Sundira, wandering the deck by night, appeared beside him.
"Pondering the destiny of the cosmos again, doctor?"
"As usual. Yes."
"What's tonight's theme?"
"Irony. All those years that the Earth people worried about destroying themselves in one of their feverish nasty little wars. But they never did. And then their own sun went and did it for them in a single afternoon."
"Thank God we were already out here settling among the stars."
"Yes," said Lawler, with a cool glance at the dark monster-infested sea. "How fine for us that was."
* * *
Later in the night she returned. He hadn't moved from his place by the rail.
"That you still there, Valben?"
"Still me, yes." She had never called him by his first name before. It seemed odd to him for her to be doing it now: inappropriate, even. He couldn't remember when anyone had last addressed him as "Valben."
"Can you tolerate some company again?"
"Sure," he said. "Can't get to sleep?"
"Haven't tried," she said. "There's a prayer meeting going on down below, did you know that?"
"And who are the holy ones taking part in it?"
"The Father, naturally. Lis. Neyana. Dann. And Gharkid."
"Gharkid? Finally coming out of his shell?"
"Well, he's just sitting there, actually. Father Quillan's doing all the talking. Telling them how elusive God is, how difficult it is for us to sustain our faith in a Supreme Being who never speaks to us, never gives us any proof that he's really there. What an effort it is for anyone to have faith, and that that's not right, it shouldn't be an effort at all, we ought to be able simply to make a blind leap and accept God's existence, only that's too hard for most of us. Et cetera, et cetera. And the others are drinking it all in. Gharkid listens and now and then he nods. A strange one, he is. You want to go below and hear what the Father's saying?"
"No," Lawler said. "I've already had the privilege of hearing him hold forth on the topic, thanks."
They stood together in silence for a time.
Then after a while Sundira said, apropos of nothing at all, "Valben. What kind of name is Valben?"
"An Earth name."
"No, it isn't. John, Richard, Elizabeth, those are Earth names. Leo, he's got an Earth name. I never heard of any name like Valben."
"Does that mean it isn't an Earth name, then?"
"I just know that I know what Earth names are like, and I never heard of a Valben."
"Well, maybe it isn't an Earth name, then. My father said it was. He could have been wrong."
"Valben," she said, playing with the sound of it. "A family name, maybe, a special name. It's a new one to me. Would you prefer that I call you Valben?"
"Prefer? No. Call me Valben if you want to. But in fact nobody does."
"What do they call you that you like, then? Doc, isn't it?"
He shrugged. "Doc's okay. Some call me Lawler. A few call me Val. Just a very few."
"Val. I like the sound of that better than Doc. Is it all right if I call you Val?"
Only his oldest friends called him Val, men like Nicko Thalheim, Nimber Tanamind, Nestor Yanez. It didn't sound at all right on her lips. But why should that matter? He could get used to it. And "Val" was better than "Valben," at least.
"Whatever you like," he said.
* * *
Another tidal surge arrived three days later, this one coming from due west. It was stronger than the first one, but the magnetrons had no problem dealing with it. Up and over, and down the far side, a little bump upon landing, and that was that.
The weather stayed cool and dry. The voyagers went onward.
* * *
In the depths of the night there was a loud muffled thump against the hull, as though the ship had struck a reef. Lawler sat up in his bunk, yawning, thumbing his eyes, wondering if he had dreamed it. Everything was silent for a moment. Then came another thump, a harder one. No dream, then. He was still half asleep, yes, but he was half awake also. He counted off a minute, a minute and a half. Another thump. He heard the timbers of the hull creak and shift.
He wrapped something around his middle and went out toward the companionway, fully awake now. Lights had been lit; people were streaming out of the portside cabin, blurry-faced, a couple of them still naked, no doubt just as they had slept. Lawler went up on deck. The night watch-Henders, Golghoz, Delagard, Niklaus, Thane-was running around in an agitated way, speeding from one side of the ship to the other as though following the movements of some enemy attacking from below.
"Here they come again!" someone called.
Thump. Up here, the impact was greater-the ship seemed to shiver and jump to one side-and the sound of the hull's being struck was sharper, a clear startling hard-edged sound.
Lawler found Dag Tharp near the rail.
"What's going on?"
"Look out there and you'll see."
The sea was calm. Two moons were aloft, at opposite ends of the sky, and the Cross had begun its nightly slide toward dawn, hanging in an off-centre position a little toward the east. The six ships of the flotilla had wandered somewhat from their usual three-ranks formation and were arrayed in a wide loosely-drawn circle. Perhaps a dozen long streaks of brilliant blue phosphorescence were visible in the open water in the centre of the group, like fiery arrows of light cutting through the ocean not far below the surface. As Lawler watched, perplexed, one of the phosphorescent streaks extended itself at a startling pace, shooting swiftly in a straight line toward the ship just to the left of theirs, travelling on a collision course, a bright needle in the darkness. From somewhere came an ominous high-pitched pinging sound, steadily growing in intensity as the streak of light approached the vessel.
The collision came. Lawler heard the crack of impact and saw the other ship heel over a little way. Faintly across the water came the sound of shouts.
The phosphorescent streak backed off, sped away, back toward the open central water.
"Rammerhorns," Tharp said. "They're trying to sink us."
Lawler grasped the rail and looked down. His eyes were more accustomed to the dark now. He could see the attackers clearly by the light of their own phosphorescence.
They looked like living missiles, narrow-bodied, ten or fifteen metres long, propelled by strong double-fluked tails. From their blunt foreheads sprouted a single thick yellow horn, perhaps five metres in length and sturdy as a kelp-trunk, that terminated in a blunt but dangerous-looking point. They were swimming at a furious rate across the open zone between the ships, getting up to immense speeds by furious lashing movements of their tails and bashing their horns into the sides of the vessels in the obvious hope of breaching them. Then, with a kind of insane persistence, they turned around, swam off to a distance, and charged again even more fiercely. The faster they swam the more intense was the luminescence that streamed from their flanks, and the louder was the sharp pinging sound that they emitted.
Kinverson appeared from somewhere, lugging something that looked like a heavy iron kettle bound in algae fibre. "Give me a hand with this, will you, doc?"
"Where are you taking it?"
"The bridge. It's a sonic."
The kettle, or whatever it was, was almost too heavy for Kinverson to manage by himself. Lawler caught hold of it by a knotted cord that dangled from the side nearest him. Together he and Kinverson were able to struggle it down the deck toward the bridge. Delagard joined them there and the three of them hauled it up to the higher level.
"Fucking rammerhorns," Kinverson muttered. "I knew they were bound to turn up sooner or later."
There was another thump below. Lawler saw a streak of dazzling blue light rebound from the ship and go scuttering off in the other direction.
Of all the strange creatures that the sea had sent against them thus far in the voyage, these things that were blindly battering into them seemed to Lawler to be the most frightening. You could stomp some, du
ck others, keep a watchful eye on odd-looking netting. But how could you deal with these spears coming at you from below in the night, these huge creatures determined to sink you, and capable of doing it?
"Are they strong enough to pierce the hull?" Lawler asked Delagard.
"It's been known to happen. Jesus. Jesus!"
Kinverson's giant form, outlined by the moonlight, rose high above the big kettle, which he had installed by this time at the front end of the bridge. He had unfastened a long padded stick that had been tied to the kettle's side and now he grasped it in both hands and brought it down on the kettle's drum-like top. A heavy booming sound rumbled out across the waters.
He struck again, again, again.
"What's he doing?" Lawler asked.
"Sending a countersonic. Rammerhorns can't see. They do it all by bouncing sound waves off their target. Gabe's screwing up their directional senses."
Kinverson pounded on his drum with phenomenal energy and zeal. The air was thick with the booming sounds that he made. Could they penetrate the water? Apparently so. Down below, the rammerhorns were rushing back and forth in the space between the ships even more swiftly than before, so that the dazzling streaks of blue light that marked their trails were intricately interwoven. But the patterns were getting erratic. A chaotic jerkiness seemed to be entering the movements of the rammerhorns as Kinverson continued to beat his drum. They moved in wild lunging leaps, now and then breaking the surface of the water, soaring aloft for a moment or two, landing with great splashing impacts. One of them struck the ship, but it was only a weak glancing blow. The pingings they made grew arrhythmic and discordant. For a moment Kinverson paused, as though he were getting tired, and it appeared as if the rammerhorns might regroup. But then he resumed his booming with even more fervour than before, hammering away with his stick, on and on and on. Suddenly there was a great flurry down below and two of the huge attackers leaped from the water at the same moment. By the light of the others, swimming in ragged circles around them, Lawler saw that the horn of one had penetrated the gill-slits of the other, was in fact impaled deep within the other rammerhorn's skull; and both creatures, falling back to the water still linked in that terrible way, now began to sink. Their path into the depths was revealed for a moment or two more by the trail of phosphorescence that they left behind. Then they could no longer be seen.
Kinverson struck the drum three last slow blows, widely spaced-boom-boom-boom-and lowered his arm.
"Dag? Dag, where the hell are you?" It was Delagard's voice, coming out of the darkness. "Start calling around the fleet. Make sure nobody's sprung a leak."
All was dark and quiet in the water. But when Lawler closed his eyes it seemed to him that searing streaks of blue light were flashing back and forth against his lids.
* * *
The next tidal surge was the most powerful one yet. It came upon them two days before they were expecting it, evidently because Onyos Felk had got his numbers wrong; and it struck with great enthusiasm and really jubilant malevolence, whacking the ships broadside as they lolled becalmed in a sleepy sea where drifting grey weeds belched a strangely seductive perfume upward into the air. Lawler was working belowdecks to reorganize his inventory of medicines. He thought at first that the rammerhorns had returned, so sharp was the impact. But no, no, this was nothing like the single point-source of a rammerhorn blow: it was more like the flat of a giant hand striking the hull and pushing the ship backward along its own course. He heard the magnetron kick in and waited for the sensation of lift, the sudden silence that meant they were riding the displacement field above the angry water. But the silence didn't come, and Lawler had to make a quick desperate grab for the side of his bunk as the ship heeled up at a startling angle, throwing him toward the bulkhead. Things fell from his shelves and sped in one quick whoosh along the floor, fetching up in a scrambled heap on the far side of the cabin.
Was this it? The Wave, at last? And would they be able to withstand it?
He held tight and waited. The ship rocked back, fell with what sounded like a colossal crash into the cavity that the surge had left behind, and heeled over the other way, sending everything that had fallen from the shelves sliding back across the cabin. Then it righted itself. All was still. He picked up the Egyptian god and the Greek potsherd and put them back where they had been.
More? Another blow?
No. Still and steady.
Are we sinking, then?
Apparently not. Cautiously Lawler made his way out of the cabin and cocked an ear. Delagard was yelling something. They were all right, he said. It had been a good hard smack, but they were all right.
The force of the big surge had carried them along with it, though, and it had pulled them off course, sweeping them eastward half a day's journey. But all six vessels had been swept, miraculously, as a single unit. There they were, out of formation but still within sight of one another, drifting on the now tranquil sea. It took an hour to rebuild the formation, six hours more to regain the position they had held when the surge had hit them. Not so bad, really. They went onward.
5
Nimber Tanamind's collarbone seemed to be healing properly. Lawler didn't go back over to the Sorve Goddess to check it out, since nothing that Nimber's wife Salai told him about his condition indicated that problems were developing. Lawler described to her how she should change the bandage and what to look for in the vicinity of the fracture.
Martin Yanez of the Three Moons called in to say that old Sweyner the glassblower had been struck in the face by a fast-flying hagfish, and now his neck was so sore that he couldn't hold his head straight. Lawler told Yanez what to do about that. From the Sisterhood ship, the Hydros Cross, came a rare query: Sister Boda was having shooting pains in her left breast. There was no point in going to see her. The Sisters, he knew, weren't likely to let him examine her. He suggested pain-killers and asked them to call back after Sister Boda's next menstrual period. That was the last he heard of Sister Boda's sore breast.
Someone on the Black Sea Star fell from the rigging and dislocated her arm. Lawler led Poilin Stayvol step by step through the process of relocating it for her. Someone on the Golden Sun was vomiting black bile. It turned out that he had been experimenting with eating arrowfish caviar. Lawler advised a more cautious diet. Someone on the Sorve Goddess complained of recurring nightmares. Lawler suggested a nip of brandy before going to sleep. For Lawler it was business as usual.
Father Quillan, perhaps envious, observed that it must be wonderfully gratifying to him to be needed in this way, to be so essential to the life of an entire community, to be able to heal the suffering ones, more often than not, when they turned to him in pain.
"Gratifying? I suppose so. I've never actually bothered to think much about it. It's simply my job."
And so it was. But Lawler realized that there was something in what the priest had said. His power over Sorve Island had been almost godlike, or at least priestly. What did it mean, after all, to have been the doctor there for twenty-five years? Why, that he had had every man's balls in his hand at one time or another, that he had had his arm up every woman's cunt, that just about everyone on Sorve under the age of twenty-five was someone he had pulled out into the air, bloody and kicking, and given his first slap on the rump. All that tended to create a certain bond. It gave the doctor a certain claim on them, and they on him. No wonder people anywhere will worship their doctor, Lawler thought. To them he is the Healer. The Doctor. The Magician. The one who protects, the one who gives comfort and surcease from pain. It had been going on that way since the days of the cave dwellers, back there on poor damned doomed lost Earth. He was only the latest in a long long line. And, unlike the hapless Father Quillan and others of his profession, whose thankless task it was to proffer the blessings of an invisible god, he was actually in a position where he could sometimes deliver tangible benefits. So yes, yes, he was a powerful figure in the community by virtue of his vocation, the man with the power of l
ife and death, respected and needed and probably feared, and he supposed that that was gratifying. Very well. He was gratified. He didn't see how that made much of a difference.
They were in the Green Sea now, where dense colonies of a lovely aquatic plant made it almost impossible for the ships to move forward. The plant was succulent, with thick glossy spoon-shaped leaves sprouting from a brown central stem and a central sporing stalk topped by brilliant yellow-and-purple reproductive bodies. Air-filled bladders kept the plants afloat. Feathery grey roots twined like tentacles below the surface, tangled together in dark mats. The plants were so closely interwoven below the waterline that they formed what was virtually an unbroken carpet covering the sea. The ships butted bow-first into them and came to a standstill.
Kinverson and Neyana Golghoz went out in the water-strider with machetes to hack them apart.
"Useless," Gharkid said, to no one in particular. "I know these plants. You cut them up, each one turns into five new ones."
Gharkid was right. Kinverson chopped at the pretty weeds with might and main while Neyana pedalled the strider forward by sheer brute force; but no opening appeared. It wasn't possible for one man, no matter how strong, to cut a big enough hole in the plant mass to create any real channel. The sundered pieces of each plant took up independent lives immediately: you could almost see them growing themselves back, sealing off the cut place, putting out new roots, sending up shiny new spoons and showy new sporing stalks.