Get in your ships and follow me,” Jess said to the eleven Roamer volunteers. He climbed back aboard his water-and-pearl vessel, stepping through the permeable film and immersing himself in the enclosed ocean microcosm. Once away from any possibility of touching another person in the crowded confines of Rendezvous, he felt a wash of relief. He had already said his loving and bittersweet farewells to Cesca, standing as close as he dared.
Like a departing parade, the group of Roamer “water bearers” left Rendezvous, followed by calls of good luck. A small vessel piloted by Nikko Chan Tylar sprinted forward, catching up with Jess’s pearly ship and sending a message via the standard Roamer comm system Jess had installed to stay in contact with his new followers, though it had required modifications to operate in the watery environment. “We’re ready to get to work, Jess. Lead the way.”
Jess accelerated the spherical vessel, and the Roamer ships raced along beside him. . . .
When they reached the first uncharted world, they dropped to slow orbital speed, and Jess guided his volunteers through a murky fog of clouds. This had once been a sterile place, swept with storms, but now the open water was filled with wental life force, like a great battery supercharged and ready to burst with elemental power. He could see the surging tides of light and power, crackling lines like a circulatory system through the entire ocean, the entire planet, like a storm of sparkling and benevolent life.
On its descent, his wental ship attracted silvery tendrils of lightning that skittered gently across the metallized coral framework. It was a probing touch, a soft brushing of electrical fingertips controlled by the wentals that had infused the whole isolated planet. They welcomed Jess and his companions.
The sentient water contained within his bubble vessel thrummed with unmitigated joy. On his first visit, this had been a dark and forbidding world, but now the angry storms had been purified by living water that stirred the cauldron of thriving wentals that filled the energized sea below. Already the dispersed water entities had grown and separated from the first body of wentals, developing their own thoughts, but each wental remained a facet of the same overall being.
Jess’s vessel landed on the open sea, where it floated like a giant soap bubble. Whitecaps lapped against the sides of the ship, alive and glowing. Nearby, the eleven Roamer ships dropped down, seeking a place to land on a flat atoll.
Nikko emerged from his family craft, drinking in the rough, brisk air. Suffused with the wental life force, the environment had changed enough that the humans no longer needed breathing masks, as Jess had on his first visit. He glanced at the distant patterns of lightning that danced from thunderheads to the ocean, and shouted to Jess. “Looks like you followed your Guiding Star back to the Garden of Eden. This whole planet’s an ocean, but it’s completely . . . alive.”
“Yes, every droplet of water, every cloud. It’s charged with living energy.”
Jess used his own connection with the wentals to be part of this sentient ocean. He stepped out onto the choppy surface of the water and walked from his globular vessel across the wavetops. Enhanced surface tension buoyed each step, keeping him from sinking, until he reached the rocks where the others waited for him. The Roamers stared at him in awe.
Jess gestured past the wave-swept shore. As if on cue, a symphony of lightning played like musical notes across the sky. “See what the wentals can do? We’ve got to help bring them into the fight against the hydrogues.”
Nikko grinned. “We’re ready.”
“I could easily have given you water from my own ship at Rendezvous . . . but I didn’t want you to accept this mission just on the basis of my words. Look around you! I needed you to see this power, this gathering storm the wentals can command against the hydrogues! Witness the potential.”
All the Roamers stared at the fervid ocean. Currents of glowing life force streamed through the waves, anxious to be turned loose. The water elementals made the alien seas thrash and seethe. Jess’s companions muttered appreciatively.
“Even a sample of wental water can spread and reproduce in another body of liquid, like a match lighting one candle after another. I could do this alone, one world at a time, but it would take too long.”
Jess dipped his hand into the water and held up a palmful of the dripping silvery liquid. “The wentals are as eager to go as you are. Here, take as much as you like. Fill containers, and then disperse them to each world on your lists.”
Nikko hurried back to his small craft and rolled out a hollow polymer drum. “Should I just . . . dip this into the ocean?” But as the young man brought the container close, the water itself came alive. Looking like a jellyfish, it rose up in a gelatinous plume, wavered, and then deposited itself into the barrel; whatever did not fit sloshed back into the ocean. “Shizz, did you see that?”
The other Roamers ran to their crafts and brought out containers. Limbs of vibrant water rose up to fill each one. With the cooperation of the wentals inside, Nikko found that he could carry the laden barrel as if it weighed nothing at all, as if water entities could somehow manipulate the gravity on this whole planet. “It feels electrical. My fingers tingle.”
Jess stood watching his new recruits fill their cargo holds with the wental essence. They would disperse, and they would find other ocean worlds that could make the strange new ally strong. He envied these volunteers their sense of wonder.
He wished he could go with them, but he had a different mission now, and it consumed him almost as much as his love for Cesca.