“Oh, yes.Something really is.”Geoff flung an arm out to blockKit from getting closer.“Kit, you make your mind up right nowwhether all that nonsense you gave me about being in love for thefirst time in your life is true or not.I don’t need a bucketful ofgoop from the bottom of the sea to prove everything I’ve worked forall this time.I just need another mermaid.”
Kit made a sound between a sob and yell of rage.“What thefuck are you...Idolove you, you bastard.But let him alone!”
“I can’t.The camera’s there—start filming.This is your careerand mine, right here, to win or lose.Note the operculum behind theleft carotid, opening now under stress to reveal the branchialchamber.Note the extrusion of gelatinous fluid from the knee andankle joints.And help me get his jeans off, now.”
“Geoff, for God’s sake...”
“Do it.He’s in agony now, but it’ll be hell for him—probablyfatal—if he has to do this through his clothes.”
“Oh, man.One of us is tripping, and I really wish it wasme.”
“Help me, or sit back and listen to him scream.”
Priddy clamped his mouth shut.But that part had started, andthe hot pain tore his throat open, ripped his lips apart and looseditself wildly into the cabin, sounds he knew he couldn’t makebecause his lungs and larynx weren’t designed for them.Betweenthem Kit and Geoff yanked his jeans down his thighs then off overhis feet, the disappearance of the tough fabric bringing a tinydiminution of the pain.His boxers had gone with his jeans, but hewas past humiliation.The next wave hit.He grabbed for the back ofthe seat and his webbed, clawed hand carved a chunk from theleather and the foam padding inside.His burning throat would onlyshape one name.He called it once, and Geoff and Kit fell back.Again, and the nearest porthole window cracked, reinforcedtriple-glaze and all.Merou!Merou—a call that began in the cortex ofhis brain and panned out like a radar sweep or the pulse from anuclear bomb...The third time would rip the boat and everything init apart, but Geoff grabbed a rug from the cot bed behind him: putone knee on the bench beside Priddy and planted the other on hischest.“Merou?”he snarled, clamping the blanket over Priddy’smouth.“Merouac?”
Hedidn’t seem to mind that his nose was bleeding.Priddy staredmutely up at him, tears forming in the corners of his eyes.Hisvision filmed and cleared: filmed and cleared again, like thesnapping of a camera lens.“Nictitating membrane,” Geoff breathed.“Merouac, is it?And I bet he hasn’t aged a day.Kit, think aboutit.They can transform body parts on a cellular level and changeback.They can heal and regrow human organs.They seem to be bloodyimmortal.Think what it would mean to us.We’d cure everydegenerative illness there is.We’d...”
“We’d hunt them to extinction,” Kit rasped out.He too wasbleeding hard, dripping onto his oilskin jacket, scarlet streaksrolling down.He put a sturdy arm round Geoff’s neck and jerkedback.“Take that fucking blanket off his face.”
Geoffchoked.“Don’t be so stupid.They can scream the place down.Literally.”
“He won’t.”Kit tightened his hold.“He’s gonna tell me what heneeds, and I’m going to make sure he gets it.Whatever you need,all right, Priddy-boy?”His voice broke.“Jesus, what’s happening?What can I do?”
Geoff pulled the blanket away.Priddy lurched up on the bench.His lower body wasn’t forked anymore.From pelvis to toes—ifhehadtoes, orfeet, or ankles, or anything at all beneath the pulsating,gold-shot sheet that had extruded from his marrow and out throughhis joints to wrap him round—he was forged into one piece.Thiswould be the last time he could speak sanely.“Take me to thewater,” he said, holding out a shaking hand to Kit.“I want Merou.Take me to the water.”
Geofftwisted round.He dodged out from under Kit’s arm, and Kit, who wastough but had never been ruthless, let go.“All right,” Geoff said,seizing him by the shoulders.“I’m sorry, all right?Kit, darling,listen.”
Kit gave a strangled sob.Priddy, falling back through fog andstars and endless rushing space, wondered how often he’d beencalleddarlingbyhis lover.If this was the very first time.Spellbinding, if so.Kit would be spellbound.Nothing could compete with that.Priddyimagined how it would be if Merou was here with him, holding himtight as he’d held him in their bunk in the lighthouse.If Merouhad said it to him.Priddy, darling,listen...
He wouldhave obeyed.Kit was obeying, of course.Priddy watched themthrough the film which had covered his vision again and which wouldnot, he knew, with the strange, bone-deep certainty of his newshape, retreat again from his eyes until he’d finished histransformation or died.Geoff was stroking Kit’s face.“I’m sorry,”he said again, and the apology was probably rarer than theendearment.“I was just so excited.You have to understandwhy.”
“I do.”Another desolate sob.“But we’ve got to helpPriddy.”
“Yes, right away.Come on deck with me now and we’ll rigsomething up to lower him into the water.Well, I’m not just goingto toss him overboard, am I?We’ll use the lifeboat hoist.Come onand help me fix it.”
They were gone.Priddy was alone in the storm.The screamingpart was finished now, the one chance he’d had to summon help fromhis own kind.He remembered how Merou had called to him in thefirst spasms ofhischange, how he’d gone running up the staircase to find him.How heavy Merou had been in his arms, and then how light.We’re different when we’re leaving ourbodies.Wind-driven breakers hit theMirage, rolling her pasther centre of gravity: she had to be taking on water by now.If Kitdidn’t get her moving soon, she’d start to wallow.If the cabinflooded, would Priddy be saved?
No.Itwouldn’t matter.He needed something more than the sea.Hestruggled up onto one elbow, meaning to call out to Kit and tellhim to forget it, not to risk himself, to turn back for land whilehe still could.Priddy needed Merou—his touch, his smile, hisvoice.All he had was the shriek of the gale through the brokenwindow, and the fractured scraps of Kit and Geoff’s voices, risingthen dropping to a shocked, dead hush.
Priddy seized the edge of the empty porthole, not minding whena shard of glass drove through his hand.He could see the whole oftheMirage’sstarboard from here, most of her port through the windows on theother side.Geoff was standing near the prow, clutching the rail,and he was alone.
Chapter Thirteen
The deckwas cold.Priddy could still feel that, though other perceptionshad shut down to whispers and shadow.Cold planks under his stomachand chest, and a piercing, whelming loneliness he would take withhim when he left his body, which would be soon.His vision had shutdown to blocks of dark and light.It didn’t really matter.He’ddragged himself far enough.Geoff Blades was one dark block on anotherwise empty deck.His ankle was within Priddy’sreach.
Heshouted in terror when Priddy made his grab.Priddy wonderedvaguely what Geoff what seeing, how he looked at this stage of anunfinished transformation.Bedraggled, gelatinous monster, eyesblanked by third eyelid, leg-bones melting to soup in the membranesac...“Kit,” Priddy said, closing his grip.“Kit.”
“I couldn’t let him see!”Geoff kicked out, but the webbingbetween Priddy’s fingers was strong as drying leather pulling taut.“Don’t you understand?Nobody can see this except me.Mermaidsexist.You’rereal.”
“Kit.Get him back.”
“I can’t.He doesn’t matter anymore.”Geoff half-fell onto thedeck.“Only you matter.Listen, Priddy.I know what to do, allright?I caught a merman once before, twenty years ago, one ofMerouac’s changelings, a boy called Francis.He was like you¬—ahuman trying to change, although Merouac never knew.All he knewwas that the boy had vanished, and he tore our boat apart trying tofind him.And I’m sorry that I let Francis die, but I learned fromhim, okay?Let me go, and I’ll put you into the water, Iswear.”
Into the water.The words fell likesunshine and music into Priddy’s mind.Everything was too late forhim now, but this grinding death would come easier—would be adissolution, a homecoming—in the embrace of the waves.And maybethere would be enough of him left to find Kit before the seaconsumed them both.With an effort he detached his hold.“Thewater.”
“That’s it.I can’t release you, but I promise there’ll be nomore pain.”
Retreating footsteps on the deck.Priddy’s world became asphere of sound, with his own fading self at the core.Somewherefar above, the wind and the clouds were being chopped up into arapid-fire beat, a thudding roar, a song from his childhood thathad used to fill him with admiration and yearning.He and Kit wouldrush to the window to see if they could spot the grey-and-redskywhales heading out.
