“Walleye seemed happy enough with Cuff when Dad and I were last here.”
He smiled grimly. “They tell me your dad threw him against the wall. That would have aroused fatherly instincts, wouldn’t it? Anyway, matters have gotten a lot worse recently.”
“Yam may come begging for food again this year.”
“They won’t get it under our present regime. And particularly, not with your father out of the picture. He could wrap Lonessa round his little finger. Stance has the opposite effect on her.”
He seemed sympathetic so I related the events that had driven me to seek refuge in Noss, while we unpegged the false keel from his boat in preparation for the grume. In answer to my final question he shook his head.
“No, lad. I didn’t see your Uncle Stance that day. I was out fishing all day. I saw Charm sailing with you, but no other inlanders. Stance’s hunters were up on the cliffs, I know that.”
We worked on. From time to time I glanced up the road in the direction of the women’s village, in the hope of seeing Charm heading my way.
Crane knew who I was hoping for. “I doubt she’ll be coming today.”
“Oh, yes?” I said casually, as though I didn’t know what he was talking about, working at a recalcitrant peg with hammer and punch.
“Lonessa will try to find ways of keeping her in, if I know Lonessa. And I know her pretty well.” He chuckled grimly.
I dropped the pretense. “What can I do about it?”
There was a pause while he thought, knocking out the last peg. The heavy false keel came free. One each end, we lifted it carefully and laid it beside the hull. The deep-water fishboat had now been converted into a skimmer, suitable for the dense waters of the grume. We strolled down to the water’s edge, dusting our hands off. A huge white bird swooped low over the inlet, scanning the water for prey.
A grummet. The first sign that the grume was on its way.
Crane had been pondering for some time. Finally he said, “I’ve had three daughters, each by different women. I wanted to pass on my memories; we all want that. I sometimes wonder if it’s a way of cheating death. Anyway, I failed. Lonessa was my last hope. It was easy enough; she was a beautiful woman. She still is. And,” he grinned briefly, “she’s an easy women to let go of, when the loving’s over. But I should have known. They always say, the baby chooses the sex of the strongest lover. And I’d hoped for a son with Lonessa? Huh! So Charm was born. For a long time I hated her for not being a boy, for killing my memories off. But all our memories die, sooner or later. Charm began to grow up, and she wasn’t like the other kids in the women’s village. She started coming to see me, wanting to come fishing with me. She enjoyed the excitement. She said, if there was one thing more boring than watching crops grow, it was watching fish dry.” He chuckled, remembering. “She said that if she was going to be the next womanchief she was going to do what she freezing well liked, and to Rax with Lonessa!”
“So she and Lonessa don’t get along?”
“They get along fine in many ways, but Lonessa likes to be boss and Charm won’t knuckle under. So that’s your answer, Hardy. Charm will find a way to see you, if she wants to.”
It took Charm until the afternoon. I’d spent the rest of the morning helping Crane and the other fishermen to get ready for the grume. We were standing around chatting and gnawing on smoked meat, and I was thinking I was getting along with these people pretty well, when Lonessa came storming into our group, all flashing eyes and tossing hair.
“Have you seen Charm, you men?” Then she saw me. “You, Hardy! If you know where Charm is I’ll advise you to tell me, right now!” And her gaze raked the line of upturned boats, as though she expected to see her daughter’s foot sticking out from under one of them.
We all expressed ignorance.
“Just keep away from her, Hardy. That’s all I ask. Charm has responsibilities and a position to maintain. I won’t have her hanging around with a freezing grubber.” And she strode off angrily before I could think of a response. Dad’s death had erased any goodwill she might have felt toward me.
Cuff was not my only enemy in Noss.
“Fine woman, that,” said one of the men, watching her strong legs carrying her in the direction of the woman’s village.
Lonessa had departed in the nick of time, because almost immediately a boat came sailing from behind a well-treed tongue of land and crunched onto the gravel beach. Charm called out.
“Hardy! Come aboard!”
I stepped into the dinghy. “Your mother was just here.”
“To Rax with her. Someone told her I was with you yesterday and she took it hard. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it. I’m the next womanchief of Noss and I reckon that means I can do what I freezing well like. Within reason, of course. Anyway, this is a great day and I’m taking you for a hike along the cliffs.”
We beached the boat some distance beyond the old ferry wharf and climbed through the sacred forest toward the headland. Eventually we emerged, out of breath, onto a high, rocky promontory.
“There!” said Charm happily. “What do you think of that!”
Far below us I could see the bar across the mouth of the estuary; a pale sandy smudge beneath the rippled blue. Beyond that the sea stretched to the horizon, immense and mysterious. Asta lay below the rim of the world, another continent. A few tiny fishboats sat on the vastness, sails filling to the light breeze. They were all making speed home to Noss.
With good reason. A pale line meandered across the sea from the shore to the horizon, as though a giant jug had dribbled milk across the surface. Above and beyond this line white birds soared, wheeled and dived. Grummets, feeding on fish and other creatures forced to the surface by the approach of dense water. The savage grume riders would be there too, gobbling up anything they could find including fishermen too slow to get back to port. Then they would move on, following the van of the grume, and the sea would be safe again.
“Isn’t that just something!” exclaimed Charm. “It gets to me every year. The grummets go round the world, following the grume. Round and round, year after year until they have heart attacks and die. Every year they lay an egg on the surface of the thick water and they keep throwing up around it, so when they look down from the sky they can see this big pool of white sick and they know where their egg is.”
“How do they know it’s not somebody else’s egg?”
“The smell, we think. Each bird’s vomit smells a bit different. Then when chick’s ready it knocks a hole in the egg just big enough to poke its head out, and feeds on the stuff. They must have strong stomachs. I wouldn’t want to, for sure. Then the chick uses the egg like a little boat until it feels confident enough to peck its way right out and float on the grume.”
It all sounded very strange and improbable to a grubber like me. “I’d have thought the waves would have scattered the vomit. And sunk the egg, once the chick punctured it.”
She smiled the superior smile of one who knows. “You don’t get waves on the grume, only a kind of slow swell. And eggshells don’t sink on it, either, silly.”
She was having things too much her own way. On her own territory, daughter of the Noss womanchief, she would have vast reservoirs of local knowledge that I couldn’t hope to match. She stood there in a pale blue dress of human fabric, grinning at me smugly. She needed to be taken down a peg or two.
There was only one way to deal with the situation. I seized her and kissed her, hard.
“Oh,” she said, when she could speak. “That was nice. Is this going to happen every time I show you how clever I am? So let me tell you about the grume riders, horrible things.”
I kissed her again, hugging her close so that her breasts pushed against my chest. I found I was running my hand over her bottom. I was also immediately, enormously aroused.
I let her go and stepped back quickly, but not quickly enough.
“Aha!” she exclaimed, staring at my m
ushrooming shorts.
“You’re not supposed to know about that kind of thing,” I muttered, embarrassed.
“A girl can’t live with a woman like my mother and not catch the occasional glimpse of her men friends.” Suddenly she reached out and grabbed me. “Did I do this to you, really?”
“It seems like it. I’m sorry. I didn’t intend… .”
“No, I’m very flattered.” The warm brown eyes gazed into mine dreamily and her hand still held me, moving gently.
“It’s best that you don’t do that.” I pulled myself free in the nick of time and tried to concentrate on the view: the silver fringe of the grume and the wheeling, screaming grummets.
“Spoilsport.” She found a patch of palpater and lay down on it, squirming as the plant’s stubby paddles kneaded her back. “Oh, that feels good. Come on, Hardy, take a chance. Lie down with me.” Maybe it was deliberate, or maybe it was the action of the plants, but the hem of her blue dress had risen to her thighs. I caught a glimpse of white pants beyond smooth, perfect legs. She raised her arms, tucking her hands behind her head in a way that pushed her breasts against the thin fabric. Hard little nipples drew my gaze hypnotically. I felt an overwhelming need to touch them. “Come on, Hardy,” she said again.
My knees gave way and I fell down beside her, hugging her to me, then running my hand over her breasts. My heart was pounding wildly and Charm’s breath was coming fast as she unfastened the row of buttons running down the front of her dress. I transferred my attentions to her thighs, and hesitated. “I’ve never done this before.”
“That makes two of us. Do you think we’re doing it right?”
“It feels pretty good to me.”
“I’m glad. I hoped it would. That’s why I got you up here today, to do this.” She raised her bottom and slid her pants off. “Now, get out of those shorts of yours.”
“But… .”
“No arguing. I outrank you here in Noss.” Deft fingers unfastened my belt. She tugged at my shorts, and the source of my embarrassment sprang into view, all ready for the fray with a mind of its own.
I kissed her, maybe trying to delay the inevitable, but she took hold of me, pulled me on top of her and guided me in.
At that point my mind stopped working.
Afterwards, I remember her looking up at the sky, her pretty face glowing, and saying, “That was the most wonderful thing in my life.” I watched her for a while, lying beside her, my hand on her breast.
I hope that memory never dies; her face and the sky, as though she was thanking the invisible stars.
Then she turned toward me, kissed me and said, “We should be thinking about getting back. My mother will be looking for me, the poor old girl. I bet she never had anything as good as this happen to her. She’s going to be jealous, and she’ll hide it by being angry about me being with you.”
“Jealous about what? You’re not going to tell her, are you?” The thought of Charm breezily informing Lonessa that we’d made love on the cliff top made my blood run cold.
“She’ll know. You can always tell.” She stood, buttoned her dress, retrieved her pants and pulled them on, reached down and hauled me to my feet. “You can’t lie there all day looking up my dress,” she explained. “It’s not a nice thing to do.”
I sighed, returning to the real world, and looked around. Nothing had changed, although I felt it should have. The grume was still there, advancing toward us imperceptibly; and the soaring grummets, and the rocks we’d climbed up to reach this spot, and the gap in the forest where the trail from village emerged into the open… .
I experienced a disturbing backflash.
We’d come by a different route, but the lay of the rocks was recognizable. That tall pillar of granite weathered to look like an old man. The three smaller rocks in a row. Trees and bushes may change, but rocks never do.
Near this spot the Nowhere Man had been conceived.
My mind didn’t always work sensibly when I was with Charm. And now fate had stepped into the gap and run matters for me. We could have made love anywhere, so why in the name of the Great Lox had we made love in this ill-fated spot?
Charm would not have known its significance. “You’re very quiet,” she said as we made our way down the trail toward the village, hand in hand. “Are you thinking how beautiful I am, and how much you love me? I hope so, otherwise I might think you were sulking about something.”
I couldn’t tell her a frightening foreboding had gripped me. Up to that moment I’d always felt I was in charge of my own destiny; but now my certainty had faltered, my confidence had ebbed. Events were huge and I was tiny. I could do nothing. I was being moved from situation to situation by a giant hand, like a helpless little wooden man in a game Mister McNeil once taught me. And in time the little man gets knocked off the board but the game rolls on as though he’d never been there.
“I’ll always love you,” I said automatically. But was I telling the truth? I had no control over the future. Neither had I control over my own body. I’d made love to Charm. Would I ever want to make love to her again, or would I seek out the company of the ale house and the backslapping fishermen, and forget about her now that she’d served her purpose?
It was dark under the trees, and the fronds of the anemones bent hungrily toward us as we passed. Somewhere a grummet squawked, snatched by an overhanging tendril as it swooped low by the waterside. A deathly flapping hammered through the forest.
“And I’ll always love you, too,” replied Charm, squeezing my hand, oblivious.
A dark figure strode toward us as we approached the ancient wharf. In the distance I could see a silvery machine glittering in the sunlit clearing at the wharf itself. The features of the striding man were blotted out by the dazzle from behind him. He was tall and long-legged, and a cloak hung to his knees, swinging as he walked.
Charm recognized him first.
“What’s the Nowhere Man doing here?” she said.
Mister McNeil was working methodically across a row of flowers, spraying distil on them from a can with a spout. “I’m sorry I had to send the Nowhere Man for you, Hardy; but I didn’t want people to think there was anything big going on.”
“What’s going on that’s big?” I asked.
He ignored my question. “So Charm’s come too,” he said thoughtfully. “I hadn’t reckoned on that.”
“She insisted.”
“Where Hardy goes, I go,” said Charm. “That’s the way it’s going to be from now on.”
“You’re a lucky man, Hardy. Luckier than I am.” Mister McNeil took a metal tube from his pocket. “All right; stand back.”
He pointed the tube at the flowers and they burst into flame. Much of the garden had already been reduced to blackened ash. Smoke was still rising from nearby flower beds. There was an expression of anguish on his face that forbade me to ask the obvious question.
Charm hardly knew the man, though. “Why are you burning your flowers, Mister McNeil?” she asked.
“Orders from Devon Station,” he said shortly.
We followed him as he walked along a path to a circular bed several paces away and began to spray distil again.
“But don’t you have a kind of gun that burns things up?” asked Charm. “Humans usually do.”
“A laser. Yes.” His tone was bitter; I’d never seen him like this before. “But a laser only burns what it hits. I have to destroy every last trace, every seed. There must be no chance of any of these flowers growing again and competing with the indigenous plants. Indigenous plants!” He uttered a harsh bark of laughter, waving a hand at the landscape. “Just take a look at the goddamned things! Creeping and strangling and eating everything within reach. Do you really think any of my flowers would stand a chance out there?”
“Unlikely,” said the Nowhere Man.
“But… .” Charm looked unhappy. “They were so pretty. They showed us what Earth is like. And they never went ou
tside your garden, anyway. I don’t understand.”
He sighed. “I was breaking the rules, you see. Nobody knew, because nobody ever came to see what was going on. Yesterday Missus Froggatt came, and she didn’t like what she saw, either outside my house or inside. She said I clinging to the past and it was time I realized just what world I’m living on. As if I don’t know! Then she told me why she’d come, and I guess I lost my temper and there was a big argument, and I finished up yelling at her to get the hell back to Devon Station and never come back here. As she was getting into her buggy she looked around and sneered, and said I was risking contaminating your world with all these Earth plants, and I had to get rid of them. According to the rule book she was right, but the rules could easily have been bent. If you ask me she said it out of simple spite. And then today it was backed up by an order from the Director… . All right; stand back.” And he pointed his tube.
The flower bed exploded in bright flames.
“So why did she come?” I asked. There was an uneasy feeling in my stomach. I didn’t want the flowers to be burned; it was like a dreadful omen. I wanted things to be just the way they’d always been. I glanced at Charm, but she was oblivious to the atmosphere. She was simply unhappy because she’d liked the flowers and now they were being killed. “You said there was something big going on.”
“Come inside,” said Mister McNeil.
The Nowhere Man seated himself in the shadows as usual. Charm and I sat side by side on a long window seat. Mister McNeil sat opposite with a glass of pale brown liquid. The Earth artifacts were still all around the room; some beautiful, some enigmatic. He hadn’t burned those.
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