130 - Thunk Me, Klunk Me

Someone, or something grabbed his hair and towed him in a direction he hoped was out of the water, his hands sprang up to lock around a mechanism of some kind and he realized someone was yelling at him to hang on so his hair didn’t get pulled out.  It was a skimmer, with netting wrapped around the tines that were now tangled in his hair and remains of his sarband, looped in a ragged line under his chin, pulling his face up out of the water.  He still couldn’t see even though the flashes were now behind him, they were still blinding.

“Endarken it, kid, it’s the middle o’ a flensin’ storm, we’ve got people crawling out ‘ the ground like worms fleeing te sand all over the place an’ you have tah go fill mah basin with spewing, crawling, disintegrating muck from some slime pit!”  The voice was gravelly with a north Lainz accent with almost a Milari overlay on the vowels.  “You pup!  You’re a Basin pisser you are an’ I’m gonna see you stuck building an’ cleanin’ filters till you’re a full grown man!  Or old an’ grey!”

“Wait, what, sorry?  I can’t see you, Naser.  What did I do? Where am I?  We were stuck in a mandered hide with not enough water, and my friend fell through into a slime pit like you said, Naser but...” he broke down coughing as his boots hit ground and he was hauled onto dry... stone it felt like.  He rolled over and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes as if that could fix the black spots.  All it seemed to do it add red edges to them.  All he could do was lie there for a long moment.

“I’m sure you’ve got all kinds of reasons but the fact remains, kid, that mah basin... forty thousand litres of water, is polluted with your muck and...”  There was a pause, then the man yelled, but not at Kyrus, apparently at someone much further away in this enormous space that Kyrus found himself in.  He blinked and was relieved to be able to see, if blurrily.  “HEY!  You there!  Don’t you add any more crap to my basin!  You just hang there.  I’ve got your basin pisser here and I’ll set up a ramp so you can all walk down civil-like.”

“Thank you, Naser.”  Da’s voice came from very high up.  “I’m happy to hang here.  I’m afraid I’m at the end of what rope we had and I’ll gladly wait for you to get us down safely without contaminating your water further.” The fellow thrust something into Ky’s hands, with a “here boy, put those on.” That turned out to be darkened glasses that made the extraordinary flashes on the surface of the water bearable.

The man harumphed at da, as if he expected argument instead of civil agreement.  “There will be six of us,” da called.  “And you might wish to leave the ramp up for someone to climb up to water our birds.  I wouldn’t want to try and bring them through that route.  I do not believe they could be forced into the holes.”

**

It took long enough, setting up to get everyone out of the underside of the mandered shell, through the alkaline water pit, the tunnel connected to a freshwater seep and out the hole into the storage basin of clean, carefully filtered and monitored water, that Kyrus was able to see clearly again.

The basin certainly wasn’t clean any longer... all the dead life that Kyrus had brought with him and the foam as the two liquids neutralized each other, off-gassing enough to make breathing a bit hard for a moment or two, floating in greasy, spreading slicks the colour of bruises. The foam was green and brown and red and gray, floating in mounds that melted as the particulates in it collapsed the bubbles and began sinking.

“I suppose I should welcome you to Quanat,” the man said grumpily.  His face was all but impossible to see, with both veil and his own dark glasses.  “You’ve got a lot of work ahead for you, even if you are sand-wrecked, kid.”

Kyrus just kept his mouth shut. I’ve fouled forty thousand litres of water. Endarkened, enlightened, ownershit. Oh ownercrap.

When da clambered down the odd wooden contraption the Quanat basin tender cranked out over to the hole, he moved pretty quickly.  His voice was even calm as he knelt down and caught Kyrus by the shoulder, turning him to check the long cut down Ky’s back.  “Are you all right?”  He was squinting, holding up one hand to shield his eyes from the random light flashes, though they were almost gone.

“The sala’rs’ll be gone soon so your eyes’ll be fine in a bit,” the man called from the brake at the base of the wooden ramp apparently built out of interlocking strands of eyebleed.

Ky nodded and his father began to shake him, just a little in time with his tight, controlled yell. “You disobedient brat! If you are in a dangerous situation and disobey me not ONCE but TWICE—“

Ky, his heart full of shame, wrenched his shoulder out of his father’s hand as his rage at da starting to yell at Werfas, what felt like an eon ago came boiling up out of his mouth.  “An’ ye’ll klunk me? Kick me, stick me, yah runner! Yah ran tah vacuum ‘n crapped us both, e’n if yah din’t know me, yah crapped yer own genderer and yer own mam an’ yer own beauty like duty! An yah dare skell at us larvae fer bone-listenin’? Yeh dare rage ‘n rant thet yeh has the bite and te high jump tah say?” He was on his feet by now, fists clenched, glaring at his da through the dark glasses, realized he couldn’t see through the heavily tinted glass, tore them off.  “An if I thunk it, say it, drunk wi’ it. EVERYBODY’s gotta be thunkin’ it?  Yeh gonna shut me up? Thunk me klunk me spill me?”

That’s when his brain caught up with his mouth and he froze.  Ownershit. Everyone was staring at the two of them.  Ilax, his daughter, Werfas, the zon all strung along the ramp.  The basin-keeper hearing the vileness pouring out of Kyrus’s mouth at his father, also frozen.  Da’s hand had flown up as if he would hit him, also stopped.  It was as though everyone were suddenly cast in amber.  I think I’ve just said something unforgiveable.