Oshenerth by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online

the water. It was true that she had gone off a little ways on her own. But she had felt no surge, experienced no dislocation. Could she have fallen asleep and then become caught up in a current, to finally awaken unaware of what had transpired? Such incidents had been documented, had been known to happen to exceptionally relaxed divers.
    Surely she had been missed by now. Surely her dive partner or someone among the crew would have noted and reported her failure to return to the dive ladder at the stern of the boat. Surely.
    She clung to that thought all the rest of the day and on into the night, until darkness and exhaustion overcame her. The gentle swell rocked her to sleep as ably as any consoling hand.
    She knew no sharks had found her during the night because she was still intact when she awoke. A quick scan of her surroundings revealed the continuing and increasingly distressing absence of islands and boat. If an island, any island, had been close at hand, she could have swam for it. If nothing else, an island would have coconuts, which (if she could manage to open them) promised food and water.
    Thinking of food and water while adrift on a landless sea was not conducive to her continued mental health.
    The tropical sun, so often a welcome visitor on her vacations, had turned into an unresponsive, remorseless, soul-sucking antagonist. While the thin suit-integrated hood of her diveskin provided some protection from the direct unrelenting rays, the synthetic fabric’s dark color also absorbed heat. By afternoon she was half-delirious.
    At least, she thought crazily, I can always splash cool water on my face. It was her last conscious thought before she passed out for the night.
    Her second morning adrift brought no relief. Pivoting in the water to keep her face pointed away from the rising sun, she slipped the regulator into her mouth and started kicking feebly toward a point of reef that rose to within a few feet of the surface. If she was not too weak, she could try standing on it for awhile. While it would not make her that much more visible to any searching boat, it would allow her to stimulate different muscles in her legs.
    She stood thus, with only her upper body out of the water, for as long as she could maintain her balance. Despite the heat, she dared not slip out of the diveskin for fear of becoming sunburned. When her thigh muscles could stand it no longer, she slipped reluctantly back into the water, letting her inflated buoyancy compensator carry her wherever it might.
    She had the regulator in her mouth when she passed out. It was still there when she felt herself being pulled under, though the sight of the big cuttlefish that was dragging her downward nearly caused her to spit it out as she screamed.
    O O O
    Memory of her abandonment and desperate situation vanished as she contemplated her remarkably revised circumstances. Apparently, she no longer needed the regulator, nor the pressure hose attaching it to the aluminum air tank, nor the contents of the tank itself. Or her rubber fins, or any of the other accoutrements that were normally required to keep a human being alive and mobile while underwater. If the touch of her own fingers were to be believed, she had sprouted gills, along with webbing between her fingers and toes and fishy fins on the backs of her calves. Almost as amazing as her new gills were the altered lenses of her eyes. Though open wide, they did not burn, and she found herself able to see as clearly as if she was still wearing her mask.
    She had been transformed. By the same process that had transformed the one-eyed spear-carrying male who was staring curiously at her? Her attention flicked back and forth between him and the shark-toting cuttlefish drifting nearby. Was it the same colorful cephalopod that had initially dragged her under? As if they were not enough to ponder, there was also the gentle giant of an octopus hovering nearby and the pair of two-foot long squid who kept