Chapter 10
The Last Monster
The return voyage to Norland took less time than had the preparation for it. Once again, the wolves had been a problem, once again Precious Wind had insisted that they were needed. Blue had been more phlegmatic than previously, though no less susceptible to seasickness. There were a number of extra passengers, Tingawan warriors, for whom room and feeding must be provided. Lok-i-xan had lamented that there was no time to prepare one of the large Tingawan ships, several of which were at anchor near the continent. The big ships had carried up to a hundred passengers, but none of them had sailed for years and fitting one for a voyage would have taken more time than they had to fulfill the plan.
Precious Wind had been laconic about the plan devised in Tingawa. It was better, she said, that it not be discussed, even among themselves. As the time grew nearer, they would go step by step, the first step being to “locate” the monster.
“I thought your locator device along with all those devices was too old and fragile to be moved,” Abasio commented to Precious Wind.
“The emissary found books,” Precious Wind told him. “Books with pictures and diagrams. There were even spare parts packaged in such a way that time scarcely touched them. The language was archaic. We called in our linguists. It was difficult, but we’ve built a new one, and a power source to go with it.”
“A power source?”
“It really takes very little power. It can be cranked or pedaled as we did the far-talker. Two men can keep it running all day.”
“What powers the ul xaolat, the thing master?” asked Xulai. “The monster uses it to move around, doesn’t it?”
“It must be powered by something hidden, something left over from that former time. We don’t know where it is. It could be up there.” Precious Wind pointed to the sky. “They had things up there that took power from the sun and sent it to earth.”
Abasio said, “And we’re assuming the creature still has Alicia’s blood on it? That seems rather farfetched to me. It’s been quite a long time since she died.”
She said, “It’s one of the few things we’re certain of. Remember the description of that coffin-shaped device the creature slept or hibernated in? Our people are certain it did all the maintenance for the creature. The device clothed it, bathed it, and—”
“You call that maintenance?”
She frowned. “Just listen! Remember, I told you on our voyage to Tingawa that we—that is, Tingawan agents—long ago journeyed around the world, finding the hidden monsters from the time of the Big Kill: one here, one there, well hidden, deeply buried. In each of those places we found a case with a top made of something like glass and we found cartons of metal tubes. In each of those glass cases we found a monster. Through the side of each case into the hip of each monster one of the tubes had been inserted.
“The first time our people went to the Old Dark House, they examined every corner. The cellar had nothing in it that looked like the glass cases we had found everywhere else. We knew the creature had moved its maintainer before; we assumed it had done so again. There were cartons of the maintainer tubes there, and we thought it possible the creature would come back for them. Our people didn’t disturb the cellar, but they did take one tube from a full carton at the bottom of a pile. They resealed the carton, so nothing would appear to be missing.
“Our people went through the entire building. There were no clothes, no remnants of clothes, not anywhere in the building. There was no food storage, no hint that any food had ever been prepared there. There were ancient fireplaces but no sign they had been used for years, decades, perhaps centuries. In the Old Dark House itself, we found no sign that anyone had slept, eaten, washed, bathed, anything that living people do . . . except one. They found secret rooms full of books.
“This convinced us the creature used books and it used maintainer tubes, but it did not use anything else. Yet it lived. Yet it was clothed. People had seen it. Our people concluded that when the creature needed information, it turned to books. When it needed rest, clothing, nourishment, or what we might call ‘cleaning and fueling,’ it received all those things from the tubes that were stored there as part of maintenance.
“It was only when our people went there for the second time, when Alicia died, and found the case open did they realize that the interior of it was similar to the glass coffin-cocoon devices we had destroyed all over the world. This told us we might have made a terrible mistake the first time we were there: the creature may have been inside, dormant. Empty cartons could have been disposed of. Of course, equally, the creature could have been somewhere else and returned without our seeing it. It was a judgment call. It had taken us fifty years to find the Old Dark House and nothing indicated the creature was there; at that time we judged it was worth leaving the place alone to see if the creature returned.”
Abasio cried, “But, Precious Wind, the damned thing is intelligent! When it came back, it would have known your people had been there!”
She sighed wearily, wiping her face with her hand. “A dog is intelligent, Abasio. I can teach a dog or a wolf how to do things that involve running, leaping, biting, howling, hunting. I cannot teach a dog to strum the strings of an ondang or read a book. I can teach a dog with vocal cords to speak several words. Dogs have distinguished among spoken commands for millennia. Mimicry is not natural to them; once they have vocal cords, it comes to them. Each creature has to learn within its own limits.
“So does this creature. I’m sure it is able to choose intelligently among successful strategies for killing people, because killing is what it thinks about. It may even be able to use books to look up ways of finding and killing people. But our people don’t believe it can think about maintenance any more than a dog can decide to build a doghouse. Dig a den, yes. Build a doghouse, no. We left the place absolutely undisturbed, the dust untracked, no footprints, no smell of our being there. We wore special suits. The people who built the creature were as single-minded as the thing itself. They wanted to kill everyone who did not believe what they believed. The creature has no thoughts or memories that are unrelated to that purpose. Its program tells it to find things to kill; kill until it needs maintenance; go get maintenance; find something to kill again.”
“So when it gets hungry it goes home.”
“Yes. When it gets really hungry, it goes home. It inserts a new tube into the maintainer; it gets inside, closes the maintainer, and all is taken care of. While it is being fed, it is also clothed and repaired as necessary.”
Abasio shook his head, hating the entire subject. “So on the basis of assumptions that Alicia shed blood on it to begin with and that the thing still has blood on it, we’re ready to risk Xulai’s life.”
“We are taking every precaution, Abasio.”
“Which you won’t tell any of us about.”
“That’s right. You’ll have to trust me and those who advise me.”
“Where Xulai is concerned, I really don’t trust anyone.” He didn’t. Abasio confessed to himself that he was in a mood. He had lost one beloved. He felt that he had spent half his life grieving. He was in a mood not to lose another and was growing increasingly afraid that it was fated to happen just as it had been fated that dreadful time before.
Xulai, meantime, had been so preoccupied with all the preparations that they were several days into the voyage before she confessed to Precious Wind it had occurred to her she might be pregnant.
“You’re what?” Precious Wind snarled.
“Well, you don’t need to sound like that!”
Precious Wind ground her teeth together. “No. Quite right. I needn’t. It’s just that, I hadn’t, we hadn’t considered that.”
“Oh, for all that’s sanctified, Precious Wind, you had to have considered that! It’s the reason for the whole thing, isn’t it? Aren’t I supposed to have children? Aren’t all of us sea-egg people supposed to have children?”
“How long?” demanded Precious Wind. “Before Abasio
was given the sea egg, or after?”
Xulai shut her mouth and became very quiet, finally replying, “I’m not sure.”
“When did he get the sea egg? How long ago?”
Again silence. “I’m not sure.”
“Which is why I was exploding. If you got pregnant before, your child will not be a changer. If you got pregnant after, your child will be a changer. I presumed . . . I thought . . .”
“Well, all of you people who brought me up presumed entirely too much. Not one of you ever said a word about it. Not you. Not Oldwife. Not Nettie.”
“We assumed you realized . . .”
“And how was I supposed to realize anything! It’s customary to tell people things you want them to realize. We don’t pick up tactical information through our skins!”
Precious Wind went into her cabin and shut the door. Xulai went into the one she shared with Abasio and broke into tears, from which he rescued her some time later by telling her it did not matter.
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” she sobbed.
“I mean it doesn’t matter,” he said, patting her on the back. “Your first child, our first child, sea fertile or not, will live out his or her lifespan long before the waters’ rising covers the earth. Our subsequent child or children will definitely be changers. If our first child is not, when he or she grows up you can give him or her a sea egg and his or her lover a sea egg. Their children, our grandchildren, will be changers. At this juncture, now, today, it makes no difference, therefore it doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” shouted Precious Wind when Abasio went to discuss the matter with her.
He explained. He concluded by saying, “Since you’re asking her to risk her life to help trap the monster, I think it would be very nice of you not to yell at her. It would also make my life much easier.”
Precious Wind scowled. “We’re taking every precaution. When we made the plan, we didn’t know she was—”
“Your knowing would not have made any difference,” said Abasio forbiddingly. “You would have had to risk her anyhow. So it doesn’t matter. You can’t Whifflepop it into something else so it won’t Gloop. No, don’t ask!”
The days at sea passed in a seemingly unending procession. Precious Wind spent most of the daylight hours teaching the wolves something that she would not talk about. Blue stood at the rail, staring over the sea while considering the future of sea horses. A few of the mares he had left behind in Tingawa would bear young ones, young ones who would be used to create a generation of swimmers. Blue wavered between pride and depression. The thought of death had never bothered him. Now it did, simply because he could not see the future he had always pictured: ongoing horse life amid pastures, mares and stallions browsing along the banks of streams, young ones racing across green meadows. Undersea life would not be like that. When he visualized what it would be like, he felt cold, unloved, his life useless, his line ended. He had no idea how similar his feelings were to Abasio’s.
Justinian, between repeated climbs up and down the rigging and endless circuits of the deck, walking and running, sometimes leaned on the rail nearby, seldom speaking, never taking his eyes from Xulai when she was within view, never taking his mind from her, not even when he was asleep. He grew sadder, leaner, and more muscular with every day. Abasio watched him with concern. Justinian was not yet elderly; his body showed that, but his face showed a man past age, eternally frozen in some other time.
The Tingawan warriors also spent their days exercising, both with and without weapons, single-mindedly readying brains and bodies for whatever might occur. The captain brooded on the lack of winds. There were too many days of calm; they were moving eastward far too slowly. As though in answer to his complaint, the calm was broken by unseasonable storms that drove them along the Great Dune Coast, much farther south than they wished to go. Eventually they sighted the Icefang Mountains a goodly distance north of east while a steady north wind blew against them. Days of constant sail-shifting labor, sailing close to the wind, gaining slow mile after slow mile, brought them finally to Wellsport. There was much talk among the sailors when they came in sight of the place. Most of them had been in Wellsport in years before, and they found everything changed. The piers floated now, as they did in Tingawa. The buildings had been moved or rebuilt two-thirds of the way up the mountain, well above the landing area.
The people of Wellsport had observed the ship for over a day. Crowds of them lined the shore to watch it arrive, the first ship to have crossed the sea in a very long time. Rumor had it that ships would be coming regularly now. Rumor had it that the sea war was over. The sailors explained, Abasio explained, Justinian explained, the war is not over, the sea is still closed, this is an exceptional arrival. In the end, rumor won. The people had decided the war was over. Xulai wondered if the people might not be right. Though she had never discussed it with either her grandfather or her sea father, there seemed to be little reason to continue the ban, if for no other reason than to expedite the movement of sea eggs among the various parts of the world where they were needed and wanted. Lok-i-xan had advised that they must be wary of too much inbreeding. In each place where sea eggs originated, at least half of them should move away into other areas with unrelated populations. Many of those were across the sea. Of course, though such places were a very long distance from Tingawa, they were not across a sea from Tingawa. Perhaps that was the real reason why ships should not travel until the monster was dead, Xulai thought.
Abasio’s wagon awaited them at an inn in Wellsport, brought by a couple of hostlers from the abbey. A large number of horses awaited them in an area outlying Wellsport, brought by the Free Knights from Valesgard in Dale at the command of Hallad, Prince Orez. The “plan” was that the group would first take the wagon and the horses to Woldsgard. Then, said Precious Wind, they would go from Woldsgard to the Eastwatch Tower and from there up the cliffs of the highlands, where the villagers awaited them. Messages had gone out and replies had been received. They were expected.
Xulai carried several boxes of sea eggs, two pair of which were to be left in Wellsport and another pair in each of the Becomer villages. All the cliffside villages were close enough to one another that eggs could be shared among them. Besides, sooner or later the villages would have to relocate nearer to the sea. Everyone who received sea eggs would need to live closer to the sea. Only those who could change would parent the new race; only the sea would test who could change. This was explained to the populace by Abasio and by Precious Wind. They had to be willing to accept the change of shape in order to prove to the people of the sea that they were worth saving. The people of the sea weren’t sure.
On this topic, the town was full of discussion, argument, and a few brawls.
“You wuddn catch me doin’ that if the world ends t’morraw.”
“You old goat, you’re too old to do any changin’, egg or no egg.”
“Who you callin’ old?”
Or: “Sounds nasty to me. Just pure nasty. Turnin’ into somethin’ like that. Yer not agona do that! No daughter o’ mine’s agona do that.”
“Ma, it’s that or drown . . .”
“You’d jus best drown.”
Precious Wind shook her head and went to Abasio and Xulai. “They’re going to have to see it happen, Xulai.”
Xulai burst into tears. “I’ve been poked and prodded and questioned and your doctors took samples of every part of me, and I am not going to change naked in front of all those people!” Her mind was saying, This is unbecoming. This is childish. Her body was saying, Don’t give a damn.
“I know.” Precious Wind sympathized. “I’d feel the same, but I’ve figured out a way . . .”
Accordingly, Xulai went down to the shore wearing a loose garment that resembled a small tent from which her arms and head emerged. At the edge of the sand, she changed and went into the sea from beneath the tent, leaving it in the surf. While curious townsmen examined the tent to
be sure she hadn’t been hidden in its seams, she swam about among a small group of curious local swimmers and divers, allowing herself to be petted, stroked, looked at, and returning only when Precious Wind had spread the tent properly at the waters’ edge. She slipped under it and resumed her proper form.
Abasio, who said to himself he would be damned if he would refuse to do anything Xulai was expected to do, eschewed the tent and changed right out in public. Wellsport was not a puritanical community, and nakedness was a fact of life in a place where freshwater was scarce and public baths were the rule. If the women would be offended, they didn’t need to look. He changed in the surf and swam away.
Three young men of Wellsport had agreed among themselves to have some fun with him if he changed into that thing the woman changed into. In fact, they provided him with a good deal of fun they had not expected. Octopods had more arms than any three regular swimmers, and octopods could breathe underwater, which the human swimmers had forgotten, to their subsequent discomfort. Abasio was in a better mood when he slithered back onto the sand, changed, toweled himself off, and dressed in time to assist the rescue of his would-be tormentors. Once again, the explanation. They had to be willing to accept the change of shape, even into something some people considered repulsive, in order to convince the Sea People they were worth saving!
The discussions that ensued in Wellsport were not notably changed.
“I tell you no daughter of mine is gonna . , .”
“Josh, your daughter’s fifty years old. Nobody’s gonna even suggest it.”
“Women’ve had babies when they were fifty. My own ma! That’s de-scriminatin’.”
“Maybe, but you don’t have to worry about not lettin’ her. Nobody’ll ask her.”
“An’ I’d like to know why not! We’re as good as anybody.”
“Ah, fer . . .”
For several days most of the troop was busy with unloading and repacking while Precious Wind and Xulai talked to groups of young men and women.