The Face of the Waters Read online

  The Black Sea Star had pulled up to starboard. Figures were moving around on its deck, pointing, waving. On the other side, the Sorve Goddess was coming up fast, with the Three Moons not far behind it.

  "That's a platform over there," Gabe Kinverson said. "North side of the island, to the left."

  "Jesus, yes!" Delagard cried. "Will you look at the size of it?"

  Immobile just beyond the island, drifting alongside it as though moored, was what looked like a second island but which was in fact the enormous sea-creature that the island itself had for a moment seemed to be. Platforms were the largest animals of the seas of Hydros that any human had ever heard of, larger even than the all-devouring whale-like beasts known as mouths: huge flat blocky things, vaguely rectangular in shape, so inert they might just as well have been islands. They drifted casually in all seas, passively straining microorganisms from the water through screenlike apertures around their perimeters. How they managed to take in enough food in the course of a day to sustain themselves, even feeding round the clock as they did, was beyond anyone's comprehension. Lawler imagined that they must be as sluggish as driftwood, metabolically-mere giant lumps of barely sentient meat. And yet their vast purple eyes, set in triple rows of six along their backs, each one wider across than a man's shoulders, seemed to hold some sort of sombre intelligence. Now and then a platform had come wandering into Sorve Bay, floating with its belly just above the submerged planks of the bay floor. One time Lawler, out in the bay fishing from a small boat, had rowed unknowingly right over one, and found himself looking down in utter amazement into a set of those great sad eyes that stared back up at him through the transparent water with a sort of godlike detachment and even, he imagined, a weird kind of compassion.

  This platform seemed to be in use as nothing more or less than a work-table. Bands of Gillies were toiling industriously on its back. They were moving about in knee-deep water, coiling and twining long strands of algae fibres that were being pushed up onto the platform from below by shining green tentacles. The tentacles were as thick as an arm, very supple, with fingerlike projections at their ends. No one, not even Kinverson, had any idea what kind of creature they might belong to.

  Father Quillan said, "How marvellous it is, the way they all work together, those different animals!"

  Lawler turned to the priest. "No one's ever seen an island under construction before, not that I've ever heard of. So far as we've known, all the islands are hundreds or even thousands of years old. So this is how they do it! What a sight!"

  "Some day," Quillan said, "this whole planet will have real land like other worlds. The sea floor will rise, millions of years from now. By building these artificial islands and coming up out of the sea to live, the Gillies are preparing themselves for their next evolutionary phase."

  Lawler blinked. "How do you know that?"

  "I studied geology and evolution at the seminary on Sunrise. Don't you think priests are taught anything but rituals and scriptures? Or that we take the Bible literally? This place has a very quiet geological history, you know. There weren't any dynamic crustal movements that pushed mountain ranges and whole continents up out of the primordial sea the way it happened on land worlds, and so everything remained on the same level, most of it submerged. In time the sea was able to erode away any land formations that did project above the water. But all that's due to change. Pressure's building up at the planet's core. Internal gravitational stresses are slowly creating turbulence, and in thirty million years, forty million, fifty-"

  "Hold it," Lawler said. "What's happening over there?"

  Delagard and Dag Tharp were yelling at each other, suddenly. Dann Henders was mixed up in it too, red-faced, a vein standing out on his forehead. Tharp was a jittery, excitable man, always quarrelling with somebody about something; but the sight of the usually soft-spoken Henders in a high temper got Lawler's attention right away.

  He went over to them.

  "What's going on?"

  Delagard said, "A little insubordination, that's all. I can take care of it, doc."

  Tharp's beak of a nose had turned crimson. The baggy flesh of his throat was quivering.

  "Henders and I have suggested sailing over to the island and asking the Gillies to give us refuge," he said to Lawler. "We can anchor nearby and help them build their island. It'll be a partnership right from the start. But Delagard says no, no, we're going to go on all the way to Grayvard. Do you know how long it'll take to get to Grayvard? How many tricksy net-things can crawl up on board before we reach it? Or God knows what else that's out here? Kinverson says we've been tremendously lucky so far, not encountering anything hostile to speak of, but how much longer can we-"

  "Grayvard is where we're going," said Delagard icily.

  "You see? You see?"

  Henders said, "We should at least put it to a vote, don't you think, doc? The longer we remain at sea, the greater the risks are of our running into the Wave, or some of the nasty critters that Gabe's been telling us about, or some killer storm, or almost anything else. Here's an island actually under construction. If the Gillies are using divers and what-all else to help them build it, even a platform, why wouldn't they accept human help besides? And be grateful for it? But he won't even consider it!"

  Delagard gave the engineer a truculent glare. "Since when have Gillies ever wanted our help? You know how it was on Sorve, Henders."

  "This isn't Sorve."

  "It's all the same everywhere."

  "How can you be sure of that?" Henders snapped. "Listen, Nid, we've got to talk to the other ships, and that's all there is to it. Dag, you go call Yanez and Sawtelle and the rest, and-"

  "Stay right where you are, Dag," Delagard said.

  Tharp looked from Delagard to Henders and back again, and didn't move. His wattles shook with anger.

  Delagard said, "Listen to me! Do you want us to have to live on a miserable little flat island that's months or years away from being finished? In what? Seaweed huts? Do you see any vaarghs there? Is there any bay that we can bring up useful materials from? And they won't take us, anyway. They know we were tossed out of Sorve on our asses. Every Gillie on this planet knows that, believe me."

  "If these Gillies don't want us," said Tharp, "how can you be so sure the Grayvard Gillies will?"

  Delagard's face crimsoned. For a moment he seemed stung by that. Lawler realized that Delagard hadn't said anything at all up till now about having cleared their arrival on Grayvard with the real owners of the island. It was only the human settlers on Grayvard that had agreed to provide sanctuary.

  But Delagard made a quick recovery. "Dag, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Since when do we have to ask permission of Gillies for emigration between islands? Once they let humans onto an island, they don't give a shit which humans they are. They can hardly tell one batch of us from another as it is. So long as we don't slop over onto the Gillie part of Grayvard, there won't be any problem."

  "You're very sure of yourself," Henders said. "But why go all the way to Grayvard if we don't have to? We still don't know that it's impossible for us to latch on at some closer island that doesn't have a human settlement yet. These Gillies here might just be willing to take us in. And yes, maybe they'd be glad to get a little help from us building it, too."

  "Sure," said Delagard. "They'd especially like to have a radio operator and an engineer. That would be just what they need. Okay: you two want to live on that island? Swim for it, then. Go on! The two of you, over the side, right now!" He grabbed Tharp by the arm and began to tug him toward the rail. Tharp gaped at him, pop-eyed. "Go on! Get going!"

  "Hold it," Lawler said quietly.

  Delagard let go of Tharp and leaned forward, rocking on the balls of his feet. "You have an opinion, doc?"

  "If they go over the side, I go too."

  Delagard laughed. "Fuck, doc! Nobody's going over the side! What the hell do you think I am?"

  "You really want an answer to that, Nid
?"

  "Look," Delagard said, "what this comes down to is one simple thing. These are my ships. I'm the captain of this ship now and I'm also the head of the whole expedition, and nobody's going to dispute that. Out of the generosity of my spirit and the greatness of my heart I've invited everyone who used to live on Sorve to sail with me to our new home on Grayvard Island. That's where we're going. A vote on whether we ought to try to settle on this little sliver of a new island here is altogether out of line. If Dag and Dan want to live there, fine, I'll escort them over to it myself in the water-strider. But there won't be any votes and there won't be any change in the basic plan of the voyage. Is that clear? Dann? Dag? Is that clear, doc?"

  Delagard's fists were balled. He was a fighter, all right.

  Henders said, "As I remember it, you were the one who got us into this fix in the first place, Nid. Was that out of the generosity of your spirit and the greatness of your heart too?"

  "Shut up, Dann," Lawler said. "Let me think."

  He glanced toward the new island. They were so close to it now that he could make out the yellow glint of Gillie eyes. The Gillies appeared to be going about their business without taking the slightest note of the approaching flotilla of human-occupied ships.

  Lawler realized suddenly that Delagard was right and Henders and Tharp were wrong. Glad though he'd be to end the voyage right here and now, Lawler knew that trying to settle here wasn't an idea worth thinking about. The island was tiny, a mere sliver of wood barely rising above the waves. Even if the Gillies were willing to let them in, there would be no room for them here.

  Quietly he said, "All right. For once I'm with you, Nid. It isn't any place for us, this little island."

  "Good. Good. Very sensible of you. I can always count on you to take a reasonable position, can't I, doc?" Delagard cupped his hand to his mouth and shouted up to Pilya, in the rigging. "Cut to windward! Let's get out of here!"

  "We should have voted," Dag Tharp said sullenly, rubbing his arm.

  "Forget it," Lawler told him. "This is Delagard's party. We're only his guests."

  3

  The weather began to change in a fundamental way at the beginning of the week that followed. As the ships followed their northwesterly course toward Grayvard they were starting to leave tropical waters behind, and the strong sun and clear blue skies of the perpetual summer that reigned in the middle latitudes. These were temperate seas here. The water was cool, and dank chilling fogs rose from it when warm breezes blew from the equator. By midday the fog was gone; but the broad vault of the sky was often dappled with fleecy patches of cloud much of the time, or even a dull, lingering low overcast. One thing remained the same, though. There was still no rain. There had been none since the little fleet had left Sorve, and that was becoming cause for concern.

  The look of the sea itself was different here. Home Sea's familiar waters were well behind them now. This was the Yellow Sea, set off from the blue waters to the east by a sharp line of demarcation. A thick disagreeable scum of microscopic algae, puke-yellow with long red streaks running through it like dark gouts of blood, covered the surface in every direction as far as the horizon.

  It was ugly stuff, but fertile. The water swarmed with life, much of it new and strange. Bulky ungraceful broad-headed fishes as big as a man, with dull blue scales and black blind-looking eyes, nosed around the ships like floating logs. Occasionally a beautiful velvety sea-leopard would come up with terrific velocity from straight below and swallow one in a single lunging gulp. One afternoon a stocky tubular thing twenty metres long with a jaw like a hatchet appeared from nowhere between the flagship and the bow of Bamber Cadrell's ship and went slamming thunderously across the flagship's wake, rising up and pounding the water frenziedly with its chin, and when it had passed by there were severed chunks of the broad-headed blue fish scattered everywhere on the yellow waves. Smaller versions of the hatchet-jaw now emerged from below and began to feed. Meatfish abounded here too, swimming in whirling circles with their sharp-tipped tentacles flashing like blades, but they stayed maddeningly out of the reach of Kinverson's fishing lines.

  Armies made up of millions of little many-legged things with glistening transparent bodies cut through the yellow scum like scythes, opening wide boulevards that closed immediately behind them. Gharkid brought up a net-load of them-they scrambled and thrashed wildly against the meshes, panicky in the open sunlight, trying to get back to the water-and when Dag Tharp, not at all serious, suggested that they might be good to eat, Gharkid promptly stewed a batch of them in their own yellow-stained sea-water and ate them with a show of complete unconcern.

  "Not so bad," he said. "Try some."

  Two hours later he still seemed to be all right. Others took the risk, Lawler among them. They ate them legs and all. The little crustaceans were crunchy, vaguely sweet, apparently nourishing. No one reacted badly to them. Gharkid spent the day at the gantry, pulling them up in his net by the thousand, and that night there was a great feast.

  Other life-forms of the Yellow Sea were less rewarding. Ambulatory green jellyfish, harmless but messy, found a way of crawling up the sides of the hull onto the deck in great numbers, where they rotted within minutes. They all had to be swept back over the side, a task that took nearly an entire day. In one region the rigid black fruiting-towers of some large alga rose to heights of seven or eight metres above the water in the mornings and exploded in the warmth of midday, bombarding the ships with thousands of hard little pellets that sent people scattering for cover. And there were hagfish in these waters, too. By tens and twenties platoons of the worm-like things went whizzing and buzzing above the waves on flights of hundred metres or so, desperately flapping their sharp-angled leather wings with a weird dreadful purposefulness until at last they fell back into the water. Sometimes they passed close enough to the ship so that Lawler could see the ridges of hard red bristles on their backs, and he would touch his hand to his left cheek, where some abrasions still lingered from his own encounter with one.

  "Why do they fly like that?" he asked Kinverson. "Are they trying to catch something that lives in the air?"

  "Isn't anything that lives in the air," Kinverson said. "Something's trying to catch them, more likely. They see a big mouth opening behind them and they take off. It's a pretty good way to escape. The other time they fly is when they're mating. The females go up ahead a ways, and the males come flying after them. The guys that fly the fastest and longest are the ones that get the girls."

  "Not a bad selection system. If you're breeding for speed and endurance."

  "Let's hope we don't get to see it in action. The fuckers come out by the thousands. They can really fill the air, and they're absolutely crazed."

  Lawler indicated the rough place on his cheek. "I can imagine. A little one smacked into me right here last week."

  "How little?" Kinverson said incuriously.

  "Maybe fifteen centimetres."

  "Lucky thing for you it was so small," Kinverson said. "Lot of real bitchy things out there."

  "You live in the past too much, doctor," Pilya had said. But how could he not? The past lived in him. Not only Earth, that remote and mythical place; but Sorve, especially Sorve, where his blood and body and mind and soul had been put together. The past rose up in him all the time. It rose up in him now, as he stood by the rail looking out at the strangeness of the Yellow Sea.

  * * *

  He was ten years old, and his grandfather had called him to his vaargh. His grandfather had retired from doctoring three years before and spent his days walking by the sea-wall, and he was shrunken and yellowish-looking now and it was clear that he didn't have much longer to live. He was very old, old enough to remember even some of the first-generation settlers, even his own grandfather, Harry Lawler, Harry the Founder.

  "I have something for you, boy," his grandfather said. "Come here. Come closer. You see that shelf, there, Valben? Where the Earth things are? Bring them over to me."

  The
re were four Earth things there, two flat round metal ones, and a large rusted metal one, and a painted piece of pottery. Once there had been six, but the other two, the little statuette and the piece of rough stone, were in Valben's father's vaargh now. Valben's grandfather had already begun passing his possessions on.

  "Here, boy," his grandfather said. "I want you to have this. It belonged to my grandfather Harry, who got it from his grandfather, who brought it with him from Earth when he went to space. And now it's yours." And he gave him the piece of pottery, painted orange and black.

  "Not my father? Not my brother?"

  "This is for you," his grandfather said. "To remember Earth by. And to remember me by. You'll be careful not to lose it, won't you? Because there are only six Earth things that we have, and if we lose them, we won't be getting any more. Here. Here." He pressed it into Valben's hand. "From Greece, it is. Maybe Socrates once owned it, or Plato. And now it's yours."

  That was the last time he ever spoke to his grandfather.

  For months afterward he carried the piece of painted pottery with him wherever he went. And when he rubbed its jagged rough-edged surface it seemed to him that Earth was alive again in his hand, that Socrates himself was speaking to him out of the bit of pottery, or Plato. Whoever they might have been.

  * * *

  He was fifteen. His brother Coirey, who had run off to sea, was home for a visit. Coirey was nine years older than he was, the oldest of what once had been three brothers, but the middle one, young Bernat, had died so long ago that Valben scarcely remembered him. Coirey was to have been the island's next doctor, some day; but Coirey had no interest in doctoring. Doctoring would tie him down to a single island. The sea, the sea, the sea, that was what Coirey wanted. And so Coirey had gone off to sea, and letters had come from him from places that were only names to Valben, Velmise and Sembilor and Thetopal and Meisa Meisanda; and now Coirey himself was here, just for a short while, stopping off at Sorve on a voyage to a place called Simbalimak, in a sea known as the Azure Sea that was so far away it seemed like another world.