Free Can and Can'tankerous by Harlan Ellison (R)

dwelling storeys; the offices from twelve to fifty, all staff members down to the last wage-slave in the typing pool; the galleria shops and their sales force from ground level to twelve…the data fields went on and on.
    It was little enough for them to key her in for a late night swim in the warm, silent Olympic-sized swimming pool.
    Hester floated on her back, auburn hair trailing on the surface like a Portuguese man-of-war. She had turned on only the valance lights; their soft blue-white glow cast a calming, almost ethereal luminescence across the gently rippling water.
    There was the sound of a door closing on metal jamb.
    Hester swam quickly to the edge of the pool, and pressed herself against it. She was naked.
    The man was tall, and dark. She could not tell whether he was Caucasian or Negro. His skin was almost the shade of teak, a golden hue that gave no indication of heritage. But it wasn’t suntan, genuine or salon-produced.
    He strode toward her, and looked down.
    “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he said. His voice was buttered toast. If she had ever trusted anyone in her life, she trusted him. His smile, his manner, the way his hands lay along the seams of his pants. Kind eyes and honest speaking.
    “Well, the pool is actually closed,” she said, not wanting to offend him, afraid of losing him even before he had had a chance to discover her. “I’m staff here at the Tower. They let me use it after hours sometimes.”
    “May I swim with you for a while?”
    She dimpled prettily. There had been a husband, briefly, eleven years earlier. A passion or two since. Nothing more. “To be honest,” she said, “I’m naked. I wasn’t expecting anyone else. The doors were supposed to be locked and—”
    How had he gained entrance? She wanted to ask him, but he was removing his clothes. “That should be all right,” he said. “No problem. And nothing to feel awkward about.”
    He stood naked at the edge of the pool, almost aglow with his easy beauty. Then he seemed to lift from the tile edge, as if airborne; arched over her, and sliced into the pool as smoothly and cleanly as a paper cut.
    She watched him stroke away from her, barely making a splash. He reached the deep end, tucked and rolled, and beat his way down to the shallow end. Then he came back. She watched, realizing she had been holding her breath.
    And when he came to her, she laid her hand on his bicep and felt the blood beating beneath the skin. He reached for her, and took her hand and put it on his hip, and her hand slid between his legs, and she knew that there would be more than swimming.
    He pressed against her, and her back went flat to the tiled side of the pool. She let her arms trail at her sides, and when he spread her legs and lifted them around his hips, her arms laid out in the overflow gutter, giving her the proper height. She felt him trying to penetrate, and she closed her eyes, her head thrown back; and then he was inside her.
    And in that instant the kelpie changed shape. His sleek head of hair—which she now realized had been wet even before he had entered the water—seemed matted with weeds. She felt a terrible pain as he expanded within her, and the sound he made was that of an animal, a cross between a horse and a bull.
    The kelpie went to its native form, holding her helpless. To be mounted, to be drowned, and her flesh to be eaten. The kelpie, servant of the Devil. Hester screamed…
    And fought back. First she trapped his organ within her, held in a grip as tight as a walnut shell. Then she changed. Her body expanded, altered, flowed, and reformed.
    Flesh was eaten. But not hers.
    Love is a changeling. The kelpie: waterhorse. Hester: the sharkling. There are forms that are ancient, and there are natural predators. More recent.
    The water was warm. And peculiarly tainted.
     
    L is for LEVIATHAN
     
    In what would have been the year 6250 BCE the crippled century-vessel from somewhere in the deeps of space fell through