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We all turned to look, and then watched with interest as the package jumped up and down on the spot, turning itself rapidly over and around in midair, shaking and shuddering as it unfolded in several different directions at once. It kept growing and growing in size, throwing out offshoots of itself, and finally sank several barbed steel legs into the ground to hold it securely in place. By the time it had finished showing off, the package had formed itself into a large, flashy, and more than state-of-the-art remote communications centre, complete with radio, sonar, live television feeds, and a few things even I didn’t recognise. Walker immediately strode over and commandeered the nearest keyboard, looked it over briskly, and then punched in a series of instructions that had the whole thing up and ru
I wandered around the console, checking the data streams on the monitors, familiarising myself with the various comm systems, very careful not to touch anything. I was damned if I was leaving any fingerprints or DNA traces on the console’s suspiciously gleaming surfaces for the CIA to study once the mission was over. After a while I moved in beside Walker and casually indicated a few more things he could do to bring the console up to full power. Just to show I wasn’t being left out of things. The others crowded in beside us, peering over our shoulders.
“We have radio and video contact with the pilot,” said Walker, “direct feed from seven underwater cameras on those monitors there, and an ongoing display of whatever the submersible’s long-range sensors are picking up. Almost as good as being there.”
“Can you hear me, Honey?” I said, leaning forward over the mike.
“Of course I can hear you! I can hear all of you.” Strapped into a pilot’s chair and surrounded very closely on all sides by what looked like enough instrumentation to take the submersible into near Earth orbit, Honey glared out at us from a small screen.
“Looks a bit snug,” I said.
“Snug? I’ve known spacier coffins. There isn’t room in here to swing a flea. I’ve already severely bruised precious parts of my anatomy just getting into the driving seat, and you don’t even want to know what I have to do to work the air-conditioning. Still, all systems are go; we are ready to proceed.”
“We still haven’t decided how you’re going to lure the famously shy Nessie out of hiding,” said Walker. “You don’t appear to have anything on board that will do the trick. Or at least, nothing that hasn’t been tried before.”
“Maybe I should try to attract the creature,” said Katt, half seriously. “I do have an outstanding track record for attracting anyone and anything with a pulse . . .”
“Yeah,” said the Blue Fairy. “That’ll do it. Stand on the edge of the loch and show it your tits, Katt.”
“Crude little man,” Katt said frostily.
“Actually, you’ve just given me an idea,” said Blue. “Attraction: that’s the key. We have to make Nessie want to come up to the surface. And there are some things, some sounds, that will attract anything, luring them on against their will, pulling them on like a hook in the jaw. And I have just the thing in mind: something I’ve fished for before.”
We all looked at him, standing tall and proud and only a bit bedraggled in his Elizabethan finery, his battered old fishing rod and reel at the ready. And perhaps I was the only one who saw just how much he needed to be taken seriously.
“What did you have in mind?” I said.
“A mating call,” said the Blue Fairy, smiling back at all of us, pleased at being the centre of attention. “I once brought up from the dimensional depths, entirely by accident I have to admit, a kind of . . . siren. A temptress, a seducer, whose call no mortal will could hope to withstand. Fortunately, this particular siren’s call was only ever intended to work on those of a heterosexual persuasion, so I remained relatively unaffected and was able to throw the damned thing back.”
“Can you find it again?” said Walker.
“Well, obviously,” said Blue, “or I wouldn’t have said anything. I’ll find it, hook it, and reel it in, and then we can use its call to bring Nessie right to us.”
“Hold everything,” said Walker. “Are you seriously proposing we call up another monster and drop it into the loch? Isn’t the situation here complicated enough as it is? Not to mention the problem we would be leaving behind for the future. What if the siren developed a taste for the locals? They could end up swarming here like so many lemmings.”
“I never suggested leaving the siren here,” the Blue Fairy said in a calm, patient, and infuriatingly understanding voice. “In fact, I think it would be downright dangerous to keep the thing around one moment longer than we absolutely have to. What I have in mind is much simpler, bordering on elegant. I bring the siren here, we record its call on this marvellous communications system . . . and I throw it back again. We then broadcast the recording of the call into the loch’s waters. Foolproof. Unless Nessie turns out to be gay as well, of course . . .”
“Let us very definitely not go there,” I said quickly. “The recording sounds fine to me. Everyone? Right; do your thing, Blue. Catch us a siren.”
Of course, then he had to make a whole big thing out of finding just the right spot along the bank of the loch. He walked us up and down through the mud and spiky grass, his face set in a rigid mask of concentration, which he had to spoil by occasionally glancing at us to see how we were taking it. He finally settled on one particular spot that looked exactly the same as all the others and gestured grandly with his left hand. A glowing golden pool some six feet in diameter appeared before him, flat and featureless, not so much covering the ground as replacing it. The pool was a gateway to everywhere else, to all the dimensions that ever were or may be, and was painful to look at directly for more than a moment.
Blue’s time with the elves had clearly helped him; I could remember when he needed to spill his own blood in sacrifice to summon the golden pool to him. And the pool looked a lot bigger than I remembered. A hole punched right through the walls of reality by sheer willpower. Only the Blue Fairy was skilled enough and crazy enough to call it up, just so he could go fishing in it . . .
He worked his rod and reel expertly, and hook and line disappeared into the golden pool without in any way disturbing the glowing surface. Blue stood quietly, apparently calm and relaxed, and we all stood and watched him. There’s always something fascinating about watching someone do the one thing they’re really good at. The sound of the line whining off the spi
I realised I was holding my breath. Blue didn’t always get what he was after the first time, and he had been known to haul some really nasty things up out of the depths. The line remained taut, rising very slowly, the reel clicking quietly. Whatever Blue had hooked, it didn’t seem to be fighting him.
I glanced quickly around. We were all standing far too close to the pool, and none of us had taken any precautions. I had my torc to protect me, but God alone knew what the others were relying on to save them from the siren’s call. I started to say something, and then the golden pool exploded as the siren burst through into our reality.
It rose up and up, towering over us, too big to be contained by the pool through which it had found a foothold into our reality. It was huge and glorious, completely unearthly, unfolding and uncoiling in every direction at once. It was vast and wonderful, too beautiful to be born, dark yellow flesh with rainbows exploding inside it. It sang, and I was lost. A glorious, wonderful, unbearable sound. I fell to my knees before it, and so did we all. Who knows what songs the sirens sang? Who knows what songs were sung for noble Odysseus? We knew, and I will hear that song in my nightmares forever.