The Dancer from Atlantis

by Poul Anderson

  However, it was a considerable achievement. About eighty feet long, the slender hull was built outward and upward from a great dugout. Down the center ran a raised and bulwarked deck, beneath which passed thwarts for the rowers. The ram was a beak projecting at the waterline, bronze-sheathed, backed by heavy timbers. The twenty oars on either side were interrupted at the middle by leeboards which had turned out to be more practical, on the whole, than a false keel or centerboard. Steering was by a true rudder. Two masts bore fore-and-aft rigs. Because Sarpedon insisted – probably rightly, in view of the low freeboard, the scanty ballasting, and the impacts sustained in battle – that they be readily unstepped, the masts were short. Reid gained sail area by using gaffs, and he had available both a genoa jib and a spinnaker; but the Minoan cloth, loosely woven, inclined to stretch and sag and absorb water, did not give the performance of canvas or dacron.

  Thus the handling characteristics turned out so odd to him that his crew caught the knack about as fast as he did. Before long they were taking practice cruises on virtually every day of halfway decent weather. They were a hearty, laughter-loving two score and ten, youngsters in the late teens and early twenties, delighted at this novelty, bound and determined to master their ship and lay their wake in rings around those old fogies who grumbled at new-fangled foreign foolishness. No longer needed as an instructor, Reid usually stayed behind with Erissa. Time for him and her was shrinking unbearably. And one of his sailors, a slim youth of good looks and good family, who could scarcely keep his eyes off the girl, was named Dagonas.

  But she came aboard with Reid for the final test, the test of the ram, before the vessel was officially dedicated. The governor had released a hulk, traded to the state for cannibalizing by a merchant owner who hadn’t considered it worth his while to make those repairs which Sarpedon now carried out. A rival gang, envious boys and skeptical shellbacks, agreed to man the target craft and show up the radicals. Boats came along to rescue whoever got dunked.

  It was clear and brisk offshore, whitecaps marching, the by now almost permanent black column out of Pillar Mountain shredded by a gleefully piping wind. Overhead trailed a flight of storks, homeward bound from Egypt to the northlands, heralds of spring. The ram ship leaped and rolled. Its sides were gay with red and blue stripes; on the sails were embroidered dolphins. The waters rushed, the timbers talked, the rigging harped.

  Erissa, forward on the upper deck beside Reid, clapped her hands. The hair streamed back off her shoulders, the skirt was pressed against her loins. Oh, see!’ she cried happily. The vessel came about in a rattle of booms, gaffs, and blocks. It had just passed the bows of the conventional ship, which trudged along on oars, unable to come anywhere near the wind.

  ‘Stop your fancyfooting and let’s have some action!’ bawled the distant skipper.

  ‘Well, I suppose we should,’ Reid told Sarpedon, ‘having proved they can’t lay a grapnel on us.’ They looked at each other in shared unsureness. The boys on the thwarts raised a yell.

  Standing off, the rammers lowered sail, racked masts, and broke out oars. The target crew poised uneasily at their own oars. They knew what happened in a collision. Both hulls were stove in, along with the ribs of any rowers who didn’t get clear.

  Reid went aft to his quartermaster. ‘You remember the drill,’ he said. ‘Aim for the center, but not straight. That could leave us hung up on them. The idea is to rip out the strakes and sheer off.’

  ‘Like a bull goring a bear,’ Erissa said.

  ‘May that be no evil omen for you, Sister,’ the man responded.

  ‘Gods forfend!’ Dagonas called at his bench just below. Erissa smiled down upon him. Reid saw how smooth and lithe the boy’s body was. His own – well, he kept in fair shape. And Erissa was clutching his hand.

  The craft began to move. The coxswain’s chant gathered speed until water seethed white and the hull sprang forward. Abruptly the target was horrible in its nearness. As directed, it tried to take evasive action. As expected, the rudder-and-tiller combination was so much more efficient than steering oars that no escape was possible.

  Reid’s people had rehearsed the maneuver often, against nets supported on logs. Oars on the inner side snapped erect; those on the outer continued driving. The noise and shock were less than he had anticipated. Disengaging was awkward – obviously more practice needed there – but it was managed. By then, the struck galley lay heeled far over. Wooden and unloaded, it didn’t sink; but presently it floated awash and the waves were pounding it to pieces.

  Cheers pealed from the victors. The vanquished were too busy swimming to the boats for a response. Reid and Sarpedon made a thorough inspection. ‘No harm that I can see,’ the yardmaster declared. ‘This ship by itself could drive off a fleet.’ He embraced the American. ‘What you’ve done! What you’ve done!’

  Erissa was there. ‘You are a god,’ she sobbed. They dared not kiss in public, but she knelt and held him around the knees.

  Again Atlantis swarmed with preparations for festival. But this was the great one. In the resurrection of Asterion lay that of the world and its dead.

  First he must die and be mourned. Forty days before the vernal equinox, the Keftiu hooded altars, screened off caves and springs, bore through the streets their three holy symbols reversed and draped in black, rent their garments, gashed their flesh, and cried on Dictynna for mercy. For thirty days thereafter, most of them abstained from meat, wine, and sexual intercourse; and in their homes, lamps burned perpetually so that beloved ghosts might find the way back.

  Not that business stopped. After all, seaborne traffic was starting up again. And however devout, the Keftiu were incapable of long faces for many hours in a row. And the last ten of the forty days were to be pure celebration. The god would not yet have come from hell to claim that Bride Who was also his Mother and Grandmother, but man’s forward-looking joy helped make sure that he would.

  Beneath somberness and decorum, excitement bubbled even on the temple isle. Soon the maidens would take ship for Knossos, to dance with the bulls and the youths: soon, soon. Erissa worked her class daily. Reid stood by, gnawing his nails.

  Why did Lydra keep refusing to see him? She couldn’t be that busy. Lord knew she had ample time for Diores, when the Achaean showed up on his frequent missions. Why was she doing nothing about evacuation? She said, when Reid got together the boldness to grab a chance to drop her a few words that she and he alone understood, she said she was in touch with the Minos; and true, boats shuttled across the sixty-mile channel between, written messages borne by male oldtimers in her service who were both illiterate and close-mouthed; she said the matter was under advisement, she said, she said.

  Meanwhile the volcano spewed smoke and, ever oftener, flames. Its fine ash made the fields dusty. Sometimes at night you saw fresh lava flow glowing from the mouth; next morning you saw new grotesqueries on those black flanks, and steam puffing white from fumaroles. The ground shivered, the air rumbled. In the taverns men spoke dogmatically and at length of what precautions should be taken against the possibility of a major eruption. Reid didn’t notice that anybody actually did much. Of course, they never imagined what the blowup was going to be like. He himself couldn’t.

  If he could tell them!

  Well, at worst there were plenty of well-found boats. Practically every Atlantean family owned one and could put to sea, provisioned, on a few hours’ notice. But they couldn’t keep the sea too long; and he didn’t know just when the hammer would fall; and he did know that the time was very short now for him and Erissa to stand on a starlit hilltop, so close together that Pamela and children couldn’t get in between, and for her to breathe, ‘We’ll be wedded right after the festival, right after, my darling, my god,’ while the mountain growled at his back unheeded save for the glow it cast upon her.

  Rain fell anew, but gently, little more than a springtime mist that quickened the earth and if it lasted until morning would not hinder the procession of the maidens to
the ships for Crete. But beyond its coolness and the damp odors it awoke lay absolute night.

  Lydra confronted Reid beneath the Griffin Judge. In the lamplight her black gown was like another shadow, against which her face thrust startlingly white. From her throne she said: ‘I summoned you this late on purpose, exile. There are none to hear us but the guards beyond the door.’

  Reid knew with a chill: There need never be any to eavesdrop. The door is thick. Though not too thick for those men to hear a call. And they are wholly vowed to her service.

  ‘What has my lady in mind?’ he got forth.

  ‘This,’ the Ariadne told him. ‘You thought to embark tomorrow with your giddy Erissa, did you not? It shall not be. You will remain here.’

  Suddenly he knew that his cage had no doors.

  ‘You have been less than candid,’ she said. ‘Did you imagine Diores and I would never talk about your companions in Egypt and so learn what you were withholding about the woman? These are uncanny matters. If you did not tell the whole truth, how can we suppose you did not lie? That you are not the enemy of him the gods have chosen, Prince Theseus?’

  ‘My lady,’ he heard himself cry, ‘Theseus is making a tool of you. He’ll abandon you as soon as you’re not needed—’

  ‘Hold your mouth or you’re dead!’ she yelled. ‘Guards! Guards, to me!’

  He knew, he knew: Long before, the man with the lion eyes had come into her aloneness and promised her what no other man would have dared, that he would make her his queen if he could; but for this, she must needs aid him in bringing about the downfall of her king.

  Why didn’t I see it? he shrieked in his head. Because I wasn’t used to intrigue, but mainly because I didn’t want to kick apart the glittery little paradise she let me spin around myself, he whispered in his head.

  He realized: When she passed on to Diores and so to Theseus the word I gave her, that was Lydra’s required service – that, and whatever help she’s been lending to a conspiracy among the metics and the disaffected on Crete, and now her locking me away lest I break the silence.

  Through how many springtime nights, while her maidens dreamed and whispered in their dormitory of the young men they would meet, through how many years has she prayed for a chance like this? And to what gods?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The ships were coming in. Already the Piraeus strand was full and newcomers must lie out at anchor. There too was Oleg’s great vessel; it could be beached, but with difficulty, and the Russian wanted to avoid curiosity seekers, thieves, and blabbermouths as much as possible. Most crews pitched tents on the nearby shore and walked to Athens for sightseeing and amusement. But on any given day, many men lounged in those camps.

  Ribald shouts blew around Erissa with the smoke of cook-fires. Several Achaeans approached her as she came striding. She ignored them, though she felt their stares on her back. A woman – bonny, too – who swung along that arrogantly – unescorted? What could she be, if not one of the whores come down to ply their trade? But she spurned every offer. So maybe she had a rendezvous with some important man in his tent? But the chieftains weren’t squatted here, they were in town at the inns, the mightiest at the palace The warriors shrugged and returned to their roasting spits, their dice games, their contests of speed and strength and bragging.

  She came to a row of skiffs. Each had a ferryman on standby, whose boredom vanished when she appeared. ‘Who’ll take me out to yonder ship?’ she asked, pointing at Oleg’s.

  Eyes went up and down her height. Teeth shone wet in beards. ‘What for?’ someone asked knowingly. ‘What pay?’ laughed his companion. ‘Mine’s the boat belongs to it,’ said a third, ‘and I’ll take you, but you’ll earn your passage. Agreed?’

  Erissa remembered the barbarians of Thrace, the burghers of Rhodes, and too many more. She drew herself erect, widened her eyes till the pupils were circled in white, and willed pallor into her face. ‘I have business concerning the Beings,’ she said in her coldest witch-voice. ‘Behave yourselves – ’ she stabbed a gesture – ‘unless you want that manhood you boast of more than you use to blacken and drop off.’

  They backed away, terrified, scrabbling out shaky little signs of their own. She gestured at Oleg’s man. He all but crawled to help her aboard, pushed his craft afloat, and worked at the oars like a thresher, never lifting his glance to her.

  She muted a sigh. How easy to dominate, when you had ceased being frightened for yourself.

  Oleg’s rubicund visage and golden beard burned in sunlight reflected off water, as he peered over the bulwark. ‘who the chawrt – Why, you, Erissa! Saints alive, I haven’t seen you for weeks. Come aboard, come aboard. Hoy, you scuts!’ he bellowed. ‘Drop a rope ladder for my lady.’

  He took her into a cabin, set her down on a bunk, poured wine that a crewman had fetched, and clanged his beaker against hers. ‘Good to greet you, lass.’ The cabin being a mere hutch cluttered with his personal gear, he joined her on the bunk. Windows were lacking, but enough light seeped past the door for her to make him out. It was warm; she felt the radiation of his shaggy tunic-clad body and drank the odor of his sweat. Waves clinked against the hull, which rocked slightly. Outside, feet thudded, voices shouted, tackle creaked, as the work of preparation continued which he had been overseeing.

  ‘You needn’t look that grim, need you?’ he rumbled.

  ‘Oleg.’ She caught his free hand. ‘This host Theseus is summoning. Where are they bound?’

  ‘You know that. Been announced. A plundering trip to Tyrrhenian waters.’

  ‘Are they really, though? This sudden – this many allies—’

  He squinted pityingly at her. ‘I understand. You fear for Crete. Well, look. You’d not get the Atticans, not to speak of what other Achaeans they’ve talked into joining – you won’t get them to attack any place under the protection of the Minos. They aren’t crazy. At the same time, they do grow restless, and the Minos finds advantage in letting them work that off now and then, on folk who’ve naught to offer in the market but slaves and who themselves are apt to play pirate. Right?’

  ‘But this year of all years,’ she whispered.

  Oleg nodded. ‘I went along with the notion, when my advice was asked. If we really are in for a tidal wave as Duncan claims, I’d hate to see fine ships wrecked, most especially my lovely new dromon. Let’s get them out of harm’s way. How I look forward to showing Duncan my work! His idea, you recall, that we build something really up-to-date that’d catch the notice of the time wizards.’

  ‘Who has warned the Minos about the disaster to come?’ Erissa demanded.

  ‘Well, you heard Diores yourself, relating what he’d seen and done on Atlantis. Duncan’s an honored guest there. I got a couple of Diores’ men drunk and asked them out, just to make sure. It’s true. So surely by now he must’ve put the word across.

  ‘We’d not have heard, here in Athens. If the Cretans do mean to empty their cities and scatter their navy well out at sea, they’d hardly give advance notice, would they? That’d be asking for trouble. I’d not be surprised but what Gathon, under orders, put the flea in Theseus’ ear about organizing a joint Achaean expedition beyond Italy. Beyond temptation, ha, ha! ’

  ‘Then why do I remember that my country was destroyed this spring?’ she asked.

  Oleg stroked her hair as her father might have done. ‘Maybe you misremember. You’ve said things are blurry where they aren’t blank for you, right around the day of the downfall.’

  ‘There is nothing unclear about my memories of the aftermath.’

  ‘Well, so maybe the God’s changed his mind and sent us back to save Crete.’ Oleg crossed himself. ‘I’m not so bold as to claim that, mark you. I’m just a miserable sinner trying to make an honest profit. But a priest of the God told me men are free to choose, that there is no foreordained doom except the very Last Day. Meanwhile we can only walk the way we hope is best, a step at a time.’

  The palm crossing her head reminde
d her of the new white streaks which had come into her locks this winter. On Atlantis, those tresses shone like a midnight sky.

  ‘Anyway,’ Oleg said, ‘remember, we’ve kept our mouths shut to the Athenians. They don’t know the future. If they believe anything, it’s that they’re bound to get friendlier with Knossos.

  ‘For proof, consider that Theseus won’t be leading this expedition though he instigated it. His idea must be to bleed off as much Achaean restlessness as possible while he’s away. If he looked for ruin to strike Crete, would he hie himself there?’

  ‘That was the news which frightened me till I had to seek you, Oleg.’ Erissa stared at the bulkhead. ‘When the prince made known that he would be among the next hostages—’

  The Russian nodded. ‘Yes, I’ve heard Duncan’s notion. I worried too for a while. But then I thought, first, Theseus and what malcontents and crooks he might gather, what could they do in the Minos’ own city except get themselves killed? Second, like I said, he’s got no reason to think the Labyrinth will face trouble from the elements. Third, if he hopes to dicker for a better standing in the Thalassocracy, what shrewder way than to settle down some years in an honored post, where they’ll try to win his good will against the day he goes home? Fourth, I wouldn’t be surprised if Gathon, again, dropped hints it’d pay him to come. You see, if Duncan’s warned the Minos about Theseus, it’s purely natural for the Minos to want Theseus in the Labyrinth where they can keep an eye on him. And fifth, lass, this dromon’s going to be the flagship of the Tyrrhenian outing. Admiral Diores will travel on it, and I’ll keep an eye on him’

  He hugged her lightly. ‘Yes, we’re in a dangerous world,’ he said. ‘It never was anything else, and never will be. But I do believe you’ve reason to feel some cheer.’