IVBeyond the Sun
In this chapter
- 19vThe Black Lung
- 20rEyeless lurker
- 20vThe Trench of Avals
- 21rLampgill anglerfish
- 21vThrough a porthole, Vault of Hours
- 22vThe Vault of Hours
- 23rInk-veiled cephalopod
- 23vGinnungap Trench
- 24rCliff-walker
2,800 m – 5,800 m · fauna
Eyeless lurker
Anombra abyssophilica
The lurker is the first organism in this chapter that I have only ever encountered from inside a hull. At three kilometres the rules of approach belong to the animal: a curious species turns aside, this one does not. What I record is what the submersible's light reached, which was not much, and what it kept from reaching us, which was a near-collision the pilot logged without comment.
The lurker is rarely seen and impossible to follow. It is a long-bodied, jointed thing, perhaps three metres in extension, the colour of wet shale. It has no eyes — the order it belongs to lost them, by all available evidence, before the genus diverged.
It is not aggressive toward submersibles, but it is uninterested in them in a manner that has produced more than one near-collision: where a curious species would turn aside, the lurker continues on its line until it must reroute, and the reroute is only by the minimum.
Pelagine view
The Tyrian record (such as it has been translated) treats the lurker as cohabitant rather than fauna. Whether this reflects an animism, a convention, or a physiological detail not yet observed by the survey is unsettled.
The Court's translators call the lurker cohabitant. The survey calls it fauna. I have left the disagreement on the page rather than resolve it into something neither party would recognise.