Hidden in Sight (23 page)

The two stayed in contact long enough for Paul to stretch himself into something almost hydrodynamic, then his rescuer released him.

I relaxed, and flipped a swimmeret to enjoy some rolling of my own.

All corridors from the yokes flowed to the main processing area, a dimly lit and cavernous space enclosed within an opaque dome. Not surprisingly, the literal translation of the Prumbin name for it was “Dull Place to Wait a Long Time.” Incoming currents were dampened by immense, slow-moving paddles rising from the floor, which also served as map displays and advertising for various hotels and recreational opportunities. There were, of course, frequent and exaggerated depictions of emaciated Prumbins toiling on land—sponsored, I presumed, by the various time-share companies eager to find new victims. It was a rare Prumbin indeed who left Nirvana without putting its smudge on a contract.

Here, the water entering my gills was stale and uninteresting, despite the efforts of the Prumbins to enhance its flavor. Not only was that water doubtless passing through more than its share of gills, given the proportion of unsuited species, but Essence of Sun-Kissed Algae just wasn't the same when one was sculling to hold a place in a queue. For almost a standard hour.

Bored, I waved at Paul again. He was leaning against a rail, waiting for our luggage. He waved back, but remained preoccupied talking to the other Human.
Humans bonded almost as quickly as Whirtles on a cruise
. At least I'd be able to talk to him myself, soon.

If this line would move
. I fastened my oculars on the Jylnics ahead of me, longing for a form that could scowl. In an intimidating manner.
Or
, I thought wistfully,
at all
.

::What are you doing here, Too-Young? This is the line for com attachments.::

Startled, I bent to orient my oculars upward and found an Oieta approaching me rapidly. I was relieved to see she was a passive blue with spots of determined, businesslike brown. A kite tail of necessities was attached to her mid-arm: ident, credit chit, com, a mesh bag bulging with tools.
A Greeter
. The Oietae equivalent of a Human ambassador, med-tech, and building superintendent. ::My Soft Companion is Human, Gracious-One:: I explained, inclining one antenna in Paul's direction. ::I need to communicate with him.::

::Why? You will not need his services again until you leave Nirvana:: A hint of disapproving purple. I tasted impatience. ::Do you see any other Oietae purchasing such devices? They are expensive, uncomfortable, and unattractive.::

Hard to argue with such a sensible being
, I decided. She was right in every respect, even without mentioning the distressing part about applying glue to my shell for a firm fit near my pre-gills. But I needed to talk to Paul, something she couldn't possibly understand.
Or could she?
I thought, having a wonderful idea.

I chose to ignore the immediate echo of Ersh-memory that wanted to list the regrettable instances which had involved my coupling of the term “wonderful” with “idea.”

With a flick of my antennae, I invited the Greeter to approach and entwine, a courtesy rarely offered between strangers.

She complied. Our antennae wrapped around one another, guided by stiff hairs into a perfect alignment of our corresponding sensory pores, from those responsive to electrical current, and thus excellent indicators of mood, to those capable of detecting the slightest trace of key pheromones. It was said among the Oietae, quite literally, that one tasted the truth of another.

We stayed in contact as long as it took us both to turn a pleased amber, then moved apart. ::I am Neram Marenelli Holdswisely:: she introduced herself, flashing back to a more neutral blue. ::Welcome to Nirvana ...:: she paused.

::Esippet Darnelli Swashbuckly, Greeter Holdswisely. My cluster instructed me to—::

Her vibrations cut across mine, though soft in their feel against my tympana. ::Please, Esippet. No need to explain. You were handling yourself so capably in line, I had no idea you were freshly hatched. Of course your family wishes you to be able to communicate with your Soft Companion. Until they arrive, I trust?:: An opinionated mauve began to creep across her sturdy segments. ::Perhaps you should come with me until then.::

So much for my great idea to be rid of her,
I thought with disgust. The Oietae weren't as parentally-obsessed as mammals like Humans, but I should have remembered they would keep better track of pre-spawning offspring than letting them visit a multispecies' resort without a family member nearby.

Just then, fortune smiled on me.
Or
, I grinned to myself,
one of those ironies of misunderstanding was about to work in my favor for once.
I stabbed an antenna toward Paul again. My Human was now in the midst of a tumbling group of three orange-and-black Oietae.
Familiar Oietae.
That made Paul's newfound friend the Soft Companion who'd been so weary in the Busfish. I presumed the Oietae were harassing her about their luggage.

The why of their presence didn't matter to me, only the pure convenience of it. ::Oh, I'm not alone:: I assured the Greeter with a pert vibration of my pre-gills. ::There's my family now.:: I waved madly and wasn't at all surprised when all three Joyous-Ones waved back.

Her purple deepened.
Ersh
, I grumbled to myself,
what did I do to deserve an official who'd worry about a child in the care of distracted elders?
It had never bothered my web-kin. Before Neram could voice her doubtless valid objections, I gave her a flare of sincere blue and the truth. ::My Soft Companion will take good care of me. He's been with the family for years. And—:: I added as an afterthought, pleased to use Paul's own praise for a babysitter he'd hired ::—he doesn't let me get away with anything.::

Greeter Holdswisely didn't need to know Paul had been praising that babysitter for not letting a certain doting and scaly Aunt indulge his offspring with unapproved treats. I'd objected later, in private and strenuously, at the injustice of being bossed by someone younger than I was by close to six centuries.
Paul
, I remembered,
had laughed
.

The Greeter wasn't completely convinced. I kept myself that polite, calm blue, moving only as much as required to breathe and not drift from my place behind the Jylnics. If the organs along my dorsal ridge could sense the impatient thrumming of the Nimmeries in line after me—a species the Oietae had seriously considered eradicating from the oceans of their colonies during various border disputes—so could hers.

Whether she felt their impatience, or cared a whit about it, what the Oieta did next took me by complete surprise. She took what looked like a miniature pair of grips from her mesh bag. Before I guessed what she intended—and could avoid it—she'd snapped them closed over the edge of one of my middle segments.
Hard enough to hurt
. I bent my oculars down in alarm and saw my segment whitening with pain—and, as she undid the grips, could see the neat, little imprint pressed into my shell. It was her address on the Brim. ::In case you need someone more reliable:: Neram said gruffly.

Not knowing what to say that wouldn't include something bitter about the sanctity of one's shell, even for the freshly hatched, I kept my pre-gills still.

It will be,
I promised myself with significant self-pity,
so nice to grow up.

 

There were stunning accomplishments of sentient life held within my flesh—soaring leaps of intellect, projects that consumed generations and altered worlds; there were simpler achievements as well—a new and biologically unlikely ending to a drinking song, a safer way to cook rostra sprouts, a law that banned cruelty. They were equal in that they had been conceived and acted upon by those now gone. They wouldn't be forgotten, so long as I endured.

Yet among them all, the Nirvana Abyss stood apart. I floated at Paul's side, overjoyed to be free of queues and alone with my Web, happily struggling to comprehend why this was so.
Perhaps
, I could hear Ersh now,
I was being ephemeral enough to be impressed by messy geology
. Certainly she'd see little to revere in a gash in the ocean floor, especially one that would be erased by upwelling magma before I could approach her years.

I'd have defended my better judgment, if Ersh would have listened. She'd never been prone to giving me a fair share of time in what weren't really debates. But I didn't believe it was the plunging rift that made me feel the closest to awe I'd ever experienced—well, there had been a time or ten when I'd been just as awestruck by the cataclysmic results of some inadvertent and completely innocent mistake on my part, but that was to be expected in a past like mine.

No
, I decided. What held me mute with admiration was the stubborn will of the Prumbins. No other species in web-memory had learned to warp the universe to suit themselves quite this well. It was, frankly, inspiring. Or alarming. It depended on how you felt about the ramifications of enjoying the afterlife in the present one.

The Prumbins weren't native to this world, though they'd named it. They weren't in the least aquatic, needing the suits for survival as much as Paul. But the otherwise unimaginative and unremarkable Prumbin had taken this ocean as the personification of their paradise, and had built a living Nirvana so they could dwell in it. The result sprawled along and over the Brim of the deepest abyssal depth of this world.

And
, I reminded myself with a hint of yellow,
it was a great place for parties.

Paul drifted closer to the lip of the viewing balcony, presumably for a better look. I scrambled to keep up to him.
Literally.
My Oieta-self was a capable swimmer, if you were among those life-forms who counted the well-timed thrashing of limbs as good technique. I could, if pressed, cover a short distance in a straight line and at considerable speed by adding the flex of my lowermost segments. It would be backward, but that was usually a preferable direction anyway if confronted by an obnoxious relative or salesbeing.

I was, however, perfectly comfortable beneath a column of seawater that would have flattened the lungs or simpler gas bladders of those less well-adapted. Comfortable and, I paused to swallow the latest accumulation of delectable
petites
offered by my mandibles, continuously well fed.

Stunningly illuminated, too,
I thought, twisting around to admire myself. Blue luminescence shimmered in the soft creases of every contentedly amber-tinged segment, with glowing egg-shaped dots along both sides of my nethermost five. The dots, called oiesies, indicated my feminine nature.
Oh, dear.
I stared at them. They should have been glowing, advertising my sexual state to anything sufficiently attractive with oculars. My amber streaked with blue-blue as I realized my oiesies were masked by a layer of translucent keratin—a holdover from my last molt.

My Human, being restricted to head and wrist lamps, wasn't as brilliant or beautiful; he was as comfortable, thanks to Prumbin technology. His suit could protect him from the pressure even at the bottom of the Abyss. It wouldn't protect him from the searing temperatures farther down, hence the servo propulsion system which would bring any suit—with willing or unwilling inhabitant—back to safer zones should its wearer be so reckless.

And I was here.

The companionway into the Brim itself was widest along this spot, built out over the Abyss so those arriving could answer the natural inclination to stop and gaze into Nirvana from any of a series of balconies. Fortunately for those reliant on the electromagnetic spectrum, the Prumbins had installed, hung, and otherwise suspended immense floodlights to show off the more spectacular features of the chasm. Those beings able to ignore how the Abyss and surrounding ocean swallowed those lights in every direction probably found the view charming.

Below where Paul and I stood was a balcony for arriving Prumbins, allowing them separate space to gasp, faint, worship, or point out the best restaurants, depending on how many times they'd visited. An attendant, one of the largest Prumbins I'd ever seen, sat in mammoth splendor on a raised dais in the middle, ready to sell permanent accommodations to any of its kind ready to end the toil of life on land—if they could afford the price. Ansky had told me it was the single best advertising ploy she'd ever seen. For Prumbins, size was success.

The com patches affixed to my tympana vibrated. Words. “So this is their idea of heaven.”

I settled so I was dorsal-down in front of my Human, keeping in place with a gentle sculling of six pairs of swimmerets. “You sound doubtful,” I commented, having made sure the balloonlike device over my pre-gills was in the right spot to transfer my vocalizations to his suit. The appliances, like everything that had to be brought down to the Brim, had cost a small fortune; it didn't guarantee a perfect fit.
Hence the distressingly large amount of glue
—which I'd have to reapply if I cycled. “Why?”

“I thought you told me most agrarian societies constructed their notions of paradise around an absence of toil, fields of plenty, with sunshine and an abundance of beer.” One magnified eye closed and opened. A wink.

“There's beer,” I assured him, now aware I was being teased. “And the Prumbins' view of the afterlife specifically includes not just the end of toil, but being able to move without effort.” Paul knew as well as I that Prumbins accumulated body mass with age, which had made evolutionary sense for the species until they developed medical techniques to extend their life span past a magnificently solid— and predator-proof—maturity. Now, a Prumbin living on land died not of old age, but when its bones finally shattered under the strain. They could have retired to live more comfortably in deep space, like the Dokecians who lost muscle tone with age. They liked the dark, too. However, space wasn't an option for Prumbins; its lack of life caused them fundamental distress. The species were farmers for a reason. They needed to be part of a network of other organisms, to feel connected to a viable ecosystem. Here in the Abyss, though the life and ecosystem were as alien as imaginable, any Prumbin could float about in a toil-free paradise within their lifetimes.