The Unknown Knowns (17 page)

“That's the house special. The Mine Shaft. You can get a Golden Shaft, which is ginger ale, or what they're having.”

I must have hesitated a second too long, because the waitress decided for me.

“You'll like that one,” she said. “The Pink Mine Shaft.”

“Actually, I was just thinking if you had iced tea—” She slipped her order pad back in the apron pocket and walked away, only to return seconds later with a Mason jar.

“Pink Shaft,” she said, setting it before me. “Now have you got everything you need?”

I built an iceberg lettuce dam to keep the chicken sandwich sequestered in one quadrant of the skillet. Then I proceeded to eat every last Nugget, carefully rationing the dipping sauces so that I wouldn't be forced to suffer a dry mouthful. When I was done I ran my tongue inside the rims of the ramekins until they were clean. The waitress watched me do this, and I could tell she was flattered. I turned my attention to the Mason jar and sucked deeply. After two drafts the straw drew nothing but air. The waitress brought me another one without my even asking.

I drank this too, watching the fluid recede and the cylinders of ice emerge like rocks under an ebbing pink tide. I thought about what I was doing here. My mission felt valuable. I had a purpose. And Jean could go to hell if she didn't understand that.
I must have been lost in this strand of thinking for some time, because when the waitress dropped a fresh napkin on the table I realized I'd been slurping. Everyone says slurping is rude, but only the superwealthy can afford not to do it. The rest of us would never leave anything behind at the bottom of a glass.

“What the Jesus?”

I turned my head in the direction of the voice and saw the Nautikon. How long he'd been sitting at the girls' table I don't know.

“What the Christ?”
he shouted.

“What's wrong?” said Brenda and/or Jenny.

“I can't fucking believe,” said the Nautikon.

The blood rushed to my head, or maybe away from it, I'm not sure. Either way, I felt funny. The Pink Shaft was working its insidious magic.

“See this guy?” The Nautikon was pointing me out to the girls, talking loud enough so everyone could hear. “He's a freaking stalker, to put it mildly.”

The Mills sisters burst out laughing, but to her credit Keesha looked concerned.

“This guy followed me all the way from Colorado Springs. He was in Denver too. Everywhere I go, there he is.” He was looking right at me now, gesturing toward my table with his Mason jar.

“Maybe he likes you,” said Brenda/Jenny. “Maybe he's got a thing for cops.”

Cops?

“I'm not a cop,” said the Nautikon. Yeah, I thought; not even close. “And no, this isn't a gay thing. I know what this guy's up to. And I think he ought to know I'm onto him.” He drank deeply,
leveling his eyes on the edge of the jar like it was the scope of a rifle. I was his target. “Take your jihad somewhere else, little man!”

My jihad? The girls laughed, I blushed, the Nautikon turned his back to me and refilled his Mason jar from the pitcher.
“Uno más!”
He signaled the waitress. “This one's on me, girls. And tomorrow—tomorrow I'm taking you three hotties for a ride on the Oaken Bucket!”

He hoisted his freshly filled jar. “To the Oaken Bucket!” He pounded it.

“To the Oaken Bucket!” They pounded theirs.

You could see it through the restaurant window. In its little pool at the tip-top of the mountain, the Bucket looked so volatile in the moonlight.

When she delivered their second pitcher, the waitress swung by my table and dropped off the check. I was fortunate enough to have exact change, so I pinned it under the golf tee puzzle game and left the dining room. The Nautikon sucked through his teeth when I passed him. His skin had never looked bluer.

This was going badly. I knew it now. I'd tried to insinuate myself into the Nautikon's life, but all he did was rebuke me and disappoint me with his macho, boozing antics. I needed to focus my energies on something positive. All I wanted to do was teach this guy a lesson. You don't come here as an emissary from a great dying race and waste your time picking up sorority girls. If there was only something I could do to snap him back to his senses. Maybe Nautika herself could tell me what to do. I went to my room and changed into my swimming trunks.

I was still a little buzzed when I lowered myself into the Waterin' Hole. Through the lens of my scuba mask I could see the gaseous turbulence where the creek emptied itself into the
pool. The water was full of little green filaments and gusts of brown algae. So was my mind, so was my conscience. I craved the comforts of
ooeee
like never before, and
ooeee
obliged, coming on like a stalking manta, slow and rubbery and enveloping. I soon found myself hovering in a mental state of otherworldliness above a vast undersea city of milky glass spires. I saw the coral red ribbing of a colossal dome. And just ahead of me a barnacle-bellied whale and a bare-chested young woman swam toward the city's enormous gate.

F
irst we behold the sea, the limpid open waters of the Mediterranean. Deep below its surface swims a mighty sperm whale, in length six times the arm span of a grown man. The gentle titan races forward, her broad tail fanning the fathoms and the wise bulb of her head streaming with bubbles. Astride the whale, on a litter of supple green leather, sits Labiaxa, daughter of Aricos. She has stripped to a goatskin skirt and a pair of sandals tightly lashed to her supple calves. Reflected in her unbelieving eyes we see an astonishing sight: a colossal openwork dome of red rises from the white sand of the seabed. It glitters within like a cageful of enchanted birds.

This—at last—is the city of Nautika! Labiaxa's glorious but ill-fated destiny—it rushes toward her, draws her in.

Now, as Labiaxa sits on her litter of green leather, flying athwart
the long spine of the sperm whale Oooeea, she feels as if she is breathing for the first time. She drinks greedily from the cold waters, feels them pass over her gills. The nutrient sea enters her bloodstream, her brain, rousing in her a long-latent consciousness. She is aware as never before, free as never before, like a woman trapped inside her own ovaries, now loosed upon the world! She is free! Free! But so terribly afraid.

 

When first she stepped into the surf at the foot of the Sican cliffs, there passed a chilling interval of doubt. She stood with her head below the surface, long black hair streaming about her like the tremulous feelers of a doomed insect. These gills, she thought, how do they work?
Do
they work? She touched them, pried at their scabrous edges with her fingertips, and felt naught but horny old scars.

She held her breath till her lungs burned and a violent humming filled her skull. Clawing her way to the surface, she sucked at the air and wept, steeled her nerves and then descended again. And again the panic assaulted her body—like an animal trapped in her lungs. She raced up to expel it into the air.

For several minutes she treaded water, feeling the late-morning sun warm the damp whorls of her hair. When she slipped under for the third time, Labiaxa decided this would be it. Fail now, and she would have to return to her father's home in shame. Opening her eyes to the briny sting, she chose a point in the distance where refracted rays of sunlight met in a crystalline blue nexus. Seconds passed. A full minute. Two. Her diaphragm jerked, her lips struggled to part, and the humming in her head escalated to a scream. But she dug her feet into the sand and refused to let go.
By and by the screaming in her brain softened to a dulcet fluting:
oooee—oooee—oooeee…
The panic subsided and her lungs ceased their struggle.

She might have drifted off to sleep, so dull and languid went the throb of her heart. She felt the crescent folds of her throat, those dead vestiges, soften and split. The sea spilled down her windpipe, triggering the faintest urge to gag. Then that too passed and Labiaxa was at last realizing her anatomical destiny. She was breathing underwater!

The Gargoulette burned in her grasp. She opened her eyes again, raised it, and waited—
oooee—oooee—oooeeeeee…

 

The journey, though in hours quite brief, has seemed interminable to Labiaxa. Now, with the city at last before her, she grips the green arms of her litter and thinks of her mother, pictures that indistinct blue haze behind which she has hidden her whole life.

Suddenly she hears a voice, but it does not register in her ears. The words pierce the very hollows of her mind. The sperm whale Oooeea speaks. Low, mothering, hers is a strange tongue to be sure, a dreamlike harmony of hieroglyphs and sighs. But to Labiaxa's astonishment, she understands every word.

Raise high the Gargoulette of Nautika!
commands the whale.

Before them stands a tremendous gate carved from black basalt. Labiaxa does as she is instructed. The three lunar medusae, perhaps recognizing their home, burn more brightly than ever. With a blast of trumpets, the gate swings open. The fanfare strikes her air-drinker ears like the groans of feminine ecstasy. Perhaps it is her own.

As they penetrate the strange city, Oooeea narrates in her tele
pathic mind-tongue. The gate, she explains, is called the Sperm's Portal, so named because it is massive enough to welcome a visitor of baleen proportions. It is the only opening through which the uninitiated may enter Nautika.

The water, though remarkably clear, obscures anything at a distance of more than a few furlongs, so that as Labiaxa presses forward the city reveals itself in stages, like the leaves of an illuminated codex. Inside the gate their path is blocked by an army of aquatic warriors. A cavalry of women—perhaps hundreds of them—mounted on sleek and stately dolphins!

Behold,
says Oooeea,
the six hundred-strong Prophylaxes of Peace. Pity them as we pass, dear Princess.

Arrayed in a fearsome phalanx just inside the dome, each soldier is outfitted for imminent combat. Her fists bristle with spears of blood-red glass and her shoulder is slung with a slender glass rifle. A red breastplate protects her blue musculature. Under each helmet Labiaxa can see a face furrowed with concern and sadness.

Warriors!
thinks Labiaxa.
But how can that be? Father told me war was forbidden in Nautika!

Yes, very astute, my Princess,
says the whale, answering her thoughts.
These six hundred live outside the Code of Nautika. They alone may know the primitive pain your air-drinker brethren call “murder”—the Nautikon tongue has no word for this aberration. But after their horrific deed is done, they are sworn to self-immolation. This, you see, is why the Prophylaxes are so desperately sad.

Oooeea gives a signal and the dolorous army parts. Labiaxa and her huge escort pass between their ranks to enter a lush garden of sea foliage. She is afraid—afraid and perhaps aroused—but the sperm whale calms her at once with a mothering mind-tone.

You are safe here, Princess,
she says, drawing to a halt.
But here is
where I must leave you. I beg you dismount. The rest of your journey must perforce be your own.

With hesitation Labiaxa loosens her leather straps and slides down the animal's flank to the sandy floor. She stands in a bower of ferns that tower on huge stalks, like swaying palms or, she thinks, like supplicating hands. Clinging to the fronds of these stately trees is some deep-sea species of rhododendron. The vines coil all around her, touching her waist and brushing her lips with lusty pink flowers. They bow and scrape before their otherworldly guest.

Oooeea turns one baleful eye to her charge, issues a single piercing farewell, and in a confetti of bubbles exits through the Sperm's Portal. Labiaxa watches the whale soar over the vast dome. Then she is alone in this strange land, mired in the unknown as surely as she is immersed in the sea. On all sides, the strange botany of the deep. Above, the dome and the infinite fathoms. At her feet, shifting sand. She is alone.

But not for long. Out of the foliage stroll a pair of Nautikon women. In appearance they are precisely as her father described them. Their skin is all over a chalky blue, bluer even than her own and infinitely smoother. Their strong legs end in broad webbed feet. The tops of their heads are bare. Indeed when the loose vestments of pearlescent cloth part, she sees that even their most intimate features are hairless. The eyes that meet her own are large, wide-set—and now huge with astonishment.

At the sight of Labiaxa, and her Gargoulette of Nautika, they scurry back into the briar of rhododendron from whence they have come.

Wait!
Labiaxa shouts out in the echo chamber of her mind.
I am—I must—!

But the Nautikons are gone.

She springs after them into the greenery but is suddenly hurled back into the arms of a fern tree. A violent concussion has ripped through the garden. Then comes another—and yet another. Labiaxa is thrown to the sand, tasting grit and blood. She leaps again, just as the seabed falls away beneath her. With a thud, a great fissure splits the garden path, disgorging the roots of several fern trees. A fusillade of sulfur gas escapes from the crevice and Labiaxa feels intense heat. Swimming up and away from the conflagration, she paddles over the tree line to find herself floating above a bustling marketplace.

On a broad plain of white sand are arranged dozens of monger stalls, each piled with merchandise. Cages of medusae hang at intervals on long cables, casting over everything a tremulous golden glow. Sea cows roam unyoked among the vendors.

At one stall succulent sea vegetables glisten in reedy baskets. At another a man sells tunics and scarves sewn from that alluring pearly fabric. Nearby a stooped man hawks flatware fashioned from seashells. Old tomes bound in green leather are displayed in long crates. Bright gongs wink in the medusa-light like small suns—
three Eea apiece! Five Eea for two!

But no one is buying. The tremor has thrown the market into disarray. Nautikons, male and female, dart about like fish around an egret's suddenly stabbing beak. Labiaxa can see where the cruel fissure has torn the marketplace asunder. A glass chariot with mechanical flippers for wheels lies on its side, its bounty of sea urchins spilled across the sand. One stall has collapsed entirely into the widening crack. Here and there steam belches up torrid storms of sand and clay.

Suddenly a fist of magma erupts, hissing, from the fissure,
gutting a sea cow. Her suckling calves keen and roll helplessly about their mother's ruptured body. Labiaxa thinks she hears laughter, cruel manly laughter echoing up from the earth below.

Earth, her father had warned her, is a man. And water a woman. When Earth-Man yields to his long-suppressed andro-rage, Water-Woman has much cause to fear.

But even amid the buckling stone and death cries, Labiaxa can feel the eyes of the market goers fall upon her. The Nautikons gaze with fear at her long raven hair and her thighs draped in rough leather. Then, as they catch sight of the Gargoulette glowing at her side, each one stiffens and bows before their alien visitor.

She hears them whisper:
Who is this Princess?

She bears the Gargoulette of Nautika, and yet, she appears so—monstrous.

Could she be the oracled one? The Mother of…

The Final…!

But no! It is impossible!

Labiaxa presses on, half-swimming, half-leaping through the water. When she passes the flatware merchant, trying now to right his overturned cart, he looks at her with profound anxiety. His thoughts reach her in tangles. A question trembles on his lower lip, but he dares not give it voice.

Who is…? But no—must not ask! Must not—even—think to ask! The Code of Nautika forbids me to question a—a Princess! The punishment—castration!

In his expression she sees something of her father—his helplessness, his predestined grief—and once more the cold seed of doubt begins to germinate.

The sea shudders around her! Volcanic fires boil the sand like grains in a pot! Labiaxa is thrown painfully against a barrow of
spiny whelks. For a brief instant, her lungs regress. They suck and convulse for air. Air! they seem to cry. Air! Bring back the old dry world! Bring back Papa!

Then a tiny webbed hand touches her shoulder.

Princess! Princess!

A girl child, naked and pure, embraces her from behind, pressing her lips against one of Labiaxa's gills in a clumsy childish kiss. In a rush Labiaxa's faith is restored. It floods her starving lungs. She inhales and imagines that she has tasted it—knows she has tasted it: the hormone-infused waters of Nautika that her father called “estro-wisdom.”

Estro-wisdom, he'd explained, is the elixir of femininity that suffuses Nautika. It gives strength to her women and reason to her men. The more Labiaxa drinks of it, the more familiar grows this uncanny city. She feels like a wanderer at last returned to her native land. Now even the thundering earth cannot shake her feeling of peace and, yes, arrival.

Settling the girl atop a bale of sea grass, she implores her:
What happens next, child? Where do I go?

But the girl's mind is strangely empty. Wordlessly, thoughtlessly even, she points. Labiaxa bestows a kiss upon the child's finned brow and swims toward a darkened alley at the far end of the market.

Beyond the light of the medusa lanterns, she must feel her way through near total darkness. The alley tapers to a narrow trail, and suddenly she stands in a gloomy forest of fern trees. Under the soles of her sandals she feels the crunch of frail shells. The glow of her Gargoulette shows a path paved with oily mussels. It splays off this way and that, a puzzle tree of forking trails, a dark hand of indecision. There are no straight lines in this dim
wood, no right angles, no clear options. Each trail curves as if by caprice to meet its invisible destiny.

She clings to a broad avenue until, as she passes one unremarkable footpath, the Gargoulette begins to glow with great urgency. Taking this as a sign, she follows the little path into the gloom. She winds left, veers right, seems to come full circle. Once she loses the trail altogether and must crawl on all fours to find it again amid the rhododendron. At last, she rounds a corner where the path ends abruptly at a massive white wall.

Labiaxa reaches out to touch it: glass. The wall pulsates with a soft but insistent inner light. It curves in either direction for many furlongs before disappearing into the dark. Gazing up, she sees how high it soars, almost to the fretwork of the dome itself, where it blooms into a glowing blue bulb. This is no mere wall—it is the foundation of a tower, a tower of incalculable circumference!

She follows it to the left for what must be hundreds of strokes until at last she finds herself in a vast oval courtyard. Around her loom a dozen more towers, identical to the one she has circumnavigated. They cast a ghost-white glow over the central lawn. At her feet lies a carpet of red and blue, some dizzying flora that quivers with a trillion particolored cilia. Drifting down to the ground, she wriggles her sandaled toes in the enchanted seabed.