For Lawler these were the stars of home, the only stars he had ever seen. He was Hydros-born, fifth generation. He had never been to any other world and never would. Sorve Island was as familiar to him as his own skin. And yet he sometimes tumbled without warning into frightening moments of confusion when all sense of familiarity dissolved and he felt like a stranger here: times when it seemed to him that he had just arrived on Hydros that very day, flung down out of space like a falling star, a castaway from his true native place far away. Sometimes he saw the lost mother world of Earth shining in his mind, bright as any star, its great blue seas divided by the enormous golden-green land-masses that were called continents, and he thought, This is my home, this is my true home. Lawler wondered if any of the other humans on Hydros ever experienced something like that now and again. Probably so, though no one ever spoke of it. They were all strangers here, after all. This world belonged to the Gillies. He and everyone like him here lived here as uninvited guests.
He had reached the brink of the sea now. The familiar railing, rough, woody-textured like everything else on this artificial island that had neither soil nor vegetation, came up to meet his grasp as he clambered to the top of the sea-wall.
Here at the wall the slope in the island's topography, which ran gradually downhill from the built-up high ground in the interior and the ocean bulwark beyond it, reversed itself sharply and the flooring turned upward to form a meniscus, a crescent rim, that shielded the inner streets against all but the most severe of tidal surges. Grasping the rail, leaning forward over the dark lapping water, Lawler stood staring outward for a moment, as though offering himself to the all-surrounding ocean.
Even in the darkness he had a complete sense of the comma-shaped island's form and his exact place along its shore. The island was eight kilometres long from tip to tip, and about a kilometre across at its widest point, measuring from the bayfront to the summit of the rear bulwark that held back the open sea. He was near the centre, the innermost gulf. To his right and left the island's two curving arms stretched outward before him, the rounded one where the Gillies lived, and the narrow tapering one where the island's little handful of human settlers clustered close together.
Right in front of him, enclosed by that pair of unequal arms, was the bay that was the living heart of the island. The Gillie builders of the island had created an artificial bottom there, an underwater shelf of interlaced wood-kelp timbers attached to the mainland from arm to arm, so that the island always would have a shallow, fertile lagoon adjacent to it, a captive pond. The wild menacing predators that haunted the open sea never entered the bay: perhaps the Gillies had made some treaty with them long ago. A lacing of spongy bottom-dwelling night-algae, needing no light, bound the underside of the bay floor together, ever protecting and renewing it with their steady stubborn growth. Above that was sand, washed in by storms from the great unknown ocean floor farther out. And above that a thicket of useful aquatic plants of a hundred different species or more, in which all manner of sea-creatures swarmed. Shellfish of many sorts inhabited its lower reaches, filtering sea water through their soft tissues and concentrating valuable minerals within themselves for the use of the islanders. Sea-worms and serpents moved among them. Plump and tender fish grazed there. Just now Lawler could see a pod of huge phosphorescent creatures moving about out there, emanating pulsating waves of blue-violet light: the great beasts known as mouths, perhaps, or perhaps they were platforms, but it was still too dark to tell. And beyond the bright green water of the bay was the great ocean sea, rolling to the horizon and past it, holding the entire world in its grasp, a gloved hand gripping a ball. Lawler, staring toward it, felt for the millionth time the weight of its immensity, its thrust and power.
He looked now toward the power plant, solitary and massive on its little snub-nosed promontory sticking out into the bay.
They hadn't finished it after all. The ungainly building, shrouded in festoons of woven straw matting to shield it from the rain, still was silent and dark. A few shadowy figures were shuffling about in front of it. They had the unmistakable slope-shouldered shape of Gillies.
The concept of the power plant was that it would generate electricity by taking advantage of temperature differentials in the sea. Dann Henders, who was as close to an engineer as anyone was on Sorve, had explained it to Lawler after extracting a sketchy description of the project from one of the Gillies. Warm sea-water from the surface level was pulled in through vanes and entered a vacuum chamber, where its boiling point would be greatly reduced. The water, boiling violently, was supposed to yield low-density steam that would drive the turbines of the generator. Cold sea-water, pumped up from the deeper levels beyond the bay, was going to be used then to condense the steam into water again, and it would be returned to the sea through discharge outlets halfway around the island from here.
The Gillies had constructed practically the whole thing-pipes, pumps, vanes, turbines, condensers, the vacuum chamber itself-out of the various organic plastics they produced from algae and other water plants. Apparently they had used scarcely any metal in the design at all, not surprising in view of the difficulty of obtaining metals on Hydros. It was all very ingenious, especially considering that the Gillies weren't notably technologically-minded, as intelligent galactic species went. Some exceptional genius among them must have come up with the idea. Genius or not, though, they were said to be having an ungodly time making the operation work, and it was yet to produce its first watt. Most of the humans wondered if it ever would. It might have been a whole lot faster and simpler for the Gillies, Lawler thought, if they had let Dann Henders or one of the other engineering-oriented humans sit in on the design of it. But of course the Gillies weren't in the habit of seeking advice from the unwanted strangers with whom they grudgingly shared their island, even when it might be to their advantage. They had made an exception only when an outbreak of fin-rot was decimating their young, and Lawler's saintly father had come to them with a vaccine. Which had been many years ago, though, and whatever good will the former Dr Lawler's services had engendered among the Gillies had long since evaporated, leaving no apparent residue behind.
That the plant still didn't seem to be working yet was something of a setback for the grand plan that had come to Lawler in the night.
What now? Go and talk to them anyway? Make your florid little speech, grease the Gillies up with some noble rhetoric, follow through with tonight's visionary impulse before daybreak robs it of whatever plausibility it might have had?
"On behalf of the entire human community of Sorve Island, I, who as you know am the son of the late beloved Dr Bernat Lawler who served you so well in the time of the fin-rot epidemic, wish to congratulate you on the imminent accomplishment of your ingenious and magnificently beneficial-"
"Even though the fulfilment of this splendid dream may perhaps be still some days away, I have come on behalf of the entire human community of Sorve Island to extend to you our profoundest joy at the deep implications we see for the transformation of the quality of life on the island that we share, once you have at last succeeded in-"
"At this time of rejoicing in our community over the historic achievement that is soon to be-"
Enough, he thought. He began to make his way out onto the power-plant promontory.
As he drew near the plant he took care to make plenty of noise, coughing, slapping his hands together, whistling a little tuneless tune. Gillies didn't like humans to come upon them unexpectedly.
He was still about fifteen metres from the power plant when he saw two Gillies shuffling out to meet him.
In the darkness they looked titanic. They loomed high above him, formless in the dark, their little yellow eyes glowing bright as lanterns in their tiny heads.
Lawler made the greeting-sign, elaborately over-gesturing so that there could be no doubt of his friendly intentions.
One of the Gillies replied with a prolonged snorting vrooom that didn't sound friendly at all.
r /> They were big upright bipedal creatures, two and a half metres high, covered with deep layers of rubbery black bristles that hung in dense shaggy cascades. Their heads were absurdly small, little dome-shaped structures that sat atop huge shoulders, and from there almost down to the ground their torsos sloped outward to form massive, bulky, ungainly bodies. It was generally assumed by humans that their immense cavernous chests must contain their brains as well as their hearts and lungs. Certainly those little heads had no room for them.
Very likely the Gillies had been aquatic mammals once. You could see that in the gracelessness with which they moved on land and the ease with which they swam. They spent nearly as much time in the water as on land. Once Lawler had watched a Gillie swim from one side of the bay to the other without breaking the surface for breath; the journey must have taken twenty minutes. Their legs, short and stumpy, were obviously adapted from flippers. Their arms too were flipper-like-thick, powerful little limbs that they held very close to their sides. Their hands, equipped with three long fingers and an opposable thumb, were extraordinarily broad and fell naturally into deep cups well suited for pushing great volumes of water. In some unlikely and astounding act of self-redefinition these beings' ancestors had climbed up out of the sea, millions of years ago, fashioning island homes for themselves woven out of sea-born materials and buffered by elaborate barricades against the ceaseless tidal surges that circled their planet. But they still were creatures of the ocean.
Lawler stepped up as close to the two Gillies as he dared and signalled I-am-Lawler-the-doctor.
When Gillies spoke it was by squeezing their arms inward against their sides, compressing air through deep gill-shaped slits in their chests to produce booming organ-like tones. Humans had never found a way to imitate Gillie sounds in a way that Gillies understood, nor did the Gillies show any interest in learning how to speak the human language. Perhaps its sounds were as impossible for them as Gillie sounds were for humans. But some communication between the races was necessary. Over the years a sign language had developed. The Gillies spoke to humans in Gillie; the humans replied in signs.
The Gillie who had spoken before made the snort again, and added a peculiarly hostile snuffling whistling sound. It held up its flippers in what Lawler recognized as a posture of anger. No, not anger: rage. Extreme rage.
Hey, Lawler thought. What's up? What have I done?
There wasn't any doubt about the Gillie's fury. Now it was making little brushing movements with its flippers that seemed plainly to say, Get away, clear out, get your ass out of here fast.
Perplexed, Lawler signalled I-mean-no-intrusion. I-come-to-parley.
The snort again, louder, deeper. It reverberated through the flooring of the path and Lawler felt the vibration in the soles of his feet.
Gillies had been known to kill human beings who had annoyed them, and even some who hadn't: a troublesome occasional propensity for inexplicable violence. It didn't seem deliberate-just an irritated backhand swipe of a flipper, a quick contemptuous kick, a little thoughtless trampling. They were very large and very strong and they didn't seem to understand, or care, how fragile human bodies could be.
The other Gillie, the bigger of the two, took a step or two in Lawler's direction. Its breath came with heavy, wheezing, unsociable intensity. It gave Lawler a look that he interpreted as one of aloof, absent-minded hostility.
Lawler signalled surprise and dismay. He signalled friendliness again. He signalled continued eagerness to talk.
The first Gillie's fiery eyes were blazing with unmistakable wrath.
Out. Away. Go.
No ambiguities there. Useless to attempt any further pacifying palaver. Clearly they didn't want him anywhere near their power plant.
All right, he thought. Have it your own way.
He had never been brushed off like this by Gillies before; but to take time now to remind them that he was their old friend the island doctor, or that his father had once made himself very useful to them, would be dangerous idiocy. One slap of that flipper could knock him into the bay with a broken spine.
He backed away, keeping a close eye on them, intending to leap backward into the water if they made a threatening move toward him.
But the Gillies stayed where they were, glowering at him as he executed his slinking retreat. When he had reached the main path again they turned and went back inside their building.
So much for that, Lawler thought.
The weird rebuff stung him deeply. He stood for a time by the bayfront railing, letting the tension of the strange encounter ebb from him. His great scheme of negotiating a human-Hydran treaty this night, he saw all too clearly now, had been mere romantic nonsense. It went whistling out of Lawler's mind like the vapour it was, and a quick flash of embarrassment sent waves of heat running through his skin for a moment.
Well, then. Back to the vaargh to wait for morning, he supposed.
A grating bass voice behind him said, "Lawler?"
Caught by surprise, Lawler whirled abruptly, his heart thundering. He squinted into the greying darkness. He could just barely make out the figure of a short, stocky man with a heavy shock of long, greasy-looking hair standing in the shadows ten or twelve metres to the inland side of him.
"Delagard? That you?"
The stocky man stepped forward. Delagard, yes. The self-appointed top dog of the island, the chief mover and shaker. What the hell was he doing skulking around here at this hour?
Delagard always seemed to be up to something tricky, even when he wasn't. He was short but not small, a powerful figure built low to the ground, thick-necked, heavy-shouldered, paunchy. He wore an ankle-length sarong that left his broad shaggy chest bare.
Even in the darkness the garment glowed in luminous ripples of scarlet and turquoise and hot pink. Delagard was the richest man in the settlement, whatever that meant on a world where money itself had no meaning, where there was hardly anything you could spend it on. He was Hydros-born, like Lawler, but he owned businesses on several islands and moved around a lot. Delagard was a few years older than Lawler, perhaps forty-eight or fifty.
"You're out and about pretty early this morning, doc," Delagard said.
"I generally am. You know that." Lawler's voice was tighter than usual. "It's a good time of day."
"If you like to be alone, yes." Delagard nodded toward the power plant. "Checking it out, are you?"
Lawler shrugged. He would sooner throttle himself with his own hands than let Delagard have any inkling of the grandiose heroic fatuity that he had spent this long night engendering.
Delagard said, "They tell me it'll be on line tomorrow."
"I've been hearing that for a week."
"No. No, tomorrow they'll really have it working. After all this time. They've generated power already, low level, and today they'll be bringing it up to capacity."
"How do you know?"
"I know," Delagard said. "The Gillies don't like me, but they tell me things, anyway. In the course of business, you understand." He came up alongside Lawler and clapped his hand down on the sea-wall railing in a confident, hearty way, as if this island were his kingdom and the railing his sceptre. "You haven't asked me yet why I'm up this early."
"No. I haven't."
"Looking for you, is why. First I went over to your vaargh, but you weren't there. Then I looked down to the lower terrace and I caught sight of somebody moving around on the path heading down here and figured it might be you, and I came down here to find out if I was right."
Lawler smiled sourly. Nothing in Delagard's tone indicated that he had seen what had taken place out on the power-plant promontory.
"Very early to be paying a call on me, if it's a professional thing," Lawler said. "Or a social call, for that matter. Not that you would." He pointed to the horizon. The moon was still gleaming there. No sign of the first light of morning was visible yet. The Cross, even more brilliant than usual with Sunrise not in the sky, seemed to throb and pulse ag
ainst the intense blackness. "I generally don't start my office hours before daybreak. You know that, Nid."
"A special problem," said Delagard. "Couldn't wait. Best taken care of while it's still dark."
"Medical problem, is it?"
"Medical problem, yes."
"Yours?"
"Yes. But I'm not the patient."
"I don't understand you."
"You will. Just come with me."
"Where?" Lawler said.
"Shipyard."
What the hell. Delagard seemed very strange this morning. It was probably something important. "All right," said Lawler. "Let's get going, then."
Without another word Delagard turned and started along the path that ran just inside the sea-wall, heading toward the shipyard. Lawler followed him in silence. The path here followed another little promontory parallel to the one on which the power-plant structure stood, and as they moved out on it they had a clear view of the plant. Gillies were going in and out, carrying armloads of equipment.
"Those slippery fuckers," Delagard muttered. "I hope their plant blows up in their faces when they start it up. If they ever get it started up at all."
They rounded the far side of the promontory and entered the little inlet where Delagard's shipyard stood. It was the biggest human enterprise on Sorve by far, employing more than a dozen people. Delagard's ships constantly went back and forth between the various islands where he did business, carrying trade goods from place to place, the modest merchandise turned out by the various cottage industries that humans operated: fishhooks and chisels and mallets, bottles and jars, articles of clothing, paper and ink, hand-copied books, packaged foods and such. The Delagard fleet also was the chief distributor of metals and plastics and chemicals and other such essential commodities which the various islands so painstakingly produced. Every few years Delagard added another island to his chain of commerce. From the very beginning of human occupation of Hydros, Delagards had been running entrepreneurial businesses here, but Nid Delagard had expanded the family operation far beyond its earlier levels.