The water screamed by below the sub, not slower than Edie’s thoughts. Everything kept getting more complicated, patterns drawing close around her, a baffling dance of intentions… and either her own intentions were being ignored, or they were too confused to matter. Maggie had probably talked to Walter. She wouldn’t admit it, but she wouldn’t deny it either- she told Edie to get out of her own head, as if that was helpful advice. Edie’s heat had passed without event, demanding no more than a grueling series of private masturbations several times a day, and her blood pressure hadn’t increased dangerously. She was horribly confused about whether she even wanted to fantasize about Walter- once she’d even thought of Maggie, with startlingly successful results. She didn’t tell the little Siamese this, as Maggie was all too available, or possibly not, as she hadn’t been dropping hints lately. Intimidated? Disapproving? Edie had been dealing with a double life for many, many years, but somehow now that she had told her secrets to another person, things were spinning out of control, and where she once had seemingly infinite resources for handling her private life, now she was exhausted, and rapidly running out of…
…fuel.
The light glowed bright red, and Edie realized she didn’t see it come on. There was no telling how long it’d been glowing while she’d been lost in her thoughts- and, obviously, she’d screwed up even before that, because she should have refueled before leaving.
Edie pulled back on the yoke smoothly, her calculating feline mind now fully committed to the flight problem that threatened her. The sub gracefully bit air and soared easily up to the roof, thousands of feet above the limitless expanse of water. Instead of scanning for denizens like a newbie, she was scanning visually and checking her navcomp for bases, refueling points, even a rest area. The first thing was to find a place to refuel, so nobody would ever know she’d been irresponsible. Had she passed one recently? The navcomp showed nothing, so she allowed her mind to go a step further- was there a place to land up there, fuel or not? A mile or so would bring her to an emergency dock. This was simply a safe place to land, with a hatch into the endless corridors of Aquarius, no refueling provisions, but the sub would be safe there. She cut back throttle a bit more, biting her lip gently, hanging on to her control with a cold determination.
Before very long, the emergency dock was in sight, clearly marked along the vast ceiling. Edie’s pilot senses went on automatic, as she tenderly fed the little sub a bit more throttle, trying to make the trajectory, her mind coolly picturing the gentle arc as if picturing it from outside, a tiny silvery craft with its tiny silvery occupant destined to put in just this much throttle, throttle giving altitude, elevator only affecting angle of attack, the unorthodox landing plotted in her mind as if it was proceeding along computer-plotted lines in a simulator.
Edie grew very still as the engine faltered, sputtered- and quit.
The line in her mind split, bisected into two as her thoughts raced. One for desired trajectory, one for what she might be able to get out of a near-stall… These subs were no low-speed handlers. The emergency dock was this far away, at this much airspeed, given that angle of attack, which if increased might give her this much extra lift while blowing that much energy on drag… and the little cat, frozen in calculation, nursed the flying sub up to the top of its arc, and stared, stunned, as the ceiling roared by, just a few feet too high to reach. It might have been a hundred- Edie knew she couldn’t get the sub any higher, every instinct in her screamed that she was on the edge of a stall, and there just wouldn’t be room to recover from it in this craft. It wasn’t like the bipes, there was barely any wing and it wanted to go terribly fast or fall out of the air like a rock. Without blinking, Edie sailed past the unreachable docking area, allowing the ceiling to fall away teasingly, facing the distant expanse of water below.
Auxiliary tanks! No, there weren’t any. Where was she? No time to type into the navcomp. The world resonated around her, too sharp, like a fantasy of a bad training session. It didn’t seem anything like real. Control effectiveness? Yes, it wasn’t too hard to maneuver- the craft was so very small that losing power didn’t hurt the controls much. But what airspeed did she want? Obviously she couldn’t smack headlong into the water, she had to do the normal almost-stalling maneuver but completely without power. Normally these subs were landed under power, even onto the water, because they flew like damned bricks without it, but she had enough velocity to manage it anyhow… she dove gently to build up a bit more… radio! Damn it! There wasn’t time…
Against the limitless expanse of gray water and the endless but unreachable steel ceiling above it, with only the sound of waves reverberating ceaselessly around the miles and miles of emptiness, a tiny craft sped across the water, just above it, keeping clear of the waves. Its speed gradually diminishing, the sub clung to the air feebly, until a wave touched its streamlined shape with a sharp crack of water against sculpted metal- then another, stealing speed from the heedlessly rushing craft- and then, the little streamlined thing scudded across the waves, rapidly slowing- and vanished beneath them.
With a horrible grinding thump of her heart, Edie realized she didn’t have any time at all. This was a sub as well as a plane. It was made to go down into the water. It could also go back up- if you had engines. She didn’t have engines, and her sub was obviously trimmed to be heavier than water, and it was going down. It would go down until it was crushed by the pressure- or until it stopped, and who could find her deep in the water with no power and nobody anywhere around? In an instant, she reacted- there was a sort of float built into the cabin, and she grabbed it, flipped up the emergency hatch release and punched it, barely remembering to take a deep breath.
The world exploded in sound and bubbles. For a horrible second she saw them rushing upwards and away from her while water filled the cockpit and the sub pulled her ruthlessly down with it- then she remembered her flight harness, clung to the float, released the buckle, and suddenly she was with the float, being pulled fiercely upward, while the sub, its cockpit air vented, dropped towards the center of Aquarius with redoubled speed.
It could only have been a second of confusion, because by the time Edie thought to open her eyes the surface of the water was near, and in another second, she broke the surface, spluttering for air and clinging to the float. Alive! Edie gasped for breath, giving in to the shakes, hanging on to the float like it was her whole world. Scrabbling at it, she discovered it had been cleverly designed to support even an unconscious person, like water-wings, and she wriggled into position, sneezing as she got some water in her nose. It was a very bright yellow. In fact- yes! There was a switch, a wonderful switch on it! They really thought of everything. It was a beacon! Edie flipped the switch, rejoicing in the glow of a little LED. Looking around, she noticed her cat vision kicking in: the minimal lighting of the ceiling dimly illuminated the scene, with the water quite calm- she could see quite a way. Surely by this time her poor sub must have hit the bot.. the b…
Her sub would not be hitting the bottom anytime soon.
Edie whimpered as it hit her. Her sub might be thousands of feet down by now, and still dropping, and there would be no bottom. Eventually it would be crushed by the pressure and still it would not be hitting a bottom- this wasn’t a pool she was in. Not a lake, not even a sea. She was floating in the central water tank of Aquarius, a tiny speck on a ball of water the size of a planet, and she hadn’t even managed to put out a distress call before she crashed. She might not be found… or she might not be found before something found her.
She looked around, terrified, at the blank expanse of water and steel sky. How could she know? Would she have warning if she was attacked? Through the waves of terror, she reasoned: there aren’t any waves. The big things, they make waves when they move. You’ve seen them. The vast mountain-sized bulk rearing out of the water… but there aren’t any waves. Hard to say how many Things are in the water nearby but there’s nothing large… big things would have to be, let’s see, how far away for the water to be this quiet?
Edie found that thinking about how far away they’d be wasn’t helping, either. Her mind refused to grasp the immensity of her situation, but the scale, the reality of it, beat upon her relentlessly. She bobbed gently up and down- up and down- trying to focus on the water right around her, trying not to think of how far below her the hapless sub must be…
…and the first minute passed.
She shivered, taking a chill from the water… even if no cold slimy things with teeth came for a furry snack, the water itself had a bite. It had a horrible patience to it that made Edie grateful for the clever float. Of course, that was not to say there weren’t cold slimy things with teeth, or tentacles, or God knew what coming for her, for that matter she might freeze to death floating there afraid to kick or move, but at least she didn’t have to tread water while doing it…
…and the second minute passed.
In ten minutes’ time, Edie could no longer tell if it’d been ten minutes or ten hours. She floated, shivering, in a fear trance, her mind seemingly expanding outward to encompass the whole endless ocean- except that it wasn’t an ocean at all, and even with her consciousness stretched that painfully far, the space around and beneath her still smothered her with its unyielding vastness. It was artificial, yet it felt as if it had existed since the dawn of time, would always exist. Her awareness, reeling with vertigo, kept expanding…
The waves started to pick up by twenty minutes. The little cat, floating entranced with horror, first saw the horizon begin to undulate. It was a phenomenon only to be seen on Aquarius, though she was not in a condition to appreciate it: there was no chop, or smaller waves, just a quiet swell on a scale to dwarf any ocean’s wave, sustainable only in water depths as great as these. Edie stared, uncomprehending, as the world seemed to contract, until she floated at the top of a huge hill of water that sat there in defiance of logic- then, the world gently changed shape around her, until she was at the bottom of a shallow basin of ocean. It all happened with impossible slowness. Somewhere, far beneath her, something the size of a country was steadily moving past, with this its effect. The expanse of water shaped itself around her like a sedate Surrealist nightmare.
Half an hour after the crash, the monstrous swell had mostly passed. It had been useful- it was something for her to focus on. She could not stop shaking with cold, and her trancelike serenity was beginning to fray. This place was just too big… it was all right when it didn’t seem real, but she couldn’t hold on to that. A wind had come up, from somewhere, blowing her whiskers about and chilling her ears, even whipping up water-spray that lashed her. It dragged her back to an intolerable reality, placed her unforgivably in the middle of an endless plane of real water, in a real place. The huge swell that had passed by was, somehow, a real thing. It was produced by some horribly vast creature that was also real. Kind of thing that was psychologically dangerous to have a tentacle the size of a house coming at you…
Something touched her paw, a tiny fish, a floating thing, or perhaps she just imagined it, and suddenly Edie was screaming, trying to climb out of the water by force of will, her mind a tatter of fear. All the horrors of her imagination were alive under her paws, and she fought futilely until her strength gave out, and sank back into the grip of the water and the support of the float, still weakly yowling out of a cat voice gone hoarse and cracked. The air seemed to reverberate with her screaming, it didn’t die away. It was amazing to think that her screaming was so loud that it could echo through a place the size of a planet.
The sound kept happening, and Edie suddenly realised it was the engine of a sub, the scream of turbines.
Her mind froze in shock at the sudden reprieve, and out of the distance came a little speck of silvery metal, coming on fast, so very fast… and with a shriek of tortured wind, the sub blasted right by. Had to be going at full emergency speed… Edie’s brain stopped working for a moment, and then ground into action again- the switch, the LED, the beacon! Where was it? And yes, when she’d been thrashing around in hysterical terror, she’d hit the switch and shut the beacon off.
Edie flipped the switch, saw the LED come back on, and floated there over unimaginable depths, the imminence of rescue awakening her unbearably to her fear. Out there somewhere was the sub. It probably was for her- at least she hoped so- but until it lifted her out of this horrible water, she was still freezing, floating in it, prey for any big predators that might come for her. She hung on not so much because it was the thing to do, but because she wasn’t capable of doing anything else.
When the sound returned, and the silvery speck appeared in the sky again, Edie found herself keening, her mind falling apart with terror that in these last seconds something terrible would come out of the depths, those intolerable depths, and devour her. Somehow it seemed impossible that she could be delivered from this- she felt death all around her, from the shaking of her chilled body to the spaces below her, filled with denizens. Her sanity hung by a thread as the speck grew larger, swooped lower, came in for a landing much like hers… she briefly imagined what it would be like if it sank too, drowning its pilot, and then suddenly the craft was beside her, the water around it churning with the force of its engines keeping it above water.
The hatch popped open, and Walter shouted, “Hang in there, Edie!”
Edie thought, all right. She thought, get me out of this NOW! She thought, wouldn’t it just be you? But she wasn’t able to do more than keen a pathetic mewl, and she couldn’t stop, even as Walter hastily threw her a rope, leaned dangerously far out of the cockpit to help her loop it round her, pulled her effortlessly from the water, and settled her on his lap. She had time to wonder if he could fly that way, before she fainted.
The water roared around her, monsters came up from horrible depths with jaws gaping under her, and Edie came awake screaming and clawing in the grip of something…
“Hey, hey! HEY! It’s over, hear me? You’re safe!”
It was the grip of Walter. He’d got her out of the cockpit somehow, they were at the dock closest to home, and he was trying to hold her up. A fairly large crowd had gathered, including even Peter, who looked both vexed and worried at the same time. She was still pretty soaked, which outlined her body much more explicitly than dry fur did, and Walter was telling her she was safe and holding her up. Edie, overwhelmed, burst into tears and clung tightly to Walter. Behind her, there was a quiet ‘awwwww!’, a bit of clapping, and also a bit of ‘shush!’ followed by Peter’s voice, addressing the crowd: “That’s enough- we’ll keep you posted on how she’s doing, it looks like she’ll be okay, folks.”
Walter got her home, though the journey was blurry and confused for Edie. By the time they got to her door, she realized Walter was carrying her curled up in his arms, but she didn’t remember when that had happened. It made her feel very small, but somehow safe. He opened her door with a pass-key, presumably supplied by Peter, and she felt briefly embarrassed as she’d left ‘toys’ in sight. He seemed not to notice.
He sat her on her bed, grabbed towels out of the bathroom and scrubbed her down vigorously until she wasn’t soaking anymore, in the process making her fur a total rumpled mess, as he plainly didn’t understand grooming or drying with the direction of the fur or any of that cat stuff. The little silver cat was too exhausted and weak to care, allowing Walter to dry her all over, impersonally, as if she was no more than a kitten again. Then he pulled up the blankets over her, saying, “I’m going to go get the doctor, all right?” and stopped as one dainty paw came from under the covers and grabbed his.
“Stay?”
Edie shivered, as much from nerves as from cold and looked up at Walter, all vulnerability. She fumbled for words, barely even knowing what she wanted- but her mind said, ‘Stay with me. I don’t care if it turns me off, I don’t care if we haven’t solved anything- I feel about two years old right now and need to be held, even if that doesn’t fit with my image. I’m not sick, I just can’t bear to be alone after all that…’
Out loud, she managed, “Please stay and hold me so I can sleep?”
Walter hesitated, troubled, but couldn’t resist. He muttered, “..’lil sister…” and looked very uncomfortable, tried to move onto the bed with covers between him and Edie, realised that was no way to hold anyone, and finally crawled under the covers, curling around Edie in spoon-fashion.
Edie shivered, and nestled back against him. Her last clear thoughts were that they fit wonderfully, and that she needed to not wiggle against him enticingly or he’d be upset. Anyhow, she didn’t need or want a lover at the moment- she needed comforting, and he’d come through. As his arms went around her and the warmth of him surrounded her, Edie fell into an exhausted sleep.
