I carried Dalusa down to the kitchen, turned my pallet over so that no residual contamination could reach her, and set her down. She pulled her mask off.
“I’m all right,” she said. “You shouldn’t have troubled yourself.” She immediately fell asleep.
There was nothing more to be done. I went back on deck.
We rounded the promontory. The wind caught us immediately; there was a sandpaper rattle of particles on the bow. The sails filled, the braces strained tight, and the Lunglance actually listed, a surprising feat for a trimaran of her bulk. Desperandum wore ship and started on a starboard tack.
North, there was a huge gap in the rock. Five hundred years ago there had been a narrow cliff there, separating the Nullaqua Crater from a minor subcrater that was now Glimmer Bay. There bad been a crack in that cliff. The Glimmer Crater, receiving sunlight only at noon, was much colder than the parent crater. A cold draft developed, laden with abrasives. Soon a small natural arch formed, housing a vertical whirlwind, hot air above, cold below. Over two centuries, the arch expanded.
On the two hundred and thirty-seventh year of human settlement on Nullaqua, the cliff collapsed with a report heard throughout the crater. It was insufficient warning. Thousands of tons of rock fell into the sea, and the resulting tsunami wiped out almost the entire Nullaquan fleet. Five ships survived: three fishing ships accidentally sheltered by the Highisle, a single retired Amarian warship in the Pentacle Islands, and a whaler from Brokenfoot. There were no surviving ships from Perseverance. Perseverance had been razed a year earlier in the Nullaquan Civil War.
The year after the Glimmer Catastrophe was known as the Hungry Year.
The Lunglance headed as closely into the wind as possible. Mr. Bogunheim was at the tiller; the sails luffed a little and Captain Desperandum chided the man absently. The captain was gazing into the dim recesses of the bay, his binoculars pressed tightly to the lenses of his dustmask.
Films of dust were forming in the wind shadows of objects on deck. The anemone rattled its bars. I wondered if it recognized our location. Like one of those homing birds, widgets, pidgets, some name like that …
It was after noon now. Dim light filtered into the bay from two sources, the entrance, two miles wide, and a glowing sliver of hills at the eastern part of the crater. An immense ridge of dark rock blocked most of the afternoon light that shone on the hills beyond. It was as dim, as gloomy as the interior of a shuttered cathedral. There was a churchlike atmosphere inside. The Lunglance soon passed the bordering guardian cliffs and sailed eastward in the hushed, weak wind.
Behind us an immense vertical beam of pale light, fifty miles high, shone through the mouth of the bay and across to the broken, battered cliff wall. It was sublime in the extreme. Everyone on deck, with the exception of Desperandum, stared, completely rapt, at the dim colossus of light. It glowed like the promise of redemption.
I tore my eyes away and shivered. It was as cold and gloomy as the bottom of a well in Glimmer Bay, but dry. Desiccated. Mercilessly dry, drier than the driest desert on Earth, Bunyan, or Reverie, dry enough to make one’s nose split and bleed at night, dry enough to make one’s hair crackle with static electricity, dry enough to make sparks sting one’s knuckles over and over again. It stole the water from my mouth, the tears from my eyeballs.
And cold. The men got out their night gear and put it on. Nullaquan nights were cold; here they would be much worse.
Hot air coming into the bay cooled by expansion; cold air replaced it. There was a faint, shuddery draft in Glimmer Bay, like the breath of a beast with lungs of ice. Dry ice.
The beam behind us gave no heat. The narrowness of the channel caused it to be absolutely stationary; the sun’s movement would have no effect on it except to change its brightness. The lowest part of the beam was slightly fuzzy with dust mist; the beam grew fainter with height as the air grew thinner and clearer. Eventually the beam vanished, but the light itself still made the airless cliff wall glow with a dim vacuum radiance, forty miles away.
At sea level, the entire bay was a rough oval, fifty miles long, twenty-six miles across. The inlet was located at about the middle of the bay.
We sailed east. It grew dimmer; many times the sailors turned to stare regretfully at the light behind us.
Now the captain decided to conduct a test for the presence of anemones. Under his orders the crew scampered up the ratlines and furled the sails. Desperandum heaved a dust drag overboard, then threw out an immense gutted chunk of shark meat. A wired-on float kept it from sinking.
The meat began to drift slowly from the ship. There were no signs of questing tentacles. Perhaps it was too deep for the creatures. A dust strider came skating creakily up out of the distance on saucer-shaped feet. He began to chew thoughtfully on the meat. The diet of adult striders differed from that of their larvae. The strider found the meat acceptable and was soon joined by a dozen relatives, skating up rapidly out of the gloom like roaches after a forgotten crumb. Desperandum grew impatient; he pulled the shark meat back on board. The striders clung to it tenaciously. Desperandum dropped the meat to the deck with a thump and the striders scattered, but not for long. Brushed aside, they returned single-mindedly to the meal. Desperandum finally had to swat one of their number with a whaling spade, whereupon the rest scuttled energetically away and leapt overboard.
There was not much plankton here; the light was too scarce. The Glimmer Bay ecology must be based on carrion washed in by the currents, I thought. The light was growing dimmer ahead of us as the sun sank. Desperandum set out lanterns.
The light was welcome, but it seemed almost a profanation of the titanic gloom and stillness. I felt uncomfortably conspicuous. The lights were like a shouted challenge to whatever denizens lived in this stagnant backwater, this nasty little rock coffin. I didn’t like this place. I didn’t like the black, looming cliffs, going up and up and up until they seemed taller than God. Those cliffs seemed eager to give in under their own massive weight, to slump together into the narrow gloom-choked bay and flatten the Lunglance like a bug between two bricks. I didn’t like the cold and the silence.
I decided to go below and start work on the day’s last meal. As I turned to go I glanced over the rail.
The dimness was speckled with hundreds of little red sparks. It was the reflection of lamplight in the multifaceted eyes of an incredible horde of dust striders. The Lunglance was surrounded by the little beasts, silently watching our lamps with the devotion of moths for a candle.
It must be a spawning ground, I thought. They could flatten themselves and ride the currents into the bay, then rush back out after breeding, skipping lightly across the dust with the wind at their backs.
More appeared even as I watched. They were thick for yards in every direction. The first mate engaged Desperandum in rapid conversation. The captain looked over the rail and shrugged.
The striders grew agitated. Panic spread through the packed thousands; they began to jump up and down lightly like water droplets on a red-hot griddle. They were going into a frenzy. I was disquieted. It was a good thing that the rail was four feet above the water. The spidery little monsters, six inches across, were leaping energetically upwards, but the deck was Out of their reach.
Then they started to climb atop one another, careless of life, smothering the weak underfoot in the dust, inspired to some inexplicable peak of insectine fanaticism by the unwonted stimulus of light. Soon the first dozens were over the side, scuttling insanely across the deck, running in circles, falling onto their backs and kicking their spiny, saucered legs frantically. The men drew back indecisively as the creatures poured onto the deck. I also began to withdraw. I passed the anemone’s jar; with a cunning whiplash movement it almost managed to sink its black hook-thorns into the back of my neck.
Slowly, not seeming to realize it, the men were forced into the dimmest area of the deck, behind the mizzenmast and close to the hatch that led to the captain’s cabin and the hold.
&n
bsp; Suddenly one of the creatures leapt up and sank its multiple mandibles into Mr. Grent’s calf. He yelped with pain. That did it; the men went berserk, and soon the pattering rattle of little cup-shaped feet was joined by the brittle crunching of striders mashed underfoot.
Desperandum gave orders, bellowing so loudly that his mask speaker shrieked with distortion: “Get below, men! I’ll handle this!”
The captain bounced across the deck to the nearest lantern and shut it off. With a few final vindictive dance steps the men began to file through the hatch. Desperandum, brushing bugs off his legs, headed for the second lantern. I stepped nimbly onto half a dozen hapless striders and ducked through the kitchen hatch. I slammed it behind me and felt my way down the stairs to the light switch.
There were two striders on the kitchen floor. I flattened them with a saucepan and started cooking.
Mr. Flack spread ointment on the bites of the crewmen. That night the men ate in the hold. They slept there, too, as the striders showed no inclination to leave the ship. We peeked up every half hour; the lantern invariably drew an eager horde of light-crazy striders. They seemed determined to set up housekeeping.
The captain showed no concern. “They’ll tire, men,” he told the crew as, preparing to sleep, they nestled uncomfortably in their blankets. “And if they don’t tomorrow we’ll drive them off. We have plenty of whale oil; we’ll go up with torches and bum them out.”
The men looked cheered at this. Personally, I suspected that the plastic-clad deck was highly flammable. I foresaw the ship in a sheet of flame. The stored water in the hold would make a magnificent bloom in Glimmer Bay; but no one would ever see it.
But my fears were unfounded. Next morning, the light from the inlet slowly shamed the few wretched stars in our limited sky into hiding their faces, then turned the darkness into slate gray shadow. A splinter of light showed on the western rim of the crater behind us. It grew to a glow.
The striders liked their new home. They were getting along famously. Doubtless any novelty was welcome here. With morning they seemed much calmer, they were even magnanimous enough to tolerate a few sailors on deck. They bore no grudges.
Taking advantage of their good nature, Desperandum spread a thick pool of raw whale oil onto the deck on the port side of the ship, between the foremast and the mainmast. A faint breeze bore the odor along the ship; soon the striders came clicking across the deck to investigate. They approved. They were silent, but they pantomimed their appreciation thoroughly, wading through the shadow, cozy stuff and slurping it into their complicated, chitinous mouths. A few of them even danced like bees.
Desperandum waited at a distance, patiently, holding a pipe lighter in one massive hand. The oil was slowly spreading. Now the striders were trampling one another in their urge to get at the juice, with that lack of fraternal concern that seemed to be their trademark. They scampered in eagerly from all over the ship.
“Issue whaling spades to take care of any survivors,” Desperandum said calmly lighting a strip of cloth. He tossed it neatly into the center of the pool of oil.
It went up with a roar. The striders began to scream, high-pitched ee-ee-ee sounds like rusty meat grinders. They caught like tinder. A few of them even exploded, showering their brethren with the flaming contents of their stomachs. Striders ran desperately across the deck, faltered, and crumpled, their smoldering legs splitting and spitting overheated juices. Some made it over the rail to the sea, and ran screeching along the surface, trailing fire.
The men began to kill the rest with the flat sides of their whaling spades. Each flattened strider left a smoldering patch on the deck. The plastic under the puddle of oil had melted a little; charred bits of strider exoskeleton were stuck in its cooling surface, but it had not caught fire.
The last screeches were cut off suddenly by the efficient crunching of spades.
“Good work, men,” said Captain Desperandum. He was all satisfaction. “Weigh drag. Jump lively aloft and loose the sails, and let them hang in the clews and bunts.”
The men did this. I was turning below to prepare lunch when I heard it.
Ee-ee-ee-ee-ee.
From the east, from the dry, dead dimness at the dust-washed base of the cliffs, came an astounding host of striders. The twilit surface of the bay was black with them, close-packed millions scuttling furiously toward the Lunglance. The tepid winds could never bear us away in time. The hideous little vermin were moving so fast that their saucered feet sent up puffs of dust.
They moved like a million tightly wound clockwork roaches.
Desperandum walked calmly to the stem to observe the advancing multitude. At that moment the sun appeared, edging slowly over the rim of the bay. The effect of direct sunlight was immeasurably cheering. The bay was brighter, airier place, less reminiscent of open graves, abandoned mine shafts, and similar unpleasant places. The striders were changed from an unnerving menace to a mere irritation.
“Get below and fetch me a barrel of oil,” Desperandum said. Three crewmen, one of them Murphig, hurried below and were soon back, groaning under their ivory burden. Desperandum picked up the barrel and held it casually under one arm as be walked to the stern railing. He touched the catch with one foot and folded the railing down. The striders were closing fast now, showing no fear of the sudden sunlight, their faceted eyes glittering like cheap imitation rubies.
Desperandum peeled off the barrel’s watertight whale-skin top and started to pour the oil overboard in a thick stream. Having never before poured whale oil on dust, he was unaware of its peculiar properties. It did not spread out in a thin flammable film, as he had expected. Instead it soaked up dust in a thick black cake and sank like a rock.
I could not see Desperandum’s expression because of his dustmask, but I imagine that he was aghast. The creatures were almost on us now; their rusty creaking was deafening.
Desperandum set the barrel down. “Get below!” he shouted. The men stood stunned for a second, then rushed for the hatches.
The striders surrounded us now, trampling one another in their eagerness to get on deck. There were not as many as I had first thought Perhaps there were as few as a million. Still making a head-hurting noise like metal files on one’s own teeth, they began to swarm up under the railing. The ship was still moving; this gave them some difficulty. Desperandum was trying to rescue his anemone. It seemed to resent rescue and kept him at bay with snaps of its tentacles. They were as effective as threats of suicide.
Another day cramped in the hold was more than I could bear. I had been enjoying the sunlight Nullaqua’s sun, usually more tinged with blue than I thought aesthetically necessary in a star, had never looked so beautiful. Besides, Dalusa was out on patrol and I wanted to wait for her. So, as the rest of the crew ducked through the hatches, I sprang energetically into the ratlines and climbed up several feet above the deck. My head was on a level with the mainsail yard.
Desperandum was still fiddling with his specimen. Now he was cut off from both of the hatches in the center hull. Worst of all, his specimen did not need any of his help, if I could judge by the sixteen drained strider corpses I had found outside its urn that morning.
Desperandum was surrounded. Suddenly the faithful Flack stuck his dustmasked head out of the kitchen hatch. “Captain! Captain, this way!” he shouted, but his voice was barely audible over the intolerable screeching. Nevertheless, Desperandum looked up.
Something thudded gently against the side of the ship.
The screeching stopped, cut off short and unanimously. My ears rang with silence. As one, the striders leapt off the starboard side of the ship, and, in panic-stricken silence, began to skate off at top speed across the dust.
It was one of the most extraordinary things I had ever seen.
Then came something that made it pale into insignificance.
Over the port railing came an immense tapering tube the size of a young tree trunk, studded with layered rosebush thorns at least six inches in diameter
. It was followed by the rest of a sluggishly weaving nest of tentacles, black, thorned atrocities thick enough to use for water mains. I didn’t get a very good look as I was too busy panicking and running up the ratline.
By the time I had caught my breath, the new anemone had ensconced itself comfortably between the mainmast and the mizzenmast, and it showed every sign of willingness to make its stay permanent.
It was a full-grown specimen, I noted from my somewhat shaky position on the main lower topgallant yard. Its tentacles were a good twenty-five feet long; its barrel body perhaps four feet high, a little over five feet if one counted its immense, rather discolored rose. It looked fat and happy, reminiscent somehow of a well-fed Nullaquan. It had seven tentacles; the eighth had apparently been chewed off in some childhood mishap.
It languidly draped three of its tentacles across the topsail braces and the main brace, wrapping them securely like grapevine tendrils around the wires of a trellis. The inner and outer lifts of the yard beneath my feet sang with tension. I immediately abandoned it and headed for the crow’s nest.
A questing tentacle found the mainmast and tugged at it.
The entire thing shook; I clung with cramped fingers to the ratline.
For a moment the idea had struck me that the anemone had boarded us to rescue its captive offspring. That notion was dispelled a few moments later when, with a negligent sweep of one arm, the anemone knocked the glass jar from its table. It hit the deck with a crash and a clang.
The heavy iron grating had crushed two of the young anemone’s tentacles; a shard of glass had stabbed its tubular body. It dragged itself with crippled slowness across the deck.
Somehow the anemone sensed movement. With unerring accuracy it picked its young kinsman from the deck and tasted it with a neat thorn puncture just above the suction foot. It found cannibalism less than appealing and dropped its victim to the deck with a complete lack of interest. Deeply wounded, perhaps mortally, the young anemone crawled painfully to the rail, trailing yellowish juice. It fell overboard and sank without a trace.
Involution Ocean Page 12