“So I’m just the latest?” Elayna asked. “I’d sort of figured; he was… pretty good. Actually, darned good.”
“A lot of that is because of Bast,” Rachel replied. She popped up over the reef to see Antja taking a bite out of one of the lobster tails. “Aren’t we supposed to be sharing with the town?”
“I’ve got too much to carry back,” Antja said, reasonably. “If I eat some, I carry it in my stomach.”
“We can switch out bags,” Rachel replied. “I’m never going to fill this one at this rate.”
“Works,” Antja said, finishing off the lobster tail and wiping her hands on her scales. “These things are a lot better cooked, though.”
“So, why’s it Bast?” Elayna said. Her tail was flipping back and forth savagely as she shoved an arm deep into a crevice. “Hah, gotcha ya bastard.”
“Bast considers it a solemn duty to train her current boy-toy,” Rachel replied, dryly. “And she’s been doing a lot of training with Herzer.”
“It shows,” Elayna laughed. “Although it took him a few minutes to figure out the differences in anatomy. After that it was great.”
“Herzer has two great skills in life,” Rachel said. “Fighting and… the other. I wish I could appreciate either one.”
She snagged another lobster and carried it over to Antja, who was dragging what had been Rachel’s bag behind her. It was more than half full.
“How do you do that so quickly?” Rachel asked.
“I’ve been doing it since I was a kid,” Antja replied. “My parents were mer and they had me as a mer; I’ve been bugging my whole life that I can remember. For that matter, I’ve hunted this reef before; I know where they tend to hang out. Try over there,” she said, pointing to a patch of reef that looked identical to the empty one that Rachel had just been working.
When Rachel approached the reef she could understand half of Antja’s success; the ledge under the rock was packed with bugs from side to side, their antennae waving at her angrily. She reached into the mass and snatched one out while the others skittered from side to side, trapped by her body and the shallow ledge. As fast as she could reach she pulled lobsters out and wrung their tails. Some skittered by her, turning to use their powerful tails to skim over dangerous open ground, but she heard Elayna whoop behind her and dive on them.
In moments she had over a dozen tails lying on the ground among the scattered bodies of the lobster.
“So it’s a trick,” she said, smiling, as she gathered up the tails.
“Sure, isn’t everything?” Antja replied. “I think that about does it. Three bags full as they say.”
“So, you were born as a mer,” Rachel said. “Did they, what? Did they crack the can under water? Some sort of underwater uterine replicator? What?”
“No,” Antja said, in a tone that showed she didn’t want to discuss it.
“Sorry,” Rachel replied, hurt. Given everything that they had been talking about it seemed a harmless enough subject.
“I’m sorry, too,” Antja said. “I just don’t want to talk about it, okay?”
“Okay,” Rachel said. Then she paused and her brow furrowed. “Antja, after the Fall, all the controls on the landsmen, well, let me make this plain, the landswomen, reproductive system turned off. We had an awful time with the first… menstruation. Did yours?” she asked, delicately.
“Yes,” Antja said, tightly. “On the other hand, they designed mer better than ‘normal’ humans; we, thank God, don’t menstruate.”
“But, you are fertile?” Rachel asked, realizing that she’d just tiptoed into a minefield as Elayna came over a rock with a set expression on her face. “You and Jason could have a baby? Elayna, for that matter, might be carrying Herzer’s?” She looked over at Elayna who had a stricken expression on her face as if that thought had just occurred to her.
“Yes, we are,” Antja said. “I wish you would stop pursuing this line of questioning.”
“Sorry,” Rachel said, “call me incurably curious. Just one more: Antja, what happened to the babies?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Daneh had spent most of the day working with the mer healers. They had no trained doctors but a few of the mer had been familiar with basic first aid and had been pressed into service. Unfortunately, in the saltwater environment there was not much that could be done. The flip side was that many of the standard infections were unable to gain a hold.
Mostly what they had to deal with were poisons from the various denizens of the deep, rashes from running up against the wrong coral and the occasional shark bite. She was shown one such, a nasty gash on the mer-man’s tail that had been clumsily stitched up. She gave a brief class on proper suturing, something that she had learned only after the Fall, and suggested some poultices for the rashes. They had about done the rounds when Germaine, one of the healers, drew her aside.
“Mistress Daneh,” the mer-woman said, nervously. “There’s something I need to show you, one case we’d like some help on. But Bruce said we weren’t to tell you about it. You can’t let on that I did this.”
“I won’t,” she said. “Where is it?”
“It’s a bit of a swim,” the mer admitted. “I’ll see if I can find a delphino that will give you a ride.”
She came back some time later with one of the delphinos.
“This is Buttaro,” Germaine said.
“Daneh, lady,” the delphino spit. “Help baby?”
“Yes, I will,” Daneh said. “If I can.”
“Hold fin,” the delphino said, rolling so that she could grasp the dorsal. “Go.”
The delphino stayed low to the reef as they headed for the inlet overlooked by the lighthouse then turned towards where the spring was. On the far side of the spring it took a breath though its blowhole and then dove towards the bottom where there was a crack in the rocks.
The way led through a twisted series of tunnels and then Daneh saw blue light ahead. They surfaced in a cave.
She had noticed that some of the mer were pregnant, but had not seen any babies. As she entered the cave her ears were assaulted by the sound of at least a dozen, mostly crying. There were more than babies in the vaulted, but crowded, cave. Mer-women swam around the rocky shelves, leading some of the older infants in water games.
Germaine surfaced by her and looked at her pleadingly.
“Mer can’t breathe water at first,” she said, coughing out a lungful of water. “They don’t have the mass to fight the cold and their lungs aren’t strong enough. They have to be born on land. They have to stay on land for a year, generally, until they can live in the water.”
“This is one hell of an Achilles’ heel,” Daneh said, quietly. “I can see why you didn’t want us to know about it. You’d better hope like hell New Destiny doesn’t.”
She led the way to one of the ledges but was confronted by an angry mer-woman.
“Germaine, I can’t believe you brought a landie here!” the woman snapped.
“Daneh is a doctor, Rema,” Germaine replied, just as hotly. “Would you rather that Maturi die?”
“No, but…”
“I don’t know if I can do anything,” Daneh said, soothingly. “But I will try. And I promise that I will do nothing to endanger your babies.”
The woman looked at her questioningly, then shrugged.
“Do what you can,” she said. “For all it’s worth.”