The water’s edge rippled against his toes. A breeze blew down the loch, ruffling his hair. He touched the curls, thought about Sandy’s tentacles, the tangle of fronds and tendrils that descended from Xander in the water. He breathed deeply, salt and seaweed. He couldn’t get the vision of Xander out of his head. He felt changed. He imagined being part of that community, gliding through the water like Sandy, slick and fast, completely at home.
Sandy was in The Ceilidh Place with the women. They were deciding what to do about Michael, and Sandy wanted to speak to Heather. Lennox slipped out saying he needed some air. But he knew he would come here. He wished he understood Sandy better. Despite their connection, Sandy still seemed unknowable.
He was in his briefs and T-shirt. The wind down the loch gave him goosebumps. He stepped into the water then dived under, the cold stopping his lungs for a moment, then he was swimming. He felt so feeble, a land animal trying to survive in an alien and hostile environment. He thought about how easily Sandy had adapted to land and he wanted to understand that more.
He looked back and realised he’d gone fifty feet from shore. The water was dark blue and brown, waves getting bigger as he left the shelter of land. He pictured megawaves in the Atlantic turning oil tankers over with ease. What were the waves like on Enceladus, if it was under ice?
His muscles burned a little, he wasn’t used to swimming. He stopped, treaded water, looked at the hills on each side, the tiny specks of boats along the shore, pathetic little vessels for this vast expanse.
He took a huge breath and dived, kept his eyes open, looking for a sign of light in the gloom. But he was so tiny, unable to go more than a few yards before coming up for breath. He dived again in another direction, just darkness. Stayed down a little longer this time then kicked his way back up. Gasped in air and looked around. He heard an engine noise. He imagined that Fellowes guy in a helicopter, leaning out like in an eighties action movie. The noise grew louder then two fighter jets appeared at the head of the loch, low and roaring, angling down the contours of the glen, then overhead with an ear-splitting scream and out to sea. Just like at Freya’s place. He watched them disappear and thought about how primitive metal machines seemed now. Combustion engines and tin cans flying around like gnats, what was the point?
He filled his lungs and went under again, water stinging his eyes. Nothing but darkness for a moment, then a blue-green light in the distance, a pinprick to begin with, but quickly closer and larger, moving at tremendous speed. It was much bigger than Sandy and a different shape, more like a smaller version of Xander, the size of a bus.
Lennox’s lungs were bursting as the thing reached him. A giant jellyfish shape, tendrils and fronds and tentacles, light across their body, no face but a pattern and display that seemed to recognise him. They darted forward and surrounded him. And suddenly he wasn’t in a salty puddle off the Scottish coast but in a vast sea, icy cold and piercing blue. Dizziness overwhelmed him and he remembered standing in Figgate Park and feeling the same. His vision spun. He reached out to hold something, felt his hands push through the body of this mini-Xander, the pair of them now somehow on Enceladus.
His brain began to right itself and he saw the water around him, blue in every direction, thousands of creatures like Xander moving slowly through deep currents, each with a huge community in and around them. Below, the water got darker for a while then pulsed and glowed red. His vision telescoped and he somehow understood these were volcanoes on the seabed, a link to the hot core of the moon, spewing lava which flowed across the surface, building into mountains as it cooled. He felt a weird reverence, realised he was sharing feelings with mini-Xander. The volcanoes were like gods but not quite, that was too simple. They were a part of the Enceladons’ belief system and life, their ecosystem and faith rolled into one.
He looked above. The ice shelf was a cracked and beautiful sky, a million criss-crossing patterns like a constellation, an infinite number of linked icebergs and glaciers, ice shelves and plates. He had the same feeling from his host, this was to be revered and respected. There was no individuality here, they were all part of the same consciousness, the whole moon was a single entity, an integral community. He watched all the illuminated Xander-like creatures swimming languorously back and forth, blotting out parts of the ice shelf as they went. He sensed kinship with them, they were his comrades in this great expanse.
Suddenly his host shot upward towards one of the bigger cracks in the ice. A jet stream flowed from a volcano on the seabed, like a fountain through the sea to the opening in the ice. They joined it and shot through the ice shelf into space, surrounded by millions of particles of water and ice. He turned and looked at Saturn, huge and orange in the sky. He realised they were in one of the rings, they were the ring. And in the expanse of space were more mini-Xanders, floating in space, swaying and drifting.
Then a change. He sensed fear and worry, and his host’s body turned to look back. A swarm of tiny dots appeared behind Saturn, growing larger, black against the sunlit surface of the planet. They were like those birds you saw on earth moving in unison, as they descended onto the north pole of Enceladus, swarms of them. He couldn’t tell what they were, but they felt like bad news. They formed a black spot on the moon’s surface, a cloud surrounding it. They glowed red and orange at the edges of the spot, then sank as the ice melted. They fell into the sea underneath and spread out. He could sense the darkness spreading through the water. He saw more Xander creatures leaving through the ice fissure. There was a panicky flood of them in Saturn’s ring suddenly.
His host was happy to see them, but sad too. Lennox looked away from Enceladus and Saturn towards the sun, a small yellow dot in space. Earth was somewhere out there, but he couldn’t see it.