World of Water Read Free Page B

the impossible...
    He glimpsed two shapes looming from the depths. He couldn’t be sure he had seen them at all, whirling helplessly as he was. Might have been some trick of the eye.
    No, they were there. Closer now.
    More of the creatures? Allies of this one? Family? Coming to see what the commotion was about?
    They would have no trouble snatching Dev off the creature’s tail. The only question was which of them would get there first and win the privilege of consuming him. Maybe they’d share him. Grab a leg each. Split him like a wishbone.
    Mission fucked before it had even started. Ten minutes from host form installation to termination. Must be some kind of ISS record.
    On the next pass, Dev got his first clear view of the new arrivals.
    They weren’t the same creatures after all. They were something else.
    Humanoid. Scaly. Finned.
    Tritonians.
    Both of them were carrying what looked like weapons.
    Both of them were zeroing in on Dev and the creature with grim, deadly intent.

 
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    O NE OF THE Tritonians seized Dev’s wrists and plucked his hands off the creature’s tail with almost indecent ease. Dev was swept away from the monster, which immediately lunged after him in a rapacious fury.
    The other Tritonian swam in above the creature, matching its course and speed. It raised a weapon – a kind of spear with a knobbly, striated texture, reminding Dev of a narwhal tusk.
    The spear slammed down, piercing the creature in the back of the neck, just behind the head. The blow was a perfectly judged, aimed at what must be a weak point, a chink in the armour.
    The creature spasmed, its legs splaying out in all directions and its maw going slack.
    The Tritonian withdrew the spear and shimmied out of range as the creature went into paroxysms. Death throes. It coiled and whipped, while blood billowed from the wound, enveloping it in a dark cloud.
    The Tritonian who had wrenched Dev free now let go of him. Dev paddled a couple of metres away, then turned to face his rescuer.
    The indigene was taller than him by a couple of handspans, and slender, with delicate, elongated proportions. There were no obvious sexual characteristics, but the narrow shoulders and pointed chin told him this was a female. Some instinct, a gut feeling from the Tritonian half of him.
    She wore a tunic like a one-piece swimsuit made from a sort of leathery hide stitched together with cord and held in place by shell clasps. The scales that covered her skin were small, fine and pale pink, with a silvery sheen. Thin, wafting fins of the same colour ran down from the nape of her neck to the top of her spine and along the backs of her limbs.
    At her breastbone was a raised design etched in her skin, a cutaway of a nautilus shell showing its logarithmic spiral and the chambers within. The keloid scarring was precise but pronounced. The detail of the design was exquisite. The pain it must have caused in the carving would have been exquisite too.
    The weapon she bore was not a spear like the other’s. It looked more sophisticated, like a cross between a lance and a rifle, manufactured from a blend of organic materials. Coral for the handle and firing mechanism, something rigid yet pulpy for the rest.
    She brandished it at Dev defensively, its tip level with his belly. Dev floated inert, wary, careful not to make any sudden movements. She seemed angry and he had no wish to antagonise her.
    The other Tritonian swam over to join her. He was clad similarly but broader-shouldered, thicker-jawed – male. Slung over his shoulder was a sack made from strands of some sort of seaweed, plaited into a web. It held several dead fish.
    Together, side by side, the pair of them surveyed Dev. Their eyes were round, black, lidless and inscrutable.
    Dev did his best to thank them for saving him from the creature. After his brush with death his thoughts were in turmoil, his heart racing, but he tuned in to the gratitude he was feeling beneath it all. The emotion was