Analog SFF, January-February 2008 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Dell Magazines
Published: 2010-12-15T07:07:51.335000+00:00

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Short Story: THE ENGULFED CATHEDRAL

by CARL FREDERICK

Illustration by Broeck Steadman

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New things take getting used to, no matter which side you're coming from.

Issuant from the warm, clear waters of the Eastern Mediterranean, six meters of white stone breached the surface—the pinnacle of a cathedral's spire. Scattered in a roughly circular array around that gothic steeple lay a few score of boats: pleasure craft, houseboats, and a light military vessel—an aged La Fayette class frigate.

The cathedral, gradually engulfed as the Earth warmed and the waters rose, had survived its baptism intact—except for the north transept, the left arm of the cross. The land subsided and the transept crumbled cleanly, leaving a great open archway to the sea. Now, through that arch swam Doctors Paul and Ingrid Ryan: two delegates to the Thirtieth International Conference on Genetics and the Future of Mankind being held in a beachfront hotel.

As he swam through, Paul looked up over his shoulder at the ceiling of his world: the coruscating plane of brightness interrupted by the black embossed outlines of the boats. Near some of the hulls, he saw starbursts—the silent splashes of divers descending to attend the ecumenical service. In the far distance, a pod of super-dolphins sped away from this unlikely hub of human activity. He wondered what was going on in those cetacean brains of theirs—and he felt oddly uncomfortable not being able to interpret the dolphins’ body language; reading body language had, of late, become second nature to him.

Paul directed his gaze to his wife swimming ahead. She appeared larger than life, a magnification caused by the properties of light rays refracting at the water/glass/air boundary of his diving mask. He smiled, conscious that he was a physicist among geneticists. Ingrid was the geneticist of the family and he'd been invited to the conference as a courtesy to her.

Floating at the clerestory level of the cathedral high above the altar, Ingrid looked stunning, divine; an angel with wings replaced by scuba tanks. Her blond hair undulated with the rhythm of her limbs and her body, unencumbered save for her scuba, flippers, wrist dive calculator, and a bikini, seemed a moving work of sculpture. She was beautiful—but then, in some respects, she'd been engineered to be.

She whirled around, facing him, and signed, “Beautiful!”

He started, then realizing what she referred to, signed “The cathedral: Yes. Very beautiful.”

Her body language showed humor and he could well imagine her green cat's-eyes wide with amusement behind her mask. Those eyes, with their slit-like irises and reflective tapetum lucidum retinas, were “genetic enhancements” chosen by her ailurophile mother. But due to a then-unknown gene-linking, those cat's-eyes caused her to be born deaf. And the form of deafness couldn't be ameliorated with a cochlear implant.

Here in the water though, deafness was not a handicap—quite the contrary. Unlike most divers, rendered mute by the mouthpieces between their lips, Ingrid and Paul could converse. They used Ingrid's first language and Paul's third: American Sign Language. At home on

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