A Door Into Ocean

by Joan Slonczewski

  Flute of whorlshell lift in hand;

  Sing for those who dwell on land…

  He looked down and tugged pensively at some weeds. “There’s no ‘land’ here. None you can live on, anyhow.”

  “No, silly,” said Flossa. “It’s for the fish you ate, and for Rilwen and the others, whose bones will sink to ‘land.’ Shora said long ago that our song would help speed each soul through the Last Door.”

  Spinel’s scalp prickled. “What’s it a door into?”

  “Who knows? That’s why it’s ‘last.’ You can’t share it; you go alone, and never return to share the telling.” Flossa leaned her head back and watched the sunset upside down. “Or perhaps you come back through the First Door, with your memory washed clean, and you grow a new shell. That’s why our numbers must stay about the same: there are only so many souls to go around. That’s what I think.” Her head snapped back, and her eyes sparkled from the plantlights. Dreamily she watched her grandmother.

  The song made Spinel uneasy. His own family lived on true land, and he hoped all of them were on this side of any Last Door. He traced a six-point with his finger, a silly thing to do, but you never could tell.

  He was glad when the song ended, and sisters grouped around the clickfly webs. Usha had set up a web to teach the apprentice lifeshapers how breathmicrobes worked, something of keen interest to him. Breathmicrobes had a special purple-changing molecule, shaped like the ring of dots that glowed in Usha’s clickfly web. When this molecule held oxygen, it turned purple, like a light switch. The molecule could grab oxygen and spit it out again, depending on just how much air was around. That was why when the human host breathed very slowly, as in whitetrance, breathmicrobes gave up oxygen, and the purple turned off.

  Mirri raised an objection. The oxygen-grabbing reaction could not work, she said, because the force barrier was too high, something like a wall that kept the atoms apart. Spinel got lost in this, but Usha seemed to think the point crucial. “This reaction works,” Usha said, “because it tunnels through the barrier. It happens easily in molecules, the world of the very small. In the larger world, it happens also, though it takes a lot longer. That is the secret of strength: start small, and in time you will tunnel through.”

  The learnsharing went on until at last the plantlights dimmed and would not relight even when filled, and sisters wandered away, some for a midnight swim, others in pairs for more private wanderings across the raft. Now his loneliness returned in full force. It was true, these creatures did not need men at all. They were not really women, as far as he was concerned. How naive of Merwen to expect him to find a place here.

  Spinel went down to the water’s edge and let the sea murmurs wash through the dull ache inside him. In the moonlight he made his way down one of the huge trunks of a branch. The banks of seaweed squished beneath his feet. Above him the moon shone full, the blue-brown Stone Moon, round enough to be a “doorhole” that he could tap to open out upon the welcoming harbor of Chrysoport…

  He sat in the seaweed to watch the moon and its arcs of reflection in the water. For a measureless time he stayed, feeling nothing, drained of the energy even to want anything anymore, and not knowing what he should want if he could.

  Something brushed across seaweed. Instinctively his fingers curled and dug in; then he looked behind and up—to see Lystra standing beside him.

  The quest for Rilwen rushed back at him—all the fear, the pulling at oars till his shoulders burned, the raft shuddering beneath his feet. But only Lystra stood there now, dark as a shadow except for the moons of her eyes.

  Lystra stretched her limbs, still sore and a bit stiff. When she had come out of her week-long trance, the music had wafted over from the celebration, music for dancing and growing. Her sisters must have had enough of death and mourning. She had taken a dip in the sea to limber up her muscles, then headed for home. By then the plantlights were mostly out and the channels deserted, except for Spinel.

  She had stopped in her tracks. A dozen different impulses had fought through her at once, and at last her sense of adventure had won.

  “Well, Valan.” Lystra sat down beside him. “Why haven’t you joined the fun?”

  He looked away. “I want to go home.”

  “But you are home.” Mystified, she peered at his dark profile, a web’s-breadth away from her touch.

  “Home is a ‘shore’ of land I can stand on. If I were to slip from this branch, I’d fall straight to the bottom of the sea.”

  “Not without coral deathweights. Otherwise, only the bones ever reach land.”

  “I’m not dead bones.”

  “Then you have nothing to worry about.”

  For his part, Spinel was at a loss; there seemed nothing left to be said. Yet something agitated him, and he had to break away before he lost control. With an effort he stood up.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “What’s it to you?” He flung the words down. “You told me to go,” he reminded her.

  “Ah, but you didn’t go, did you?” From where she sat, Lystra reached out her arm and curled a finger around his ankle, flicking his instep.

  A pulse raced through him. Reeling, Spinel sat down again hard and dug his fingernails into the weeds. Lystra’s hand closed about his wrist to steady him. “But I’m a malefreak!” he exclaimed, not sure why he had said it, but an intoxicating warmth flooded over him.

  “So what, I love you anyway.” Lystra figured it was all right. Usha had said that males were not all that different, just bigger outside to make up for what they lacked within. For a moment she felt intensely sorry for Spinel, who had no womb for a little sister to swim in, only a thing like the mating arm of an octopus. The thought fled in an instant; pity was Merwen’s failing, not hers. Spinel’s skin was as warm as her own, and softened by a thin sort of fur, sparser than the wisp of headfur that a newborn soon shed.

  Spinel held back, still afraid that the slightest wrong move would turn her into a fury again. Day after day he had seen Lystra’s form, until he knew her as well as the branch channels, yet now, without clothes to pull off, a signal was missing. She explored him with her fingers, then with her lips. Then something she touched shattered the tension, and they both clung together as if they would merge into one, until the sun’s first rays spurted across the sea.

  5

  THE NEXT SEVERAL days passed quickly for Spinel. He went with Lystra everywhere, whether tending starworms or solar cookers. At night the pair took a blanket out to the water’s edge, or if it rained they hid away in a trysting nest in one of the remoter raft tunnels. Spinel began to recognize nuances of finger-talk that had escaped him before, and for a while he could not look straight at a webbed hand.

  No one said anything, but odd incidents began to happen. Once they both were out in a boat with Flossa and Wellen and a refugee girl. Without warning, the three girls leaped together and dove overboard; the craft capsized behind them, dumping Spinel and Lystra. The next day, for dinner, there was nothing but octopus, hundreds of meaty arms steamed over hydrogen burners. When the jokes started about various octopus arms and what their specialized functions were, Spinel more than suspected they were aimed at him. Then Flossa whispered something, and the rest of the little witches giggled like crazy.

  “What was that?” he demanded, but they only laughed harder.

  Lystra said, “She wonders how I can bear to look at someone whose ‘breasts’ hang down between the legs with an extra thumb in between.”

  That killed his appetite, and he fled behind the silkhouse.

  Lystra came after him. “What’s the matter, Spinel?” Her hands cradled his head. “You look glum as a starfish.”

  “Why do they have to pick on me?” Though already his mind was dissolving in the seafoam of her touch.

  “Not you, us. That’s how it is, when a pair of sisters swim as twins. The others will test us, to see how well we stick.” She sighed. “If I hadn’t a selfname to honor, I’d str
angle them myself.”

  “Well I’ll strangle them, if they don’t leave off.”

  “Try that, and you’ll set the whole raft to laughing. You should Unspeak them instead.”

  “Really? How?”

  “Pretend Flossa does not exist. Just look straight through her every time.”

  “Maybe…”

  So he set his mind to ignoring Flossa. At first, she redoubled her tricks to get his attention. She would not leave him in peace, until the time she sat herself down right before the doorhole so he had to step over her to get in. His foot slipped; he fell and bruised his elbow. At the sight of this, Flossa took fright and kept asking whether he was hurt, until Spinel begrudgingly admitted that he might recover. The mishap quenched her interest in the game, and her companions soon gave up as well.

  Merwen watched the pair discreetly. Though their friendship pleased her, its sudden intensity caught her off guard. Yet when had Lystra ever been anything but sudden?

  Furthermore, Merwen still felt for Yinevra, who had taken her daughter’s loss stoically but at some point was bound to explode. Would Yinevra lash out at Lystra, accusing her of forgetting so soon? For the sake of harmony, Merwen invited Yinevra to share a supper with the family, and somewhat to her surprise she accepted.

  Now Yinevra was here, with her lovesharer Kithril, who was busily sharing acquaintance with Merwen’s refugee guests. Yinevra sat quiet and pensive, leaning her elbows on her knees. Lystra and Spinel sat apart from the rest, caught up in a lively discussion, in Valan tongue, about the traders’ latest proposal to hire Sharers as deckhands for a “wage.”

  “Sign us on, they say,” Lystra grumbled. “Sign on to their own seasilk-raking vessels—now, for a year’s supply of starworm cables. A year’s supply! And they’re short of steel?”

  “It’s all to hook you in,” Spinel said. “Moontraders are scoundrels, the whole lot. Even in Chrysoport you couldn’t find a straight one.” His hand alighted easily on her breast.

  “We’ll send them all home,” Lystra added, “by whichever ill-fated door they came.”

  “Yes, but that will take awhile. Why not lock them up first?”

  “What?” Playfully she wrestled his arm away. “What sort of notion is that?”

  “Just lock them away safe, so they can’t hurt anybody.”

  “Is that what you do on Valedon?”

  “Sure. How else do you treat a crook?”

  Lystra seemed interested. “Does it work? Are they cured?”

  “I guess so. Why would the Protector waste good solidi on jails if they didn’t work?”

  Yinevra had overheard Spinel. She nodded and stretched and addressed Merwen. “Curious,” she murmured, “this Valan daughter of yours. I commend your choice; as usual, you knew what you were about, after all.” She nodded again, to herself. “Yes, they took my daughter, Shora curse them. But we took one of theirs, and I think they will live to regret it.”

  Merwen sickened at this bitter wish. Learnsharing was such a subtle thing. She was loath to trigger another clash with Lystra, but better now before it got out of hand.

  It took some vigilance to catch Lystra alone again, and when she did at last, she felt far from comfortable. “My daughter, I see that you have found a twin.”

  “So your plan worked. No need to—”

  “I planned nothing of the sort.”

  The sharp words startled Lystra, who drew her face in like a snail. “Why not?”

  Merwen searched for words. Few sisters had her daughter’s knack of leaving her speechless.

  “What a mother you are,” said Lystra irritably. “No lovesharer of mine would ever suit you well enough.”

  “You have a selfname, but Spinel does not.”

  “It’s too sudden, is that what you think?” Lystra glared at her. “Wasn’t Usha sudden, for you?”

  Merwen kept her voice level. “Usha was no Valan malefreak.”

  “Indeed, hear the wordweaver now!” Lystra crowed. “Who was it who convinced us all that Valans are human, male and female alike?”

  “Each convinced herself. But—”

  “You’re wriggling out. If Yinevra could hear you now!”

  “Valans require much learnsharing.”

  “And you thought that Spinel would come here to learn with you all the time. Instead, he shares with me. He hates traders as much as I do.” She triumphantly crossed her arms.

  “Hating is the saddest thing to share. What else have you shared with Spinel?”

  Taken aback, Lystra considered. “I think that Valedon has two sorts of creatures, ‘good’ ones like Spinel, and ‘evil’ ones like traders.” She used the Valan terms. “‘Evil’ ones are trapped like animals, so they won’t hurt the ‘good’ ones.”

  “So only the ‘evil’ ones get trapped?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Including Shaalrim and Lalor when they were on Valedon?”

  Abruptly Lystra stood up. “Well, who can say, anyway! You spent a whole summer there, and what do you know?” The door whooshed open as she stomped out, nearly colliding with Nisi in her haste.

  Nisi barely noticed, she was so wrapped up with her own news. “Malachite comes tomorrow,” Nisi announced triumphantly. “And my lovesharer, too. All as Talion promised.” She paused for breath. “He—Malachite asks to visit with you, and with the Gathering.”

  “Malachite? The selfnamer?”

  “Yes. He’ll tell you himself,” Nisi added quickly.

  “Good. Was this what Talion shared with you, the last time?”

  Nisi grew tense. She worked her fingers in between each other, in a manner that unnerved Merwen. “We spoke of many things.” But Nisi had not shared them with Merwen later, as she usually did. It saddened Merwen to watch Nisi struggle with her own name.

  Other Sharers were not surprised to hear that the Valan selfnamer would visit Merwen first. Merwen had always thought well of malefreaks.

  Berenice was beside herself with anxious anticipation. Everything must go like clockwork in this first contact with a lord whose will could end a city, or even a world. Her first agonizing decision had been how to present herself, clothed or not. It hurt her to alienate Lystra and others who were sensitive about such things. In the end, though, the presence of Realgar had settled it. From her meager wardrobe she chose a plain, close-fitting talar whose hue matched her skin.

  Now Berenice stood at the water’s edge, lacing and unlacing her fingers, with Merwen and Usha beside. To her dismay, Merwen had insisted that the family be present, except for Flossa, who was needed for a shockwraith hunt. There stood Spinel with his mouth agape, shamelessly arm in arm with Lystra, whose curiosity had won out over the hunt. And there were Weia and Wellen with fingers in their mouths…Berenice could only hope that the Envoy would forgive any breach of etiquette from these ignorant natives of the Ocean Moon.

  A large bullet-shaped vessel pulled up to where the raft branches rose dry. From it, a silvery walkway extruded, all the way up to the core raft. As the visitors disembarked, Realgar gleamed magnificently with the sun full on his studded uniform. Yet the honor guard of twelve, striding forth in two perfect columns, made her scalp prickle as it approached this unarmed Sharer family.

  Malachite came last. A figure of perfect proportions, with platinum hair and seamless platinum clothes, the Envoy bore an extraordinary air of authority.

  Realgar saluted. “My Lord Malachite, infinitely wise Envoy of the All-knowing Patriarch of Torr, I beg leave to present Lady Berenice of Hyalite, the Protectoral Liaison for Shora.”

  Her unexpected title first startled and then infuriated her. She hurried to introduce Merwen and her family, as “protectors,” and recovered some of her composure.

  Malachite gave Realgar an inaudible command. In an instant, the honor guard was marching back to their ship, leaving just the two men. Berenice relaxed enormously. Perhaps, after all, the Envoy would understand Shora.

  Merwen had been disconcerted to
see Valans in the plumage of wage-earning death-hasteners line up with this Malachite, the Valan selfnamer. The fact that one of them was Realgar, Nisi’s lovesharer, was a revelation to Merwen. No wonder Nisi had always spoken so little of him; she must have felt as deeply for him as had Lystra for Rilwen.

  Malachite himself was a disappointment, at first sight. Merwen had expected him to look more like a Spirit Caller, loosely clothed and with a long unhurried beard. Instead he looked almost Iridian, smooth-shaven except for the scalp, encased in stiff cloth and a collar that all but cut off his head. None of the epithets that Realgar embarrassingly listed for him sounded anything like a selfname, but of course he would share that himself; she would not be so impolite as to ask.

  “You have a lovely seaname,” Merwen told him.

  “Thank you,” said Malachite, in an accent as clear as Nisi’s. “But I should share for correctness that the sea did not name me, since my home has no sea.”

  The Sharers were all amazed. “No sea at all?” Spinel exclaimed.

  Nisi tried to hush him, much to Merwen’s annoyance. Usha recovered to say with unusual grace, “Now that you’re here, the sea has surely named you.”

  “I share thanks,” said Malachite, “and to show my appreciation for your welcome I bring gifts from the Patriarch Himself.”

  The gift-toys that sprang from his spindly fingers were remarkable, even more so than those brought by Nisi’s mother and mothersister, the first of the traders, when they first fell from the sky. A nugget of light sent cascades of flowers, then animal-shapes as big as the silkhouse, all of which vanished as swiftly as they came. A dot of fabric unfolded to an enormous drapery invisibly thin, yet strong enough to lift a fishing boat. A silver pyramid hovered like a clickfly and emitted teeth-shattering sounds her ears had never known.

  Nisi, too, was impressed, and even her orange-haired lovesharer showed a spark of interest from within his bristling shell.

  “These wonders come from beyond Valedon?” Merwen asked.

  “From Torr itself, the home of the Patriarch,” Malachite said. “These particular inventions came about in the years since I last toured Valedon.”