Pirate Sun (11 page)

He wound the thing’s tiny fan and spun the flint wheel. The fan drew air across the wick, which would otherwise starve itself in free-fall, and a golden glow shone out. It revealed a bizarre galaxy of tools with himself at its center. Antaea was a pair of bright eyes and curves of clothing in shadow. Behind her loomed her bike.

They said nothing as they unmoored it; as Antaea mounted its saddle and kicked it into life; as Chaison found the floor hatch and yanked it open. But as she gunned the jet into the opening and reached for his hand, their eyes met.

He hesitated, looked to the door. Darius and Richard Reiss were still out there somewhere, but there was no way to find them. He had to hope they had made it onto one of the flower boats.

Chaison took Antaea’s hand and leaped onto the saddle behind her. With a roar they shot out of Ergez’s house, past sewer pipes and broken ropes on the twisting underside of Songly and into a maze of writhing water.

THERE WAS NO
sky anymore. What surrounded the town was something like the inside of a cascading fall of cloth; or like the inside of some nightmare’s closing mouth. This froth, this spray, held chambers a mile or more in diameter, caverns of air chained together into writhing tunnels threatened with being sealed at any moment by sloughing walls of water. The magnesium headlamp of Antaea’s bike pinioned tumbling spheres like armless monsters, miniature spinning planets of water tossing off runnels and droplets with indiscriminate fertility. Any one of those could choke the bike if they hit it.

Chaison leaned back to take one last look at Songly. The town was a glittering arc of lights being torn apart by silver arms of water; still racing quickly, the ribbon of wood and rope holding its houses and market was shearing a mane of white spray off the grasping fingers. In moments it would be consumed—the market, Ergez’s house, the workers’ hostel—and perhaps Sanson and his family, and Darius and Richard Reiss.

Unable to watch, he started to turn away—but just then, lightning revealed a dozen bright flowers opening and closing in the air next to the ribbon. Some of the boats had escaped.

If he’d had another half hour…If he’d anticipated what was coming…He knew he was a good commander because being beaten filled him with intolerable anger. This time, there was no enemy to strike back at.

He had to turn quickly as Antaea put the bike into an insane series of maneuvers to avoid oncoming water. She was slim enough that he could put his arms around her waist and still grip his elbows; Chaison had to lock his hands in this position, else he would have crushed the wind out of her or been torn from the bike by the rushing air. They weren’t battling a headwind made by their own speed, it was air being squeezed out of narrowing chambers ahead of them that rushed past. The bike’s engine roared, flat-out, and yet for long seconds they made no progress.

Then with a kind of elastic snap they were flung ahead into an undulating tunnel of water. Antaea leaned left and right and they dodged boulder- and house-sized water drops. He felt the corded muscles of her back flex against his abdomen and chest. The undersides of her breasts tapped his forearms.

She swore fiercely as the bike coughed and shuddered. They started to tumble but she righted them—barely—and Chaison looked back to see a round white cloud expanding around their contrail. They’d swallowed a head-sized drop and it had nearly extinguished the engine. “We can’t keep up this speed!” he shouted.

“You want to stop for
that
?” She nodded at the infalling walls. Chaison gritted his teeth and hung on as she spiraled them around tumbling drops and through hissing spray.

“Look out!” Ahead of them the long tunnel was suddenly constricting. Antaea gunned it recklessly and Chaison was slapped by hard projectiles of water until he was gasping and blind. Then the bike slewed hard, he blinked away droplets and saw that they weren’t going to make it, and Antaea shut down the engine and leaned back hard. Her body pressed him down, the bike rotated with them and, hull-first, they hit the wall.

The impact slammed her against the bike and him against her. Chaison expected to choke on water but instead as he raised his head he saw that they were at the bottom of a conical splash-crater, shockwave still expanding it as the bike slowed. Just before it would have come to a stop the water ahead of them simply parted like a curtain and they were through the narrowed neck and in another chamber of air.

Antaea reached down to restart the engine. Chaison twisted around to gape at the round hole they’d punched through the wall. It looked exactly like a bullet hole through soft metal, but it was six feet wide. The bike trailed droplets and spray as the engine caught and they raced away.

He turned back, securing his grip around her waist. “Have you done this before?”

Antaea laughed. “Thank you!”

They continued on, more cautiously, through a shifting world of transparency and shadow. Again and again they were forced to change direction, so that soon it became impossible to know where they were or what direction they were traveling. It wouldn’t have surprised Chaison if Songly had loomed out of the dimness. Instead, they saw debris—boards, barrels, and snaking coils of rope, and once a complete grove of trees, their roots still intertwined—but no humans alive or dead.

The image of those fragile little boats had stayed in Chaison’s mind. How were they going to make it through this chaos? They weren’t, he decided. They would have to find high-pressure bubbles of air—areas that couldn’t be collapsed further—and wait until they circulated into view of daylight, or were rescued. But the scale of the catastrophe seemed so vast that rescue was unthinkable.

Chaison had been nursing the magnesium headlamp, feeding in its long wick by hand as Antaea flew. There was only so much wick to feed it, and at last the lamp sputtered and went out, leaving them in utter darkness.

Antaea swore and cut the engine. For a second the shattering roar echoed back and forth, describing invisible spaces. Then there was nothing but a strange sighing, almost a groan: the sound of water capturing sky.

“This is bad,” she said unnecessarily. He could feel her leaning this way and that, doubtless searching for some sort of light. He did the same, keeping his grip on her. The universe had become reduced to her body pressed against his, and the hot metal curve of the bike between his thighs. Once again he felt a momentary panic, remembering his cell, and without realizing held her tighter.

“Admiral…?” Her voice was concerned, questioning. For a few seconds Chaison was confused by it. Just as he realized he was squeezing her breathless, something caught his eye. He let go with one hand and pointed. “There!”

He felt her reach back. Her fingers traced along his arm, found his hand. She twisted to look at the indistinct green patch he’d seen. “Yes!” Without consultation, they stretched their bodies and pushed with their legs, altering their center of gravity and turning the bike. Then Antaea reached down to start it.

Chaison relaxed his grip. Cautiously they drifted closer to the aqueous glow, which slowly resolved into a glasslike wall, its depths harboring a single wan shaft of sunlight that angled up from below. It seemed miles away.

Antaea rotated the bike and gunned it gently, stopping them a few feet from the surface. “How do we get through?” she asked. “It looks like a long way.”

“We could swim,” he said doubtfully. “It would be easy—” They could just hold their breaths and kick their way through.

Antaea shook her head. “If we abandon the bike, we’ll be stranded once we reach clear air.”

Once at a surface, they could stay half inside the water and slog their way up and around the slopes and intricate curves of the flood, looking for rescue or something to beat the air with. Chaison had to admit though, that when exhaustion claimed them they would have no choice but to exit the water, else surface tension would drag them slowly into it, to drown. Being stranded in empty sky was little better. “We need the bike,” he admitted.

“We can push it through ahead of us,” she said.

“A short distance, maybe. But that…”

“Yes—it would be too far…. Unless we give ourselves a head start.” She twisted her body to turn the bike and he followed her lead automatically, before realizing what she was intending.

“Antaea, wait! We could destabilize the water ahead of us—close off whatever chink there might be, or push it away.”

“Chance we’ll have to take.” She opened the throttle, taking them back into blackness.

Chaison bit his lip, trying to think the thing through rationally. “Not too fast,” he said after a moment. “If you go too fast the water’s surface tension will be like—”

“—Concrete, I know, I know. I took flying classes when I was a kid, Admiral.”

“Chaison.”

He could barely make out her smile as she looked back at him. “Chaison.” Then they flipped over again, and she opened the throttle wide.

She almost misjudged their speed. At the last instant she flipped the bike sideways, not even bothering to choke the engine. There was a bone-jarring
bang
! as they hit the water at forty miles per hour; Chaison felt like his spine was being driven out the top of his head. He recovered enough to take a deep breath and then cold water reached out from all directions to claim him.

He exhaled slowly, as he’d been taught. Drowning was a very rare thing in Virga, but Chaison had once suffered through an academy training course that covered it. He was surprised that he remembered it. As long as he breathed out, the water wouldn’t enter his nose; instead, a long bubble formed along his cheek and broke away behind him in the dark. Chaison kept his hands pressed to the cold flank of the bike and his body straight, kicking with his feet. Unfortunately the can-shaped jet blotted out any view of where they were going. That shaft of light could be ten feet away or a thousand, for all he knew.

The light
was
increasing, otherwise he would have turned back. After long seconds he began to see shapes in the wavering water: reflections and refractions of distant sunlight; the mirrorlike curves of air surfaces; bubbles. It was ethereally beautiful, like a model of the sky rendered in glass, with mirrored balls standing in for clouds.

When he spotted a bubble as big as himself less than ten feet below, he grabbed Antaea’s arm and pointed. She nodded vigorously; abandoning the bike they swam over to the silvery oval and plunged their heads into it.

He faced her inside a quivering sphere half-lit in green. Antaea took him by the shoulders and laughed wildly. “Just in time!” she shouted. “I was about to kack!”

He didn’t think this was a good time to joke, but her smile was infectious. “There may not be any more of these, so we’d better not waste this air talking.”

“What, you’ve never done this? Sat with your head in a bubble inside a lake?” He saw she was serious. “I suppose Slipstream doesn’t have many big water balls,” Antaea went on, “and you grew up under gravity, didn’t you? It was different where I come from. There’s minutes of air in this bubble. We could have lunch here.”

“The bike is drifting away,” he pointed out.

“Ah. There is that.” She began gulping great breaths of air. “Let’s get back to it, then.”

He took her offered hands, and together they swam back to the bike. Their kicking feet shattered the bubble, leaving its dozens of children to disperse aimlessly.

The light was plainly visible now. It came from a sheer wall that stretched into obscurity above and below. Beyond that surface lay brightness, even the crescent-curve of a cloud. But between them and it there were no more helpful bubbles—and it was a long way. As they positioned themselves behind the bike Chaison glanced at Antaea, who shrugged. Then they began kicking again.

In seconds the sense of adventure he’d gotten from Antaea was gone. This new desperation was physical, a howl of outrage from the body: breathe! It overrode any thought, any determination he might have had. Chaison fought toward the light, tossing his head back and forth, aware that the rest of his movements were becoming random as well. They weren’t going to make it.

Antaea convulsed and let go of the bike. It turned under Chaison’s hands and he found himself looking down the intake. Trapped there by the fan blades was a head-sized bubble of air.—Of course, it could be a head-sized bubble of toxic exhaust, but he didn’t care. He jammed his head into the jet and gulped at the quivering sphere.

A moment later he was out again and holding Antaea with one hand while he pushed the bike with the other. Everything was closing in and graying; worst of all was a terrible loneliness he’d never felt before. He had never realized that in drowning, the body tells you that you’ve been abandoned. There is no one and nothing outside that can help you as death emerges from inside.

Air burst around him. Chaison gave a reverse whoop, putting all his strength into one breath. He hauled Antaea into the light, letting the bike tumble where it wanted. For a few seconds he could only gasp in long shudders. Then he turned to Antaea.

Her face was a horrible gray; she wasn’t breathing. He forced her mouth open and swept it with one finger, removing a small gout of water. Helplessness overwhelmed him as he realized he didn’t know what to do next. It normally took two people to do CPR in freefall, one to provide air via mouth-to-mouth contact, the other to compress the chest from behind. Chaison had learned where to place his intertwined fingers—midsternum—and to squeeze the patient’s rib cage against his own chest. You couldn’t do this effectively from in front because the person’s back diffused the pressure. But he had no choice this time.

He removed one of his shoes and placed it under Antaea’s small breasts. He moved his mouth over hers, then hesitated.

He shook himself; this wasn’t a kiss, it was something he’d been trained to do to other men. He wrapped his arms around Antaea, squeezing her body sharply as he pressed his lips to hers and drove breath into her.

Despite his rationalizations, the sensation of Antaea’s lips against his was shocking. He cursed himself for being weak and self-involved, and renewed his work. The shoe dug painfully into his own solar-plexus; hopefully it would concentrate the pressure in the right spot.

After just a few seconds Antaea coughed weakly, then convulsed in his arms. She reared back, sucking in a great wheezing breath. Chaison loosened his grip, but kept his hands around her arms until he was sure she wouldn’t strand herself in the air.

Air…He looked past her for the first time. An empty sky, purple and clear, beckoned past water drops and twirls of mist. He and Antaea stood half out of a vast wall of undulating water that must stretch for miles. A distant sun bathed the whole scene in shades of gold and rose.

To their right a green arm of water hundreds of feet thick and thousands long stood out from the main flood. It was crooked as if grasping at the diffuse ribbons of cloud that surrounded it. Convoluted shapes in paler green and blue hinted at giant bubbles and caverns hollowed out of the flood beneath Chaison’s feet.