The Long Twilight (24 page)

"Mostly the boy's strength," Cruthers said shortly, eyeing Gon sourly. "This can't go on indefinitely, Brother Glad." He looked the big, florid man in the eye. "I have the authority to order an end to these swimming expeditions on medical grounds. He's exhausting himself for nothing. It's obvious there's no viable culture among the natives—assuming any are left alive."

"We know they're alive. And as for culture, it's not their fault Terra withdrew support, let them revert to savagery," Brother Glad said in his large voice. "These people are a human creation, no less human for their appearance. It was Terran science that mutated their ancestors, disinherited them and denied them the open air. We can't slough off responsibility for them!"

"That was three hundred years ago. My job isn't to emotionalize over what's past, but to look for ways to build the future. Recommending uneconomic ventures on lifeless worlds isn't one of those ways."

"We must stay long enough to establish contact and learn their needs!" the missionary said indignantly. "We owe it to the Merieds to do what we can to lighten their lot."

"The Meried experiment was carried out in order to open a new world to colonization, to afford an outlet for the human need for a frontier. The test failed. I shall so report."

"But we could try again—"

"I can't base my recommendations on sentiment, Brother Glad, however noble. Tomorrow we lift. You may plan accordingly." The Survey chief turned and strode from the room.

"Don't despair, Gon," Glad said to the boy after the door had closed. "I'm sure we'll have luck today. Think what it will mean, Gon—to meet your own people—"

"They're not my people," the boy interrupted. He looked at the stone floor, not at the man. "They look like . . . like freaks," he added in a mutter.

"We don't use that word, Gon!" the man said in a whiplash tone. "You, least of all!"

A beige flush mounted the boy's narrow face.

"I'm worse than they are," he blurted. "They're at home here, but I'm not at home anywhere! I can't stand sunlight, but I can't breathe water! I swim better than any Terran, but not as well as a baby Meried!"

"There'll always be a home for you in the Tabernacle," the missionary said in a gentler voice. "Now come along. It's time."

Gon didn't move.

"Gon, Gon, have you forgotten everything we've taught you?" the blond man said in a tone of patience long abused. "Don't you remember our purpose here, your own privileged role as a unique instrument of the Infinite?"

"I'm not a unique instrument, Brother Glad. I'm a halfbreed monster that never should have been born!"

"Stop it!" The missionary's voice cracked like a physical blow. "You're forbidden, ever, to voice thoughts like those! There is a purpose in life for every soul born under a sun! Your purpose is here! Now get on your feet and come with me! I won't let you fail—us or yourself!"

Reluctantly, the boy rose and followed the blond man as he strode down across the pebbled beach. At the edge of the sea, the older man halted and turned his face up to the sky.

"O, thou who art eternal and without limit," he intoned, "grant this humble creature of thy making the privilege of leading those who were lost and are found again back to the true path of thy will!"

He turned to the boy.

"Perhaps today is the day, Gon," he said solemnly. "Good luck."

The boy shivered, looking out across the wind-riffled water. He went forward hesitantly until an edge of surf washed about his feet, then paused to adjust the breathing mask across his mouth. As he looked back, he saw Brother Glad's pale eyes fixed on him. He waded on; the chill water surged about his waist, his chest.

I'm afraid!
He wanted to scream.
I don't want to go down into this alien ocean. I want to go home.
But instead he drew a deep breath and dived forward into the breaking wave.

II

On their barge, anchored ten miles off the lifeless North Continent of the world known as Meries, Cap O'Royle and Pard Kuchel, traders, sat at the cabin table, drinking coffee. For the last five hours they had been busy, loading the displays of Terran manufactured goods into the homemade display racks designed to be lowered over the side for the examination of their prospective customers. Small tools, wrist compasses, patent fish-baits, sea-lights, buckles and straps, small hardware, a few foodstuffs, all the items that twenty years of tramp commerce had taught them would be welcomed by the elusive Merieds.

There was a sudden splash in the diving well at the center of the barge; a goggle-eyed gray-blue face appeared there, water sluicing down across the coarse, almost reptilian skin. The creature's sphincter-like mouth gaped comically, like a goldfish on a carpet. Water ran from the nostrils, mere slits in the wet-clay sheen of the face. The sea-man made a hoarse, croaking sound, waved a webbed hand and dropped from sight as O'Royle, a stocky, white-haired man, called a greeting.

"They're here," he said, rising. "I'll take the first load down."

"Damn! Wish old Dreen would give a man more warning! Many times as I've seen that ugly face, it still gives me the leaping creeps when it pops up at me that way!"

"They're adapted to their environment, Pard, like a bird or a fish. Think of 'em that way and they have a kind of beauty."

"Hard to believe they're only ten generations away from normal folk," Pard said. "I heard somewhere a man could still breed with 'em. Picture getting that close to one of their females."

O'Royle grunted. He checked his gauges, closed his helmet and lowered himself into the well. As the blue-green water closed over him, the sea-man swam up, his oversized eyes gleaming in the watery light.

"Hello, Dreen," O'Royle said, his voice echoing oddly through his underwater microphone. "Good trip up?"

The Meried's finny head-crest rippled as he nodded, uttering the gasping, clucking sound that was an all-purpose affirmative. He held out a small pouch of soft, slick-wet fishskin.

"I have a few sea-stones for you, O'Royle," he said in his thin, going-down-for-the-last-time voice. "Not so nice as last time, but big, eh?"

The trader squeezed the pearls out on his palm. They were as big as walnuts, but lumpy, an iridescent milky-blue yellow in color.

"They're beauties," O'Royle said. He waved a hand at his stock of goods—mostly small hardware, water-proof power tools. "Take what you like."

The Meried took his time looking over the display. Other seamen gathered around. They had brought their barter-goods with them: nets of rare shells, glassy, polychrome corals, sea fruits mutated from Earthly plants. There were swollen ears of sea-corn with yard-long cobs set with fist-sized kernels, purple oceanberries descended from Pinot Noir grapes, clusters of tomatoids, like great green raspberries; hundred-foot salt-melons which would be flensed like whales and the sweet red flesh lifted aboard in hundred-pound slabs, to be ferried ashore and stored in the spaceship's freezer. The stones O'Royle sold on distant planets, but the foodstuffs he rationed out to himself and Pard over the long years between visits.

"Did you know, O'Royle, there is another party of drymen camped on the shore there, half a swim to the north?" the sea-man said. He pointed off through the murky water.

"Traders?" O'Royle frowned.

"These are no traders. They built a house on the high beach, but they offer no goods."

"Maybe they're scientists, a mapping party, something like that." O'Royle rubbed his chin, looking troubled.

"They say," Dreen went on, "that there's a man among them who's of the sea, but not of the sea."

O'Royle looked at him questioningly. "You mean a frogman, with scuba gear?"

"No . . . he swims naked in the surf. Yet he sleeps on land. Curious, eh, Royle?"

"Half a swim to the north, you said?"

Back on deck, O'Royle told Pard the news. The smaller man swore.

"Might of known it wouldn't last, having the place to ourselves."

"There's plenty here for everyone, Pard," his partner pointed out. "It might be the best thing for the Merieds to build up trade here, remind the government they're out here."

"I don't mean that. I just don't want strangers poking in, spoiling things. I like it like it is—peaceful."

"We don't own Meries, Pard. But I'm curious. I'm going to take the flitter over and pay a courtesy call. You mind the store."

III

As Gon's eyes adapted to the light level, he was able to see the undulating slope that stretched away before him, its surface thickly grown with weed of the strange color that he only saw here, under the sea. A cloud of silt rose like a puff of smoke ahead, as some small sea-dweller took alarm at his approach; at once, with a sharp pain, the nictitating membranes that protected his eyes flicked closed—a reflex never triggered on land.

He swam on, out past the second bar, angling more sharply downward now. Outcroppings of rock broke the bottom here; the luminous lichens crusting them shed an eerie glow through the water. Small shrimp-like piscoids moved in awkward spurts among the stalks of sea-cane. Something large and lazy oozed away across the bottom. Gon drew air from his breather, giving the big fellow a wide berth.

The first chill had passed; as his body warmed, he swam more strongly, questing through the dim water for the elusive mermen.

O'Royle flew north for half an hour, following the barren coastline of the lifeless continent. Behind the froth-laced beach, gray and tan hills rose toward distant peaks of stone, untouched by the faintest hint of green. Only patches of dead trees and sere grasses along the strand attested the three-centuries-gone attempt to transplant earthly soil and flora to the young world. Those, and the remnant of the viaformed humans who had been seeded here. The Lost War had wrecked the grand scheme of which they had been a part, cut off the support and aid that would have made the scheme work. Now with a resurgent Terra again feeling her way into the Arm, the Merieds might benefit from some belated assistance, O'Royle reflected. But, more likely, the sea-men would suffer from the rediscovery of their world. The oceans were rich in dissolved minerals; floating refineries could extract them, discharge the contaminating wastes into the sea. It was standard practice on pre-life worlds, but tough on the Merieds. That was the reason O'Royle had never reported his find, twenty-five years ago. Now, it seemed, the secret was out.

He saw the camp ahead, a cluster of pre-fab sheds perched on a knoll of rock above the high-tide line. He settled in near a shed; a stocky man in khakis came forward.

"I'm Brother Glad," the stranger said, holding out a square hand. "Surprised to see your flier. The others are away, out in the launch."

O'Royle listened silently to the other's explanation of the purpose of the Survey Group.

"I understand you have a half-breed in your party," he said when the missionary paused. "I'd like to see him."

Brother Glad looked surprised. "There is a lad of mixed blood with me, yes. How did you—"

"Where is he?"

"What's your reason for asking?"

"This boy—he's from Terra? About nineteen years old?"

Glad frowned. "And if he is?"

"His name's Gon O'Royle. He's my son."

Glad's face went rubbery; his mouth shaped itself around words as if trying them for size but finding none that fit.

"I left the boy in school, back on Terra," O'Royle said. "Why did you bring him here?"

Brother Glad made an effort to reassemble his expression of stern good will. "He belongs here," he stated. "His destiny—"

"He belongs back on Terra, getting an education," O'Royle cut off the other's speech.

Brother Glad's expression jelled over. "Gon is here doing what the Infinite shaped him for, what he was born for."

O'Royle narrowed his eyes. "He was born," he said grimly, "because a young spacer met a woman in a lonely place, and they fell in love. As for his shape—Gon's an intelligent boy, a fine scholar. He can lead a useful life—"

"A life of seclusion—a scientist-monk, a misfit in a dead-end! He deserves a chance to live! Here, he can make a unique contribution. He'll play a role in the Great Plan—"

"Hogwash!" O'Royle cut in. "You're not going to use Gon as a pawn in your game, whatever it is! Now, do you tell me where he is, or do I have to start looking?"

Brother Glad met O'Royle's eye. "You may be Gon's father, but he's of age. You've no claim on him now."

"And you do?"

"He's helping me willingly."

"To do what?"

"His people were disinherited—denied the open land, the free air—by the meddling of our ancestors! I intend to undo that wrong—to bring these unfortunate stepchildren of the human race back to their own world! Gon can help!"

O'Royle stared at the zealot. "Back to their own world?
This
is their world, damn you! They can't live out of water for more than a few hours!"

"Perhaps—but we needn't abandon them to such a fate! They've regressed since their ancestors were left here; they no longer farm; their domestic animals have returned to the wild. They've multiplied, but no start has been made on bringing life to the shore. The experiment, in other words, is a failure. Very well—these people are doomed—but their children deserve the right to rejoin their race, to live normal lives! They're innocent victims of unnatural tampering with the Infinite's plan! We owe it to them to give them back what they lost!"

"Where does Gon come into all this?"

"He's my ambassador to the Merieds. He'll go among them, bring the good news of their deliverance to them, lay the foundation for the program—"

"You sent him out
there
—into the ocean?"

"Of course. It's his natural element. He can go among the Merieds as no norm—ordinary man could do."

"You fool!" O'Royle's voice was ragged. "Why do you think I took him to Terra in the first place?"

"To be rid of him, I suppose!"

O'Royle's fists were clenched, but he held his voice steady. "Gon looks like his mother—externally. To normal Terries that makes him a freak, a side-show exhibit. But internally, it's different. He's only half Meried. His heart's not designed to pump under the pressure of more than fifty or a hundred feet of water. And the trace minerals in the water here are wrong; iodine and arsenic and lead can reach toxic levels in his cells in a matter of hours—if he hasn't drowned by then, or been killed by the local sea-life!"