Have a little faith, friend Orion, the voice in my mind said. It felt almost amused.
I lost track of time as we sank deeper and deeper into the sea. There was no light to see by, no sensation at all except the rush of water swirling by me.
Listen to the music of our world, said the voice. Open your mind to it.
I could hear more than gurgling, I realized. There were crackling sounds all around me. Hoots and whistles and soft thrumming noises. And off in the distance a faint melodic crooning that rose and fell. None of the clicks and whistles of dolphins, though.
Now open your eyes, Orion.
I hadn’t realized I’d been keeping them shut. Involuntarily I gasped. I was surrounded by hundreds of soft glowing points of light, like being in the middle of a meadow full of fireflies or in the heart of a cluster of gleaming stars.
And when I gasped I had air to breathe.
“Can you hear me?” the voice asked. And I could. It was using sound rather than telepathy or whatever form of mind contact it had used before.
“Good,” it said, without my answering. “The air globe is stabilized and you should feel more comfortable. We will see what can be done about your wounds.” The voice was silky soft, warm and calm.
“Who are you?” I asked. “Where are we?”
The lights danced and twinkled around me, blue and red and green and yellow, but I could not make out any shapes.
“We are nearing the bottom of the sea, roughly a hundred kilometers from the shore where the Skorpis have made their base.”
“You know about them?”
I sensed a tolerant chuckle. “Yes, we know about them. And about you.” The voice grew darker, more severe. “And about the way you casually slaughter one another.”
“I wouldn’t call it casual,” I replied.
No response. The lights flickered around me, as if they were dancing in a sphere all around me, binding me in a web of blinking colorful flashes of energy.
“You haven’t told me who you are,” I said.
“You may call us the Old Ones.”
“What does that mean?”
Again that tolerant sense of amusement, like a grandfather watching a baby’s hesitant first steps.
“You will find out in due course,” the voice said. “For now, we must travel deeper into the sea.”
I got a sense of motion, acceleration, a tremendous rushing through the dark waters. The lights remained all around me. I could breathe. I seemed to be floating weightlessly, almost like an astronaut in orbit. In the dim flickering light I could see that my wounds were scabbing over. The bleeding had stopped completely and I felt a little stronger. All the while I was moving through the inky depths, speeding deeper and deeper, farther and farther from the shore.
At last I saw more lights approaching. They glowed and pulsated as if they were living, breathing creatures. Whole avenues of light opened up before my eyes, as if I were flying toward a vast city, swooping along a highway of lights that led to its magnificent heart.
“How do you feel?” the voice asked.
“Bewildered.”
“I mean physically. Your wounds.”
I flexed my arms, looked down at my legs. They were healing rapidly.
“Everything seems to be going along fine.”
“Good. We are pleased.”
“Tell me more about yourselves. What is this city of lights that we are approaching?”
“This is our home, Orion. The home of the Old Ones.”
“May I see you?” I asked, sensing that these lights were merely sparks of energy.
“You may be unpleasantly surprised,” the voice replied. “You may be repelled by our appearance.”
“Then tell me what to expect.”
“A reasonable approach to the problem.” The voice hesitated, as if checking with others before answering my request. Then:
“Orion, your Creators have told you that space-time is an ocean, have they not?”
“The one called Aten has taunted me more than once about my linear perception of space-time,” I answered.
“Yes, we can see that. Yet your linear perception is not entirely in error, Orion.”
“There are currents in the ocean of space-time,” I said.