“Nothing.” Myrah looked at the pinched, pretty face and was immediately sorry she had tried to weaken any structure of faith which was helping Geean through what was likely to be a short existence.
“Why don’t you give me your bag and start getting yourself a partner?” She smiled and held out her hand. “We’ll be going back soon.”
“Thanks, Myrah.” Geean squeezed her hand in gratitude while she was transferring the bag, and then darted away through the shimmering brilliance with the agility of an elver. Myrah attached the thongs of the two bags to her belt and cruised in a small circle while looking for delicacies which might be available near the surface. There was no food visible, but she found a clump of stingweed growing on a branch. It was a tough material which contracted violently when removed from contact with the water, and it was used to power the Home’s air pumps.
By the time she had cut the clump free and put it in a carrying net the other members of the group were ready for the return journey. Young Geean, looking pleased with herself, had managed to pair off with Lennar. Myrah, Caro, and the other two females who had been with men on the way up formed an outer ring. Lennar stared at Myrah for a moment, obviously wondering why she had surrendered her rightful place in the centre of the formation, but voicing any query would have implied a rejection of Geean and she knew he would not do that. He gave the signal to descend and the group swam downwards, away from the light.
Myrah had been swimming only a short time when she became aware of Caro approaching from the left. Caro closed in until their bodies were touching and merged their bubbles with an abrupt forward movement of her head.
“Why did you do it?” she whispered.
“Do what?”
“You know what I mean. Geean couldn’t make a child if she lived to be fifty.” Caro’s face was taut with anger and the filigreed petals of her bubble cage clicked against Myrah’s.
“Get back to your station,” Myrah said quietly. “You’re supposed to be on guard.”
“Nothing ever happens up here and you know it. You’re jealous of me, aren’t you?”
Myrah gripped her shoulder. “If you don’t get back to your station I’ll report you to the Council—and you won’t gather ice again until you’re too old for it to make any difference.” She pushed Caro away with a powerful thrust which spun both of their bodies.
Caro’s air bubble broke up into a flurry of tiny spheres and she had to swim a few strokes to one side to pick up a fresh one. She turned back to Myrah, intent on continuing the quarrel, and failed to see the dark brown shape darting towards her from a deep crevice in the nearby root columns.
“Behind you!” Myrah screamed, and from the corner of her eye she saw the couples in the centre of the circle break away from each other.
Caro froze for a fatal instant, her mouth wide open with shock, before twisting round to level her spear. The Horra grazed past her in a characteristic attack and its major tentacles, trailing behind the conical body, snaked around Caro, pinning her arms to her sides. She was upside down in relation to the Horra, and Myrah caught a glimpse of the ghastly organic spear of its sexual arm stabbing upwards into Caro’s throat. Caro’s body convulsed and suddenly the water all around was stained with arterial blood. The Horra, with its propulsion siphon jetting spasmodically, circled back towards its hiding place. Its course took it near the centre of the group and one of the men, Toms, lunged at it with his spear. The sharpened tube entered its mantle cavity, just behind one of the eyes. The Horra shrilled in pain, but was not slowed down.
With Caro’s body clutched against its central mouth, it continued its pulsating flight towards the root column, the two ice bags which Caro had been carrying spinning in its wake. It reached the vertical cleft and writhed inside, using the longest of its ten tentacles to give it purchase. Toms was close behind the Horra, and Myrah saw him grasp the protruding end of his spear and try to drive it further into the unseen shape. Without any fixed point to provide leverage, his limbs threshed water ineffectually as though he too had been wounded.
“Come back,” Lennar shouted to him. “There’s nothing you can do, Toms.”
“I can kill it.” Toms’ voice was cracked and distorted by the commotion in the water. “I’m going to kill it.”
Lennar signalled the rest of the group to continue moving downwards. “There’s no need, Toms—look around you.”
Toms steadied himself in the water and his face altered, the instinct for self-preservation returning, as he became aware of the amount of blood which was hazing his immediate area. He backed off immediately and swam downwards just as the first flecks of silver-blue light came speeding out of nowhere. The ripperfish were as small as a woman’s finger, but so voracious that even one of them could inflict serious wounds on an adult human. Normally unobtrusive, they appeared so quickly on the scent of blood that in Clan legend they were reputed to materialise from the water itself. Within the space of a few breaths the slow-curling billows of redness issuing from the Horra’s lair were obliterated by blankets of silver needles. Toms came swimming down to the comparative safety of the level where the group had assembled, his eyes wide with shock.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “A Horra! What was a Horra doing so near the surface?”
One of the other men handed him the spear which Caro had failed to use. “It might be something to do with the new current again, or perhaps they live on the surface in other parts of the world.”
“I don’t think so,” Lennar said. “If they were used to moving in ripperfish territory they’d know not to take any food they couldn’t swallow whole.”
“That one will have learned its mistake by this time.”
“Stop it! Stop it!” Geean’s limbs were rigid and quivering with hysteria. “Caro wasn’t food.”
“She was,” Lennar said firmly. “As soon as you stop keeping guard you turn yourself into a piece of food. It’s the first rule.”
Geean turned to him, her small face contorted with grief. “Rules! How can you talk like that when you’d just swum with her. She was carrying your rotten seed when it happened.”
“Personal feelings don’t change the rules,” Lennar said, his voice harsh. He broke away to capture an air bubble, then came back to Myrah, spreading his hands to check his forward movement. “I saw Caro with you. Why did she leave her station?”
Myrah glanced at Geean and guessed she was not ready to hear what Caro had been saying. “She thought the seal on one of my ice bags was opening up.”
“Not a good enough reason to go off guard. What did you say to her about it?”
“I told her to get back in formation “
Lennar gave Myrah a thoughtful stare. “At least I’ll be able to report to the Council that somebody did something right.”
“I want to go home,” Geean said in a quavering voice. Her face was blank, the eyes flat and lifeless.
Lennar shook his head. “Not just yet—we can’t afford to leave Toms’ spear.”
Myrah followed his gaze upward and saw that the swarm of ripperfish had already begun to thin out, its food supply almost exhausted. In a few moments all the small glittering bodies had vanished. Lennar swam up to the crevice and looked inside. Myrah knew he would see nothing but one human skeleton and the single pen-shaped, subcutaneous shell which would be all that remained of the Horra. He put his arm into the lair, withdrew a spear and swam back to the group, collecting Caro’s slowly tumbling ice bags on the way. His face, behind the reflective veil of his air bubble, showed no trace of emotion, but to Myrah’s eyes he seemed older than at the start of the trip.
There was little conversation during the return to the bottom of the euphotic zone. The members of the group swam separately, but in close formation, one of the men adopting a feet-first attitude so that he could scan the water above and behind them. It had never been known for any of the Horra to approach the surface before, but if it had happened once it could happen again and, as the leader of the group, Lennar did not want to take unnecessary risks. Myrah found herself wondering if the loss of Caro would affect the long-established mating rituals of the ice-gathering swims. It was hard to accept that a custom so central to the Clan’s way of life might have to be abandoned, but her mind kept returning to a remark Lennar had made early in the day.