At Winter's End

by Robert Silverberg

  He considered what small stock of information he had about the Sea-Lord civilization of the Great World days. About all there was was the account in the book that Hresh had written, he who so many years ago had penetrated the ruined cities of the ancients and looked with his own eyes on their way of life by means of machines of theirs, no longer functional now, that had given him glimpses of their actual time.

  The Sea-Lords, Hresh said, had been created by the humans out of some species of intelligent sea-going mammal, just as they had created the People out of apes. Like all mammals they breathed air, not water, but they were much more at home in the sea than on land, where they moved about with some degree of difficulty. When they were on land they traveled in cunningly made chariots that moved on silver treads, controlling them with manipulations of their flipper-fingers. Mainly, though, they lived at sea, guiding the vessels that carried all manner of costly merchandise from one part of the Great World to another. The other Great World races depended heavily on them. When they were in port, Hresh said, in the taverns and shops and waterfront restaurants that they frequented, they behaved like the bold, swaggering princes of the sea that they were.

  And now—to have retrogressed to the simple life of watergoing beasts—

  The crewmen were putting up tents under the trees. Nortekku watched them for a while. Not that the sight of tents being raised was so fascinating, but just now he wanted to avoid coming close to the Sea-Lords, or even to look in their direction.

  Siglondan and Kanibond Graysz didn’t appear to feel any such inhibition. They and their two Hjjk confederates went quickly down to the nearest Sea-Lord group and involved themselves in what looked very much like a conversation with them. Nortekku could hear the clicking, buzzing sound of Hjjk-speak, then the quick chatter of the Bornigrayans, and then the Hjjks again, speaking in brief outbursts with long spans of silence between them. From time to time the Sea-Lords seemed to reply, with a sort of clipped grunting that had the cadence and phrasing of language. After each burst of it the Hjjks spoke again to the two Bornigrayans, as if interpreting what had just been said.

  But how had the Hjjks learned the Sea-Lord language? By second sight, perhaps. Hjjks, Nortekku knew, had a kind of second sight that was much more powerful than that of the People. They were able to speak directly to minds with it: that was how they had first communicated with the newly emerged People in the early days of the Going Forth. Perhaps they had used it to develop some understanding of Sea-Lord speech, too.

  Thalarne now had joined the group and was listening attentively. Curiosity overcame Nortekku’s uneasiness: it felt foolish to hang back like this. He took himself down the sloping strand to the place close by the water where the others were gathered but the gathering broke up just as he arrived. The Sea-Lords headed into the water and the two Bornigrayans, with the pair of Hjjks, went off up the beach. Thalarne alone remained.

  She gave him a stricken look as he approached.

  “What was all that about?” Nortekku asked.

  She seemed to be struggling to shape an answer. Then she said, “There’s something very bad going on here, but I’m not altogether sure what it is. All I can tell you is that we aren’t just imagining what we think we see in their eyes. One good look will tell you that. It’s very clear that these people are aware of their own tragedy. They know what they once were; they know what they are now. You just have to look into those eyes and you know that they’re the eyes of people who can’t understand why they’re still alive, and don’t want to be any more. People who wish they were dead, Nortekku.”

  Who wish they were dead? For a moment Nortekku made no reply. He had never seen her look so deeply unnerved. It was easy enough to believe that there was something tragic about the expression in these creatures’ eyes: he had seen it himself, from far away. But how could she be certain of this startling interpretation of it? The grunting speech of the Sea-Lords and the mind-speech of the Hjjks were closed books to her, Nortekku knew.

  “You heard the Hjjks tell this to Kanibond Graysz and Siglondan?”

  She shook her head. “I got there too late to hear anything important. It was all winding down by then. I’m speaking purely intuitively.”

  “Ah. I see. And you trust that intuition, Thalarne?”

  “Yes. I do.” She was steadier now. “I looked into those eyes, Nortekku. And what they were saying was, We want to die. Show us how to do it. You are great ones who can cross the mighty sea; surely you can give this little thing to us. Surely. Surely. Surely.”

  That was going much too far, Nortekku told himself. This was hardly the method of science, as he understood that concept. The look in their eyes: was something like that a sufficient basis for so fantastic a theory? But Thalarne seemed wholly carried away by it. He had to be careful here. Cautiously he said, “You may be right. But I just can’t help but think that you’re making an awfully big intuitive leap.”

  “Of course I am. And I’ve already told you I’m not fully sure of it myself. Just go and stand close to them, though, and you can see for yourself. Those eyes are sending a message without any ambiguity at all. They’re pleading for it, Nortekku. They’re crying out for it.”

  “For death.”

  “For death, yes. For the extinction that somehow was denied them when the rest of the Great World was destroyed. They want to die, Nortekku, but they don’t know how to manage it. It’s almost as if they’re saying they want us to kill them. To put them out of their misery.”

  “But that’s insane!” Nortekku said, brushing at the air as though to push the concept away.

  “Well, then, so they’re insane. Or half-insane, anyway. Or perhaps they’re so terribly sane that to us they seem crazy.”

  “Asking to be killed—asking to be made extinct—”

  Perhaps there was something to it. He had seen those eyes himself. She was simply guessing, but the guess had a cold plausibility about it. But was Thalarne hinting, then, that she felt that their wish ought to be granted? Surely not.

  The idea was repellent, unthinkable, horrifying. It was a violation of all she believed, and he as well. She was a scientist, not an executioner. She had come here to investigate this surprising remnant of the Great World, to learn all that could be learned about it, not to extirpate it. And for him the survival of these Sea-Lords was a marvelous boon, a miraculous restoration of a small piece of a vanished world.

  With short, quick, troubled steps he began to pace back and forth, ankle-deep, at the margin of the gentle surf. Thalarne, moving along beside him, said, “Their whole context is gone. They’re all alone in a world they are no longer part of, one that they don’t like or understand. They have the intelligence their race had in the old days, or nearly so, but there’s nothing to apply it to, no framework to fit into, no world to belong to. So they swim and copulate and catch fish all day. Does that sound good to you? Then try it. Try it for ten, twenty, fifty years. Watch your parents growing old in such a life. Watch your children entering into it. They live a long time, Nortekku. They try not to bring new generations into being, but it happens. They think their gods have forgotten them. Their life is meaningless, and it goes on and on and on. It’s driven them halfway to madness. And so they want to die. If only they knew how.”

  “Well, maybe so. We can’t really know. But of course, even if that’s what they want, we couldn’t possibly—”

  “No. Of course not,” she said quickly. “How could we even consider it?”

  That much was a relief, he thought.

  “But that’s why this situation, if I’m right about it, is so tragic,” she went on. “And that’s why we need to find out much more about them.”

  “Yes,” Nortekku said. “Yes, definitely.” He would have said anything, just then. He wanted to get away from this whole subject as fast as he could.

  “Come with me,” Thalarne said abruptly. “Up there, behind those dunes, where Siglondan thinks there may be shrines. Places where artifacts are kep
t.”

  That made him uneasy too. “Should we go there, do you think? Wouldn’t it be sacrilege?”

  “Just to look. Siglondan and Kanibond Graysz surely will, before very long.”

  Getting over the dunes was no trivial task. Very little vegetation of any kind grew on them, and the loose sand slipped and slid beneath their feet. Thalarne pointed out places where the Sea-Lords themselves had worn deep tracks, compacting the dunes with their flippers, and they followed those. On the far side the air was still and very warm, heavy with the stifling interior heat of this continent: nowhere could they feel the sea breeze that made the strip by the shore so pleasant. Strange spiky plants were growing here, tall, stiff-armed, leafless, bristling with spines. These stood everywhere about, like guardians in the sandy wasteland. It was hard to follow the track here, but after a little searching Nortekku found something that had the look of a path, and they took it.

  By trial and error they made their way to a place where, no question about it, many flippered feet had passed. The sand was packed down hard. There was a second row of dunes here, much more stable ones, tightly bound by low sprawling shrubs interwoven with gray clumps of tough, sharp-edged grass. “Look here,” Thalarne said.

  Three bare metal frameworks sat in a row at the foot of the dunes: mere shapes, the fragile outlines of things rather than the things themselves. But from those shapes it seemed clear that these were the remnants of three of the vehicles—chariots, Hresh had called them—by which the ancient Sea-Lords had traveled when ashore. The ghostly hints of levers, of wheels, of seats, all gave credence to that idea.

  There was a sign, also, of a passageway into the dune, a tunnel roofed over by wooden arches. Nortekku and Thalarne exchanged glances. He saw her eagerness.

  “No,” he said. “We mustn’t. Not without their permission.”

  “Even though Kanibond Graysz and Siglondan will—”

  “Let them. We can’t. This has to be a sacred place.” He knew that Thalarne conceded the strength of that argument. But in any case the decision was taken from their hands, for a Sea-Lord had appeared from somewhere, an elderly one, it seemed, a male, stooped and bowed, with silvered fur and veiled, blinking eyes, who came shuffling up to them and took up a stance between them and the three chariots. The custodian of this place, perhaps—a priest, maybe. He had the sadness in his eyes too, and possibly also the anger that Nortekku believed lay behind it, but mainly they were tired eyes, very old, very weary. The Sea-Lord said something in a barely audible tone, low and husky, and, after a brief silence, said it again.

  “He wants us to leave, I think,” Nortekku said. But of course the old Sea-Lord could have been saying almost anything else.

  Thalarne agreed, all too readily. “Yes. Yes, that has to be it.” She smiled at the Sea-Lord and turned her hands outward, apologetically, and the two of them moved away, back toward the encampment by the water. The Sea-Lord remained where he was, watching them go.

  “Will you tell the Bornigrayans about this?” Nortekku asked.

  “I have to,” said Thalarne. “We’re not here as competitors. They’ve shared a lot of things with me. They’ll find it by themselves before long, anyway. You know that.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I imagine they will.”

  The eyes of that old Sea-Lord haunted him as they picked their way back over the outer dune. Thinking of him, Nortekku felt again a sense of the great age of the world into which his own people had erupted so recently. His world was new and young, only two centuries old, bursting with the vigor that came with having been let free of the cocoons after seven hundred thousand years in hiding. But now he saw more clearly than ever that the world of the New Springtime was but a thin overlay masking the dead, used-up world that had preceded it—masking a whole succession of dead, used-up worlds, going back to who knew what pre-human mysteries.

  So you are back to that, he thought. The transience of everything, the eternal cycle of decay and extinction. That is a grim and cheerless way of looking at things, he told himself. It is a vision devoid of all hope.

  But in that same bleak moment came once again the opposite thought, the compensating and comforting one, the thought that the world is a place of constant renewal through billions of years, and that that renewal was a never-ending process that held out the promise of eternal life. World after world, world without end.

  I will cling to that idea, Nortekku told himself. I must. I must.

  The next morning Thalarne led the two Bornigrayan archaeologists to the site on the far side of the dunes. Nortekku was still displeased about that, but grudgingly he accepted her argument that it would be unethical for one member of the expedition to conceal an important find from the others. He had to bear in mind, she reminded him, that she was here—and he as well—only because they had invited her along.

  There was something wrong with that line of reasoning, but Nortekku did not feel like taking the matter up with her. She was here, in fact, because her husband had wanted to send her somewhere far away, someplace where her lover wouldn’t be able to find her: it was for that reason, and no other, that Hamiruld had arranged to have her included in what was fundamentally an expedition designed to produce new plunder for those wealthy highborn collectors of antiquities who were paying the venture’s expenses. Whatever scientific information might be gathered was strictly incidental. And so, even though it struck Nortekku as folly to be worrying about ethical issues when dealing with such people as Siglondan and Kanibond Graysz, he wasn’t in a good position to be urging her to conceal finds from them. The truth of the situation was, he conceded, that he and Thalarne were fundamentally helpless here.

  Helplessly, therefore, they accompanied the Bornigrayans to the place of the chariots. The old Sea-Lord custodian was nowhere in sight. That was a blessing, Nortekku thought. Helplessly they looked on as Kanibond Graysz, using a power torch, went slithering into the tunnel that entered the dune. Helplessly they watched him emerge with objects: a rusted helmet that had an air of immense age about it, a knobby-tipped rod of scabby yellow metal that might have been a scepter, a battered bronze box inscribed with curvilinear writing of a Great World sort.

  “Nothing else in there,” Kanibond Graysz reported. “Just these three things, scattered about at random. But it’s a start. We’ll need to excavate to see if other things are buried beneath the floor. Tomorrow, perhaps.”

  Little was said by anybody as they returned to camp. But once Nortekku and Thalarne were back in the tent that they shared—the pretense that they were brother and sister had long since been abandoned—he found, to his horror, that he could not keep himself from raising the issue that he knew he must not raise with her.

  “That made me sick, what happened today. It’s theft, Thalarne. You said yourself, back in Bornigrayal, that it’s one thing to collect objects from a site that’s been abandoned for a million years, and something very different to steal them from living people.”

  “Yes. That’s true.”

  “And yet you just stood there while he went in and took those things. Even leaving the ethical issues out of the question, I ask you, Thalarne: is that good archaeological technique, just to walk in and pick up objects, without recording stratification or anything else?—But then there are the ethical issues too.”

  She made no attempt to hide her anguish. “Let me be, Nortekku. I don’t have any answers for you.”

  He pressed onward anyway. “Is it your position that since these people don’t care a hoot whether they live or die, it doesn’t matter what we do with the things that belong to them? We aren’t sure that that’s how they feel, you know. It’s just a speculation.”

  “A very likely one, though.”

  “Well, then—granting that you’re right—can we really feel free to help ourselves to their possessions while they’re still alive?”

  “Let me be, Nortekku,” Thalarne said again, tonelessly. “Can’t you see that I’m caught between all sorts of conflicting for
ces, and there’s nothing I can do? Nothing.”

  He saw that it was dangerous to push her any further. There was nothing she could do, nor he, for that matter. Nor would she allow any further debate about this. It was as though she had pulled an impenetrable curtain down around herself.

  The days went by. Nortekku stayed away, most of the time, when the Bornigrayans went over the dunes to poke in the caches of hidden artifacts back there. Usually Thalarne went with them, sometimes not, but when she did go she had little to report to Nortekku about anything they might have found there. It couldn’t have been much, he knew: Kanibond Graysz said something about that, one night at dinner, remarking on how scrappy and insignificant most of their finds had been. The sponsors of the expedition were going to be disappointed. Too bad, Nortekku thought, but he kept his opinions to himself.

  He still could not bring himself to go near the Sea-Lords. They spent much of their time in the water, often far out from shore where it would not have been possible to go, but when they returned to the beach he kept his distance from them. The unhappiness that they emanated was too contagious: being near them plunged him into gloom. Now and then he would see one of them looking toward him with that poignant, yearning stare of theirs. He would always look away.

  His estrangement from Thalarne saddened him as much as what the archaeologists were doing in the dunes. They still shared a tent, they still would couple from time to time, but there was no lifting of the invisible barrier that had fallen between them. Since he was unable to discuss anything with her involving the Sea-Lords, about all that was left to talk about was the weather, and the weather was unchanging, warm and sunny and calm day after day.