by John Dalmas
"You're doing fine," he said. "Keep talking. I wouldn't be surprised if you came up with something."
I didn't, though-that night or any other. I didn't know what Piet might have in mind of course, but none of the rest of us came up with anything.
I was fishing with Jenoor a few weeks later when the end of the dry season arrived. We found out the hard way. Fortunately, we were fairly close to the island, on the west side, usually the upwind side when there was any wind. We seldom went more than a couple of hundred yards from it, for safety's sake, and the water two hundred yards from the island was only four feet deep or so, green in the tropical sunlight. It was shallow enough that we used spears occasionally, when a fish came near enough to that strange object floating on the surface.
We could have gotten out and waded, but we wouldn't of course, because one of the fish species around there- the javelin fish, which was sometimes five or more feet long-was known to attack swimmers. The idea was for us to eat fish, not vice versa.
It was early afternoon, a better time for spotting fish than when the sun was lower. Usually we would see fish from time to time-more often than not, the fish we caught were ones we saw feeding. We'd cast a little way in front of them and let them come up on the lure.
This day we were seeing none at all; it was as if they'd all moved somewhere else.
We'd noticed occasional thunderheads for several days, building far to the west in the afternoons, but none had come near. We'd have welcomed a good rain, just for the change.
Jenoor and I were both facing east to reduce the glare effect on our eyes, and hadn't noticed how near the storm had gotten until we heard the thunder, Jenoor had just hooked our first fish after two hours of nothing. We both turned; the thunderhead wasn't much more than a mile away, with a thick dark wall of rain coming down from it to the sea.
We weren't smart enough to be worried, and returned our attention to the fish. As she played it, perhaps forcing it more than usual because of the rainstorm coming, swells started to raise and lower the skiff. I'd already reeled in my own lure, to keep my line out of her way as she worked her fish. Now I picked up a paddle. The storm was approaching faster than I'd expected, and I felt my first misgiving.
"Horse him in," I told her tersely. "If the line breaks, it breaks. I think we'd beiter get to shore before that thing hits."
She nodded, raising her rod tip and cranking harder. That lasted about ten seconds before the wind hit. It was colder than I would have thought, and almost too hard to be air. With the water as shallow as it was, the sea responded quickly; within seconds the swells became waves that threatened to swamp us.
"Break the line and let's get out of here," I yelled, Jenoor yanked, and the line and rod went slack. Gripping the paddle, I began to dig for the island with it. That's when the first big wave hit, and we turned over.
The water seemed deeper than usual. The wind was piling it up, and it was up to my shoulders. I knew Jenoor didn't swim very well, and my first thought was to find and get hold of her, but I couldn't see her. She's on the other side of the boat, I thought, or under it. Somehow I'd come up on its upwind side. The next thing I knew, she surfaced a few feet in front of me, swimming clumsily, as the boat righted itself. It was full of water.
I struck out for it, and that's when I discovered that the big wave hadn't been big at all. The next one was the big one, and steep because the water was so shallow. It lifted us both, but we went up and down almost in place, because it wasn't breaking yet. The skiff, on the other hand, got carried thirty feet farther from me. The next wave was close behind and bigger still, and it was breaking. I just had time to grab Jenoor when it crashed over us, carrying us tumbling and confused in the general direction of the island. I was scared to death I'd lose hold of her.
I wasn't even sure the waves would take us to the island, because we'd been on the windward side, but off toward the south end. With my free arm, I tried to swim to my left. The next breaker caught us and drove us forward again, sprawling and out of control, and then we were in waist-deep water. My arm was around Jenoor. I lurched to my feet, helping her up. We were inside the breaker line now, not more than a couple of hundred feet from the mangroves, about even with the island's tip. I could see the skiff, awash but still upright, sideways and seventy or eighty feet ahead of us. The wind and waves were pushing it a lot faster than we could wade or swim, and unless we were luckier than I had any right to expect, it was going to miss the island and go out to sea.
Let it, I thought, and kept wading toward the island with my hand clamped around Jenoor's wrist. There were, after all, priorities, and I could always make a raft.
The rain hit then like a wall, and the wind slammed our backs, knocking us off our feet for a moment, while a rip current tried to take us past the island. But the water was shallow enough that once our feet found the bottom again, the rip couldn't sweep us away. In a minute or two, whipped by hard-blowing rain, we were clambering through and over the prop roots at the edge of the mangroves. We didn't stop until we were on solid land, scrambling as if something was after us.
Then we just lay on the ground for a minute, holding on to one another. The rain fell on us as if there weren't any treetops overhead, and we didn't get up until I realized I was starting to feel a lot more than just protective of Jenoor.
The wind hardly penetrated the forest, but it sure whipped the treetops. They were all bending southeast. The rain was incredible. When we got to camp, our cistern, the plastite chest, was already full and running over. All five of us crouched inside the shelter, no one speaking for a while. Finally Deneen said two words: "The boat?"
"Gone," I said. "We're lucky we didn't go with it."
She nodded and reached over, squeezing my hand.
After a few minutes though, we stopped feeling awed by the storm. Or maybe the word is intimidated. "No boat," Deneen said. "Maybe it is time to think about leaving this place. We could get pretty hungry trying to live on lizard."
"We could make a raft," I said. "But maybe this storm is just the first of a season of them." Again I turned to Piet. "What do you think?"
"We've been waiting ten weeks," he said, "almost eleven. And I've got a contact or two who might have a lead on a cutter."
I knew when he said it that he wasn't feeling optimistic.
"But let's give Klentis and Aven another five days, at least," he finished. "If they don't get here by then, we'll try our luck."
FOUR
The storm lasted about an hour, then stopped almost as suddenly as it began, leaving us with sunshine, and water dripping from the trees. If we were to stay another five days, we'd need to keep fishing, so I went out and cut poles to make a raft with. Then, it still being our day to fish, Jenoor and I went back out. There were no more thunderheads to the west, but we stayed within a hundred yards of the island anyway. The raft wasn't as quick as the skiff, and we had only push poles to move her with.
We were lucky we'd had four sets of fishing tackle.
If the fish had given us almost no action earlier that day, this time we had more than we needed within half an hour: a pair of sand moochers more than thirty-five inches each.
That evening, instead of talking about stealing a cutter, we talked about where we'd go in it. Piet told us about a planet we might try-one that dad had favored. He called it Grinder.
"It used to be a mining world," he said. His voice was quiet, as soft as the twilight that let us see his Face but hid his expression. "There used to be deposits of very high quality heavy-metal ores in the crust. But after a few centuries they were mined out, and Grinder was too far from anywhere to make ordinary ores worth mining. By six hundred years ago the mines had shut down. Most of the people left then, but some stayed, hunting and farming, and gradually it turned into a hideout for smugglers."
"You think it would work as a rebel base then?" Deneen asked.
"It's as promising as any." He paused as if deciding whether or not to say what he said
next. "Both your parents favored it, so it's the place they're most likely to go if they get off Evdash."
If they get off Evdash. It was the first time Piet had even implied an if, and the words ended the conversation. We sat together in the silent gloom for a minute or more longer before anyone moved. Then Tarel got up without saying anything and went out to his hammock. A moment later Deneen went to hers, and then Jenoor, my eyes following her. That left only Piet and me squatting in the shelter, and when I turned to him, his eyes were on me.
"Piet," I murmured, "I need to talk to you. Privately."
"Go ahead."
"I need more privacy than this," I said, and got up. Piet got up too, and followed me as I walked to the floater. It was parked outside the repellent field, so we got in and shut the door quickly to keep most of the bugs outside.
"Okay," he said when we'd both sat down, "let's have it."
"I want you to marry Jenoor and me. You're the senior member-the leader and magistrate in this community. If you say we're married, we are."
"You've talked to Jenoor about this?"
"No. I wanted to get your agreement first."
"How old is she?" he asked.
"You know how old she is. She's sixteen. And a half."
"What's the legal marriageable age for a girl on Evdash?"
"Eighteen. Seventeen with a parent's consent. What's the legal age in the Federation? The Empire?"
"Eighteen. Sixteen with a parent's consent."
"Or a guardian's?" I asked.
"Or a guardian's."
"So there's no natural law that says eighteen. Only legal arbitraries that some past legislatures passed."
"Not all laws make sense," he replied. "But they're the stuff of civilization. Unless a law is actually destructive and can't be changed, it ought to be obeyed. Decent laws, even if they seem a bit foolish, are what keep a society from coming apart."
His words surprised me. I hadn't expected them from someone who'd been a rebel most of his life. I could see what he meant though, even if I felt sure it didn't apply in this case. I sat there waiting for something to come to me that would convince him, but all I could think of was how I'd felt when Jenoor and I had gotten ashore that afternoon, safe from the sea, and I'd lain there with my arms around her. It had felt like my heart was in my throat, and I'd wanted to keep her safe forever. Among other things.
Piet was the one who broke the silence. "All right. So let's say I'm her guardian now; I guess I am. Give me a reason it's all right for you two to get married."
"Okay," I answered slowly. "First let's assume she's willing; that she wants to. Evdash is part of the Empire now, so legally, sixteen should be old enough, if we consider you her guardian and you give your permission. And next, we're outside the law, so we can't go to some courthouse and ask them to marry us. We couldn't if we were thirty, so age isn't the issue. Only whether she wants to and whether you're willing."
"Why not wait?" he said. "You're not the kind who lets his gonads rule his life."
There was no denying that sex was part of it, but only part, though I suppose it added a lot of the urgency to it. And like I said, I felt protective of her. But I also felt fond, and-I just wanted to be with her as her husband. I didn't really have the language to describe it.
It also occurred to me that now Piet's questions were more to make sure I'd thought it through myself. That probably meant he'd say yes. "Why not wait?" I said, answering his question. "Because in two weeks there's a good chance we'll all be dead. And we could have had two weeks together by then."
Piet turned the door handle. "Ask her," he said. "I hope she tells you yes. Five to one she does."
We shook hands on it and got out. When I'd closed the door, we walked together through near night the twenty yards to camp. I almost went over to her hammock right then to ask her, but I didn't, Hers was between Deneen's and Tarel's-they were only about six or eight yards apart-and I wanted my proposal to be private.
Sometime in the middle of the night it rained again. Not a downpour like we'd had that afternoon, but a pretty good rain that chased us all out of our hammocks and into the shelter. So of course we had to bunk down on the bare ground-not the most comfortable sleeping, especially with Bubba smelling like a wet canid. He read my thought and chuckled, a sound so human you'd have to hear it to believe it.
In the morning we could cut vegetation and pile it in the shelter for beds. The repellent fields would keep it from getting full of insects and other arthropods. But the hammocks, which were made of fine-mesh netting, were cooler and generally more comfortable than piles of weeds would be. So the best solution seemed to be to keep on sleeping in the hammocks and only take shelter as needed-hopefully not often. I couldn't see any practical way of slinging hammocks inside the shelter.
Maybe, I told myself, we'd been too quick to leave our hammocks. We didn't wear much to sleep in anyway, and as long as the rain wasn't too cold… And the hammocks were made of "Skin-Soft" synthetic, so they didn't soak up water.
Which brought to my mind the matter of privacy if Jenoor agreed to marry me. We had a second repellent field, so we could have our hammocks away from the others, but they were too small and unstable for double occupancy. And as for separate shelter if needed… This definitely seemed to be the rainy season. The best possibility seemed to be the floater, if we moved it a little farther away. The floater would get around the problem of hammock stability, too. At the very beginning, Piet had said no one would sleep in the floater because everyone couldn't, not comfortably, and he wasn't going to give anyone, including himself, special privileges. Besides, hammocks were cooler.
But Jenoor and I would be married. If she said yes. And he'd treat that as a different situation, I was sure.
I went back to sleep feeling pretty cheerful, considering our long-range prospects.
The next morning had a good feel to it. It even smelled good-not dusty any longer, but fresh-and I was glad the rainy season had arrived. We all had a hand-foot workout and then Deneen and Tarel went fishing. Piet sat on a log stool-we'd sawed five blocks from a log to use for seats-and began working on a new carving. He was the best of us all at turning a piece of wood into something artistic. It would have been my day to keep the still supplied with salt water, except that now we had rainwater-all of it we needed.
It was Jenoor's day to collect jonga fruits, beat them thoroughly with a hammer, and put them to soak, to soften for tomorrow's breakfast. The way to pick jonga fruits is to take a pole with a heavy survival knife lashed to it and find some you can reach from the ground or from some branch you could climb on. Then, with the pole and knife, you saw or hack at their tough stems till they drop off. She had picked up the pole and her old plaited packsack and was leaving camp when I fell in beside her.
Bubba had fallen in on her other side. Not all right, Bubba, I thought to him. He knew what I had in mind. This isn't going to be easy for me. If you have to eavesdrop, do it from somewhere out of sight, okay?
He flashed me a quick grin and veered off casually to explore some interesting smell. As if there was any spot or critter on Lizard Island that he hadn't examined a dozen times already.
"Okay if I walk along with you?" I asked Jenoor.
She smiled sideways at me. "Sure. Glad to have you."
"I've got something in particular I want to talk to you about."
"All right." She looked interested, and something more. I really didn't know what to say next, or rather, how to say it. Will you marry me would make sense of course, but it seemed kind of abrupt and inelegant.
"What I want to say is-it's a question." I stepped in front of her. "Jenoor, will you marry me?"
So much for elegance.
She looked at me seriously, not turning her eyes down shyly or anything like that. "Of course I will, Larn. I've been hoping you'd ask one day. I can't imagine marrying anyone else; I haven't since the first week Tarel and I came to live with your family."
"You mean
it!" I said. It seemed a wonder. "You really mean it!" I stepped back from her and looked around for something to sit on; my knees felt a little weak. But there wasn't anything handy.
"Who'll marry us?" she asked.
"I asked Piet if he would, last night when he and I went to the floater. He's the one we look up to here- sort of the magistrate of Lizard Island. He questioned me about it pretty closely, and then he said he would, right here on the island, if you agreed. He even said he hoped you'd say yes. And I've already solved the problem of privacy."
It suddenly occurred to me I was talking too much, too fast, and I stopped.
She answered slowly. "Of course. The extra repellent field and the floater. Piet would let us use the floater, under the circumstances."
I nodded.
"When would you like the wedding?" she asked.
"How about-this evening? Just before supper."
She nodded thoughtfully. "That sounds good." Then she leaned the pole against a tree beside her. "Is there…" This time it was her turn to be a little embarrassed, "Is there something we should do now to seal the agreement?"
I stared. She was so darned pretty. I put out my hands. She took them and we stepped together and kissed, long but gently. Then she stepped back.
"I'm going to like being married to you," she said. "And I want it to last a very long time. Until… As long as circumstances allow. But now I want you to go back to camp, and I'll go cut some jongas. It's best if we don't spend all day together."
"Right," I said, and started back to camp. She'd handled the whole scene as if she was twenty-five years old, I told myself. I'd known she was mature for her age, but she'd been incredible.
Suddenly I flipped out and did a run of three handsprings right there in the forest.
Back at the shelter I told Piet what Jenoor's answer had been. He accepted it matter-of-factly and didn't even smile. To my surprise, that bothered me. It was as if I wanted him to pump my hand and congratulate me or something. Then it occurred to me that I'd once heard mom mention something to dad about someone she called "Gwennith"-as if this Gwennith had been married to Piet, or anyway been someone special to him. And as if something had happened. But I'd never heard anything more. In the rebel life he'd led, with the political police always looking for him… She might have been killed or imprisoned, or they might have had to separate and never found one another again. I was sure Piet would have been a heck of a good husband. He had all the qualities.