"What about the Azure Sea?" Lawler asked.
Delagard seemed a little surprised. "Way up over here, practically in the other hemisphere. What do you know about the Azure Sea, doc?"
"Nothing much. Someone mentioned it to me recently, that's all."
"A hell of a trip from here, the Azure Sea. I've never been there." Delagard turned the globe to show Lawler the other side. "Here's the Empty Sea. This big dark thing down here is the Face of the Waters. Do you remember the great stories old Jolly used to tell about the Face?"
"That grizzly old liar. You don't actually believe he got anywhere near it, do you?"
Delagard winked. "It was a terrific story, wasn't it?"
Lawler nodded and let his mind wander for a moment back close to thirty-five years, thinking of the weatherbeaten old man's oft-repeated tale of his lonely crossing of the Empty Sea, of his mysterious and dreamlike encounter with the Face, an island so big you could fit all the other islands of the world into it, a vast and menacing thing filling the horizon, rising like a black wall out of the ocean in that remote and silent corner of the world. On the sea-chart, the Face was merely a dark motionless patch the size of the palm of a man's hand, a ragged black blemish against the otherwise blank expanse of the far hemisphere, down low almost in the south polar region.
He turned the globe back to the other hemisphere and watched the islands slowly moving about.
Lawler wondered how a sea-chart made so long ago could predict the current positions of the islands in any useful way. Surely they were deflected from their primary courses by all sorts of short-term weather phenomena. Or had the maker of the chart taken that all into account, using some sort of scientific magic inherited from the great world of science in the galaxy beyond? Things were so primitive on Hydros that Lawler was always surprised when any kind of mechanism worked; but he knew that it was different on the other inhabited worlds of space, where there was land, and a ready supply of metals, and a way to move from world to world. The technological magics of Earth, of the old lost mother world, had carried over to those worlds. But there was nothing like that here.
He said, after a moment, "How accurate do you imagine this chart is? Considering that it's fifty years old, and all."
"Have we learned anything new about Hydros in the past fifty years? This is the best sea-chart we have. Old Felk was a master craftsman, and he talked to everyone who went to sea, anywhere. And checked his information against observations made from space, on Sunrise. It's accurate, all right. Damned accurate."
Lawler followed the movements of the islands as though mesmerized by them. Maybe the chart really did give reliable information, maybe not: he was in no position to tell. He had never understood how anyone at sea ever could find his way back to his own island, let alone reach some distant one, considering that both the ship and the island were in motion all the time. I ought to ask Gabe Kinverson about that sometime, Lawler thought.
"All right. What's your plan?"
Delagard pointed toward Sorve on the chart. "You see this island southwest of us, coming up out of the next strip? That's Velmise. It's drifting north and east, moving at a higher velocity than we are, and it'll pass within relatively easy reach about a month from now. At that time it'll be maybe a ten-day journey from here, maybe even less. I'm going to put through a message to my son there and ask him if they'd be willing to take us in, all seventy-eight of us."
"And if they aren't? Velmise is pretty damned small."
"We have other choices. Here's Salimil moving up from the other side. It'll be something like two and a half weeks from us when we have to leave here."
Lawler considered the prospect of spending two and a half weeks in a ship on the open sea. Under the blazing eye of the sun, in the constant parching blast of the salt sea-breeze, eating dried fish, pacing back and forth on a little deck with nothing to see but ocean and more ocean.
He reached for the brandy bottle and filled his cup again himself.
Delagard said, "If Salimil won't take us, we've got Kaggeram down here, or Shaktan, or Grayvard, even. I have kin on Grayvard. I think I can arrange something. That would be an eight-week journey."
Eight weeks? Lawler tried to imagine what that would be like.
He said, after a time, "Nobody's going to have room for seventy-eight people on thirty days' notice. Not Velmise, not Salimil, not anybody."
"In that case we'll just have to split up, a few of us going here, a few of us going there."
"No!" Lawler said with sudden vehemence.
"No?"
"I don't want that. I want the community to stay together."
"What if it can't be done?"
"We have to find a way. We can't take a group of people who have been together all their lives and scatter them all over the goddamned ocean. We're a family, Nid."
"Are we? I guess I don't think of it that way."
"Think of it that way now."
"Well, then," Delagard said. He sat quietly, frowning. "I guess as a last resort we could simply present ourselves on one of the islands that isn't currently inhabited by humans and ask the Gillies living there for sanctuary. It's happened before."
"The Gillies there would know that we were thrown out by our Gillies here. And why."
"Maybe it wouldn't matter. You know Gillies as well as I do, doc. A lot of them are pretty tolerant of us. To them we're just one more example of the inscrutable way of the universe, something that simply happened to wash up on their shores out of the great sea of space. They understand that it's a waste of breath questioning the inscrutable way of the universe. Which I suppose is why they simply shrugged and let us move in on them when we first came here."
"The wisest ones think that way, maybe. The rest of them detest us and don't want a damned thing to do with us. Why the hell should the Gillies of some other island take us in when the Sorve Gillies have tossed us out as murderers?"
"We'll be all right," Delagard said serenely, not reacting in any visible way to the ugly word. He nursed his brandy cup with both hands, staring into it. "We'll go to Velmise. Or Salimil, or Grayvard if we have to, or someplace completely new. And we'll all stay together and make a new life for ourselves. I'll see to that. Count on it, doc."
"Do you have enough ships to carry us?"
"I've got six. Thirteen to a ship and we'll make it without even feeling crowded. Stop worrying, doc. Have another drink."
"I have one already."
"Mind if I do, then?"
"Suit yourself."
Delagard laughed. He was getting drunk, now. He caressed the sea-chart as though it were a woman's breast; and then he lifted it delicately and stowed it once again in the cabinet. The brandy bottle was nearly empty. Delagard produced another one from somewhere and poured himself a stiff shot. He swayed as he did it, caught himself, chuckled.
He said, slurring his words, "I assure you of one thing, doc, which is that I'm going to bust my ass to find us a new island and get us there safely. Do you believe me when I tell you that, doc?"
"Sure I do."
"And can you forgive me in your heart for what I did to those divers?" Delagard asked woozily.
"Sure. Sure."
"You're a liar. You hate my guts."
"Come off it, Nid. What's done is done. Now we simply have to live with it."
"Spoken like a true philosopher. Here, have another."
"Right."
"And another for good old Nid Delagard too. Why not? Another for good old Delagard, yeah. Here you are, Nid. Why, thank you, Nid. Than you very much. By damn, this is fine stuff. Fine… stuff…" Delagard yawned. His eyes closed, his head descended toward the table. "Fine… stuff…" he murmured. He yawned again, and belched softly, and then he was asleep. Lawler finished his own cup and left the building.
It was very silent out there, only the lapping of the wavelets of the bay against the shore, and Lawler was so used to that that he scarcely heard it. Dawn was still an hour or two away. The Cr
oss burned overhead with terrible ferocity, cutting through the black sky from horizon to horizon like a luminous four-armed framework that was up there to keep the world from tumbling freely through the heavens.
A kind of crystalline clarity possessed Lawler's mind. He could practically hear his brain ticking.
He realized that he didn't mind leaving Sorve.
The thought astonished him. You're drunk, he told himself.
Maybe so. But somehow, somewhere in the night, the shock of the expulsion had fallen away from him. Altogether gone or simply temporarily misplaced, Lawler couldn't say. But at least for now he was able suddenly to look the idea of leaving in the eye, without flinching. Leaving here was something he could handle. It was more than that, even. The prospect of going from here was-
Exhilarating? Could that be it?
Exhilarating, yes. The pattern of his life had been set, frozen-Dr Lawler of Sorve, a First Family man, a Lawler of the Lawlers, getting a day older every day, do your daily work, heal the sick as best you can, walk along the sea-wall, swim a little, fish a little, put in the required time teaching your craft to your apprentice, eat and drink, visit with old friends, the same old old friends you'd had when you were a boy, then go to sleep, wake up and start all over, come winter, come summer, come rain, come drought. Now that pattern was going to change. He would live somewhere else. He might be someone else. The idea fascinated him. He was startled to realize that he was even a little grateful. He had been here so long, after all. He had been himself for so long.
You are very very drunk, Lawler said to himself again, and laughed. Very very very very.
The idea came to him to stroll through the sleeping settlement, a sentimental journey to say his farewells, looking at everything as though this were his last night on Hydros, reliving everything that had happened to him here and there and here and there, every episode of his life. The places where he had stood with his father looking out at sea, where he had listened to old Jolly's fantastic tales, where he had caught his first fish, where he had embraced his first girl. Scenes associated with his friendships, and with his loves, such as they had been. The side of the bay where he'd been the time he'd come close to spearing Nicko Thalheim. And the place back of the boneyard where he'd spied on grey-bearded Marinus Cadrell screwing Damis Sawtelle's sister Mariam, who was a nun in the convent now. Which reminded him of the time he'd screwed Mariam himself, a few years later, down in Gillie country, the two of them living dangerously and loving it. Everything came flooding back. The shadowy figure of his mother. His brothers, the one who had died much too young and the one who had gone off to sea and floated out of his life forever. His father, indefatigable, formidable, remote, revered by all, drilling him endlessly in matters of medical technique when he'd much rather have been splashing in the bay: those boyhood days that hadn't seemed like a boyhood at all, so many hard grim hours of enforced study, cutting him off from the games and fun. You will be the doctor some day, his father saying again and again. You will be the doctor. His wife Mireyl getting aboard the Morvendir ferry. Time was ticking backward. Tick, and it was the day of his trip to Thibeire Island. Tick, and he and Nestor Yanez were running, dizzy with laughter and fear, from the furious female Gillie that they had pelted with ginzo eggs. Tick, and here was the long-faced delegation that had come to tell him that his father was dead, that he was the doctor now. Tick, and he was finding out what it was like to deliver a baby. Tick, and he was dancing drunkenly along the bulwark's topmost point in the middle of a three-moon night with Nicko and Nestor Lyonides and Moira and Meela and Quigg, a young merry Valben Lawler who seemed to him now like someone else he had once known, long long ago. The whole thing, his forty-plus years on Sorve viewed in reverse. Tick. Tick. Tick. Yes, I'll take a nice long walk through the past before the sun comes up, he thought. From one end of the island to another. But it seemed like a good idea to go back to his vaargh before setting out, though he wasn't sure why.
He tripped going through the low entrance and fell sprawling. And was still lying there when morning sunlight came in, hours later to wake him.
For a moment Lawler couldn't quite remember what he had said or done in the night. Then it all came back. Being hugged by a Gillie. The scent of it was still on him. Then Delagard, brandy, more brandy, the prospect of a voyage to Velmise, Salimil, maybe even Grayvard. And that strange moment of exhilaration at the thought of leaving Sorve. Had it been real? Yes. Yes. He was sober now, and it was still there.
But… my God… my head!
How much brandy, he wondered, had Delagard succeeded in pouring into him last night?
A child's high voice from outside the vaargh said, "Doctor? I hurt my foot."
"Just a second," Lawler said, in a voice like a file.
6
There was a meeting that evening in the community centre to discuss the situation. The air in the centre was thick and steamy, rank with sweat. Feelings were running high. Lawler sat in the far corner opposite the door, his usual place. He could see everything from there. Delagard hadn't come. He had sent word of pressing business at the yard, messages awaited from his ships at sea.
"It's all a trap," Dann Henders said. "The Gillies are tired of us being here, but they don't want to bother killing us themselves. So they're going to force us to go out to sea and the rammerhorns and sea-leopards will kill us for them."
"How do you know that?" Nicko Thalheim asked.
"I don't. I'm just guessing. I'm trying to figure why they're making us leave the island over a trivial thing like three dead divers."
"Three dead divers aren't so trivial!" Sundira called out. "You're talking about intelligent creatures!"
"Intelligent?" Dag Tharp said mockingly.
"You bet they are. And if I were a Gillie and I found out that the goddamned humans were killing off divers, I'd want to be rid of them too."
Henders said, "Well, whatever. I say that if the Gillies succeed in throwing us out of here, we'll find the whole goddamned ocean rising up against us once we're out to sea. And not by any accident. The Gillies control the sea animals. Everybody knows that. And they'll use them against us to wipe us out."
"What if we simply don't let the Gillies throw us out?" Damis Sawtelle asked. "What if we fight back?"
"Fight?" said Bamber Cadrell. "Fight how? Fight with what? You out of your mind, Damis?"
They were both ferry-captains, solid practical men, friends since boyhood. Right now they were looking at each other with the dull, glowering look of lifelong enemies.
"Resistance," Sawtelle said. "Guerrilla warfare."
"We sneak down to their end of the island and grab something that looks important from that holy building of theirs," Nimber Tanamind suggested. "And refuse to give it back unless they agree to let us stay."
"That sounds dumb to me," Cadrell said.
Nicko Thalheim said, "To me too. Stealing their jujus won't get us anywhere. Armed resistance is the ticket, just like Damis says. Guerrilla warfare, absolutely. Gillie blood flowing in the streets until they back down on the expulsion order. They don't even have the concept of war on this planet. They won't know what the hell we're doing if we put up a fight."
"Shalikomo," somebody said from the back. "Remember what happened there."
"Shalikomo, yes," another voice called. "They'll slaughter us the same way they did them. And there won't be a damned thing we can do to stop it."
"Right," Marya Hayn said. "We're the ones who don't have the concept of war, not them. They know how to kill when they want to. What are we going to attack them with, scaling knives? Hammers and chisels? We aren't fighters. Our ancestors were, maybe, but we don't even know what the idea means."
"We have to learn," said Thalheim. "We can't let ourselves be driven from our homes."
"Can't we?" Marya Hayn asked. "What choice do we have? We're here only by their sufferance. Which they have now withdrawn. It's their island. If we try to resist, they'll pick us up one by one and throw us
into the sea, the way they did on Shalikomo."
"We'll take plenty of them with us," Damis Sawtelle said, with heat in his voice.
Dann Henders burst into laughter. "Into the sea? Right. Right. We'll hold their heads under water until they drown."
"You know what I meant," Sawtelle grumbled. "They kill one of us, we kill one of them. Once they start dying they'll change their minds pretty damn fast about making us leave."
"They'll kill us faster than we could kill them," said Poitin Stayvol's wife Leynila. Stayvol was Delagard's second most senior captain, after Gospo Struvin. He was off sailing the Kentrup ferry just then. Leynila, short and fiery, could always be counted on to speak up against anything that Damis Sawtelle favoured. They had been that way since they were children. "Even one for one, where's that going to get us?" Leynila demanded.
Dana Sawtelle nodded. She crossed the room to stand next to Marya and Leynila. Most of the women were on one side of the room and the handful of men who constituted the war faction were on the other. "Leynila's right. If we try to fight we'll all be killed. What's the sense of it? If there's a war and we fight like terrific heroes and at the end of it we're all dead, how will we be better off than if we had simply got into a ship and gone somewhere else?"
Her husband swung around to face her. "Keep quiet, Dana."
"The hell I will, Damis! The hell I will! You think I'm going to sit here like a child while you people talk about launching an attack on a physically superior group of alien beings who outnumber us about ten to one? We can't fight them."
"We have to."
"No. No."
"This is all foolishness, this talk of fighting. They're only bluffing," Lis Niklaus said. "They won't really make us go."
"Oh, yes, they will-"
"Not if Nid has anything to say about it!"
"It's your precious Nid that got us into this in the first place!" Marya Hayn yelled.