Galena could barely stand upright, with all the ropes of beads she wore for this momentous occasion, but she threw her arms about him and held him for some time. “Don’t forget your lunch,” she said at last. “I packed lots of good things, so those people will know what a Valan boy eats. And remember, Spinel, wherever you’re going, and whatever you end up doing, do it right.” Her black eyes exuded shrewdness, though half hidden in her swollen face. Somehow his mother had a glimpse of the unknown that was about to claim him.
Other villagers in their beads and caftans shouted after him and passed the wine jug from hand to hand. Someone even dared to offer it to Merwen, but she refused. Old Ahn pressed through the crowd and thrust some bags at him, though he already had too much to carry. “How can they grow groundnuts and tomatoes up there, without any fresh soil?” Ahn wondered.
Spinel did not know. Suddenly the food parcels became his most precious possessions.
“You’ll come back to us rich as a trader, won’t you, lad?” called Melas through cupped hands. “What a fish tale you’ll bear then!” Or was it “fishtail”?
Before he could change his mind again, Spinel hoisted his belongings into the boat, where Usha stowed them away. A wind gusted in from the sea, ruffling loose skirts and trousers. Uriel’s cowl slipped back as he raised his arm: “The Patriarch’s Spirit has blessed your voyage…” But his holy words were soon lost. The waving arms, the farewell shouts, Oolite’s scream—all receded into the distance and the past.
They sailed up the jagged coastline, and Usha steered skillfully past Trollbone Point, where vertical cliffs broke into boulders tumbled (it was said) by the ancient Trolls. Spinel had explored there among fossil bones of the fabled giants, said to have eaten hoards of gems and laid eggs of alabaster. But Trolls had passed away when the godlike Primes came to remodel the planet Valedon to human standards. And where were the Primes today? His sense of melancholy deepened.
“Can Uriel reach his Spirit in an instant, even across the light-years?” Merwen was sitting on the deck with her legs crossed, her arms still except for a finger that waved slightly.
Startled, Spinel shook himself to collect his thoughts. He had asked Uriel something like that himself, once, and got no satisfactory answer. “It’s his faith,” Spinel muttered and looked away.
“Then he must be a man of immense power.”
“The High Protector has power, and he has no use for faith,” Spinel impertinently observed. “The Protector uses radio and starships.” He jumped up and swung his arm in an arc to mimic the trajectory of a starship. “And he rules everyone in Valedon.”
“Then everyone rules him.”
Spinel stopped and stared down at her. “What’s that?”
“Each force has an equal and opposite force,” Merwen said. “So who rules without being ruled?”
His mouth hung open, and he pulled at his lip. He knew little of “forces,” except for those that held crystals together, as his father had beat into his head over the years.
“You have to learn more of our tongue. In Sharer speech, my words will explain themselves.”
“Oh, I can talk that stuff.” Spinel repeated some of the words he had picked up, Sharer words for water and sky, as well as the “plantlight” and the splaylegged “clickfly” that sat on her head and emitted perverse noises. Merwen helped, always patient with his stumbling attempts at pronunciation, but Usha would grimace and shake with soundless laughter. Spinel got more and more annoyed, and when Merwen started on verbs his temper broke. “What the devil is ‘word-sharing’? Does the word for ‘speak’ mean ‘listen’ just as well? If I said, ‘Listen to me!’ you might talk, instead.”
“What use is the one without the other? It took me a long time to see this distinction in Valan speech.”
Spinel thought over the list of “share-forms”: learnsharing, worksharing, lovesharing. “Do you say ‘hitsharing,’ too? If I hit a rock with a chisel, does the rock hit me?”
“I would think so. Don’t you feel it in your arm?”
He frowned and sought a better example; it was so obvious, it was impossible to explain. “I’ve got it: if Beryl bears a child, does the child bear Beryl? That’s ridiculous.”
“A mother is born when her child comes.”
“Or if I swim in the sea, does the sea swim in me?”
“Does it not?”
Helplessly he thought, She can’t be that crazy. “Please, you do know the difference, don’t you?”
“Of course. What does it matter?”
Buildings clustered and towered ever higher toward Iridis, like the gathered skirts of a trinket peddler whose arms opened wide into the longest spread of docked ships that Spinel had ever seen. Piers jutted out as far as he could see, an endless comb at the coif of the sea.
Merwen steered in among the ships, whose hulls towered above her tiny houseboat. Spinel felt as lost and insignificant here as the bits of flotsam that washed up against the hull. But Merwen must have known her way, for where she docked at last a man waited to greet them—a rich, shiny man, in tight cream satin with a broad opal-studded breastplate. Eagerly Spinel ran forward to the prow; then he stopped and blinked twice.
The man had no face. There was only a pale, blank oval where his face should be. “It’s a servo!” Spinel was delighted. It was said that mechanical servitors did all the hard work in Iridis, leaving the nobles free for leisure. Even so, that Lady of Hyalite must be exceptionally rich to have such a fine one and clothe it like a Protector, besides.
Merwen said, “Where is Berenice?” Her voice was strained. Puzzled, Spinel squinted back at her and at Usha. Usha sat still, her expression rigid; she gripped the gunwale, and the tendons of her arm stood out.
“Lady Berenice shall join you at the moonferry.” The servo spoke in melodious tones. “If my ladies please, board the hovercraft.” An arm swung back toward the silver dome behind him.
“A hovercraft! Why, you can fly higher than a seagull in a hovercraft—” Spinel stopped. Merwen was whispering with Usha in that crazy Sharer speech. He waited, shifting from one foot to the other. “What’s wrong with her, Merwen? We can’t keep the lady waiting.”
Merwen said, “Your speech cannot express what Usha thinks of this…object, the hovercraft. Like the servitor, it is made of ‘dead,’ of ‘non-life,’ of material that has never known the breath of life.”
“You mean, she’s scared to get into a hovercraft? What will she do about the moonferry?”
“We’ll see. For now, we will walk.”
Spinel opened his mouth, then shut it again and turned away. While the servo helped Merwen and Usha unload their belongings, which Usha reluctantly consented to stow in the hovercraft, Spinel sullenly kicked at a dock post. “Take that for your stupid ‘sharer talk,’ too.” The dome of the hovercraft whirred and sparkled; wistfully, he watched it take off on its own. Then the servo marched up the pier, and Spinel and the Sharers followed him-or-it into the city.
The streets were a confusion of motley colors and noises that all seemed to call to Spinel at once. It took him awhile to realize that not every blare of a horn was aimed at himself. And the smells, of oil and refuse, mixed with that of fruits and flowers sprawled in the vendors’ trays, made an uneasy knot in his stomach. On either side of him buildings rose higher than even the cliffs of Trollbone Point; as he looked upward, he felt that he strolled the depths of a chasm. Yet in an instant that notion was swept away by the throngs of people and costumes, the hovercrafts flitting up and down like fireflies, the storefronts with letters of light that danced in the air.
When the travelers reached Center Way, Spinel was simply dumbfounded. There must have been more people crammed into that one thoroughfare than lived in the whole of Chrysoport. Women passed in brilliant talars, heels clicking sharply. Traders wore gems coiled around their heads as they exhibited bales of seasilk, piled precariously high, or cases of intricate metal implements whose purpose could not be guessed. Spinel c
raned his neck up; way above him, the buildings rose forever, past the skyway where great silver pencils streaked by, their reflected glare stinging his eyes.
A hand clawed his arm. “A fiver, noble lord,” croaked a stranger. “Oh, a fiver for the sightless.” The stranger was gnarled and hunched over, almost a caricature of Ahn. Irritated, Spinel shrugged him off. Spinel had not expected to find beggars in the city of Iridis.
Where had Merwen got to, and the servo? For a frantic moment he searched. Then he caught sight of Merwen and Usha watching a green monkey that danced to the tune of a fiddler. The street fiddler scraped away to a lively beat, while the monkey capered about and flourished its cup for coins. When the tune was over, the monkey leaped and scampered up the arm of its master.
Merwen asked, “Is she human?”
“Are you kidding?” said Spinel. “It’s a monkey. People eat them, even.”
“How was I to know? You’re human.”
Spinel blinked in surprise. It was the first time she had snapped at him, that he could recall.
They turned away and walked on after the servo. In the distance ahead, a regular booming sound grew and reverberated beneath Spinel’s feet. Parade music floated in above the heads of a crowd that now pressed solidly together. The servo somehow made a path through the crowd, and Spinel followed, until suddenly between two heads he caught a glimpse of—
Palace Iridium. The legendary mosaic facade that stared out of a thousand holocubes was now there in front of him, real as life. Before it, the courtyard was virtually paved with soldiers, columns upon columns of them marching past in precise crystalline arrays.
“What’s going on?” Spinel exclaimed. “Are they off to the Pyrrholite war?”
A man laughed. “Not just now,” he said in a clipped city accent. “Malachite, the Patriarch’s Envoy, has only just come. Talion’s turned out the Guard to honor him. No, there’ll be no war while Malachite is here.” The man pointed; a starship stood by the palace, a green needle that touched the clouds.
Spinel watched, mesmerized. All his strength, and that of legions of marchers, flowed and focused into that slim green starship that held the power of the Patriarch of Torr.
Where was Nisi? Merwen wondered, as Spinel tarried amidst the crowd. This city-place was stifling her. Merwen had gotten used to Chrysoport; indeed, the flat plaster homes of the village appeared sensible enough, for dwellings anchored to the solid floor of earth. But Iridis was a jumble of unintelligible shapes and fetid odors that made her swoon. It was a nightmare where dead things walked on two legs, or preyed above, while the ground bristled with sharp objects more dangerous than the spines of coralfish; for the hundredth time she fingered the soles of her aching feet. Her skin burned, dry as bleached raftwood, and she longed for some more of Usha’s protective oil. In the summer heat, this place was even worse than on the first ghastly day that she and Usha had stepped off the moonferry. Would they never find Nisi again, and the moonferry, and get back to blessed Shora?
The Chrysoport youth seemed happy enough here, excited as a girl at her first hunt for a shockwraith. Merwen followed his gaze to the swarm of marchers in the distance. For a moment she was puzzled; then the meaning dawned on her, sending an eerie tingling sensation to her feet. The marchers were those of whom it was said that death pays a wage. Kaol the Dolomite had been one, but here was a whole school of them, so many that they merged into a mass of thornlike shoulders and thick black boots that struck the hard black pavement, pounding, pounding incessantly. If these creatures were all human, as Usha insisted, then some purpose must guide their boots, but what could it be? Did the pavement flatten the soles of their boots, or did the marchers work together to polish the somber pavement as smooth as a nighttime sea?
7
“GENERAL REALGAR OF Rhodochrosite,” intoned the monitor of Berenice’s main hall.
Berenice lifted her chin and straightened her long neck before the mirror wall of her salon. Surely Realgar was still at the parade? She had not expected to see him again; he was so busy nowadays, with his new post at the Guard and winding up the Pyrrholite campaign. She stared in dismay at the image of her bald scalp, which she had just had shaven within the hour. Never mind; she rose and pushed away the white servo arms that snaked from the ceiling for her manicure and skin toning. Hurriedly smoothing her talar, she headed for the hall.
At the sight of him in full uniform, Berenice caught her breath. The crescent line of Realgar’s shoulders glittered with jewels: for his family house, Rhodochrosite, and sardonyx for his homeland, and commander’s grade rubies, and rows of others he had been awarded. Yet the spell was soon broken by the two children at his side: his son, Elmvar, a squirming eight-year-old, and the elder sister, Cassiter, who gaily carried Realgar’s plumed helmet. “Look, Mama Berenice!” she cried. “The parade—wasn’t it the greatest ever?”
“Yes, Cassi, it was. Realgar, how did you get away? The Malachite reception—”
“Just for a minute, that’s all.” He took Berenice’s hands and kissed her. She closed her eyes, savoring the salt of his tongue.
Realgar drew back slightly to look at her.
Her bare scalp twitched. “Don’t tell me,” she sighed. “I look ghastly.”
“A Sharer already.”
“You know I’m about to leave.”
“Of course, that’s why I’m here. Cassi and Elmvar will miss you more than ever.” He patted his son’s tousled hair. “Berenice. Couldn’t you stay just a month more? The Torran Envoy has incredible things to show, gifts from the Patriarch. It’s your last chance for ten years.”
“My apologies to Malachite, but I’ve a promise to keep. This moonferry was the last one I could get before Merwen’s Gathering, the one which will judge my selfname.” She sighed again. She was flattered that he had come to see her off, despite all the ceremonies, but why did he have to make things difficult?
“Very well, but this time I insist that you return before the seaswallowers march across the globe.”
“Realgar, please.”
Stern lines hardened in his cheeks. Even the children were still for a moment, sensing his mood.
“I’ll stay as long as Talion orders.”
Realgar let out a deep breath. “For Torr’s sake,” he whispered, “just don’t make yourself a watery grave.”
Berenice swallowed. She herself dreaded the whirlpools of those cephaglobinid monsters when they migrated from pole to pole. But Sharers faced the migration twice a year, and this year Berenice would face it with them. Then they would truly accept her as a sister of Shora.
A squeal came from Cassiter; Elmvar was tugging at the helmet, trying to wrest it from her.
“Elmvar, leave the helmet to Cassi,” Realgar said. “Go play with this.” He pulled the raygun from his belt, a ceremonial weapon as antiquated as a sword. The boy took it and waved it bravely about the hall, while making ferocious noises.
Suddenly Cassiter dropped the helmet and clapped her hands over her ears. Berenice winced; the child was still sensitive to sudden noises, years after her mother’s death. She ran to Cassiter and folded her in her arms, rocking gently.
Berenice had no children of her own. Her first marriage had ended with her defective firstborn, which the doctors had blamed on her own genes. They had sterilized her then and her husband, heir to the House of Aragonite, had left her to build his dynasty elsewhere.
In despair, she had gone back to Shora, her birthplace, where her father had founded the moon trade. Sharers could mix and match human genes at will, even correct the bad ones. No Valan doctor would risk his neck to perform such “witchcraft,” but Usha had fixed Berenice soon enough. Berenice could bear a healthy child now—if she dared. On Valedon, the very secret of her “cure” was an everpresent knife at her neck.
Then Realgar had entered her life, a gift of fate, or perhaps of her scheming parents, at whose home she had met him. She had fallen for him, with his ambitions and his two darling children. But
how would Realgar fit into her life as a Sharer? Never mind, for now. Berenice pressed Cassiter’s hair. “Cassi, do you know what I’ll bring you from the moon? A whorlshell, that’s what, a perfect whorlshell polished by the sea.”
“A whorlshell? A real one, with golden stripes?”
“That’s right, just for you.”
Cheerful again, Cassiter beamed and let Berenice release her. As Berenice stood again, she caught a softness in Realgar’s eyes, a rare show of feeling. “They need you,” he said. “As much as I do.”
“Yes.” She barely voiced the word. She was just on the verge…it would be so easy to give in, now, to solve everything for good. But there was something else she had gained from Shora, beyond physical wholeness: a wholeness of the spirit, a source of refuge that she would never find on Valedon. She could not give up Shora for marriage, not yet.
Cassiter picked up the helmet again and plunked it on her head. It came down over her eyes, but she marched ahead blindly, and her brother started to follow. “Come on, troops! For’ard! Tighten up the bleeding line!”
“That’s enough, now,” said Realgar. “We have to be going. Time to say goodbye to—”
Immediately the children rushed back and clung to her. “You can’t go already,” cried Elmvar. “Then there’s just the old nanny servo; she’s ugly, and she smells like motor oil.”
Berenice swallowed hard and forced herself to look up at Realgar.
“They get so out of hand,” he apologized. “They need a mother to keep them in line.”
“Not for that, surely; they can’t lack…discipline?” She paused at the word, recalling with distaste his dismissal of rebel Sharers.
His shoulders straightened. “Cassiter. Elmvar. Stand here.” His voice had not risen, but the children released the folds of Berenice’s talar and went to stand beside their father. “Now say goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Mama Berenice,” they chorused.
Unexpectedly, desire overcame her. Her head felt light, and she thought that if he asked her now she would surely say yes. But Realgar seemed content to look long and hard into her eyes, satisfied that he still held her. “You shall return safely, Berenice,” he pronounced, as if binding even the elements to his will.
A Door Into Ocean Page 5