Michael Siemsen - Exigency

Aether nodded. Zisa’s tone wouldn’t be the most accurate indicator of a critsit.

A dull thud struck the EV hull. Aether and Qin looked around and then at each other. A wave? Their motion hadn’t been affected. Another thud, this time at the very top of the EV.

“What the hell is that?” Aether said.

“Seabird?”

“No birds on Epsy.”

“A fish? Some kind of jumping fish?” Qin’s face remembered and said duh. “Optics!” He popped up, squatting in his seat and peering around.

Aether followed suit and set her fone to autoglide through spectrums. She paused on the thermag overlap, spotting through the EV gear and walls a group of figures in the water beneath and around the pod. “You see them?”

“Ahh man, I ahh, yeah, I ahh…” He began hyperventilating, head snapping from figure to figure. “What ahh… what’d’you ahh… what’d’you think they’re doing?”

The colorful blobs of warmth appeared to be poking at the hull and conversing. Aether counted only five.

She adjusted focus and intensity until the bodies gained definition. “Just checking us out. Slow it down. Remember that these are all peaceful people. In nose, out mouth.”

Unconvinced, he tried to watch each individual at once. “Nonono-why? Why us, too? All the way out here? Ah-hey!” He jumped as if to avoid a probing Threck tentacle touching his foot.

Typical phobic behavior. The full meter of gear and hull between him and the Threck in the water below offered no solace. His mind was operating as if the visitors were inside the EV with him.

“Qin, sweetie, look at me.” She annunciated as if speaking to a child. “I really don’t think we need to worry. Not about Sea Threck. These are Sea Threck. You remember Minnie talking about Sea Threck? They’re the purist hippie types, right? They reject the modern comforts of the city and return to the water, remember?”

He looked at her, desperate for it to be true. “Yeah, sure, yeah, but doesn’t that make them hunters versus farmers?”

“Yes, however we look nothing like fish or crustaceans. Besides, how could they possibly breach the hull? Even if they had the very best bronze weapons from the city, they’d hardly make a dent.” She glanced down. “Look, some of them are leaving.”

“Great, but some are staying.”

Aether watched as three orange figures slowly descended into darkness, tentacles waving gracefully around them. The two that stayed behind appeared to be keeping their distance, floating beneath the EV.

“If you were amphibious,” Qin began with a shaky voice. A valiant effort at self-distraction via idle conversation. “Would you ‘return to the water’ or stick to the city?”

Aether wished she could be more thrilled by this moment. She stood mere meters from another intelligent lifeform—people they’d never expected to see up close with their own eyes. “I think I’d choose the place I didn’t yet know.”

Qin looked up, wearing an aspiring smiling. “I guess that’s all of us, huh? Thus the current predicament.” He peered back down between his feet. “When they’re swimming like this, you can really see how they evolved for land… the ruined symmetry… and yet still so suited for the water.”

Aether watched the two Threck under the pod. Side by side, they “lay” beneath the surface as if on an invisible hammock. They supported each other with one “arm” tentacle wrapped under the other’s back, the unoccupied arm gently waving at their sides to maintain position. On land, the Threck’s two front tentacles stretched out below them as legs—thus their wider girth and stiffer structure. Over millennia, the rear appendages had become arms, and the ends—called pads or clubs , or even hands when the team got lazy—evolved increasingly useful features. The arms were thinner and considerably more dexterous than legs, and for precision tasks such as sewing, Threck used the thousands of cilia on their pads as little fingers. A couple years ago, Minnie captured a clip of a Threck artist painting a detailed mural on a city wall. The clubs were dipped into various paints and then gradually slid across the wall as individual cilia hairs applied paint to specific “pixels.” The pad was washed, a new paint applied, and more blank areas were filled. “They use them like inkjet printers!” Minnie had enthused.

“Still there,” Qin said. “What if they don’t leave by nightfall? Then what?”

“I’m hesitant to try and scare them away. Can you verify that, if we do nothing, the current is still leading us close to the rally point?”

“Already done. We’re still heading north for several hours before skirting the coast eastward. But if we don’t blow the raft when we get close, we’ll pass right by, and out to open sea. What if they stay—”

“Hang on,” Aether interrupted, holding out a finger to Qin while staring down at her seat. “What the hell is that? ” Deep beneath the surface, perhaps 100m below the two Sea Threck, hundreds of new heat signatures appeared and grew.

“Ahh yeah, ahh not good… ahh how many—”

“Does it matter? Wait…” As the amoebas of heat ascended, Aether could see them combining into larger blobs. It wasn’t a bunch of different entities, but a single, extremely large creature, slowly rising toward them.

Qin murmured, observing the same thing, “Ahh man that’s some kind of whale…”

“More like a mollusk… That’s all hard shell just beneath the—oh, I know what it is. Affrik or averik or something like that. It’s the big domesticated fishing boat animals. You know, in the harbor?”

Qin just stared downward, inhaling through the nose, exhaling through the mouth.

A moment later, the massive beast stopped its ascent about 40m below. Five Sea Threck appeared from around the thing’s edges. The other two that had waited now twisted into action and all seven rose to the surface, surrounding the floating pod.

Two thuds in rapid succession. Something appeared in the porthole over Aether’s head. A thick, pink vine. Squeaks and bumps against the hull. The EV tilted, knocking Aether off-balance. She grabbed a handle and steadied herself.

“They’re wrapping us up!” Qin said. “Hippies or not, they’re not giving up as interesting a prize as this! They’re keeping us! They’re going to take us somewhere!”

Aether ignored him and watched four figures quickly swim down toward the giant animal. What to do? Blow the hatch and raft, and bail? Initiate contact now? As much as she tried to convince Qin how peaceful these people were, the truth was they didn’t have all that much data on Sea Threck. What if they spoke an entirely different language? It seemed likely, given the differences in environments, land and water. Most sounds spoken in one atmosphere wouldn’t work at all in the other.

And what if the Sea Threck tried pulling them farther out to sea?

She didn’t have to think long about this question. Answering for her, the Sea Threck had their enormous creature submerge once more, dragging the pod beneath the surface with ease.

“Crap! Ah crap!” Qin blurted, clutching two handles as the pod sunk deeper and deeper, sunlight from the surface rapidly dissipating, the glow of the EV’s internal lights taking over. He spewed rapidfire thoughts, “Where’re they taking us? Wha’d’we do? What if the pressure—”

As the pod continued plunging, it accelerated to the northwest.

Aether tried to remain calm for the both of them. “We don’t have to worry about pressure. We equalized on landing, so we’ll remain at sea level atmosphere. Also, the EV’s can withstand pressure down to… what… two-K?”

Qin was losing it. “I don’t know! Is it? Can it? What if we run out of air? Stuck at the bottom… the scrubbers…”