“Now, Silky; emergency systems on—”
The smoke-gray cone above Moon’s seat dropped unexpectedly over her, cutting off Elsevier’s voice beginning a distress call, and her last view of the rising sea surface, ice-white and iron-gray. She was immobilized against her seat by a cushion of expanding air, lay unresisting — unable to resist — as her helplessness became total. After an eternity of anticipation, the coming together of metal sphere and iron-gray sea rang dimly through her, like a blow falling on someone else, in astounding anticlimax.
And after another brief eternity the cushion shrivelled away from her, the smoky pod lifted. She threw off the restraining straps and pulled herself forward out of her seat to stand between the pilots’ couches. The gray shield was still rising above Silky’s seat; he shook his head in a very human gesture of befuddlement. Before her the sea butted against the port with furious indignation; droplets of icy water seeped through the shatter-frost that impact had etched over the reinforced transparent wall. The very structure of the LB heaved under her feet, and the crash of the angry water was loud around them.
The hood hung firmly in place above Elsevier’s seat; as though it had never-Moon looked down suddenly at Elsevier’s face, afraid to see, unable to look away.
A track of red traced the ebony of Elsevier’s upper lip, but she looked up, resting her head against the seat back. “It’s nothing, my dear… only a nosebleed… I had to finish my message. Ngenet’s coming.” She shut her eyes, gasping shallowly, as though gravity’s heavy hand still crushed her… had already crushed her. She sat motionless, making no effort even to raise a finger; like a woman who had all the time in the world.
Moon swallowed, choking on a smile, touched her shoulder with frightened tenderness. “We’re down, Elsie. You saved us. Everything’s all right now! It’s over.”
“Yes.” A strange surprise filled the violet-blue eyes; Elsevier looked out in astonishment at something beyond their view. “I’m so cold.” A spasm worked the muscles of her face.
And as suddenly the eyes were empty.
“Elsie. Elsie?” Moon’s hand tightened over her shoulder, shook her… released her, when there was no response. “Silky—” half turning, not willing to turn away, “she’s not… Elsie!” pleading.
Silky shouldered her aside in the cramped space between the seats. He reached out with the cold snake-fingers of his gray-green arm to touch the warm flesh of Elsevier’s face, her throat… But she did not flinch under his touch, only went on gazing at something beyond view, until the flat strips of gray passed over her eyes, closing them forever. “Dead.”
The LB heaved and settled, throwing them off-balance; Moon looked down distraughtly as her feet did not respond. Water lapped the legs of her pressure suit, sea water, rolling into the cabin. “Dead?” She shook her head. “No, she’s not. She isn’t dead. Elsie.
Elsie, we’re flooding! Wake up!” shaking the limp, un responding body. Tentacles wrapped her arms, jerked her away unceremoniously.
“Dead!” Silky’s eyes were the clearest, the deepest she had ever seen them. He pressed a sequence of buttons on the panel, repeated it. “Hatch sprung. Sink. Out, go—” He shoved her toward the lock; she staggered as a new, knee-deep surge met her halfway in the aisle.
“No! She isn’t dead. She can’t be!” furiously. “We can’t leave her now.” Moon clung to a seat back.
“Go!” Silky struck at her, driving her away, back toward the lock. She stumbled and fell, another surge covered her and brought her up gasping with salt fire burning her eyes. She struggled on to the lock entrance, caught hold of the doorway, turning to look back once more: to see Silky kneel in the swirling water by Elsevier’s side and bow his head, rest it briefly against her shoulder in tribute and farewell.
He climbed to his feet again, waded down the aisle to Moon’s side. “Out!” The tentacles wrapped her arm again as he dragged her on into the lock.
She let go of the door frame, unable to resist, and plunged after him. She saw the hatchway agape, swallowing the sea, like a helpless dr owner… “My helmet! I’ll drown—” She turned back to the inner cabin, but the waist-deep surge wrapped its own arms around her, dragged her off her feet. Icy water doused her again; she struggled upright, half swimming, gasping as the frigid runoff sluiced in around the neck of her suit. The LB tilted with the heaving of the sea swells, canted the floodwaters back toward the hatch, sweeping her with them. She slammed into the edge of the hatch opening, cracking her head on the metal, before the LB spewed them both out into the open ocean.
Moon’s cry extinguished like a flame as the sea closed over her head. She kicked her way to the surface, broke out into the air, where wind-driven sleeting rain beat her back against the water surface. Fingers of blinding hot and cold mauled her inside her clumsy suit. “Silky!” She screamed his name, and it was torn away by the wind, as lost and desolate as a mer’s cry.
But then as suddenly, Silky’s spume-splashed face and torso were beside her; supporting her as she fought to keep herself afloat, dragged down by the waterlogged pressure suit. He had shed his own suit, swimming freely, in his element. She felt him jerk at the seals of her suit front, trying to strip it from her.
“No!” She clawed at his slippery tentacles, but they escaped her like eels. “No, I’ll freeze!” Her struggles drove her under, she came up again gagging and spitting. “I can’t live in this — without it!” knowing that she would not survive anyway, because the suit was filling with liquid ballast to drag her down. She understood at last, in the way that would only come to anyone once in a lifetime, the full and poignant irony of the Sailor’s Choice: to freeze, or to drown.
Silky left her suit alone, only trying now to help her stay afloat. Already the first shocking agony of cold had blurred to a bone-deep ache that sapped her of strength and judgment. In the distance between the shifting molten mountains, for a moment she glimpsed the foundering LB — and then nothing where it had been but the flowing together of sea and sky. Elsevier. A sacrifice to the Sea… Moon felt the salt water of her own grief mingle with the sea’s and the sky’s.
And after an uncertain length of time she realized that the squall was passing: The sky dried its tears and lost its anger, the swollen wrath left the sea’s face, exhaustion dried her own tears as a wan, ice-splintered sun blinked down at her through the opening clouds. Silky still held her firmly from behind, helping her stay afloat; her body was convulsed with uncontrollable shivering. Sometimes she thought she could see the shoreline, unreachably far away, never sure it was more than a phantom of the mists or of her mind. She had no strength left to speak, and Silky spoke only with the wordless reassurance of his presence. She felt his alien ness more vividly than she ever had, and the knowledge that it made no difference…
She should tell him to let her go, save his strength, there was no hope that Ngenet would ever find them in time. It would still come to the same thing in the end. But she couldn’t form the words, and knew in her heart that she didn’t want to. To die alone… to die to sleep here forever. She thought she could feel the marrow congealing in her bones. She was so tired, so achingly weary; and sleep would come, rocked in the Sea Mother’s inexorable cradle. The Lady was both creator and destroyer, and with dim despair she knew that the single lives of woman or man were no more important in Her greater pattern than the life of the tiniest crustacean creeping through the bottom mud…
Something broke the water’s surface in front of them, sending cold spray into Moon’s face. She groaned as Silky’s arms tightened around her chest, squinted with ice-lashed eyes at a shining brindle face gazing back at her. Two, then three more inhuman faces surfaced, behind and beside the first, to lie like fishing balls on the brightening water. Recognition rose slowly, like a bubble rising out of the depths, penetrating her anesthetic stupor: mers…