World of Water (30 page)

“Might be worth it, just to wipe that patronising smirk off your face.”

“Harmer, please.” Handler’s tone became wheedling, conciliatory. “This antagonism – it’s unnecessary and counterproductive. I’m on your side. I’m trying to do what’s best for everyone.”

Dev gave an exaggerated, emphatic shrug. Handler got the message and, to appease him, lifted his hand away.

“Just come inside with me,” he continued. “Lieutenant Sigursdottir let me stash the case of patches in her cabin. I went to all that trouble, retrieving it before the
Reckless Abandon
went down. You wouldn’t want me to have done that for nothing, would you?”

“All right then,” Dev relented with a sigh. “You lead the way. I’ll be right behind.”

Handler, satisfied, turned away from him.

Next instant, Dev scrambled over the rail and propelled himself into the heaving sea. Handler’s yell of thwarted exasperation was cut off as Dev hit the water.

He half expected Handler to dive in after him and carry on the discussion in Tritonese. Evidently, though, the ISS liaison felt the point – and Dev – didn’t merit pursuing.

There was only the tiniest niggle of doubt in Dev’s mind that he was right about the nucleotide shots. They
were
making things worse for him. It was simple cause-and-effect. Symptoms of cellular breakdown cropped up almost immediately after each dose.

So, was the treatment unsuitable? Had Handler been given bad advice by ISS?

Or was the batch of nucleotide serum contaminated somehow?

Both were possibilities, and both were unpalatable.

But there was a third, even worse possibility.

Sabotage.

44

T
HE
I
CE
K
ING
was moving on.

With its retinue of Tritonian subs, the God Beneath the Sea – now, more accurately, the God
In
the Sea – left Opochtli behind. Its physical appetite had been sated. Perhaps its appetite for destruction too. For the time being, anyway.

Mighty, water-warping kicks of its paddle-like hind legs drove it away from the township, setting up a turbulence that turned the sinking debris into a raging blizzard.

The manta subs took refuge in deeper strata of the ocean as the chunks of flotsam hurtled past like meteors. They stayed there until things calmed.

The Ice King had been unaware of the subs’ presence, or of that of the
Admiral Winterbrook
. It had been preoccupied. Its assembled worshippers hadn’t spotted them either, too busy gawking at their god’s awe-inspiring display of power to look in any other direction.

This, Dev mused, was just about the only advantage he and his allies had going for them. They had observed the Ice King from a safe range and managed to remain unobserved themselves.

The trick now was to stay on its trail and not get caught. The moment the behemoth or its entourage of Tritonians caught sight of them, it was game over. A creature that could singlehandedly obliterate a township would have little trouble with a Marine catamaran and a pair of manta subs.

Once it got up to speed, the Ice King travelled fast. Dev estimated it was achieving perhaps fifteen knots, which was remarkable considering just how much of it there was to shift. The kicking of its hind legs resonated through the water, a low, quaking
boom-boom-boom
. The wake it generated buffeted the manta subs about even at a steady one-kilometre distance.

Ethel was still coming to terms with the notion that a piece of her people’s folklore had been brought to actual, physical life.

You’re telling me someone made that?
she said.

The Number Folk are master engineers
, Dev said,
and crazy with it. They can manipulate the smallest particles of existence, much like we can, but they do it with far less restraint. They’re not afraid of pushing the boundaries. For them it’s a technical exercise. For us, it’s tampering with our own essence. We’re inhibited about it, whereas they don’t care. They go for broke.

But who would envisage a god as a giant crab?

I don’t know much about gods. It’s not something my race really concerns itself with anymore. But as I understand it, deities have taken all sorts of shapes and guises over the centuries. Plenty of them have been animals, or part animal.

All the same – a crab?

In the stories about the Ice King, is he described at all?

No. I always assumed he looked like one of us.

I think – no offence – but the aim here was to produce something a bit more impressive than just another Tritonian. Something alien and unknowable. Something that would intimidate as much as enthral.

Something that’d be hard to kill, too.

Exactly. But also there’s the symbol to consider. The Ice King symbol has been around for ages, hasn’t it? Since as long as anyone can remember. It represents the creation myth. And the moment you laid eyes on the actual Ice King out there, you connected the two of them, it and the symbol, didn’t you? The association was instant.

Realisation dawned on Ethel’s face, exquisitely rosy.
Because the symbol happens to look like a crab.

Meaning a crab would be the logical choice for the Ice King’s incarnation,
Dev said.
The Number Folk drew on the pre-existing image to determine what physical aspect the god would take, in order to make it instantly recognisable, familiar. Life imitated art. Or rather, life was obliged to follow art.

How did it get here, then?
Ethel asked.
It didn’t just appear. It didn’t drop from the sky. Where did it come from?

Fairly good question. I’ve seen something similar before. Not the same proportions, but the same principle.

On Alighieri, the last planet he visited before this one, Dev had met a Professor Sunil Banerjee, a zoologist who had aided and abetted a Plusser agent in developing an oversize version of a specimen of the local fauna, the moleworm. The Plusser, going by the intentionally nondescript alias of Ted Jones, had then used the giant moleworm as part of a plot to take over the Diasporan helium-3 mining operation on that world.

Somebody on Triton had pulled off much the same feat, only on a far grander scale.

Who and how, Dev had yet to ascertain. More and more, though, he was convinced that there was an active Polis+ infiltrator presence on Triton and that it was better entrenched and embedded than any he had encountered before. Foes in high places.

Put simply
, he told Ethel,
it was grown. Either from scratch or using an existing creature. It was cultivated in secret and then, when it was ready, let loose.

Hard to keep anything so large hidden.

But not impossible on a world that’s virtually one hundred per cent water and relatively sparsely inhabited. Anyway, the Ice King didn’t have to remain a secret for very long. Once it reached maturity, the sooner people found out about it, the better.

In order that its worshippers would rally around it.

Yes. In order that word about it would spread and it would draw the faithful to it.

So saying, Dev exited the cockpit and went to the sleeping chamber where the insurgent-wannabe kid was being kept. He hooked a hand around the bonds binding the kid’s wrists and ankles together, and dragged him out, roughly but not too roughly.

Back in the cockpit, he showed him the Ice King.

There it is
, he said.
That’s your god.

The kid’s face was flushed with a beatific golden glow.
He’s real. I knew it. I knew it!

Dev explained that the crab was an artificial being, nothing more. A hoax perpetrated by means of ungilled science. A monstrous fraud.

But the kid saw only what he wanted to see.

He came
, he said.
Rumours started going round. Stories about a commotion in these parts. Upheaval. An arrival. Something huge. It was taken as a sign. An omen. And it was all true. He has arisen. He has come.

No, that thing came
, said Dev.
That thing came, and a whole bunch of insurgent types got wind of it, went for a look, and said to themselves, “A-ha! The Ice King. The God Beneath the Sea. Must be.” Because what they found is vast and menacing and ugly and powerful. It fits the bill. It’s everything they’ve been wishing for and longing for. It’s a figurehead they can get behind.

Blasphemy!
the kid declared, affronted.
Don’t speak that way about our god.

Whoops. Too late. Guess I’m doomed now.

You are. All of your kind are. With the Ice King leading us, nothing can stop us. His might will sweep our enemies aside. He will purge the ungilled and purify the world.

You’re being played
, Dev countered.
That massive great crab has been put here simply to give the uprising a focus and an added impetus. It’s here to make the waverers commit. Anyone who was undecided about signing up with the insurgency, won’t be anymore. Who wouldn’t want to be part of the holy army, now that you’ve got yourselves a living, breathing weapon of mass destruction?

Face it
, said Ethel to the kid,
you’ve always known the ungilled colonists could beat you in a straight fight, with their superior weaponry and technology. That’s why you and your fellow insurgents were restricting yourselves to hit-and-run tactics. Sneak attacks and vandalism. But not anymore.

No, not anymore
, said the kid with pride.
Now, everything has changed. Today is the day we were promised so long ago. Today is the day we take back our world.

Not necessarily
, said Dev.
You may find that, come this afternoon, your beloved Ice King won’t be looking nearly so impressive
.

What are you talking about?

I know people who know people who’ve got a weapon that’s capable of taking out your so-called god, and they’re not afraid to use it.

Liar. That’s not true.

You’ll see for yourself, soon enough.

You’re making it up
, the kid protested.
Trying to confuse me. Get me doubting. I don’t believe you. It’s a bluff. Nothing can harm the Ice King! The Ice King is immortal. The Ice King is forever.

Yeah, yeah
, said Dev breezily.
Just you wait
.

Ethel was finding the kid’s ideological fervour harder to dismiss than Dev was. Dev could see she was itching to hurt him. Her hands were squeezing the manta’s fleshy steering stalks hard, as though she wished to throttle them, and raw contempt glowered on her face in shades of pewter and puce. Her cousin’s killer and a staunch upholder of a dogma she was ardently opposed to – she had every reason to despise the kid.

Before she could lash out, perhaps even kill him, Dev hustled the kid out of the cockpit.

Do what you like with me
, the kid said defiantly.
I’m not scared. If I die at your hands, I die knowing that my god is going to avenge me.

I’m not going to kill you
, Dev said.
Can’t you get that through your thick skull? That woman back there – she’s the one you have to worry about on that score, not me. In fact, I may have just saved your skin. Again. So pay attention.

The kid looked away in obstinate refusal.

Dev grabbed his head and forced it back round so that they were face to face again.

I think you’re a good person
, he said.
I think that deep inside you there’s a lonely, frightened boy who’s got himself further into a situation than he intended and is looking for an exit. It’s scary where you are and it seems even scarier trying to wriggle free, so you’re staying put. That’s no way to live.

The kid’s jet-black, saucer-like eyes stared at Dev. Was he getting through to him? Was what he was saying making any sense to him whatsoever?

Being an insurgent might have seemed like the answer to all your problems
, he went on.
It might have made you feel grown-up and manly. It might have given you an outlet for all that adolescent angst and aggression. But look what it’s also done. It got you imprisoned and tortured. It’s turned you into a murderer. It’s ruined your life
.

Still nothing from the kid. Except – was that a brief, faint flicker of remorse? A stippling of rueful blue, gone in a moment?

It’s not too late, though. You can still turn things around.

How?
said the kid. Surly and morose but also, just discernibly, inquisitive, imploring.

Search me. That’s something you’ll have to work out for yourself
.

They had arrived back at the sleeping chamber. Dev prodded the door to open and shunted the kid in through the irised aperture.