Valben hadn't seen him for four years. He didn't know what to expect. The man who came in had the same face as his father, the face that he was beginning to have also, with strong features, a powerful jaw, a long straight nose; but he was so tanned by sun and wind that his skin looked like an old piece of rugfish hide, and there was an angry slash across his cheek, a purpling scar that ran from the corner of his eye to the corner of his mouth. "Meatfish got me," he said. "But I got him, too." He punched Valben's arm. "Hey, you're big! Just as big as I am, you are. But lighter. You need some flesh on your bones." Coirey winked. "Come with me to Meisa Meisanda sometime. They know food, there. It's a feast day every day. And the women! The women, boy!" He frowned and said, "You go for women, don't you? Sure, of course you do. Right? Right. What about it, Val? When I get back from Simbalimak, will you take a trip to Meisa Meisanda with me?"
"You know I can't leave here, Coirey. I have studying to do."
"Studying."
"Father's teaching me doctoring."
"Oh. Right. Right. I forgot that, didn't I? You're going to be the next Dr Lawler. But you can come away to sea with me for a little while first, can't you?"
"No," Valben said. "No, I can't."
And then he understood why his grandfather had given the little bit of pottery from Earth to him, and not to his older brother Coirey.
His brother never returned to Sorve again.
* * *
He was seventeen, and deep in his medical studies.
"High time you did an autopsy with me, Valben," his father said. "It's all just theory for you so far. But you've got to find out what's inside the package sooner or later."
"Maybe we ought to wait until I've finished my anatomy lessons," he said. "So I have a better idea of what I'm seeing."
"This is the best kind of anatomy lesson there is," his father said.
And took him inside, to the surgical room, where someone was lying on the table under a light blanket of water-lettuce cloth. He drew the blanket aside and Valben saw that it was an old woman with grey hair and flabby breasts that fell aside toward her armpits; and then a moment later he realized that he knew her, that he was looking at Bamber Cadrell's mother, Samara, the wife of Marinus. Of course he would know her, he realized: there were only sixty people on the island, and how could any of them be strangers? But still-Marinus' wife, Bamber's mother-naked like this, lying dead on the surgical table…
"She died this morning, very quickly, just fell down in her vaargh. Marinus brought her in. Most likely her heart, but I want to see for certain, and you should see too." His father picked up his case of surgical tools. Then he said, softly, "I didn't enjoy my first autopsy either. But it's a necessary thing, Valben. You've got to know what a liver looks like, and a spleen, and lungs, and a heart, and you can't learn it by reading about them. You have to know the difference between healthy organs and diseased ones. And we don't get that many bodies to work on, here. This is an opportunity I can't let you pass up."
He selected a scalpel, showing Valben the proper grip, and made the first incision. And began to lay bare the secrets of Samara Cadrell's body.
It was bad at first, very bad.
Then he found he could tolerate it, that he was getting used to the awfulness of it, the shock of taking part in this bloody violation of the sanctuary of the body.
And after a time it actually became fascinating, when he had managed to forget that this was a woman he had known all his life, and was thinking of her only as an arrangement of internal organs of various colours and textures and shapes.
But that night, when he was done with the last of his studying and was out behind the reservoir with Boda Thalheim and sliding his hands across her smooth flat belly, he couldn't keep from thinking that behind this tight drum of taut lovely skin there also was an arrangement of internal organs of various colours and textures and shapes very much like those he had seen this afternoon, the shining coils of intestines and all the rest, and that within these firm round breasts were intricate glands scarcely different from those within the flabby breasts of Samara Cadrell, which his father had demonstrated for him a few hours before with deft strokes of his scalpel. And he pulled his hands back from Boda's sleek body as though it had turned into Samara's under his caresses.
"Is something wrong, Val?"
"No. No."
"Don't you want to?"
"Of course I do. But… I don't know…"
"Here. Let me help you."
"Yes. Oh, Boda. Oh, yes!"
And in moments everything was all right. But he wondered if he would ever touch a girl again without having vivid images of her pancreas and kidneys and fallopian tubes rise unbidden and unwanted in his mind, and it occurred to him that being a doctor was a very complex business indeed.
Images out of bygone times. Phantoms that would never leave him.
* * *
Three days later Lawler went down to the cargo hold in the ship's belly for some medical supplies, carrying only a small taper to light his way. In the dimness he nearly walked into Kinverson and Sundira, who were coming out from between the crates. They looked sweaty and dishevelled and a little surprised to see him, and there wasn't much doubt of what they had been up to.
Kinverson, unabashed, looked at him straight on and said, "Morning, doc."
Sundira didn't say a thing. She tugged her wrap together in front, where it was parted, and went on past, expressionless, meeting Lawler's eyes only for a moment and quickly looking away. She seemed not so much embarrassed as simply retreating into a self-containing sphere. Stung, Lawler nodded as if this were a completely neutral encounter in a completely neutral part of the ship, and continued forward to the medical storage area.
It was the first real evidence he had ever had that Kinverson and Thane were lovers, and it hit him harder than he would have expected. Kinverson's words about the mating habits of hagfish, a few days earlier, came back to him now. He wondered whether they had been aimed at him in some sly, mocking way. The guys that fly the fastest get the girls.
No. No. Lawler knew that he had had plenty of opportunities of his own back on the island to get something going with Sundira. He had chosen not to, for reasons that had seemed to make sense at the time.
So why was he so hurt now?
You want her more than you'll admit even to yourself, don't you?
Yes. He did. Especially right now.
Why? Because she's involved with somebody else?
What did it matter? He wanted her. Lawler had known that before, and had done nothing about it. Maybe it was time to start thinking harder about why he hadn't.
He saw them together again later in the day in the stern, up by the gantry bridge. From the looks of things Kinverson had caught something unusual, and he was showing it to her, the proud huntsman displaying his catch to his woman.
"Doc?" Kinverson called, poking his head over the edge of the bridge. He smiled in a way that was either blandly amiable or casually condescending, Lawler wasn't sure which. "Come up here for a minute, will you, doc? Something here that might interest you."
Lawler's first impulse was to shake his head and keep on going. But he didn't want to give them the satisfaction of avoiding them. What was he afraid of? That he'd see Kinverson's paw-prints all over her skin? He told himself not to be so stupid and scrambled up the little ladder to the gantry.
Kinverson had all manner of fishing equipment bolted to the deck, gaffs and hooks and lines and such. Here, too, were the nets Gharkid used in trawling for algae.
A graceful greenish creature that looked a little like a diver, but smaller, was lying limply on the gantry-bridge floor in a yellow puddle, as though Kinverson had just pulled it aboard. Lawler didn't recognize it. Some sort of a mammal, most likely. Air-breathing, like so many other inhabitants of Hydros' ocean.
"What's that you have there?" he asked Kinverson.
"Well, now, we're not so sure, doc."
It had a low, sloping foreh
ead, an elongated muzzle tipped with stubby grey whiskers, and a slender streamlined body ending in a three-vaned tail. There was a pronounced spinal ridge. Its forelimbs were flattened into narrow flippers somewhat like those of Gillies. Curved grey claws, short and sharp, protruded from them. Its eyes, black and round and shining, were open.
It didn't appear to be breathing. But it didn't look dead, either. The eyes held an expression. Fear? Bewilderment? Who could say? They were alien eyes. They seemed to be worried ones.
Kinverson said, "This was fouled in one of Gharkid's nets, and I pulled it in to clear it. You know, you can spend your whole life out on this ocean and even so you never stop seeing new critters." He prodded the animal's side. It responded with a weak, faint motion of its tail. "This one's a goner, wouldn't you say? Pretty little thing."
"Let me have a closer look," Lawler said.
He knelt beside it and cautiously put his hand on its flank. The skin was warm, clammy, perhaps feverish. He was able now to detect the sounds of faint breathing. The animal rolled its eyes downward to follow what Lawler was doing, but without any sign of great interest. Then its mouth sagged open and Lawler was startled to see a peculiar woody network just within it, a spherical structure of loosely tangled white fibrous strands blocking the animal's entire mouth and gullet. The strands coalesced into a thick stem that disappeared down the creature's throat.
He pressed his hands along the animal's abdomen and felt rigidity within, lumps and bumps where all should have been smooth. His hands had finally begun to lose their stiffness by this time, and he was able to read the topography of the creature's interior as though he had laid it bare with a scalpel. Wherever he touched it he could feel the signs of something invasive growing inside. He rolled the creature over and saw strands of the same woody network emerging from its anus, just above the tail.
Suddenly the animal uttered a dry, hacking, ratcheting sound. Its mouth opened wider than Lawler would have believed possible. The woody tangle within it rose into view, jutting far out of the animal's mouth as if on a pedestal, and started to weave from side to side. Quickly Lawler rose to a standing position and stepped back. Something that looked like a little pink tongue detached itself from the fibrous sphere and zipped madly about on the deck, darting back and forth with manic energy. Lawler brought his boot down on it just as it went past him heading toward Sundira. A second autonomous tongue erupted from the sphere. He smashed that too. The sphere waggled around sluggishly as if gathering the energy to emit a few more.
To Kinverson he said, "Throw this thing into the sea, fast."
"Huh?"
"Pick it up and heave it. Go on."
Kinverson had been watching the examination in a baffled, remote way. But the urgency of Lawler's tone got through to him. He slipped one big hand under the animal's middle, lifted, tossed, all in one swift movement. The creature went plummeting inertly toward the water like a mere inanimate sack. At the last moment it managed to right itself and hit the surface smoothly, head first, as though by inherent reflexes still partially functioning. It managed one powerful kick of its tail and glided out of sight underwater in an instant.
"What the hell was that all about?" Kinverson asked.
"Parasite infestation. That animal was loaded from its snout to its tail with some kind of plant growth. Its mouth was full of it, didn't you see? And all the way down its body. It's been completely taken over by it. And those little pink tongues-my guess is that they were offshoots looking for new hosts."
Sundira shivered. "Something like killer fungus?"
"Something like that, yes."
"You think it could have infected us?"
"It sure was going to try," Lawler said. "In an ocean the size of this one, the parasites can't afford to be host-specific. They'll take root in whatever they can." He stared over the side, half expecting to see scores of parasite-ridden animals drifting helplessly all about the ship. But there was nothing down there except yellow scum streaked with red. Turning back to Kinverson, he said, "I want you to suspend all fishing operations until we get clear of this part of the sea. I'll find Dag Tharp and tell him to send the same order to the other ships."
"We need fresh meat, doc."
"You want to have the personal responsibility of examining everything that's caught to see if it's carrying that parasitic plant?"
"Hell, no!"
"Then we don't haul anything in around here. It's that simple. I'd rather live on dried fish for a while than have one of those things growing in my gut, wouldn't you?"
Kinverson nodded solemnly.
"Such a pretty little thing, it was."
* * *
A day later, still sailing through the Yellow Sea, they ran into their first tidal surge. The only surprise was that it had been so long in coming, considering that they had been at sea for several weeks now.
It was impossible to escape the surges altogether. The planet's three moons, small and fast-moving, swung round and round in intricately intersecting orbital patterns, and at regular intervals they were lined up in such a way as to exert a powerful combined gravitational effect on the great ball of water they orbited. That lifted a great tidal bulge which continually travelled around Hydros' midsection as the planet turned. Smaller tidal effects, the products of the gravitational fields of the individual moons, moved at angles to it. The Gillies had designed their islands to withstand those inevitable times when a tidal surge would come their way. On certain exceptional occasions the lesser tidal surges crossed the path of the great one, setting up the massive turbulence known as the Wave. The Gillie islands were built to resist even the Wave; but individual boats and ships were helpless against it. The Wave was what every mariner feared more than anything.
The first tidal surge was one of the mild ones. The day was leaden and humid, the sun pale, indistinct, bloodless. The first watch was on duty, Martello, Kinverson, Gharkid, Pilya Braun. "Choppy sea ahead," Kinverson called from aloft. Onyos Felk, in the wheel-box, reached for his spy-glass. Lawler, who had just emerged on deck after his morning medical call to the other ships, felt the deck plunge and buck beneath him as if the vessel had put its foot down on something solid. Yellowish spray came whirling up into his face.
He looked up toward the wheel-box. Felk was signalling to him with brusque gestures.
"Surge coming," the mapkeeper called. "Get inside!"
Lawler saw Pilya and Leo Martello securing the ropes that held the sails. A moment later they dropped down out of the rigging. Gharkid had already gone below. Kinverson came trotting past, beckoning. "Come on, doc. You don't want to be out here now."
"No," Lawler said. But still he lingered a moment more by the rail. He saw it, now. It was heading toward them out of the northwest like a little message of welcome from distant Grayvard-a fat grey wall of water that lay at a sharp angle across the horizon, rolling down on them with impressive speed. Lawler imagined some sort of rod sweeping through the sea just beneath the surface, pushing up this inexorable distended ridge. A cold salty wind preceded it, a cheerless harbinger.
"Doc," Kinverson said again, from the hatch. "Sometimes they sweep the deck when they hit."
"I know," said Lawler. But the power of the oncoming surge fascinated him and held him. Kinverson vanished with a shrug into the ship's interior. Lawler was alone now on deck. He realized they might well close the hatch and leave him out here. He took one last look at the surge, and then he ran for it. Below, everyone but Henders and Delagard was gathered in the companionway, bracing themselves against the imminent impact.
Kinverson slammed the hatch shut behind him and dogged it.
An odd grinding sound rose from the depths of the ship, somewhere aft.
"Magnetron's coming on," Sundira Thane said.
Lawler turned to her. "You've been through these before?"
"Too often. But this one won't be much."
The grinding sound grew louder. The magnetron sent down a shaft of force that pressed against
the ball of molten iron at world's core and provided a lever capable of lifting the ship a metre or two out of the water, or a bit more if necessary, just enough to carry it over the worst force of the surge. The magnetic displacement field was the one piece of super-technology that the humans of Hydros had managed to bring with them from the worlds of the galaxy. Dann Henders once had said that a device as powerful as the magnetron would have other applications far more useful to the settlers than keeping Delagard's ferries afloat on turbulent seas, and very probably Henders was right about that; but Delagard kept the magnetrons sealed aboard his ships. They were his private property, the crown jewels of the Delagard maritime empire, the foundation of the family fortune.
"Are we up yet?" Lis Niklaus asked uneasily.
"When the grinding stops," Neyana Golghoz said. "There. Now."
All was silent.
The ship was floating just above the crest of the surge.
Only for a moment: the magnetron, potent though it was, had its limits. But a moment was long enough. The surge passed by and the ship drifted gently over it and down its far side, landing lightly in the pocket of displaced water beyond. As it resumed its place in the water it swayed and shuddered and shook. The impact of the descent was greater than Lawler had expected, and he had to fight to keep from being thrown down.
Then it was all over. They were afloat on an even keel again.
Delagard emerged from the hatch that led to the cargo hold, grinning in warm self-congratulation. Dann Henders was right behind him.
"That's it, folks," the ship-owner announced. "Back to your posts. Onward we go."