On Blue's waters (7 page)

“Hum-ha!” It had been intended as an interruption, and I stopped talking.

“Logic, hey? Yes, um, logic. You said logic like a god. In your book, hey? You had Silk say it.”

It had been an idea Silk had once expressed to me, and I thought it might well have occurred to him when he climbed the insurgents’ barricade; but I did not trouble Remora with all that.

“Your god, um, logic, betrays you.”

I told him I did not see how.

“Ah-multiplely. In diverse ways, eh? To, ah, begin. There are many-yes, many-here who, er, do not. They offer no sacrifices. Nor do they attend sacrifice, hey? Never come to the manteion. I, um, inquire when it is, um, not unwelcome, concerning private prayer and-ah-special devotions. No. None. I-ah-credit it, for the most part.”

I nodded. “So would I, Your Cognizance.”

“Not worshippers, eh? Numbers, ah, fluctuate. Well known in the Chapter back home, eh? Much piety sometimes. In, er, time of test. Trial, hey? Floods might be-ah-instanced. Fires. Plagues. Wars. Or after a theophany, hey? At others, but little.” He lifted his hand and let it fall. “Up and down, eh? You follow me?”

I nodded again.

“Suppose it dropped to, er, nought. Zero. Not a single spirit, eh? Not a one. Never here, long as I live. Um-no. But suppose. No worshippers. Might not these-ah-foreign deities which you, um, suggest take the occasion to, ah, scourge?”

“It doesn’t seem likely,” I objected

“Hum? I beg to differ. Likely enough. Only too, ah, likely, I should say. Let us continue. You, er, we assume they are-um-deceased. These Vanished People, eh? The whorl is-ah-commodious? Voluminous? Extensive. You agree?”

“I suppose it is.”

“Capital. We progress. There is another, um, factor. No skylands, eh? Only, ah, stars there, as they are called. Whorl at home bent upwards, hey? Revealed itself to, ah, the eyes. This the, er, contrary. Reverse. Bent down. You, um, arrived via water?”

“Yes,” I said, and I told him what had happened on the sloop.

“Indeed, indeed! Capital! One prayer, eh? Only one, and, er, small faith, as you confess. Concede. See what one small prayer can do.” He rocked gleefully, his blue-veined fingers gripping the armrests of his chair.

I said forcefully that if the leatherskin had come in answer to my prayer I would just as soon as the Outsider had ignored it.

“Ingratitude. Rampant everywhere.” Remora shook his head. “But we-ah-digress. Yes, digress. You came by, um, sea. This is established. You must have observed that most of this-ah-fo-reign whorl. Concealed. Not like home, eh? You conceive that its former- um-population dead, eh? Extinct. Everyone does, even, er, myself. Ask how I know, and I am-ah-constrained to respond that I do not. I, um, assume it. You-ah-similarly? Synonymously, eh?”

I nodded, wondering how to ask him what I most desired to know.

Now I must ready myself to cut the throat of a stonebuck for Echidna, and prepare my homily.

* * *

I see that I have mentioned my prayer on the sloop without saying anything substantive about it.

The truth is that I grew frightened. The Short Sun was setting without the least hint of a breeze, and the fishing line I had put out had caught nothing. With the water and food I had brought, I could spend one more day sitting in an idle boat with some comfort, but after that the matter would become serious. I had been thinking about the gods, as I have indicated already. I decided to venture a prayer. After all, if the gods I addressed did not hear it, was that my fault or theirs? The only question was which I should address, and I soon found that I could make convincing arguments for three.

First, Pas. He was the greatest of all, and it seemed that Silk might have influence with him. Silk had been my staunch friend, as well as my teacher.

An even better case might be made for Scylla. I had come from her sacred city, where I was born; and I was trying to reach New Viron, which is her town as well, at least nominally. Besides which, she is the goddess of water, and I was on the water and would soon be in need of drinking water.

Last the Outsider, whose case was nearly as good. Of the three, he seemed most apt to hear my prayer. No god, perhaps, had much reason to think well of me; but he had more than any other. Also, he had been Silk’s favorite, and when Silk did not say that he trusted no god at all (which to tell the truth he frequently did) he said that the Outsider was the only god he trusted.

To be safe, I decided to address all three jointly. I knelt, and found myself tongue-tied. How could I address those three as a group? Pas might or might not be Silk, in part at least. Sinew had been quite correct about that. From what Auk and Chenille had told Nettle and me, Pas’s daughter Scylla was willful, violent, and vindictive. If ever a goddess seemed apt to resent being put in second place, it was she.

The Outsider seemed to me at that time as faceless and mysterious as the god or gods of the ancient inhabitants of this whorl we call Blue. He was, moreover, the god of outcasts and outlaws, of the broken and discarded. I considered myself neither an outcast nor an outlaw; and far from being discarded, I was about to undertake a mission of utmost importance for my town. Such being the case, what could I find to say to him? That I had no claim on his benevolence, but hoped for his help without one?

In the end, I prayed to whatever god might hear, stressing the helplessness and hopelessness we settlers felt, who had left our manteions and their Sacred Windows behind us, with so much else that we held dear, in obedience to Pas. A wind from the west, north, or east would be of greatest service to me, I told the hypothetical god. I had to go to New Viron, and eventually reach Pajarocu-a town quite unknown to me-before its lander lifted off. The feeblest breeze would be more than welcome, if only it would move my boat.

Had I ended my prayer there, I might have saved myself an infinity of fear and dismay; but I did not. Out of my heart I spoke of my loneliness and of the feelings of isolation that had swept over me as I waited half a day and more for a change in weather. Then I promised to learn all that I could about the Outsider and the gods of this whorl, to honor Pas and Scylla most highly if I ever returned to the whorl in which I was born, and to do anything in my power to bring them both here if they were not here already. I also (but this was to myself) solemnly swore to buy sweeps when I got to New Viron; and I recited every prayer that I could recall.

All this, as you may imagine, occupied quite some time. When I lifted my head at last, it was already shadelow, with only the smallest crescent of the Short Sun visible above the western horizon. Day was passing; but something else had gone before it, or so I felt. For what must have been half a dozen minutes, I watched the Short Sun set and looked about me, hoping to learn what it had been. The sloop seemed unchanged, with only a trifle more water in its bilge than there had been after I had bailed it. The sky was darker, and its few clouds ruddy in place of white, but that was only to be expected. The dim and distant shore of Main (I thought of it as distant, at least) was nearly black now, but otherwise the same.

At length it came to me: the trolling seabird had vanished. I had complained, most probably to no god at all, of loneliness. I had begged for company. And the only living thing in sight had been taken away. Here was proof of the cruelty of the gods, or of their absence from the whorl to which their king and father had consigned us.

Thinking of it I began to laugh, but was interrupted by a loud plop as my fishing float was jerked beneath the silvery surface. I reached for the line. It broke and vanished before I could touch it, leaving me with two slack cubits or so tied to a belaying pin. I was still staring down at the water when the sloop rocked so violently that I was almost thrown overboard.

The horror of it will never leave me entirely. Looking behind me, I saw great, coarse claws, each as thick as the handle of our ax, scrabbling for hold on the port gunwale and rowling its wood like so many gouges. A moment later the head appeared and shot toward me, the clash of its three jaws like the slamming of double doors. I threw myself backward to escape it, and fell into the sea.

I nearly drowned. Not because of the roughness of the water-there was none-nor because of the weight of tunic, trousers, and boots; but out of sheer panic. The leatherskin would release its hold on the sloop, swim under it, and kill me in a second or two; it seemed completely certain, and paralyzed by terror as I was, I was unable to conceive of an escape and equally unable to ready myself for death. Surely, these were the longest moments of my life.

Sea and air were still, and at last it came to me that the noises I heard resulted from the leatherskin’s continued efforts to climb aboard. It was not swimming swiftly and silently beneath the hull as I had feared, but struggling with idiotic ferocity to go straight to the place in which it had last seen me.

I am a strong swimmer, and I considered the possibility of swimming ashore. I knew it was a league or more away, because it had been almost out of sight when I stood in the waist of the sloop; but the sea was calm and warm, and if I paced myself carefully I might succeed.

An instant more, and I realized that I would have no chance whatever. The leatherskin would follow me over the starboard gunwale, and once it was back in the water was certain to hear my splashings and track me down. However slender it might be, my only chance was to reclaim the sloop the moment that the leatherskin returned to the sea.

By the time I had understood that, I had managed to kick off my boots. Diving so as to make less noise, I swam to the bow, surfaced, and risked grasping the bowsprit Sinew and I had added when it had become apparent that our new sloop would benefit from more foresail.

The sloop was still rocking violently; it was clear that the leatherskin had not given up its struggle to clamber aboard. I waited, trying very hard to breathe without gasping, and heard, and felt, the impact as its great inflexible body crashed to the bottom of the sloop, which sank under its weight until the freeboard was a scant hand.

I pulled myself up, and risked a look.

It was a sight I shall never forget. The leatherskin, one of the largest I have seen, stood with six massive legs and half its weight on the starboard gunwale, over which silver water cascaded. Its long, corded neck was stretched toward the last fleck of the vanishing Short Sun, its mouth so wide agape that every spike of its thousand fangs stabbed outward. Before I could have drawn breath, it had tumbled over the side and back into the oily sea.

The bowsprit was jerked up as if by the mighty hand, and I with it, although I nearly lost my grip. When it plunged down again to strike the sea (for the foundering sloop was pitching as though in a gale) I was able to throw myself onto the foredeck.

By the time I had scrambled to my feet, the leatherskin had heard me and turned back, its head above the surface and its ponderous bulk moving so rapidly below that the sea swirled and frothed above it. Floundering knee-deep, I got the harpoon I had re-stowed that afternoon; and when the leatherskin’s huge claws gripped the starboard gunwale and its hideous jaws had snapped shut upon the barbed head, I rammed the harpoon so deep that its fangs actually tore the skin of my right hand. It fell back into the water, its head dripping bloody foam, and was lost to my sight, the harpoon line hissing after it as it sounded.

I was afraid that it might snatch the boat under, and bailed frantically, telling myself again and again that I must cut the line, which was tied to a ringbolt in the keel. I groped for it, terrified that a loop of the uncoiling line would catch my wrist or my ankle. But although I would have sworn an hour before that I could put my hand on that ringbolt in the dark, I would not find it.

The leatherskin surfaced thirty cubits from the bow, snorting blood and water. In less than a minute, the sloop was jerked along behind it, listing fearfully and making more speed than it ever had under sail. I lunged forward (I had been too far aft searching for the ringbolt) to cut the line, but before I could, the leatherskin had done the job for me. The line went slack.

By that time the first stars were out. I ought to have finished bailing and recoiled the line, I suppose, and no doubt done other things as well-gotten out our little tin lantern and lit it.

But I did not. I sat in the stern instead, where I was accustomed to sit, with my trembling hands resting on the tiller; and tried to catch my breath, and felt the hammering of my heart, and tasted the sweet-salt tang of the sea. Spat, and spat again, too tired and shaken to get up and break out a fresh bottle of water.

Green rose larger and brighter than any star, a flying whorl of visible width, where the stars are but twinkling points of light. I watched it climb above the dim white cliffs and swaying incense willows, and wondered whether Silk had seen it, at the bottom of the grave in his dream (where it would have been a fit ornament) and forgotten it when he awakened-or perhaps had only forgotten to tell me about it. Even if it had been there, he would not have known what a horror he saw.

After an hour or more had passed, it occurred to me that if the leatherskin had arrived a few minutes later it would almost certainly have killed me. By the last rays of the Short Sun I had scarcely escaped it.

In the dark…

The thought re-energized me, although I cannot explain why it should. I lit the lantern and ran it up the mast, found the bailer and resumed work, wearily scooping up water as black as ink and flinging it over the side. When I was a boy, we had pumps to raise the water from our wells; none but very backward country people and the poorest of the poor dropped buckets down their wells and hauled them up again; I thought as I worked how much easier a similar device would make it to empty a boat half filled with water, and resolved to build one when I could, and thought about how such a thing might be constructed-a tube of copper or waxwood, a plunger that would first draw the water up, and then, the positions of the valves being reversed by the motion of the handle, force it out another opening and back into the sea.