Chapter Twelve #2
fishing boat got into trouble off Hunros Bay, and this guy just...
ran to the end of the jetty and dived in. He vanished into the
waves, and Geoff thought he must have drowned too, but two days
later the crew of the boat turned up, just like the Hendersons.
With a similar story, only they were talking openly about being
rescued by people with fishtails. Mermaids.”
“Mermaids,” Priddy echoed. The rock and yaw of the boat was
making his guts roil, and he couldn’t think of anything intelligent
to say. “You’re right. That does sound nuts.”
“Seriously, after all those stories you told me? I mean,
I struggled to take it
in, and if it hadn’t been coming from a head of department at
Northeast Atlantic... I’d have thought you’d have lapped it
up.”
“Stories are one thing, Kit.”
“I know, and if I hadn’t heard Michael Henderson today, telling
the exact same tale about being rescued, and wrapped up in these...
membranes or whatever... But there’s more, and you do need to know,
because I want your help with this too.”
“With what, for God’s sake? Why are you two so desperate to get
out there today?”
“Because Geoff’s been chasing this for twenty years now. One of
the Bryher fishermen could describe exactly where he’d been kept,
and Geoff and his team got the research boat to the site in time
to find some of
this stuff. Priddy, are you listening?”
He was
trying. His ears kept popping, though, and he must have done some
damage to himself after all with his leap off the cliff. His legs
were hurting abysmally. “I’m listening. He got some of the
membrane?”
“Yes. It didn’t last long out of the water, but his team had
time to do some basic tests, and it had the most amazing
properties. Like stem cells, only better.” Suddenly Kit beamed, and
looked like the friend Priddy remembered, worry burning off in
enthusiasm for the project in hand. “They brought a fish in with it
by accident, and this damn stuff was wrapping it up to fix its
injuries at one end, and doing God knows what to its gills at the
other so it could—get this, Prid—so it could
air-breathe.”
“Mate, could you please stop talking about gills?”
“What? Anyway, all Geoff and his team wanted was to find some
more, because you’ve got to imagine the potential of this stuff,
the importance. It could revolutionise treatment for people with
degenerative illnesses like motor neurone and
Parkinson’s.”
Priddy
was fairly certain he was about to throw up, and Geoff wouldn’t
care for that, not in the beautifully upholstered cabin. Probably
he’d never get his security deposit back then. But the prospect of
getting up and making his way to the side was more sickening than
the heave of the deck. “All right. Did he find more?”
“That’s just it. No, never. This guy on Bryher—his boyfriend
disappeared around that time, and Geoff thinks he somehow blamed
the research team. Their boat was scuppered overnight in the
harbour—torn apart, really. And ever since then, whenever Geoff’s
followed a trail of legends and sightings and got close, someone or
something always comes along and intervenes. There’ll be a sudden
sand-slide across a perfectly stable section of ocean floor, or an
underwater probe will vanish. That’s why we have to head for the
coordinates where the Lovely Rose
crew were being held, because...” He trailed off.
Geoff Blades’ shadow had sliced the thin, coppery light coming in
through the cabin’s for’ard window. “Shit, Geoff. I know the
autopilot’s on, but she won’t make it through the shoreline channel
on her own.”
“We’re not in the channel anymore.”
Priddy
knew that. For the last thirty seconds, he’d been feeling the vibe
through his bones of increasing engine power. He’d felt the chaotic
tilt of the cliff-base waters smooth out into the regular
pitch-and-drop of a big Atlantic swell. He stared up at Geoff, who
was watching him avidly, just as he’d watched Michael Henderson.
The time for respect was over. “What the fuck are you up to,
Blades?”
“You don’t look well, Priddy. Not well at all. There’s
something on the side of your neck, you know—let’s put your lovely
hair back and take a look.”
Priddy recoiled. There was no need—Kit had knocked aside
Geoff’s reaching hand, jolted upright to block him—but the reflex
still fired, and it ended Priddy’s world. A pain like nothing he’d
even dreamt of before leapt out of the cabin walls and up from the
floor to consume him. He crashed back onto the bench seat, back
arching, fists closing into white-knuckled knots. A white heat
ripped from the soles of his feet to his groin. Through crimson
veils he saw Geoff Blades shoving Kit aside. A big hand caught his
jaw, wrenching his face around into the light. “I should’ve bloody
known. My God, I thought you were just a hysterical little fake,
but you weren’t bloody breathing when we found you on that beach, were
you?”
“What the hell are you doing?” Kit demanded. “We’ve got to turn
the boat around. Something’s the matter with him.”
“Oh, yes. Something really is.” Geoff flung an arm out to block
Kit from getting closer. “Kit, you make your mind up right now
whether all that nonsense you gave me about being in love for the
first time in your life is true or not. I don’t need a bucketful of
goop from the bottom of the sea to prove everything I’ve worked for
all this time. I just need another mermaid.”
Kit made a sound between a sob and yell of rage. “What the
fuck are you... I do love you, you bastard. But let him alone!”
“I can’t. The camera’s there—start filming. This is your career
and mine, right here, to win or lose. Note the operculum behind the
left carotid, opening now under stress to reveal the branchial
chamber. Note the extrusion of gelatinous fluid from the knee and
ankle 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—probably
fatal—if he has to do this through his clothes.”
“Oh, man. One of us is tripping, and I really wish it was
me.”
“Help me, or sit back and listen to him scream.”
Priddy clamped his mouth shut. But that part had started, and
the hot pain tore his throat open, ripped his lips apart and loosed
itself wildly into the cabin, sounds he knew he couldn’t make
because his lungs and larynx weren’t designed for them. Between
them Kit and Geoff yanked his jeans down his thighs then off over
his feet, the disappearance of the tough fabric bringing a tiny
diminution of the pain. His boxers had gone with his jeans, but he
was past humiliation. The next wave hit. He grabbed for the back of
the seat and his webbed, clawed hand carved a chunk from the
leather and the foam padding inside. His burning throat would only
shape one name. He called it once, and Geoff and Kit fell back.
Again, and the nearest porthole window cracked, reinforced
triple-glaze and all. Merou!
Merou—a call that began in the cortex of
his brain and panned out like a radar sweep or the pulse from a
nuclear bomb... The third time would rip the boat and everything in
it apart, but Geoff grabbed a rug from the cot bed behind him: put
one knee on the bench beside Priddy and planted the other on his
chest. “Merou?” he snarled, clamping the blanket over Priddy’s
mouth. “Merouac?”
He
didn’t seem to mind that his nose was bleeding. Priddy stared
mutely up at him, tears forming in the corners of his eyes. His
vision filmed and cleared: filmed and cleared again, like the
snapping of a camera lens. “Nictitating membrane,” Geoff breathed.
“Merouac, is it? And I bet he hasn’t aged a day. Kit, think about
it. They can transform body parts on a cellular level and change
back. They can heal and regrow human organs. They seem to be bloody
immortal. Think what it would mean to us. We’d cure every
degenerative illness there is. We’d...”
“We’d hunt them to extinction,” Kit rasped out. He too was
bleeding hard, dripping onto his oilskin jacket, scarlet streaks
rolling down. He put a sturdy arm round Geoff’s neck and jerked
back. “Take that fucking blanket off his face.”
Geoff
choked. “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 he
needs, 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—if
he had toes, or
feet, or ankles, or anything at all beneath the pulsating,
gold-shot sheet that had extruded from his marrow and out through
his joints to wrap him round—he was forged into one piece. This
would be the last time he could speak sanely. “Take me to the
water,” he said, holding out a shaking hand to Kit. “I want Merou.
Take me to the water.”
Geoff
twisted round. He dodged out from under Kit’s arm, and Kit, who was
tough 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 and
stars and endless rushing space, wondered how often he’d been
called darling by
his lover. If this was the very first time. Spellbinding, if so.
Kit would be spellbound. Nothing could compete with that. Priddy
imagined how it would be if Merou was here with him, holding him
tight as he’d held him in their bunk in the lighthouse. If Merou
had said it to him. Priddy, darling,
listen...
He would
have obeyed. Kit was obeying, of course. Priddy watched them
through the film which had covered his vision again and which would
not, he knew, with the strange, bone-deep certainty of his new
shape, retreat again from his eyes until he’d finished his
transformation or died. Geoff was stroking Kit’s face. “I’m sorry,”
he said again, and the apology was probably rarer than the
endearment. “I was just so excited. You have to understand
why.”
“I do.” Another desolate sob. “But we’ve got to help
Priddy.”
“Yes, right away. Come on deck with me now and we’ll rig
something up to lower him into the water. Well, I’m not just going
to toss him overboard, am I? We’ll use the lifeboat hoist. Come on
and help me fix it.”
They were gone. Priddy was alone in the storm. The screaming
part was finished now, the one chance he’d had to summon help from
his own kind. He remembered how Merou had called to him in the
first spasms of his change, 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 our
bodies. Wind-driven breakers hit the
Mirage, rolling her past
her centre of gravity: she had to be taking on water by now. If Kit
didn’t get her moving soon, she’d start to wallow. If the cabin
flooded, would Priddy be saved?
No. It
wouldn’t matter. He needed something more than the sea. He
struggled up onto one elbow, meaning to call out to Kit and tell
him to forget it, not to risk himself, to turn back for land while
he still could. Priddy needed Merou—his touch, his smile, his
voice. All he had was the shriek of the gale through the broken
window, and the fractured scraps of Kit and Geoff’s voices, rising
then dropping to a shocked, dead hush.
Priddy seized the edge of the empty porthole, not minding when
a shard of glass drove through his hand. He could see the whole of
the Mirage’s
starboard from here, most of her port through the windows on the
other side. Geoff was standing near the prow, clutching the rail,
and he was alone.