Drink The Water

Chapter 2

2

“Don't drink the water.”

Janine looked back, startled.

A man stood a few paces behind her, towering over her.

Kneeling at the end of the dock, nothing between her and the poisonous Nartressan sea, Janine felt a moment of vulnerability, as though a slight nudge might send her to her death. “I know,” she replied, “I'm a biologist.” Why do I have a sudden sense of déjà vu? she wondered.

The night fading, a blue penumbra to the east, only a few cottage lights illuminating him from the side, she couldn't see his face. She stood and looked at him fully, recognizing him finally from the numerous vid coms they'd exchanged. “You must be Doctor Thomas Carson. I'm Janine Meriwether, Assistant Xenobiologist at the Alien Microbiology Institute.” She stepped nimbly over the equipment at her feet to greet him.

They shook.

“Pleased. You look just like your vid,” he said, his dark prominent brow dominating his face above eyes sunk too far into their sockets. The hair was dark against skin too white.

“Aren't you cold in that formall? Seems too insubstantial in the breeze.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the brisk bay wind. She noted the maritime insignia at the left breast.

“Lived here all my life,” he said. “It's invigorating. But come on, the panel's waiting for you. Dismayed them when they found you'd already left the spaceport, but I knew where you'd gone.”

“And you came to find me.” She grinned, having come to the dock to see for herself the poison seas she'd be studying for the next year or so, rather than wait for her escort. Janine decided she liked him.

“You grew up here, didn't you?”

She bent to snap her cases closed. “For a time, but I don't remember much except the cold and the wind.” Snap-snap. “Father was in the diplomatic service, so we never stayed in one place too long. I spent more time in orbit than I did groundside.”

Snap-snap, and ready to go. She handed him one and picked up the other two. Her mobile laboratory. She'd studied the prion remotely, but not up close. The vector resisted being taken off planet. The environment couldn't be duplicated, and the creature disintegrated in the face of all attempts to preserve it. She'd had just enough time before Doctor Carson's arrival to obtain a sample.

“This way,” he said, gesturing toward a waiting hover.

She glanced back at the dock as she followed him, wondering what had happened back there. Just a dream, she thought, shaking it off.

The hover lifted and followed a path that wound its way up the hillside. She glanced down at the small collection of buildings that comprised the hamlet of Wainsport. Sparsely settled, Nartressa was ninety-five percent water, and its main export was seafood.

But not just seafood. The seas were so abundant that over twenty thousand robotrawlers plied its waters continuously with no noticeable drop in biodensity. Although the fish had been harvested for over three hundred years, only in the last forty years had it reached these proportions. The volume showed no sign of slowing despite multiple warnings from conservationists that the harvests were unsustainable.

From the hover window, Janine counted ten such robotrawlers off the coast, and above one hovered a suborbital resupply ship, lifting the trawler's hold right from its belly and dropping in an empty hold, the operation taking ten minutes.

The hover dash squawked. “Doctor Carson, distress call from Randwick. The w**d's snatched another one.”

“Pilot,” Carson said. “Alert the panel we got a live snatching. They'll be happy to wait for Janine.”

“Right away, Sir,” the woman said, putting the hover into a tight bank, the engine screaming. She got on the squawk box.

Why didn't he use his trake? Janine wondered, the acceleration pushing her into the seat. She wondered what they would find. “How many people so far, Doctor?” The sector government had sent her to investigate not the forty plus seaweed grabs, but the seaweed itself.

“Forty-five confirmed snatchings. Another twenty people are missing without explanation. Keep in mind, Doctor Meriwether, the population here is small, just under a million, and about half of those people spend most of their time on orbital processing plants. And not a single body recovered.”

“Janine, please. I hate to be called Doctor.”

He grinned at her. “Certainly, Janine. Tom.”

“Pleased.” They shook and shared a laugh. “And prior disappearances? You were going to search the records.”

“Found a few, but nothing that was definitely the work of the w**d. Again, no bodies, and so it's difficult to tell whether the w**d pulled them under.” In their exchanges prior to her arrival, he'd explained the local term for the seaweed. “No one likes it,” he'd told her, “It clogs the harbor, washes up on the shores, and gets tangled in the trawlers. Like the weeds in your garden, this stuff grows more rapidly than we can get rid of it. So we just call it the weed.”

Previous biodiversity studies had yielded nothing remarkable about the seaweed, except that it was the most abundant flora on Nartressa. It was regarded as the primary food source for the prolific fish populations, more than two thousand species of which had been identified. Oddly, only the one species of seaweed existed, an anomaly that defied logic or explanation, since such genetic specialization tended to be an evolutionary dead-end.

Instead, the w**d had thrived.

For three hundred years, humans had lived on Nartressa and had harvested its oceanic bounty without noticeable trouble. Until two years ago. A w**d strand had snatched someone off a dock in full view of a crowd of bystanders, and since then, forty-five more people had been dragged into the depths and another twenty were suspected to have met the same fate. In the year since Janine had been contacted, thirty confirmed snatchings had occurred, the rate increasing.

And now they've snatched another person, she thought, the hover banking above a beach, houses clustered at the lagoon edge, a small crowd visible near the emergency vehicles.

Janine sighed as the hover settled.

EMT Randall Simmons quartered the lagoon surface with the drone, its images funneled to his corn through the subdural optimitter as he searched for any sign of the latest victim.

Of the fifteen times he'd been dispatched to snatch sites, he'd not found the slightest sign of the victims. No trace of any w**d victim had thus far been found.

Or of the w**d that had snatched them. No heat signatures, no chemical traces, no spectrometer signs. Worse, biometer traces left on land of the seaweed's passage bore not a single difference from that of the ocean water itself.

Randall felt the Chief's scrutiny. “Got anything, Simmons?”

He shook his head, the three lines on his corn flat, the surface of the water featureless, but for wind and surf.

“Uh, oh,” the Chief said, “Here comes trouble.”

Randall heard the approach of a hover, its engines whining under strain. In a hurry.

He guided the drone back across the lagoon, bewildered that even in the shallow water, no trace of the victim could be found.

Beyond the police tape, the wail of a woman rose. “Diagnosed with leukemia just last week, and now this!”

Twenty-four year old Benjamin Johnson, who'd gone for a jog around the lagoon, wasn't going to be found either, Randall knew. His mother, the woman watching from beyond the tape, had seen him being dragged into the water from her kitchen window and had commed EMS. Stationed on Randwick Island, Randall's unit covered an archipelago spread across six thousand square miles of ocean. They'd been on scene in minutes, the squad house on the hilltop commanding a view of the surrounding ocean. Despite their quick response, the trail had been cold already, the water an even temperature just ten feet from the shore.

Randall looked over the Chief's shoulder.

An oddly-dressed woman followed a tall, dark-haired man out of the hover, carrying three bulky valises between them. The woman's gotta be an offworlder, Randall thought. The Chief intercepted them, and a heated exchange followed, if the gestures were any indication.

Randall returned his attention to the drone, turning it back once again over the lagoon. The brisk breeze made it somewhat difficult to control even with its antigrav unit, its geopositioning only accurate to within a foot.

He brought up a grid of the lagoon, saw he'd quartered it all. On his trake, he opened a secure channel to the Chief. “Lagoon quartered. Start on the inlet?”

“No, bring in the drone. These critter-happy brain-heads want to talk to you,” the Chief told him over the coke.

Randall brought in the drone, and the mother's wail grew louder.

While he packed it, the offworlder woman started unpacking her cases. Finishing, he loaded the drone onto his hover, and stepped over to watch her.

She pulled a bot out of one case. It looked like some of the planet's bottom feeders, multiple mechanical arms sprouting from a pendulous body the size of his head. It crawled along the police tape like some alien insect.

“Nothin' on the drone, eh?” she said to him, not looking his way.

He looked at her, startled. “Janine, right? What the black hole are you doin' back on this ball o' mud?”

“Randy? That you? Haven't seen you since the fifth grade. Wondered if I'd see anyone I used to know. How've you been?”

He extended his hand. “Could be better. The w**d's got us all scared, and it's getting more aggressive.”

“Any other witnesses?” Janine gestured vaguely toward the mother. “She's not in any shape to help. Won't be for awhile, either.”

“Plenty other witnesses, unfortunately, and not a single body. Five in the last two months—”

The bot scouring the ground beeped frantically, sinking its pinchers into the sand two feet from the water. The soft soil erupted.

Randall leaped backward, pulling Janine with him.

A seaweed branch burst from the earth, wrapped the bot and hurled it oceanward, pieces flying different directions as the bot disintegrated.

The branch hovered in the air, as though taking stock, then slithered into the sea.

Brian Franks, CEO of Aquafoods Interstellar, snapped awake at the stern of his yacht and stood, his breathing rough. A shiver shook him. That's not the shiver of cold, he thought, wiping the sweat from his brow and trying to catch his breath. He looked toward the dock, and the steps built into the gunwale that he'd climbed … or thought he'd climbed …

I must have been dreaming, Brian thought, looking down at his leg, then back at the dock.

He glanced at the sun, then his watch. I must have sat down and nodded off, he thought, wondering where the time had gone. If I laid in the sun that whole time, I should be lobster red. He was amazed that he wasn't, the tropical planet of Bora Bora known for its bronzed people.

En route to a visit with the Chancellor, Brian Franks had landed half a world away, had chartered the yacht and sailed it singlehandedly to the Capitol island of Waki-Waki across serene seas of glassy clarity, and had pulled into the berth three hours ago. At seventy, Brian Franks was as fit as he'd ever been. His skin was nearly milk-white, and his hair jet-black. Brian wondered why he hadn't burned. Those melanin treatments must've worked.

He looked again at the steps.

His attaché, Steve, strode along the dock toward him.

Suddenly, Brian was nervous.

“How was the trip, Sir?”

Brian just stared at him.

“What is it? You look startled.” The attaché stepped to the edge of the dock, stopping in the exact place where Brian had been standing when the w**d had pulled him …

Brian started to warn him.

Steve stepped onto the yacht without incident. “Are you all right, Sir? You look pale.”

“Help me off this boat,” Brian said hoarsely, finding his voice.

His attaché was leading him into the marina clubhouse before he realized it, his hands cold and clammy, his heart beating rapidly. He couldn't seem to catch his breath, and his brow felt hot and moist.

“This way, Sir.” The waiting hover-limo whined at a low hum.

“Sammy!” said a voice.

Brian ignored it, heading for the limo.

“Sammy Ericson! Hey, Sammy, ain't seen you in forty years!”

Brian whirled. “I don't know you, Sir!”

“Sammy? Come on, it's me, Alfred! Alfred Santos!” The man two feet away wouldn't be put off. “We were stationed together on Nartressa! Don't you remember?”

“You're mistaken, Sir. I've never been there. Pardon.” Brian stepped into the waiting limo.

The man continued to watch him, looking bewildered.

Brian relaxed as the acceleration pushed him into the seat. Nartressa? he wondered. The marina dropped out of sight, the man dropping from his thoughts. Pull yourself together! Brian told himself, wondering what had happened at the dock.

His attaché began to brief him on the upcoming meeting, the hover heading into the city, the steep slopes of the volcanic mountain behind the city dominating the island. The hover-limo took him directly to the penthouse suite of the Bora Bora Hilton, the north tower overlooking the bay. And the blue, blue ocean.

Within minutes, servants had undressed him and were bathing him, another showing him a selection of tuxedos for the evening.

Dried and coiffed, Brian ate a light meal and donned the chosen tux.

“Any other arrangements for the night, Sir?” Steve asked.

Brian stepped to the door of the waiting hover-limo, wondering whether to order a delight for later. “Yes, Steve, but a somewhat older woman than before. Someone with experience.” Better that than trying to forget in a cloud of w**d smoke, he thought.

Honeydew Diamond woke sweating on the penthouse divan, the echo of her own scream in her ears, the second time in two days she'd had the same nightmare.

Steve, the nicely-dressed gentlemen who'd acquired her for his boss for the evening, rushed into the room.

“Sorry,” she said, “just a nightmare.” She looked around. No sign that her unnamed customer had returned from his evening engagement.

“He's not back, yet,” Steve said. “Need anything to help you relax? He's got the finest Tilaxian wines, Sechuan powder, Nartressan w**d—”

“No!” Honeydew said. Too quickly, she realized.

She'd had nightmares at least once a week for the last four years, since that night on the Nartressan beach, when the wealthy son of the shipping tycoon had taken her there to get the freshest w**d right from the source. Instead, it'd gotten her. She didn't remember what'd happened. Didn't remember if she'd been dragged into the water or if someone had stopped the seaweed, or what. She'd found herself on an outbound shuttle, compensated at double her usual rate, a note in her pocket, without any awareness of what had happened in between.

“You look pale,” the attaché said.

She found her reflection in a mirror. Her black hair made her white skin even whiter. “No more than usual. Tea.”

“Huh?”

“Do you have tea? Hot tea?”

“Hot tea, please,” he called to the air.

A bot brought it out.

“Fancy.” She took a sip, felt its warmth spread through her, felt the cold dissipate from inside. The darkness still lurked, but was held at bay. She vowed she would never give in to the darkness. “How soon?”

He hesitated a moment. “The Limo is still at the reception. You have other obligations?”

She shook her head. “I just hate to wait.”

“The immerser is over there. Fantasies, games, adventures. Bystanders or interactives. He'll let you know when he arrives. Just call my name if you need anything.”

She nodded and watched him leave the way he had come. She might offer herself to him if she had the opportunity, confident his boss would double her usual pay. But what she wanted was companionship now. She hated being alone.

The darkness encroached when she was alone.

She pulled her knees to her chest and watched the hoverport for her patron's arrival.