The Deep Gods Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Evil?”
    Ammi shook her head. “No, you do not understand. They—they are not bad, not good.” Her eyes became wider. “But if they call a man, he must go. How can you say you will not?”
    “I only said that I hadn’t made up my mind, Ammi,” Daniel said. He stared toward the beach and the silent groups that waited there. “I would like to know… if these Morra-ayar can really tell me… why I’m here, how I got here. But that’s only curiosity, after all. If it did any good to know how it happened, I might be more anxious about it.” He chuckled. “And it’s possible these Morra-ayar don’t know, either, whatever they are.”
    “They know everything,” Ammi said.
    On the beach, people were beginning to stand up and a few had already entered the water; out in the bay, the sun struck lances of glittering light on the sudden ripples. A shining dark form leaped and splashed back, then another.
    Daniel, moving toward the beach, was suddenly afraid. He did not know what he feared; it was a deep, stomach-twisting terror, reasonless and huge. He had felt that kind of fear as a child, once, in a dark pine wood, walking alone. He had been eight or nine, he remembered. And there had been no reason at all, only the green silence and the shadows. It was like that now.
    But Ammi was going, with long strides, toward the beach; her face was shining with a strange, blind ecstasy as though she were drugged. Daniel, following, could not speak of his fear now, he knew.
    More and more dolphins leaped in the deeper water; huge ones, Daniel saw. He could not quite remember what the average size had been, in his time, but these seemed bigger than those he had seen. He remembered that one sort had been called a killer whale, and the cold knot of fear within him tightened; but he set his mouth hard, and walked down into the water.
    Around him, the others were discarding their kilts, tossing the skin garments back toward the beach as they went into the water. Daniel felt the strange vibrating sensation in his legs again—the same pulsing that he had felt the day before, when the other sea dweller had spoken to him. But this was deeper pitched, and different; it was like hearing a sound through his skin, the sound of a chorus of voices.
    He plunged forward and began to swim; others were swimming all around him as the sound in the water grew stronger.
    Egon’s muscles knew what to do, Daniel realized; this body he wore was the body of a strong man, a skilled swimmer. He found himself stroking effortlessly, plowing ahead of the others, though Ammi was close behind him. And now the skin sound was enormous; it was as if he floated within the pipes of a gigantic organ. It was a little like Bach, Daniel thought, dizzy from the sound. It was as though his mind, flooded with the sound, thought it was vanishing, to be replaced by a rising brilliant light. Without conscious thought about the matter, he was diving down, down into the depths, and all around him he saw the others diving too.
    All around the swimmers, the Sea People swam in a complex spiral, upward and downward, weaving in and out. They sang as they swam; a counterpointed web of sounds in which there did not seem to be words, but images, clearer than language.
    Daniel, turning and spinning with the rest, knew with total clarity what the images were, but he could not turn them into words. With the part of his mind that still observed and listened, he knew the singing could never be made into words; the images could exist only here and now.
    Then he saw Ammi, a white glimmering shape; she touched him and they moved together, weightless. Together they rose to the surface, after an eternity, and leaped half out of the water, as others were doing all around them. It was like the joyous leap of the Sea People, a great draft of air filling the lungs, and then diving down again, and again.
    Daniel, deep in the green water, saw a child flying by, and a great dark shape beside it, and