But there must be some way, with the resources Gundhalinu had available to him, to pick a single mer out of the herd, stun it, and get a blood sample. He wondered again why it hadn’t been done. The oversight was so obvious, it was almost as if Gundhalinu was intentionally stalling the research—or looking for something else….
Reede considered the pseudo-linguistic gibberish of the mersong again. There were flawed but meaningful patterns there; he didn’t have to be told that by the studies, he felt it in his gut. And their meaning was important— Something helpless and hopeless rattled its cage inside his brain, and he swore. “Not to me!” he shouted furiously. The wall of rock flung his words back at him, and the fog swallowed them up.
Maybe Gundhalinu was only stalling the research because he was afraid that reintroducing a smartmatter drug into human society on a large scale would do to the Hegemony what it had done to the Old Empire. Gundhalinu always worried too much about the big picture—as if he could control anything, anyway. If he didn’t do this, someone else would; there was always someone who would, and damn the consequences. That was Gundhalinu’s flaw, it muted his natural instincts; he didn’t trust even himself enough. Reede remembered the look of exhilaration and release that filled Gundhalinu’s eyes sometimes when they had worked together … the look that had always been one step away from terror. But he had never stepped over the edge, and with Reede forcing him to face his own potential, he had never stepped back, either. And together they had made a miracle happen once, against the odds….
He stopped abruptly, as the black wall of volcanic rock rose in front of him, blocking his way. He moved forward to it, putting out his hands until they touched it; feeling it support him, feeling the rasp-sharp, porous surfaces scrape his flesh as they stopped his forward motion. He could not turn back, he could not go around it—he could only go over it, flaying himself against its inevitability.
He began to climb, because there was nothing else that he could do, picking his way from broken surface to broken surface, pulling himself upward heedlessly, mindlessly, with bleeding hands; scrambling, leaping, letting his perfect reflexes carry him instinctively to safety from one jagged ledge to the next. Somewhere above him water geysered upward, exploding through a natural funnel in the rocks, showering down on him. Far below he glimpsed shadowy motion as the sea insinuated its way beneath the seeming solidness of the stones, relentlessly undermining their stability; waiting for him to make one misstep.… He felt the stone beneath his feet begin to shift under his weight; he leaped again, scrambled up another steep, angled surface, breathing hard.
He had reached the crest of the rockfall. He raised his head, stabilizing his balance as he looked out across an unobstructed view, and saw them at last, waiting for him. The mers…
He watched them moving below him, dozens of them; heard their voices dimly through the voice of the sea. He made a sound that was half laughter, half incredulity, as a nameless, sourceless joy filled the emptiness in his mind and soul. “I know you …”he whispered, “I know you. You’re mine.”
He swore and shook his head, frightened by the incomprehensible words. The wild, profound joy he felt was crushed beneath sudden despair as he reached back over his shoulder, reaching for his gun Knowing what he was about to do, he knew suddenly that he was committing an obscene crime, the ultimate act of self-deniaj and perversion that would damn him forever… . But he did not know why, didn’t even know how he knew it.
He had been sent here by the Source to get answers. He had been sent here by the Source to kill a mer, and bring back its blood for study. If he failed, if he resisted, he knew what his punishment would be. Desolation filled him, and hopeless grief, as if he were about to murder one of his own children. The sound of the sea was like the black laughter of the gods, and he knew that he was the butt of their joke.
“They’re fucking animals, damn it!” His own blinding, animal fury rose up in him, consuming the fear, the grief … the other fury that would have stopped him from what he was about to do. He had been ordered to kill, and he would. All he needed to let him do it was to see in his mind’s eye that faceless, soul-eating mound of corruption who had sent him here. And then he wanted to kill something, anything; needed to, had to—
He began to work his way down the far side of the rockfall, moving single-mindedly now; taking care not to make his movements sudden, or do anything that would attract the attention of the mers before he could get within range. He had to be close enough to kill one with his first shot, because he had no way of knowing how they would react when he started shooting. He would kill one, and if the others didn’t flee, he had come equipped with the kind of sonic scramblers the mer hunters had always used, to drive them into the sea in a blind panic and leave him alone with the corpse.
He was close enough now to make out the colors of their fur clearly, the brindled brown backs, the V of golden fur on the chests of the females. Their heads nodded gently on long, slender necks; their eyes were filled with peace. Their flipper-footed movement on land was hardly graceful, but its pragmatism and dignity struck him as oddly poignant. He had done well, he had made them strong. He had made them—
He swore again, unslinging his gun; forcing himself not to see the vulnerability of the unsuspecting creatures below—to see only the formless shape of his rage He pushed to his feet, balancing on the canted surface of the rock, raising the rifle. He took aim, letting his gunsight range randomly over the herd; let it lock in on a single mer chosen by chance. He took a breath, held it, trying to make himself fire.
Wave-driven water exploded through the blowhole on his right, showering down on him. Drenched and blinded by icy spray, he felt his feet go out from under him on the wet ledge. He dropped his gun, heard it clatter down through the rocks as he scrambled frantically for a handhold. He caught a lip of stone behind him, felt his arms wrench as they took the full weight of his body. And then he felt his fingers lose their grip on the algae-slick surface, letting him fall free, following his gun down into the throat of stone.
He cried out as he fell; cried out again as his fall abruptly stopped. He shook his head in stunned disbelief; tasted blood from his bitten tongue. As his eyes cleared he saw black stone in front of his face… black stone all around him, like the shaft of a well. Far above was a slit of blue, all he could see of the sky. Blocking his sight were his own upflung hands, flailing like insect wings. Pain screamed along the length of his left arm, down his side, up through his jaw as he tried, futilely, to pull them down. He was wedged like a bug between pincers of rock. His feet were not touching a solid surface; his legs were not free to kick or even move more than a few inches. They were numb. … He looked down, straining to see past the angles of the rock, and found the restless gleam of light reflected on water. A wave rolled into his prison, breaking against his hip, chilling him to the bone a few centimeters farther up his body. He was nearly waist-deep in water… and the tide was coming in.
He lost control as the realization took him; as if he had fallen into a sea of acid, and it had already begun to eat the flesh off of his bones. His panic-stricken struggles wrenched his arm until pain blinded him, and only drove him deeper into the water. Terror rose in his throat; he swallowed it down, fighting himself for the right to stay sane. There was a remote in his backpack; he could call for help, if he could only get to it. Niburu would come for him, pull him out of here, save him. There was still plenty of time, if he could only reach his pack—