Кейт Форсит - Relics, Wrecks and Ruins - Anthology of Speculative Fiction Short Works

The waters were dark, and Aracai’s gills itched. He swam briefly to the surface and flashed his gills, shaking his head, to try to rid them of grit.

Aracai wondered long about the C54, horrified that such a weapon would be unleashed on others, crippling the minds of children.

He thought of his daughter, her tiny fingers as rubbery as the tentacles of a dead octopus, her blind eyes, the malformed brain that would not work well enough to let her breathe.

“The Venezuelans create this drug, and the other nations, they do not fight back?” Aracai asked.

“Oh, they fight back,” Escalas sang. “Humans have never discovered a stick that could not be turned into a club. Venezuela’s enemies wage economic war, making their country the poorest of the world’s poor, and they bribe AIs to withhold information from them. Each of Venezuela’s enemies have iconic celebrities who mock the Venezuelans, weakening their spirits. They use viruses and nanobots…”

“And if we go to war,” Aracai asked, “are we any better than they are?” The possibility that they weren’t frustrated Aracai. He did not know much about humans. He had seen the hulls of their boats above water, but had never wanted to meet one.

Truth be told, he despised them. The humans had made him poorly. His eyes did not face forward like those of a human, which made it dangerous to swim too far, too fast, lest he crack his skull on something. He had no need for hair, and would have preferred to have flesh alone, or perhaps scales, instead of flowing locks that were always picking up bits of seaweed and becoming home to tiny crabs. His shoulders were too large, not sleek enough to slice through the water.

It is the right of any creature to dislike his creators, he thought. The humans created us according to some nightmarish aesthetic instead of constructing something more elegant.

“I am what they made me,” Aracai said.

“Is that all you are?” Escalas asked. “Do you not also make yourself?”

Aracai dodged between two rocks. “We can always better ourselves.”

“I think,” Escalas said, “that it is almost a duty for a man to better himself, or a people to better themselves. We must swim forward, not be content to drift with the tides. Don’t you think?”

There it was again, that secretive tone. Was he talking of genetic manipulation? That cost a lot of money, something that a mer, living off the bounties of the ocean, did not need.

But Aracai thought, I could make money. There are still treasures under the sea—Spanish galleons full of emeralds, sunken Mayan ruins off the coast of Mexico, filled with artifacts. Humans pay well for such curiosities. Perhaps I could find a cure for the poisons.

But the old mer seemed to want to send a message.

“So,” Aracai said at last, “do humans actually die in these wars?”

“Some die,” Escalas admitted. “But there are various theories on war. The goal is not to kill, it is to demoralize, to alter the behavior of the enemy.” The old mer struggled to talk and breathe at the same time. He rose to the surface, gasped a deep breath, and continued. “To be honest though, I do not think that humans value life as much as you and I do. When I found you, Spirit Warrior, you were the first mer that I had met in two years. I felt so alone, and so I begged you, ‘Swim with me.’ Among the mer, we crave each other’s company. But with over two hundred billion human souls on earth, there are too many. If one of them dies, the others feel relief rather than loss. Why, on the Amazon alone, there are sixteen million humans living along its banks It is the largest river in the world, and holds one fifth of all the fresh water…” he droned on.

Ahead of them, Dulce was slowing, and she had begun to sing in the way mer women will, a threnody whose tune was beat out in the lashing of her tail.

The old mer glanced ahead and said, “She is a fine wife for a Spirit Warrior. I hope that at the end of this, you will be able to have the children you deserve.”

“Why do you call me ‘Spirit Warrior,’” Aracai asked.

The old mer slowed his swimming and did a roll, so that he could peer into Aracai’s face. “Among the humans, men contend with one another. But you fight your own weaknesses, your own inner demons. That is why I brought you.”

Aracai eyed Escalas. “You do not want to kill humans either, do you?”

Escalas admitted, “To take a life is… reprehensible. To even force another into a certain path… weighs on my soul. But we will not reach our destination for many days and so I have time to ponder.”

Aracai thought long. He realized that he need not make a decision to go to war now. He could abandon the bomb at any moment, let it sink into the mud. Changing course would be as simple as a flick of his tail.

But he plunged ahead, through the night, wondering.

By early dawn they had traveled many kilometers upriver, reaching the old gods that guarded its mouth.

The old gods came in the form of enormous ancient busts of men and monkeys, all grimacing, each perhaps sixty feet tall. A line of them had been discovered across the river channel back in the twenty-second century, sunk deep into the mud, but no one knew what civilization had carved them. Aracai worried for Dulce. The bomb she carried was very heavy. She held the disk clasped against her belly as she swam, near her womb, and he knew enough to be afraid for her, for them all.

How much radiation did the bomb emit? How much could they handle?

Did it even matter? When they set the bomb off, he might not have a chance to escape the blast. Even if he got away from the fireball, the detonation would create a wall of sound, a sonic boom that would carry downriver, stunning and killing fish, including him.

And he had to wonder, was there any life left in Dulce’s womb worth worrying about anyway?

He took the bomb, to give her a rest, but then determined that she would carry it no more.

Escalas continued to struggle in the swift water. Aracai was smart enough to wonder if the old man had brought him on this journey, planned it months or even years ago, just so that he’d have strong arms to carry the weapon. Aracai considered asking, but knew he would not get a straight answer. Escalas was always forcing him to think for himself.

So Aracai swam, hampered by muddled thoughts, a heavy burden, and strong currents. The riverbed below him looked remarkably dead in the morning light. Escalas’s warnings about ferocious fish and deadly stingrays seemed to be without merit.

At dawn Aracai rose to the surface, drew a great breath, and peered about. The bank to the north was so far away he could make out only water, but to the south he saw buildings—squat and colorful in shades of lavender and canary and pearl, sitting in tiers along the bank. Peasants with mule carts walked along the roads in bare feet.

There had to be tens of thousands of them, freakish things. There were no gleaming hovercars with wealthy passengers, like he’d once seen in Chile.

Aracai dove deep and swam near the bottom.

Then came the new gods.

Aracai was flapping his tail hard, driving upstream through the sepia waters, falling behind the others. Soot and algae beat against him like a storm, and suddenly he heard a ping. A brilliant blue beam of light struck his face and he squinted to see huge metal struts ahead that seemed to be covered by seaweed. He realized that it wasn’t seaweed at all, but strands of plasteet—a material used to capture energy from wave action—and he followed new movement as the barrel of a cannon swiveled his way.