Vonda McIntyre: Fireflood

by Vonda N. McIntyre

This story copyright 1979 by Vonda N. McIntyre. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal use. All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

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Dark moved slowly along the bottom of a wide, swift river, pushing against its current. The clean water made long bubbling strokes over her armor, and round stones scraped against her belly scales. She could live here, hidden in rapids or pools, surfacing every few hours to replenish her internal supplies of oxygen, looking little different from a huge boulder. In time she could even change the color of her armor to conform perfectly to the lighter, grayer rock of this region. But she was moving on; she would not stay in the river long enough to alter her rust-red hue.

Vibrations warned her of rapids. She took more care with her hand-and footholds, though her own mass was her main anchor. Stones rumbling gradually downstream did not afford much purchase for her claws. The turbulence was treacherous and exciting. But now she had to work harder to progress, and the riverbed shifted more easily beneath her. As the water grew swifter it also became more shallow, and when she sensed a number of huge boulders around her, she turned her back to the flow and reared up above the surface to breathe.

The force of the current sent water spraying up over her back, forming a curtain that helped conceal her. She breathed deeply, pumping air through her storage lungs, forcing herself not to exceed her body's most efficient absorption rate. However anxious she was to get underwater again, she would do herself no good if she used more oxygen than she stored during the stop.

Dark's armor, though impenetrable and insensitive to pain, detected other sensations. She was constantly aware of the small point of heat-- call it that, she had no more accurate word-- in the center of her spinal ridge. It was a radio transceiver. Though she could choose not to hear its incoming messages, it sent out a permanent beacon of her presence that she could not stop. It was meant to bring aid to her in emergencies, but she did not want to be found. She wanted to escape.

Before she had properly caught her breath, she sensed the approach of a helicopter, high above and quite far away. She did not see it: the spray of water glittered before her shortsighted eyes. She did not hear it: the rush of the river drowned out all other sounds. But she had more than one sense that had as yet no name.

She let herself sink beneath the water. An observer would have had to watch a single boulder among many to see what had happened. If the searchers had not homed in on the transmitter she could still get away.

She turned upstream again and forged ahead toward the river's source.

If she was very lucky, the helicopter was flying a pattern and had not actually spotted her transmitter at all. That was a possibility, for while it did not quite have the specificity of a laser, it worked on a narrow beam. It was, after all, designed to send messages via satellite.

But the signal did not pass through water and even as the searchers could not detect her, she could not see or feel them through the rough silver surface of the river. Trusting her luck, she continued on.

The country was very different from where she had trained. Though she was much more comfortable underground than underwater, this land was not ideal for digging. She could survive as well beneath liquid, and travel was certainly quicker. If she could not get to the surface to breathe, the time it would take her to stop and extract oxygen directly was about the same. But the character of water was far too constant for her taste. Its action was predictable and its range of temperature was trivial compared to

what she could stand. She preferred to go under ground, where excitement spiced the exploration. For, though she was slow, methodical, and nearly indestructible, she was an explorer. It was just that now she had nowhere to explore.

She wondered if any of her friends had made it this far. She and six others had decided, in secret, to flee. But they offered each other only moral support; each had gone out alone. Twenty more of her kind still remained scattered in their reserve, waiting for assignments that would never come and pretending they had not been abandoned.

Though it was not yet evening, the light faded around her and left the river bottom gray and black.

Dark slowly and cautiously lifted her eyes above the water. Her eyes peered darkly from beneath her armor. They were deep blue, almost black, the only thing of beauty about her: the only thing of beauty about her after or before her transformation from a creature who could pass for human to one who could not. Even now she was not sorry to have volunteered for the change. It did not further isolate her; she had always been alone. She had also been useless. In her new life, she had some worth.

The riverbed had cut between tall, thick trees that shut out much of the sunlight. Dark did not know for certain if they would interfere with the radio signal as well. She had not been designed to work among lush vegetation and she had never studied how her body might interact with it. But she did not believe it would be safe for her to take a quiet stroll among the giant cedars. She tried to get her bearings, with sun time and body memory. Her ability to detect magnetic fields was worthless here on Earth; that sense was designed for more delicate signals. She closed it off as she might shut her eyes to a blinding light.

Dark submerged again and followed the river upward, keeping to its main branch. As she passed the tributaries that ran and rushed to join the primary channel the river became no more than a stream itself, and Dark was protected only by thin ripples.

She peered out again.

The pass across the ridge lay only a little ahead and above her, just beyond the spring that created the river. To Dark's left lay a wide field of scree, where a cliff and hillside had collapsed. The river flowed around the pile, having been displaced by tons of broken stone. The rubble stretched on quite a way, at least as far as the pass and, if she were lucky, all the way through. It was ideal. Sinking barely underwater, she moved across the current. Beneath her feet she felt the stones change from rounded and water-worn to sharp and freshly broken. She reached the edge of the slope, where the shattered rock projected into the river. On the downstream side she nudged away a few large stones, set herself, and burrowed quickly into the shards.

The fractured crystalline matrix disrupted her echo perception. She kept expecting to meet a wall of solid rock that would push her out and expose her, but the good conditions existed all the way through the pass. Then, on the other side, when she chanced a peek out into the world, she found that the texture of the ground changed abruptly on this side of the ridge. When the broken stone ended, she did not have to seek out another river. She dug straight from the scree into the earth.

In the cool dry darkness, she traveled more slowly but more safely than in the river. Underground there was no chance of the radio signal's escaping to give her away. She knew exactly where the surface was all the time. It, unlike the interface of water and air, did not constantly change. Barring the collapse of a hillside, little could unearth her. A landslide was possible, but her sonar could detect the faults and weaknesses in earth and rock that might create a danger.

She wanted to rest, but she was anxious to reach the flyers' sanctuary as quickly as she could. She did not have much farther to go. Every bit of distance might make a difference, for she would be safe only after she got inside the boundaries... She could be safe there from normal people: what the flyers would do when she arrived she could not say.