Incandescence Read Online Free PDF Page B

Houdini!» The ship lurched abruptly, almost toppling him. He managed to steady himself, but his heart was pounding.
    While Rakesh was still inching his way forward, Parantham marched to the end of her plank. Watching her poised swaying at the edge made his stomach clench. Embodied on his home world, he'd dived into water from greater heights than this, but never from such an unsteady platform. Parantham was a native of scapespace; no doubt she was imbued with her own kind of innate prudence against physical damage whenever she was embodied, and no doubt Csi had done his best to make her experience memorably intense, but even if she was perceiving an identical scape, they were not quite together in any of this.
    Parantham turned her whole body around to face the deck, but she still had to shout over the wind. «Jafar, Renu, Viya, Csi. I'll never forget your friendship. Be sure that I'm happy and certain in my choice. I hope you all find freedom, and I hope it is as sweet as this.» In one fluid movement she turned back to the ocean, bent her knees, leaned forward, and dived.
    Rakesh watched as she disappeared beneath the foaming water. He was shivering now. He lifted himself up to his full height and walked forward unsteadily, as rapidly as he could. Maybe Parantham had felt something close to pure exhilaration at her departure, but he couldn't, and he didn't want it that way.
    He stopped a few centimeters short of the edge and turned slightly, spreading his legs to brace himself.
    «To travel is to die? I won't argue with that.» The wind seemed to swallow his words, but he didn't really care if he was audible or not. Over the last few days he'd made his peace individually with everyone in the node that he'd been close to. Let them violate the physics of the scape to hear him, if it really mattered. «I've died once before, and I've lived almost a century in this second incarnation. It was a strange, frustrating, maddening existence. You made it bearable, and I'm grateful for that, but don't ever forget why you died the first time. When you get the chance, move on to the next life.»
    Rakesh took a step forward and gazed down at the waves. He stretched out his arms and dived.
    The fall must have taken at least a couple of seconds, but rather than his mind going into slow motion he hit the water with the sense that he'd had no time to ponder its approach. The impact came as a bracing jolt to his body, but not an unfamiliar one. It took another few seconds for the effect of the chain to penetrate his consciousness; he had certainly slowed down once he entered the water, but he possessed no buoyancy, and he was not showing any sign of coming to a halt.
    Snatches of sound that might have been distorted singing flowed into Rakesh's skull through the bones of his clenched jaw. He opened his eyes and saw a dozen luminescent blue shapes in the water below: delicate, veiled forms rising up to meet him. Were there sirens here after all, mythical creatures made real to ease his passage?
    He fell past them. They were giant jellyfish, propelling themselves along by squirting water from bladders with a flatulent squeak.
    Rakesh wondered bleakly just how far Csi wanted to twist the knife. He contemplated deserting the scape to step across the light years in a manner of his own choosing: something involving a stroll across soft grass on a warm day.
    The water was pitch-black now. He had gulped air instinctively before submerging, but just how long that lungful would last was entirely in Csi's hands. A mild unpleasantness at the back of his mind was becoming an insistent choking feeling, and his ears were aching from the pressure. He probably could have untangled himself from the chain and made it back to the surface before losing consciousness, but there was no point remaining in the scape at all unless he played along with the scenario, right to the end.
    A smudge of silver light appeared beneath him, and Rakesh used what strength he had to