Most of the characters in this story are the property of ABC TV and other entities, and I do not have any permission to borrow them. Not that I think ABC will notice; it certainly isn't taking very good care of them. However, no infringement is intended, and this story is not for profit. All other characters are my property, and if you want to mess with them, you have to ask me first. Feedback is most appreciated.



Interface



Ed took another swallow of beer and sighed happily. *Sun, sand, surf...nothin' like it.* The grains he sat on were warm, and he set his bottle aside and stretched out on his back. It was the first truly warm day of spring, and he wore only a t-shirt to top off his swim trunks. Further down the slope of the beach, the ocean hissed onto shore and drew back, again and again. He gave the water a slightly regretful glance, but the surf was high today and his recent illness had left him a bit weak yet. He wasn't foolish enough to go out with his board when he wasn't in top condition.

*Still, I've got the day off and nothing to do.* Normally, he and Sloan would have taken such a day and done something together, but she was off with Tom on some project or another. Ed sighed, and pushed away a twinge of jealousy. He didn't get to spend much time with his friend any more. Not that he worried about Tom's loyalty any longer, but it was still a little lonely when your best friend fell in love. And Sloan was in love all right, it was obvious--even if she hadn't admitted it to herself yet.

He rolled over onto his stomach and idly traced a drop of condensation as it slid down the beer bottle. Peace washed over him with the sound of the ocean. Ever since they'd gotten back from Alaska, he'd been driven by the need to find some way to strike back at the new species. But when he'd showed up at the lab that morning, Walter had promptly chased him back out again, telling him not to return until he got some of his tan back. Ed had been able to leave his tension at the edge of the beach. The shore had always been a refuge for him.

He sat up again, stretching. It was the middle of the week and off-season, and so he'd seen few people that morning. In fact, the beach was now deserted. Brushing half-heartedly at the clinging sand, Ed stood up, picked up his bottle, and began sauntering back to the spot where he'd left his gear. The bottle was empty, so he exchanged it for the full one, and after a moment's thought, added a sandwich. He'd only brought two beers, anyway, since he had to drive back to his apartment. *Not till later.*

Ed wandered off again, letting his feet go where they willed, and they pleased to take him further down the beach, away from the parking lot and toward the rock outcropping that halted the swath of sand. Confronted by the rock, Ed stuffed the sandwich and the bottle into the pockets of his shorts and began exploring the jagged rocks. Surf crashed up against the furthest ones, and Ed could see tendrils of water frothing and sliding among the stones. The tide was about to turn, and would soon creep back up the beach.

The heap of stone was bigger than he'd expected. He knew there was another beach on the far side, but he had never considered how much space the rocks took up. Deciding to find a place to sit and munch, Ed worked his way back from the ocean, trying to find a place where he wouldn't be suddenly drenched by spray.

Edging around a clifflike boulder, he was surprised to find a narrow gap leading into the rocks. He peered in and found it became a passageway floored with water-tumbled stones. He laughed to himself. *Wow, this is beginning to look like a kid's book or something. "Treasure in the Rocks,"* he titled, and eyed the gap. Narrow it was, but he would fit. So he turned his shoulders and edged inside.

A couple of times he thought he would have to turn back, but each close space turned out to have just enough room for him to squeeze by. The walls climbed until they were a good four feet over his head, and when he looked up all he could see was a bright strip of blue sky. Mostly he had to watch his feet. He made a mental note to be careful how much time he spent in here--this was not a journey he wanted to retrace in a hurry, and the tide could come in fast.

The passage turned and twisted, so Ed figured that he didn't cover a lot of linear distance, but finally it gave out into a roughly round space floored with sand. Intrigued, Ed looked around. Dried weed and bits of debris were lodged in the rough walls; the chamber was no more than six yards across, and its sandy floor sloped down into a tidepool. *Must have an outlet under water,* he thought, watching the gentle ripples slide across it and lap against the far wall. *I wonder how deep it gets when the tide is full?*

He dropped down to sit on the sand, breathing deeply and frowning in annoyance. *Lung capacity's still not up to par. How long is it going to take?* He hated being sick. Rubbing idly at the scrapes the rocks had inflicted on him, he wondered if anyone had ever been here before. The idea of being the first gave him a mild thrill, but he scoffed at the idea. *Somebody's got to have found it sometime. Probably kids use it as a secret clubhouse during the summer...*

But the sand was so smooth, combed by the sea, and the hush was so complete, that Ed felt as though he were not only the first to enter the chamber, but the only person in the world. When he looked up and saw a gull sail by, he was almost shocked by the suddenness of it.

Slowly, his heart and breathing returned to normal after his exertions. He took off his shoes and dug his feet into the sand, the feeling of peace returning, stronger than before. There was no threatening new species here, no inevitable evolution, no danger; no mystery but the eternal one of the sea. Even the tiny lapping of the tidepool made no sound.

Digging out his sandwich--slightly squashed--and his bottle, Ed set them down and got up to take a closer look at the pool. As he rose, the sun slipped past one wall and poured light down into the water, which lit with a greeny-gold iridescence. Ed squinted a bit and peered into the pool. Something pale gleamed below the surface, maybe a foot or so...

Letting out a yelp, he stumbled backward a step and swore, his voice echoing oddly off the walls. The pale blur was a face, eyes wide, dark hair fogging about it like a stormcloud. *So much for no one ever coming here before!*

He took a deep breath, swallowed, and edged back. *Get a grip. It's not like you've never seen a body before. And it can't be any worse than Lynch.* He pushed away the memory of that charred corpse as he leaned back over the pool. *Wait a minute...eyes?*

Ed knew that the eyes were the first things a scavenger would go for in the water. The body in the pool must not have been there long at all. But when he looked down into the water, the face was gone. Nothing but shining sand until the shadow of the wall fell across the deeper end.

Ed sat down heavily. *I know I saw it. I know it. But that's impossible...unless...*

He began to laugh shakily. Whoever the face belonged to, they were obviously quite alive. The person must have swum in through the underwater entrance, and had been just as startled to see Ed. "Sure, that's it," he said mockingly. "You're not cracking up."

Then he sobered. Actually, the more he looked at it, the less sense that made. *Okay, maybe I could have missed the waves when the person came in. But wouldn't they have to come up for air?* There had been no sign of a breathing device. He reconstructed the rock outcropping in his mind. If he had his bearings right...and his sense of direction was nearly infallible...the rock that made up the far wall was solid clear through to the ocean side. And the sea was far too rough for someone to swim up to those rocks--they'd get battered to pieces against the stone. *Maybe there's another entrance--or some kind of sideways passage--*

The pool's surface rocked, and bigger wavelets splashed onto the sand. Ed scrambled to his knees. *They're back!*

Before he could lean over, the person reappeared, arching up out of the water with a suddenness that had Ed jerking back. For a long moment, they both froze, staring at each other.

Ed saw a wide pale face, eyes so dark a purple as to be nearly black, streaming ebony hair with weed tangled in it. His eye automatically defined the face as female--its features were delicate, though lax with surprise--even before his gaze slid a little lower. No clothing at all. Milky-white skin marked with a few pale scars, small breasts half covered by the long hair, the torso disappearing into water cloudy with stirred-up sand. Pale arms with a faint spattering of golden freckles, hands invisible below the water as she braced herself upright. There was something odd about her ribs, Ed thought in the midst of his surprise, but propriety had him looking back to her face.

"Um...hi," he said tentatively.

The woman tilted her head a fraction, reminding him unnervingly of Tom for an instant, but she did not answer. Ed tried again. "How...how did you get in here? Is there an underwater tunnel?"

He was doing his best not to stare, or to babble, but she was extraordinary, and not just because she was half-naked. Ed had done his own share of skinny-dipping, after all, though never at a public beach during the day. He was beginning to feel very uncomfortable under her steady gaze. Then one corner of her mouth twitched up, a thoughtful look, and she cleared her throat and said something in a light, slightly hoarse voice. Unfortunately, he didn't understand her.

"Sorry, could you repeat that?" he asked weakly. *This is weird.*

She said something else instead, and it made no sense to him either. In fact, he didn't even recognize the language; it sounded vaguely like Greek. He shook his head helplessly, and she shrugged, and lifted one hand to push a strand of hair off her forehead. Her fingers, he noticed, were slightly webbed. *Definitely weird. And...getting...weirder...*

His thoughts trailed off into incoherence as she shifted her weight in the water. Instead of swinging her legs around to sit, she swung something blue-silver-green and solid, and his mind gibbered faintly at the sight of the muscular, shimmering, fluked tail that now curved sinuously half out of the water.

*It has to be a fake, a special effect.* That was the first thought that made it to the surface of his mind. But he couldn't take his eyes from it, and it didn't look fake. It looked scaled and streamlined and real, and he could see the tiny tremors of shifting muscles run across it under the skin.

He stared and stared, part of him trying to will it to be fake, part of him trying to figure out how it worked if it was real, part of him shouting in wild joy from his childhood--*It's real! Magic is real!* His hand itched to stroke that glistening surface and see what it felt like--cool or warm, soft or firm.

But before he could make a fool of himself, the tail twitched--and he sputtered as she used the filmy fins to toss a splash of water in his face. By the time he wiped the salt from his eyes, his mind was under control, and he had to grin at her mischievous expression. She smiled back; her teeth were white and small and slightly pointed.

"Well, you're definitely not my field," he said, sitting back down on the sand. "I was never interested in marine biology."

She spoke again, sounding like she was doing the same thing: talking because silence seemed awkward, even if the other could not understand. *She *sounds* friendly, anyway,* Ed thought. *I hope I do too.*

There were a thousand questions he was dying to ask, but there would be no answers. He held out one hand tentatively near her tail, palm down, and looked questioningly at her. She cocked her head, then nodded.

Her tail was cool to the touch, and firm; it felt like the surface of a dolphin more than anything else he could think of, though it was faintly rippled with scales where a dolphin was smooth. And it bore the unmistakable resilience and pulse of life. I don't know what she is-- magic, genetic engineering, or what--but this is part of her.* Ed shook his head at this ancient myth alive in front of him. When he lifted his hand away, she leaned forward in turn and did the same thing--asking without words if she could examine his legs.

"Sure. Turnabout is fair play..." He stuck them out, resting his heels in the water, and she ran cool fingers over them, exclaiming softly over the hair on his calves and the fact that he had toes. *Hasn't she seen a human before? After all, she can apparently breathe air...*

He craned his neck as she leaned over his legs. The oddity of her torso that he'd noticed in the midst of his shock was more obvious now. Her ribcage was longer than normal, and wider as well, though not enough to make her grossly out of proportion. Ed wondered what was hidden under her dripping hair, which plastered itself in tendrils to her skin.

The mermaid sat back on her tail again and regarded him thoughtfully. Feeling a bit awkward, he reached back for his sandwich and bottle and offered them to her.

Smiling again, she took the bottle and removed the screw top with the ease of practice. Ed kept his jaw from dropping, barely. "You've seen beer before?" Then he gave himself a mental smack. Humans had been dropping stuff in the ocean for thousands of years, and not always on purpose.

He watched as she sniffed delicately at the bottle's mouth; her eyebrows-- thin curves of black--rose, and she took a careful sip. He had to grin at the expression on her face. *Of course, the carbonation's gotta be new to her.* Opening a beer bottle underwater would immediately dilute the beer with seawater. She rolled the liquid around in her mouth with the care of an expert taster, then swallowed, and took a larger mouthful before handing back the bottle.

Ed took it and regarded it for a moment, thinking about pathogens, then thought the heck with it, and took a gulp himself. They passed the bottle back and forth for a few companionable, silent minutes before she took the sandwich.

Again, the plastic wrapper did not seem a mystery to her. But this time her nose wrinkled at the smell of peanut butter, and she handed the sandwich back with an apologetic shrug. Ed grinned and rewrapped it. "Not your kind of stuff, huh? Guess you're more a sushi type."

The mermaid pushed a strand of hair out of her face and said something back. The black coils were beginning to dry in the warm air, but she kept dipping her tail to be sure that the surface remained wet. Her gaze took on an intensity that made him slightly nervous; it was as though she were trying to decide something about him. Then she leaned forward again and took both bottle and sandwich, tossing them gently back behind him, away from the pool.

Ed followed their flight and turned back, puzzled. The mermaid said something that sounded like a question, and held out one hand to him. Ed put his own in it, and she immediately began tugging him into the pool.

"Whoa!" Ed dug his heels in, literally. "Where're we going?"

Her grip tightened, and she spoke again, gesturing seaward. *She wants me to go with her?*

He shook his head. "I'll drown," he tried to explain, putting a hand to his throat. "I can't--"

She laid one soft finger over his lips. His eyes crossed as he tried to get a better look at its webbing, but her voice made him look back up. Her expression was gentle; he hadn't a clue what she was saying, but it occurred to him that she must know of his limitations. *In fact, I don't know if *she* can breathe water. All I know is that she's supposed to be a myth--*

She had both his hands now, and was pulling again, but not so hard that he could not free himself easily if he wanted to. *Do I want to?*

A tangle of myths spun through his head. Mermaids in legends drowned sailors, enticing them to their deaths with beautiful song. Yet this one hadn't sung a note, and her voice sounded perfectly ordinary. She was impossible, but he'd seen a lot of impossible things lately. As a scientist, he made a career of exploration. And if she did mean him harm, well, he was a strong swimmer.

"Okay," he said, and gave into her pull. She tugged him halfway into the water, then let one hand go and wrapped her fingers firmly around his other wrist. He took as deep a breath as he could--then they slid below the surface. Ed caught one glimpse of the hole through the wall that she must have used before she gave one incredibly powerful push with her tail, and they were through it.

He shut his eyes against the sand, but he could feel the rush of water that told him they were moving quickly, and the beat of her tail sent pulses through the water to bounce off his skin. He kicked carefully, trying to help a bit, but wary of hitting the tunnel walls with his bare feet.

He was beginning to worry about how much air was left in his lungs when light swept over them. The mermaid led him up at an angle, and they reached the surface beyond the waves' breaking line.

Ed sucked in a deep breath and began kicking to stay afloat. The mermaid bobbed in the water nearby, grinning at him, and he grinned back. Then she arched back into the water, her tail glistening briefly in the sun before she disappeared below the surface. A hand gripped his ankle, shaking it playfully, and he filled his lungs again and ducked down.

She hovered in the water a few feet away, and he knew without a doubt that, no matter her origins, she was in her element. Her hair waved around her head with the motion of the water, and her tail was natural and perfect. He was the one out of place.

She held out her hand again; he took it, and they were off through her blue- green, sunlit, moving world. Watching her back as they swam, he noticed- beyond amazement now-that she possessed a set of gills that ran parallel to her ribs along her back. *That explains her ribcage.* He could see the protective flaps of skin rise and fall as she breathed, and he was wildly curious as to how her body could fit in the mechanisms for breathing both water and air. The water was relatively shallow here, and she would let him go so he could rise to the surface to breathe, but she was a much more powerful swimmer and he let her pull him along. When they got to steeper slopes and she angled down them, he hesitated; he could only go on holding his breath for so long.

The mermaid looked at him again, apparently puzzled. Then she closed the gap between them, and before he quite knew what was happening, her lips were on his. Air bubbled from their mouths, tickling his nose, and he suddenly realized what she was trying to do. He let her seal her lips over his, and breathed in. Her breath was warm and tasted faintly of beer and fish, but it was oxygen-rich and he was grateful. *I'd give a lot to know how she does that!* he thought, and smiled at her when she let him go. The whole day was beginning to take on a dreamlike quality.

She led him deeper, further, replenishing his air every so often. They moved through schools of tiny fish and saw huge ones cruising past; they parted curtains of seaweed and drifted over corals and beds of crustaceans. Once they dove deeper as a motorboat passed by overhead; twice, a strange rumbling seemed to make the water tremble faintly, and it took him a while to realize that the sound that quivered in his bones was whalesong from some distant cetacean. Ed saw the ocean from the mermaid's perspective, untrammeled by mask or wetsuit or oxygen tank. He watched her scatter a flutter of fish with a flick of her tail and stroke the fearsome nose of the biggest moray eel he'd ever seen. Wonder piled on wonder until it all became a vibrant, salty blur. And then it faded gently to black.

*****

Ed woke uncomfortable-chilled, sticky, aching, and thirsty beyond belief. He lifted his painful head and looked around; he was lying on his stomach as though he had just crawled out of the ocean, and a retreating wave was lacing his ankles with foam. Dazed, he got unsteadily to his feet. *What the heck--*

A voice called behind him, though he couldn't make out the words. Turning, he saw a black head bobbing just beyond the waves, a white arm waving. Memory flooded back, and with it, understanding. *Lack of oxygen. I must have passed out.* Even the mermaid's breath had not been enough.

Steadying himself, he waved back. She shouted again, then dove; her tail flashed in the setting sun, and she was gone. He watched for a long time, but she did not reappear.

The whole thing seemed suddenly preposterous. Surely he'd just fallen asleep on the beach, and the tide had caught him. Surely the person in the water had just been a swimmer who had pulled him back onto the shore.

But if that were so, why hadn't the swimmer come out of the water with him, and pulled him completely away from the waves? Where had she gone when she'd dived? She'd never resurfaced.

His head hurt too much right now to disbelieve it, Ed finally decided. He spotted his bag not too far away, and squelched tiredly toward it. He had seen too many "impossible" things recently to dismiss the day's experiences out of hand. "I'll think about it later," he muttered to himself. "After some painkillers."

Picking up the bag, he turned to look back over the ocean one last time. The setting sun was beginning to stain the water orange; nothing moved in its glittering expanse but the waves. A small smile crossed Ed's face, and he started walking back to his van, an old line of poetry running through his head. *If the bards of old the truth have told, the sirens had raven hair...*