Symphony for Skyfall
by Rick Cook & Peter L. Manly
Illustration by Vincent Di Fate
Shark!
Ensign stretched his timpani even tighter and listened again. The clouds swirled around his body, obscuring his own wingtips in the mist of opaque orange and pink. Wind-driven ice crystals stung against his taut membranes. The air pressed in on him thick and oppressive. He wished he were above the clouds and out in the clean sunlight with the rest of his pod. Reflexively his body twitched toward a more aerodynamic shape that would let him rise faster. But he forced himself to relax into a listening posture. Trying to out-climb a shark was a fool’s game and a fool would not survive this day.
Dum-Doom.
The shark’s hunting pulse swept over him again as the predator sought him through the clouds. Close, but not too close. With the disturbance caused by the nearby thermocline the hunter would have trouble finding him. Ensign listened so hard his muscles ached from the strain of holding his hearing membranes taut. He knew that if he used his jet the shark could home in on the sound instantly—so he used the slower, quieter, and more drawn-out method of relaxing his buoyancy chambers, letting them inflate silently to float him upward, continuing his painfully slow rise to sunlight and safety.
Dum-Doom Dum-Doom
Two pulses this time! Ensign cursed his luck. The shark had his general direction now and swept back and forth over a narrower sector, moving its beam faster. Soon it would be close enough to switch to high frequency for the final, slashing attack. Ensign sucked the warm, thick atmosphere through his maw, supercharging his system for the action to come. He felt a quiver along his flanks as his remoras sensed his fear and shifted uneasily.
Dum-Doom Dum-Doom
RUN! His instincts screamed. Flatten out, expel his store of hydrogen through rear orifices and shoot for the cloud tops. But his self-control held and he kept his pace. Reason told him he was too deep to get clear of the clouds and even if he did, the shark could take him on a lunge, rending him, slashing open buoyancy cells and feasting at leisure as he fell back helplessly into the clouds.
Yet reason also told him the shark would find him soon. The shark was a creature of the clouds and down here in the dark heat and thick air the advantage lay with the hunter.
Think! There had to be a way. Think!
Dum-Doom Dum-Doom Dum-Doom
“Caught in the clouds with one shark on the way…”
The scrap of song crossed his mind. Yes, that was it! But what was the rest of the song? Caught in the clouds…
It wouldn’t come. He hummed the melody in his head, striving for the next line but it wasn’t there. Nothing.
Gently, softly, Ensign sang out through his earmouths, “Caught in the clouds with one shark on the way…” Come on! Sing me the rest!
He felt motion along his terror-tight skin as one of his remoras eased forward to an earmouth on his back. There was a warm tickling as the symbiote clamped its suction head to the special membrane and then the membrane vibrated as the remora picked up the memorized song.
Of course! There were two sharks. The remora’s song formed the picture clearly in his mind. As soon as he swerved away from the first shark he’d put himself square in the path of the attack of the second. Ensign thought he remembered what came next, but he stilled himself to listen to his companion’s far more accurate rendition.
There was much more. Ensign drank it in as quickly as the remora could sing it to him in six-part harmony.
Dum-Doom Dum-Doom Dum-Doom Dum Dum Dum Dum
The shark had him! Ensign’s whole body quivered as the shark switched to a higher frequency for precise location. Sensing his haste, the remora picked up the tempo, the song becoming a buzzing multifrequency squeak as the little friend tried to jam the information into his mind.
Dum Dum Dum Dum Dum Dum Dum
Faster and closer came the sound of the hunting shark. It was rising now, moving into position for a killing surge. No time to review, Ensign had to act.
He willed himself to narrow his hearing to the middle frequencies, concentrating on the shark’s voice, picking up its rhythm.
DumDumDum DumDum Dum-Dum DumDum DumDum DumDum DumDum DumDum Dum
Ensign added his own pulses to the hunting shark’s, matching the predator’s frequency and pulse shape with automatic ease. The shark quickened its call and shifted to a higher frequency, the added pulses making it think he was closer than he was.
DumSumDumSumDumSumDum
SumDumSumDumSumDumSumDum
SumDumSumDumSum
Ensign varied his pulses as the song directed. Still the shark climbed, but Ensign could sense the first edge of uncertainty in its hunting cry. Now the song told him to add a new sound in the middle frequencies.
SumhissDumSumhissDumSumhisss DumSumhisssDumSumhissssDumSum hisssssDumSumhissssss The shark’s beam wavered and lost focus. It dropped in frequency to cover a wider area. Ensign felt the shark moving away to the north. Quietly he eased to the south, increasing his volume to mask his movements. DumSumhissssss*click*DumSumhisss-sss*click *DumSumhissssss*click*Dum Sumhissssss*click*pop*
As the song instructed, Ensign added more noise to the higher frequency to cloak his position and further hide him from the second shark. All along his flanks and back his remoras twitched and shifted nervously under the impact of the unnatural sound.
Frantically the shark began to shift tempo and frequencies, seeking a clear channel even if it were suboptimal. But the song prepared Ensign for that too. Sharks have little musical imagination and the pattern of the shift, first higher and faster, then lower and slower, then jumping suddenly to higher and slower, was foretold in the song. Ensign matched the shark shift for shift, leaving it coursing blindly in the murk. Just to be safe he added a syncopation.
The shark’s signal stuttered, wavered and faded. Still close but out of charging range. Now came the song’s final stanza. Ensign contracted muscles all along his body, sacrificing hearing sensitivity for aerodynamic efficiency. With powerful flaps of his outer wings he began to climb for the cloud tops and safety.
Du…
The shark’s search beam flashed over him almost too quickly to register. But the shark was too far away and headed in the wrong direction. As the clouds lightened around him and began to fade into rainbow-tinted fog, Ensign could picture the hunter slewing frantically, lashing out with his sonar trying to find him again.
Then he was out in the sunlight, floating deep in a canyon formed by two cloud banks. He sucked in air, reveling in the clear, clean sting of ammonia. Ensign expanded in triumph as—
SKREEEEEE
With a blast of hunting sound the second shark hurtled out of the clouds. Ensign barely had a glimpse of the dark torpedo shape as it tore down on him. Instinctively he rolled right and roared out on all frequencies using all his upper timpani to focus sound on his attacker. The shark twitched under the force of the blast and missed by a remora-length as Ensign rolled away and struck out with a wingtip to batter the shark as it dove. Then, without waiting to right himself he expelled hydrogen in a single huge gust that sent him zooming above the cloud tops. His lower eyes gave him a confused vision of the shark twisting away as it shrank back into the murky depths.