"Glad I'm in here."
"What's it like underneath on a night like this?"
I puffed, thinking of my light cutting through the insides of a black diamond, shaken slightly. The meteor-dart of a suddenly illuminated fish, the swaying of grotesque ferns, like nebulae-shadow, then green, then gone--swam in a moment through my mind. I guess it's like a spaceship would feel, if a spaceship could feel, crossing between worlds--and quiet, uncannily, preternaturally quiet; and peaceful as sleep.
"Dark," I said, "and not real choppy below a few fathoms."
"Another eight hours and we shove off," commented Mike.
"Ten, twelve days, we should be there," noted Malvern.
"What do you think Ikky's doing?"
"Sleeping on the bottom with Mrs. Ikky if he has any brains."
"He hasn't. I've seen ANR's skeletal extrapolation from the bones that have washed up--"
"Hasn't everyone?"
"...Fully fleshed, he'd be over a hundred meters long. That right, Carl?"
I agreed.
"...Not much of a brain box, though, for his bulk."
"Smart enough to stay out of our locker."
Chuckles, because nothing exists but this room, really. The world outside is an empty, sleet drummed deck. We lean back and make clouds.
"Boss lady does not approve of unauthorized fly fishing."
"Boss lady can walk north till her hat floats."
"What did she say in there?"
"She told me that my place, with fish manure, is on the bottom."
"You don't Slide?"
"I bait."
"We'll see."
"That's all I do. If she wants a Slideman she's going to have to ask nicely."
"You think she'll have to?"
"I think she'll have to."
"And if she does, can you do it?"
"A fair question," I puffed. "I don't know the answer, though."
I'd incorporate my soul and trade forty percent of the stock for the answer. I'd give a couple years off my life for the answer. But there doesn't seem to be a lineup of supernatural takers, because no one knows. Supposing when we get out there, luck being with us, we find ourselves an Ikky? Supposing we succeed in baiting him and get lines on him. What then? If we get him shipside, will she hold on or crack up? What if she's made of sterner stuff than Davits, who used to hunt sharks with poison-darted air pistols? Supposing she lands him and Davits has to stand there like a video extra.
Worse yet, supposing she asks for Davits and he still stands there like a video extra or something else--say, some yellowbellied embodiment named Cringe?
It was when I got him up above the eight-foot horizon of steel and looked out at all that body, sloping on and on till it dropped out of sight like a green mountain range...And that head. Small for the body, but still immense. Fat, craggy, with lidless roulettes that had spun black and red since before my forefathers decided to try the New Continent. And swaying.
Fresh narco-tanks had been connected. It needed another shot, fast. But I was paralyzed.
It had made a noise like God playing a Hammond organ...
_And looked at me!_
I don't know if seeing is even the same process in eyes like those. I doubt it. Maybe I was just a gray blur behind a black rock, with the plexi-reflected sky hurting its pupils. But it fixed on me. Perhaps the snake doesn't really paralyze the rabbit, perhaps it's just that rabbits are cowards by constitution. But it began to struggle and I still couldn't move, fascinated.
Fascinated by all that power, by those eyes, they found me there fifteen minutes later, a little broken about the head and shoulders, the Inject still unpushed.
And I dream about those eyes. I want to face them once more, even if their finding takes forever. I've got to know if there's something inside me that sets me apart from a rabbit, from notched plates of reflexes and instincts that always fall apart in exactly the same way whenever the
proper combination is spun.
Looking down, I noticed that my hand was shaking. Glancing up, I noticed that no one else was noticing.
I finished my drink and emptied my pipe. It was late and no songbirds were singing.
I sat whittling, my legs hanging over the aft edge, the chips spinning down into the furrow of our wake. Three days out. No action.
"You!"
"Me?"
"You."
Hair like the end of the rainbow, eyes like nothing in nature, fine teeth.
"Hello."
"There's a safety regulation against what you're doing, you know."
"I know. I've been worrying about it all morning."
A delicate curl climbed my knife then drifted out behind us. It settled into the foam and was plowed under. I watched her reflection in my blade, taking a secret pleasure in its distortion.
"Are you baiting me?" she finally asked.
I heard her laugh then, and turned, knowing it had been intentional.
"What, me?"
"I could push you off from here, very easily."
"I'd make it back."
"Would you push me off, then--some dark night, perhaps?"
"They're all dark, Miss Luharich. No, I'd rather make you a gift of my carving."
She seated herself beside me then, and I couldn't help but notice the dimples in her knees. She wore white shorts and a halter and still had an offworld tan to her which was awfully appealing. I almost felt a twinge of guilt at having planned the whole scene, but my right hand still blocked her view of the wooden animal.
"Okay, I'll bite. What have you got for me?"
"Just a second. It's almost finished."
Solemnly, I passed her the little wooden jackass I had been carving. I felt a little sorry and slightly jackass-ish myself, but I had to follow through. I always do. The mouth was split into a braying grin. The ears were upright.
She didn't smile and she didn't frown. She just studied it.
"It's very good," she finally said, "like most things you do--and appropriate, perhaps."
"Give it to me." I extended a palm.
She handed it back and I tossed it out over the water. It missed the white water and bobbed for awhile like a pigmy seahorse.
"Why did you do that?"
"It was a poor joke. I'm sorry."
"Maybe you are right, though. Perhaps this time I've bitten off a little too much."
I snorted.
"Then why not do something safer, like another race?"
She shook her end of the rainbow.
"No. It has to be an Ikky."
"Why?"
"Why did you want one so badly that you threw away a fortune?"
"Many reasons," I said. "An unfrocked analyst who held black therapy sessions in his basement once told me, 'Mister Davits, you need to reinforce the image of your masculinity by catching one of every kind of fish in existence.' Fish are a very ancient masculinity symbol, you know. So I set out to do it. I have one more to go. --Why do you want to reinforce _your_ masculinity?"
"I don't," she said. "I don't want to reinforce anything but Luharich Enterprises. My chief statistician once said, 'Miss Luharich, sell all the cold cream and face powder in the System and you'll be a happy girl. Rich, too.' And he was right. I am the proof. I can look the way I do and do anything, and I sell most of the lipstick and face powder in the System--but I have to be _able_ to do anything."
"You do look cool and efficient," I observed.
"I don't feel cool," she said, rising. "Let's go for a swim."
"May I point out that we're making pretty good time?"
"If you want to indicate the obvious, you may. You said you could make it back to the ship, unassisted. Change your mind?"
"No."
"Then get us two scuba outfits and I'll race you under Tensquare.