Soft Apocalypses (24 page)

“I do not want to die, and I certainly do not want our child to die,” he replied. “But if the worst happens on this venture, her name will be written down alongside mine in the history books. Men years from now will know who she was and what she tried to help us do. And other Tamil girls will hear her tale, and maybe some of them will realize that they, too, could be people of importance in the world.”

“Mama,” Thilini said. “I
am
afraid of the shark. I see it in my dreams. I don’t want it to haunt me when I’m old, but if I do not face it again, I am sure it will be with me forever.”

“Oh, my baby.” Her mother pulled her in for a tight hug. “Do what you feel you must. But please go to the Koneswaram temple with me first. We must pray to Ganesha to remove all obstacles in the way of your success and safety.”

“Yes, Mama.”

Four days later, the
HMS Makara
launched with minimal fanfare to go hunting for the ship-killing shark. Her father was the craft’s engineer; once they were in the water, he was to focus entirely on making sure the steam engines ran properly. Two British naval men—Hart and Dawes—who were experienced with handling submersibles served as pilot and co-pilot. A third British sailor—Jacoby—manned the triggers for the massive harpoon cannons mounted to the sides of the craft.

Thilini took up her station in front of the gleaming brass wireless telegraph. Her job would be to send back as many details of the hunt as she could. In the event that they failed, at least there would be a thorough accounting of what happened. Technicians had taken one of the wireless telegraphs down the road to Kantale and the transmission back to Trincomalee was a success, so Herr Rothschild was confident it should function well for at least part of the journey.

She took a small mahogany statuette of Ganesha out of the pocket of her rubber suit and set it on the instrument panel. Her mother had given her the figurine after their visit to the temple. Thilini never had much religious fervor, but she felt better knowing the jolly elephant-headed god was there with her.

As her father started the steam engines, Thilini tapped out a test message to the technician manning the telegraph back at the factory; she quickly received her acknowledgement. So far, so good. She began to transcribe the orders the men shared amongst themselves.

“Steady forward,” said Hart.

“Aye,” replied Dawes. “Ten knots, cabin temperature 80 degrees, boiler temperature 240 degrees.”

“All systems fair!” her father called from the rear.

They passed through the area where the orca had been taken by the shark. The crew was silent; all Thilini could hear was the pounding of her own heart. She took Ganesha off the instrument panel and held him tightly in her fist to steady her shaking hand. The porpoises had seemed to be able to find their way in the water not so much by sight as through sound; she wished they had something similar on the submarine so they could better find their way in the dark.

Jacoby the harpooner shifted in his seat a few feet away from her, mumbling a tuneless sea chantey under his breath. His leg jittered, making the metal panel beneath him squeak. His teeth were bad and his breath terrible.

In fact, all the Britons were starting to sweat and stink inside their rubber suits. Thilini decided the best tactic was to breathe shallowly through her mouth.

“Hoy!” Jacoby sat up straight. “I saw something down low off the port bow.”

“Taking her around now,” said Hart. “Bait the water.”

Dawes pulled the lever that released a half barrel of salt pork from a compartment below one of the harpoons.

Thilini watched with growing horror as a dark form rose and rose toward the submarine. When it was 100 yards from the craft, it was clearly the shark and not a whale. Its armored snout was scarred and lumpy from dozens of attacks on ships. It swam closer, attracted by the meat.

Jacoby pulled the trigger on the first harpoon; it struck a glancing blow on the shark’s thick gills and tumbled off into the depths. The huge shark veered away and began swimming west. The harpooner swore long and hard.

“I’m after it!” exclaimed Hart. “He’ll not escape us!”

“Twenty knots ... twenty five ....” said Dawes.

They followed the shark for hours. The engines were able to keep up with the shark’s prolonged speed, but the interior of the submarine became a steampot. Thilini had to fetch a flannel cloth to clean the condensation off the windows every half hour.

Shortly after they lost telegraph contact with Trincomalee, the shark dove down into a valley on the seafloor. Dawes turned on the bright electric headlamps so they could better see. The twin beams cut through the murk, and they illuminated a scene none of them would ever be able to forget.

A huge figure sat there in the middle of the sea floor. At least thirty of the gargantuan sharks circled it; they looked like minnows next to it. At first glance, Thilini thought it was a colossal statue of ten-armed Ganesha. If it sat in the sea beside the cliffs of Swami Malai, she guessed it would be able to peer over the temple built upon those high rocks. But as her eyes better focused, she realized that what she took for elephant ears were really fanning gills, and what she thought was a trunk was a bundle of enormous tentacles hanging down on the figure’s distended belly. The arms, yes, those were certainly giant limbs, although inhumanly twisted and ending in too many clawed fingers. And other arms were not arms at all, but massive boneless tentacles.

Surrounding the huge figure for at least two miles around were enormous shards of metal, like pieces of a giant shattered eggshell. They gave off a faint green glow that she instantly recognized.

“The meteor,” she breathed. “You were inside it!”

As if it heard her, the hideous colossus turned its gilled, tentacled head toward the submarine and fixed them all in its gaze. Its four eyes were each bigger than their craft, each blacker than the deepest trench in the ocean.

A sudden vertigo took hold of Thilini, and she could feel the terrible darkness of those eyes spreading through her mind, could feel a cold, alien intellect trying to probe the corners of her consciousness. She clutched her Ganesha figure tightly and began to pray.

She could hear her father reciting a Hebrew prayer behind her; there was so much fear in his voice she thought her heart would break. Jacoby had gone slack in his seat, his eyes rolling up into his skull and a trickle of blood running from his left nostril. Hart had fallen to the floor, jerking as though he suffered some kind of seizure. Dawes just sat there staring at the colossus, muttering “No ... no ... no ....” under his breath over and over.

Thilini watched as the colossus casually plucked down one of the circling sharks with a facial tentacle. The shark obediently opened its maw, and the colossus reached inside it with another tentacle, pulling out half a whale carcass. It popped the whale into its tentacle-obscured mouth and ate it as a man would munch a buttered cashew.

The colossus blinked and turned its head ever so slightly toward the sharks. Five of them peeled away from their formation and began swimming toward the submarine.

Thilini swore and leaped over Hart into the pilot seat. She quickly turned the sub around and tried to put as much distance as she could between them and the pursuing leviathans. She glanced at the pressure and temperature gauges. Both were climbing dangerously high.

“Papa! Papa, check the engines!” she cried.

His praying stopped. “What?” he stammered, sounding confused.

“The engines! Attend to the engines!”

“Yes, of course.”

She heard him making adjustments and releasing valves, and soon the needles on the gauges were dropping into their safe zones again.

“The sharks!” she called back to her father. “Are they gaining on us?”

“Oh no.”

She took that as a ‘yes’ and pushed the accelerator lever as far as it would go. Forty knots ... forty-five ... fifty. An unhealthy vibration began to spread throughout the sub, the steam engines clearly laboring under the load. She heard her father cursing and twisting handles behind her.

“Dawes! Dawes!” she shouted, trying to rouse the Englishman from his terrified fugue. When her words made no impression, she slapped his cheek.

His eyes popped open. “Ow!”

“I need a navigator, Mr. Dawes. We’re headed back to Trincomalee. Can you help me get us there?”

“Aye, Miss.” His voice shook and his eyes seemed unfocused. Thilini hoped for the best.

“They’re still gaining,” her father called. “I have done all I can here to improve the efficiency of the engines.”

She thought hard. “Mr. Dawes, do we still have bait aboard?”

“Yes, two barrels worth.”

“Dump it. Dump it all. And pray it distracts them,” she said, gripping the Ganesha figurine.

He did as she ordered, pushing buttons to release the salt pork into the chilly water.

“Ah!” her father cried, jubilant. “They’re stopping! They’re stopping!”

Thilini kept the engines hot and pressed the submarine on to land. An hour after they distracted the sharks, she reduced speed and Dawes took over piloting duties so she could send a brief telegraph back to shore.

Martin Rothschild and an array of British naval officers were waiting for them at the harbor when they docked. The morning light was just breaking over the horizon.

“Did we receive your telegraph properly? You said
thirty
of the blasted sharks?” her uncle Martin asked.

She nodded, unbuttoning her rubber jacket to cool off in the morning air. Her cotton undershirt was soaked. “Perhaps even more. And they are but sardines compared to the leviathan who controls them.”

Martin looked to her father. “Is this true?”

He nodded gravely, watching medics pull Hart and Jacoby from the submarine; both were completely insensible. “Every word.”

“They will eat anything they can devour,” she said. “No ship is safe here. No one on Earth has a weapon strong enough to combat the leviathan. I am terrified to imagine the weapon that could, for it would surely endanger all other life on the planet as well.”

Martin twisted his gloves in his hands and stared out at the sea. “What shall we do? If we cannot take our tea and timber out on the water –”

“– you can take it by airship,” Thilini said. “My father and I thought on this. We have the means to create larger and faster airships suitable for all manner of cargo. Just give us a week or so to draw up new plans, and we may begin building in the factory here.”

“What shall we do when that monstrosity has devoured the whole of the ocean?” Dawes was still sheet-pale. “What will we do when it decides to come up on land?”

“Then we will do what we must. But in the meantime, I say give the monster the sea, and we can take the sky.”

Her father left to discuss the details with her uncle. Thilini stood on the docks, staring out at the gray expanse of water, remembering the cold touch of the leviathan’s mind in hers. She did not know whether it was a solitary conqueror, a lost traveler, or an exile marooned by its own kind on her planet.

But she did know that if it ever emerged from the depths, she would sense it. As she kissed the top of tiny Ganesha’s head, she vowed she would move Heaven and Earth to stop it.

About the Author

Lucy A. Snyder is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels
Spellbent
,
Shotgun Sorceress
,
Switchblade Goddess
, and the collections
Orchid Carousels
,
Sparks and Shadows
,
Chimeric Machines
, and
Installing Linux on a Dead Badger
. Her writing has appeared in
Strange Horizons
,
Weird Tales
,
Hellbound Hearts
,
Doctor Who Short Trips: Destination Prague
,
Chiaroscuro
,
GUD
,
Apex Magazine
,
Nightmare
,
Best Horror of the Year
and
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
.

Lucy was born in South Carolina but grew up in San Angelo, Texas. She currently lives in Worthington, Ohio with her husband and occasional co-author Gary A. Braunbeck.

Lucy has a BS in biology and an MA in journalism and is a graduate of the 1995 Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop; her classmates included authors Kelly Link and Nalo Hopkinson.

She has worked as a computer systems specialist, science writer, biology tutor, researcher, software reviewer, radio news editor, and bassoon instructor. In her past life as an editor, she published Dark Planet and selected poetry and software reviews for HMS Beagle. She currently mentors students in Seton Hill University’s MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction and coordinates the writing workshops at the annual Context conference.

If genres were wall-building nations, Lucy’s stories would be forging passports, jumping fences, swimming rivers and dodging bullets. You can learn more about her at www.lucysnyder.com.

Publication History