The Book of Water Read online

  A dinosaur on the beach. Yeah, sure.

  He knows what’s going on. This is no poisoned-tomato vision, it’s a special effect, got to be.

  Of course the vid people won’t know they’ve stumbled on a veteran. Usually they want amateurs for these “true-life” guerrilla shoots, so N’Doch won’t tell them about playing background last year in War Zone. He’ll let them see him do his stuff first.

  Meanwhile, the special effect continues to stare at him like it wants something important. He’s impressed. It’s very realistic. Not your ordinary robot, then, but some new kind of cybercritter, maybe, or even . . . a cleverly engineered mutant! That means the vid company must have money, lots of it. N’Doch sees this might be his big break. If they’re rolling tape now and he plays his part well, they’ll keep it in and he could be famous. He’ll have to guess what he’s supposed to do. They never tell you in advance, or it wouldn’t be a “true-life” pic. And if he can figure out a way to work in a song, he’ll really have it made.

  He springs to his feet, but his legs are still shaky. They don’t really want to carry him the several steps it would take to come within arm’s length of the critter. It, no, she—somehow he knows this—shifts her feet restlessly but does not approach. N’Doch wonders idly, if she isn’t a robot, how the wranglers give the creature her cues.

  A deep wave recedes across a stretch of wet sand, revealing the critter’s long flat tail: a blade of muscular flesh, which she coils neatly around her webbed feet as she eases onto her haunches in front of him. N’Doch looks her over, calmer now that he’s settled on a logical explanation for her presence. His legs decided to hold him up, and once again, he is taken by the creature’s beauty.

  What seemed from a distance to be shiny fish scales is actually a fine silvery fur as silky as the richest velvet. N’Doch has never touched real velvet, but he’s seen it on TV. Immediately, he longs to touch it. What he covets most are its strange electric-blue highlights. He wonders if it grew this way, or if they’ve somehow wired her for it. And probably she’s bred small so they can fit her into the frame with human actors. Otherwise, they’d need a long shot to see all of her.

  Her head, which he’d taken for naked but for her large dark eyes and little seallike ears, is set with a ruff and crest of gauzy iridescent flesh. It lifts lightly as it dries in the sun, softening her sleek profile with curls and complications. The crest trails down her slim neck and along her spine. N’Doch thinks of the gossamer-finned carp he saw once in a rich woman’s backyard pool—the first (and last) time he’s ever been confronted with food just too beautiful to eat.

  He can’t settle on any one of the current vid series to connect with this particular situation. It’s been a few days since he’s caught up on his TV-watching. It could be a new story line in an old show, or a pilot for a whole new program. Maybe they don’t even know the story yet, and they’re waiting for it to develop naturally out of the Precipitating Event—how ’bout it?—a man meets a dinosaur on the beach. N’Doch wishes he’d been at that story conference. But this must be why the creature looks so impatient. She’s waiting for him to get on with the action.

  Since the ball’s apparently in his court, he tries imagining the song he’d write about such a meeting. He decides the first thing he should do is touch the creature. They’re sure to love that, him looking like he’s totally amazed and trying to prove what he’s seeing is real. No problem playing it, either, since it’s exactly where he’s at. But it’s a hard thing, he discovers, to make himself cross the narrow but infinite space of sand between him and the critter, and lay a palm to that blue-lit silver velvet.

  Still, his career’s at stake. He manages it. The first impossible step is all it takes to draw him swiftly the next three or four. He reaches out, trying not to look too tentative. The critter’s fur is the softest thing he has ever felt. As he smooths his hand from shoulder to ribcage, he feels a rush of heat and embarrassment because the touch is so oddly intimate. Bemused, N’Doch retreats a step. Again he hears coughing behind him, but now he cannot look away. The creature fixes him once more with her liquid gaze, then opens her wide mouth and sings to him.

  It is the music N’Doch has waited for all his life. He doesn’t realize he’s been waiting until he hears it, but there it is, and his first response is tragic: the only right music has already been written, and by someone else. His next is relief that it has no lyric. At least it has waited for him to put words to it. He begins to hum along. The melody comes into his head just as it is leaving her throat. He knows already the words he will write, words of awakening and discovery and of a great task to be accomplished, notions he’s never concerned himself with in his music so far, but N’Doch knows better than to argue with inspiration. He slips into harmony. They are a perfect duet. They build a crescendo together, append a short coda and finish on the same drawn-out high note. They stare at each other in silence. Even the surf has quieted to a rolling caress.

  N’Doch thinks: Wow. This is even better than sex.

  Then the creature lifts her gaze above his head and sings again. The bulged reply is so harsh and unmusical that N’Doch whips around, offended.

  What he sees first is a white girl standing beside a big rock. He’s perplexed by the white girl, who is very strangely dressed, but mostly by the rock, which is the size of a semi. He can’t remember a rock that big on this part of the beach and it’s not exactly the sort of thing you’d miss. Just as he’s deciding the white girl is part of the production crew and the rock is a piece of scenery, the rock moves. In that instant, it is no longer a rock, but a bronze-and-green beast, also the size of a semi, and looking even more like a dinosaur than the one that came out of the water. This one even has horns, and claws each the length of a scimitar.

  Two of them. Wow. N’Doch grins. Now he’s sure the producers have money. He smiles at the white girl, in case she’s one of them, even though she does seem kind of young. But he knows the media are run by young people. He’s been worried about being over the hill at twenty.

  When she doesn’t smile back, only stares at him wide-eyed, he sees she must be an actress—she’s thin enough, maybe a little too tall—and the director has told her to be afraid of him. N’Doch thinks she’s doing a pretty good job. He gives her a brief nod which he hopes looks professional. He’s a bit jealous that she seems to know the script and he doesn’t. Her costume is weird, like something out of a gladiator epic. Well, maybe not gladiators, but something with swords, from a much colder part of the world than this one. He tries to figure what country she’s meant to be from. No place is that cold anymore, except maybe Antarctica in the winter. The dumb girl’s wearing leather and long sleeves and heavy woven trouser-things and boots, more clothes on her back than N’Doch’s ever owned in his life, and she looks like she hasn’t washed in months. Plus, her hair’s all choppy. N’Doch admits he doesn’t know much about white girl’s hair but he does know a bad ’do when he sees one. He likes the neatly sheathed dagger at her belt, but can’t help thinking how she must be dying of the heat under all that stuff. Right now she’s not doing much but staring at him, but he can see she’s beginning to sweat.

  The two cybercritters are staring, too—at each other. N’Doch wonders if they’re supposed to fight. That would account for the strange tension he senses in the air between them. Some kind of communicating going on, he decides, so they must be machines, remote controlled by the technicians.

  The big brownish one rises from his couch. He takes a few big steps down the beach. The smaller silvery one goes to meet him. She’s quicker, more lithe. Her greater grace makes N’Doch feel proud, though he can’t imagine why, particularly since she moves right past him like she’s never seen him before in her life. And after all that music and touching. He stands aside, miffed. He’s really hoped this part would be more than a walk-on. Then he notices the white girl is sticking right by her beast as he moves. N’Doch thinks, Hey, you can just accept what you’re given or you
can try to make the most of it. He turns and follows the silver one up the beach.

  The two creatures meet halfway. N’Doch waits, or rather, hopes for sparks to fly. Instead, they halt a few paces apart and bend their long necks in simultaneous bows. The brown one towers over the silver one. His curving ivory horns pass like scythe blades to either side of her blunt, sleek head. The formality of it raises the hair on the back of N’Doch’s neck. It seems so proper somehow, so . . . ancient, even if it is all for the camera.

  The big brown one twists his golden gaze back at the white girl. She comes immediately to his side, her hand sliding familiarly up his rough cheek. She smiles shyly at the silver beast, then dips and rises in a gesture of greeting that looks awkward in leather and pants. N’Doch guesses it would look all right if she were wearing some kind of ball gown. He tries picturing her in fancy dress, lots of makeup and jewels, a little less hair or a whole lot more. The effect is not unpleasing. Maybe they’re planning something like that for the finale.

  But next, all three of them are staring in his direction. To N’Doch, it feels like an assault. He just knows someone is expecting something of him. At a loss, he spreads his arms and grins, and again his head is full of music, sounds he’s sure he’s been on the point of imagining. It crowds his thoughts, drowns all awareness, of the beach around him, of the thick heat and the subdued crashing of the surf, all this fades before a rush of tone and rhythm and harmony. N’Doch struggles to keep his cool. He’s had his moments of mad musical inspiration, but it’s never come to him like this, fully orchestrated, damping his other senses as it demands his immediate and total attention. His body is actually vibrating like a drumhead. He thinks maybe they’re beaming the sound track directly into his brain. Last he’d checked, this wasn’t possible, but there it is inside him, this sound, this music that’s like someone else’s voice singing in his head. He is helpless to do anything but surrender and listen to it.

  Then it becomes clear to him—he doesn’t know how—that the source of the music is the silver beast herself. It’s like the music she was singing aloud a moment ago, a further development of the same theme, only this time less of a declaration . . . more of a demand. N’Doch gazes at her in wonder.

  “How are you doing that?” He’s just gotta ask. She’s probably not programmed to answer questions, but if she can sing, maybe she can also speak. He does not ask, “What do you want with me?” That would be like asking, “Um, what’s the next line?” It sounds wimpy, and it’d spoil the take.

  So he moves in closer to join the group, trying to look like he knows what he’s doing. The girl retreats from him a bit, into the shadow of her beast like a child into its mother’s skirts. She’s definitely on the tall side, he sees now, and her eyes, studying him so carefully, are very dark for a white girl’s, almost black. Her skin is a fine pale olive roughened by sun or wind or maybe, though N’Doch cannot truly imagine it, by actual cold. And it looks real, now that he sees her close, like she’s not even wearing makeup. He guesses her to be about fourteen.

  The brown beast shrugs gently, a slow earthquake that jostles the girl sideways off her perch on his forearm. She regains her balance easily on the sand. N’Doch can see she’s no stranger to exercise. She tosses the beast what N’Doch reads as a dirty look, the first sign of spirit he’s seen in her. Then she squares her shoulders as if preparing for some onerous task, and turns to face him.

  “Mein Name ist Erde,” she announces. “Erde Katerina Meriah von Alte.”

  “Ummm,” says N’Doch. He recognizes the harsh gutturals of one of those white northern European languages, but does not understand a word. He can’t recall the last time he saw a vid in anything but French. Even the American ones are mostly dubbed. Are they trying to trip him up? Okay, it’s gonna be a scene about communication. He smiles. “Comment ça va?”

  Her dark eyes narrow. She doesn’t understand him either. N’Doch is surprised. Most Europeans speak French. Will the viewers buy that she can’t? Maybe she’s supposed to be from some boondock isolationist principality. He’s heard of such things. He’s sure now she won’t speak Wolof, so he switches to English, which he’s learned only from vids. “Hey there, how ya doin’, kid?”

  She still doesn’t get it. N’Doch gets ready to try sign language. So far, he doesn’t think much of this script. He thumps his bare chest, like some guy in a bad jungle movie. “N’Doch,” he says, “N’Doch.”

  The girl gives the big brown guy a quick sidelong glance, as if he’s said something she didn’t quite hear. But next she looks back at N’Doch with a gleam of understanding. She points at him and forms the sounds carefully.

  “En-doche.”

  He nods encouragingly. “N’Doch,” he repeats, correcting her pronunciation. He points back at her and cocks his head.

  She taps her own leather-clad chest. “Erde. Mien Name ist Erde.”

  N’Doch tries it out. “Airda?”

  “Erde.”

  “Right. Airda.” They both nod, but N’Doch is thinking, God, this is stupid. He’s never met anyone he didn’t share at least one language with before.

  Then he notices how the two beasts are regarding them with patient indulgence, like parents whose toddlers are meeting for the first time. He relaxes a little. Well then, he thinks, I guess it’s okay. Must be I’ve kept to the script so far.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In her eagerness to follow the dragon’s Quest, Erde had expected to travel a goodly distance, but she hadn’t counted on finding herself in a country that was so hot and where people didn’t speak German. Never mind that she’d only recently gotten her own voice back: Just what did you do if somebody couldn’t speak your language? But she was fairly sure language would be the least of her problems—the dragons would figure it out between them. Certainly the two of them were having no problem understanding one another. She felt Earth’s relief and excitement humming through his body like a murmur of gratitude. Not since he’d woken up in that deep cold cave above Tor Alte had he been able to communicate with another being so fast and so fully, too fast for Erde to keep up. But she had snagged one astonishing revelation as it flashed by her: This new dragon from the sea was apparently Earth’s relative. She’d actually heard him call her his sister.

  Erde recalled how she’d felt when Rose of Deep Moor had proved able to sense and decipher Earth’s image signals in her head. Not as clearly or as easily as Erde, certainly—the dragon had to be gentle with his sending to avoid burning Rose out. But she’d been the first since Erde and Earth had found each other and learned that they could speak in a way that did not (at first) include language. It helped that Rose was Sir Hal’s longtime beloved, and a truly remarkably power in her own right. But mostly, instead of feeling the expected jealousy, Erde was glad to have someone to share the burden of communicating with the dragon’s ferociously curious and demanding intellect.

  And, even better, another dragon to help answer Earth’s difficult questions. It wasn’t that Earth considered her ignorant or inadequate. His generous nature was not given to that sort of harsh judgment. She was still his boon companion, his Dragon Guide, and forever would be. But Erde sensed she had come to the end of her useful knowledge, at least as far as helping Earth discover the reasons for his recent reawakening. And just when she’d needed help, help had arrived. It occurred to Erde that she and the dragon had been lucky that way. Sir Hal, too, had appeared out of nowhere to aid their escape just as she was about to fall into the clutches of Fra Guill’s army of monks. It must mean that, like it or not, this hot, ugly, scary beach was exactly where they were meant to be to continue the dragon’s Quest.

  Which also meant that this dark young man—he seemed younger now than he had from a distance—this “Endoch” was meant to be also. If he was here with this sea dragon, he must be her dragon guide. But what Earth seemed to take for granted, Erde had a harder time accepting. He just didn’t look like a dragon guide, running abut half-naked and grinning, so full o
f himself, yet at the same time a bit too eager to please, as if there was something he thought she might give him if only he was charming enough.

  Well, thought Erde, I have nothing, and I wouldn’t give him anything even if I had. Besides, he must have done something wrong, to have people chasing him so furiously.

  At the back of her mind, she felt the pressure of the dragon’s censure. He was not too involved with his newfound relative to remind her that people had been chasing her very recently. And what, after all, does a dragon guide look like? The image he showed her was like a mirror held up in her mind. Did a scrawny, wide-eyed, wind-roughened fourteen-year-old girl inspire any greater confidence?

  Chastened, Erde reconsidered her inner tirade. The dragon was right. It wasn’t proper to take on so against an innocent stranger. It was just that, well, he was so strange. But judging from the men who’d been pursuing him, dark skin and no clothing was the way things went in this smelly, steamy country. Erde had a sudden sense of reversal, like being tossed head over heels in a torrent. The sense of it was so physical, she grabbed Earth’s neck crest for support. In this place, it could be her own pale skin and heavy clothing that seemed unnatural. As the thick heat wore on her, she was already prepared to shed a few inappropriate layers.

  So she’d better give this young man a second chance. If the sea dragon was Earth’s sister, it then followed that this Endoch should be, in a way, her brother. Erde found she could warm to that idea. She’d always wanted a brother or a sister. Someone nearer her own age to talk to. Her life in her father’s castle had been filled with adults twice her age or older. Except for Rainer. Well, Rainer had been sort of her brother, until he grew up so tall and handsome and she was dumb enough to fall in love with him. She wasn’t going to do that again. Tentatively, she smiled at Endoch and he grinned back, revealing the whitest, evenest teeth she’d ever seen, set in a round mobile face as smooth and fine as polished walnut. His grin asked, Well, what’s next? Erde hoped Earth would have an answer.