The Face of the Waters

  "Pizarro," Lawler said. "Cortes. They would at least have gone ashore before turning tail and running."

  "Don't fuck around with me now," said Delagard. "I'm trying to level with you."

  "You gave me Pizarro and Cortes when I tried to level with you, Nid."

  Delagard opened his eyes. They were frightful: bright as coals, fiery with pain. He drew back the corner of his mouth in what might have been an attempt at a smile. "Go easy, doc. I was drunk."

  "I know."

  "You know what my mistake was, doc? I believed my own bullshit. And Jolly's bullshit. And Father Quillan's. Quillan fed me a lot of stuff about the Face of the Waters as a place where godly powers would be mine for the taking, or so I interpreted what he was saying. And here we are. Here we lie. Rest in peace. I stood here all night and I thought. How would I build a spaceport? With what? How could anyone live in all that chaos over there without going out of his mind in half a day? What would we eat? Could we even breathe the air? No wonder the Gillies won't come here. The miserable place is uninhabitable. And suddenly everything came clear to me, and I was standing here all by myself, face to face with myself, laughing at myself. Laughing, doc. But the joke was on me, and it wasn't very funny. This whole voyage has been sheer lunacy, hasn't it, doc?"

  Delagard was swaying back and forth, now. Lawler saw abruptly that he must still be drunk. There had to be one more hidden cache of brandy on board and probably he'd been drinking all night. For days, maybe. He was so drunk that he thought he was sober.

  "You ought to lie down. I can give you a sedative."

  "Fuck your sedative. What I want is for you to agree with me! It's been a crazy voyage. Hasn't it, doc?"

  "You know that's what I think, Nid."

  "And you think I'm crazy too."

  "I don't know if you are or you aren't. What I do know is that you're right on the verge of collapse."

  "Well, what if I am?" Delagard asked. "I'm still the captain of this ship. I got us into this. All those people who died, they died because of me. I can't let anybody else die. I've got the responsibility for getting us out."

  "What's your plan, then?"

  "What we need to do now," Delagard said, speaking slowly and carefully out of some almost unfathomable depth of fatigue, "is work out a course that'll take us up into inhabited waters, and go to the first island we can reach and fucking beg them to take us in. Eleven people: they can always find room for eleven people, no matter how crowded they try to tell us they are."

  "That sounds fine with me."

  "I figured it would."

  "Okay, then. You go get yourself some rest, Nid. The rest of us will get us out of here right now. Felk can navigate, and we'll pull the sails around, and by mid-afternoon we'll be a hundred kilometres from here and making for someplace like Grayvard as fast as we know how." Lawler nudged Delagard toward the steps leading down from the bridge. "Go on. Before you drop."

  "No," Delagard said. "I told you, I'm still the captain. If we have to leave here, it'll be with me at the wheel."

  "All right. Whatever you like."

  "It isn't what I like. It's what I have to do. What I need to do. And there's something I need from you, doc, before we go."

  "What's that?"

  "Something that'll let me deal with the way things have turned out. It's been a total defeat, hasn't it? A complete fuck-up. I've never failed at anything in my life until now. But this catastrophe-this disaster-" Delagard's hand suddenly jabbed out and clutched at Lawler's arm. "I need a way of making myself able to live with it, doc. The shame. The guilt. You don't think I'm capable of feeling guilt, but what the fuck did you ever know about me, anyway? If we survive this trip everyone on Hydros is going to look at me wherever I go and say, There's the man who headed the voyage, who led six ships full of people right down the toilet. And there'll be reminders for me all the time. From now on every time I see you, or Dag, or Felk, or Kinverson-" Delagard's eyes were fixed and fiery now. "You've got some drug, don't you, that numbs out your feelings, right? I want you to give me some. I want to dose myself up on it but good, and stay dosed from here on in. Because the only other thing for me to do now is kill myself, and that's something I can't even imagine doing."

  "Drugs are a form of killing yourself, Nid."

  "Spare me the pious bullshit, will you, doc?"

  "I mean it. Take it from somebody who spent years dosing himself with the stuff. It's a living death."

  "That's still better than a dead death."

  "Maybe so. But in any case I can't give you any. I used up the last of my supply before we got here."

  Delagard's grasp on Lawler's arm tightened fiercely. "You're lying to me!"

  "Am I?"

  "I know you are. You can't live without the drug. You take it every day. Don't you think I know that? Don't you think everybody does?"

  "It's all gone, Nid. Do you remember last week, when I was so sick? What I was doing was going through withdrawal. There isn't a drop left. You can search my stores if you like. But you won't find any."

  "You're lying to me!"

  "Go and look. You can have all you can find. That's a promise." Carefully Lawler lifted Delagard's hand from his arm. "Listen, Nid, just lie down and get yourself some rest. By the time you wake up we'll be far from here and you'll feel better, believe me, and you'll be able to start the whole process of forgiving yourself. You're a resilient man. You know how to deal with things like guilt-believe me, you do. Right now you're so damned tired and depressed that you can't see beyond the next five minutes, but once we're out in the open sea again-"

  "Hold on a minute," Delagard said, looking over Lawler's shoulder. He pointed toward the gantry area in the stern. "What the fuck's happening down there?"

  Lawler turned to see. Two figures were struggling, a big man and a much slighter one: Kinverson and Quillan, an unlikely pair of antagonists. Kinverson had his hands clamped on the priest's thin shoulders and was holding him at arm's length, immobilized, while Quillan fought to break free.

  Lawler scrambled down the steps and hurried aft, with Delagard stumbling along behind him.

  "What are you doing?" Lawler asked. "Let go of him."

  "I let go, he goes across to the Face. That's what he says. You want him to do that, doc?"

  Quillan looked weirdly ecstatic. He wore a sleepwalker's glazed stare. His pupils were dilated, his skin was as pale as though he had been drained of blood. His lips were drawn back in a frozen grin.

  Kinverson said, "He was wandering around here like somebody who's out of his head. Going to the Face, he kept saying. Going to the Face. Started to climb over the side, and I grabbed him, and he hit me. Jesus, I never knew he was such a fighter! But I think he's quieting down a little now."

  "Try letting go," Lawler said. "See what he does."

  Shrugging, Kinverson released him. Quillan began at once to press onward toward the rail. The priest's eyes were shining as if with an inner light.

  "You see?" the fisherman asked.

  Delagard came shouldering forward. He looked groggy but determined. Order had to be maintained aboard ship. He caught the priest by his wrist. "What are you up to? What do you think you're trying to do?"

  "Going ashore… the Face… to the Face…" Quillan's dreamy grin broadened until it seemed that his cheeks must split. "The god wants me… the god in the Face…"

  "Jesus," Delagard said, his face mottling in exasperation. "What are you saying? You'll die if you go over there. Don't you understand that? There's no way to live over there. Look at the light coming from everything. The place is poison. Snap out of it, will you! Snap out of it!"

  "The god in the Face-"

  Quillan struggled to break free of Delagard's grasp, and for a moment succeeded. He took two sliding steps toward the rail. Then Delagard caught him again, yanking Quillan toward him and slapping him so hard that the priest's lip began to bleed. Quillan stared at him, stunned. Delagard raised his hand again.

  "Don
't," Lawler said. "He's coming out of it."

  Indeed something was changing in Quillan's eyes. The glow was leaving them, and the rigid look of trance. He seemed dazed now but fully conscious, trying to blink away his confusion. Slowly he rubbed his face where Delagard had struck him. He shook his head. The motion widened into a convulsive body-long shudder, and he began to tremble. Tears glistened in his eyes.

  "My God. I actually was going over there. That was what I was doing, wasn't I? It was pulling me. I felt it pulling."

  Lawler nodded. It seemed to him that he felt it too, suddenly. A pulsation, a throbbing in his mind. Something stronger than the tempting urge, the mild tug of curiosity, that he and Sundira had felt the night before. It was a powerful mental pressure, drawing him inward, calling him toward the wild shore behind the surf-line.

  Angrily he brushed the idea aside. He was getting as crazy as Quillan.

  The priest was still talking about the pull he had felt. "There was no way I could resist it. It was offering me the thing I'd been searching for all my life. Thank God Kinverson grabbed me in time." Quillan gave Lawler a dishevelled look, terror mixed with bewilderment. "You were right, doc, what you said yesterday. It would have been suicide. I thought just then that I'd be going to God, to a god of some sort. But it was the devil, for all I know. That's Hell over there. I thought it was Paradise, but it's Hell." The priest's voice trailed off. Then, more distinctly, he said to Delagard, "I ask you to take us away from this place. Our souls are in danger here, and if you don't believe that there is such a thing as the soul, then at least consider that it's our lives that are in peril. If we stay here any longer-"

  "Don't worry," Delagard said. "We aren't going to stay. We're leaving here as fast as we can."

  Quillan made an O of surprise with his lips.

  Wearily Delagard said, "I've had a little revelation of my own, Father, and it agrees with yours. This voyage was a gigantic fucking miscalculation, if you'll excuse the vernacular. We don't belong here. I want to get out of here as much as you do."

  "I don't understand. I thought-that you-"

  "Don't think so much," said Delagard. "Thinking too much can be very bad for you."

  "Did you say we're leaving?" Kinverson asked.

  "That's right." Delagard looked up defiantly at the big man. His face was red with chagrin. But he seemed almost amused now by the extent of the calamity that was tumbling down upon him. He was beginning to seem himself again. Something not far from a smile played across his features. "We're clearing out."

  "Fine with me," said Kinverson. "Any time you say."

  Lawler glanced away, his attention caught suddenly by something very strange.

  He said abruptly, "Did you hear that sound, just now? Somebody speaking to us out of the Face?"

  "What? Where?"

  "Stand very still and listen. It's coming from the Face. 'Doctor-sir. Captain-sir. Father-sir.' " Lawler mimicked the high, thin, soft voice with keen accuracy. "You hear that? 'I am with the Face now, captain-sir. Doctor-sir. Father-sir.' It's as if he's standing right here next to us."

  "Gharkid!" Quillan exclaimed. "But how… where…"

  Others were coming on deck, now: Sundira, Neyana, Pilya Braun. Dag Tharp and Onyos Felk were a few paces behind them. All of them seemed astounded by what they had heard. The last to appear was Lis Niklaus, moving in a peculiar shambling, stumbling way. She jabbed her forefinger at the sky again and again, as though trying to stab it.

  Lawler turned and looked up. And saw what Lis was pointing to. The swirling colours in the sky were congealing, taking shape-the shape of the dark, enigmatic face of Natim Gharkid. A gigantic image of the mysterious little man hovered above them, inescapable, inexplicable.

  "Where is he?" Delagard cried, in a thick, clotted voice. "How's he doing that? Bring him here! Gharkid! Gharkid!" He waved his arms frantically. "Go find him. All of you! Search the ship! Gharkid!"

  "He's in the sky," Neyana Golghoz said blandly, as if that explained everything.

  "No," Kinverson said. "He's on the Face. Look there… the water… strider's gone. He must have gone across while we were busy with the Father."

  Indeed, the strider's housing was empty. Gharkid had taken it out by himself and crossed the little bay to the shore beyond. And had entered the Face; and had been absorbed; and had been transformed. Lawler stared in wonder and terror at the huge image in the sky. Gharkid's face, no question of that. But how? How?

  Sundira came up beside him. Her arm slipped through his. She was shivering with fear. Lawler wanted to comfort her, but no words would come.

  Delagard was the first to find his voice.

  "Work stations, everyone! Pull that anchor up! I want to see sails! We're getting the hell out of here right now!"

  "Wait a second," Quillan said quietly. He nodded toward the shore. "Gharkid's coming back."

  The little man's journey toward the ship seemed to take a thousand years. No one dared move. They all stood in a row watching by the rail, frozen, appalled.

  The image of Gharkid had vanished from the sky the moment the real Gharkid had come into view. But the unmistakable tone of Gharkid's voice, somehow, was still a part of the strange mental emanation that had begun to radiate steadily from the Face. The physical incarnation of the man might be returning, but something else had remained behind.

  He had abandoned the water-strider-Lawler saw it now, beached in the vegetation at the edge of the shore; tendrils of new growth were already beginning to wrap themselves around it-and was swimming across the narrow bay: wading, really. He moved at an unhurried pace, obviously not regarding himself in any danger from whatever creatures might inhabit these strange waters. Of course not, Lawler thought. He was one of them now.

  When he reached the deeper waters close to the ship Gharkid put his head down and began to swim. His strokes were slow and serene, and he moved with ease and agility.

  Kinverson went to the gantry and returned with one of his gaffs. His cheek was jerking with barely controlled tension. He held the sharp tool aloft like a spear.

  "If that thing tries to climb up on board-"

  "No," Father Quillan said. "You mustn't. This is his ship as much as yours."

  "Who says? What is he? Who says he's Gharkid? I'll kill him if he comes near us."

  But Gharkid had no intention, it seemed, of coming up on board. He was just off the side, now, floating placidly, holding himself in one place with little motions of his hands.

  He was looking up at them.

  Smiling his sweet, inscrutable Gharkid-smile.

  Beckoning to them.

  "I'll kill him!" Kinverson roared. "The bastard! The dirty little bastard!"

  "No," said Quillan again quietly, as the big man drew back the hand that held the gaff. "Don't be afraid. He won't hurt us." The priest reached up and touched Kinverson lightly on the chest; and Kinverson seemed to dissolve at the touch. Looking stunned, he let his arm sag to his side. Sundira came up alongside him and took the gaff from him. Kinverson hardly seemed to notice.

  Lawler looked toward the man in the water. Gharkid-or was it the Face, speaking through what had been Gharkid?-was calling to them, summoning them to the island. Now Lawler felt the pull in earnest, no doubt of that, no illusion either but a firm unmistakable imperative coming in heavy throbbing waves; it reminded him of the strong undertows that sometimes came eddying up while he was swimming in the bay of Sorve Island. He had been able easily enough to withstand those undertows. He wondered whether he'd be able to withstand this one. It was tugging at the roots of his soul.

  He became aware of Sundira's ragged breathing close beside him. Her face was pale, her eyes were bright with fear. But her jaw was set. She was determined to hold her own against that eerie summons.

  Come to me, Gharkid was saying. Come to me, come to me.

  Gharkid's soft voice. But it was the Face that spoke. Lawler was certain of it: an island that spoke, seductively promising everything, anything, in
a word. Only come. Only come.

  "I'm coming!" Lis Niklaus cried suddenly. "Wait for me! Wait! I'm coming!"

  She was midway down the deck, near the mast, blank-eyed, trance-faced, moving uncertainly toward the rail with flatfooted shuffling steps. Delagard, whirling about, called out to her to stop. Lis kept on going. He cursed and began to run toward her. He caught up with her just as she reached the rail and made a grab for her arm.

  In a cold, fierce voice that Lawler could barely recognize as hers Lis said, "No, you bastard. No. Keep away from me!" She shoved at Delagard ferociously and sent him tumbling to the deck. Delagard struck the planks hard and lay there on his back, looking at her incredulously. He seemed unable to rise. A moment later Lis was on the rail, and then over it, plunging in free fall toward the water, landing with a tremendous luminous splash.

  Side by side, she and Gharkid swam off toward the Face.

  Clouds of a new colour hung low in the hot, churning air above the Face of the Waters. They were tawny above, darker below: Lis Niklaus' colouration. She had reached her destination.

  "It's going to take us all," Sundira said, gasping. "We have to get away from here!"

  "Yes," Lawler said. "Fast." He glanced quickly around. Delagard still lay sprawled on the deck, more stunned than hurt, perhaps, but not getting up. Onyos Felk was crouching by the foremast, talking to himself in muzzy whispers. Father Quillan was on his knees, making the sign of the Cross over and over again, muttering prayers. Dag Tharp, yellow-eyed with fear, was clutching at his belly and rocking with dry heaves. Lawler shook his head. "Who's going to navigate?"