Her Scales Shine Like Music: A Tor.Com Original Page 2
Outside, the hailstone marbles had morphed into a layer of slush; gray rivulets of runoff trickled toward the lake. The heavy clouds had thinned, those remaining had dressed for the opera, preening ostrich feather streamers. The local sun felt like a blessing on my bare face, and with luck would keep me company long enough to dry my supposedly self-cleaning clothes, which badly needed cleaning. Having a body of water so near my front door had advantages, and the smart material, despite its stay-fresh limitations, rejected salt.
I slogged some 680 soggy meters to determine if the storm had shifted the hidden, motion-activated microcams spying on the abandoned paraphernalia. It hadn’t, although they certainly dripped. I could’ve checked on them from my shelter, but bathing my eyes in mysteries refreshed my sense of wonder, and somewhat eased my restiveness. I would’ve spent far more time staring at the alien junk if it didn’t tug on my curiosity like an addiction. The war between cupidity and curiosity was already too close to a tie.
I suspected that one object, emplaced on a smallish mound, was some form of power supply or generator. It stood a good meter taller than me—and I’m anything but short—appeared barrel-shaped with a flat top, and had what I guessed were sockets designed for massive cables. The way the soil around it bulged made me think it had sunk at least half a meter. If so, it had to be heavy as hell, a hell made of lead.
That night, my main battery had recharged enough for me to use my virtual system, watch recorded shows, or play immersive games. I tried, but after a dozen attempts nothing gripped me. I turned the device off, lay in bed, and stared up at my ceiling. Only five days, and my life here already felt very old.
* * *
Morning on the sixth day brought another kind of present: wind, sometimes brisk, sometimes violent, and always unwelcome. Outdoors, my parka at full blast couldn’t keep up with the heat loss, and even indoors felt colder than it had at night. I made several expeditions, one to the latrine and another to the lake to fetch water, and came back shivering each time.
I came up with seven more lines for the poem I’d tentatively titled “Bittersweet,” but discarded them all because none matched the feeling of the initial line. The notion of eating just for something to do had too much appeal, but while my food supply included an extra sixty days beyond the expected arrival time of the next crew, no grocery shops were currently available, and contingency supplies exist because contingencies happen.
Why not, I asked myself, see how many push-ups you can do these days in an hour? When I’d taken silver for Canada in ski archery, my record had been 1,260. I’d worked to stay fit since then, but my edge had certainly dulled. Question was, had it chipped entirely off?
I’d lost count somewhere past six hundred when the wind, which had been rattling my shelter and periodically moaning through the tent’s clever tangle of guy wires, stopped so suddenly, the hush felt as though someone had just died. My interest in push-ups dropped to a new low, and I headed outdoors to certify that I wasn’t that someone.
In the utter stillness, the air felt relatively balmy, which levitated my spirits so much that I decided to get reckless and do something my bosses wouldn’t endorse: give this world a name. That kind of honor made an excellent bribe, and when my relief showed up, if I bandied my choice around, there’d be a slight but real chance the name would stick.
“I dub thee … Sonnet!”
After such a massive accomplishment, I felt worthy of taking the balance of the day off. A picnic, an alcoholic beverage, and a no-pressure writing session seemed in order.
I fetched a blanket, whitepad and stylus, one of my three small bags of mixed nuts, and reconstituted some orange juice. Piano had provided me a single carton of vodka, really all I wanted, since I’m not much of a drinker. I opened the tab and added a splash to the juice.
Settled on the blanket, snacks on one side and wimpy screwdriver on the other, I opened a fresh file on my whitepad, put on my best Moses-confronting-Pharaoh impression, and declaimed, “Let my verses flow!”
And they did. Except, dammit, they kept driving me more nuts than my snacks by trying to rhyme. I didn’t understand my problem until I found myself humming a simple melody. How about that. The muse wasn’t bringing me a poem, but a song. With that realization, all the words fell into place like a creative implosion, and I scribbled furiously before any could slip away.
Déjà Vu
Here it is again, what I’ve seen in the dark.
Your eyes glow from within, your skin shoots out sparks.
(Chorus):
Just a hint that’s something’s been erased …
Just a hint the path ahead has already been traced.
A star falls out of the night in the shape of a flame.
It casts off lightning in flight, spelling your name.
(Chorus)
(Bridge)
As I move through the mist where all things exist,
A strange tower comes into view.
I step through the door, I’ve been here before,
I’ve been here before with you. Déjà vu.
How will I recognize you in a new form?
Does the cyclone of time have a center, an eye of the storm?
(Chorus)
No wonder I’d been blocked! For weeks, I’d been struggling to avoid thinking about how much I missed Tara while my heart had been trying to express nothing else. I munched on cashews and almonds that tasted wonderful after days of rehydrated “food,” made myself more comfortable on the blanket, ran my fingers through the cold sand within reach, and stared at the wavelets. I wondered about the sand, wishing I’d asked Cards how this narrow beach had come to be. Even in such clear weather, I couldn’t see the lake’s far shore, and I’ve got eyes 5X binoculars would kill for.
I don’t know when I drifted off, but woke up chilled in the opalescent twilight, stood up, activated heating in my parka, and wrapped myself in the blanket. The colors were now too good to miss. One of the house-sized bubbles, like an igloo made of rainbows, rose up within throwing distance of the shore. As it finally popped, another appeared immediately, much closer to me. Interesting. I’d never seen two appear in such close succession. When something stirred the water again, I figured a third psychedelic pocket of splendor was on the way.
Instead, something solid and exceedingly strange gradually emerged from the water. I couldn’t quite distinguish its shape at first because it was highly reflective, but thought it had three huge eyes, if they were eyes—two close together on the front of its head, if that was a head, and one toward the top. The front eyes stayed aimed directly at me, and if the thing had moved in my direction or done anything vaguely threatening, I would’ve run like hell.
Whatever it was, it remained dead still, front eyes now level with mine, wavelets gently splashing against its sides. No sign of mouth, gills, or a blowhole. I couldn’t imagine how it kept so steady in the water, and sincerely hoped that it wasn’t standing on the lake bed four kilometers below. As my own eyes or my brain adjusted, I could tell the thing vaguely resembled a horse covered in small, very shiny hexagonal scales. Only this equine was about mastodon-size and twice as wide.
Artist would’ve called this a “tableau.” The thing stared at me and I stared back as the sky so slowly faded and the first hyper-twinkled stars appeared. Any thought of fetching recording equipment from my shelter never crossed my mind, and retrieving the wave rifle didn’t get within a light-year. Just as the first of Sonnet’s moons peeked over a distant mountain range, my companion eased downward and smoothly vanished underwater without changing its upright position.
“What,” I asked the universe after a few minutes, “the hell was that?” Rather than wait around for an answer, I jogged back to my shelter, bringing only the blanket along. I set the tent’s lume-room panels brighter than usual, pulled out a packet labeled “lentil stew,” and put it back. No appetite. Only sleep, I thought, would do me good. Still, I sat for a time, heart slowly un-pounding, before trus
ting my head to the puff pillow. Thus began a long night of shivers, although I wasn’t cold. In the very early morning, an interesting thought arose: What made me so sure my new pal was confined to the lake?
* * *
I awoke after a last-hour uneasy nap and found my tent battery fully charged from yesterday’s abundant sunshine, despite the trivial draw from running last night’s illumination for an extra hour. This meant I could waste another day buried in virtual occupations. Games, shows, and a pantheon of other electronic time-eaters lay beckoning, likewise a few chores such as digging a second latrine, and my kettlebells seemed to sulk from disuse.
I got dressed, grabbed my chair, hauled it down to the beach, and set it next to my whitepad and last evening’s mostly depleted party supplies. The mixed-nut bag wasn’t quite empty, but only Brazil nuts lurked within, and like all right-thinking people, I put them out of my mind and not in my mouth.
After a quick trip to the latrine and a quick raid on my breakfast supplies, I settled into the chair and slurped lukewarm goo humorously labeled “oatmeal with raisins, brown sugar, and cream.” Breakfast complete, I picked up my pad and stylus, and proceeded to use neither. My eyes seemed glued to the water, which remained slightly calmer than usual and free of monsters.
After a break for lunch, a guilt-provoked brief exercise session, and some clothes-washing that didn’t take long since my wardrobe was so limited, I resumed my post and waited. Artist had accurately measured Sonnet’s rotation speed and reported the world to have a 23.2-hour day. Yet sitting there, the day seemed to stretch for weeks.
In the late afternoon, before the sky even thought of darkening, the creature appeared in the same spot, again heralded by two behemoth bubbles. Sunlight practically sprayed from it in every direction. Damn. Those scales made tarpon skin seem tarnished in comparison, and it dawned on me that the thing was beautiful. I commanded myself to stay calm. Aside from its size, the gorgeous monster posed no obvious threat. Not that I planned to take a swim.
My calmness held well enough as those huge eyes, brighter green in the daylight than emeralds, reached my eye level. But after a pause, they kept rising until they gazed down at mine from at least six meters above water level. That was bad enough, but then I had the biggest shock of my life, far worse than last evening’s record-breaker.
Conceding today’s staring contest, I squinted downward to see if my visitor had fins, legs, or something really creative. That brought on my blood-to-ice-water moment, although at first I thought my eyes were lying. They weren’t. Turned out the giant equine’s lower half smoothly merged into something unbelievably larger. The water horse clearly wasn’t a creature in itself, but an extrusion from the back of an aquatic titan shaped like a blue whale, but easily three times longer. Several meters of restless water and hints of sun-cast caustics obscured that back, but it seemed covered in gleaming hexagonal scales similar to those of its … living conning tower, but far larger.
Something akin to countless tendrils or fronds surrounded the leviathan, but this vague forest floated deeper down, hard to distinguish. I looked upward and met those glowing eyes again, and once again, tableau time …
Don’t know how minutes passed, but a lot of them evaporated before I noticed the change. So very slowly, the eyes were rising even higher while moving farther away. As those eyes gradually became obscured by intervening surfaces, I saw what was happening. This whale’s whale had been progressively tilting. I had no idea what this signified or what consequences would be coming my way, but from how my heart hammered on my ribcage, at least one part of me felt less than safe.
When the front end finally surfaced, a cascade pouring off it as a skyscraper of a head rose above water level, I found a new set of eyes staring at me, a quartet of immense, blazing green diamonds.
Some detached part of my mind decided this was the perfect moment to become a media-style commentator: You know, Ross, that the colossal squid sports the largest eyes of any Earth animal. Isn’t it interesting that such a squid could fit most of its body within one of those eyes?
Interesting? Fucking terrifying.
I caught a hint of something, possibly a mouth, far enough beneath the eyes to be submerged, and wondered how something so vast could survive on a world that might have just two living creatures. What could it eat? That line of thought led straight to panic, and I pulled myself back to the moment.
Silence. Both of us motionless except for occasional violent bursts as if from underwater jets, presumably from my dance partner’s respiration. Twilight came and went, the first stars arrived and steadily accumulated company. In eerie silence, the monster eased under the water and was gone, leaving behind spreading ripples, the cold punch of genuine awe in my soul, and a few thousand questions.
Before I fell asleep that night, it occurred to me that the alien campers may have departed this world because they’d encountered the giant fish, although I couldn’t guess why that would scare them enough to take off so very posthaste. Another thought shoved the rest aside. One thing for certain: Whatever surprises might come tomorrow, they’d be trivial compared to today’s.
So much for certainty.
* * *
I kept myself as busy as possible the next morning, partly to keep from obsessing. Certainly, a wide array of things to obsess about remained available. Should I relocate my shelter farther from the lake, just in case? Should I continue my evening trysts with the giant, or avoid them like a sensible poet, since I had no way to know if they put me in danger? Was I willing to avoid the most interesting thing on the planet? Were there other monsters in the lake? I decided that prudence demanded that I move the tent, and let floating giants lie.
So, naturally, I did neither. That afternoon, I relocated to the beach equipped with snacks and a reconstituted “beverage” of indeterminate nature. Trusty whitepad in hand, I began a new poem. The title came to me instantly, and the subject was hardly a surprise: “Her Scales Shine Like Music.”
That, I decided, would also be the first line. Second line? I had nothing. But as I rolled the title around in my head, I noticed with a touch of amusement that my momentary inspiration had made the monster female. I tried substituting “its” for “her,” and that just felt wrong.
She didn’t appear until twilight had settled in, but did her tilting routine right away. For perhaps another half hour, we just performed our staring duet. Then I found out that something major had been hiding in the surprise bag after all.
Thin tendrils slowly rose from the water. A flotilla of them. Alien water snakes? My new burst of fear helped me remember the hula skirt of tendrils around the monster that I’d glimpsed yesterday.
“Well, damn,” I said out loud. “You’ve got tentacles.” So a creature nearly the size of a naval destroyer, a giant fishy version of a centaur, came equipped with things to grab with?
“Tentacles” wasn’t quite the right word. Taken individually, these were smoothly covered with tiny silver scales and seemed delicate to the point of fragility. Taken as a group, they scared the hell out of me. I lurched several steps backward, and then a few more as they kept extending. When they stopped extending, they were a lot longer than I liked, long enough to reach and coil around me. I resumed slowly backing up, but stopped when the tendrils suddenly bunched up and appeared to be engaged in bizarre maneuvers, twisting around each other, almost tying themselves in knots. Flexible buggers, each one capable of multiple bends in multiple places.
A worry crossed my mind that all this activity was meant to hypnotize prey. As the only prey around, I didn’t care for that idea.
Another worry wasted. As I watched, the intricate tentacle weaving began to take on a more defined shape, which suddenly tightened into something similar to a sculpture.
I don’t have Artist’s sense of proportion or perspective, so this artwork might’ve had technical flaws beyond my untrained discernment, but it was easily good enough to recognize what it depicted: me. Parka, gloves, and bo
ots included.
Another eerie moment. So my titanic companion was no mindless beast, unless she did portraiture by instinct. One thing for sure: she was damn good with her, um, hands. I used my glove-covered ones to applaud softly. Nothing else happened for a very long time, until she pulled her sculpture apart, drew the tendrils back into the lake, and sank out of sight.
* * *
Our tête-à-têtes over the next three weeks followed a similar pattern with a few troubling variations.
Every evening, at some point, she’d reassemble my image and hold it for up to an hour. One non-balmy evening, after her daily tribute to my pulchritude, she built a different representation, almost touching the first. I stared at the barrel-shaped living sculpture, the tendrils so tightly packed that the barrel’s surface appeared smooth, and recognized it as the largest artifact at the alien campsite. She gave me plenty of time to admire the juxtaposition before freeing her tendrils. I expected them to slide back into the water as usual, but this time they wafted closer to me, stopping near my feet just as I seriously considered abandoning my chair. I’d begun to trust my leviathan, but doubt I would’ve had the courage to keep sitting if a nearby tendril had so much as twitched. They didn’t, and she soon departed.
Days passed, and I paid progressively more attention to the sky, watching for a flash from descending twistships, and listening for any telltale rumble. Afternoons, I set up by the lake, worked on poems, and waited. Before any stars appeared, she would. She’d taken to creating and destroying those same two sculptures three times in a row before sending her tendrils near me, closer each evening.
I don’t know why, but I started talking to her. Her magnificence deserved oratory, but I seemed to be in short supply.
“God, how I wish we could communicate,” I remember saying, doubtless louder than necessary, since she wouldn’t understand a word. “My name is Ross, but on the ship that brought me here we have this tradition of using people’s hobbies as names. So I’m also ‘Poet.’ I’m from the planet Earth. Well, ‘Earth’ is what we call it where I live.”