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His superb underwater vision followed the leak of bubbles upward, tracing them
toward the distant surface, which was no longer a visible plane but only a
hopeless memory.
In that instant, when he knew all hope was gone, a corner of his vision caught
a dark flash, a flicker of shadow against shadow. He turned his head toward
it and saw a woman swimming below him, her dive-suited flesh looking
unclothed.
She turned, something in her hand. Abruptly, the line of his ankle jerked
once, then released.
Merman!
She rolled beneath him and he saw her eyes, open and white against a dark
face.
She slipped a knife into her leg sheath while she moved upward toward him.
The trickle of bubbles from his mouth became a stream, driving out of his
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mouth in a hot release. The woman grabbed him under an armpit and he saw
clearly that she was young and supple, superbly muscled for swimming. She
rolled over him.
A white flash of oxygen despair began at the back of his head. Then she
slammed her mouth against his and blew the sweet breath of life down his
throat.
He savored it, exhaled, and again she blew a breath into him. He saw the
airfish against her neck and knew she was giving him the half-used excess that
her blood exuded into her lungs. It was a thing Islanders heard about, a
Merman thing that he'd never expected to experience.
She backed off, dragging him by one arm. He exhaled slowly, and again she fed
him air.
A Merman team had been working an undersea ridge, he saw, with kelp waving
high beside it and lights glowing at the rocky top -- small guide markers.
As panic receded, he saw that his rescuer wore a braided line around her waist
with weights attached to it. The airfish trailing backward from her neck was
pale and darkly veined, deep ridges along its length for the external gills.
It was an ugly contrast to the young woman's smooth dark skin.
His lungs ceased aching, but his ears hurt. He shook his head, pulling at an
ear with his free hand. She saw the movement and squeezed his arm hard to get
his attention. She plugged her nose with her fingers and mimicked blowing
hard.
She pointed at his nose and nodded. He copied her and his right ear popped
with a snap. An unpleasant fullness replaced the pain. He did it again and
the left ear went.
When she gave him his next breath, she clung to him a bit longer, then smiled
broadly when she broke away. A flooding sensation of happiness washed through
Brett.
I'm alive! I'm alive!
He glanced past the airfish at the way her feet kicked so steadily, the strong
flow of her muscles under the skin-tight suit. The light markers on the rocky
ridge swept past.
Abruptly, she pulled back on his arm and stopped him beside a shiny metal tube
about three meters long. He saw handgrips on it, a small steering rudder and
jets. He recognized it from holos -- a Merman horse. She guided his hand to
one of the rear grips and gave him another breath. He saw her release a line
at the nose of the device, then swing astraddle of it. She glanced backward
and waved for him to do the same. He did so, locking his legs around the cold
metal, both hands on the grips. She nodded and did something at the nose.
Brett became conscious of a faint hum against his legs. A light glowed ahead
of the woman and something snaky extruded from the horse. She turned and
brought a breather mouthpiece against his lips. He saw that she also was
wearing one and realized she was easing the double load the airfish had been
forced to carry.
The fish trailing from her neck and over his own shoulder appeared smaller,
the gill ridges deeper and not as fat.
Brett gripped the mouthpiece in his teeth and pushed the lip cover hard
against the flesh.
In by the mouth, out by the nose.
Every Islander had some sub schooling and parallel training with Merman rescue
equipment.
Blow, inhale.
His lungs filled with rich, cool air.
He felt a lurch then and something bumped his left ankle. She rapped his knee
and pulled him closer to her back, lifting his handgrips until they formed a
brace against her buttocks. He had never seen a naked woman before and her
dive suit left nothing for him to imagine. Unromantic as the situation was,
he liked her body very much.
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The horse surged upward, then dived, and her hair streamed backward, covering
the head of the airfish and flickering against his cheeks.
He stared through a haze of her hair and over her right shoulder, feeling the
water tumble around them. Far down the tunneling shadows of the sea past the
smooth shoulder he saw a dazzling play of lights -- uncounted lights -- big
ones, small ones, wide ones. Shapes began to grow visible: walls and towers,
fine planes of platforms, dark passages and caves. The lights became plaz
windows and he realized he was descending onto a Merman metropolis, one of the
major centers. It had to be, with that much sprawl and that much light. The
dance of illumination enthralled him, feeding through his mutated vision a
rapture he had not known himself capable of feeling. A part of his awareness
said this came from knowing he had survived overwhelming odds, but another
part of him gloried in the new things his peculiar eyes could see.
Cross-currents began to turn and twist the horse. Brett had trouble holding
his position; once he lost his leg grip. His rescuer felt this and reached
back to guide one of his hands around her waist. Her feet came back and
locked onto his. She crouched over her controls, guiding them toward a
sprawling assemblage of blocks and domes.
His hands against her abdomen felt the smooth warmth there. His own clothing
seemed suddenly ridiculous and he understood the Merman preference for dive
suits and undersea nudity for the first time. They wore Islander-made dive
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