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The World of the Atomic Sea
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Chapter 1
“Papa, why are they all looking at us?”
Avery had been wondering the same thing. And they were looking at the group from the Verignun, there could be no doubt. From balconies overhanging the bazaar and alleys snaking off it they looked. From market stalls and street corners. Not all of them, really only a small percent, but the watchers were there, and there was something purposeful about the way they observed the group from the whaling ship, something that made the hairs on the back of Avery’s neck stand up.
“Because we’re outsiders,” he said, not wanting to ruin the day for his daughter. She’d been looking forward to port in the way that only children can anticipate something. But in the city of Ethali, the residents would see many outsiders, and there was nothing particularly strange or unusual about the party from the Verignun—outwardly, anyway.
Layanna strode at Avery’s side, her deep blue eyes drinking in the colorful chaos, blond hair flashing in the sun. Though seeming to enjoy it, a trace of concern dimpled the area between her brows.
“Anything we should be worried about?” he asked her, careful to keep his voice low.
She only shook her head, not in a No, he understood, but in an I don’t know. Around them vendors enthusiastically hawked their wares—fish and other creatures from the sea, but also spices, rum, goods from ports even more exotic than this, salvage, cotton, disease-free cattle, stamps, currency, books, art. The Verignun had docked so her crew could sell the pitiful amount of whale flesh they’d been able to harvest (after already collecting the hot lard) and purchase food and supplies, in this case for the return leg of their journey. The Verignun had reached the outer edge of her months-long voyage and was ready to set sights on home once again.
Ani threw off her momentary worry and ran to a nearby stall selling obviously-diseased snapfish. The specimens glistened sickly in their bins, and Avery called out for her not to touch any.
“Eww!” she said, squealing in delight as one of the fish, somehow still alive, squirmed and snapped its primary mouth at her; it had many others located in miniature at the end of each writhing tendril, which sprouted liberally along its slimy length. It was weak and Ani wasn’t in danger at all, so she bent down to observe something about its head that interested her.
“It’s got a pincer for a tongue, Papa!” she reported brightly. “It’s blue!”
This didn’t surprise Avery. Some of the other snapfish had milky blind eyes sprouting from their tendrils—eyes which snapfish did not normally have—or secreted a brown fluid from their gills. Even mutant breeds could mutate.
“Why haven’t these fish been processed?” Avery asked of the vendor, a hulking infected fellow with octopus-like skin and air-bladders growing under his arms.
“Some folk like ‘em better this way,” the man said, spitting to the side and revealing that instead of teeth he possessed yellowing beak-like protrusions jutting from his gums, chipped and scored and looking capable of breaking bone with a single snap. The beaks were discolored by the juice of the hili seed, which many of the locals chewed. “Some think they taste better,” he added. “I know I do.”
“As a doctor, I feel compelled to warn you that—”
“May I help you, hon?” the man asked Layanna, interrupting Avery.
Her eyes had brightened at the morbidly-squirming fish, and Avery was afraid she might buy one of the things from the vendor and eat it raw right there in front of everybody, but fortunately he was spared that sight again today.
“Not at the moment,” she said, and the vendor shrugged as if to say Your loss.
“Interesting port, isn’t it?” she said as the whaling party continued on.
Avery agreed that it was. The Azad Islands had been under an Octunggen blockade when he and the others had activated the Device two months ago and had nearly been on the point of surrendering. Here and there buildings still bore cracks and holes due to the shelling, but most of the damage had been repaired in the time since the blockade had mysteriously broken up; mysterious to the Azadi, anyway. Avery and the others in his group knew why, of course, as they’d been the cause of it. Most of the Octunggen’s otherworldly weapons had stopped working when Avery and the others had fired the Device, and thus Octung’s whole offensive had collapsed.
Scattered monuments to the dead stood around Ethali, flowers, pictures and wax dolls strewn before them. As Avery watched, a group of mourners dressed in blue prayed at the feet of a statue of a man, woman and child, a whole family, symbolizing those lost. The Azad Islands were a Ghenisan protectorate, but their culture was very un-Ghenisan. Over half were infected (as indeed were the woman and child depicted in the statue), which made sense as the islands had been settled long before the processors that cleansed seafood and purified the air had even been dreamt of. Accordingly mutants hooted and squelched and chittered to all sides, some with scales of a thousand hues, some shelled, some boasting the skin of a puffer fish or the hide of shark or the texture of a starfish.
Just months ago, Avery would have felt intimidated and out of place in the midst of such an alien gathering, and in a way he still did—he didn’t really consider himself one of them; the infected were still to be looked down on, pitied and despised, part of him couldn’t help but think—but, like it or not, he was one of them. He’d eaten diseased food from the Atomic Sea and bore the wine-colored striations across part of his face and torso to show for it—not particularly elaborate mutations by the standards on display here, but enough to forever brand him a freak in Ghenisa, the land he had grown up in, a land which prided itself, among other things, on its safely processed seafood and robust fishing industry.
Ani jumped and squealed at every new mutation, and several times Avery had to pry her away from a certain infected person lest she offend the party with her requests for him or her or it to do something—squirt ink, snap a pincer, change color. “You can’t even change color!” she’d scolded Avery earlier, as if this were a fault that should be corrected immediately.
Before he could stop her, she ran forward again, this time to intercept an obese woman covered in anemone-like stalks of vibrant yellow and orange that waved and jostled as if the woman were underwater.
“Ooo, can I touch? Are you poisonous?” Ani said, marveling at the rippling tendrils.
The woman laughed. “My husband wishes,” she said. Like all those born in the Azad Islands she was relatively short and darker-skinned than Ghenisans tended to be, but she spoke Ghenisan well. “Go ahead, cutie. Touch.”
Without hesitation, Ani buried her hand in waving yellow tendrils (Avery cringed) and squealed happily.
“Can I squeeze one?” she said.
Avery sighed, but he felt a deep and abiding love wash over him. He’d only had Ani back for two months—two months after four years of never thinking he’d see her again, after having mourned for her, for the gods’ sakes—and he still wasn’t over it. He didn’t think he ever would be.
Layanna must have seen his expression, as he felt a pressure on his hand and looked sideways to see her smiling. The contact surprised him; they weren’t particularly physical these days.
Avery sweated in the heat as the group moved on. The sailors and whalers from the Verignun bought goods or wandered off to amuse themselves as seamen will when in port, but Avery and his group weren’t allowed to wander. Captain Greggory didn’t want any of them out of his or his men’s sight, except for Janx, whom as a veteran sailor—and a famous one—he was willing to give some leeway; and Hildra, of course: she was considered Janx’s woman and could go where he did. But the captain didn’t trust Avery or Layanna. If it weren’t for the fact that the whalers were going to Ghenisa, the destination of Avery’s group, Avery would never have consented to travel with them.
The sights and sounds of the bazaar were certainly arresting, but Avery couldn’t help notice other details, mainly all the refugees from the continents of Urslin and Consur. Dressed in rags, they clustered by the thousands in alleys and side streets, squatting over sewer grates on narrow pitted sidewalks holding hats or sacks, or posing provocatively (if not a little sadly and pathetically, some so skinny Avery could see the bones clearly pressing against thin, unhealthy skin) hoping to attract a john. Many who must have arrived healthy and with some coin, enough to purchase the trip here, were now infected and starving. They and their families had fled the mainland when it had seemed so certain that the armies of Octung would descend any day—as they had in countless places—only to wind up here months later penniless and vagabond, turned into thieves, beggars and whores, unable in many cases to afford processed seafood and having to resort to the kind that could kill or cause mutation. Now these proud Ghenisans, as a majority of them appeared to be, who had looked down on mutants in their own land, found themselves the unwanted pariahs shivering in the gutter.
Avery’s heart went out to them. If Ani had been alive a year ago, when things had looked most dire, he might well have sold his soul to get her off the mainland, get her somewhere safe and far away from the marching legions of the Lightning Crown. How many Anis were out there now, scared and hungry, possibly diseased from unprocessed seafood, having to submit to any indignity just to survive another day?
Not only the refugees looked dismal, Avery noted with worry. There were a large number of islanders who appeared unaccountably grim, when by all rights they should be rejoicing—Octung had been defeated; its armies were in retreat!—and Avery at first attributed it to the influx of foreigners and the burden they’d put on the city, but slowly he realized what he was seeing were expressions not of stress but fear. It made no sense until Avery noticed a huddle of Azadi reading a newspaper together, gasping and looking ill. Avery (who neither spoke nor read Azadi) bought a paper and asked Captain Greggory to read the main article, which boasted an alarmingly large headline.
“Shit,” said Captain Greggory, and his voice sounded ominous. “One of the Gyrgin Islands vanished last night.”
Avery swayed. The ship had stopped off at another chain of islands a couple of weeks ago, where they’d heard report of a neighboring island’s entire population and civilization disappearing the previous night. The island had been wiped out—razed and made waste—by some awful force, and there had been no survivors to report what had done it. Rumors ran that other islands had vanished far to the north and south, but these had not been confirmed. Avery knew of only one other island that had been similarly hit for sure.
“Any survivors?” Avery asked.
“None,” Greggory said. “It says they—or It—came at night like before. Caught everyone asleep.” People had began referring to the phenomenon by a number of names, such as It, Them, the Thing and, simply, the Horror. “Says it’s estimated that more’n three hundred thousand died.”
The whalers muttered amongst themselves. “What is It?” one said. “Some new mutation, maybe?”
