The Face of the Waters

  The shadowy figures of women danced around Lawler as he slept, women without faces, mere cavorting bodies, generic receptacles for desire. They could have been anyone, anonymous, mysterious, pure female essence without specific identity, blank tablets and nothing more: a procession of swaying breasts, broad hips, full buttocks, dense thick pubic triangles. Sometimes it seemed to him that the dance was made up of disembodied breasts alone, or a succession of endlessly parting thighs, or moist shining lips. Or wriggling fingers, or flicking tongues.

  He tossed restlessly, drifting toward wakefulness but always subsiding again into sleep, which brought new flurries of fevered sensuality. Clouds of women surrounded his bunk, their eyes slitted and wanton, their nostrils flaring, their bodies bare. Now there were faces to go with the bodies, the faces of the Sorve women he had known and loved and all but forgotten, a legion of them, all the escapades of his busy youth recalled to life and surrounding him now, the unformed faces of adolescent girls, the leering faces of older women who were dallying with a boy half their age, the tense, sharp-eyed faces of women stricken with a love that they knew was futile. One by one they passed within Lawler's reach, let him touch them, allowed him to pull them close, and then faded into smoke, to be replaced almost at once by another. Sundira… Anya Braun… Boda Thalheim, not yet Sister Boda… Mariam Sawtelle… Mireyl… Sundira again… Meela… Moira… Sundira… Sundira… Anya… Mireyl… Sundira…

  Lawler felt all the torment that desire can bring, and no hope of relief from it. His penis was huge, aching, a log. His testicles were iron weights. A hot musky woman-smell, maddening and irresistible, covered his nose and mouth like a smothering blanket, choking him, seeping down deep into his throat and filling his lungs until they were fiery with discomfort.

  And beneath the images, beneath the fantasies, beneath the aching sense of distress and frustration, was something else: a strange vibration, perhaps a sound or perhaps not, in any event a steady widening beam of strong sensory input that came stabbing up through his body from his loins to his skull. He could feel it entering him like an icy spear just behind his testicles and rising through all the steaming intricacies of his guts, through his diaphragm, his heart, piercing his throat, stabbing upward into his brain. He was skewered on it and turning slowly like a fish grilling on a spit; and as he turned the intensity of the erotic sensations grew and grew and grew until there seemed to Lawler that nothing else existed in the universe but the need to find a partner and couple with her at once.

  He rose from his narrow bed, not sure whether he was awake or still dreaming, and went out into the passageway. Up the ladder, through the hatch, out on deck.

  The night was mild and moonless. The Cross trailed across the lower sky like a cluster of jewels that someone had carelessly tossed aside. The sea was calm, with little rounded rippling swells glittering by starlight. There was an easy breeze. The sails were set and full.

  Figures were moving about: sleepwalkers, dreamers.

  They were as vague and ghostly to Lawler as the figures of his dreams. He understood that he knew them, but that was all. They had no names just now. They had no selves. He saw a short thick-bodied man and another with a bony, angular body and a tiny, emaciated one with wattles at his throat. Men were not what he was looking for, though. Far down by the stern there was a tall, slender dark-haired woman. He headed for her. But before he could reach for her another man appeared, a tall strapping one with big glowing eyes, who came gliding out of the shadows and caught her by the wrist. They sank down together on the deck.

  Lawler turned. There were other women on this ship. He would find one. He had to.

  The throbbing ache between his legs was unendurable. That strange vibratory sensation still spitted him, rising the whole length of his torso, past his gullet and into his skull. It had the cold burning force of an icicle, and an icicle's knife-like insistence.

  He stepped over one couple grappling on the deck: a greying older man with a compact, solid-looking body and a big hefty woman with dark skin and golden hair. Lawler thought vaguely that he might have known them once; but, as before, no names came. Beyond them a small bright-eyed man flitted by alone, and then there was another couple locked in a close embrace, the man huge and muscular, the woman lithe, youthful, vigorous.

  "You!" came a voice from the shadows. "Here!"

  She was sprawled below the bridge, beckoning to him, a sturdy broad-bodied woman with a flat-featured face, orange hair, a sprinkling of reddish freckles on her face and breasts. She was shiny with sweat, breathing hard. Lawler knelt by her and she drew him down and gripped him between her thighs.

  "Give it to me! Give it to me!"

  He slipped easily inside her. She was warm and lathered and soft. Her arms enfolded him. She crushed him down against her heavy breasts. His hips moved in urgent thrusts. It was quick, wild, fierce, a hard grunting moment of rut. Almost as soon as he began to move, Lawler felt the walls of her hot moist passage quivering and tightening on him in deep, steady spasms. He could feel the impulses of pleasure running along her nerve-channels. That was confusing, that he should be feeling what she was feeling. An instant later came his spurting response, and he could feel that in a double way too, not only his sensations but hers as she received his fluid. That too was very strange. It was difficult to tell where his consciousness left off and hers began.

  He rolled away from her. She reached for him, trying to pull him back, but no, no, he was on his way. He wanted another partner now. That single throbbing moment hadn't been nearly enough to ease the need that drove him. It might be that nothing could. But perhaps he could find the tall slender one next, or else that robust young sleek-limbed one who seemed to be overflowing with vital energies. Or even the big dark-skinned one with the golden hair. It made no difference which one. He was insatiable, inexhaustible.

  There was the slender one, by herself once more. Lawler started toward her. Too late! The hairy thick-bodied man with fleshy breasts like a woman's seized her and claimed her. Off they went into the darkness.

  Well, the big one, then… Or the young one…

  "Lawler!" a man's voice said.

  "Who's that?"

  "Quillan! Here! Here!"

  It was the angular man, the man who seemed to have no flesh. He came out from behind the place where the water-strider was stowed and took hold of Lawler's arm. Lawler shook him off. "No, not you-it's not a man that I'm after-"

  "Neither am I. Nor a woman, either. Good lord, Lawler! Have you all gone crazy?"

  "What?"

  "Stand here with me and watch what's going on. This lunatic orgy."

  Lawler shook his head muzzily. "What? What? Orgy?"

  "You see Sundira Thane and Delagard going at it over there? Kinverson and Pilya? And look, look, there's Neyana, moaning for it like a madwoman. You've just finished with her yourself, haven't you? And already you want more. I've never seen anything like this."

  Lawler clutched his loins. "I feel… pain… here…"

  "It's something out of the sea that's doing it to us. Affecting our minds. I feel it too. But I'm able to control myself. Whereas you… the whole crazed lot of you…"

  Lawler had great difficulty understanding what the bony man was telling him. He began to move away. Now he saw the big golden-haired woman wandering the deck, looking for her next partner.

  "Lawler, come back!"

  "Wait… later… we can talk later…"

  As he shambled toward the woman a slender dark male figure moved past him, calling out, "Father-sir! Doctor-sir! I see it! Over here, over the side!"

  "What do you see, Gharkid?" the angular one called Quillan asked.

  "A big limpet, Father-sir. Attached to the hull. It must be sending out some chemical… some drug…"

  "Lawler! Come look at what Gharkid's found!"

  "Later… later…"

  But they were merciless. They went toward him and took him by the arms, one gripping him on each side, and marched him
toward the rail. Lawler peered over. Here the sensations were far more intense than anywhere else on board: Lawler felt a deep rhythmic thrumming along his backbone, a stupefying pounding in his groin. His balls tolled like bells. His rigid penis trembled and jerked upright, pointing at the stars.

  He fought to clear his brain. He could barely comprehend what was happening.

  A thing invading the ship, driving everybody crazy with lust.

  Names returned to his mind and he matched them with faces and forms. Quillan. Gharkid. Resisting the force. And those who hadn't: he and Neyana, Sundira and Martello, Sundira and Delagard. Kinverson and Pilya. Felk and Lis. On and on in an unending change of partners, a feverish dance of pricks and cunts. Where was Lis? He wanted Lis. He had never wanted her before. He had never wanted Neyana either. But he did now. Now, Lis, yes. And then Pilya, finally. Give her what she's been after this whole voyage. And Sundira after that. Get her away from loathsome Delagard. Sundira, yes, and then Neyana again, and Lis, and Pilya-Sundira, Neyana, Pilya, Lis-fuck till dawn-fuck till noon-fuck till the end of time-

  "I'm going to kill it," Quillan said. "Hand me that gaff, Natim."

  "You don't feel its force?" Lawler asked. "You're immune?"

  "Of course I'm not immune," the priest said.

  "So your vows-"

  "It isn't the vows that are holding me back. It's simple fear, Lawler." To Gharkid Quillan said, "The gaff should just about reach. Hang on to my legs so I don't go overboard."

  "Let me do it," Lawler said. "My arms are longer than yours."

  "Stay where you are."

  The priest pulled himself up on the rail and wriggled down the outer side of the hull. Gharkid grabbed his legs. Lawler steadied Gharkid. Looking down, Lawler saw something that looked like a bright yellow plaque perhaps a metre across clinging to the ship just above the water-line. It was flat and circular with a little puckered dome in its centre. Quillan reached down as far as he could and stabbed at it. Again. Again. A tiny spurt of blue fluid rose like a feeble little fountain from the creature's back. Another poke. The creature quivered convulsively.

  Lawler felt the pain in his loins beginning to ease.

  "Hold me tighter!" Quillan called. "I'm starting to slip!"

  "No, Father-sir. No!"

  Lawler clamped his hands around Quillan's upturned ankles. He felt the priest's body go taut as he bent away from the ship, reached downward, drove the gaff home with a short hard thrust. The thing clinging to the ship rippled wildly along its fleshy perimeter. Its colour darkened to a deep green, then to a morbid black; sudden writhing ridges arose in its soft flesh; it drew itself up and fell back into the sea and was swept off into the ship's wake.

  Almost at once Lawler felt his mind throw off the last of its fog.

  "My God," he said. "What was it?"

  "A limpet is what Gharkid called it," said Quillan. "Stuck to the ship, dousing us all with wild pheromones." He was quivering as though released from some unbearable tension. "Some of us were able to fight it. Some weren't."

  Lawler looked updeck. Everywhere naked people were wandering slowly about, looking dazed, like newly awakened sleepers. Leo Martello stood beside Neyana, staring at her as if he had never seen her before in his life. Kinverson was with Lis Niklaus. Lawler's eyes met Sundira's. She seemed stunned. Her hand brushed again and again across her flat bare belly in an anguished scrubbing motion, as if to rub away the impress of Delagard's flesh against her own.

  The limpet was a harbinger. In these low latitudes the Empty Sea appeared to be getting less empty.

  * * *

  A new kind of drakken appeared, a southern species. They were much like the ones of the north, but larger and more cunning-looking, with a cheerily calculating look about them. Instead of travelling in swarms of many hundreds these drakkens moved in a pack of only a few dozen, and when their long tubular heads came jutting up out of the water they were very widely spaced, as though each member of the pack demanded and received a generous territorial allotment from its companions. They accompanied the ship for hours, kicking along untiringly beside it with their noses up in the air. Their gleaming crimson eyes never closed. It was easy enough to believe that they were waiting for darkness and an opportunity to come scrambling up on board. Delagard ordered the watch below to go on duty early, patrolling the deck armed with gaffs.

  At twilight the drakkens submerged, all of them vanishing in a single moment in that sudden simultaneous way of their kind, as if they had been sucked down in one gulp by some vastness below them. Delagard wasn't convinced that they were gone and kept the patrols on deck all night. But there was no attack, and in the morning the drakkens were nowhere to be seen.

  Then late that afternoon as darkness began to fall a great amorphous soft mass of some sallow viscous stuff came drifting by the ship on the windward side. It went on and on, stretching out over hundreds of metres, perhaps more. It might almost have been an island of some strange kind, it was so big: a colossal flabby island, an island made entirely of mucus, a gigantic agglomeration of snot. When they drew closer to it they realized that this huge puckered wrinkled thing was actually alive, or at least partly so. Its pale custardy surface was lightly quivering in fitful motion, pushing up little rounded projections which almost immediately sank back down into the central mass.

  Dag Tharp struck a comic pose. "Here we are, ladies and gentlemen! The Face of the Waters at last!"

  Kinverson laughed. "More like the other end, is the way it looks to me."

  "Look there," Martello said. "Bits of light rising from it, fluttering around in the air. How beautiful they are!"

  "Like fireflies," said Quillan.

  "Fireflies?" Lawler asked.

  "They have them on Sunrise. Insects equipped with luminescent organs. You know what insects are? Land-dwelling six-legged arthropods, unbelievably common on most worlds. Fireflies are insects that come out at twilight and blink their little lights on and off. Very pretty, very romantic. The effect is much like this."

  Lawler watched. It was a beautiful sight, yes; tiny fragments of that enormous turgid drifting mass detaching themselves and rising, borne upward on the light breeze, glowing as they rose, quick flashes of yellow brilliance, little soaring sunlets. The air was full of them, dozens, hundreds. They coasted on the wind, rose, fell, climbed again. On, off, on, off: flashing, flashing, flashing.

  On Hydros beauty was almost always cause for suspicion. Lawler felt a growing uneasiness as the fireflies danced.

  Then Lis Niklaus yelled, "The sail's on fire!"

  Lawler glanced upward. Some of the fireflies had come drifting across the ship, and wherever they fetched up against one of the sails they clung and glowed steadily, igniting the close-woven sea-bamboo fabric. Little puffs of smoke were spiralling upward in a dozen places; little red gleams of burning threads could be seen. In fact the ship was under attack.

  Delagard shouted orders for a change of course. The Queen pulled away as fast as it could from the bloated enemy on its flank. Anyone not needed to shift the sails was sent aloft to defend them. Lawler scrambled around in the rigging with the others, batting at the little sparklers as they came drifting into the sails, scraping away at the ones that were already affixed to them. The heat of them was insignificant but persistent: the constant warmth they emitted while stuck to the fabric was what achieved ignition. Lawler saw charred places where they had been pulled free in time, others where starlight glittered through small holes in the sails, and-high up on the foremast topsail-a scarlet tongue of flame, tipped with a black trail of smoke, where the material was ablaze.

  Kinverson was climbing swiftly toward the burning place. He reached it and began to clamp his hands over the blaze to smother it. The bright flamelets disappeared one by one into his grasp as though by a conjuring trick. In moments nothing but glowing embers could be seen; and then those too were out. The firefly that had ignited the fire was already gone. It had fallen to the deck as the sail gave way around it
, leaving behind a ragged, blackened hole the size of a man's head.

  The ship caught the wind and moved quickly off to the southwest. Their unlovely foe, unable to travel at the same pace, soon was out of sight behind them. But its pretty offshoots, its dainty fluttering fireflies, continued to ride the breeze for hours in lessening numbers, and it was dawn before Delagard felt it was safe for the defenders in the rigging to come down.

  * * *

  Sundira spent the next three days mending the sails, with help from Kinverson, Pilya and Neyana. The ship made no headway while the spars were bare. The air was still; the sun was disagreeably strong; the sea was quiet. Sometimes a fin flickered above the surface in the distance. Lawler had the feeling they were under constant surveillance now.

  He calculated that he had a week's supply of numbweed left, at best.

  Another free-floating creature, neither as gigantic nor as repellent nor as hostile as the last, came by: a large featureless ovoidal thing, perfectly smooth, of a lovely emerald colour, aglow with radiant luminosity. It stood up out of the water to its midsection, but the sea was so clear here that its shining lower half was easily visible. The thing was perhaps twenty metres around at its waist, and ten or fifteen metres in length from its submerged bottom to its rounded summit.

  Delagard, jumpy, ready for anything, lined everyone up along the side of the ship armed with gaffs. But the ovoid drifted on past, harmless as a piece of fruit. Perhaps that was all that it was. Two more wandered along later the same day. The third was more spherical than the first, the second more elongated, but they seemed otherwise to be of the same kind. They seemed to take no notice of the Queen. What these ovoids needed, Lawler decided, were huge glistening eyes, the better to stare at the ship as they floated past it. But their faces were blind, smooth, mysterious, maddeningly bland. There was a curious solemnity about them, a massive calm gravity. Father Quillan said they reminded him of a bishop he had once known; and then he had to explain to everyone what a bishop was.