Becoming Mermaids

Chapter 17: The Endless River

Timidly, she returned the song to him in her own tweets and chimes. The whale stopped and listened— listening to her!— and at the appropriate time, responded with a counterpoint. From all corners of the ocean, the song resounded in intricate harmonies.

Maybe Coquette was right, Sam thought. I do have the soul of a mermaid.

* * *

Coquette had been dead, but was no longer dead. Nothing Dr. Tiwana did could have done brought this about, no medical expertise, no matter how skilled. She drowned. She died. Her lungs had been completely full of water, and now she didn't have so much as a rattling cough. Coquette touched her lips, still feeling the kiss that had saved her. It lingered there like a scar, as though she could feel it with her fingertips.

She sat on the gunwale of the speedboat, hunched over her bare feet, leather jacket shrinking and sticking to her skin. The tempest was still running its course. Though helicopters buzzed through the air, there was no way they could have approached or even cornered the small boat. The sea was far too rough. It was a wonder they didn't capsize. Wei-Ting was a phenomenal captain, the best money could buy.

"Nobody's going to know about this," she said to her crew. "As far as you're concerned, the mermaid is a myth." They all nodded. The matter was settled.

Coquette peeled open her wet pocket and pulled out a large, red gemstone on a chain. She closed it in her fist without taking a good look at it. The rough edges cut into her palm. Somewhere out there, Samantha had been forced into a life of solitude— swimming and exploring, all alone. Coquette had done her time— it was only fair that someone else took up the slack. But without the stone, Sam had no hope of return. Just endless seas, forever.

Coquette had half a mind to strip off her clothes, stare into the stone, and jump into the sea. Sam couldn't have gone far— a hundred miles at the most— and Coquette could use her mermaid powers to track her down.

But what if the change happens while Sam is deep underwater? Becoming human at fifty fathoms would be fatal. And even at the surface where the storm raged, it can be hard to keep your head above water. Forty foot waves have a tendency of shoving you back under. Imagine the terror of having your mermaid senses suddenly switch off, to become a naked human being tossed by the pitiless sea. It might take hours, finding her. Hypothermia could settle in.

Coquette put the stone back in her pocket.

* * *

Coquette's staff noticed the change, too. They saw that something was eating away at her. Ever since the great SeaWorld robbery, in which she was rumored to have captured a mermaid for her private aquarium, she'd been moody, lacking the zeal for organized crime that had drawn many of them to her side. Now she just paced the halls of her lair, carved into the walls of an active volcano.

Their suspicions were confirmed when she scaled back her staff and concentrated her resources on a secret project. No one had a full picture of what it was— each team was kept in isolation of the others— but it involved a satellite, launched right under NASA's noses on an abandoned Apollo launch site. After that, she fired just about everybody in the organization.

The next phase involved computer specialists. It was widely believed that she was constructing an artificial mind to enslave the human race, but the closest to the project said it was just image analysis. But it was anybody's guess what she was looking for. These were the darkest times, when she would be seen brooding in front of her mantle of dripping lava. In public, she swung between ecstasy and rages.

Her empire was crumbling, and she didn't seem to give a damn. She became all consumed in her work, laying off the well oiled team of experts she'd gathered around her. Mob boss Kingsley took over most of her old territory and challenged her with a direct ultimatum. She blew him off.