The Endless Sink

The Endless Sink

By Damien Ober

I woke to complete darkness. The wind that roared around me had been in my dreams too. It was the sound of the edge of my rock, but endless now. There was no quiet to step back into. We had left sold land behind and were off on the sink. Little lights clipped to our belts were turned off. In all directions, I could see nothing. Everything was gone. Everything but the wind and the black void.

I felt the sinker’s hand on me and could then maje out the rough shape of her. She was peering through some sort of device, off at something far below us. Her shout reached me through the roaring howl, «Risers!» And then I could see them, two glinting specks coming towards us.

The sinker unhooked the tether which kept us from drifting apart. «Give me some space.» I didn’t know what she meant and so she shouted, «Spread your arms and legs! Rise a little!» The specks had grown into people, coming up fast. Two men it looked like, each with a small light on the front of his helmet. The sinker straightened her body and went diving toward them.

As the three forms converged, there was a flash in the dim light of the risers’ headlamps. The risers were still, rising limply toward me. As they passed, I saw one’s face, frozen in a controrted grimace. Little droplets of blood hung around them in strange shifting patterns. Up they went, just dead bodies now.

The sinker flated back to me as I sank down to her. She was wiping and sheathing her sword. «They find you sleeping and you never wake up. Take everything you have to trade at whatever pueblo they land on next.» She recliped our tether.

The Endless Sink. Photo by Elena.

«Sorry,» I shouted back.

The sinker smiled. «We all fall asleep, kid. You have to.»

«Where is it?»

The sinker went into her pack, pulled out a roll of paper. She spread a stretch of it between her hands.

«What’s that?» I shouted.

«A map.»

«A map?»

«We’d be lost out here without it.»

Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, edited by Rich Horton, Prime Books, 2015.