by David Walton
She leaned against the rail and sighed. "I wish I could have gone with them."
"On land? But there could be all kinds of dangerous things. Wild animals, quicksand, natives with poisoned spears."
"I suppose now you're going to say it's no place for a woman."
"I suppose I am." He laughed, and she smiled to see it. Somewhere on this journey, Matthew had learned to laugh at himself. "I'm just saying it's better to let the armed soldiers take the first look. We're all going to shore eventually."
"But we're missing the first discoveries. What marvels is my father seeing, right now, while we're stuck here?"
He rang the bell again. Then he said, hesitantly, "How long do you think we'll stay here, on the island?"
"We just arrived."
"I know. But what if we can't figure out how to get home without dying? We could be here for years and years. The next time a ship arrives, it could be your grandchildren who meet them at the dock."
"You have to have children first to have grandchildren."
"That's what I'm saying. There aren't many women here, if you haven't noticed. Once this colony starts up, you might find yourself with a lot of suitors."
Catherine tossed a dismissive hand. "Who would want me? My father's money is gone, so I'm poor, but I don't how to cook or clean or keep a house. Let's see, what skills have I learned recently? I can dissect animals. I can read a nautical map and tie a bosun's knot and calculate longitude. Which of those—"
He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth. She tried to slap him, but she was off balance, and the blow barely glanced off his chin. "Missed," he said, grinning.
But she wasn't playing. This wasn't a flirtatious game, in which she pretended to be uninterested in order to lead him on. To make sure there was no mistake, she curled her fist and punched him solidly in the eye, sailor- style.
"Ouch!" He reeled back, his pride probably stinging worse than his face.
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. "Why did you have to do that?"
"I thought you might like it," he said.
"It's a mortal sin."
"It is not!"
"It leads to one."
He rubbed his face. "Since when did you care so much about sin?"
"Oh, stop whining. Let me see."
She pulled his hand away and could tell from the color around his eye that blood was already pooling in the cavity. It would be black and blue for certain, probably for a few days. She wasn't really sorry. She valued his friendship, but she had enough to think about right now without trying to figure out if she loved him. Still, he did look funny. She let a smile sneak out. "You look a sight."
"It hurts."
"Craven. You'll never be a great explorer with that attitude."
"I don't want to be a great explorer."
She made her voice serious again. "And I don't want to marry. I don't want to plant a garden and mend clothes and feed the children while a man makes all the discoveries and gets all the glory."
She heard a splashing sound from below and looked out to see if the longboat was returning. On the deck beside them, six tamarins stepped out of the air.
THE bones were human. Most of them were scattered through the sanctuary, though they found some high in the church tower. The bones had been chewed by animals and scattered, but the fact that they were all in the church implied that the settlers had gathered there together to make their final stand. There were no weapons. There was also no clothing, not even scraps left by hungry scavengers. Had the tamarins done this?
The church was made of diamond like the rest, and the long benches inside were made of gold. Almost everything in all the buildings— beds, tables, chairs— was made of some precious metal. The chimneys weren't stone after all, but blocks of silver. There was no artistry; it wasn't like visiting the rich cathedrals at Salisbury or Ely. The furniture was practical and unadorned. Parris's impression was of a group of men so saturated with riches that they didn't know what to do with them.
Even so, it was another mystery. Gold and silver and especially diamond were hard to work. You couldn't make even a simple chair out of them without a forge and a great deal of skill. Besides that, they were tremendously heavy. Parris pushed his weight against a gold bench and could barely slide it at all, never mind lift it. How had they constructed whole houses?
Beyond the church, they discovered three small pools dug into the ground and lined, one with gold, one with silver, and the third with diamond. Despite the fact that the water was still, no scum or algae grew over its surface. Dozens of eels swam sinuously through the water. At the bottom of the gold pond sat a few gold crowns stamped with the face of Henry VIII— the first gold Parris had seen that had come from England.
The others joined him at the water's edge. Sinclair picked up a fallen branch and reached in to poke at one of the eels.
"Why are they here?" Parris said. "Were they breeding them for food? There's a whole lake to fish—"
Half of Sinclair's stick was heavy and glinting. One of the soldiers reached his hand toward the water to pick up a coin. "Stop!" Parris said. He ran around the edge of the pond toward the man, but his warning came too late. The man screamed and pulled his hand out. It was frozen in place, fingers outstretched, and made of pure, shining gold.
Everyone backed away from the pond. Half of the branch Sinclair had put in the water was also gold, and he tossed it hastily away. Was it the water? Or the eels? Parris looked in the other two ponds. In one, he saw a scattering of silver coins. In the other, though he had to look carefully before he found it, a single small diamond.
The soldier moaned in panicked horror. With a great effort, he lifted the gold hand and cradled it in his other arm. Parris studied it in amazement, careful not to touch it. All the tiny features— the hair, the creases, the wrinkles around the knuckles— were gone, replaced with smooth gold like a glove. It didn't seem to be just a coating, however— the hand was heavy enough to be solid metal.
"This is worth your hand, friend," Sinclair said. "Gold of this weight would fetch ten times your wages in London."
The soldier didn't say anything, but Parris could see by his expression that he wasn't impressed.
The bell- box clutched under Parris's arm rang. He glanced at it in surprise— he had forgotten about it in the excitement of exploring the settlement. He was about to return the signal when the bell rang three times in short succession, and then did it again. It repeated the pattern over and over as they ran back through the settlement in the direction of the ship. As they reached the cover of the trees, it fell silent.
Chapter Twenty-one
THE lookouts saw nothing. One moment, the forecastle was empty but for Matthew and Catherine and a few sailors manning the ropes; the next, six red tamarins appeared, still wet from swimming. They looked so much like Chichirico that Catherine couldn't have told them apart. None of them wore clothes. Matthew began sending the emergency signal through the bell- box, three quick rings.
The sailors ran, but Matthew and Catherine were trapped, since the tamarins stood between them and the ladders. The tamarins advanced. One of them spoke in their language, a torrent of syllables and gestures. Catherine didn't understand most of it, but she caught the word "Chichirico," and guessed what they wanted.
"He's here, on the ship," she said in their language, or tried to. She used the word for "ship" that Chichirico had taught her, but he used it for other things, too, usually human things that were distasteful. She suspected it actually meant something like "abomination."
The tamarin made an incomprehensible response. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the red beard and broad shoulders of Oswyn Tate lift slowly above the port ladder. He raised a matchlock to his shoulder.
"No!" Catherine shouted, but it was too late. He touched the match to the powder, and the gun erupted in smoke and noise. The tamarins disappeared.
Tate threw the matchlock aside and scrambled the rest of the wa
y onto the deck. He drew a knife and began slashing chaotically through the air.
"Stop," Catherine said. "You can't hurt them that way. You'll only anger them."
"I didn't miss," Tate said. "I shot one of the devils, but the bullet went right through. They're not real flesh and blood."
"They are. Please, put the knife down. They're gone."
Tate calmed down a little, but he still spun, scanning the deck. He walked over to the rail and examined a hole where the wood had splintered from his bullet. "Went right through. Didn't hurt that devil at all."
A series of splashes sounded, and they looked over the rail to see ripples spreading from several disturbed areas of water. A voice whispered in Catherine's ear, in halting English. "I go with them. I return."
She kept her face still and didn't reply.
Tate still peered over the rail, oblivious. "Good riddance," he muttered. "I hope they don't come back."
Catherine raised an eyebrow. "How can you be sure they're gone?"
SINCLAIR was furious. Tate, that fool, had fired on an unarmed native who posed no clear threat. The reds might have been coming with an offer of friendship.
"You weren't here," Tate said. "They appeared out of nowhere and attacked the young lady."
"They didn't attack me," Catherine said. "They were talking to me."
Sinclair clenched his fists. He was surrounded by idiots. He couldn't leave them alone for two hours without something like this happening. Maybe the tamarins would have been their enemies anyway, but they certainly would be now.
"I should throw you in the brig," he said.
"You can't do that," Tate said.
Sinclair leaned forward. "I like you," he said. "You've always been loyal. But I can lock you up, and I can have you flogged. Don't ever question my authority."
Tate looked like he might object, but he said, "Yes, my lord."
Sinclair called for the bosun and started issuing orders to unload the ship. There was no point in waiting any longer. Being surrounded by water was clearly no protection from the tamarins, and they couldn't stay on the ship forever. Better to establish a strong presence as soon as possible. Any more time spent huddling on board simply delayed the inevitable. With enemies that could turn invisible and walk through walls, no place was safe.
THE soldier with the gold hand came to see Parris, complaining of pain where the flesh of his arm was fused with the gold. His wrist was red and irritated, and when he rotated it, pus seeped up from the gap. He was hot and feverish. What ever was wrong, the quintessence water wasn't healing it, or if it was, the presence of the gold was causing it all over again.
Parris told him there was no choice but to amputate at once. With the miraculous water running through his body, the normally dangerous cut should heal in a matter of minutes. The soldier balked, despite the fact that the hand was already useless, apparently hoping a way might be discovered to transform it back. He would wait until morning, he said. In the morning, he would let Parris amputate.
By morning, he was dead.
He was the first to die that day, but not the last. Quintessence water might be able to heal common sicknesses and injuries, but the plants and animals of Horizon had more deadly weapons. While the sailors were put to work unloading the ship, the passengers started felling trees to enlarge the palisade. One man tried to pick a juicy- looking fruit he found hanging on a bush within easy reach. The fruit was covered with invisible barbed spines that lodged in his hand. They were apparently poisoned, since he fell over dead a few minutes later. Another man, a passenger with some experience hunting game, went into the forest with a matchlock against advice. He shot a boarlike creature, but by the time he approached it, it had healed from its wound and gored him with its tusks. These, too, were poisoned, and the man died shortly after dragging himself back to the settlement.
It made sense to Parris. God had provided the animals and plants of this place with miraculous water, making them harder to kill, but predators still had to eat, and prey still needed ways to defend themselves. Poison, apparently, had taken the place of brute force. It made the island seem more alien and treacherous. How many more people would die discovering which foods were deadly and which were safe?
Despite this, the new settlers threw themselves into the work with enthusiasm. After months of confinement on the Western Star, they reveled in the chance to stretch their legs on dry ground and build their new home. They were awed by the buildings, and everyone wanted to dip a branch into the pools and pull out gold or silver or diamonds.
The sailors, no more able to return home than anyone else, were as much a part of the settlement as the passengers. That meant over a hundred people who needed shelter. The existing town wasn't big enough. They chopped the beetlewood trees into long logs and extended the palisade into a second circle, giving the whole settlement the rough shape of a figure eight, with a short opening connecting the old town with the new. The palisade itself was a lethal- looking toothwork of sharpened stakes that any large animal would have difficulty scaling. But would it stop a tamarin?
At dusk, when the sun reached its largest and brightest and the clearing blazed with heat, Sinclair called a halt to the work. He insisted that all tools be carried back to the ship. They had just gathered everything together when the tamarins appeared.
No one saw them coming. One minute, the forest was silent; the next, more than a dozen tamarins surrounded them. These tamarins were red, like Chichirico, with the same basic size and features.
"Ignore them," Sinclair said. "Carry on with your business as if they weren't there."
Nervously, the men hoisted supplies on their shoulders and began the trek back to the ship. The tamarins watched them, but made no move to engage. Parris spotted Tate, off to one side, ramming wadding into his matchlock and filling the pan with powder. He pointed him out to Sinclair.
Sinclair reached Tate just as he raised the gun to his shoulder.
"Put it down," Sinclair said. "Do not fire."
"Someone has to be ready," Tate said. "I won't fire unless they attack."
"It won't do any good. Bullets pass right through them. And if you threaten them, you may provoke them to attack. I'm ordering you to lower the gun."
Tate swore, but did as he was told.
The red tamarins shadowed them back to the ship. The settlers ignored them as best they could, and all returned safely before dark.
A feast was waiting for them on board. Some sailors had found enormous tortoises walking on the beach and hauled them back to the ship. Turned upside down, the tortoises could be roasted in their shells and made fine eating. The delicious smell of smoking meat filled the ship, and the men soon forgot the silent threat of the tamarins in an evening of feasting, dancing, and song.
CHICHIRICO returned that night. He appeared to Catherine in her cabin aboard ship, where she was sitting up waiting for him, hoping he would come. Father was snoring in his hammock. Catherine was tired of the ship. So far, she hadn't been allowed to so much as touch her foot to the beach. Matthew had joined the men in their first day of work on land, but not her. She'd been pressed into service mending sailcloth with the other women. A necessary job, of course, if the Western Star were to one day return to England, but as dull as the endless open sea. She wanted to go on shore.
Chichirico seemed happy to see her, though perhaps he was just happy to be back in his own home among his own people. They spoke in a mix of English and tamarin, switching back and forth in an attempt to be understood.
"Who killed the original settlers?" Catherine said. And in tamarin: "Why . . . hairless ones . . . die?"
There followed a frustrating series of attempts by Chichirico to communicate something which Catherine couldn't understand. Finally, Chichirico lifted his central tail, the one with the needle- sharp spine at the end. "Try?" he said. He made a motion like he was drinking water. "Safe now."
Catherine understood— because she now had quintessence in her body from
drinking the water, it would be safe to bond with him. But would it really? Was he just guessing? Chichirico wore a simple sling or bandolier made of twisted vines, and from this he produced the tough cylindrical stalk of some plant. He bit open the top, revealing a hollow inside filled with a metallic fluid that she recognized: mercury.
Catherine glanced at her father, still sleeping soundly. Heart pounding, she shifted in bed, presented her back to Chichirico, and waited.
IT was gentler this time. She slipped easily into his perspective without losing her own. The change was disorienting, but not nearly so overwhelming as it had been in England. When the ritual was done, she was fully herself, able to control her own thoughts, but with a thin strand still connecting her mind with Chichirico's.