Sea Siege

by Andre Norton

  It was a fine day. In fact, since the great storm, the weather had continued almost uniformly good. Griff watched a flight of birds make a half circle about the new radio tower. Radio tower—perhaps that was the most useless piece of construction they had done since the start of the rebuilding. Yet no one had protested its erection—they all still hoped for news, to learn that some portion of the old life still existed. And among the Naval personnel no one clung more to that installa­tion than did Holmes. He spent most of his time hunched in the hut with the operator, a dogeared wad of messages in his hand, ready to push them through for transmission as soon as contact with the States was once more established. In his way, Griff decided, the security officer was as hopeful in a hopeless position as was Hughes—though it might be easier to awake a response from the pool captive than it would be for Holmes to treat with his superiors in the dim and vanished of­fices of the United States Navy.

  Casey might have been reading Griff's thoughts, for he laughed. "Poor old Holmes, he'd like to do the dirty on the skipper, only he can't get through to the Big Brass. D'you know, maybe Murray's the biggest brass left right now. Only Holmes won't accept that. He's had fourteen fits since we brought the Russkis in here."

  "They got it just as hard as we did."

  "Sure, kid. And these have turned to and worked like the rest of us. I'm not calling names. And if they plastered us—they got it back as hot and heavy—maybe worse. It isn't going to help matters to shoot Karkoff and his boys—they didn't give the word to start firing. Though you know," he added shrewdly, "if they hadn't been found by us—but by survivors of a bombing— they wouldn't have lasted. We got our bad punches not from the Russkis, but from the sea, the quakes, the storm. If we'd had them from a bomb, we wouldn't feel the same way. As it is now, we're closing ranks—man against nature. If you're human, you're on our side. So they were lucky, darn lucky to end up in our section of the world."

  "How about the plane? Any chance of getting it up for a look-see?"

  The Navy plane had gone during the great storm, but they held hopes of being able to restore the trans­port that had brought the cargo of refugees from Santa Maria. Like the mast of the radio station, this plane served as a defiance, a hope. If they could take to the air on an exploring trip—even venture out in a radius of a hundred miles or so and chart the changes—

  "Well, Hooker's steamed up about what they were able to do last night. We have a couple of mechanics who can build anything if they have scrap enough. They're trying to fit her with an atomic motor from a wrecked crawler we located. If they can ready her to take off, Hooker's game to fly her."

  They had come upslope from the octopus pool and now stood on the crest of one of the heights that had been born during the quakes, giving San Isadore re­spectable hills for the first time in her existence. The settlement was a ragged circle below—the coral-block, thatched buildings, rather like blocks spilled from some giant child's play box, the half-cave, half-house sec­tion of the base, and the islanders' huts, where trickles of smoke arose from cooking fires. It had a hastily slapped-together look but at the same time a vitality that had never been seen in Carterstown.

  "There's your voodoo man down there now—taking it easy." Casey pointed to Le Marr seated on the trunk of a dead palm.

  The islander was not lazing though. His slender hands moved skillfully as he wove dried fronds into one of the wide-brimmed hats that were the island protection against the sun. And he glanced up with a welcoming smile as Griff and Casey slid down the bank into what was the backyard of his private domain. A cock, tethered by its leg to the other end of the palm log, stopped pecking in the earth and offered crowing challenge.

  "Be a good day, mons. Sit down an' rest your feet." He gave the traditional island greeting. "There's coco-milk for the drinkin'. Shut your big mouth, you crazy bird!" he bade the cock, and astonishingly enough its clamor subsided at once.

  "I wish you could do that with the devil." Uncon­sciously Griff gave the pool captive the name conferred on it by the islanders. "Talk to it, I mean."

  Le Marr's swiftly flying fingers paused. "Whyfor you wants to talk with that thing?"

  "Not talk exactly. But it is intelligent. If we could find some way of communication, maybe we could—"

  "Make peace 'tween ocean an' land? Listen, mon. This here"—he held up a piece of the dried leaf he was us­ing—"is one kinds thing. Once it live, it grow, maybe­so it had knowledge. Not like the knowledge in mon's head, but knowledge what was for it. But can you talk with this? All right, all right. This debble, he think good—better nor dog, better nor donkey, more like mons. But not the same way as mons. He don't want the same thing as mons wants—"

  "He wants to live, doesn't he?" cut in Casey. "Every­thing wants to live. Maybe we could get that idea across."

  "How you be sure he wants to live more than he wants other things? Mon wants that—but do debble?"

  Griff pulled the conversation back from the philosophi­cal to the immediate problem. "But is there any way we could communicate with the thing, Le Marr? That grease of Liz's keeps the things away—or seems to. Is there anything which will attract them?"

  Le Marr shrugged. "How do I know? I don't want to talk to this thing. Better we would be if this thing be gone away an' we spend no more time with it. Sea an' land, they never mix. An' they ain't goin' to— You mons, you make the big bombs, you make the plane, the rocket to carry those bombs. Then—" He made an eras­ing gesture with his hands, and the half-finished hat fell to the ground. "Then you use them! An' what be left? Trouble—death! Mons don't use things right. May­beso this world be tired o' mons. Now you want more kinda knowledge, you want to start all over again. I say no!" One of his hands came down in a chopping motion as if he were beheading something. "Let mons live quiet, do no thing to learn what will start more bad things—"

  Casey clasped his hands about his knee, leaned back.

  "Brother," he announced, "you've got a good point there. It's one which has been stated before by a lot of earnest souls. There's only one thing about it—it won't work!"

  "An' why not?"

  "Because, as a species, we're bitten by a queer bug. We've got to find out what lies beyond the next range of hills, and not only geographically. Our curiosity is bred into our bones. I'll bet there were those in the cavemen days who deplored the use of this new-fangled fire, who didn't see why tying a stone onto a shaft and making an ax out of it was the right thing to do. You could kill a horse or a deer better that way, sure, but it also was a mighty nasty war weapon. That knowledge which made the bombs gave us the atomic motors which have kept this base going since the bust-up. You can't withdraw from living, Le Marr—unless you want to commit suicide. And we're so constructed that mass suicide does not appeal. There's a long road back stretch­ing ahead of us now. And we have to take it. Perhaps half our globe is uninhabitable. For all we know it is. We haven't yet faced the horrors of a fall-out, of radia­tion sickness. We may be doomed right now. Don't you suppose that every man over there at the base hasn't thought of that? But have you seen anyone stop work and sit around waiting for the end to catch up with him?

  "What are you doing here?" He scooped up the half-made hat. "You're weaving a hat—a mighty neat job of it, too. But why do it? Tomorrow you may be dead— we may all be dead. Who'll be left to wear it—that thing over in the pool, one of your donkeys? There's that woman over there scraping up earth to make a garden. She's planting seeds; will she live to see them sprout? She thinks so—or she wouldn't be doing it. You see, Le Marr, inside we all believe that we're going to keep on breathing and walking around. We accept that the more because we have survived some pretty tough treatment. And if we accept that we have to be practical.

  "There's the problem of food and clothing. It was lucky for San Isadore that the Navy supply dump was here. We have supplies for several years. But this island is not going to support her present population without some help. And the refugees from Santa Maria may n
ot be the last to reach us, which means we eventually will have to spread out—or import from other surviving com­munities. And we have to have mastery of the sea for that. It's either sit down and die, or it's get up and fight! If we can learn anything useful from that eight-armed thing over in that pool, we have to do it—the sooner the better. It may be a matter of our survival, and that is enough to build a fire under any man. You may not agree, but that is the truth as I see it."

  For the second time since Griff had known him, Le Marr answered with the speech of an educated off-island man. "You make a good case for your side of the argument, Lieutenant. As you say—this is the truth from your point of view. And for your race it is. We are a mongrel lot, we islanders, and we have certain traits of our own. To our way of thinking, nature has turned against us, and that is a belief rooted in the supernatural. You do not know it in your portion of the town, but some of us have reverted to very dark practices." For a moment his face had the same look of strain it had worn during their weird battle on the Queen. "I have some influence with these, my people. I am trying hard to hold that influence—to prevent their falling into the savagery from which they climbed painfully long ago. If once more they turn to certain rites and sacrifices—" He stopped abruptly, his lips thinned as if he tightened them against dangerous admissions. "I can do this only because I do share some of their beliefs and appear to share others. Should I now change in my attitude, should I—as they would see it—attempt to traffic with the devil they fear, I might lose all the control I still pos­sess. Then, Lieutenant, we might have yet another dan­ger to contend with, a situation which might end, once and for all, all your bright plans of a world rebuilt."

  "Do they still think that we are responsible for the trouble?" Griff thought of the destruction of the labora­tory, of his father's work.

  "Some of them do. Others can be readily influenced to join them. Your strange machines, the lights you use, the larger percentage of your belongings"—he was speak­ing now to Casey—"are sheer magic to my people. It is only since Dr. Gunston and you Naval people have come to San Isadore that our world has changed. We were a century behind history— Now we may have caught up with it, to find the transition not only be­wildering but for us—fearful. You believe that you have nothing to fear from us but—"

  Griff had a flash of understanding. "You have your own ways of force, of dealing with an enemy—the ways you know, Liz knows—"

  Le Marr gave a slow, assenting nod. At the same time he took the hat from Casey and began his work again. "Yes, there are ways my people may make their dis­pleasure felt—if they are pushed too far."

  "We have to work together—we have to!" Casey brought his fist down on the trunk of the palm. Shreds of dried bark drifted on the wind to the ground.

  "Some of us already realize that; the rest must be brought to such an understanding. During the days of the storm we took refuge together. But now you go your own road. You are busy on foreign concerns, and it may appear to you that we have nothing to offer in sup­port of your labors. My people hope that you will go and leave us in peace—that you will repair the plane, ready your seagoing LC's—and that after you are gone, the old world will return. That is what they wait for. If it does not come then—"

  "They may take steps to hasten it?" prompted Griff. They had taken steps about the laboratory after it had become suspect—drastic ones.

  "We shall hope not."

  "Then"—Casey hunched forward on the tree trunk —"can't you use that for an excuse in coming to our help now. We would never leave with the sea closed to us. The plane, if we are ever able to get it off the ground, couldn't carry more than a pilot and a few ob­servers. But if we can free the seas—"

  Le Marr made a meticulous business of braiding, of fitting small rough ends into smoothness. To all ap­pearances he was concerned only with that. But a mo­ment later he said, without looking up, "It might be done."

  "Can you ask the others to help? Would such a project bring us closer together?"

  "That also might be done. But you do not intend to leave—"

  "How can we? Maybe not for years," Casey admitted. "We have no idea what's waiting for us out there. May­be you are right—at your gloomiest—maybe we are washed up, maybe man is no longer top dog. But we won't accept that decision without a fight. I don't think, if it comes right to the point, your people will either. And it's up to you, Le Marr, to see that they fight the right way—on our side, with their minds and their hands—and not their superstitions and their emotions!"

  "You are of one kind, my people of another," warned the islander. "Don't try to drive us too hard or too fast. We are like our donkeys—sometimes we may be driv­en, but other times we must be coaxed, and always we must have our minds and desires considered. Very well, I shall do what I can. If the first step toward coopera­tion is the study of devils, then I shall undertake the study of devils." He smiled, his slow, shadow smile.

  The sea wind was rising, beating through the leaves of the standing palms as if the trees applauded him with clapping fronds. Casey stretched.

  "Oh, we'll make it back." His confidence was such as drew belief. "I'm not saying 'uncle' to any fish. Just give us time—say a hundred years or so—and you won't know the bloomin' world, you won't for a fact."

  "I hope so—with all my heart I trust that that may be true." Le Marr spoke with conviction.

  Griff stood up; the wind pushed against him with its old demanding force. Without being conscious of move­ment, he turned to face north. To him the long road back must always point that way. Would he ever tread it openly?

  The End