Chapter 3
“I’m still having those strange dreams,” Ani said.
“Dreams?” Avery repeated, but he was thinking, Please, no. He and Ani were taking a walk on the outer deck, enjoying a little father-daughter time—or they had been.
“You remember, I told you,” she said. “There’s a door, a huge, crystal door, and I’m walking closer to it ... closer ... but I never seem to get there. And there’s weird sounds. Music. Bells. Singing, but creepy. And a heartbeat. A huge heartbeat.”
Avery thought of a monstrous heart that was all too familiar. “You’ve had this dream since you’ve been back with me?” He’d hoped her recurring nightmare would have faded after she left Octunggen custody.
“It’s coming more and more often.”
“It’s just stress,” he said. “I’m sure it’s just stress.” But inside he was unsure. No one had been through what she had before, and its possible implications frightened him deeply.
Suddenly, she brightened. “Look!” She ran to the gunwale, the boots of her environment suit clomping on the metal deck. “A squid!”
Something squirmed, white and ghostly against the stars. Crying in delight, Ani turned back to him, making sure he’d seen it—as if he could miss it. The great white translucent cephalopod floated almost serenely over the waters, its dangling tentacles drifting slightly behind it as it coasted over the bubbling, vapor-wreathed ocean, in a course that took it, Avery noted, perilously close to the ship.
“I see it,” he told her, as a burst of lightning exploded upward with a great boom about a mile or so to starboard. He could see Ani’s pale, excited face through the glass of her face-plate for just a moment before she wheeled back to face the creature.
“She’s a big one,” Ani said.
They’d passed several other floating giants since leaving the Azad Islands three weeks ago—this was an active area for them, and getting more so by the day—but Avery had to agree; they had been puny compared to this one.
“Why do you think it’s a she?” he asked.
“Cause she’s so pretty.”
Avery had to smile. From a scientific point of view, the squids that prowled the skies over this region of the Atomic Sea (on the maps, this was known as the Verragazian Ocean) were certainly fascinating, quite a different species from the ones that had migrated over the Borghese months ago, longer and tapering, gracile and white, but, as far as he was concerned, the creature drifting toward them was a perfect horror: spectral, unnatural, and probably hungry.
Sure enough, scintillating particles floated down from it to alight on the sea, and the water began to churn where they struck.
“Ain’t she a beaut,” said Janx, approaching.
“She is,” Ani said. She pointed again, this time to the shining flakes drifting down from the squid toward the waters. “What’s that?”
Avery could see Janx start to answer, then ruefully close his mouth.
“Waste matter,” Avery said. “It emits waste, which attracts little fish that feed off it—”
“Eww.”
“—then bigger fish come to the surface to eat the little fish. Those—”
On cue, the great squid tensed, tentacles going into a rigid cone, then, with a blast of gas, shot toward the water, disappeared in a geyser of foam and sparks and poisonous vapor, then rose again, a large squirming something caught in its tentacles, being drawn toward the great hidden beak; Avery could almost feel its chomp chomp a hundred yards out. The fish it had caught, assuming it was a fish—he thought he saw a glimmer of silver scales, and what might be a set of mandibles—thrashed violently as the beak bit into it, then went still. Gradually the animal, what little could be seen of it, vanished upward as the squid consumed it.
“Wow,” said Ani.
“Something, ain’t they?” said Janx.
Sailors gathered at the bow and began taking pot shots at the creature, passing a rifle from one to the next.
“Hey!” Ani told them. “Cut that out.”
The sailors kept firing.
“Why are they doing that, Papa?”
Avery turned this one over to Janx.
“For fun!” Janx said, trying to put on an infectious smile. This was difficult with his haggard face and blood-shot eyes; he’d been drinking heavily since the day he’d put a lance through Uthua, the being wearing his best friend’s body, and it hadn’t slowed after the Azads. “Hell, little girl, when you’re stuck on a ship for months on end there ain’t much entertainment to be had. I’ve been on some ships where ... well, let’s just say I’ve seen guys pretty hard up for kicks.” Avery was glad he didn’t elaborate. “Shooting at one o’ the big uglies is better’n some things.”
“It’s not ugly,” Ani said. “It’s pretty. Look how it shines. And you can kind of see the stars through it. See, around the edges?”
Janx gave her a wounded look. “I said she was a beaut, didn’t I? Well, didn’t I?” When Ani nodded, he added, “Folk like me—” he indicated his nose-less face “—have got to find the purtiness where we can.”
“And me,” Ani said, her voice suddenly lower. A small hand went to her own face-plate, and Avery knew she was imagining running her fingers over the small white scars that were ravages of the disease that had killed her. Avery didn’t know what to say.
“Honey, you’re a doll,” Janx said, saving the moment. “A damned sight better’n that, anyway.” He jerked his thumb at the squid, and Ani giggled.
“Doesn’t the squid take offense at being shot at?” Avery asked. Having seen this particular sport before, it was a question he’d often wondered.
“Oh, sure. And if the lads keep it up too long without droppin’ it, it’ll either squirt away or attack.”
“Attack?” He’d never seen that before.
“Oh, aye. What would you do if little folk kept peltin’ you? That’s part of the fun—nail it ‘afore it nails you. The trick is it’s brain is so small it’s hard to find, and that’s purty much the only thing can drop it.”
