44 ::: Creideiki

His skin itched. It had always itched, since that dim time when he rode alongside his mother in her slipstream — when he had first learned about touch from nursing and the gentle nuzzles she gave him to remind him to rise for air.

Soon he had learned that there were other kinds of touching. There were walls and plants and the sides of all the buildings of the settlement at Catalina-under; there was the stroking, butting, and yes! biting play of his peers; there was the soft, oh, so deliciously varied touch of the mels and fems — the humans — who swam about like pinnipeds, like sea lions, laughing and playing catch with him underwater and above.

There was the feel of water. All the different kinds of feel there were to water.

The splash and crash of falling into it! The smooth laminar flow of it as you speared along faster than anyone ever could have gone before! The gentle lapping of it, just below your blowmouth as you rested, whispering a lullaby to yourself.

O, how he itched!

Long ago he had learned to rub against things, and he discovered what that could do to him. Ever since then, he had masturbated whenever he felt like it, just like any other healthy fin would…

Creideiki wanted to scratch himself. He wanted to masturbate.

Only there was no wall nearby to rub against. He seemed unable to move, or even to open his eyes to see what surrounded him.

He was floating in midair, his weight held up by nothing… by a familiar magic… "anti-gravity." The word — like his memories of floating this way many times before — for some reason felt alien, almost meaningless.

He wondered at his lassitude. Why not open his eyes and see? Why not click out a soundbeam and hear the shape and texture of this place?

At intervals he felt a spray of moistness that kept his skin wet. It seemed to come from all directions.

He considered, and came to the conclusion that something must be very wrong with him. He must be sick.

An involuntary sigh made him realize he was still capable of some sound. He searched for the right mechanisms, experimented, then managed to repeat the sound.

They must be working to fix me, he thought. I must have been hurt. Though I don't feel any pain, I feel a vacancy. Something has been taken from me. A ball? A tool? A skill? Anyway, the people are probably trying to put it back.

I trust people, he thought happily. And the apex of his mouth curled into a slight smile.

* !!!! *

The apex of his mouth did what?

Oh. Yes. Smiling. That new thing.

New thing? I've done it all my life!

Why?

It's expressive! It adds subtlety to my features! It…

It is redundant.

Creideiki let out a weak, warbling cry of confusion.

* In the brightness

Of the sunshine -

* There are answers

In schools, like fishes *

He remembered a little, now. He had been dreaming. Something terrible had happened, and he had been plunged into a nightmare of bewilderment. Shapes had darted toward and away from him, and he had felt ancient songs take new, eerie forms.

He realized he must still be dreaming, with both hemispheres at the same time. That explained why he couldn't move. He tried to coax himself awake with a song.

* Levels there are -

Known only to sperm whales

* Physeter, who hunts

In chasms of dreaming

* To battle the squid

Whose beaks are sea-mounts

* And whose great arms

Encompass oceans…

It was not a calming rhyme. It had overtones of darkness that made him want to fly away in horror. Creideiki tried to halt it, fearing what the chant might call up. But he could not stop crafting the sound-glyphs.

* Go down to levels -

In the darkness

* Where your "cycloid"

Never reaches

* Where all music

Finally settles

* And it gathers

Stacked in layers

* Howling songs of

Ancient storms,

* And hurricanes

That never died…

A presence grew alongside Creideiki. A great, broad figure could be felt nearby, forming out of the fabric of his song. Creideiki sensed its slow sonar pulses, filling the small chamber he lay within… a small chamber that couldn't possibly hold the behemoth taking shape beside him.

Nukapai?

* Sounds of earthquakes -

Stored for epochs

* Sounds of molten

Primeval rocks…

The sound creature solidified with each passing verse. There was a muscular power in the presence forming beside him. The thing's slow, huge fluke strokes threatened to send him tumbling head over tail. When it blew, Its spume sounded like a storm breaking on a rocky shore.

Fear at last gave him the will to open his eyes. Moist mucus ran over his eyeballs as he labored to separate the lids. They were recessed to their deepest, and it took moments to make them switch to air-focus.

At first all he saw was a hospital suspension tank, small and confined. He was alone.

But sound told him he was in the open sea, and a leviathan rode next to him! He could feel its great power!

He blinked, and suddenly his vision shifted. Sight adopted the frame of reference of sound. The room vanished, and he saw It!

!!!!!!!

The thing beside him could never have lived in any of the oceans he had known. Creideiki almost choked in dread.

It moved with the power of tsunamis, the irresistibility of the tides.

It was a thing of darkness and depths.

It was a god.

* K-K-Kph-kree !!

It was a name Creideiki hadn't been aware he had known. It welled up from somewhere, like the dragons of a nightmare.

One dark eye regarded Creideiki with a look that seared him. He wanted to turn away — to hide or die.

Then it spoke to him.

It spurned Trinary, as he knew it would. It cast aside Primal, disdaining it a tongue for clever animals. It sang a song that brushed against him with physical force, enveloped him and filled him with a terrible understanding.

:You Swam Away From Us Creideiki : You Were Starting To Learn : Then Your Mind Swam Away: But We Have Not Finished : Yet :

:We Have Waited Long For One Such As You : Now You Need Us As Much As We Need You : There Is No Going Back :

:As You Are : You Would Be A Hulk : Dead Meat : Emptiness Without A Song : Never Again A Dreamer or A Fire User :

:Useless Creideiki : Neither Captain : Nor Cetacean : Useless Meat :

:There Is One Path For You : Through The Belly Of The Whale Dream : There You May Find A Way : A Hard Way : But A Way To Do Your Duty : There You May Find A Way To Save Your Life… :

Creideiki moaned. He thrashed feebly and called out for Nukapai. But then he remembered. She was one of them. She waited, down below, with his other tormentors, some of them old gods he had heard of in the sagas, and some he had never heard mentioned even by the humpback whales…

K-K-Kph-kree had come to bring him back.

Though Anglic was lost to him, he conveyed a plea in a language he had not known he knew.

:I am damaged! : I am a hulk! I should be dead meat! : I have lost speech! I have lost words! : Let me die!

It answered with a sonorous rumble that seemed born beneath the earth. Beneath the ooze.

:Through The Whale Dream You Go : Where Your Cousins Have Never Been : Even When They Played Like Animals And Barely Knew Men : Deeper Than The Humpbacks Go : In Their Idle Meditation : Deeper Than Physeter : In His Devil Hunt : Deeper Than The Darkness Itself… :