Sea Monsters

Ceph left the council floor spangled in panic. The crowds of seafolk averted their usually perceptive eyes; they had long felt invincible in the deep and were unaccustomed to responding to any signal of alarm. Before her journey to the surface, Ceph had felt the same way, and knew there would be no use trying to rally them.

She turned her attention instead to the trail of yeti crabs moving into the heat of the vents. The silky fibers on their oversized front claws filtered the toxins from the core, leaving the harvested bacteria clean and edible. Of course! The seafolk may have designed the features of the megacity, but they hadn’t built it; the ancient intelligence hadn’t constructed the spiral infrastructure that kept the city flowing. When the council delivered their proclamation that the thermal vents be opened, that the seabed be mined and new vents expanded, the seafolk themselves wouldn’t be doing the work. The yeti crabs would be the ones tasked with the project of extinguishing all life in the sea.

Nervous fuchsias shot through Ceph’s riotous coloring — not that the yeti crabs would be able to distinguish the subtlety. Or would they? Ceph calmed her patterns, and timidly called for the attention of one of the crab grandmas. The worker hesitated, then left the line to approach Ceph.

The Council intends to kill off all life in all the seas, she patterned. Like a fever? Ceph wasn’t sure if crab bodies had immune systems similar to fish and other ectotherms like seafolk. Behavioral fever was why the ancient intelligence located their cities around thermal vents — the heated water stimulated immune systems and killed off para­sites, as well as simply being a warm and pleasurable cline. They’re prepared to devastate entire ecosystems to protect their current way of life.

The yeti crab diligently harvested bacteria growing on her arm hairs with her mandibles. Ceph didn’t know if she should interpret this as a sign of understanding.

Ceph had a history of miscommunication with the locals in the sea-mud flats at home, and she wasn’t confident in her abilities to get it right here either. The yeti crabs might be more accustomed to interpreting seafolk chromatophore — an adaptation necessary to navigate the dominant seafolk culture — but Ceph was still woefully ignorant of crab languages. She’d never had to learn, she’d —

No, that wasn’t right, Ceph had understood crabs before. Up in the shallows, when the coral spoke. Crabs had a voice in that community. She could hear them — if she listened. She perked her earfins again, but only heard the disjointed quiet of the deep. Or was there more behind the silence? Beyond the static of the sizzling rush of superheated water endlessly escaping the sea-vent towers …

Then she heard the slow, low humming of the aged tube worms. And something even deeper, more ancient —

STOP!

A blast of bioluminescence overwhelmed Ceph’s senses. Council guards were descending on her position.

She’s trying to communicate with the coral and crabs.

Ceph could taste their disgust as they surrounded her.

What are you doing? You think you can incite a riot?

With jeering gestures, the males circled her. Their sedatives paralyzed her limbs. Tiny red dots of no prickled her skin.

Then the Main Arms of the Council Deep entered the ring. Daughter of Nautil’s second brood, the Main Arm of Tradition announced, withholding the courtesy of even remembering her name. We appreciate your bringing the issue to our attention, but — he flared with a rage luminescence that belied his other­wise controlled gestures — WHAT right do you have to defy the Council ruling?

Ceph couldn’t answer with her arms so grotesquely frozen. The Main Arm of Innovation signaled with a flick to have the guards ease up on hormone production. She feebly wiggled one arm in an answer. What the Council proposed … will not solve the problem. The ones from Above are a part of ocean ecosystems. Removing them, or any other organism, will be catastrophic for us. Life is more than what falls as snow through the currents. Please —

The Main Arm of Innovation secreted his own sedative to shut her up. Her body seized in her final gesture, and it was humiliating that he locked her in the movement when she was pleading for understanding.

The red dots on Ceph’s skin were pulsing angry now. This helplessness was infuriating and a reminder that males had evolved to produce this sedative when they split off from octopodes many millions of years ago. Otherwise the bride murdered her mate after coupling. And as the angry dots coalesced into virulent red blotches, these males could see, if she’d had freedom of movement, Ceph would’ve torn them to pieces.

The Main Arm of Tradition darted forward, wrapped one sneering strong arm around her immobile body and plunged his other modified arm deep into the place where her arms met. The sacredness of her core. Terror and grief ignited her coloring as she felt him leave his semen packet inside her.

This was not coupling; this was a death sentence for Ceph and her unborn. This male had no intent to send sisters who would tend her young.

All the color faded from Ceph. She looked as dead and rigid as bleached coral. As devastated. This was not how civilized seafolk behaved, yet none of the males moved in to stop the violation, or even had the courage to stop secreting the sedative that held her powerless.

Her attacker released her and she fell like snow. He held his strong arm up in triumph. Then a burst of his shock and confusion filled the water as his arm vanished in an inky cloud of his own blue blood.

A grey-brown flash, and one of the guards vanished from the ring. Then another. An assassin as fierce as a leopard seal and as indiscriminate as a shark tore through them.

Iliokai … her name shaded Ceph’s skin, body released from the male’s chemicals, but still limp in grief.

What was left of the squad of guards flashed warning signals, cautious glows of alarm. They huddled in protective formation and pricked their ear-fringes, all senses alert, trying to locate what was out there.

Iliokai darted in and around them, picking them off. “Fucking squid.”

The attack always came from an unexpected direction, with a vicious swiftness, and the few guards who were left inked their escapes.

The stunned council members were left exposed. The whale rider tore a limb from the Main Arm of Innovation with her teeth and spat it back at him.

No one in the deep dares attack us! his chemicals leaked pain and disbelief.

“I’m not from the deep,” Iliokai sneered.

Then, all at once, she seized and convulsed. The guards had circled back when they recalled why they’d lived un­challenged in the deep for so long. They deployed their neurochemical weapons on the foreign predator, no longer in pure defense, but to punish her for humiliating them.

The whale rider writhed in agony, until she lost conscious­ness. Her muscles twitched with the assault on her nervous system, the toxins still inflicting their damage even though she wasn’t awake to feel it.