Horizon Storms - Kevin J. Anderson [20]
That first day, while Jess had drifted, he sensed enormous swimming things beneath the currents, heavy shapes like plesiosaurs or sea serpents from a legendary Earth past. When one of the hungry monsters came up from the depths, Jess saw an immense maw, long teeth, spined tentacles reaching out—but the wentals had protected him, sending a message through the water that this man was to be left alone. And saved.
The underwater behemoth had surfaced so that Jess could cling to the knobby fins on its slippery, slimy back. The creature cruised at great speed across the water, breaking through waves, until Jess saw a low line of rocks and crashing surf. The sea monster had brought him to land…
For uncounted days he had lived among the scrub brush and weeds, not needing to eat, wishing for real human companionship, though he had the ever-present wentals in his mind. For a long time, he watched shelled creatures like trilobites crawl in endless circles, climbing out of one tide pool and lowering themselves into another. The days passed with painful slowness. He stood with arms outstretched as storms passed over him in a bath of fresh raindrops. Even the lightning could not harm him.
When he’d flown his solo nebula skimmer, Jess had not bothered to shave often. He had shoulder-length, wavy brown hair. He grew a mustache and beard just thick enough to cover the cleft in his chin, trimming it every few days, but since the wentals had infused him, his hair had all stopped growing.
“I was supposed to bring the wentals to the Roamers, to help you expand and grow. And now I’m stranded here,” he spoke aloud. “We’ve been defeated before we could even start.”
Not defeated. We are stronger now than we were.The thrumming voice spoke inside his skull, the echoing presence of innumerable diverse wentals. We waited ten thousand years to reach this point. We can wait again.
At the edge of the vast, primitive ocean, Jess sat on the rough rocks watching the blue-green water foam against the reefs. All of the amazing power he now held, along with the secret return of the wentals, did him no good. “I’m not very good at waiting.”
Off on the horizon, he watched lightning-embroidered storm clouds that hung low in the sky. He could see for immense distances, and he realized that his view wrapped all the way around the curvature of the planet itself. He drew on the combined vision of all the wental entities diffused across every kilometer of open ocean. He could sense it all.
It was glorious. If only he could share it with someone…
Not long ago, on the first sterile sea planet where Jess had distributed the living water beings, there had not been even the rudiments of monocellular life. On that world, unrestricted, the wentals had raged through the water, grasping every molecule to incorporate it into their essence like a flamefront devouring fuel, bringing a whole planet to life, lighting it up like a torch.
On this planet, though, there was a primitive yet viable ecosystem in place. These oceans were filled with plankton and plants, shelled organisms, and soft-bodied swimmers. The wentals had come alive in the seas, but in spite of their bold strategy in saving Jess, they had restrained themselves here, choosing not to affect the other creatures.
The changes they had made in him were irreversible. He had the wental power as a permanent part of his physiology. He might even be able to harness that power to help his people…if only he could get off this planet.
For almost two centuries, Roamer clans had made life possible in the most terrible environments. They solved problems, they created innovative ideas and technologies to succeed where the Hansa would never even dare to try.
Jess was sure there was a way to get off of this planet.
Though the watery entities could hear the thoughts inside his head, he shouted across the waves in his impatience. “If you wentals are so powerful, why wait? We have work to do!” Out there, in the inaccessible vastness of the Spiral Arm, the hydrogues were continuing to