"Of course," Quillan answered, after a moment.
* * *
But things remained strained between them for some time. Lawler made a point of keeping away whenever he saw the priest and Gharkid together. It was evident, though, that Gharkid wasn't making any more sense out of Quillan's teachings than Lawler could, and his dialogues with the priest eventually came to an end. Which pleased Lawler more than he had anticipated.
* * *
An island came into view, the first they had seen on the entire voyage, unless you counted the one that the Gillies were constructing. Dag Tharp hailed it by radio, but no answer came back.
"Are they just unsociable," Lawler said to Delagard, "or is it a Gillie island?"
"Gillies," Delagard said. "Nobody but fucking Gillies over there. Trust me. That's not one of ours."
* * *
Three days later there was another, in the shape of a crescent moon, lying like a sleeping animal on the northern horizon. Lawler, borrowing the helmsman's spy-glass, thought he could see signs of a human settlement at the island's eastern end. Tharp started down to the radio room, but Delagard called him back, telling him not to bother.
"This one a Gillie island too?" Lawler asked.
"Not this time. But there's no sense putting in a call. We aren't going to pay them a visit."
"Maybe they'd let us fill up on water. We're running pretty damned low."
"No," Delagard said. "That's Thetopal over there. My ships don't have landing rights on Thetopal. I don't get along well with the Thetopali at all. They wouldn't let us have a bucket of stale piss."
"Thetopal?" Onyos Felk said, looking puzzled. "You sure?"
"Sure, I'm sure. What else can it be? That's Thetopal."
"Thetopal," Felk said. "All right. Thetopal, then. If you say so, Nid."
Once they had passed Thetopal, the sea was devoid of islands again. There was nothing but water to be seen in all directions. It was like travelling through an empty universe.
* * *
Lawler calculated that they were about halfway to Grayvard by now, though it was only a guess. Surely they had been at sea at least four weeks, but the ship's isolation and the unvarying daily routines made it difficult for him to work out any very clear sense of how rapidly time was passing.
For three days running a cold, hard wind raked down on the fleet from the north and stirred the wrath and fury of the sea all about them. The first sign was an abrupt transformation of the atmosphere, which in the region of the coral reefs had been soft and almost tropically mild. Suddenly now the air turned clear and tight-strung, so that the sky arched high above the ship, vibrating and pale, like an immense metallic dome. Lawler, who was something of an amateur meteorologist, was troubled by that. He brought his fears to Delagard, who took them seriously and gave orders to batten down. A little while later came a distant drumroll that heralded the first strong winds, a prolonged deep booming; and then the winds themselves arrived, quick nervous short-lived bursts of chilly air that licked and jabbed at the sea, stirring it as though with a pestle. With them came sparse rattling scatterings of dry hail, but no rain.
"Worse to come," Delagard muttered. He was on deck constantly as the weather worsened, scarcely taking the time to sleep. Father Quillan was often beside him, the two of them standing together like old cronies, peering into the wind. Lawler saw them talking, pointing, shaking their heads. What did these two have to say to each other, anyway, that coarse raucous man of blunt appetites and the austere, melancholic, God-haunted priest? There they were, anyway, together in the wheel-box, together by the binnacle, together on the quarterdeck. Was Quillan trying to convert Delagard now? Or were they trying to pray the storm away?
It came on anyway. The sea became an immense waste of broken water. Spray as fine as white smoke filled the air. The full wind struck with a hammering rush, burning past their ears and leaving a confused clamour echoing behind. They shortened the sails to it, but the ropes pulled free nevertheless and the heavy yards went whirling from side to side.
All hands were on deck. Martello, Kinverson and Henders moved about precariously in the rigging, lashing themselves in to keep from being whirled off into the water. The rest yanked on the ropes while Delagard furiously shouted orders. Lawler worked alongside the rest: no more doctor's exemption for him, not in a gale like this.
The sky was black. The sea was blacker, except where it was tipped with white foam, or when a mammoth wave rose beside them like a giant wall of green glass. The ship wallowed forward into it, boring down instead of rising as it should, pitching headlong into dark smooth hollows, rolling as some great wave backed off to leeward with a terrible sucking sound, then came crashing toward them again to send cataracts of water tumbling across the deck. The magnetron was useless for this: the winds were coming in from contrary directions, colliding, surrounding them with unruly water that slammed against them from all sides, so that there was no rising over it. They had battened down everything, they had brought whatever they could belowdecks, but the sluicing waves found anything left behind, a bucket, a stool, a gaff, a water cask, and sent it thumping and leaping across the deck until it vanished over the side. The ship's nose dipped, rose, dipped again. Someone was vomiting; someone was screaming. Lawler caught a glimpse of one of the other ships-he had no idea which, it flew no flag-hard alongside them, caught in an oscillating wallow, now rising above them as though it planned to come crashing right down on their deck, now plummeting out of sight as if being dragged straight to the bottom.
"The masts!" someone yelled. "They're going to go! Get down! Get down!"
But the masts held firm, certain though it seemed that they would be jumped from their sockets and thrown into the sea. Their desperate vibrations shook the entire ship. Lawler found himself clinging to someone-Pilya, it was-and when Lis Niklaus came scudding down the deck at the mercy of the wind they both caught hold of her and reeled her in like a hooked fish. At any moment Lawler expected a deluge of rain to begin, and it bothered him that in all this frenzy of wind they would have no chance to put out any containers to catch the good sweet fresh water in. But the winds remained dry, dry and crackling. Once he looked out over the rail and by the light of the sea-foam he saw the ocean full of little glinting staring eyes. Fantasy? Hallucination? He didn't think so. Drakken-heads, they were: an army of the things, a legion of them, long evil-looking snouts sticking up everywhere. A myriad of sharp teeth waiting for the moment when the Queen of Hydros capsized and its thirteen occupants went pitching into the water.
The gale blew and blew and blew, but the ship held and held and held. They lost all track of time. There was no night; there was no day; there was only the wind. Onyos Felk calculated later that it had been a three-day blow: perhaps he was right. It all came to an end as swiftly as it started, the black winds transforming themselves into a clear bright force that gleamed and cut like a knife; and then, as though some cue had been given, the storm dropped away in a moment and calmness returned with an impact much like a crash.
Stunned, Lawler moved slowly across the soaking deck in the strange new quietness. The deck was littered with torn bits of algae, clumps of jellyfish, angry flopping things, all sorts of marine detritus that the surging waves had thrown up. His hands ached where new rope-burns had awakened the pain the net-thing had inflicted. Silently Lawler took inventory: there was Pilya, there was Gharkid, there was Father Quillan, there was Delagard. Tharp, Golghoz, Felk, Niklaus. Martello? Yes, up above. Dann Henders? Yes.
Sundira?
He didn't see her. Then he did, and wished he hadn't: she was up near the forecastle, wet through and through, her clothes clinging to her skin so that she might just as well not have been wearing any, and Kinverson was with her. They were examining some creature of the deeps that he had found and was holding up to her, a sea-serpent of sorts, a long drooping comical thing with a wide but somehow harmless-seeming mouth and rows of circular green spots running down its flabby yellow body
to give it a clownish look. They were laughing; Kinverson shook the thing at her, practically thrusting it into her face, and she howled with laughter and waved it away. Kinverson dangled it from its tail and watched its pathetic wrigglings; Sundira ran her hand along its sleek length, as though petting it, consoling it for its indignities; and then he flipped it back into the sea. He slipped his arm across her shoulders and they moved on out of sight.
How easy they were with each other. How casual, how playful, how disturbingly intimate.
Lawler turned away. Delagard was coming down the deck toward him.
"You seen Dag?" he called out.
Lawler pointed. "Right over there." The radioman sat crumpled like a pile of rags against the starboard rail, shaking his head as though unable to believe that he had survived.
Delagard wiped strands of sopping hair out of his eyes and looked around. "Dag! Dag! Get on that fucking horn of yours, fast! We've lost the whole goddamned fleet!"
Lawler, aghast, swung about to stare at the eerily calm water. Delagard was right. Not one of the other ships was in view. The Queen of Hydros was all alone in the water.
"You think they sank?" he asked the ship-owner.
"Let's just pray," Delagard said.
But the ships weren't lost at all. They were simply out of view. One by one they made radio contact with the flagship as Tharp tuned them in. The storm had casually scattered them like flimsy straws, carrying them this way and that over a great stretch of the sea; but they were all there. The Queen of Hydros held its position and the others homed in on it. By nightfall the entire fleet was reunited. Delagard ordered brandy broken out to celebrate their survival, the last of Gospo Struvin's Khuviar stock. Father Quillan, standing on the bridge, led them in a brief prayer of thanksgiving. Even Lawler found himself uttering a few quick, thankful words, a little to his own surprise.
6
Whatever existed between Kinverson and Sundira didn't seem to preclude whatever was coming into existence between Sundira and Lawler. Lawler was unable to understand either relationship, Sundira's and Kinverson's or his own and Sundira's; but he was wise enough in this sort of thing to know that the surest way to kill it was to try to understand it. He would simply have to take what came.
One thing quickly became clear. Kinverson didn't care that Sundira had taken up with Lawler. He seemed indifferent to matters of sexual possessiveness. Sex was like breathing to him, so it appeared: he did it without thinking about it. With anyone handy, as often as his body called for it, purely a natural function, automatic, mechanical. And he expected other people to look upon it the same way.
When Kinverson cut his arm and came to Lawler to have it cleaned and bandaged, he said, while Lawler was working on him, "So you're fucking Sundira now too, doc?"
Lawler pulled the bandage tight.
"I don't see why I need to answer that. It's none of your business."
"Right. Well, of course you're fucking her. She's a fine woman. Too smart for me, but I don't mind that. And I don't mind what you do with her either."
"Very kind of you," Lawler said.
"Of course I hope it works the same the other way."
"What do you mean by that?"
"It means there might be something left between Sundira and me," said Kinverson. "I hope you realize that."
Lawler gave him a long clear-eyed stare. "She's a grown woman. She can do whatever she wants with whoever she wants, whenever."
"Good. It's a small place, a ship. We wouldn't want any fuss here over a woman."
In rising irritation Lawler said, "You do what you do, and I'll do what I do, and let's not talk about it any more. You make her sound like a piece of equipment we both want to use."
"Yeah," said Kinverson. "Damned fine equipment."
* * *
One day not long afterward Lawler wandered into the galley and found Kinverson with Lis Niklaus, the two of them giggling and groping and grappling and growling like Gillies in rut. Lis gave him a quick wink and a raucous chuckle over Kinverson's shoulder. "Hi, there, doc!" she called, sounding very drunk. Lawler looked back at her, startled, and went quickly out.
The galley was very far from being a private place: obviously Kinverson wasn't much concerned about taking precautions against Sundira's discovering-or Delagard, for that matter-that he had something running with Lis on the side. At least Kinverson was consistent, Lawler thought. He didn't care. About anything. About anyone.
Several times in the week following the windstorm Lawler and Sundira found the opportunity for a rendezvous in the cargo hold. His body, its fires so long dormant, was quickly relearning the meaning of passion. But there was nothing like passion coming from her, so far as Lawler could see, unless swift, efficient, enthusiastic but almost impersonal physical pleasure qualified as passion. Lawler didn't think so. He might have when he was younger, but not now.
They never said anything to each other while they were making love, and when they lay together afterward, returning from it, they seemed by common treaty to limit their conversation to the lightest of chatter. The new rules were established very quickly. Lawler took his cues from her, as he had from the start: she was obviously enjoying what was going on between them, and just as obviously she had no wish for any heavier transaction. Whenever Lawler encountered her on deck they spoke in the same inconsequential way, now. "Nice weather," they would say. Or, "What a strange colour the sea is here."
He might say, "I wonder how soon we'll get to Grayvard."
She might say, "I don't cough at all any more, have you noticed that?"
He might say, "Wasn't that red fish we had for dinner last night marvellous?"
She might say, "Look, isn't that a diver swimming past us down there?"
Everything very bland, pleasant, controlled. He never said, "I haven't felt like this about anyone in a million years, Sundira." She never said, "I can't wait until the next time we can slip away, Val." He never said, "We're two of a kind, really, people who don't quite fit in." She never said, "The reason I kept wandering from island to island is that I was always looking for something more, wherever I was."
Instead of getting to know her better now that they were lovers he found that she was becoming more remote and indistinct to him. Lawler hadn't expected that. He wished there was more. But he didn't see how he could make there be more unless she wanted it.
She seemed to want to hold him at arm's length and take from him nothing more than she was already getting from Kinverson. Unless he had misread her, she didn't desire any other kind of intimacy. Lawler had never known a woman like that, so indifferent to permanence, to continuity, to the union of spirits, one who appeared to take each event as it came and never troubled to link it to what had gone before or what might come afterward. Then he realized that he did know someone like that.
Not a woman. Himself. The long-ago Lawler of Sorve Island, skipping from lover to lover with no thought except for the moment. But he was different now. Or so he hoped.
* * *
In the night Lawler heard muffled shouts and thumps coming from the cabin next to his. Delagard and Lis were having a quarrel. It wasn't the first time, not by any means; but this one sounded louder and angrier than most.
* * *
In the morning, when Lawler went down to the galley early for breakfast, Lis was huddled over her stove with her face averted. From the side her face looked puffy; and when she turned he saw a yellow bruise along her cheekbone and another over her eye. Her lip was split and swollen.
"You want me to give you something for that?" Lawler asked.
"I'll survive."
"I heard the noise last night. What a lousy thing."
"I fell out of my bunk, is what happened."
"And went rattling around the cabin for five or ten minutes, shouting and cursing? And Nid, when he picked you up, felt like shouting and cursing too? Come off it, Lis."
She gave him a cold, sullen look. She seemed close to tears. He had never
seen tough, salty Lis so close to breaking before.
Quietly he said, "Let breakfast wait a few minutes. I can clean up that cut for you and give you something to take the sting out of those bruises."
"I'm used to it, doc."
"He hits you often?"
"Often enough."
"Nobody hits anybody any more, Lis. That kind of stuff went out with the cave men."
"Tell that to Nid."
"You want me to? I will."
Panic flared in her eyes. "No! For Christ's sake, don't say a word, doc! He'll kill me."
"You really are afraid of him, aren't you?"
"Aren't you?"
Lawler said, surprised, "No. Why should I be?"
"Well, maybe you aren't. But that's you. I figure I got off lucky. I was doing something he didn't like, and he found out, and he took it a lot harder than I ever imagined he would. Taught me a thing or two, that did. Nid's a wild man. I thought last night he was going to murder me."
"Call me, next time. Or bang on the cabin wall."
"There won't be a next time. I'm going to be good from now on. I mean it."
"You're that much afraid of him?"
"I love him, doc. Can you believe that? I love the dirty bastard. If he doesn't want me screwing around, I'm not going to screw around. He's that important to me."
"Even though he hits you."
"That tells me how important I am to him."
"You can't seriously mean that, Lis."
"I do. I do."
He shook his head. "Jesus. He slams you black and blue, and you tell me it's because he loves you so much."