Джон Адамс - The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019

The water here was deceptively deep, dropping from shallows into the abyss with surprising speed, and the undertow was correspondingly strong, sucking swimmers in, pulling them down. It was perfect. From a biological standpoint, it was perfect.

I slid down the hillside on the sides of my shoes, banking against my own momentum, until I reached the bottom and the stones turned under my feet, making my footing uncertain. I windmilled my arms, getting my balance back, and stopped, listening.

Nothing.

No boats, no cars, no distant sound of voices; no seabirds calling or dogs barking. The world was silent, save for the sound of the sea. I nodded. This fit my assessment of the area, and more, the assumptions I’d made about the environment I was looking for. Someplace that was open and secluded at the same time. Someplace with certain unique geographic features. Unique enough to lure a creature as huge and inexplicable and important as the one the world had watched die fifteen years ago out of the depths and onto the land.

The beach was long and empty, flanked by hills and rocky granite spikes that jutted like bones where the water had worn the earth away. I started walking.

Fifteen years is a long time. Long enough to make a few hours’ walk seem like nothing in comparison, although my legs ached and knees burned by the time I rounded the curve of the cove and saw what I’d been looking for: a cave, not natural, although it could certainly pass for such to the untrained eye, hewn from the rock wall that encircled the small, isolated slice of the sea. Something had reached out with a terrible claw, perhaps coated with the kind of biological acid that developed for a reason, a reason bigger and better than destroying cities, and had sliced an opening out of the rock. Something that needed a safe, secure, isolated place.

I pulled the flashlight from my bag and started inside, the pain in my legs forgotten in the face of the moment I’d been seeking for so impossibly, incredibly long, since I was a child who had somehow been able to recognize despair when she saw it in the eyes of a creature the size of a city.

At the back of the cave I found them, rolled gently into their cradles of melted, stabilizing sand. There had been three once, each the size of a basketball—so small for what they would eventually become, but not unreasonably so, given what I knew about the life cycles of sea turtles and sharks.

One of them was a deflated husk, its leathery skin cracked and pitted, its contents diffused into the sand around it.

One of them had hardened, undergoing a strange, terrible alchemy that might be as common and necessary for this species as the hibernation of cicadas, the slow incubation of alligators. Maybe when there were multiple healthy eggs, one of them would always turn into a sphere of what looked like solid obsidian, preserving its contents for a time when it would be alone, free of competition, free to grow.

The third . . .

It was the pale, inviting green of a healthy eel’s skin, mottled with paler yellow and deeper olive, a biological tapestry of possibilities. It was slightly larger than either of its flawed siblings, pulsing with its own internal bioluminescence. I moved closer. There was a heavy shadow at the center of the egg, moving slightly, preparing to be born. I hadn’t missed it.

“Hi,” I whispered, and my voice was a shout in the confines of the cave. “I, um. I knew your mother. I’ve come to take you someplace safe.”

The egg didn’t respond. I lifted it from its cradle, and it was heavy and warm and soft in my hands. I nestled it in the bottom of my backpack, making sure it was secure, before picking up the second egg. It felt solid from side to side, and I hoped, however irrationally, that that would mean one day it could soften and swell and hatch. For now . . .

For now, people were returning to the state, to the coast, and this cave would be found soon enough, by scientists who should have started looking years ago, who should have been asking themselves from the start why something so big, so powerful, so perfect, would come ashore at all. Maybe some of them had been. I liked the thought. I liked the idea that some people had looked at the arc of her steps, the way she went for the closest, most dangerous population center, and said to themselves, I’ll give them time, I won’t attract attention, I’ll wait. It would mean I wasn’t in this alone.

My backpack felt heavier than the world as I made my way back up the coast to the slope where I’d made my descent. I squinted at it. The idea of climbing it made my thighs ache in anticipated weariness. The thought of spending the night on this rocky, exposed coast, with the Pacific winds doing their best to flay the skin from my body, was worse. With a sigh, I gripped the nearest exposed root and began pulling myself up.

I had a long way to go before I—before we —would be safe.

The house I’d rented was one of hundreds left empty and barely maintained in the wake of the Seattle disaster, the sole remaining asset of a family that might never choose to return to Washington. They had seen the world turn against them, and they were seeking level ground.

The maintenance that had been performed had been handled by the state, squads of nervous, underpaid contractors visiting each municipality for one week a quarter, patching the obvious leaks and repairing the worst of the damage. Nothing they did could have prevented the slow decay of an unoccupied home, but they’d tried, right up until the moment when the region was declared fit for habitation and the responsibility was passed back to the homeowner. A lot of neighborhoods like the one that was temporarily mine had looting problems now, desperate residents pulling down fences and stealing shingles from the unoccupied homes. They tried to justify it to the media, claiming that they were reclaiming materials that would otherwise have been wasted, blaming the state for its lackadaisical standards and the climate for destroying their precious homes, but most people regarded them as dangerous thieves, and it had slowed down the rate of residents returning to Washington. Empty neighborhoods were still more common than the state liked.

I had been able to get my place for little more than a song. It was too big for me, with a yard that opened onto an incredible view of the Sound, all blue water and endless sky. Opening the front door revealed a living room done up in varying shades of beige, with water stains on the walls and ancient curtains covering the windows. I locked up behind myself, making my way to the back bedroom, which I had prepared meticulously for this moment.

Blackout curtains kept the sunlight at bay, while humidifiers and heaters brought the temperature up to something heavy and tropical. The creature had breathed acid, biological and bright, and the eggs had been nestled in cradles of melted sand, with channels dug around them, as if to keep them dry. I had gambled on the fact that the acid had been a part of the gestation process, intended to tell the babies when it was safe for them to emerge. I removed them from my backpack, placing them in the beds of sculpting foam that I had constructed. There were four beds, a moment of wild optimism given physical reality. I pushed two of them under the desk with my foot and went for my field kit. It was time to take some basic measurements.

The active egg weighed eight pounds and had an ambient temperature of eighty-four degrees. The inactive egg weighed twelve pounds and had an ambient temperature of sixty degrees. I still tucked them both in, putting enough distance between them to mirror the setup in the cave, before leaving the room and scavenging a dinner for myself from the meager supplies in the kitchen. My bed beckoned. Cracker crumbs still clinging to my lips, I collapsed into it without removing my clothes. The work, the real work, was about to begin.