls, which came into operation when the Earth entered a warm period.

The excess water released from the polar caps was instantaneously transported to a suitable storage point in another part of the Solar System, where it formed a planetoid around an orbiting matter transceiver. At the end of a hot spot, when the caps were beginning to expand and lock up water, the whole system went into reverse, thus maintaining the planetary equilibrium….

Tarrant now had to decide whether or not he could accept the Bergmann Hypothesis and some of its possible corollaries.

He kept his head down, his hands busy with the work of cleansing wounds and taping pads over them, while he tried to marshal and evaluate the evidence. Will Somerville had told him that the Earth as a whole was cooling down, and that the “sea was changing”. Those facts agreed perfectly with the Hypothesis; and from there it was only necessary to assume that the ocean’s regulators, the sunken matter transmitters, were devices which could transport living matter without harming it. He could presume they were intended to remain on the bed of the sea and draw off nothing but water—but even the super-machines of a super-race could eventually malfunction, become erratic in their mode of operation.

He had no idea of how a matter transmitter might work, but he could visualise an intangible “entrance”, a region of space which was somehow given congruency with a distant location between the planets. If the entrance became subject to fluctuations in size or position it might swallow submarines, ships or even aircraft, together with volumes of air. Tarrant’s mind baulked at imagining the trauma and subsequent hardships the crews would have had to endure in order to survive in their new environment. The death rate would have been appallingly high, close on a hundred per cent, but human beings could be fantastically adaptable provided they were given the smallest toehold. As long as there was food—available in the form of fish—and … Tarrant frowned as a new thought occurred to him.

“Is your world made of salt water?” he said to Lennar, who was watching him closely.

Lennar nodded. “It is the same water as in your sea.”

“Then what did you drink?”

“We collected ice from the surface and melted it inside bags of skin.”

“What good would that do? Frozen sea water is just as salty as unfrozen sea water.”

“On Earth—maybe.” Lennar had begun to sound tired. “But on my world the sun changes the surface water to mist during the day. At night the mist becomes water again and then turns to ice. We gather the ice near dawn, and it makes good water for drinking.”

Tarrant nodded, suddenly convinced that all he had been told was true. If Bergmann’s watery planetoid was rotating its inhabitants would experience day and night. Water would evaporate to form a cloud layer on the sunward hemisphere, and when the vapour was carried around to the night side it would condense and freeze. The ice would indeed yield drinkable water, but the difficulty with which it would be obtained was indicative of the general hardships of life in the artificially created world. It dawned on Tarrant that the people he had taken from the sea had just come through one of the most shattering experiences imaginable, and he began to feel a deep respect for their fortitude.

“Would you like some fresh water to drink now?” Tarrant looked along the row of faces and felt a feathery breath of uncanniness when all five, including the semi-conscious redhead, nodded once in perfect unison. His thoughts on the matter remained half-formed under the continuing visual impact of three female bodies reflecting the sunlight like miniature snowcapes. He was in the grip of what Kircher had referred to as animal arousal and could not disguise the fact, but he had a distinct impression that such things were unimportant, or unremarkable, among the unearthly men and women. Fetching a jerrycan of spring water from the cockpit, he gave Lennar a drink from a plastic cup, supporting his head as he did so. Lennar took a cautious sip, then eagerly drained the cup.

“It’s good,” he whispered. “I didn’t know water could be so good. There was always a little salt.”

“Have some more.”

Lennar shook his head. “Give some to Geean.”

Tarrant moved to the red-haired girl, lifted her up a little and let her drink. Her back and shoulders felt too frail, and he detected a rasping vibration each time she breathed. He raised his eyes to Lennar, who nodded significantly.

“This girl needs medical attention,” Tarrant said. “I’d better get her ashore as soon as possible.”

He refilled the cup and turned to the brunette, who raised her shoulders unaided to allow him to slip his arm underneath. The movement, identical to a preliminary for love, sent hot gusts of unreason billowing into Tarrant’s head. While she was drinking, the girl moved closer to him and—apparently to improve her balance—placed one hand squarely on his crotch and allowed it to remain there. Tarrant almost gasped aloud with the pleasurable shock. He held perfectly still, afraid to move, until she had finished the water.

“Thank you.” Her lips were glistening wet as she looked up at him. Suddenly he was certain he was being invited to kiss her, and that, furthermore, none of her companions would consider his action the least bit out of the ordinary. This has to be one of those dreams, he thought. He began lowering his face to hers, acting out his part in the erotic fantasy, then became aware that the others were watching intently. Shame flooded through him on the instant, and he drew away from the girl. The look of disappointment on her face was unmistakable, and it haunted him all the while he was giving water to the older woman and the youth.

“Look,” he said finally, “this has all happened too fast for me. I guess I’d better take you to the island.”

Lennar looked alarmed. “We’re not ready. It’s too much….”

“Then we’ve got to have a talk and decide what we’re going to do.”

“We’ll tell you as much as we can,” Lennar replied in his strange, flat-vowelled English, “but can we cover our eyes? The light hurts.”

“I’ll see what I’ve got.” Tarrant thought for a moment, then opened his equipment locker and produced a wide roll of black insulation tape, from which he tore off five pieces and improvised eye shades. While he was working another boat emerged from the mouth of the channel, a hundred or so metres away. Its owner exchanged salutes with Tarrant before swinging round to the west, heading for his own sector. Tarrant was glad the man had not pulled alongside him for a chat—he would not have relished trying to explain the presence of nude men and women in his boat. He could foresee all kinds of problems when he brought them ashore to encounter the staid and conservative populace of Cawley Island. To forestall visits from other farmers, he started his electric motor and headed due north at low speed. While the boat was cruising he learned as much as he could about his passengers.

The exchange of information was hampered by language difficulties and basic incompatibilities in outlook. Some of the words in Lennar’s restricted vocabulary had no meaning at all for him, and others proved to be debased Spanish and French, but he slowly gained a general idea of what life must have been like in a space-borne globe of sea water. His sense of wonder increased as he heard that there were almost two hundred men, women and children living in a conglomeration of nets and the hulls of old ships … that they had lost all knowledge of their origins … that they lived far below the surface to avoid extremes of temperature … that respiratory diseases were endemic and kept life expectancy to about thirty years….

In return, Tarrant tried to impart information which would help the group adjust to the change in their environment, but he was handicapped in that so many essential cornerstones of knowledge were missing. They had, for example, no conception of astronomy, and this made it virtually impossible for him to explain anything about the distances they had covered, apparently instantaneously, or about the size of the Earth as compared to the world they had known. Also, the rudimentary edifice of their physics—born of conditions in which gravity was almost non-existent—had little room for the concept of weight, the suddenly-acquired property which made it so difficult for them to move when not buoyed up by water.

During the halting discussions the red-haired girl, Geean, gradually came out of her state of shock and soon afterwards complained of skin pains. It took Tarrant only a few seconds to diagnose incipient sunburn, and he cursed himself for not having realised that skin which had never known direct sunlight would be highly sensitive to ultraviolet radiation. He unfurled the boat’s canopy and stretched it taut between the four uprights of the solar panel array, creating a prism of shade.

“I should have thought of that sooner,” he said ruefully, and was on the point of sitting down again when he noticed a boat overtaking him from the south. There was no question but that the boat was purposefully aiming for a rendezvous. Tarrant stared at it, both surprised and resentful, then he recognised the broad beam and chipped blue paintwork of Will Somerville’s cruiser, The Rose of York. His resentment promptly faded—there was no man he would rather have had join him at that particular time—but he was at a loss to know why Somerville should have chosen to sail out this far in search of his company.

“Why haven’t you got a radio in that peanut shell?” Somerville shouted from his upper deck as he reduced speed and brought his boat wallowing close to Tarrant’s.

“What’s the matter?” Tarrant asked.

“Who said anything was the matter?” Somerville threw his wheel over and touched fenders. “I’ve got something to show you, that’s all. I put a few scrapings of your squid blood under the microscope, and damn me if….” His voice dwindled into silence as, from his superior elevation, he glanced down at Tarrant’s deck.

“You’d better come aboard,” Tarrant told him. “I’ve got something to show you.”

Two hours later Tarrant and Somerville, by mutual consent, retired to the cabin of The Rose of York where they could talk without distraction. The cluttered, homely surroundings brought Tarrant some relief from the fierce psychic pressure, composed of strangeness and blatant sexuality, which was being exerted on him by the five interplanetary castaways. Even so, visions of Myrah’s full-breasted nakedness and quick, bold smile were so clear in his mind that they seemed to be superimposed on everything he looked at. He was grateful when Somerville opened a locker and took out a bottle of dark rum and two glasses.

“We’re in a funny situation here,” Somerville said, pouring generous measures. “In the old days this would have been an international matter, and the League of Nations or the United Nations or some outfit like that would have taken it out of our hands. Nowadays, on Cawley Island, there’s only you and me.”

Tarrant inhaled the rich caramel aroma of his drink. “You don’t have to get involved, Will.”

“Are you kidding?” Somerville looked indignant. “I’m in it up to here, young Hal—don’t forget I knew there was something weird going on long before anybody else did. You couldn’t prise me out of this one with a crowbar.”

“Okay, but what do you suggest we do?”

“It’s obvious they have to be taken ashore as soon as possible. Then there’ll be the job of convincing the Chamber our new friends are what they say they are and not shipwreck survivors. Kircher’s in the Chamber this year, isn’t he?”

Tarrant nodded gloomily. “He’ll probably think I’m importing staff for a brothel.”

“Well, that’s a practical point to be dealt with right off—we have to get them some clothes. They’ll need protection from the sun, anyway.” Somerville swallowed his rum and sat staring at Tarrant with an expression of jocular dismay. “Do you feel as if the top of your head’s going to blow off?”

“I’m having trouble taking it all in.” Tarrant sipped his own drink. “Funny thing is, they don’t seem particularly shocked or worked up. Did you notice?”

“They probably don’t realise what has happened.”

“They know enough. Christ, Will, they were out hunting fish, then a current pulled them into a black hole, and a second later they were in a world where everything, everything, is different from everything they have ever known. I mean, they’re entitled to be having hysterics….”

“Delayed reaction?”

“No reaction, more like. And there’s the busty one—Myrah—I swear to God she’s ready for a tumble.”

“Wishful thinking.”

“No. It’s true.”

“Are you complaining?” Somerville topped up the glasses. “We established they have a low birth rate and a high death rate—so they have a different outlook on sex.”

“I know, but….” Tarrant shrugged helplessly. “You and your bloody Bergmann Hypothesis!”

“Don’t blame me, old son,” Somerville said. “You have to admire Bergmann, though. Everything was against him, and yet he was in there first. You know he tried to institute a sky search to find his planetoid?”

“No luck?”

“Nobody was interested, as far as I know. Then he tried looking for the actual machines. There was a place off Japan where a lot of ships had been disappearing, and I think there was another one near Bermuda, and he reckoned that if he could….”

“Will!” Tarrant rattled his glass on the table. “What am I going to do with those people out there in my boat?”

A look of resignation spread over Somerville’s face and he gathered up his bottle and glasses. “We’d better transfer them in here. Then we can go back to the island and still be able to keep them out of sight till we find some spare clothes.”

“Let’s get on with it, then.” Tarrant went up on deck ahead of a grumbling Somerville, and climbed down into his own boat. Five faces turned towards him.

“We’re going to take you on to Will’s boat, where there’s a lot more room,” he said quietly. “Then we’ll see about some food.”

Lennar was at the starboard side, nearest The Rose of York. Tarrant began with him and was relieved to note that he was not actually helpless, being able to raise himself with minimal assistance to where Somerville could grasp his arms. Geean was next, and while he was stooping to lift her slim body Tarrant saw that Myrah was watching him from beneath her eye shade with what seemed like wicked amusement. He smiled at her, wondering if she understood what she was doing to him, and felt a pang of disappointment as he realised that had she been at the end of the row, nearest the port side, they would have had the chance to be alone for a minute when he had taken the others off. He carried Geean to Somerville’s waiting arms, and discovered that she too, although coughing silently, was regaining some measure of strength and was able to support some of her own weight.

“Good work, young lady,” Somerville said to her and raised his eyes to Tarrant. “I’ve just remembered I’ve got some Streptosyn capsules in the medicine chest. I’ll get them out and start feeding them to her.”

Geean looked from one to the other with concern. “It’s all right,” Tarrant told her. “We’re going to cure that cough of yours.”

She nodded gravely, and once more Tarrant was surprised by a lack of response. He had gathered enough during his earlier talks to know that Geean’s people regarded bronchitis as a fatal illness, and he failed to see how she could take the news of her reprieve so calmly. It occurred to him that he might not be making enough allowance for the dissimilarity in their backgrounds, that the word “cure” might have no meaning for Geean. He turned back to the others and found that the youth, Harld, was actually rising to his feet.

“Take it easy,” Tarrant cautioned, gripping the outstretched arms. “You’re still new around here.”

“I’m a hunter,” Harld said, grinning. “I have to be strong.”

“Just don’t overdo it.” Tarrant helped him step over the remaining two women and got him into Somerville’s boat, and when he turned round he saw Myrah helping Treece to her knees. He caught Treece’s circling hand and brought her across the boat. Somerville had not reappeared, and he had to stand waiting with his arms around Treece. She leaned against him more than seemed necessary, making his body hypersensitive to wave-like changes of warm pressure as she altered her posture. It’s dream time again, he thought, as it became obvious there could be nothing accidental about what she was doing. He began to wonder, as the fevers rose into his brain, if all the women in that distant globe of water could be raging nymphomaniacs. The supposition was anything but logical, and yet….

“Hand her over,” Somerville said, appearing above him. “I’m doing all the work and you’re having all the fun.”

Tarrant helped Treece into the bigger boat and turned back for Myrah. She was sitting nearly upright, with arms splayed behind her, but when he got close she sank back on the deck. Kneeling beside her, he faced the prospect of sliding his hands under her body to raise her up, knowing that if he did so his self-control was going to fail. He hesitated, his mind a dizzy pendulum.

“Hal,” she whispered, “please swim with me.”

“I…. The water isn’t safe,” he said, taking refuge in obtuseness, but unable to prevent his body sinking down closer to hers.

She wriggled her shoulders impatiently and the movement was transmitted to her breasts. “That isn’t what I mean.”

“I know.” Feeling that the seconds of privacy were going fast, that he had to seize the chance while he had it, Tarrant pressed his mouth to hers. She remained perfectly still for a moment, so rigid that he began to fear a Beth-type rejection, then her lips slowly parted, inviting that first symbolic act of penetration. He probed urgently and ecstatically with his tongue, and felt something cool and liver-smooth dart forward into his mouth. It vibrated in the back of his throat. He rolled away from Myrah, retching in a frantic effort to expel the invader, but his throat was clear again and he knew that the eel-like thing—predator or parasite—was deep inside him.

He lurched to his feet, unable to speak, pointing accusingly at Myrah—then a vast, cold sadness descended over him. He knew how dark it was at the centre of the world. He felt the new current intensify its grip on his body, threatening to end his life by wrenching his component organs apart and dispersing them into the night….

“We’d better hurry,” he said to Myrah. “We haven’t got much time.”