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Page 25.
Chapter 8. Amela and Vikri to the Ocean
 There was no pursuit, merk or otherwise.
Amela and Vikri—and the doomed automaton that had been their pilot—streaked south toward the equator.
Below, broad expanses of dark blue represented the main ocean of Manaul 5. Long, looping coastlines bordered the sea, with stretches of desert, white marshes, and craggy mountains inland.
"No more arctic snow," Vigri said happily. "I can almost feel my bones warming up."
Amela found a dented, scratched klima control. She pushed the slider from Neutral to Colder. The blower stopped pulling in outside air, which had turned from chilly to warm. They'd had it on Heater when Denla was still handling the detail panels. Now it was time to crank up the dehumidifier.
Amela said: "I was only there about two years, but this seems wonderful."
The pilot's ghost silently flew them on.
"Oh yes," Vigri said. "I have been dreaming about this." She used a wet rag to wipe gore and foam from the pilot's ears and nose. Then she returned to the little galley, rinsed her rag, and returned to clean the pilot's mouth.
As time wore on, the pilot's wide-open eyes remained fixed on the horizon. Its mouth still hung faintly open, and kept filling with ooze, but its face was a shadowy, freckled ghost of its former lovely self. Eyes glazed and barely blinking, it drove the skimmer straight ahead on autoserv assist.
"Ten minutes," Vigri said as she read an overhead display.
"Ten minutes what?" With her arms crossed, Amela stood behind the flight deck, unwilling to sit or be near the pilot's remains.
Vigri fairly floated about, so elated did she seem. Her smile seemed transfixed by the brilliant desert and ocean sun that penetrated the skimmer's dim interior in fleeting slats and strips.
"I will be leaving you."
"Why?" Amela felt a flash of betrayal.
"My time has come, dear. Just as poor Denla's time came and went."
Amela kept her arms crossed. "Maybe it's my time as well. All this, just to be skewered by some stupid merk harpoon or something."
"No, no, don’t think that way," Vigri said soothingly. She hugged a defensive Amela. "I sense that you have long life ahead, if you use your wits and avoid obvious traps. Everything will be clear in a short while. Just remember—Denla is programmed to take you to the Pitz Boat. You press the green button and run. She will take care of herself. Say a prayer for me and for Denla."
"I will," Amela said, choking with emotion. She felt like bawling out loud, holding her hands to her eyes, sinking to the floor in tears. But she kept a firm if rubbery face, dabbing just a tear or two, and tried to put on her best, cheery look.
The skimmer set down in a long, fast slope, descending on a beach.
Under intense noon sunlight, white water curled into high walls a quarter klik out, and lacy foam sprawled in luxurious nets onto the soaked sand. Further up, the sand was dry like tan sugar.
Amela and Vigri emerged from the skimmer's dropped gangway.
"Oh gods, this is gorgeous," said Amela.
"It is divine," Vigri said, taking a delighted breath and hugging herself. With her pale, pasty skin and rail-thin frame, she almost looked girlish. Her cheeks flushed, and her eyes sparkled. Her lips reddened in a rose-like smile. "This is the place."
The sea thundered to Amela's left. Amela too felt a sense of joy as the hot sun beat down, driving out arctic stiffness and bone-chilling cold. Her eyes had been accustomed to twilight for too long. She blinked a lot, and peered through teary slits. She kept one hand or the other hovering over her eyebrows.
"It's been ages," Amela said. "We have oceans on Belair, not as dramatic as this. Look, there are seashells."
"Yes, if we were little girls, we would gather seashells," Vigri said.
Everywhere, the sand was filled with alkaline-white spirals, cones, conches, stars, and other bleached remains of long-ago sea life.
"They were all swept up here to die," Vigri said. "Wish me well on my journey."
Remembering that Vigri was terminally ill, and had lost everything, Amela said: "May you find peace."
"Say the holy anima for me. Help me across the river to those who love me."
"I will. I promise."
"Thank you. I hope you find your loves for whom you long so."
Yes, Amela thought, her mind racing thousands of lightyears away. Solan and Nally…man and boy…husband and son…love and love…the living, not the dead…she was the missing star in the trilogy, the mother and wife that they missed terribly…
"You'd better hurry," Vigri said. "Stay off this beach. It's not safe for you."
"Take care." Amela reached out.
Vigri brushed her away. "Get back into the skimmer and take off." She pointed to the wall-high breakers thundering up and falling in a crash of groaning sand and kelp a few hundred heads out over the lacy nets.
Amela prayed: …Go to the house of your mother and father, and their parents, and all who are your genesame. Your parents embrace you with love, as they did when you were a child. Helah! A bright new star shines in the western sky.
Vigri turned and started walking away along the beach. She kept the blinding sun ahead of her, and the thundering breakers to her left.
Rejoice in the garden of flowers and birds, at the table where this night you are a shining moon.
Amela walked back up the ramp. As the door closed, she was enveloped by familiar gloom. Her eyes stopped hurting. The atmosphere smelled of cafir, of oily hemp, of paint, of straw, of machine parts and grain sacks, mostly cargo delivered from the near-empty cargo spaces.
Without expression, Denla-gone worked its controls. The skimmer stirred, enveloped in a circle of high sound and dense dust. As the skimmer rose, slowly, the dust cleared.
Amela sat on the galley set where she and Vigri had shared cafir. Amela pressed both palms to the glastic port, and stared outside.
They have prepared a feast with wine, and khytaras, and chanting children in garlands, to send away your sorrows...
Vigri was a dwindling figure. Her jump suit flapped in a shore breeze. Sunlight flooded the air. The sand shimmered, with its billions if not trillions of beached shells and mussels and starfish, all fossils now, white as sugar. On Vigri's left, the surf rose and fell. Nets of lacy foam twirled slowly across acres of shallow green sea water.Vigri walked into the blinding sun. No doubt she heard loving voices, and peered blindly through the portal of her ancestors. She purposely headed toward the blinding sun.
Amela's skimmer rose for its final hop to another shore. But before Amela lost sight of Vigri, Amela saw one last thing. She continued silently reciting the sacred anima to its melancholy end.
From the sea, through the wall of breakers, three or four hundred-head long crocodile shapes ran out on car-sized paws. The crocosaurians had long, tapering bodies covered in rock-hard horn the color of sea mud. Their backs dripped with lace like submarines emerging from the deep. Foam dripped over sides. Their backs glistened as they raced to shore. Their twenty-head-long skulls, open with driveways of fire-ax teeth, yellow and pouring from bottom grazing, converged on the spot where Vigri obliviously and happily walked, like a woman freed at last and young again in her joy.
Homen.
Vigri was gone. The shapes vanished back into the sea. Sun and wind played on the empty beach. She had gone to the house of her ancestors, where she now found eternal peace beyond understanding.
The surf's thunder receded as Amela in her skimmer rose into the sky and headed east along the shore.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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