Orion Arm

  "Taking Pernio out today, Helly?" Mulholland asked me.

  "Yep. My charter fell through, so I'm just gonna knock around. You see Kofi anywhere?"

  "He was in earlier for a cappuccino, fresh off the dawn hop-shuttle from the Big Beach. Try his boat."

  Billy Mulholland was a poker player nearly as artful as my old man, and the only other Eyebrow denizen besides myself and Mimo who was born on Earth. He was a handsome devil who got busted and Thrown Away for operating a Ponzi investment scam that plundered the stock portfolios of a few hundred credulous old ladies in Sydney, Australia. After serving a five-year term in a DPR in Goondiwindi, he dug up the small stash he had managed to hide from the law and bought a ticket to the Perseus Spur.

  He finished adding up my bill on an old-fashioned calculator. "Should I put this lot on your tab, mate?"

  "Nah, I'm flush again." I proffered an EFT card primed with the obscene amount of severance pay I had received from Rampart. If I was discreet, the sum would take care of my modest domestic needs for the next ten years or thereabouts.

  Leaving the store, I passed Jinj & Peachy's Bed & Breakfast. The gals were sweeping their veranda and watering hanging baskets of flowers. The Tallhorse sisters were a sweet-natured pair, parolled and Tossed after serving time for armed robbery on Fanning-Alpha. I gave them a wave and a grin, then moved on downhill to Gumercindo Hucklebury's marina. Goom himself, a rumored wife-murderer from Tikchik, was engaged in a furious argument with Seedy McGready over the old fisherman's penchant for dumping piscoid guts off the dock after cleaning his catch.

  I said, "Hi, guys." They halted their squabble long enough to bid me a friendly good morning, then went at it again, hammer and tongs.

  Kofi Rutherford's rattletrap sport submersible, Black Coffee, was in its slip, and he lay on his stomach on the aft flat, installing a new surefoot covering. His rinky-dink boat was down for repairs more often than not, so he frequently served as first mate on mine.

  "Yo, my man," he called as I hove into view with the tote wafting after me. "Come aboard. Time I took a break anyhow. This job is a megabummer."

  He climbed to his feet and stretched, working the cramps out of his splendid mahogany body. Kofi is a couple of centimeters taller than I am but less heavily muscled, a top-notch diver who knows more about the Kedgeree underwater realm than anyone else in the islands. He was wearing chartreuse shorts patterned with pink flamingos, and a duckbill gimme cap bearing the Macrodur AC logo.

  Next to Mimo Bermudez, Kofi was my closest pal on K-L. He was an embezzling accountant from Cush in the Orion Arm, on the run from the enforcers of Omnivore, the Big Seven food and beverage Concern. He managed to escape his planet with a briefcase stuffed full of high-end negotiables but lost the loot when Qastt bandits boarded his starliner in the no-man's-land around the Fungo Bat Nebula. His temperament tended toward the morose, perhaps because of the fiscal disaster, but he was dependable and hardworking and knew how to keep clients happy.

  I had let him use Pernio during my late stint with Rampart, and I swear there were tears in his eyes when I told him I'd come back to the islands to stay. Could be that the poor guy's emotions were somewhat mixed.

  "How's about coming out diving with me?" I offered. "My sports cancelled and it's a perfect day for a dip. Won't be too many more like this before the rainy season sets in for good."

  He sighed. "You're tempting me somethin' fierce, man. But I gotta get this flat patched, then go fix the roof on my shack... Where you figure on heading?"

  "Glory Hole. Maybe see a giant cometworm. They come into the shelves before bad weather. Aw, c'mon, Kof. You know I don't like to dive alone."

  "Maybe you can find someone else to buddy up with." He thought about it, frowning. "Damn. Might be tough to do today. Oren's at the Beach, picking up a new load of fritzware from his Dumpster-divers, Glasha went fishing, and Tewfik told me he was gonna hop over to Alibi to see his girlfriend."

  "Never mind. I'll do a solo. What're rules for if you can't break 'em once in a while?"

  "Tell you what, Helly. If there's anything left of the day when I finish, I'll come on out and join you. If I don't make it, stop by my place on your way home and we can pop some hops."

  "You got a deal. Be seeing you."

  Pernio was tied up temporarily at Sal Faustino's boatyard across the tiny harbor from the marina. My sub is a forty-year-old Mawson with a lot of good years left. A portion of my corporate gratuity had financed a complete overhaul of the sturdy old bucket's engines and systems, plus a fresh coat of buttercup-yellow paint. Her name is the medical term for frostbite. Sneaky little play on words there, a veiled reference to the exalted family moniker. She's equipped with a retractable flybridge for surface running, a stereo system featuring recordings of golden oldies by the Beatles and Jimmy Buffet, a big underwater viewport, and a framed copy of my personal motto: sport divers are always in over their heads.

  I went aboard with my gear and spent a half hour checking the sub out. She looked great and the engines purred like the big fat Persian cat that guarded the door at Jinj & Peachy's guest house. I left Pernio idling at the slip and went to pay the bill.

  In response to my hail, Sal Faustino emerged from the machine shop and gave me a cool greeting. She's the best marine engineer in the Out Islands, a square plascrete block of a woman whose flaming temper conceals a heart as soft as a creamed ham pie. Sal used to love me like a foster son until she found out that my real name wasn't Helmut Icicle.

  "I'm taking Pernio out today, Sal. She looks great."

  "Thanks." She didn't offer her hand, maybe because it was covered with grease. And maybe not.

  "I'd like to settle up with you."

  She hmphed. "Rampart plastic, I suppose."

  "That's right," I said mildly.

  "Yeah. Well, c'mon into the office."

  A few folks on Eyebrow Cay really got their knickers in a knot when they discovered I was the son of Rampart's queso grande. The piss-off quotient maximized when I actually signed on with the Starcorp in order to expedite the search for Eve and her kidnappers. Even though K-L was a freesoil world, Rampart still exerted a chilling influence over the little planet's economy—most especially its Orion Arm imports, which largely made the trip on Rampart transport and had moderately appalling price markups as a result. The situation was only partially alleviated by the Spur's thriving smuggler community.

  Sal was one of those who disapproved of my family connections on general principles. Now that I'd quit Rampart and reverted again to Throwaway, she was still grumpy, but inclined to let me worm my way slowly back into her good graces.

  "Keep an eye on the starb'd propulsion unit," she muttered, handing back the EFT card. "Had to use a rebuilt injector when those snots at BB Nautical wouldn't let me have a new one. 'Reserved for regular customers,' they said! I suppose I should've mentioned the Holy Name of Frost—"

  "I'm sure a rebuilt will be fine."

  "You know about the storm coming, right? Where you heading?"

  "Place I know near Teakettle. I plan to be back long before the weather turns. So long, Sal. Thanks for rushing the refit."

  Ten minutes later my yellow submarine and I chugged through the reef passage into the calm blue alien ocean.

  Any real sailor will tell you that a glory hole is a place on shipboard to store odds and ends. Mine, however, is a genuine hole in the bottom of the sea, as celebrated in the old barroom ballad.

  In my alter ego of Cap'n Helmut Icicle, I never took sport-diving clients to my secret spot. Mimo, Kofi Rutherford, and a handful of other close friends on Eyebrow Cay have shared the Glory Hole's heart-stopping beauty with me, but for the most part I've kept it for myself as a sort of private sanctuary—maybe the closest thing to a sacred place that my battered psyche will acknowledge.

  To get there you have to go nearly two hundred kilometers southeast of Eyebrow to the treacherous, uncharted shoals south of Devil's Teakettle Island. Then, if you're driving a sub,
you crank up the flybridge and navigate on the surface, eyeballing your way through a skimpy serpentine channel full of razor-sharp lava rock and half-submerged coralline heads, trying not to tear the bottom out of your vessel. Eventually you come to a dead end in the midst of a featureless shallow flat some seven kilometers offshore.

  Now it's time to anchor the boat and start walking or swimming, depending on the tide. It was on the ebb this morning but still at armpit depth, so I was able to swim to the hole.

  I dressed out in the brand-new gear I'd splurged on before I'd left Seriphos: a Phoque skinsuit and BC, an ultralight-weight NeLox rebreather helmet with a depth spectrum compensator lens, and a Rolex dive computer with sonicom, magfield navigation, and lots more bells and whistles. Sitting on the forward flat of the sub, I donned another new toy: Corby jetfins, a lazy man's way to move around underwater that I'd long lusted after but hadn't been able to afford prior to my Rampart gig. They were controlled by means of a single shell-glove worn on the left hand.

  I butt-scooted onto the starboard descender, tapped its control pad, and let the mechanism lower me into the water. Easing myself prone, I did a small buoyancy tweak, then clamped the fingers of my gloved hand together mittenwise and flexed them slightly to activate the fin waterjets.

  Hot damn! I was off and steamin', gliding effortlessly just beneath the surface at a minimum rate of knots with nary a splash, one with the fishies.

  The preset navigation display on my faceplate showed me the way to go. There was almost no current on this side of the volcanic island and the waters were transparent as air, with visibility almost unlimited—not that there was much to see as yet. The bottom was mostly featureless grayish sand, pocked here and there with odd small craters. Most of them were no more than twenty or thirty centimeters wide, dark blue at the center, densely edged with lacy pink, lavender, and lime-green sessile animals. The only free-swimming piscoids on the flat that day were tiny golden creatures no larger than terrestrial guppies. They fled ahead of me in panicky schools before spiraling en masse into a handy bolthole, as though they were glittering confetti being sucked down a drain.

  The moored yellow submarine was nearly invisible against the background of wooded Teakettle Island when I finally reached my destination, over two kilometers away. From the surface the Glory Hole appears as a perfectly round azure aperture about two meters in diameter, sited mysteriously in the midst of pale shallows punctured by countless smaller openings.

  I turned off my jets by splaying my fingers and flippered along with the most exquisite caution, for the hole's timid denizens are easily spooked. Drifting to the rim, I planted a locator-float with a dive flag. Then I adjusted my buoyancy compensator to permit the slowest possible descent, feet first, body motionless. The NeLox rebreather gives off no noisy bubbles and its little tanks can sustain an adult human for nearly half a day at moderate depths. The water, uncomfortably warm on the flat above, cooled as I sank through a short shaft of white rock alive with colorful sea-daisies, waving banners of blue-green seaweed analogues, and colonies of miniature firecracker spongids that "exploded" scarlet defensive nematocysts as I passed by. Unlike the deadly weaponry of their larger cousins, these tiny poison darts bounced harmlessly off my skinsuit.

  I emerged from the tube into a kind of underwater arcade, a unique realm that lies beneath the enormous shelf reef that partially encircles Teakettle. The coral ceiling was perforated by hundreds of small openings that admitted narrow bright beams of angled sunlight like theatrical spots, illuminating the gorgeous creatures that inhabit the Glory Hole as though they were precious specimens on display in a museum. Every nuance of color that would ordinarily be lost at depth was restored to vivid perfection by the compensating mechanism of my faceplate lens.

  Huge amber filigree sea fans, peony-worms with cerise gills, and iridescent violet plum-tunicates grew on the rocky piers supporting the shelf. Hanging beneath some sections were dense thickets of dainty shrub-corals and bryozoans. Their fragile branches glimmered like faceted jet or pink mother-of-pearl and harbored slowly creeping emerald and cobalt molluscoids.

  The floor of the Glory Hole was pure white sand separating a series of fantastic gardens browsed by slow-moving schools of autumn-leaf fish, calico cheepers, and fearless hula-hoop microsharks. Blue and silver toadstool algids grew amidst cannonball crinoids streaked with neon red. Flowering vine gorgonians festooned gigantic translucent barnacles. From sheltered crevices among the encrusted rocks, alien crus-taceoids in shiny armor watched me with calm, fiery eyes.

  There were plenty of sleepy-looking flapjaw demons hanging about, ugly but delicious fish analogues about half as long as my forearm with sharp little triangular teeth, stra-bismic eyes, and leathery muddy-red skin. Normally, demons are sluggish and inoffensive; but they go into a feeding frenzy when there's blood in the water, so I didn't want to bother them until it was time to leave. Then I'd capture the designated dinner subjects with my hands, pop them into my catch bag, and dispatch them when I got back to the sub.

  Twenty meters or so from the entrance to the hole was a flat rocky area the size of a billiard table that hosted very few bottom-dwelling organisms. In its center floated a cheap plastic lawn chair, tethered to a rocky knob with two short lengths of cord. This was my nautical throne, in which I was accustomed to rock in the cradle of the deep.

  I brushed a few clinging marine animals from the seat and settled down gratefully. The chair touched bottom, then tilted gently to and fro. Doing my best to empty my mind and surrender to the Glory Hole's soothing enchantment, I breathed slowly and steadily, attempting to achieve an altered state of consciousness that would wipe away my malaise and persistent sense of guilt. Now and then curious scavenger fishes or creeping arthropodal life-forms would investigate my swaying body. When they found that I was inedible, they went away. My eyes began to close...

  What was that?

  I snapped out of my reverie, aware of a sudden anomalous movement among the indigo shadows on the landward side of the arcade. The sea floor rose in there, coral pillars thickened into virtual corridors, and the illuminating holes in the ceiling were few and far between. Something was fitfully thrashing around in the twilit caverns, and it was very large.

  A rush of adrenaline banished my mystical mood in a nanosecond. I gripped the arms of the plastic chair and asked the dive computer to do a targeting scan. My faceplate darkened slightly. The fairy-tale scene lost most of its color and seemed to flatten into two dimensions. A huge shape seemed to be tied in a knot behind one of the thicker columns. The targeter gave its range as 33.2 meters.

  "Identify," I whispered. The display confirmed what I already suspected: probability 86%: giant cometworm—

  THALASSOKOMETIS MAGNIFICA.

  Most members of the Kedgeree diving community rated the creature as the most beautiful marine species on the planet. It was also one of the rarest.

  I switched the faceplate back to normal mode and finned toward the fabulous beast. Within a few moments it was clearly visible to my enhanced eyes. The rounded head was about the size of a big beachball, blue and gently fluorescent, with enormous white-glowing eyes and a luminous golden mane of hairy filaments. Its mouth gaped, revealing multiple rows of sharp glassy fangs. The body was thick as a man's thigh, matte-black, adorned with horizontal lines of glowing crimson, amber, and white sparks that were brightest and most numerous near the head and faded to invisibility at the tail. Swimming freely, the creature would have been at least six meters long.

  But this specimen was unable to swim. It was entangled in the tenacious meshes of a crude drift-net.

  "Aw, shit," I whispered.

  As I hovered at a safe distance, the cometworm ceased its impotent struggling. The head turned and looked straight at me, then tilted slightly to one side. Slowly, the formidable jaws closed. The headlight eyes blinked. I remembered that these animals were reputed to be very intelligent. Was there a hope that this one might let me cut it free?

&n
bsp; I drew my knife from its leg-scabbard and held it in my extended right hand. The worm tilted its head to the other side, as if in puzzlement. Holding my left arm tightly against my side, I performed a brief mime show, pretending that the limb was stuck. Then, beginning at the wrist, I simulated short chops with the blade that gradually "cut" the arm free of its invisible bonds.

  "I can do this for you," I said quietly. "How about it?"

  The worm blinked again.

  I shifted the knife to my other hand and repeated the demonstration. The cometworm stared. I swam toward it with infinite caution, keeping the knife extended in my right hand. If it lunged at me, I was prepared to activate the jetfins and haul ass. But it remained motionless, waiting.

  "Okay, big guy. Here's how it works."

  I grasped a trailing end of the net and sliced off a hunk, letting the mesh float free. The worm didn't move. I ventured closer, took hold of a section that enveloped the creature's midsection, and began to cut in earnest. Its skin was like black velvet studded with tiny gems. It trembled slightly when I inadvertently touched it, but otherwise remained still, suspended a meter or two above the sandy sea floor. I worked carefully, slicing apart the tangles, while the eerie eyes watched me and seemed to approve.

  Finally, the job was done. I wadded up the net shreds and tucked them into my catch bag, finned backward, and put the knife away. "That's all, fella. You're free."

  The great serpentine bulk undulated gracefully and the creature opened its mouth wide. Then it gave a final blink and eeled off into the darkness.

  A voice in my helmet earphone said, "Nice going."

  I spun around in delighted surprise and saw a familiar skinsuited figure equipped with scuba gear. He was back in the well-lit section of the Glory Hole, coming toward me, and he carried a gas-powered speargun under his arm.

  "Kofi! Hey, man, you made it after all!"

  "That's right. The thought of you out here all alone in a place almost nobody knows about... I just had to come."