The Sixth Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur C. Clarke

  A wave splashed across the floor, like twisted glass before the rock on which the fire stood. Then it flopped wetly across the burning driftwood which hissed into darkness. Charred sticks turned, glowing in the water, and were extinguished.

  Rain was buffeting them; hands held them once more, pulling them into the warm sea, the darkness, and then nothing.…

  Snake was thinking again, and this time through the captain’s eyes.

  The cabin door burst open in the rain. Wind whipped her wet veils about her in the door as lightning made them transparent, blackening her body’s outline. Jordde rose from his seat. She closed the door on thunder.

  “I have received the signal from the sea,” she said. “Tomorrow you pilot the ship into the estuary.”

  The captain’s voice: “But Priestess Argo, I cannot take the ship into Aptor. We already have lost ten men; I cannot sacrifice…”

  “And the storm,” smiled Jordde. “If it is like this tomorrow, how can I take her through the rocks?”

  Her nostrils flared as her lips compressed to a chalky line. She was regarding Jordde.

  The captain’s thoughts: What is between them, this confused tension. It upsets me deeply, and I am tired.

  “You will pilot the boat to shore tomorrow,” Argo nearly hissed. “They have returned, with the jewels!”

  The captain’s thoughts: They speak to each other in a code I don’t understand. I am so tired, now. I have to protect my ship, my men, that is my job, my responsibility.

  But Argo turned to the captain. “I hired you to obey me. I order you to pilot this ship to Aptor’s shore tomorrow morning.”

  The captain’s thoughts; Yes, yes. The fatigue and the unknowing. But I must fulfill, must complete. “Jordde,” he began.

  “Yes, captain,” answered the mate, anticipating. “If the weather is permitting, sir, I will take the ship as close as I can get.” He smiled now, a thin curve over his face, and turned toward Argo.

  CHAPTER XII

  Roughness of sand beneath one of his sides, and the flare of the sun on the other. His eyes were hot and his lids were orange over them. He turned over, and reached out to dig his fingers into the sand. Only one hand closed; then he remembered. Opening his eyes, he rolled to his knees. The sand grated under his knee caps. Looking out toward the water, he saw that the sun hung only seeming inches above the horizon. Then he saw the ship.

  From its course, he gathered it was heading toward the estuary of the river down the beach. He began to run toward where the rocks and vegetation cut off the end of the beach. The sand under his feet was cool.

  A moment later he saw Iimmi’s dark figure come from the jungle. He was heading for the same place. Geo hailed him, and panting, they joined each other. Then, together they continued toward the rocks.

  As they broke through the first sheet of foliage, they bumped into the red-haired girl who stood, knuckling her eyes in the shadow of the broad palm fronds. When she recognized them, she joined them silently. Finally they reached the outcropping of rock a few hundred feet up the river bank.

  The rain had swelled the river’s mouth to tremendous violence. It vomited surges of brown water into the ocean, frothed against rocks, and boiled opaquely below them. It was nearly half again as wide as Geo remembered it.

  Although the sky was clear, beyond the brown bile of the river, the sea snarled viciously and bared white teeth in the sun. It took another fifteen minutes for the boat to maneuver through the granite spikes toward the rocky embankment a hundred yards away.

  Glancing down into the turbulence, Argo breathed, “Gee.” But that was the only human sound against the water’s roaring.

  The boat’s prow doffed in the swell, and then at last her plank swung out and bumped unsteadily on the rocky bank. Figures were gathering on deck.

  “Hey,” Argo said, pointing toward one. “That’s Sis!”

  “Where the hell are Snake and Urson?” Iimmi asked.

  “That’s Snake down there,” Geo said. “Look!” He pointed with his nub.

  They could see Snake crouched near the gangplank itself. He was behind a ledge of rock, invisible to the people on the ship, apparently, but plain to Geo and his companions.

  “Watch it,” Geo said. “I’m going down there. You stay here.” He ducked off through the vines, keeping in sight of the rocks’ edge and the boiling foam. The ship grew before him, and at last he reached a sheltered rise, just ten feet above the nest of rock in which the four-armed boy was crouching.

  Geo looked out at the boat. Jordde stood at the head of the gangplank. The eighteen feet of board was unsteady with the roll of the ship. Jordde held something like a black whip in his hand, only the end went to a box-like contraption strapped to his back. With the lash raised, he stepped onto the shifting plank.

  Geo wondered what the whip contrivance was. The answer came with the hollow sound of Snake’s thoughts. That…is…machine…he…use…to…cut…tongue…with…only…on…whip…now…not…wire… So Snake knew he was just behind him. As he was trying to figure exactly the implications of what Snake had said, suddenly, with the speed of a bird’s shadow, Snake leaped from his hiding place and landed on the shore end of the plank. He recovered from his crouch, and rushed down the plank toward Jordde, apparently intending to knock him from the board.

  Jordde raised the lash and it fell across the boy’s shoulder. It didn’t land hard; it just dropped. But Snake suddenly reeled, and went down on one knee, grabbing the sides of the plank. Geo was close enough to hear the boy scream.

  “I cut your tongue out once with this thing,” Jordde said, matter of factly. “Now I’m going to cut the rest of you to pieces.” He adjusted a control at his belt and raised the lash again.

  Geo leapt for the plank. He faced Jordde over the crouching boy, he wondered how wise it had been. Then he had to stop wondering and try to duck the falling lash. He couldn’t.

  It landed with only the weight of gravity, brushing his cheek, then dropping across his shoulder and down his back. He screamed; the whole side of his face seemed seared away, and an inch crevice burned into his shoulder and back the length it touched him. He bit into white fire, trying not to leap aside into the foaming chasm between rocks and boat. As the lash rasped over his shoulder, sweat flooded his eyes. His good arm, which held the edge of the plank, was shaking like a plucked string on a loose guitar. Snake lunged back against him, almost knocking him over. When Geo blinked the tears out of his eyes, he saw two bright welts over Snake’s shoulder. He also saw that Jordde had stepped out upon the plank and was smiling.

  When the line fell again, he wasn’t sure just what happened. He leaned in one direction, and suddenly Snake was a dive of legs in the other. Now Snake was just four sets of fingers on the edge of the plank. Geo screamed again and shook.

  Two sets of fingers disappeared from one side of the board and reappeared on the other. As Jordde raised the lash a fourth time to rid the plank of this last one-armed nuisance, the fingers worked rapidly forward toward Jordde’s feet, until suddenly an arm raised from beneath the plank, grabbed Jordde’s foot, and tugged. The lash fell far from Geo who was still trembling, trying to move backwards off the unsteady plank, and keep from vomiting at the same time.

  Jordde tripped, but turned in time to grab the edge of the ship’s gate and steady himself. At the same time, one leg, and then another, came up the other side of the plank, and then Snake rolled to a crouching position on the board’s top.

  Geo got his feet under him now, and stumbled backwards, off the plank, and then sat down hard a few feet back on the rocks. He clutched his good arm across his stomach, and without lowering his eyes, leaned forward to cool his back.

  Jordde, half-seated on the board now, lashed the whip sideways. Snake leaped a foot from the plank as the line swung beneath his feet. All four arms went spidering out to regain equilibrium. The whip struck the side of the boat, left a burn along the hull, and came swinging back again. Snake leapt once more
and made it.

  Suddenly there was a shadow over him, and Geo saw Urson stride up to the end of the plank. His back to Geo, he crouched bear-like at the plank’s head. “All right, now try someone a little bigger than you. Come on, kid, get off there. I want my turn.” Urson’s sword was drawn.

  Snake turned, grabbed at something on Urson, but the big man knocked him away as he leapt diagonally onto the shore. Urson laughed over his shoulder. “You don’t want the ones around my neck,” he called back. “Here, keep these for me.” He tossed the leather purse from his belt back to the shore. Snake landed just as Jordde flung the lash out again. Urson must have caught the line across his chest, because they saw his back suddenly stiffen. Then he leapt forward and came down with his sword so hard that had Jordde still been there, his leg would have come off. Jordde leapt back onto the edge of the ship, and the sword sliced three inches into the plank. As Urson tried to pull the blade out once more, Jordde sent his whip singing again. It wrapped Urson’s mid-section like a black serpent, and it didn’t come loose.

  Urson howled. He flung his sword forward, which probably only by accident thwunked seventeen inches through Jordde’s abdomen. He bent forward, grabbed the line with both hands, and tugged backwards, screaming.

  Jordde took two steps onto the plank, his mouth open, his eyes closed, and fell over the side.

  Urson heaved backwards, and toppled from the other side. For a moment they hung with the whip between them over the board. The ship heaved, rolled to. The plank swiveled, came loose; and with the board on top of them, they crashed into the water.

  Geo and Snake were at the rocks’ edge. Iimmi and Argo were coming up behind them.

  Below them, limbs and board bobbed through the foam once. The line had somehow looped around Urson’s neck, and the plank had turned up almost on end. Then they went under again.

  With nothing between it and the rock wall of shore, the boat began to roll in. With each swell, it came in six feet, and then leaned out three. Then it came back another six. It took four swells, the time of four very deep breaths, until the side of the boat was grating up against the rocks. Geo could hear the plank splintering down in the water. But the sound of the water blanketed anything else that was breaking down there.

  Geo took two steps backwards, clutched at his stubbed arm, and threw up.

  Somebody, the captain, was calling, “Get her away from the rocks. Away from the rocks, before she goes to pieces!”

  Iimmi took Geo’s arm. “Come on, boy,” he said, and managed to haul him onto the ship. Argo and Snake leapt on behind them, as the boat floundered away from the shore.

  Geo leaned against the rail. Below him the water turned on itself in the rocks, thrashed along the river’s side, and then, as he raised his eyes, stretched out along the bright blade of the beach. The long sand that rimmed the island dropped away from them, a stately and austere arc gathering in its curve all the sun’s glare, and throwing it back on wave, and on wave. His back hurt, his stomach was shriveled and shaken like an old man’s palsied fist, his arm was gone, and Urson.…

  And then Argo said, “Look at the beach!”

  Geo flung his eyes up and tried in one moment to envelop whatever he saw, whatever it would be. Beneath the roar was a tide of quiet. The sand along the naked crescent was dull at depressions, mirror bright at rises. At the jungle’s edge, leaves and fronds sped multi-textured rippling along the foliage. Each single fragment in that green carpet hung up in the sun was one leaf, he reflected, with two sides, and an entire system of skeleton and veins, as his hand and arm had been. And maybe one day would drop off, too. He looked from rock to rock now. Each was different, shaped and lined distinctly, but losing detail as the ship floated out, as the memory of his entire adventure was losing detail. That one there was like a bull’s head half submerged; those two flat ones together on the sand looked like the stretched wings of eagles. The waves, measured and magnificent, followed one another onto the sand, like the varying, never duplicated rhythm of a good poem, peaceful, ordered, and calm. He tried to pour the chaos of Urson drowning from his mind onto the water. It flowed into each glass-green wave’s trough in which it rode, suddenly quiet, up to the beach. He spread the pain in his own body over the web of foam and green shimmering, and was surprised because it fit easily, hung there well, quieted, very much quieted. Somewhere at the foot of his brain, an understanding was beginning to effloresce with the sea’s water, under the sun.

  Geo turned away from the rail, and with the wet deck slipping under his bare feet, he walked toward the forecastle. He released his broken limb, and his hand hung at his side.

  * * * *

  When Snake came down that evening, Geo was lying on his back in the bunk, following the grain of the wood on the bottom of the bed above his. He had his good arm behind his neck now. Snake touched his shoulder.

  “What is it?” Geo asked, turning on his side and sitting out from under the bunk.

  Snake held out the leather purse to Geo.

  “Huh?” Geo asked. “Didn’t you give them to Argo yet?”

  Snake nodded.

  “Well, why didn’t she take them. Look, I don’t want to see them again.”

  Snake pushed the purse toward him again, and added, Look…

  Geo took the purse, opened the draw string, and turned the contents out in his hand: there were three chains, on each of which was a gold coin fastened by a hole near the edge. Geo frowned. “How come these are in here?” he asked. “I thought—where are the jewels?”

  In…ocean, Snake said. Urson…switched…them.

  “What are you talking about?” demanded Geo. “What is it?”

  Don’t…want…tell…you…

  “I don’t care what you want, you little thief.” Geo grabbed him by the shoulder. “Tell me!”

  Know…from…back…with…blind…priestesses, Snake explained rapidly. He…ask…me…how…to…use…jewels…when…you…and…Iimmi…exploring…and…after…that…no…listen…to…thoughts…bad…thoughts…bad…

  “But he—” Geo started. “He saved your life!”

  But…what…is…reason, Snake said. At…end…

  “You saw his thoughts at the end?” asked Geo. “What did he think?”

  You…sleep…please, Snake said. Lot…of…hate…lot…of…bad…hate… There was a pause in the voice in his head… and…love…

  Geo began to cry. A bubble of sound in the back of his throat burst, and he turned onto the pillow and tried to bite through the sound with his teeth, the tiredness, the fear, for Urson, for his arm, and the change which hurt. His whole body ached, his back hurt in two sharp lines, and he couldn’t stop crying.

  * * * *

  Iimmi, who had now decided to take the bunk above Geo, came back a few minutes after mess. Geo had just awakened.

  Geo laughed. “I found out what it was we saw on the beach that made us so dangerous.”

  “How?” asked Iimmi. “When? What was it?”

  “Same time you did,” Geo said. “I just looked. And then Snake explained the details of it to me later.”

  “When?” Iimmi repeated.

  “I just took a nap, and he went through the whole thing with me.”

  “Then what was it you saw, we saw?”

  “Well, first of all; do you remember what Jordde was before he was shipwrecked on Aptor?”

  “Didn’t Argo say he was studying to be a priest. Old Argo, I mean.”

  “Right,” said Geo. “Now, do you remember what my theory was about what we saw?”

  “Did you have a theory?” Iimmi asked.

  “About horror and pain making you receptive to whatever it was.”

  “Oh, that,” Iimmi said. “I remember. Yes.”

  “I was also right about that. Now add to all this some theory from Hama’s lecture on the double impulse of life. It wasn’t a thing we saw, it was a situation, or rather an experience we had. Also, it didn’t have to be on the beach. It could have happened any
where. Man, and his constantly diametric motivations, is always trying to reconcile opposites. In fact, you can say that an action is a reconciliation of the duality of his motivation. Now, take all that we’ve been through, the confusion, the pain, the disorder; then reconcile that with the great order obvious in something like the sea, with its rhythm, its tides and waves, its overpowering calm, or the ordering of cells in a leaf, or a constellation of stars. If you can do it, something happens to you: you grow. You become a bigger person, able to understand, or reconcile, more.”

  “All right,” said Iimmi.

  “And that’s what we saw, or the experience we had when we looked at the beach from the ship this morning; chaos caught in order, the order defining chaos.”

  “All right again,” Iimmi said. “And I’ll even assume that Jordde knew that the two impulses of this experience were one—something terrible and confused, like seeing ten men hacked to pieces by vampires, or seeing a film of a little boy getting his tongue pulled out, or coming through what we came through since we landed on Aptor; and two—something calm and ordered, like the beach and the sea. Now, why would he want to kill someone simply because they might have gone through what amounts, I guess, to the basic religious experience?”

  “You picked just the right word,” Geo smiled. “Now, Jordde was a novice in the not too liberal religion of Argo. Jordde and Snake had been through nearly as much on Aptor as we had. And they survived. And they also emerged from that jungle of horror onto that great arcing rhythm of waves and sand. And they went through just what you and I and Argo went through. Little Argo, I mean. And it was just at that point when the blind priestesses of Argo made contact with Jordde. They did so by means of those vision screens we saw them with, which can receive sound and pictures from just about any place, but can also project, at least sound, to just about anywhere too. In other words, right in the middle of this religious, or mystic, or whatever you want to call it, experience, a voice materialized out of thin air that claimed to the voice of The Goddess. Have you any idea what this did to his mind?”