Chapter Seventeen--THE POD

 

 

Ari opened his eyes, instinctively sniffing the air in response to something flinty, salty, and wet. The sea? An animal birthing outside a lab? A surgery so ancient that bodies bled? No. Something else.

Blood. Torn flesh. The most visceral and primal of smells. A huge meaty aroma made the air heavier than in the swamp. Here some deeper, darker secret was cut open. He was captured in it more completely than the ensnaring, claw like branches had splintered bone and snagged his mortal flesh.

A scream ripped through him. Panic echoed, ebbing and flowing on the pulsing shores of the blood scent. This sharp tide that had him awash was carrying life out to sea. He sensed a desperate plea — HELP!

Was he crying for help? Was it his voice? Was it even an articulate sound?

Ari strained to hear. He listened with his ears. He listened with his mind. He listened with his heart.

He saw pain and fear, smelled blood, and heard death. The blood scent was overtaken by a flood of 3-D visual sound waves. A psychedelic array of images washed over him in swells of synesthesia. Truth had many facets.

Confusion tossed him wildly like a fern stem driven by a tempest. He felt himself flung east. West. North. South. North again.

He had not moved.

Or had he?

HELP!

He rolled and ducked avoiding some unseen aggressor. Yet even as he did so, he sensed he was not the one who had moved. He was melding, becoming one with something, someone, under attack.

HELP!

Now he was sure of it. It was like the third and final cry of a drowning man sinking into oblivion. It was not his cry. It was larger than he was — mammoth. Leviathan.

He fell again. Instantly he found himself resting on the edges of Atlantius on an outcropping of rock. Drom was next to him, looking out to sea. He was safe here, absorbing the sunlight, as warmed by what he shared with Drom as by the sun.

The ocean broke just outside the calm waters of the cove, the force of the surf mellowed by a protective reef. Perfect curls formed as easily as a nestling's ringlets, sliding past, one after the other, rhythmic blues, shimmering greens. Outside the cove, the rollers played, a study in motion, contrasting with the perfect blue still waters inside the reef. Each was its own perfection.

Drom herself was still greater perfection. To him she was the most pleasing wonder of all Nature’s craft. Drom's long jet-black hair washed down in waves, lapping at the neat, small shoreline of her waist. Ari gazed lower, following where the tumult of cascading hair urged him. It edged the firm tight curve of her buttocks. His eyes glided down her perfect long legs to her wriggling toes. Not wanting to miss a bit of her luscious five-foot, eight-inch form, he held her tapered ankles with his sight and stroked up her calves to her thighs. His gaze would have lingered there forever had his sight not been coaxed higher again by the sweet shadows her ample breasts cast. His gaze nuzzled there until summoned upward by her dark-green feline eyes. The feral pupils widened, letting him slip tenderly into their drowning depths.

He jumped as her eyes lashed away from him and back to the horizon. At almost the same instant, they both spotted a discordant splash outside the reef line.

Help!

It was the same cry.

Drom clutched Ari's hand. "We have to help him."

They drowned together in the image, one with the panic-strangled victim. As waves slid by in curving glossed transparencies, sights that were heard and sounds that were seen tumbled one over the other. Wave crashed into wave in a chaotic pattern of interfering energies, yet the orderly surf moved as before and the cove lay still.

Tides of impulse ripped them in one direction and thrust them back again, while urging them elsewhere. They witnessed a monstrous breech of Nature. The vital flow of pulsing energies that made up all things was violated.

As quickly as they submerged in that experience, it vanished. It left no more of a trace upon them than a wisp of cloud crossing the sun on a simple summer day.

As if to signal that it was utterly gone forever, Drom laughed musically. The tinkling chimes of her glissando slid out onto the sea-scented air. Ari breathed in her musky female scents as they unfurled. There was nothing in the world except her. Free, joyous laughter was the only echo.

Summoned as surely by ecstasy as she had been a moment before by fear, she leapt up and ran to the sea. Her soles kissed the warm sand as she ran. Ari followed her with all the inevitability of four planets in conjunction producing high tides.

Ari drew to her, crossing long sweet stretches of soft sand. The sun lent its fire to their skin. The waters lapping the long tidal reaches that led to the cove promised to cool them if they succumbed to summer's flames. Fulsome clouds pillowed toward celestial promises.

The beach was deserted. Not a soul was in sight. They owned the continent.

The wind peeled away the shadow of Drom's dark hair, exposing her fully. She ran into the water, with Ari splashing after her well-turned heels. The cove's gentle waters warmly welcomed them, licking their legs as the wind caressed them.

Ari drew in the sight of her breasts floating in the water. Simple, total, unadulterated beauty.

They floated together in warm liquid silk. Drom swam a little, knowing Ari was following her. He held his head out of the water to watch her as she rose with each stroke, the water dropping, revealing her secrets.

How did I land in this Paradise? Ari wondered.

"You can't catch me," she called, knowing full well that he could.

Drom did not swim through the water, but became one with it, feeling each droplet slide over every curve and crevice of her flesh. She bobbled happily and then rose from the water, dripping jeweled sunshine. She walked toward her intended husband, her lover, knowing that he was aroused by the naked afternoon.

Ari's long blond hair sent rivulets of water streaming down his sculptured body. It was Drom's turn to have her eyes linger, circling on his small, tight, raised nipples. She gathered her dark locks in her hands and dried his chest with them, then knelt and toweled off the rest of him.

He pulled her to her feet and used the fabric of his own blond mane to dry each precious inch of her exquisite form. They faced each other, a tantalizing nothing apart. Drom slid her fingers into the thick blond tangle at the nape of his neck. Ari followed suit, his fingers gently circling and probing the hollow at the back of her neck. Together they offered each other to the wind. It flickered through their hair and across their skin, until they were as deliciously warm and dry as they had been cool and wet. Ari stood, cradling her in his arms as he looked back out to sea.

The sound was distant, vague, and soothing. Ari strained to hear more, but the noises were muffled and echoing. It was as if he were back underwater. It was becoming clearer, louder. A steady whoosh. Yet beyond the soothing sound he heard distress and fear. He did not know where he was.

As he shook his head, things grew clearer. Blue sky appeared. It seemed to move. Then he knew he was on his back, lying down. He felt something gritty under his bare feet. Sand. They were back at the beach, their favorite cove. Had he been elsewhere? Was this a dream within a dream or had he wakened and found himself near Atlantius?

This was Drom and Ari's secret spot. The cove wrapped gently around the southwest corner of the city of Atlantis. Surrounded by dunes and topped with grass-like plants, it curved gently to the southeast. Dense foliage beyond the white sand insured privacy should unexpected eyes appear.

The aqua waters of the cove lapped gently. Inshore they were so crystal clear that he could see individual seashells, coral, and rocks submerged as far as three meters offshore. Further out where the headland and a peninsula formed the cove, the water was a deeper indigo blue. The combers crashed and roiled over the reef in a steady eternal procession.

Ari turned on his side and gazed at Drom stretched out beside him. Even supine and lolling to the sides, her full breasts took his breath away, rising and falling with her soft breathing. The sheen of her bronzed skin was irresistibly alluring. He lost himself in the emerald glow of her eyes.

The sea stretched away, a vast shimmering sheen of cobalt, surging at the reef line. Drom leaned on her elbows and looked over at him. "Finally awake, sleepy head?"

"The Leader Class needs lots of rest. We have momentous decisions to make."

He didn't see her broad smile. A moment later a sweet shadow fell over his face. Drom's lips, moist and deliciously full, were poised above him. They sought his with the surety of long-deepened intimacy.

The kiss was wet, their tongues swimming. "Mmmm," he murmured when she pulled back. "There are certainly some advantages to belonging to the Leader Class."

Drom slapped him playfully on his bare arm. "Who cares about your old Leader Class? On a day like this, who cares about anything?"

Their sun-kissed shoulders touched as they sat up and gazed out to sea. All was quiet except for the surf. They listened with reverence to the rhythmic slap of the wavelets curling up on the beach. Out in the cove a large fish slapped his tail and momentarily flipped, glistening wetly in the sun.

Drom shook her hair, enjoying the sensation of it sweeping across her back. "I hoped we’d see the whale pod that was here before.”

"I thought I heard them earlier. But if I did, they were too far out for a clear fix. Maybe it was my imagination.” Secure in his place in time and the universe, he was quiet for a while. Then he added, "Those whales are special to you, aren't they?"

Drom was pensive. "There is something about them that touches me. I don't know. The primeval, the universal. Something that's in all of us. Something that's more than us."

"Those are pretty lofty inspirations to find in a bunch of fish."

Drom offered him her most disdainful look, but she knew Ari was just playing the fool. She knew that he felt something magnificently indefinable about the whales too, something ethereal.

They had little luck sensing even the whereabouts of the pod, let alone their thoughts. Finally, Ari stood. "The water looks great. Let's go in."

Drom stretched back languorously. She sighed, "The sun's so lovely. I don't want to move."

Ari dropped to his knees beside her. "Come on. I don't want to swim alone."

"No, thank you." Her refusal was full of mock curtness, a wry smile crossing her beautiful face. Her almond eyes narrowed with mirth.

Ari rose to his full height and puffed out his chest in an exaggerated manner. He looked down scornfully with an overly imperious tone. "You dare, woman? You dare refuse a Leader?"

Drom shaded her eyes with her forearm as she looked up at him. "Big brave Leader. Afraid to go in alone?"

Ari feigned shock. "You refuse?"

He scooped her into his arms and carried her to the water's edge while she squealed. She rained harmless blows on him and adorned her legs around him vigorously, feigning helplessness as he had mastery. Waist deep, he ignored the cold that pricked his skin and turned it pebbly. He dumped her in unceremoniously. She came up sputtering and shoved a handful of water into his smirking face, then twisted into a dive, swimming energetically away, fighting the cold. Laughing, Ari caught up with her and pulled her into his arms. They delightedly shared a salt-sweet kiss.

For the next hour, the two frolicked like children. They moved forward in a rising and falling motion into the depths and then shot straight up, their young healthy bodies glistening sleekly in the sun.

Back up on the beach, Drom brushed the water from her face and then worked her hands to press it out of her waist-length hair. Ari dropped to the sand at her feet. Drom, smiling, fell next to him, on his chest, and kissed him deeply. His arms wound around her as they settled into the familiar niche of each other to sleep.

A series of low squeaking, clicking, and pops woke them. Ari's sense of sight engaged first. He was visually within the sound.

Gut images of depravity took on concrete form -- long narrow flippers flashed out from a sturdy body and short evil tail. Forelimbs, longer and larger than its hind limbs, flailed, directed by corrupt intent. Its wicked flippers had round leading edges and tapering backs, but there its resemblance to peaceful penguins ended. These profane flippers moved in malevolent vertical strokes like the sinister wings of a flying reptile. It was a water reptile, at least 14 meters long. Half of that immense immoral length was its neck.

Ari sensed it paddle along on the surface with its head held high above the water looking for prey. Its sinful vertebrae formed a neck that bent sideways.

Blood. Fear. Horror.

Ari felt a peaceful ancestral legacy shatter. The tradition and heritage of the Believers seemed to die in that instant. With the plunge of an evil head, a large row of teeth slashed into the victim.

This atrocity in action had a name – Elasmosaurus. These cynics had no culture beyond reveling in debauchery. Known for their ferocity, the monsters normally killed their prey alone. But today, a heinous pair collided in circumstance and joined to tear the flesh off a grandfather. The valiant old whale fought with all his ancestral pride intact. The frenzied monsters tore him to bloody shreds.

His pitiful cries tugged at the heartstrings of the young Atlantians. Drom, now in tune with this grievous song, covered her eyes. Her hand could not block the image from her mind.

Although this fresh and inescapable horror was new to Drom and Ari, to the whale pod it was the latest epic battle lost in a war waged over eons. Elasmosaurus usually won. Disaster had almost become an old friend. While living out generations of family good, the pod of Fin whales had lost many members. Grief for each of them resided in their common memory. Few members of the pod were left.

Ari felt the weight of destiny's dark star descend. He swam in the broth of distant seas, feeding, gorging beyond his fill. To someone unaccustomed to anything but ceremonial teas and energy wafers, it was an odd experience. Ari felt himself swell. Given that sensation, he knew the whales had been storing fat for half a year.

Adapt or die.

It was not a threat, but a law of nature.

Ari was jolted by a force that blasted him and all he knew or would ever know into oblivion. This was something more than the collision of one grandfather whale and leviathans. It was a celestial collision.

Ari was seized by a compulsion to find the whale pod. They knew secrets he must unmask. He willed himself back into his physical reality and climbed a nearby dune. Standing ankle deep in scaly grass, his hand visoring his eyes, he peered intently out to sea.

Drom quickly joined him. "I can feel that they are here."

She saw them at once and pointed with certainty to a spot about fifty yards out. The pod was just beyond the force field that guarded the entrance of the cove.

"Fin whales," he cried, confirming their identity. His voice twisted empathetically, recognizing a kindred life form in jeopardy. "That pair of monsters is almost on them. There's a bunch of smaller ones too. Plesiosaurus, I think."

An Elasmosaurus was easier to see than the whales, because half of its long neck was above water. The awful sight before them confirmed what Ari had sensed in the sound-vision. The vertebrae swayed, sinister, serpentine. Menacing teeth readied to strike.

It lunged with a stabbing plunge of its long neck. Below the water, its flippers moved in great vertical strokes at deadly speed. They closed on the pod.

Ari was uncertain. "What can we do?"

They watched as the whales bunched together near a passage through the reef. They knew the cove was protected by a force field, extending from the bottom of the coves to ten meters above the water.

Ari plunged down the sandy hill. He and Drom galloped, splashing into the water. They swam mightily toward the pod for several minutes. Finally they stopped and began treading water, arching their necks in an effort to see farther.

Ari saw that his people's technology was the whales’ mortal enemy. Panting, Ari called to Drom. "Should I raise the force field for them?"

"Yes!” She cried. “Let them in."

His fingers flew to the four suns and Triton symbol on his headband. He tapped three times, unleashing the powers of four suns.

Ari was glad Drom was at his side. "All we can do now is wait."

It was not so much water that they tread now, but time. Eternity hung in an instant.

Drom and Ari barely breathed as their minds saw what their eyes could not. They listened intently, each intuitively curling one finger behind an ear. They knew the pod was gliding through a passage over the reef.

Drom turned to him. "Can you communicate with them?"

"I'm getting lots of visuals but they're confused."

"Me too. There's fear and blood. Too much blood. That poor mammal!” Her voice broke with the sharp pain of splintered bone, "They ate him alive!"

"I'm getting visuals from all of them at once. I'm trying to sort them out. Fear. More fear. And still more. The calf that made it into the cove is hurt. They want help for him, but know he's near death."

"I'm not getting all that. But what I sense seems to match. Can we help?"

Ari slowly weighed the situation.

Drom's words were a desperate plea. "Are they all through the reef? The water’s rough, the coral sharp."

"I feel relief and sense safety."

The pod moved closer to shore. The whales approached the two, then nervously veered away from them.

Ari's voice was tight with concern. "Those monsters are at the entrance now. Are all the whales in the cove?"

Ari saw massive splashing as the huge creatures thrashed in confusion and pain. The water was tormented.

Drom agonized. "I can't tell."

Ari knew the weight of decision was his own. If he acted too soon, he'd leave whales outside. If he was too slow, he'd let death follow them. He watched a single second more and then quickly reached for his headband. He tapped the four-sun Triton symbol, closing the force field.

Instantly they heard a loud crash. Enraged evil. The Sea Dragons threw themselves futilely against the invisible barrier. They screeched frustration, as the pod circled anxiously in the safety of the cove.

Drom gently approached the pod. They calmed, understanding that danger had passed. The waters grew tranquil as the whales slowed and drifted, entrusting themselves to its liquid embrace, sliding along the slow currents.

Drom could smell the beasts before she could see them. It was the salt tang of the ocean multiplied by ages of brewing in its living multitude. As she sensed their nearness, she was claimed by a new fear. "They're too close! If they come nearer, they'll ground themselves."

"You're right." Ari swam out in front of them and then turned seaward. Amazingly, the whales followed with innocent trust to safer, deeper water.

Drom neared, playful now that the danger was past. "So you’re the big strong leader after all."

Both tread water and watched the pod.

As she often did, Drom spoke what Ari was experiencing. "I feel so welcomed by them, privileged to share their grief."

Ari nodded. "No Atlantian has ever before communicated with a whale or dolphin. But this seems every bit as natural as it is unique."

Drom agreed. "Until you rescued them, whales hadn't had any use for Land Walkers like us. Aside from scorning our technology, they were indifferent to us. Before now, they've never even tried to communicate."

Ari was impressed by the depth of her knowledge. "I knew you liked whales, but I didn't know you'd studied them."

Drom's simple answer was full of meaning. "I haven't done any research. I just know that this is so. It is like I feel it in my heart before my mind comprehends."

"Heart to head? Yes, that's exactly it."

Later the rational parts of Ari's and Drom's brains would deduce that the savage attack had evoked this gift. Evil was the catalyst for good. In an instant, the sea birthed a revolution, making the two races partners, forming a momentous alliance.

Though Ari and Drom were quickly tuning in to the Sea Dreamers' world, they did not yet know the deeper understanding it held. The telepathic message the whales felt was strong. The Chosen One was here. He would deliver them. That fact cascaded over them in a flash of images — dawn birthed, all begins. They beheld the origin of creation.

An eerie, haunting sound floated over the still waters. As the young Landwalkers drifted, they noticed the pod lining up to swim methodically in an orderly circle. The pod began singing the Exodus Melody, a deep funeral dirge.

Ari and Drom exchanged a tender glance.

"It's for the old male, Razorback," Drom said softly.

The lament was long and sad, telling of his spirit passing to the netherworld. It held all the great pain and sorrow that those left behind felt. Then it surpassed their grief, moving beyond it to celebrate the eternal beauty of the netherworld. In the midst of bereavement, the Exodus Melody grew transcendent, sharing the joy of the departed as it rose to become a higher spirit, a higher level of the creation.

Drom's voice shivered. "I feel their pain, Ari. Can you?"

"Yes, we have some kind of subliminal communication with them beyond our usual telepathy."

Deliver us.

Drom’s dark hair streamed out into the water. "Their song births an empty feeling in me, a lost feeling. Yet there's also a sense of salvation, of peace, of tranquility. The pathos is real, heartfelt. The song tells of a better place." She listened a moment more and added, "It makes me feel better. They feel better too."

Drom reclined, trusting the water to hold her. She floated on her back with her face in the sun. The vibrations from the nearby pod's movements rippled through her languid body, relaxing her ever deeper.

One of the smallest members of the pod approached her. "Look, Ari!" she exclaimed. "He's so small. Why, I believe he’s a dolphin. Yes, he is. He must have attached himself to the whales."

The dolphin nuzzled Drom with his smooth rounded snout. In reply, she reached out and patted his soft wet head. He stood up on his tail and emitted a high series of clicks, like two rocks banging together.

Drom laughed. "Isn't he beautiful?”

Ari grinned. "He likes you. Must be a male." On one level he was joking. On another he was again stating something else that he knew with no demonstrable way of knowing.

As the dolphin rejoined the pod, Ari and Drom followed. The whales swam slowly as if they wanted the pair to stay with them. When they stopped, one submerged just below the surface, the water boiling around him as he descended.

Ari turned to Drom. "I'm getting more of what they're saying. We'd tune into them better under water."

Drom nodded and followed him beneath the surface. They adjusted easily to the pressure as the water deepened. The whales dove around them in graceful spirals. Within the burbling drone of their blue world, the creatures calmed, their agitation mutating. Then a strange thing happened. They could see the air rushing from the two blowholes on his head. As they watched in amazement, the whale blew a big mushroom-shaped bubble of air into the water. He backed away from the rising bubbles and extended his huge mouth, sucking it into its mouth, creating a new shape.

In the vibrations of the whale sounds that echoed through the still waters, the young Atlantians sensed the primeval nature of these magnificent creatures. They could see and feel that the beauty of them and in them was ancient and learned and real. The whales' every motion conveyed the splendor of their ancient world. This was their art. They were purposefully creating a mélange of colors and shapes and sounds that defied description. Their compositions invariably evoked myriad emotions in all who beheld them. No one could help but be touched by such magnificence.

More wondrous still, this creation was an active collaboration. Another smaller whale appeared, sucking in the rainbow shimmering bubbles. Yet another blew a bubble ahead of himself, then sucked it back in, creating new and different shapes. The small whale back paddled, fizzing out air. It nodded its head sharply downward sending a cloud of water against the expanding bubbles. This produced a twisting bracelet that shined and expanded until it broke into flattened rising spheres. As they repeated the whole process, Ari and Drom were moved into an ethereal world where beauty was an existential thing. Here art flourished, validating the superiority of these creatures.

They popped to the surface. Drom panted out, "What are they doing?"

"They're conversing with each other and with us. Are you getting any of it?"

"Some of it. They’re talking of their art and their culture." She paused, treading thoughts along with the water. "It’s all about love. It's a celebration of a new beginning, a nativity feast."

Ari's smile was bright with the light of new discoveries. "I like the way they think."

Drom nodded her understanding. "Some took turns sucking each other's bubbles.”

It looked like the ones that are mates do that longer." "Want to give it a try?" Ari urged.

He clasped her hand and slowly descended, deeper, and deeper into the aqua-blue netherworld. Increasing pressure added speed to their free fall. Ari was plummeting down through the lush blue waters, descending endless fathoms toward the sea floor below. Racing at him, the collage of shells, rock, and coral grew larger, as Ari tumbled. He crashed through some bubbling water. Currents snapped, flotsam and jetsam falling with him, the smell of the primal sea filled his nostrils.

Ari felt safe here. As they immersed themselves in the whales’ world, they somehow knew they didn’t need to worry about running out of air.

For a while they hung in suspended animation, drifting within the wonder of it. Changes in pressure added to their speedy descent. Their level of trust was also deepening. The water was heavy, even as it was light.

Sound waves resonated through the sea. At first, the whale noises were a cacophony of high and low-pitched sounds. They needed to become literate in this foreign symphony. It was the outgrowth of another culture, another world, another creation entirely.

Looking up, the lovers could see sunlight piercing the clear water with shafts of brilliance that turned into prisms of exquisite colors. The burbling in their ears melded with the whales' dissonance creating an extraordinary, sensory experience. Occasionally there were lulls when only the sounds of the deep itself accompanied their communion with each other and the whales.

Off to their right the big whale blew huge bubbles of warm lung-purified air. Ari swam toward it and stretched a single finger out to touch it. It was much like the gesture with which he had touched his headband. His hand slipped neatly inside the sphere without breaking it. He entered it and let himself be encompassed by it. Drom joined him. Drifting in the air bubble, they found they could breathe easily.

The whales swooped, gliding gracefully around them. Their songs filled the water world with joyous feelings of life's continuance, of birth, regeneration, and sacred renewal -- the joy of life itself was their religion. By this sacred expression of art they healed themselves and were happy and safe again.

Drom passionately asked, "Can you feel it, Ari? Can you feel the love? I feel newly born."

Her voice was altered by the air bubble. It had profound, mystical tones. Ari drew her to him and kissed her deeply.

Their kiss complete, she gently pushed off against him and arched her back. She made a triangle of her long legs and stretched her arms high, bowing backward, looping into a gracefully dreamy slow-motion somersault. Her long dark hair swirled in lazy patterns around her, an ebony drift that almost reached the luscious full curve of her rump. After completing one turn, she'd push up and do another.

Endlessly one bubble followed another, forming a bubble matrix. Everything was silent. Almost unaffected by gravity, movements were slow. Sometimes she varied her ballet, including twirls and leisurely, perfect pirouettes. Ari watched his gorgeous companion's intricate underwater dance among the swimming whales. The mammoths were a living backdrop to her dance of love.

When she returned to his side, Ari was more than ready to honor her with his body. He slipped his arms around her, one arm holding her, the other hand tracing her body from the base of her spine up to the nape of her neck.

They kissed, joining in a duet of smaller motions. His mouth glissaded down her hardening breasts to her flat, taut belly, descending between her inner thighs.

Drifting easily into a standing position, Drom encircled his hips with her legs. At one with the seas of ancient creation, she murmured, "Ari, please. Now."

She drew him into her as he pressed into her private, unfathomed, inner seas. The lovers twisted, gently pummeling each other with pleasure. The whales glided over, under, and around them forming a lover's bracelet, bonding the Land Walkers and the Sea Dreamers.

The lovers drifted through a wreath of bubbles delivered by the whales as a gift. At times the bubbles lifted them, at others they let them sink. It seemed as though they defied gravity, for the whales had surrounded them and made sure there was a steady stream of bubbles to constantly buoy them. The whales took turns surfacing to get more air. As the pod's ballet continued, the two lovers became more entwined, more in love with each other, more in love with the whales, more in love with a universe that held galaxies of salted water and seas of stars.

 

--

 

The pod quieted and swam across from Ari. He sensed himself alone in the audience of a grand concert hall, facing a choir and orchestra of supreme accomplishment. Ari knew Drom was still beside him and that she too heard the succession of whistles and echoing fluid-throated warbles. He also knew that this song was sung only for him. Drom was a witness to a sacred act in which he was a primal participant.

He knew this was the Ascension Melody. No longer did the song seem discordant. Ari heard with newly tuned ears. This song was as fluid and reaching as all the vast planetary seas. Ari was one with the seas and within them was one with the whales.

Drom saw a shadow as grievously dark as Razorback's mortal blood cross Ari's face. She screamed with the horror of it. This was something worse than the grandfather's death. This was a shadow falling across the future, darkening Ari's path, shadowing her own life in unknown ways. The whales knew much that she did not.

Ari was one with the whales, one with their future, one with their deep destiny. Although he did not move, he sensed himself lifted in some way, as if his soul were ascending up a silver cord to heaven. With his ascent, Ari carried Drom, the whales, and a whole level of being with him.

Although he understood, the enormity of the message was such that he was compelled to weakly question it. "Say you that I am the chosen one?"

"Time will reveal all as you grow."

As the last strains of the Ascension Melody reverberated through the cove, Ari and Drom turned to each other. Drom spoke what Ari knew even better than she, "Our lives have changed from this moment. We have been altered. Things are different.” It was an understatement, bespeaking knowledge Ari did not want to claim, though he knew it was his.

Drom sensed his resistance. "You're fighting yourself. No one can win such a battle."

"I want to be an artist like those of the pod, not a Leader. I want to lose myself in the joy of creation and dance the song of new conceptions. I'll play new music for you and for all who would listen."

Drom sensed things beyond her ken. "You must listen to the song within that you wish not to hear. You are who you are."

Ari saw an image of Nor's distinguished but distant face shimmer in the deep. All the dark depth of the sea was held within those two eyes.

Ari finally put words to the tune he would silence. "I don't want to be the next Administrator."

Internally each biological cell called choosing for him. He must be the Chosen One. He knew it, but he would not speak it. He would not admit it and make it more real.

"Let's watch this miracle while we may." He turned toward the fin whales.

The pod blew a bubble that burgeoned behind the image of Nor. As the air sphere grew, the image expanded with it until it was larger than any other bubble. To Ari it seemed bigger than the sculptures on other planets and cast a shadow more massive.

"It seems to have a human face," said Drom, struggling to recognize what Ari clearly saw. "It seems to be all of us."

"A Leader is all of us," conceded Ari, not disclosing his own private vision, but hinting at it.

A dolphin nudged Ari and Drom's bubble like a child playing ball. It guided them into the large sphere. Ari felt himself pass through his father. He turned, and for a second looked out with his father's eternally blue eyes. Again he saw what he would avoid. He was the chosen one. His father knew; the whales knew; Ari knew.

Ari spoke fighting the feeling, measuring out revelation, "This is truly a secret race, ancient and loving."

Drom shared an aspect of his intuition. "I fear their innocence makes them a perfect target for evil."

"May we always guard them from it as we did today." With those words, Ari unwittingly provided the final tug that cinched his destiny. As much as he would avoid it, he had clearly wished it on himself. Though he did not want to wear the heavy robe of Leadership, he donned it. He shrugged his shoulders, part of it still wishing it would slip away.

Drom added her vow to his. "May it be as you have spoken. We share a sacred privilege."

 

--

 

Ari and Drom came ashore, wobbling a bit as they staggered out of the water and exchanged knowing smiles. Both felt drained but desperately happy. They had shared a unique, breathtaking first.

They sat on the beach looking seaward. The waters close to shore foamed with activity. Ari watched their purposeful movements, wondering if these masters were still creating bubble sculptures. "I'm itching to know what that's about."

He studied them intently. He thought of many complex metaphysical and aesthetic explanations. Then as the pod scraped along the bottom, a realization came to him that cured his curiosity faster than a rash treated with the right balm. "They're scraping dead scales off their skin."

"Any creature who grooms itself has class." Drom said, unconsciously brushing sand from her tapered ankles. "They're justly proud of their appearance and take great care to remove all of the dead skin during molting season by finding coves like this when they migrate."

Ari added his knowledge to hers. They summer in the north and winter in the south. I didn't know you knew so much about whales."

"I didn't, until now. Now I just know."

"Me too." They looked at each other in amazement.

Ari knew this cove like a second home, but analyzed it anew. "This cove is perfect for them. Inshore it's about seven meters deep with a pebbly bottom. The mixture of small round rocks lets them scratch their hides free of barnacles without cutting themselves."

As they watched the whales rub their skins on the rocks, Ari used his powers to communicate with a twin-finned female. She evidently was the Leader. Ari held Yu and Face in his mind and visualized them swimming with the pod. It was his way of asking permission for them to visit.

Ari felt the Leader's reply. "These two friendly Land Walkers are welcome." Her tone shifted, "But no others."

Ari thanked TwoRidge and immediately made a Vid-com call to Yu. Yu's reply was immediate. "Holy Kalkun! Extraordinary! I'm on my way."

Since her presence via Vid-com was second hand, the pod Leader was unlikely to have picked up anything from Yu herself. She might have led the pod away from this stranger. Instead, She warbled contentedly, having intuited Ari's purpose and his pleasure at Yu's response.

"Look. The pod's surrounding a baby. Its belly is so pale. Why would it turn up to the sun?" Drom's voice broke, an agonized wave crashing on a shore of rock shards. “Oh, Goddess! It's dead."