The boat shuddered slightly and Sandra moved slowly, painfully, out from under the modest shelter they’d rigged. Seeing Dennis, she crawled in his direction, clumsily seating herself beside him.
“Three days,” she managed to say thickly. Her lips were cracked and her eyes looked dull.
“Yeph,” Silva replied, surprised that he could talk-and by how bad his voice sounded. He wished Sandra hadn’t come out. She looked terrible, and seeing her only reminded him how badly he’d failed to protect her and the others.
“S’vivors won’t ’ast much ’onger now,” Sandra gasped.
“I know.”
The canvas moved again, and Lelaa crawled out to join them, panting. She didn’t look as bad as Sandra, but only because of her fur. If anything, she’d probably suffered worse. ’Cats generally needed even more water than humans did.
“Wat’s dat sound?” Lelaa asked, after several tries.
“What sound?” Dennis croaked. All he could hear was a constant, ringing “ reeeee ” in his ears.
“Dat… rumble, bubble sound.” Lelaa put her ear to the damp hull of the boat and listened again. “Der it is,” she almost crooned. “Louder now. I hear it asleep, and it waked… woke me up. It’s real.”
“So? It’s prob’ly a mountain fish down there, fartin’. I bet somethin’ that big could fart for an hour.”
Sandra shushed him. “No, I hear it too.” She looked around them at the sea and saw a large, low, fuzzy shape, creeping toward them from the south. “My God!” she practically shouted, and fell down in the boat. Chinakru was yelling something and the mounds of canvas began to stir.
“It is a mountain fish!” Silva hissed, groping for the Doom Whomper. “A baby one!” He tried to raise his massive weapon, but it was just too heavy. “Hel… Help me with this thing, Cap’n Lelaa!” he almost roared.
“No!” she said, wonder creeping into her voice. “That’s no mountain fish!” she declared, surprisingly clear.
“Well, whatever the hell it is, gimme a-” Silva stopped, staring at the closing apparition. “Uh… Is that…?”
“Ess nineteen!” Lelaa confirmed with utter certainty, helping Sandra back up. She worked her mouth and tried to lick her dry lips. “Though maybe only your God knows what she’s doing here… and how she managed it!” The excitement in her voice aroused others in the proa and the canvas fell away, revealing blinking eyes and haggard faces. “Former” Tagranesi on the other boats began to stir as well, and Chinakru was moving around his boat, alerting others.
The battered submarine didn’t look much like her old self anymore; most of the superstructure atop her pressure hull was twisted or gone. She resembled a wallowing, listing, waterlogged tree trunk that had been chewed on by a super lizard, but enough of her distinctive characteristics remained to identify her. The four-inch-fifty gun still stood, supported by the naked, reinforced structure beneath it that had once been concealed by the foredeck. The straight up and down bow was unmistakable, and though both were now fully extended, the aft periscope was decidedly bent near the top. Of course, the filthy, bloodstained men and ’Cats clinging to the remains of the shattered conn tower removed any possible doubt.
“Ess nineteen!” shrieked Captain Lelaa, trying to make her cracking voice heard over the two rumbling diesels as the sub slowed to a stop nearby.
“Ahoy there!” came an answering, almost unbelieving cry through a speaking trumpet. “Captain Lelaa? Is that really you? Who the devil are all those… creatures?”
Princess Rebecca stood unsteadily, supported by Lawrence-who was in turn supported by Abel.
“They are Lawrence’s people,” Rebecca managed to cry. “Would you happen to have any water to spare?”
Sandra looked at Dennis, a grin further splitting her dry lips. “Your gun is empty anyway, Mr. Silva, and your gunpowder is all wet!”
“A good thing too,” Silva replied, strength seeming to surge back into his limbs as he stared at the battered wreck before him. Clearly, the old submarine had been through hell. He couldn’t wait to hear her story. “I bet one shot would’ve finished her.”
Petey squirmed out from under the heaped canvas and sluggishly hopped to the bulwark beside Rebecca, where he goggled at the submarine. “Eat?” he moaned plaintively.
EPILOGUE
Baalkpan
Alan Letts, chief of staff to Adar-the High Chief and Sky Priest of Baalkpan and chairman of the Grand Alliance-bounced the burbling infant in his arms. Across from him on a similar, decidedly human-style chair, Adar himself lounged awkwardly, but as comfortably as he could. They were in the “living room” of Alan’s new “house,” provided by the “grateful people of Baalkpan.” Alan and his wife, Karen, had both refused the gift as originally presented, but Adar assured them that homes such as theirs would eventually be available to all “mated” officers. There was already a bachelor officers’ quarters and numerous barracks for the single enlisted soldiers, sailors, and Marines. The small female bachelor officers’ quarters, or “fem-box” as it was called, had been around ever since the human females spent their first night ashore. Now there’d be quarters for married officers, according to Adar. Something like “base housing.”
Alan wasn’t sure that was the original plan, and frankly doubted it would be the case if he and Karen hadn’t raised a stink. He was pretty sure the initial idea arose because Adar wanted his chief of staff and his family-particularly young Allison Verdia-to have a suitable roof over their heads. The home was relatively modest-by an admiral’s standards-and would have been “suitable” for a very extended Lemurian family, but Adar had hinted more than once that Alan and Karen should quickly add to their brood. Alan wondered how Adar would cope with the anticipated flood of mated officers once the “liberated” women of Respite began to arrive-and, of course, there were already plenty of mated Lemurian officers, though most had homes of their own.
A lot would depend on how the fragile new “financial system” they’d created held up. The Alliance was now officially on the “gold standard,” and the transition from the age-old barter system was moving in fits and starts. Gold was recognized as “pretty” by the aesthetic Lemurians, but with the possible exception of the Maa-ni-los, few ’Cats recognized the metal as possessing any intrinsic value, particularly when compared to iron. Gold was easy to form and didn’t corrode, but it made poor tools and weapons. Alan explained that besides its value as a “pretty,” decorative, metal, gold could be used as a symbol to represent the relative value of goods and services that Lemurians had always kept up with by means of a complex system of tabulated obligations. Gold would eliminate the need for that-once they calculated a baseline for what a given quantity of gold should be worth. Adar complained that “anybody” could just go out and “find” gold, but Alan countered that simply finding the stuff required labor too, and maybe that time and effort might be used to establish a “baseline” of sorts.
It was all very complicated, and Letts was no economist. His experience as a Navy supply officer actually had more in common with the old Lemurian system. He’d always relied on sometimes complex and overlapping commitments and favors to get what he needed for the ship before their “old” war with the Japanese began, but that experience had also reinforced his firm commitment to the capitalist system. He’d been lazy then, because he was good at his job and hadn’t had to work very hard. Besides, there’d been an all-pervading “what’s the point?” attitude in the Asiatic Fleet. Still, with his family’s farming roots, he knew that the harder you worked, the more you should make, and the more you made, the more people you could hire to help you make more. He devoutly despised the socialist systems in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and like most of his human destroyermen comrades, didn’t see much distinction between the two. Both were brutal totalitarian regimes, and he blamed the socialist-leaning American “progressives” for his own country’s utter unpreparedness for war. He knew something had to be done, and gold was the simplest, most obvious answer.