Pacificalia

Bubble City: a term of derision. Hundreds were planned once - great, domed sub-marine enclosures, colonised by a genetically modified population who were to be the salvation of an overextended world. Then, the phaser-field technology that made it possible found a more exciting application. Instead of looking inward, the heaving hoards of Earth took to the stars in their million in phaser-driven bubbles. Abandoned, the Bubble Cities slowly died until only Pacificalia remained,i ts population evolved to life beneath the waves.

Relieved of the grinding pressure, those above who stayed spread out over depopulated continents. Machines indulged their slightest whim. Earth became Utopia. For Pacificalia their Utopia was another Eden.

***

Calandra turned to her companion petulantly. “Topside must be real,” she argued

Adalanta scoffed, tossing her sleek head, "It’s nothing but story, Calandra." She flipped her broad feet in the plunge pool from which they had just emerged.

"It is not!" Calandra exclaimed, the transparent inner eyelids of her eyes drawing back involuntarily in annoyance.

Adalanta laughed, cynically. "Calandra, don’t believe everything the teachers say. A world that is ... dry? Where the fire in the sky cracks your skin? Where you can only crawl around the ground, stuck in one dimension? Grow up. Soon it will be time for your pairing - there’ll be no time for fantasy then." With a graceful backflip she dived into the pool and plunged down and away through the arch to the open ocean, suction podules at thigh and ankle locked, threshing the hairless body through the water with the ease and grace of a dolphin. In one flowing movement Calandra dived into the pool and sped after her friend.

***

Nolon watched the mail-drogue arc over the empty sea. He clicked his fingers and a trolley glided over with another drink. Nolon took a disinterested sip and let it fall to the burning sand as the trolley slid back to retrieve the goblet. It hovered near his elbow, awaiting instructions. Nolon ignored it, walking wearily back into the house.

Inside, he lifted his arms and his robe was taken from him by pneumatic arms, despatched to the laundra-unit and another garment laid out. He lowered himself into the jacuzzi, tired with the effort of doing nothing much and let the probes pummel his body until the sluggish blood began to circulate once more. How many more days until Merilla came back? Three? Four? Who knew? He programmed a meal and sat out on the balcony, looking over the soft curve of the darkening bay. A dispenser trundled up with an aperitif, and the mail-drogue crossed the sky ... again.

***

Calandra caught up with Adalanta just before the shark fence. Nothing but a faint shimmer on the ocean floor, the girls could have gone on – there would have been no danger - but let a shark attempt the passage and it would have been sliced in two. A herd of du-gongs swam heavily in from the opal distance, shepherded by dolphins. Calandra recognised one as Tlik, a jet-black bottlenose belonging to her uncle, and pitched out a greeting. The dolphin wriggled its body in pleasure and whistled in reply. Darting skilfully to all sides the animals guided the du-gongs through the city entrance and into the cave-pens.

Running short of air, Calandra and Adalanta followed them in. They sprawled on the banks of the entrance stream, basking luxuriously in warm air blowing from heat vents set in the wall. "Topside does exist" Calandra said petulantly, continuing her argument.

Adalanta smiled at her friend's persistence. "The Capun will have to talk seriously to you Calandra."

"Well, good!" Calandra responded. "I should like to talk to him as well," she said with a bravado she did not feel, for no-one talked to the Capun in that way. "Why does he talk about Topside then?"

"It’s story!" Adalanta's voice was scornful. She sat up, turning to make the point, but Calandra had gone, snatching off a tunic from the rack in the warm air's drying breeze. She watched her go then turned to bask again, naked. Her pairing was imminent and the men would be back from the plant soon - her developing pseudo-gills fluttered in anticipation.

Tlik nosed out of the stream and gazed after the retreating Calandra with a plaintive cry. "Shoo!" Adalanta pushed his nose away with her foot and the dolphin turned tail, splashing the girl with his flukes as he sped off.

The men were late, and an annoyed Adalanta joined her sisters in the Dining Hall barely in time for the evening meal. The atmosphere was sombre. She sat down hurriedly. "What's wrong?" she asked in a hoarse whisper, speaking to a girl on her left, an unfortunate child whose suction podules had never developed properly, making her a cripple in the water.

"It's Calandra. The Capun has summoned her."

There were only two reasons why anyone was summoned. Calandra was not yet ready for pairing: that left only one reason. Punishment. Adalanta thought of their recent conversation and wondered whether Calandra would now be so forthright in her opinions.

***

With some trepidation Calandra bowed, as was the custom, The Capun’s normally impassive face sombre.

"Calandra." His voice was unexpectedly soft. She looked up fearfully.

"Do you know what 'Pacificalia' means?" he said, rising and laying his hands on her bowed shoulders, drawing her to her feet. "It means ‘Place of Peace’." He cupped a hand under her chin and raised her face. "Do you know why?"

She shook her head.

"It is because only beneath the waves is there tranquillity." Releasing her, he spoke with fervour. "You have been to the surface." A statement, not a question. Most had, if only in bravado. It was a salutary experience - the world above water was alien. The clarity dizzied them, the air dried their throats, the expanse of nothing gripped them with terror, and the fire in the sky scorched their skins. It was an experience elders threatened youngsters with, and an experience those youngsters dared each other with and, having dared and found, rejected.

Calandra nodded again.

"You have been to the surface ... and yet you still speak favourably of Topside." It was an accusation. She bit her lip.

"Remember your lessons Calandra" the Capun continued. "Your soul sinks to the Trench ... if you live righteously. If you pull against the general good, then your soul burns in Topside for eternity, your skin cracks and blisters, your lips swell and burn, and your body crawls on its belly on burning sand for eternity. Is that what you want, Calandra?"

"No!" Calandra almost shouted. The rhetoric, learned by rote, was meaningless, the denial a rejection. "No, your Honour, I cannot believe in a Topside like that!" She gasped, shocked.

The Capun straightened, his eyes widened in surprise. Calandra stiffened and tilted her chin defiantly. "Your Honour, forgive me ... I have seen The Log." Then her nerve failed and she dropped her head again.

There was silence as the Capun stared at Calandra's trembling but defiant form and steepled his fingers, considering. Then he stood. "Come" he said, decisively. He looked back

at her impatiently. "Come, child!" Obediently, she followed.

***

Nolon watched the mail-drogue pass again, then it flashed and his message indicator lit. The message was disappointingly brief. Merilla's head and shoulders smiled out. "Hi" she said. "I'm staying longer. Alinor has this marvellous new dream-machine. The latest. We're all off to build the Pyramids again. See you soon". The screen blanked.

Nolon cursed. Alinor and her damn dream-machines! He shouted fiercely for a drink, dragged out a Vid-ex and hooked in.

***

Few people had seen the Capun's private quarters. Calandra looked around wide-eyed. He unlocked a cupboard and lifted out an ancient tome."The Log" he said, laying it on a table. "You know what this is, Calandra?"

"Yes," she replied quoting her lessons. "The Book of the Beginning."

"That's right, Calandra, but what is it? What purpose does it serve? You say you have read it."

"Parts only, your Honour. It was confusing. There was little time." She looked shamefaced. "It was at the last Parading in the Story Hall ... I hid away. When the procession left I had a few minutes to read before the Guards came to take it away. I should not have desecrated The Log, but I have to ... understand." She looked down at the closed book and said quietly. "It's all about Topside, isn't it?"

The Capun motioned Calandra to pull up a chair. "What do you know about Topside, Calandra?"

" I know what the teachers say. I know that people should not speak of Topside. Topside is purgatory." She swallowed and raised her chin defiantly. "I do not believe it."

He regarded her gravely. "For one so young you have a sharp tongue in your head ... and a wise one.” His long fingers tapped the cover. "None but the Capun should read The Log, Calandra."

Calandra nodded, miserably.

"So, what does that make you?"

"A ... heretic, your Honour. A body to be consigned to Topside for eternity." The lessons rolled off her tongue.

The Capun smiled. "Except that you do not believe in a Topside like that. No. What it means, Calandra, is that you are privileged. Read."

She stared.

He nodded sagely. "Read."

***

The Vid-ex snapped off, leaving Nolon struggling to maintain a hold on reality. What Alinor's new machine must be like was not hard to imagine. ‘We’, Merilla had said. The new Vid must be group-interactive. A party could now act out a vicarious other-life. Soon Vid-experience would supplant reality. He had no word for it, but Nolon realised at that moment that he was BORED. He stared at the blank screen unseeing, while the household machines went about their anonymous tasks. He slept, and a cover against the chill night drew across him from the arms of the chair.

He awoke stiff and unrefreshed, to find a trolley at his elbow with breakfast ready and prepared. Something in him snapped. He stormed outside. The trolley buzzed, hesitated, and offered its tray to Nolon's empty chair. He came back wielding a metal rod filched from the Auto-repair shed and, systematically, demolished every machine in the house.

When he had finished, he looked around at the carnage, fell to his knees ... and screamed.

***

Calandra finished reading. Throughout, the Capun had sat opposite assessing her with narrowed eyes. She noticed this vaguely as she read of man's Descent from Topside, of the Great Evacuation, of the Withdrawal, of the Abandonment ... and the Rejection: the Final Isolation. Topside had consigned its children to the Deep as utterly as it had condemned itself to eternity's ennui.

She closed the book and looked up with awe-struck eyes behind which a gleam of triumph shone, apparent to the Capun’s penetrating gaze. He took The Log, locking it away."You will have understood only one fraction of what you have read, Calandra."

Calandra said nothing, but what she had understood she understood very well. Topside did exist! Not in some fire-swept, arid world of the imagination, but a world of the here and now. She looked to the Capun and said, simply, "Why?"

"Why? Why what, Calandra? Why the deceit? Why ... you? You will understand in time. What you must understand now is the path you have chosen." He rang a bell and a servant appeared bearing food and drink, regarding Calandra with respectful awe. "Eat" he said. "You will not be returning to your Sorority Hall."

While she ate, he paced the chamber, explaining with urgent words the reason for Calandra's summons. She did not accept blindly what her peers took for truth. Her questioning nature had not gone unnoticed. In the mind of Pacificalia's people Topside had become a terror, that none but the few questioned. Calandra, the Capun told her, was one of those few, as he had been. "Those who question," he said, "must lay the ghost of their own beliefs ... for the greater good. As all good Capuns must." He stressed the last point.

Slowly the import dawned on Calandra.

"Yes, Calandra" he said quietly. "You must go Topside for your own peace of mind but, more importantly, so that the City's beliefs are not shattered by impossible dreams. The rhetoric is not for nothing. Topside abandoned us, Calandra. You, of all people, must experience Topside - and come back, to guide our people. You, Calandra, will be the Capun." He paused, seeing her thunderstruck face. "In time, Calandra. When I am dead."

Calandra suddenly lost her appetite and the maturity that she had assumed that evening shrank away.

"No, Calandra. There is no turning back now. You will stay here until I have taught you many things you must know. But first you must go Topside. That is the destiny of every Capun." He rang the bell again and the same servant appeared. "Now, sleep. We will talk in the morning." He nodded and the servant led a pensive Calandra away.

"Calandra!"

She turned and the Capun looked at her with an amused smile.

"The Log. Why do you think it was left unguarded?"

***

Nolon slumped on the porch looking hopelessly over the manicured gardens. With the central control panel smashed, the tillers had stalled. Other automats lashed around, their logic circuits shorted, sparks buzzing from ruined housings. Slowly, the house died. Soon, there was no sound but the breeze rattling through the palm trees and the insistent lap of wave on shore.

He staggered away into open countryside: an instinctive reaction to escape a structured but pointless existence, to experience life outside the comfortable confines of the Vid-ex. The Vid-ex was a passive, milk-sop thing. He wanted to live. At last he stopped, chest heaving with emotion and exertion, letting the morning air rasp into his lungs, and fell to his knees exulting. He was free. He turned his back on it all and walked off into the hills.

***

Calandra turned to see the safety of Pacificalia falling away behind her, then faced above and swam, breaking surface with a flourish. The harsh blue abyss above gripped her with the irrational fear of falling, of suction podules failing to mesh, of being drawn inexorably up until her lungs were crushed by the blackness of oblivion. The initial contact was always worst. It would pass. Slowly, she trod water, letting the swell of waves toss her like flotsam. Full circle there was nothing to be seen but ocean. She struck out in the direction that the Capun had instructed, carrying only a probe-lance as protection against the sharks and a knife as last resort. She would be two days on the journey. The mark would be a conical mound seen on the horizon. Topside.

***

Nolon gained the top of the hill with a tortured rasping of lungs, breaking through the trees into direct sunlight and collapsing exhausted. Gradually, he brought his breathing under control. A burble of running water caught his attention and he crawled further to find a spring bubbling into the watershed on the opposite side of the hill. He dipped in a cupped hand and drank. His eyes followed the course of the stream until it disappeared into the forest, splashing and gurgling over rocks in its downward frenzy, its line apparent in the mass of trees as a deep slash in the forest cover. It emerged far to the north in a flat, grassy, plain receding, dim with distance, to the beach. Beyond, the sea was infinity - a mere extension of the sky- and he bowed his head, conscious of the fly-speck of his existence. He had cut himself off entirely from his world. Panic-stricken, he fled, following the stream down the hill, vying with it in its frenzied dash to the ocean, skidding down the skree, his legs lacerated from the sharp rocks that littered the steep hillside. Night fell, yet still he ran until he sank exhausted behind a rock on the banks of the torrent. He wept as darkness drew a blanket over his shuddering body.

Morning found him calmer. The stream, which had appeared to roar savagely the previous day, now murmured across its pebbled bed. He bathed his legs, letting the water soothe the sores and wash away the filth, and drank deeply, plunging his head under the surface and then sank back on the rocky outcrop, considering. His first priority was food. He hadn't eaten for over twenty-four hours, but there would be no, no machine to serve him now. He had no conception of survival outside the confines of his own home however many Vid-ex scenes he could call to mind. Animals he had heard aplenty in his flight. Apart from birds, he had seen none, and would not have known how to cook them if caught. Fruit! Fruit grew in the garden. It must grow naturally. Wildly, he looked around. He found that he was sitting in a depression in the hillside, bisected by the stream, with the summit towering above. Scree cascaded down on either side, providing no purchase for vegetation. The tree line started further down. It was there that he must go. He scrambled to his feet and slithered down the slope.

***

Calandra revelled in skimming the surface as the day wore on, the tireless action of her coupled legs thrusting through the water effortlessly. She feasted on oysters, teasing the shells apart with her knife. She soared and dived with the exuberance of youth, alarming the fish with her inquisitive questing. But she never forgot her purpose. She spent the night in a cave, dispossessed of its inhabitant by the probe-lance.

In the morning, as the day drew on, the thickening clouds solidified and the swell surged higher. Calandra dived to calmer water well below surface, making it necessary to surface for air more often. The waves buffeted her and she stayed on the surface no longer than necessary, and she was tiring quickly. At the height of the storm she surfaced wearily,

but had no sooner raised her head above water than it was struck from behind by a storm-tossed log. She threw up her hands in defence and entwined her arm in the twisted roots. Clinging semi-conscious to the water-logged trunk, she drifted with the tide through the night, conserving her strength.

As suddenly as it had started, the storm abated, and the fire in the sky seemed to calm the waters. Exhausted and her probe-lance gone - lost during the night, she hauled herself atop the log and anchored her limbs amongst the twisted roots. The fire in the sky beat down on her body, warming it. Gradually, she relaxed and eventually slept, waking to a calm sea, but her back burning and head throbbing with pain, her lips swollen and cracked: the symptoms of damnation. She rolled off the log. Immediately, her back was soothed as the cool ocean bathed her dehydrated body. She broke surface again to gulp air and her discomfort was forgotten: bobbing on the far horizon was a conical mound. Topside!

***

Nolon gorged himself on the fruit growing in the fringes of the forest. As he sheltered from the sun in the shade of a large mango tree the mail drogue passed over, flashing, He laughed, madly. Try as it might no message would be delivered. He stood and waved his arms at the machine, throwing the remains of a mango after it. "Build your Pyramids, Merilla!" he shouted. "I will build a world." He felt justified in the boast. He had survived one night in open countryside, in the flesh. No Vid-ex for Nolon. Nolon was master of his destiny. He picked up a fallen branch, lashed at the foliage in the undergrowth and ran off downstream, striking out as he ran. He finally emerged onto the flat coastal plain, fringed in the distance with the white sand of the shore. The clouds of the dissipating storm far out to sea whisped up into the sky and the distant roar of surf echoed like thunder. He sank down against the bole of a tree and drank in the view with fearful eyes. What now?

***

Calandra struck out with renewed vigour until Topside encompassed the whole of the horizon, the colours uncompromisingly alien. Harsh greens, bright coral-whites, volcanic browns and reds, vibrating in the coruscating light of the Great Abyss. The mound towered above until she felt that it was falling and she sank down in the ocean, taking comfort in its security. The swirl of the shallowing water billowed around her feet as they touched bottom, the waves thrusting her eagerly forward, then drawing her back again. Tendrils of kelp clutched her ankles, reluctant to let go as she waded through the breaking rollers in increasing wonder. She fell, and the thrust of the ocean spreadeagled her, pushing her insistently onto the shore. She staggered upright and immediately felt her body sag. She felt excruciatingly encumbered, sinking to her knees then collapsing on her stomach, groping her way forward, biting off agonised sobs as the grit grated her tender body. But, even through the discomfort, a quiet nub of satisfaction grew. She had made it to Topside!

***

There were no fruiting trees as Nolon approached the coastal plain and the pangs of hunger were beginning to gnaw again. To someone who had never experienced hunger, the sensation was unpleasant. He returned to the stream to drink, the cold water temporarily assuaging his hunger. The few small animals he had seen easily evaded his clumsy pursuit and he was getting tired. He rested by the stream looking out to sea and remembered an old Vid-ex where the hero had ridden out a storm, to be cast away on a remote island. The difference was, in the Vid-ex the hero - Nolon - had the skills to survive. Nolon in real-time, had none.

He remembered suddenly that in the Vid-ex there had been turtles which had laid eggs in the sand, in distinctive pits. He could picture them now. The sensation as the warm yolks

spattered yellow down the hero's chin was sensual and Nolon's mouth watered at the memory. Sand and turtle eggs were equated in his mind. He gave no thought to breeding cycles – they were outside his knowledge. He stumbled off in search.

***

Away from the crashing surf Calandra became aware of other sensations. The air was full of strange cries and pungent aromas and she sensed the presence of fresh water. The stream gurgled across the sand in a deep urgent channel eroding the banks which periodically 'plopped' into the churning water. Gratefully, she half-crawled, half-walked over to the channel and slid down the collapsing banks. Instantly her body was soothed and buoyed-up, but almost as instantly chilled to the bone in the icy water. She scrambled out and lay sprawled, gasping, racked with the terror of Topside. She would have plunged back into the ocean and fled but for the small inner voice that called her stubbornly to go on. She raised her head and scrabbled quickly to the cool glade from which the stream issued, where she collapsed in the heavy undergrowth.

***

Nolon was delirious with fear and excitement. He staggered over the sand, dragging his branch. His two-day growth of beard, shredded clothing and staring red-rimmed eyes gave his face a manic appearance. His search took him far away from the stream, and behind a spit of sand spilling out into the breakers. He dug frantically in every dip and hollow, scouring the sand for any sign of turtle eggs, scoop marks, drag marks. The spit took him to the edge of the ocean and he walked into the breakers, searching for what he had no idea. He lifted his gaze to sea and his attention was caught by a momentary glimpse of something black cruising along behind the waves, but then the rollers mounded and it was lost to sight. He was still looking when his feet found the stream. The scouring action of the waves had dug a pit where the two bodies of water met and Nolon fell helpless into the tempestuous pool. He disappeared beneath the surface.

***

Calandra's body ached. The air parched her throat, the light bored into her eyes and the dryness set her nerve-ends tingling. The cacophony of noises confused her and she cradled her head in misery. The rest, however, had brought back enough strength to let her find some object, some sign, to take back to prove that she had been Topside and returned ... wiser and ready to accept. Almost anything would do. All was so alien. She pulled herself up slowly ... and then froze.

The glimpse had been brief, but she had seen, towards the mouth of the stream, a movement. Then it was gone. She fingered her knife, hesitantly. Her gaze flickered briefly seawards and discounted the movement she discerned there - a shark fin close inshore, perhaps a piece of flotsam - she was more concerned with the vision she had first glimpsed.

***

Nolon floundered, swallowed water, coughed and breathed in. It was the branch that saved him. In shock his fingers clutched it as the waves threw him into the shallower water of the stream. The branch caught fast in the crumbling banks as his feet scraped bottom. Spluttering, he clawed his way out of the channel retching. Breathing heavily, he crawled on to escape the encroaching waves. Suddenly, his hands encountered loose sand, and it was some moments before his mind registered the different texture. In front, he saw tracks, leading along the collapsing banks of the stream, up toward the tree line. Scuffling tracks, made by something crawling on its belly, something shuffling laboriously with outstretched limbs.

He raised his head and laughed a crazy laugh, hauling himself to his feet and staggered in pursuit of the wavering tracks. He hefted his branch and whooped as he stumbled over the clinging sand towards the trees.

Horrified, Calandra watched the apparition rise from the sand. It was the stuff of nightmares. A slack-mouthed creature clothed in rags howled as it bounded heavily over the sand with a speed that Calandra found unbelievable. It brandished a thick stem over its knobbly head as it advanced, its feet churning the sand. Fiery eyes glared from a demonic face, framed by thick strands of a lank substance like the tassels on the Log's lectern cloth, swaying from side to side as it ran, dripping water in a steady stream. She wanted to run, but couldn't move, fascinated but terrified by the approaching demon. It appeared human but incredibly disfigured, with skin as brown as a Leatherback's carapace. At last she overcame her torpor and moved to draw back into the cover of the surrounding bushes, but her foot caught in hidden roots and she sprawled full length on the ground.

The movement caught Nolon's eye and he increased his shambling run, confident in his discovery: Nolon the Mighty Hunter! He burst through into the clearing with a yell of triumph just as the creature raised its streamlined head. Its bulbous eyes swivelled in terror as it opened its mouth and screamed. The ululation rebounded from the trees in a thousand echoes. Nolon reacted instinctively. He shrieked himself in morbid fear at the creature confronting him, and brought the branch down over its head in a clubbing blow, once, twice, three times, until the screams choked off.

He levered the creature over, and dug frantically in the sand where it had been lying. Nothing. No eggs. Nothing. He screamed his rage and frustration and raised the club again. Then he looked at the unfamiliar, sallow-skinned body lying discarded and broken, smelt the pungent odour of blood on his hands and realised that he had been the cause of death. He vomited and convulsively threw the club away. Without a backward glance he stumbled away, splashed across the filling stream and shambled, sobbing, across the beach, fleeing around the headland from reality.

As the tide swept along the shore, the stream backed up and the beach was left empty, save for the bleeding body sprawled on the banks of the torrent.

***

Little by little, the sand crumbled away into the surging water as the sea reclaimed its own and Calandra slid down the crumbling banks. The cleansing water washed away the blood and swirled her body seawards ... where it was caught by a gentle mouth and tugged softly towards the ocean. She stirred, and moved her arms in automatic response to the motion of the water. Opening her eyes painfully she looked straight into the limpid eye of the dolphin that chittered concernedly as it struggled to drag her away. "Tlik" she murmured, then lost consciousness again as Topside receded far, far into the distance.

***

Nolon staggered across the beach, recognising landmarks as he went. He turned one more headland and was home. He collapsed to his knees and watched the auto-repair unit insert a circuit board into one of the garden tillers. It limped on to the auto-bar and tinkered quickly. The auto-bar jittered, swivelled and advanced, proffering a jigger of iced drink. Nolon took it numbly. Vacant-eyed he walked into the house, dialled up a meal and savagely dragged out a Vid-ex.

***

Clinging to the back of Tlik, Calandra did not see the cone of Topside sink below the horizon. But she had realised her destiny. No more would she question her people's beliefs. Topside was forever a place of the damned, a savage, uncompromising horror that should never be allowed to disturb her people's equanimity. The tranquillity of Pacificalia was assured.