Swimming Without a Net Page 14

  The other eye slowly opened. Indeed?

  Yeah. Uh. Sorry to interrupt. In her excitement, she darted around and around him. Listen: it’s wrong to make a group decision on something that will affect every single person differently.

  Oh?

  She mentally gulped at the dry voice. And thought to herself, I’m the only one who’ll talk to the king like this. I’ve got to try!

  I think rather than forcing everyone to comply with the group vote, you let each one of your people make up his or her own mind.

  But if, say, a third of them wish to expose themselves—

  Where’s the rule that says you all have to? In fact, let the Traditionals stay in hiding, if they want. That way the Air Breathers will always have a home to retreat to. You’re not exposing everyone to one decision. You’re not exposing people who want to stay safe.

  Mekkam closed his eyes again and thought it over.

  I do not know, Rika, Artur said worriedly. We are a people of tradition, and by tradition the Pelagic—

  If you guys want to show up in the twenty-first century, you’ve got to act like it. And that includes chucking a legal system that’s four hundred years old. Heck, ours is almost that old and it’s a fucking mess!

  Artur began, I do not—

  Enough. I have decided.

  Fred realized she wasn’t too crazy about living in a monarchy. Why should one guy be able to decide something like this?

  Then she thought, One day it might be me making these decisions! Disaster!

  Fredrika makes a good point. Further, she has shown me a way to help all my people, regardless of which side they are on. How annoying not to have thought of it myself. But we are a prisoner of our own societies, whether we live in the sea or in the suburbs. It will be as she said.

  It will? Fred gaped and was nearly spun away from him when she stopped paying attention and let the current grab her.

  We will tell everyone. Right now.

  And then, a moment later: It is done.

  Forty-four

  But how will we —

  Then I will return—

  —couldn’t be simpler—

  —couldn’t be worse—

  And how can we—

  But he said we could—

  ENOUGH!

  A hundred minds all shut up at once, and at least that many pairs of eyes were staring at Fred. She cleared her throat, remembered she didn’t have to speak out loud, then added, If you want to go up, go up. Just swim up to one of the public beaches and walk out. Or we could go hunt down the offices of People magazine. But one thing: Bipeds have a big-time nudity taboo. So if you want to hang out surface-side, you’d better love the idea of jeans and T-shirts.

  I will go. That thought, clear and cool, like a mountain spring. I will go right now.

  Tennian. Shocker. Fred swam after her as she ignored the private beach and made for the public shore about five hundred yards away.

  Uh, Tennian, they might be scared.

  Who could be scared of me?

  You’d be surprised. Just…no sudden moves, all right?

  Fred could hear displaced water and looked; Thomas was chugging behind her and Tennian in the URV. She waved, then went back to following Tennian.

  The blue-haired girl popped to the surface in full tail, a hundred yards offshore. There was a filthy boat staffed with sailors, all of whom started shouting and pointing at Tennian.

  She waved.

  Fred popped up beside her, squinting at the boat. There was something familiar about it, something she had read recently…it wasn’t Navy, or Coast Guard. It wasn’t a private yacht. It was—

  “Pirates!” Fred gasped. Now she remembered, oh, yes. Modern pirates were popping up all over the place, robbing cruise ships and private yachts. “Tennian, don’t—”

  “Hello!” she cried, waving. Her tail was all too visible beneath the clear waves. “I am Tennian, of the Undersea Folk, wishing you—”

  There was a crack, and Tennian disappeared beneath the waves.

  Forty-five

  Tennian!

  I—don’t—What happened?

  Fred caught Tennian as she spun toward the sand bottom. Her blood was already darkening the water, which would bring the little guys: black tip reef sharks, white tip reef sharks, and grey reef sharks. They, in turn, would bring the big boys: makos, great whites, tiger sharks, hammerheads. Dammit!

  You’ve been shot, Tennian. They shot you with a gun…a weapon.

  But why?

  Because they were scared of you.

  But I did nothing!

  Welcome to the wonderful world of bipeds.

  She turned, feeling more displaced water, and saw Thomas had pulled the URV up right behind them, and was beckoning frantically toward her. And, like an answer to a prayer, Artur materialized on her other side and picked Tennian up out of the sand.

  Come on, Thomas can fix this.

  Do not be afraid, Tennian. Rika’s Thomas is a most competent healer.

  I’m NOT afraid. They were afraid of ME!

  Fred saw a black tip reef shark circle toward them, waited for it to get closer, then punched it in the nose. It was either that or go for the eyes, and she didn’t want to blind the fish for following its instincts. It spun away, sending a startled (and disgruntled) thought in her direction.

  Three more came up on her blind side, but Artur bared his teeth at them and they darted away. In the ocean, she supposed the Undersea Folk were at the top of the food chain.

  Remember where the boat was. We’ll go back later and settle their hash, Fred thought.

  Indeed. I look forward to that, Little Rika.

  She saw a large shadow start toward them and thought it was probably a tiger shark. She started pushing and hurrying them along, never taking her gaze from the shadow. The three of them got through the air lock in record time, and then Artur was stretching Tennian out on the tile. Thomas had appeared, carrying a bulky first-aid kit.

  “Finally. Took you guys long enough.”

  “Sharks,” Fred said shortly.

  “Great. Tennian, you doing okay, honey?”

  “I did nothing!”

  “Yeah, well, what can we say. We’re a skittish and unpleasant race.” Thomas pulled her into a half-sitting position and looked at her back. “A neat through and through. Probably a rifle. Did you see it, Fred?”

  “It was long, that’s all I saw.”

  “Rifle, then. Good. Small bullets,” he told Tennian, “and not much damage. And they aimed high. Or hit high, anyway.”

  “That is good?”

  “Very fuckin’ good.”

  Blood was pooling beneath Tennian and Fred knew from experience that she had to be in pain, but the blue-haired mermaid only had eyes for Thomas, and seemed to hardly notice as he fixed her shoulder.

  Déjà vu all over again, she thought. A year ago, she’d been on her back, bleeding like a pig and bitching to beat the band. Now…

  Artur was looking at her strangely.

  “What?”

  “Can you not hear me, Little Rika?”

  “Sure.”

  “I mean, before. Could you not hear me before?”

  “Spit it out, Artur! What the hell are you talking about?”

  “He said, ‘This will not endear my people to yours,’” Tennian gasped. “You could not hear him?”

  “Well, no. I guess my mer-telepathy only works when I’m in the water. Right?”

  “Oh.”

  “You mean you guys can talk like that out of the water?”

  “Of…of course. All of us can.”

  “Oh.”

  Artur and Tennian were looking at her with great sympathy, like she was missing a leg or something. “Who cares?” she asked impatiently. “Can we focus on getting Tennian fixed up, please?”

  “Yes, of course,” Artur said. He was having trouble meeting her gaze. “I was taken by surprise. I have never known anyone who could not—I mean, any Undersea F
olk who could not—why, your father could—”

  “Half-breed, Artur, remember? I didn’t get the teeth, and I obviously didn’t get the full ESP gene, either. Big fucking deal! Can we get back to Tennian now?”

  “I am…well. I was just…surprised.”

  “Tennian, they shot you!”

  “Yes. As I said. Surprised.” She gasped as Thomas did something to her shoulder. “Very, very surprised.”

  “You got this?”

  “I got it,” Thomas said, not looking up.

  “Then let’s get up there and kick some pirate booty.”

  “I do not think that will be necessary,” Artur said, but he followed her out the air lock anyway. And when Fred got to the surface, she got the surprise of her life.

  So, she imagined, did the pirates.

  Forty-six

  The small, ugly boat was swarming with Undersea Folk. But the first thing to catch her attention was King Mekkam, who was holding the rifleman at arm’s length and saying, “You do not harm one of my people without facing consequences, biped.”

  Two ladders hit the water and Fred scrambled up one. Artur was already on the ship. How did he do that? She saw three rifles on the deck, all of them with bent barrels. There were perhaps a dozen Undersea Folk and maybe eight pirates. No chance for the bipeds at all.

  One of the Undersea Folk was Tennian’s twin, who was standing on the captain’s head. His teeth were being ground into the deck as he flailed and said, “Mmmph gmmphh dmmmph!”

  “Oh, boy,” Fred said. “So much for good race relations.”

  “They are thieves and law flouters, yes?” the king asked.

  “Yes, Mekkam.”

  “Then we will turn them over to the authorities. Are there many like this?”

  “Kind of,” she admitted. It was tough to admit that pirates were alive and well in the twenty-first century.

  “Then we can be of assistance to your authorities. We will be good at that.”

  “I guess,” she said respectfully, trying to ignore the begging and screaming. “But are you sure you want to? Tennian didn’t do a damned thing.”

  “Exactly so,” her twin, Rennan, said, actually jumping up and down on the pirate captain’s head. “So we, too, will try for the surface world.”

  “This is all my fault,” she said glumly, sitting beside two unconscious pirates. “Me and my whole ‘democratic process’ speech. Me and my shitty advice.”

  “On the contrary, Little Rika. You did warn us. Many times. And Tennian is grown, and able to make her own decisions.”

  She looked up at him, realizing…“I would have known what they were up to. You organized and led an attack with your dad, from the URV. You did it all with your telepathy while at the same time you were helping us with Tennian. And I didn’t have a clue what was going on, because I’m mind blind when I don’t have my tail.”

  “It seems that is so.” Artur knelt beside her. “But I do not mind, Little Rika, truly. I was surprised, true. But your differences make you the delight you are to me. And if you do not mind, I do not mind.”

  “Oh, the one-eyed person in the country of the blind and all that, huh?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. What now?”

  “Now the others have decided they will—”

  “Come!” Rennan cried, and quite a few of them dived off the bow of the ship, shifted to tails, and began swimming for the public beach, which was crowded (as could be expected this time of year).

  “But what about the bad guys?”

  “They will sleep.”

  Fred looked. Yup. Pirates were all unconscious. Only she and Artur were left, conscious, on the ship.

  Fred got up off the deck and stared after the swimming Folk. All she could see were their heads bobbing in the surf. “Are they still going to the public beach?”

  “We can be a stubborn, implacable people, Little Rika.”

  “Oh.” She nibbled her lower lip. “I see. Kind of a knee-jerk ‘they can’t scare us off’ type reaction.”

  “Exactly so.”

  Artur and Fred dove off the stern and swam after the other Undersea Folk. One by one, the Folk swam up to the beach, shifting from tail to legs in full view of at least two hundred tourists.

  “Hello,” Rennan was saying to a delighted little girl. “I am Rennan, of the Undersea Folk.”

  “Becky.”

  Biped and merman shook hands.

  “Becky!” Mama wasn’t happy at all, and came running over, jiggling everywhere in her too-tight black one-piece. “You get back here!”

  “Hello, madam. I am Rennan.”

  His outstretched hand forced her to remember her manners; she hastily shook his hand.

  “Did you see, Mom? He’s a merman! He had a tail!”

  “Are they shooting a movie around here?”

  “No, madam. Come and meet my friends.”

  Fred watched, amazed, as tourist after tourist came down to the water, some trying to cover the Folk with towels, most amazed at the transformation. Only the children were unrestrainedly delighted.

  “Wow,” Fred said. She waved as Jonas screeched up to the beach in the resort van. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

  Jonas was now hopping up and down on the sand, shaking a fist at her.

  “What is he screaming?” Artur asked.

  “Oh, the usual. ‘You didn’t tell me.’ ‘You left without me.’ Yak-yak-yak.”

  “He seems agitated. Even for Jonas.”

  “Hey, now he gets to go home and start planning his wedding.”

  “Ah, a noble goal.”

  “Speaking of which, where the hell is Dr. Barb?”

  By now Jonas had hopped back in the van and driven right up on the beach, a huge no-no. Jonas hit the brakes as the passenger door opened and Dr. Barb jumped out.

  “What’s going on?” she cried. “Are you all right, Dr. Bimm? Did you see the pirates?”

  Fred, still knee-deep in the surf, abruptly sat down.

  “Dr. Bimm? Are you well?”

  And shifted to her tail.

  Dr. Barb stared down at her. At her tail. Blinked. Rubbed her forehead. Blinked faster. Meanwhile, Jonas came up and put his arm around her. “Anybody get hurt?” he asked quietly.

  “Tennian. And all the pirates.”

  “Dr. Bimm.”

  “Yeah, Dr. Barb?”

  “You’re a mermaid.”

  “Yeah, Dr. Barb.”

  Dr. Barb was blinking so fast, Fred wondered if the woman was going to have to sit down. “Then this,” she said at last, “this explains all those late nights when you’d insist on feeding the fish on your own.”

  “Yeah.”

  “This explains rather a lot, actually.”

  “Okay.”

  “Including your hair.”

  “Yep.”

  “This isn’t a family reunion, isn’t it?”

  “No, Dr. Barb.”

  “Okay. I just wanted to get that cleared up.” Her boss knelt and tentatively put a hand on Fred’s tail, where her left calf normally would have been. “Dr. Bimm…you’re really quite beautiful.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Barb. You can go ahead and have a heart attack now.”

  “Oh, no.” Dr. Barb was scanning the beach, taking in the tourists and the other Undersea Folk. “There’s going to be far, far too much to do.” She was absently patting Fred’s tail. “This changes everything.”

  “Think so?”

  “This is our prince,” another Folk was saying. “Prince Artur, and our friend, Fredrika.”

  “Hi.” Fred shifted to her legs, stood, and shook hands with a strange, chubby male tourist who hadn’t used enough sunscreen on his bald head. “My name’s Fred, and I’ll be your mermaid today.”

  Forty-seven

  Much later, she and Artur went back to the URV to check on Tennian, who was drinking her third Coke and chattering to Thomas.

  “Ho, my prince! Fredrika!”

&nb
sp; “Your twin’s up there kicking ass and taking names.”

  “Yes, I have been following the events.”

  Right. That darned telepathy…In full-blooded Folk, it worked wherever they were, not just in the water. Dammit. She’d never felt more like just a half in her entire life.

  “And see! Thomas has healed me.”

  “Not quite,” he cautioned. “I think you should take it easy for at least a day. I know Fred heals quickly, but I’ve never treated a non-hybrid before.”

  “Well, super,” Fred muttered.

  “I am grateful you were here,” Tennian said.

  “Oh, it was my pleasure. Really.”

  Fred watched the two of them stare into each other’s eyes.

  Dammit! That fucking Florence Nightingale syndrome! He’d fallen in love with Fred after patching her up, then left for a year. Now here he was, slobbering all over Tennian and making a damned fool of his damned self, dammit!

  Well, she didn’t care. She absolutely did not. In fact, it made things an awful lot easier. Yes, it did.

  She turned to Artur and abruptly said, “I’ve decided. I’ll come home with you. I might even marry you. But one thing at a time. First, a visit.”

  Artur yelped with delight and swept her up in a rib-cracking hug. “Oh, Rika! You have made me very, very happy. I have so many things to show you!”

  Fred submitted to the embrace, and couldn’t help but notice that Thomas didn’t look up. Not once.

  Oh, well.

  That was that, then.

  Dammit.

  Forty-eight

  “You guys, you guys!” Jonas was yowling and Fred, Artur, Thomas, and Tennian ran the last few steps to the bar.

  Dr. Barb darted out of the main lodge and frantically beckoned. “Hurry, Dr. Bimm! Prince Artur! You’re on again!”

  They had the television above the bar tuned to CNN, where the stream informed them of stock prices, and the talking head was saying, “—actual mermaids!”

  “Undersea Folk,” Tennian corrected.

  “You knew and you didn’t tell me,” Dr. Barb was saying reproachfully to Thomas. “I think as your supervisor I had a right to know.” She raised an eyebrow at Fred. “And as your supervisor I definitely had a right to know.”