Warily Spinel drew closer. The web was a fascinating pattern, but he could make nothing of it. Lystra’s face was a bit harsher than he cared for, but there was a ghost of Merwen’s eyes and cheekbones. And her cheeks were unlined; she could not be much older than himself.
Spinel lifted his chin. “What do you mean, a letter?”
She pointed to the clickflies. “They spin out their news so that all may read. In the Eighth Galactic, the Third Cluster, System Wan-elion, many things were dying: glider squid washed up on the rafts, starworms floated up with their bellies gray and swollen; even shockwraiths were gone from the underraft. What was the cause? Your Valan sisters, of course, dumping poisons in the sea. But a lifeshaper of Wan-elion fixed that. She spread a slime mold that overgrew all the Valan fishing boats. Now the greedy fishers are gone from Wan-elion.” Lystra watched him expectantly.
“So what’s that got to do with me?”
“Everything, Valan, everything. Already you’re in league with the traders—I told Merwen so. So you’re hungry, are you? I’ll fix that; I’ll feed you to the starworm!”
Spinel stepped back a pace, then had a maddening sense of being tricked.
“Trollhead,” Lystra muttered. “I’ll feed you after I feed the starworm. Come on.” She started to turn away.
“No,” he burst out, “if you don’t want me, then by Torr I want nothing from you.” He tensed his legs and put his fists at his hips.
She blinked a few times, as if rearranging a puzzle. “Well said, Valan. A pity more of your sisters don’t agree. Perhaps you’ve got some brains beneath your fur.” She headed down toward the water. “Come along, Valan! You’ll upset Merwen, if you don’t.”
He had no choice, if he was to eat. How could Merwen have done this to him?
Lystra dove into the sea, swift as lightning. Spinel plunged in after, and his leg grazed a submerged branch. He gasped at the surface, his leg stinging. Then more cautiously he tried to keep up with Lystra as she darted through the maze of channels. Schools of fish scattered like jeweled rain. Opalescent jellyfish loomed ahead, and he swerved aside to avoid them.
Where had that monstrous Sharer got to now? Spinel paused at the surface to catch his breath, his feet paddling slowly.
A head popped up. “What’s keeping you?” Lystra said. “Just go on down.”
Fear gripped him; something was wrong. His arm thrashed out to get hold of a branchlet, and the barnacles raked his palm.
“You can’t swim,” Lystra noted as if to herself.
“I can too!” he shouted. “I can swim all the way past Trollbone Point.”
Lystra’s arm shot out and pulled him under, down toward the dim blueness. She’s drowning me, his mind screamed. He pried at the claw that crushed his wrist and stretched his arm till it would snap. Nothing could slow this relentless plunge, deeper with every kick of Lystra’s powerful legs. A vise of water inexorably clamped Spinel’s chest; any moment now, his life would spill out in a stream of froth.
Unaccountably, air burst around him. Spinel choked and splashed, and the sounds echoed hollowly. His arm struck something hard—the roof of a clear, glassy bell that enclosed enough space for himself and Lystra to tread water underneath.
Lystra floated, her palms gliding in lazy circles. She waited for his breath to slow to normal. Then she turned to a rack of tools set in the bell. “Good,” she said, as she pulled a belt of tools around her waist. “Stay here till I’m done with the starworm.” She slipped out of the bell and spurted away, gliding in and out of the shadows cast by great branches above, until she reached…
A green swath stretched beyond, perhaps as long as a market square. Tiny Sharers hovered at its mouth, which sprouted a radial pattern of stalks with bulbous ends. The body was bound to the branches above it by a spidery mooring, except for the tail, which swung ponderously and spewed a white jet in a long, waving curve. Spinel watched the beast, awestruck. Could this be a “seaswallower?”
The starworm was not a seaswallower, but a lesser cephaglobinid species. It fed on plankton and small fish filtered from the seawater pumping steadily through its gut. The stream from the gut of a score of starworms could propel a raft gradually, enough to keep the rafts together in a system of eight and to guide them into currents that did not veer too far poleward. To bind the starworms and steer their course, to clean their mouth filters and raise their hatchlings—these were jobs for Lystra and her sister wormrunners.
As Lystra approached, two wormrunners already circled above the swaying stalks of the starworm’s mouth. Elonwy the Fearful was about Lystra’s age, but Yinevra the Unforgiving was the senior wormrunner responsible for all twenty starworms. Yinevra grimaced and lifted an accusing hand to demand, “Why late today, Lystra?” That left a bitter taste in Lystra’s mouth. The Valan creature had kept her back, for he could barely swim at all. Mercifully, Yinevra did not stop for a grilling. She was pale from need of oxygen, so she sped off to the airbell where Spinel had been left.
What Lystra was late for was the time for “farsharing,” the sending of news by way of the starworm’s song. The starworm produced its song in low-frequency sound waves from within its roiling gut. The form of the song could be directed to send news within hours all around the globe. Now, according to time-keeping clickflies, it was farsharing hour for Raia-el.
Already Elonwy had prepared a special bait, a good-sized red squid at the end of a grappling pole. Lystra kept herself prudently outside the reach of its arms. Elonwy held out to her another pole, Lystra grasped it, and together they maneuvered the squid into the treacherous vortex of the starworm’s maw. This sudden bulky mouthful slowed the pumping to a trickle, as the beast paused to ingest it.
Now Lystra could swim safely to the lip, for a few minutes at least. As she neared it, she averted her eyes from the throbbing tunnel inside, almost furtively, almost the same way she avoided certain mental tunnels of her past and future…She banished that thought and caught hold of one of the radial stalks of the “star” that rimmed the mouth. She sunk her feet into a valley between two of the stalks and steadied herself. Beyond, over the beast’s hide, shafts of light flickered and danced through the crisscrossing cables that harnessed it fast to the raft. Those cables, made of coldstone, were gotten from the trader nowadays, Lystra reminded herself sourly. Were it up to her, though—
Enough of that: she had to be ready for the mindguide, the instrument that would tell the starworm what pattern of groans to make. Did Elonwy have the mindguide? No, Elonwy was whitening as her breathmicrobes used up their oxygen, so she swam over to the airbell. Elonwy’s pregnancy was showing now, in the soft round of her belly; a couple of months more, and the Gathering would see that she sat out awhile.
Yinevra came to the starworm. From her hand dangled the black, curling fingers of the mindguide. Yinevra’s chin jutted critically, but Lystra would do this right. She took the mindguide and set its tendrils behind a radial stalk, just over the proper neural node. The mindguide would release a timed sequence of hormones, in a simple code. Simple messages would result: Merwen the Impatient Home Safe with Valan Child. Strain Ler Is on Way to Aial-el. This was a fungal strain to cure an outbreak of lethal fever; Usha had made the cure and sent a sample by clickfly to the lifeshaper of Aial-el. And lastly, to be repeated twice, Motorboats Drown Starworm Song; Stop Use. Yinevra had long suspected that Valan motors caused the troubling upsurge in ocean noise, which at times shortened transmission range to only a few hundred kilometers. Now she was certain, and even Merwen had no answer to this.
The black tendrils of the mindguide had settled, and their hormones would take effect within half an hour. Everyone would have to surface before then, because the song of the starworm, though below the frequency range of human hearing, was so loud underwater that its power could kill. So Lystra went to the airbell for a quick gulp of air, took Spinel, and rushed him up to a raft branch before his miserable breath gave out.
In an instant Yinevra swung u
p beside her. Her inner eyelids retracted, releasing the pent-up fury in her eyes. Her foot scooped up water and showered Lystra. “Why late today? You’re never late. You know it’s not fair to the other rafts if we overrun our time. You know I have to get to the Gathering. And whatever did you bring that idle Valan creature for, to drain off an airbell all morning?” Yinevra pointedly kept her back to Spinel. Fine wrinkles spanned her scalp, though she still had the chest and arms of a veteran wormrunner. Yinevra the Unforgiving was even surer about Valans than Lystra was, and she was older than Merwen.
“I’m sorry about the airbell.” The pneumatophores that grew from it conducted air only so fast. “But I had to keep him from mischief,” Lystra added. “We’re going to the trader. I thought you might like a look at him, after all the fuss.”
“A skinny runt, isn’t he? Merwen thinks I’ll take pity on him and forget how the traders drove my daughter mad.”
Lystra grew numb. She did not want to think about Yinevra’s daughter.
“Yes,” said Yinevra, “I know your mother well. When will you take a selfname and join the Gathering? You of all sisters will add weight to the Doorclosers—”
“No. I’m not ready.” Don’t ask me why, she pleaded in silence.
Yinevra watched, her mouth twisting slowly. “Well, then. When you visit the trader, let him share ten lengths of cable. Several starworm moorings need repair.”
Lystra was dismayed. “So soon? He asked for a whole boatload of seasilk, the last time.”
“Bring medicines, then. Usha makes the best.”
Lystra flushed at this praise of her mothersister. “Usha came home thin as silkweed. She works herself to the bone, in any case.”
“If the starworms break loose now, we’ll drift until—”
“Shora, no!” In two months, before winter set in, seaswallowers would migrate southward. A ring of ravenous whirlpools would sweep from pole to pole. In the tropics, the ring would stretch thinnest, and that was where Raia-el must stay.
“Then hunt a shockwraith. Shockwraith sinews held starworms fast for millennia, before traders came.”
“Shockwraiths shared a harsher toll.” The scar across her mother’s scalp had been left by a shockwraith, although Merwen had never shared the details with Lystra. An event over which Merwen could not weave words must be unspeakable indeed.
Yinevra gripped Lystra’s chin, and her own jutted close. “My girl, you’ve said no five times in as many minutes and as many directions. Is that all the young are good for nowadays? When the time comes for Shora to choose, only two streams will flow: to close the Door, or die.”
3
SPINEL SHIVERED AND rubbed his palms, which were puckered from long immersion. The sun soon dried him except for his trunks, and those began to itch. One thought held him now: when he got back to the traders’ raft, he would stay there, no matter what, until the next moonferry. He would do anything to get off this planet and back to Chrysoport, even if he had to spend the rest of his days chipping tesserae in his father’s basement.
But first Lystra had to take him to the trader—if she ever meant to in the first place, which he doubted more than ever. He could take the boat himself, perhaps, though how would he navigate? These questions ran through his mind as he skipped down the raft branch after Lystra. At the far end, just where the branches thinned out and dipped under, there was a boat similar at first glance to Merwen’s. Spinel ran ahead and hopped into the stern. “Hey, where’s the motor?” The sternpost was bare.
Lystra turned on him. “I’ve never used those noisy stone objects, and you can tell every trader in sight I said so.” She grasped a paddle and raised it so high he thought she would strike him. But the next instant, it plunged down at a raft branch. The boat shoved off gradually, loaded as it was with tied bundles of spun seasilk.
“I just asked,” Spinel said sullenly. “What’ll you do, then? Row this thing out on the open sea?”
She tossed her head and laughed. “No, I’ll fly away to the Stone Moon. I’ll do that, one of these days,” she mused, half to herself. “And when I get there, Valan, you watch out.”
“Look, if you really hate the moontraders, why do you bother with them at all?”
“A good question.” Vengefully she shoved at the branch again. “I wish more of us were asking it. Ask Merwen: she was alive when the first traders came. But you must know for yourself, trader’s brat.”
Blood rushed to his face. Spinel clenched his fists, leaned across the seasilk, and shouted, “I’m nobody’s brat, I’m a stonecutter’s son. I’ve got a decent father with a regular trade, which is more than you can say. None of you have any stonesigns; you’re worse than beggars!”
Lystra eyed him coolly. “Only Valans consider begging a calling. What have you done, since you got here? Who’s been at work all morning, and who will ‘pay’ for your food?”
“I said, I want nothing from you! I’m going home.” He dove out and swam, with no idea where. Blindly he thrashed among the branches, heedless of the squid darting away or the jagged coral fans that loomed ahead without warning.
Within half a minute, something grabbed him from behind, digging into his shoulder. He choked and twisted around to fight it off. It was Lystra, who hoisted him roughly up a dry branch. Barnacles gouged his chest and arms, and blood trickled down; salt burned into the wounds.
“Sit still, for Shora’s sake,” Lystra gasped, and her breasts rose and fell. “Why do you think I walked the branch, instead of swimming? Fleshborers nest here.”
Spinel looked down, and his scalp froze. The water churned with fleshborers, maddened by the blood scent, their jaws clicking shut just above the surface before they coiled under again. Finding no prey, the creatures snapped at each other, and soon chopped lengths of fleshborer littered the surface like boiled sausage.
Spinel’s stomach heaved, empty though it was. When Lystra got up again, he followed her very closely, back to the boat. He watched the shadows weave among her ribs, and he thought, She went in, to get me.
Lystra was signaling with her fingers across the water. A glider squid rose from the depths and rolled over, exposing an owlish eye. From the boat, Lystra tossed something toward the squid, a mere sprinkling of powder, but the squid must have liked it. It came right up to the prow and let Lystra slip a harness on. The squid spurted ahead, and soon the boat sailed at a good clip, bouncing on the choppy waves.
They entered the traders’ raft at a bay cut into the branched mesh, apparently for larger ships that docked on solid raft. Whitewashed concrete buildings clustered on the bay. The nearest one displayed the opal Hyalite sign above its door. “Hyalite—that’s Lady Nisi’s House,” said Spinel.
“Yes,” said Lystra. “The best of a bad lot. Nisi does reason with them, at times.” She unstrapped the squid and tossed it some more powder. “There, that’s good, isn’t it,” she crooned at the beast. “Just leave me my arm, thank you, old girl.” She tied the boat at the dock, jumped out, and headed for the Hyalite shop.
Inside, the linoleum cooled Spinel’s feet, and a welcome blessing it was. Odors of hardware and amberscent mingled curiously. The shelves offered desultory stock: flashlights, kitchen gadgets, a whole row of cameras, plastic basins in a pyramid of sizes. But there, right next to the gadgets, gemstones spilled out in bins: garnets, topaz, onyx…The gems were unset and crudely polished, but he fingered them happily, savoring each taste of home. It was odd, though, for who would buy stones on Shora? Chrysolite, amberlite, emerald, sapphire…
Star sapphires. Spinel blinked and pulled back his hand. Starstones for sale, just like ordinary stone? No law forbade it, but even the most unbelieving Iridian would pause before wearing for mere decoration the sacred sign of a Spirit Caller.
“Help you, sir?” The proprietor leaned cheerfully on his elbows across the counter. He winked, and creases rippled from his lips. “Those gems sell like a shot around here. Natives snap them up. You’re a new face, son; trade or trawle
r?” He glanced at Spinel’s chest, which was blood-streaked and, as ever, bare of a stonesign.
“Neither.” Spinel sighed. If he stayed on Shora, he’d never get a stonesign at all. But there was little chance of that. “You got any farm produce?”
“All you can eat, and not a week old.”
A week old, and he was used to the freshly plucked harvest in Chrysoport. Still, he was so hungry his mouth watered even at yellow tomatoes and wilted cabbage. At last he would get something to eat.
Lystra was well acquainted with Kyril, the Hyalite trader, a thickset, phlegmatic fellow with the serenity of an anglerfish. Whatever else he was, he looked her in the eye every time, and for that she gave him credit.
Kyril turned from Spinel and smiled broadly at her. “Share the day, Lystra,” he said in her tongue. “That squid out there—she’s a handsome beast.”
From the window, the glider squid could still be seen as it rocketed above the waves with its trailing jet, then dove once more. It was on the hunt, its appetite whetted by the taxing haul and by the special treats Lystra gave. “She’s a strong one,” Lystra admitted. “And reliable; she never dives when in harness.”
“Handsome, for sure. You know, I could share something handsome for her. A collector I know would give anything; she’s worth more than a dozen boatloads of seasilk.”
Lystra wrinkled her nose. “I doubt she would like to live on Valedon.”
Kyril chuckled. “How would you know, Lystra? Must everyone share your taste?”
“Of course not.” She switched to Valan and raised her voice. “This creature, for instance, can’t wait to quit Shora.”
Spinel looked up. “Why shouldn’t I? There’s nothing for me here.”
“We’ll sign you on,” Kyril offered. “Everyone’s looking for help. You’ll make your fortune.”
“Really?”
That took her aback. “Never mind. Merwen has adopted him, for much more important work. He’s hungry. What he eats, I will pay for.”
A Door Into Ocean Page 8