Shell Song

By Phill Campbell

When Dionia arrives on the water world of Melusine she meets Hyle, the leader of a group of human colonists inhabiting an atoll city. The Melusines have adapted to an amphibious existence, but what has caused their genome to alter so quickly? And what is the secret of their symbiotic relationship with the mysterious Polyp? Hyle's people are involved in a territorial war with the merrows, a race of fierce amphibious reptiles. It is the time of the inundation, when the conjunction of the planet's two moons triggers the merrows' reproductive cycle and they rise from the ocean depths to spawn. The merrows are determined to reclaim their ancient breeding grounds from the colonists. The mysterious Shell has been lost on the ocean floor and the atoll city is defenceless without it. Drawn into the conflict by her feelings for Hyle, Dionia is plunged into a series of perilous adventures when she undertakes the quest to rescue the Shell and return it to the city. Dionia joins forces with Hressa, a female merrow. Hressa aids Dionia on her quest, and helps her to understand that the merrows are not monsters but an intelligent species with their own cultural heritage. Dionia is hiding her own secret, for she possesses mental abilities that are prohibited on her own world. On Melusine these abilities are a precious gift for they will enable her to control the Shell. But the Shell already has a Keeper - the jealous, tormented Katira; and violence erupts in a final dramatic confrontation between the two women. The Shell has a unique solution to end the war between the two species - a solution that has startling implications for humanity's future. But will Dionia manage to survive her own personal transformation?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phill Campbell
• Release date: Apr 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301604326

Phill Campbell

UK resident. Artist, illustrator and writer, with a Fine Art degree from Liverpool University. Sings tenor with the Manchester Lesbian and Gay Chorus (MLGC). Interests include: Golden Age SF, comparative religions, anthropology and shamanism. Has won several short story awards and competitions; has also had work published and performed on stage. Is currently writing and illustrating the sequel to Shell Song.

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SHELL SONG

Phill Campbell

Copyright 2013 Phill Campbell

Smashwords Edition

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1. MEMNON

Chapter 2. MELUSINE

Chapter 3. ANCHORAGE

Chapter 4. HRESSA

Chapter 5. KATIRA

Chapter 6. ENDURANCE

Chapter 7. DESCENT

Chapter 8. ABYSS

Chapter 9. DUEL

Chapter 10. POLYP

Chapter 11. ENLIGHTENMENT

Chapter 12. TRANSFORMATION

Chapter 13. EDEN

CHAPTER I

MEMNON

Dionia opened her eyes upon darkness. She lay still, realising from the absence of sound that the main drive had shut down and the ship was in orbit around Melusine. Her cabin felt oddly empty without the comforting subliminal hum.

The dreams had woken her as usual; and as usual she couldn’t remember what they were about. They eluded her grasp like darting fish, diving down to some uncharted level of her mind, deep beyond all soundings, where they melted into darkness and were gone.

She sighed and moved restlessly in the bed, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to sleep unless she took a sedative. She reached up and touched the varilux unit on the headboard, tuning the light to a soft golden glow that soothed her stinging eyes.

She leaned for the strip of tablets on her bedside locker but her hand stopped of its own volition before it reached them. Drugs were not the answer to her problem. The sedatives stopped her from dreaming, but she woke feeling tired and drowsy, as if her sleep had done her no good at all. She had to accept that her subconscious mind was trying to bring her problems into focus and that she was resisting it.

She slid out of bed and entered the hygiene compartment. Stepping under the impulse shower, she doused herself with ice-cold water, gasping as the needle sprays stung her skin. She added a shot of mentholated cleanser, closed her eyes, and inhaled the energising vapour.

Once the air-jets had buffed her dry she stepped out of the compartment, pulled on a clean pair of coveralls and belted them firmly around her narrow waist. Catching sight of her reflection in the mirror panel she paused for a moment, regarding it with objective appraisal. She saw a thin, pale face, with the bones showing beneath translucent skin. A succession of restless nights had shadowed her eyes, but even without this she was no beauty and she knew it. Her hair was the colour of silver-gilt, as smooth and short as a boy’s. Her grey eyes had a subtle, penetrative quality; and her small features and slender build bestowed the outward appearance of fragility.

She palmed the lock on the doorplate and stepped into the corridor, intending to review Melusine’s specifications in the main lab. Dionia’s inner restlessness had ruled out a planet-bound occupation – she had chosen to enlist with the science survey corps instead. She had served as an assistant technician on Memnon for over one standard year. The ship was a huge mobile laboratory-complex that had travelled halfway across the quadrant, recording and analysing scientific data. Dionia found her routine tasks boring and meaningless, but they left her mind free to explore her inner life of intensely vivid thoughts and emotions. Although she enjoyed seeing new worlds with their inexhaustible variety of life-forms, each time the ship reached a new planet she experienced an odd sense of anticlimax, as if something for which she had unconsciously been searching had eluded her once more.

Connor was in the lab when she arrived. The exobiologist was stooping over one of the data-screens, scanning a readout. He straightened up as she entered.

‘What’s wrong, Dionia? Couldn’t you sleep?’

Dionia was not on intimate terms with any of her colleagues. Her pathological fear of revealing her hidden abilities prevented her from forming emotional attachments to her crew-mates. Apart from a few initial overtures by some of the male crew members, she had been left pretty much to herself. Connor was the one exception. The XB was a genial giant, with a dark bushy beard, gentle brown eyes, and oddly delicate hands for a man of his size. Dionia found his quiet strength of character reassuring, and instinctively sensed that she could trust him. Although she had never confided her troubles to him, she felt relatively at ease in his company.

She responded with a smile and a quick shake of her head, and then descended the short ramp that led down to the hologram pit. The rim of the pit was waist-high, curved over and inwards to shield the emitters lining the inner walls. She pressed a stud, and the air above the pit curdled with a fog of micro-particles suspended in a force-field bubble. The emitters flicked into life, projecting a 3D image of Melusine’s surface onto the cloud of reflective particles.

Dionia studied the image that swam in the air before her. Melusine was a water-world – a radiant, blue-green globe swirling with jewel-colours. She could distinguish strings of islands, atolls and reefs, but there were no major land-masses; only a thin haze of whiteness that marked the polar ice-caps.

She leaned over the monitor screen embedded in the wall, keyed in a request for information, and scanned the glowing strings of words and symbols that flowed across the screen.

According to the data collected by Memnon’s scanners, Melusine was the third planet of the G-type star, Alecto. Its surface was composed of 98% water and most of its landmass was submerged. The combined pull of the planet’s two moons wove a complex web of tidal currents that resulted in the remaining areas of dry land being frequently inundated.

The globe dissolved in a shimmer of light as the emitters changed their focus. The airborne particles eddied and swirled, and she found herself gazing at a scene of breathtaking beauty.

A limitless expanse of ocean stretched away into a blue haze of distance. The water was stained with colourful blooms of algae – brilliant splotches of scarlet, purple and green, as if a child had emptied the contents of its paint box into the sea. On the right of the image, two rock-spires towered a hundred metres into the air, their surfaces cracked and splintered by centuries of weathering. Hardy lichens and clumps of vegetation clung to fissures in the rock faces, and colonies of black-winged avians squabbled and roosted on their ledges. The image was so vivid and immediate that Dionia felt as though she could step inside it. Her imagination supplied the information that was lacking – the cries of the birds, the smell of the ocean, and the feel of the wind on her face. As she gazed at the image a vague feeling of premonition stirred in her mind, but it vanished before she could analyse it, leaving her shaken by its momentary intensity.

Connor left his post and stood beside her, gazing at the image.

‘It’s beautiful. Completely wild and free – a world that will never be tamed by the hand of Man. You know, I sometimes wonder if what we’re doing is right. We have this insatiable need to push outwards, to colonise and conquer, riding roughshod over anything that stands in our way – anything that isn’t strong enough to stand up for itself. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that different doesn’t mean inferior; and that every life-form, however humble, has the right to a free existence. How can Man ever find his true place in the universe without tolerance and understanding?’

Dionia swung round on him. Her face was flushed, her mouth set in a bitter line.

‘You should try looking closer to home before you start worrying about wider issues,’ she said. ‘How do you expect Man to extend compassion to other species when it can’t even accept those among its own kind that deviate from its precious norm?’

Connor blinked with surprise at her uncharacteristic outburst.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why certain individuals are segregated due to a natural mutation that society fears and distrusts.’

‘Psi abilities?’

‘Would you describe the way they are treated as tolerant?’

‘But they are integrated into society – they perform a valuable function. Psi contact between human relays is the only method of real-time interstellar communication we have.’

‘You mean they’re herded into those training schools, where their abilities are exploited instead of being allowed to develop along natural lines. Humanity has always feared what it doesn’t understand. I would rather …’

The look on his face told he she had said too much. She turned away from him, struggling to regain her composure. She couldn’t afford to give way to such revealing outbursts. She had been on the verge of a disastrous self-betrayal. Poor Connor hadn’t expected such a violent response to his innocent remarks. Her bitterness might be understandable to someone who knew the truth about her, but she hadn’t taken the XB into her confidence. Her sudden flash of anger had bewildered him.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended, you Dionia.’

‘I’m the one who ought to apologise. I had no right to speak to you like that. No one can accuse you of lacking tolerance or understanding."

He smiled at her, the corners of his eyes and mouth crinkling into kindly lines. Dionia was tempted to lower her guard and confide in him. It would be a relief to share the burden of her difference instead of always carrying it alone. But fear held her back. She valued Connor’s good opinion too much to risk losing it. She retreated behind the defensive shield of detachment she had built up over the years, like a soft-bodied crustacean hiding beneath its armoured shell. When she spoke again, her voice was cool and controlled.

‘When will the drones return to the ship?’

‘Any time now. The download’s almost finished.

The swarm of sensor-drones was the main weapon in Memnon’s data-collecting arsenal. The self-powered, metre-long ovoids could analyse any alien environment. Apart from the visual images they transmitted to the ship, the drones recorded ambient temperature, atmospheric pressure and background radiation, as well as a myriad other variables. The safety-conscious had always argued that since the drones were capable of collecting all the required information, there was no need for the crew to expose themselves to unnecessary danger. But such warnings were routinely ignored.

Dionia was an exception to the rule. Although she did not lack physical courage, once she had viewed the transmitted images she usually lost interest, preferring to stay in the womb of the ship while her colleagues explored the planet’s surface. She enjoyed the sense of solitude – the empty labs humming with untapped power; the absence of sharp-edged human psyches that rasped against her increasingly sensitive awareness; the lack of noise and bustle, and the temporary relief from the constant fear of self-betrayal. But Dionia’s brief glimpse of Melusine had convinced her that this time she needed to visit the planet herself.

With a final surge of strength, Hyle lifted himself over the edge of the cliff and stood upright on the squared-off summit of Finger Rock. The wind, from which the bulk of the cliff had shielded him during his climb, struck full against his body, chilling his skin as the sweat of his exertion evaporated. The climb to the summit was difficult and dangerous, and even the most foolhardy of his people seldom attempted it. But the effort of concentration demanded by the climb had cleared his mind of the problems that beset it; and here, at the summit of his world, he felt strangely light and free.

He revelled in the feel of the wind against his naked body, living completely in the present, untroubled by thoughts of past or future. The smell of the ocean was strong in his nostrils, filling his lungs with a rush of pure, untainted air, and he could hear the thunder of surf against the rocks far below. A flock of ariels swirled through the air above, him, voicing shrill calls of alarm. He flung his head back to watch them, marvelling how their narrow bodies balanced on the updraught, suspended between the black-feathered vanes of their wings.

A sharp rattle of falling stone sounded from the cliff behind him. With one swift, fluid movement, Hyle whirled and sank down on one knee, whipping a bone-hilted dagger from a sheath at his waist, drawing it back in readiness for a killing thrust. Peering cautiously over the edge of the cliff, his eyes met those of the creature that had followed him, and his face broke into a smile of affection.

‘Gar,’ he said. ‘I told you to stay behind. This climb is too risky. You could have fallen and hurt yourself.’

The shining eyes in the grey-furred face gazed up at him reproachfully, and the merdog’s mouth opened, revealing pointed white teeth and a black tongue. A series of sharp, coughing barks told Hyle what his companion thought of his orders; and the man shook his head in exasperated amusement.

‘Come on then; you can’t give up now.’

Gar’s whole body drooped with defeat as he gazed sadly at the warrior’s face. Hyle laughed at the merdog’s duplicity, knowing full well that Gar was aggrieved at being left behind, and wanted to he helped up the last step of the way for no other reason than to make his erring friend feel guilty.

Hyle leaned over the edge of the cliff and extended his hand, stretching the interdigital webbing into a pale fan. The merdog grinned at him slyly, and placed one black-webbed paw in the proffered hand. Hyle exerted his strength and hauled the merdog up beside him. Gar sank onto his haunches, regarding him with such complacency at having scored a point that Hyle roared with laughter. His face shed its habitual worried frown, and for a few moments he looked surprisingly youthful.

Gar was a powerful animal. His streamlined body was heavily muscled and covered with a thick pelt of water-repellent fur. Large intelligent eyes were set in a domed forehead above a black-nosed muzzle, armed with an array of carnivorous teeth. His paws were furnished with black claws; and his long muscular tail, which he used to steer himself through the water, doubled as a weapon. As a companion, he was loyal, courageous and intelligent. He also had a mischievous sense of humour that delighted in playing tricks on his human comrades. His close friendship with the merdog was one of the best things in the young warrior’s life.

Hyle got to his feet. Followed by the merdog, he made his way across the top of the cliff to the Dome. The summit of Finger Rock had been sheared off at some time in the past, creating a level space on which hardy grasses and creeping plants had taken root. In the middle of this space stood the Dome. It shone dazzlingly white against the azure sea and sky, its smooth surface immune to weathering and corrosion.

Hyle sat down with his back against the Dome and gazed out to sea, while Gar settled down on his haunches and began to groom his fur. Hyle caught the thought-current from the merdog’s mind – a deep rumble of contentment, like a snore from a peaceful sleeper. The sun was warm on the warrior’s bare skin, and he felt the accumulated tensions of the day dissolving. Against his back he felt a faint, rhythmical vibration. Turning round, he placed his ear against the surface of the Dome and listened to the pulse of the mighty engine that gave light and power to the city of Ys. With a smile at his own childishness, he placed the palm of his hand against his bare chest, feeling the echoing beat of his heart. He remembered climbing up here on the day his mother had been killed by a sabrefin, hiding from the rough sympathy of the other warriors, seeking solitude in which to grieve alone. On that day his heartbeat had seemed a fragile thing, so easily stopped … as his mother’s had been. Yet the eternal heartbeat of Ys had comforted him in the first sharp emptiness of his loss. It had seemed constant and unchanging, as dependable as the pull of the tides or the courses of the stars – beyond the sadness of human frailty. But now he was older he knew that this sense of continuity was an illusion. All things were subject to change, even the miraculous machines installed by their forebears. And the city of Ys, of which he was now the war-leader, was facing a peril greater than any it had known before.

Hyle glanced up at the sky, as if his eyes could pierce the blue film of daylight and see into the darkness of space. When night fell, he knew what he would see in the heavens – the conjunction of this planet’s two moons, which occurred only once every seven years. That deadly pattern in the night sky warned his people that it was the time of the Inundation, when the city would be submerged, and the merrows would rise from the depths of the ocean to launch their final attack.

Sensing Hyle’s fear, Gar abandoned his grooming and projected a thought-current of concern and reassurance into his friend’s mind. The merdog’s dark-golden eyes regarded him gravely, for Gar too was aware of the danger. The fierce, reptilian merrows were the hereditary foes of his people. The merdogs had been hunted almost to the point of extinction before the humans had arrived on Melusine, and Gar’s people had found themselves new and powerful allies. Now the two races were inseparable, and they shared the same danger. Hyle and Gar were so attuned at this moment that they scarcely needed the empathic thought-current to unite them. They were both seasoned warriors, prepared to fight to the death to save Ys from destruction.

Together they went to the edge of the cliff and gazed down at the atoll-city. In the afternoon haze it looked as fragile and radiant as a magical toy. When Hyle considered the forces that were ranged against it, he wondered how it could hope to survive.

The curved coral arms of the sea-walls, connected to the base of Finger Rock, shone dazzlingly white in the sunshine, sheltering the sapphire oval of the lagoon. The Melusines’ dwelling-pods were clustered on their inner walls. From this height they resembled grains of sand left behind by the outgoing tide. The water level was higher than usual – another sign of the impending Inundation – and most of the pods were submerged. Their inhabitants breathed a constant supply of fresh air delivered by their forebears’ ingenious machines. Few signs of activity were visible in the lagoon. Most of the warriors were out hunting for food or patrolling the shallows, keeping a sharp look-out for raiding parties of merrows. The city of Ys sheltered no more than two hundred and fifty humans and a small colony of merdogs. The numbers of both had dwindled over the years, for many of them had fallen defending the city. Straining his eyes, Hyle discerned a group of armed warriors guarding the sea-gates that led to the deep ocean realms. Down there, in the submarine city of Sedna, the merrows were preparing to migrate to the surface as the time of their spawning approached. The city of Sedna was impregnable, guarded by shoals of warrior males and defended by the appalling pressure of the deep, which neither merdogs nor humans could withstand. In the past that had not mattered, for the Shell had protected the city; but now …

Hyle sighed, knowing that unless some unlikely miracle occurred, Ys was doomed. Gazing down at the white-walled city far below, he felt a deep surge of pity for the courageous colonies of merdogs and humans that lived there. It was unbearably tragic that the last beacon of human hope on this planet should be extinguished, and at this moment the burden of his responsibility weighed heavily on him. But the people of Ys needed a strong leader, not one who was crippled by self-doubt, and he could not fail them in their hour of need. Only here, on the summit of Finger Rock with Gar, who understood him better than anyone else, could he indulge in the momentary luxury of despair.

A subtle stirring in his mind told him that the Polyp symbiote that shared his body was responding to a distant threat of danger. A storm was brewing out at sea, caused by the freakish weather conditions preceding the Inundation. Hyle’s inner link with the planet-wide Polyp colonies enabled him to predict natural variations in the climate, and for several days he had been aware of a growing sense of uneasiness as his symbiote responded to the changes triggered by the conjunction.

Hyle knew that he had stayed here too long. He must prepare the army to face the merrows’ attack, which would occur within the next few days. He was about to descend the cliff when Gar barked sharply, and a moment later the merdog’s mental warning reached his mind. Hyle whirled and found himself confronted by something so alien to all his experience that he froze in disbelief, uncertain how to react.

A shining ovoid of silver metal hovered in the air before him. Sunlight flared off its sides, and a cluster of mirrored lenses regarded him like glistening eyes. A faint humming noise emanated from its casing. For one wild instant, Hyle thought it was some enormous exotic insect blown from a distant island by the prevailing wind. But then he realised that the thing was a machine. Before he had time to wonder whether it was benign, hostile or merely indifferent, it rose vertically to a point above his head. Then it was gone, streaking through the blue air with astonishing speed.

As the shock wore off, Hyle recalled the legendary flying machines created by their forebears. But none of the original machines had survived. One by one, as the energy that powered them failed, they had fallen from the sky and sunk into the ocean depths. There could only be one other explanation … another sky-ship had arrived on Melusine.

Hyle’s excitement communicated itself to Gar, dispelling the merdog’s uneasiness. As Hyle descended the cliff he wondered, not for the first time, what had caused his people to abandon their forebears’ knowledge. Possibly the new abilities conferred on them by their symbiotes had rendered the old knowledge obsolete. One thing was certain, without the changes the Polyp had wrought within them they would not have been able to survive on Melusine. But the power of the Shell had been their only sure defence against the merrows, and now the Shell was lost. It lay somewhere on the deep bed of ooze that covered the floor of the Abyssal Plain, where no living creature dared to go. Hyle hoped that the flying machine’s appearance meant that a new variable had entered the equation of survival on Melusine, otherwise the only remaining human refuge on the