"Keep as still as you can," I told Oar. "If you don't move, your legs are almost invisible in the water. You won't look like anything's supper."
She said nothing — her "stay quiet, don't be seen" instincts had kicked in again. I fumbled with the Bumbler, trying to locate what it was beeping about.
Radio first. No signals.
Visual scan. Nothing.
IR… and immediately it showed a strong heat source in the water, one hundred meters upstream.
The temperature was too high for a reptile; it had to be warm-blooded. That suggested a dolphin; but the heat trace on the screen looked bigger than any fresh-water dolphin I'd heard of. In fact, the bogey looked as big as a killer whale, and as hot as a gas-powered engine.
Holding the Bumbler high out of the water, I dialed "Visual telescopic" and aimed the scanner in the direction of the IR blob. A moment later, the screen showed a sharklike fin cutting the surface in a straight line toward us.
The fin was made of glass.
The Glass Fin
"Have you heard of glass dolphins?" I asked Oar.
Her answer was barely audible. "No."
I scowled. Possibly, the engineers of Melaquin made glass versions of higher cetaceans as well as humans — the animals were, after all, sentient in their own way. Even so, the blob on the Bumbler's screen had a furiously bright IR signature. Hotter than Oar. Hotter than any blubber-insulated orca built to avoid leaking body heat into cold surrounding water.
The fin continued straight for us.
Still working with the Bumbler, I tried to resolve a better picture of the thing — particularly its tail. Cetaceans have horizontal tail fins; fish have vertical. The image on the screen was still too blobby for me to be certain, but this tail looked vertical. And the thing's body wasn't moving properly: no undulations to provide propulsion. The body stayed completely rigid, more like a submarine than a living organism.
I thought of Oar's glass coffin boat. Perhaps Skin-Faces had boats too, built with intimidation in mind.
"Shit," I said.
"Oh shit," Oar murmured, like the response in a litany.
Raising my voice, I shouted at the onrushing fin, "Greetings! I am a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples, and I beg… aw, fuck it."
Lifting my stunner, I shot the beast right in the dorsal.
Accidental Music
Hit by sonics, the fin sang like a glass harp. The sound reminded me of the hum from running a wet finger around the rim of a wine glass. I could actually see the vibrations, strong on the fin's tip, damped down where the fin entered the water.
Without hesitation, I shoved the stunner into the river and fired again.
Ouch.
My hand tingled with numbness — in water, the tight sonic beam didn't hold its cohesion, and a fraction of it radiated back at me. My grip didn't loosen enough to drop the gun, but I couldn't pull the trigger again till my fingers got over the shock. Still, the incoming bogey took a hard hit too: water conducts sound better than air.
A moment later, the fin disappeared.
On the Bumbler screen, the bogey's heat signature veered to one side and angled into a steep dive. If it used sonar, it would have quite a headache — maybe enough to send it running in pain. For that matter, it looked like it was going to…
I swear I felt the jar of impact as the bogey's nose hit the river bottom. The heat blob on the Bumbler dimmed to half, as muck bloomed up from the collision site and fuzzed the IR scan. Still, I could see the bogey reverse its way out of the mud and angle off in another direction, only to run into a sunken log as it neared the surface.
The log cracked. I hoped the bogey did too.
Our tree trunk rocked wildly as waves swept across us, hard and fast. For a moment, my attention was occupied with keeping hold of the Bumbler and the stunner; to avoid losing the weapon, I transferred it to my other hand. That left only my numb arm for clinging to the tree trunk. Awkwardly, I slung the arm over the tree, not holding on but only propped up with the trunk snug under my armpit.
I was just turning back to look for the bogey when it jumped straight out of the water.
It was a shark the size of a killer whale, but clear as glass and just as stiff. As it soared upward, head clearing the water, then fins, then tail, I could see its nose was starred with cracks from its collision with the log: the beast wasn't invulnerable. Without hesitation, I raised the stunner and shot straight at its cracked snout while it still sailed through the air.
The sonics struck the glass like a gong. For one brief moment, the bogey reverberated — a pure deep tone of whale song. Then the arc of its jump brought it splashing into the river, more than a ton of glass bellyflopping in front of me.
Tsunami time.
Submerged
One moment my numb arm was propped over our tree trunk; the next I was hammered by a wall of water, knocking me loose and burying me under its weight. It drove me deep below the surface, battering my head and shoulders, almost stunning me. Instinct was all that kept me holding my breath. I was left disoriented, dizzy… which way was up? And even if I could figure out the direction to swim, could I do it with one bad arm and the Bumbler weighing me down?
Yes, I could. I could do it.
The rebreather was still around my neck. I shoved it into my mouth, cleared it, and took a breath. Air. Yes. I was in control.
Light meant up, dark meant down. The light looked a long way off, but I could make it. I just had to take it easy. Once I found air again, I could search for Oar. Probably she was still afloat; with strength like hers, it would take more than a tidal wave to knock her off our tree trunk.
I swam upward, filled with the calm that comes when survival demands it. Up toward the light. I could see it better now. I could…
Bump. My outstretched hand touched glass.
The whale-shark floated between me and the surface.
Around the Belly
Maybe it was dead. No, it had to be a machine; say that it was broken, not dead. But I had shot it three times, it had smashed into the river bottom and the log, then it had suffered the crashing smack of bellyflopping into the water after its jump. All that buffeting must have taken its toll.
The machine lay still now. I prayed it was too damaged to move. Keeping my hand against the thing's hull, I began to feel my way around it: under its belly, up to fresh air.
Clang.
The sound was soft. I didn't hear it so much as feel it through my fingertips. Something had shifted inside the glass machine.
Just broken equipment, I told myself, banging together.
I didn't believe it. I gave a good kick, trying to hurry to the surface.
Whir.
An engine spun into life. I could feel that through my fingers too.
Shit.
I was still palming my way along the hull when the whale-shark started to move. The motion was jerky-damaged. I wanted to press my stunner against the machine's glass belly and keep pulling the trigger till the gun's battery was exhausted; but there might be an echoing backwash that left me unconscious in the water. My arm was still numb from that earlier bounce-back. All I could do was hurry, and hope Oar and I got out of the water before the glass monster came to its senses.
The hull under my hand was starting to curve upward. I was around the bulge. Pushing off, I swam hard toward the light. Beside me, the machine moved forward, its wake pulling me around in a spiral. Ignore it — up was up, and I was almost at the surface.
For some reason, I thought I'd be all right if I could reach fresh air again.
My head emerged into the light. Some distance away, Oar still clung to the tree trunk, her body frozen, not looking in my direction. I was about to swim toward her when something grabbed my leg.
I was dragged under again, fighting and kicking. There was time to see glass tentacles stretching from the whale-shark's mouth to my ankle. Then I was pulled inside.