Mermaids and mermen are to me what I suspect horses were to a lot of my friends growing up.
It's hard to tell because even as a kid, I was unlikely to collect mermaid dolls and posters and similarly-themed dish towels. These days, I have a lot of cat stuff, mostly because I decided not to fight people's tendency to give me cat stuff. I suspect I'm simply not a collector-type of person--of anything, that is, except books.
Still, sea people are enchanting. There's E. Nesbit's Wet Magic as well as Stargate: Atlantis. (I always wanted the city to remain below water.) And there's a lovely moment in Voyage of the Dawn Treader where Lucy, leaning over the side of the ship, sees a sea maiden and makes an instant connection. C.S. Lewis never tackles sea people directly but they haunt the Narnia books. They attend the coronation of the Pevensie children but are absent or only referenced in other books.
In other words, C.S. Lewis gives them the qualities that attend them in folklore: mysterious, unmanageable with an edge of ruthlessness.
My sea people are more cool-headed Fortune 500 CEOs. But the wonder of the sea--which I live near and can't imagine ever leaving--attends their rituals and customs and, naturally, their ability to produce tails.
Nerites Amid the Stars is now available on Amazon.
Below is Chapter 1.
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| Meke |
* * *
Meke took a swim as soon as he departed the ship.
The pools in ship quarters were adequate. Of course, travelers to Mars didn’t have much choice. But nine months of shallow water wore on Meke in a way he hadn’t felt since the aftermath of his initiation ceremony.
He had quarters on the Mars Space Station. They were reserved over a year earlier when the Mars Council accepted for review the proposal that Siphonophes be allowed residency on Mars. The station already had quarters for Siphons. In the last year, those quarters were expanded, the pools enhanced.
He followed the goodwill greeter, Phyl, to the station’s second level or tier and down a broad, shiny promenade. His quarters were in a separate sphere from the main tier or concourse, which included embarkation, conference rooms, offices, and the food court. Each sphere had its own artificial gravity. From the outside, the station was a stack of squashed bubble-like modules. From the inside, the station appeared one structure, its “floors” separated by translucent metal barriers and elevators.
Phyl stopped outside a metal door engraved with a faintly elegant pattern reminiscent of waves or kelp. He inserted a card into a slot and waved Meke in first.
Meke entered a long room on the outside of the tier, so it showcased a curved translucent wall with a view of dark expanse. Meke kept his eyes on Phyl. Space disconcerted him. On the ship, he kept the window to his cabin shuttered.
Phyl held out the card and said, “The entry card can be programmed with your own pin—old technology but still effective.”
“Thank you.”
“Welcome to Mars Space Station.”
Alone, Meke stripped and lowered himself into the pool against the inner wall. Unlike the pool on the ship, it was deep, and Meke let himself sink without pause, his legs merging and wrapping into a glittering stem. Some mermen on Earth had fins but most, like Meke, had nectophores. Meke’s shone bioluminiscent blue.
He descended as the skin along his torso thinned to handle respiration without burdening his air-breathing lungs. The pool curved to meet the outside translucent wall. Right now, he could see Mars.
He paused, his
tail (in the vernacular) lashing slowly. He made himself look out, ignoring the vast darkness around Mars with its faint stars. The view was easier to take while he was in water, so long as he didn’t remind himself that the water and the pool were entirely manufactured. Not natural. Man-made objects suspended in space.
But Mars, after all, was why he there.
Mars and retribution.
Mars came first. After an hour, he reluctantly pulled himself out of the pool and dried only his hair (Siphons never minded a little damp) as his legs reshaped. He should have unpacked before he went into the water—the clothes in his trunk were wrinkled and stale-smelling—but the quarters had decent facilities as well as an above-water bed. He sent pants and a high-collared shirt on hangers through the quarters’ standing wash-and-dry cleaner. He dressed. He collected all his electronics. He propped open the door to the promenade and programmed his card with a new pin.
The card also contained destination indicators. Meke pressed the top and the card softly chirped when he waved it to the left. He returned to the glass-fronted elevator that took him to the main concourse. From there, he followed the clicks to the conference room.
He’d arranged from the ship to meet with station, Mars, and Siphon representatives tomorrow, 11:00 Sol time since the station kept on the Mars clock.
He didn’t expect to see Rill—Rill worked in the bureaucratic offices that stretched behind the conference room and circled a third of the station. The offices broke at Embarkation with its multiple checkpoints. They picked up again in the section devoted to Mars Trade. Meke had studied station plans as soon as he landed the assignment.
Rill worked for Demographics, collecting and collating population data from Mars’ early years. Enumerator was his official title in the lists that came from the station. Rill, Enumerator.
He was Rill, Meke’s Rill, that Rill. Meke’s private investigator confirmed Rill’s departure from Earth for the Mars station nine years earlier. He took the money and ran. And Meke had no idea what to think about any of it.
He followed the card’s clicks to the food court that circled the station’s center where visitors could stare through translucent barriers at open promenades within upper spheres. Like any newbie, Meke stood and stared, all the way to the vast bubble ceiling. He knew the station’s layout but knowledge and experience weren’t the same—as any Siphon could attest.
The artificiality of the station was beginning to wear. He settled outside a café near the solar-famous restaurant with the first-long-lived clone chef. The chef had a male lover, once a Mars citizen. Meke should be able to relate. He couldn’t.
The café served Martian algae, which Meke had eaten on Earth as a specialty item. Here it was a common staple, appearing on every dish.
He finished his meal and crossed to a shop with full aquariums. He purchased a bag of krill for later. Right now, he needed a full tide of sleep.
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| Rill |
He turned towards the elevator, sliding the card out of his shirt pocket.
And there was Rill.
Meke hadn’t been sure he’d recognize him. Nine years, from adolescence to adulthood. In human terms, they were twenty-five. And yet—
Rill was slim and compact with cropped dark hair (it was longer and more tangled once). Meke wasn’t close enough to see the slanted heavy brows and shy, cheeky smile. But he recognized Rill’s walk, that unconscious cocky grace that Meke still envied.
Rill was studying a tablet as he sauntered across the concourse, a bag of Earth seaweed swinging from his other hand. Easy. Relaxed. At home.
Maybe I shouldn’t have come.
