The Face of the Waters

by Robert Silverberg

  Sure. Sure.

  * * *

  One of the Earth-dreams came to him again. There were two of them, one very painful and the other one not so bad. Lawler had one of them at least once a month, sometimes both.

  This was the easier one, the one where he was actually on Earth himself, walking on solid soil. He was barefoot and there had been rain just a little while before and the ground was soft and warm, and when he wiggled his toes and dug them into it he saw tendrils of soil come spurting up between them, the way sand did when he walked in the shallows of the bay. But the soil of Earth was darker stuff than sand, and much heavier. It yielded slightly underfoot in a way that was very strange.

  He was walking through a forest. Trees rose about him on all sides, things like wood-kelp plants with long trunks and dense crowns of leaves far overhead, but they were much more massive than any wood-kelp he had ever seen, and the leaves were so far above him that he was unable to make out their shapes. Birds fluttered in the tree-tops. They made odd melodic sounds, a music he had never heard before and could never remember when he awakened. All manner of strange creatures loped through the forest, some walking on two legs like a human, some crawling on their bellies, some standing on six or eight little stilts. He nodded to them and they acknowledged his greeting as they went by, these creatures of Earth.

  He came to a place where the forest opened up and he saw a mountain rising before him. It looked like dark glass, speckled with mirror-bright irregularities, and in the warm golden sunlight it had a wonderful brilliance. The mountain filled half the sky. Trees were growing on it. They looked so small that he could pick one up in his hand, but he knew that they only seemed that way because the mountain was so far from him, that in fact those trees were at least as big as the ones in the forest he had just left, perhaps even bigger.

  Somehow he walked around the mountain's base. There was a long sloping place on the other side, a valley, and beyond the valley he saw a dark sprawling thing that he knew was a city, full of people, more people than he could easily imagine. He went toward it, thinking that he would go among the people of Earth and tell them who he was and where he had come from, and ask them about the lives they led, and whether they knew his great-great-grandfather Harry Lawler or maybe Harry Lawler's father or grandfather.

  But though he walked and walked, the city never grew any closer. It remained forever on the horizon, down there at the far side of the valley. He walked for hours; he walked for days; he walked for weeks. And always the city was out of reach, forever retreating from him as he walked toward it; and when he woke at last he was weary and cramped, as though from a great exertion, and he felt as though he had had no sleep at all.

  * * *

  In the morning Josc Yanez, Lawler's young apprentice, came to his vaargh for the regular instruction session. The island had a strict apprentice system: no skill must be allowed to die out. This was the first time since the beginning of the settlement that the apprentice doctor had been anyone but a Lawler. But the Lawler line was going to end with him; some other family would have to carry the responsibility after he was gone.

  "When we leave," Josc asked, "will we be able to take all the medical supplies with us?"

  "As much as there's room for aboard the ships," Lawler told him. "The equipment, most of the drugs, the book of recipes."

  "The patients' records?"

  "If there's room. I don't know."

  Josc was seventeen, tall and gangling. A sweet-souled boy with an easy smile, an open face, a good way with people. He seemed to have an aptitude for doctoring. He loved the long hours of studying in a way that Lawler himself, fidgety and rebellious as a boy, never really had. This was the second year of Josc's instruction and Lawler suspected he already knew half of the basic technical principles; the rest, and the skill of diagnosis, would be his in time. He came from a family of sailors; his older brother Martin was one of Delagard's ferry captains. It was very much like Josc to worry about the patients' medical records. Lawler doubted that they'd be able to take them along: those ships of Delagard's didn't seem to have much space for cargo, and there were other things with higher priority than old medical records. He and Josc between them would have to commit everyone's medical history to memory before they left the island. But that wouldn't be a big problem. Lawler had most of it in his memory already. And so, he suspected, did Josc.

  "I hope I get to go on the same ship you do," the boy said. Lawler, next to his brother Martin, was Josc's greatest hero.

  "No," Lawler told him. "We'll have to be on separate ships. If the one I'm on is lost at sea, at least you'll still be around to be the doctor."

  Josc looked thunderstruck. At what? At the idea that Lawler's ship might be lost at sea and his hero would perish? Or at the idea that he was really going to be the community doctor some day, and perhaps some day very soon?

  Probably that was it. Lawler remembered how he had felt when it had first come home to him that his own apprenticeship actually had a serious purpose, this gruelling, endless study and drilling: that he would one day be expected to take his father's place in this office and do all the things that his father did. He had been about fourteen then. And by the time he was twenty his father was dead and he was the doctor.

  "Listen, don't worry about it," Lawler said. "Nothing's going to happen to me. But we have to think of worst possible cases, Josc. You and I, we have all the medical knowledge this settlement has, between us. We have to protect it."

  "Yes. Of course."

  "Okay. That means we travel in separate ships. You see what I'm saying?"

  "Yes," the boy said. "Yes, I understand. I'd prefer to be with you, but I understand." He smiled. "We were going to talk about inflammations of the pleura today, weren't we?"

  "Inflammations of the pleura, yes," said Lawler. He unfolded his worn, blurred anatomical chart. Josc sat forward, alert, attentive, eager. The boy was an inspiration. He reminded Lawler of something he had begun lately to forget, that his profession was more than a job: it was a calling. "Inflammations and pleural effusions, both. Symptomatology, causation, therapeutic measures." He could hear his own father's voice, deep, measured, inexorable, tolling in his mind like a great gong. "A sudden sharp pain in the chest, for example-"

  * * *

  Delagard said, "I'm afraid the news isn't so good."

  "Oh?"

  They were in Delagard's office in the shipyard. It was midday, Lawler's usual break from doctoring. Delagard had asked him to stop in. There was an open bottle of grapeweed brandy on the wood-kelp table, but Lawler had declined a drink. Not during working hours, he said. He had always tried to keep his mind clear when he was doctoring, except for the numbweed; and he told himself that the numbweed did no harm in that way. If anything it made his mind more clear.

  "I've got some results. So far they aren't good results. Velmise isn't going to take us in, doc."

  It was like a kick in the belly.

  "They told you that?"

  Delagard shoved a sheet of message-parchment across the table. "Dag Tharp brought me this about half an hour ago. It's from my son Kendy, on Velmise. He says they had their council meeting last night and they voted us down. Their immigration quota for the year is six, and they're willing to stretch it to ten, considering the unusual circumstances. But that's all they'll take."

  "Not seventy-eight."

  "Not seventy-eight, no. It's the old Shalikomo thing. Every island afraid of having too many people and getting the Gillies upset. Of course, you could say that ten is better than none. If we sent ten to Velmise, and ten to Salimil, and ten more to Grayvard-"

  "No," Lawler said. "I want us all to stick together."

  "I know that. All right."

  "If we don't go to Velmise, what's the next best possibility?"

  "Dag's talking to Salimil right now. I've got a son there too, you know. Maybe he's a little more persuasive than Kendy. Or maybe the Salimil people aren't quite as tight-assed. Christ, you'd thin
k we were asking Velmise to evacuate their whole goddamned town to make room for us. They could fit us in. It might be tough for a time, but they'd manage. Shalikomos don't happen twice." Delagard riffled through a sheaf of parchment sheets in front of him and handed them across to Lawler. "Well, fuck Velmise. We'll come up with something. What I want is for you to look at these."

  Lawler glanced at them. Each page held a list of names, scrawled in Delagard's big, bold script.

  "What are these?"

  "I told you a couple of weeks ago, I've got six ships, and that divides out to thirteen to a ship. Actually, the way it works out, we'll have one ship with eleven, two each with fourteen, the other three with thirteen apiece. You'll see why in a minute. These are the passenger manifests I've drawn up." Delagard tapped the top one. "Here. This is the one that ought to interest you the most."

  Lawler scanned it quickly. It read:

  ME AND LIS

  GOSPO STRUVIN

  DOC LAWLER

  QUILLAN

  KINVERSON

  SUNDIRA THANE

  DAG THARP

  ONYOS FELK

  DANN HENDERS

  NATIM GHARKID

  PILYA BRAUN

  LEO MARTELLO

  NEYANA GOLGHOZ

  "Nice?" Delagard asked.

  "What is this?"

  "I told you. The passenger manifest. That's our ship, the Queen of Hydros. I think it's a pretty good group."

  Lawler stared at Delagard in astonishment. "You bastard, Nid. You really know how to look after yourself."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I'm talking about the terrific job you've done ensuring your own safety and comfort while we're at sea. You aren't even embarrassed to show this to me, are you? No, I bet you're proud of it. You've got the only doctor in the community on your own ship, and the most skilled communications man, and the closest thing we have to an engineer, and the mapkeeper. And Gospo Struvin's the number one captain of your fleet. Not a bad basic crew, for a voyage of God knows how long taking us to God knows where. Plus Kinverson the sea-hunter, who's so strong he doesn't even seem human and knows his way around the ocean the way you do around your shipyard. That's a damned fine team. And no annoying children, no old people, nobody who's in poor health. Not bad, friend."

  Anger showed for a moment, but only a moment, in Delagard's glittering little eyes.

  "Look, doc, it's the flagship. This may not be such an easy voyage, if we wind up having to go all the way to Grayvard. We need to survive."

  "More than the others?"

  "You're the only doctor. You want to be on all the ships at once? Try it. I figured, you have to be on one ship or another, you might as well be on mine."

  "Of course." Lawler ran his finger along the edge of the sheet. "But even applying the Delagard-first rule, I can't figure a few of these choices. What good is Gharkid to you? He's a complete cipher of a human being."

  "He knows seaweed. That's the one thing he does know. He can help us in finding food."

  "Sounds reasonable." Lawler glanced at Delagard's plump belly. "We wouldn't want to go hungry out there, would we? Eh? Eh?" Looking at the list again, he said, "And Braun? Golghoz?"

  "Hard workers. Mind their own business."

  "Martello? A poet?"

  "He isn't just a poet. He knows what to do aboard a ship. Anyway, why not a poet? This is going to be like an odyssey. A fucking odyssey. A whole island emigrates. We'll have somebody to write down our story."

  "Very nice," said Lawler. "Bring your own Homer along, so posterity gets to hear all about the great voyage. I like that." He checked the list again. "I notice you've got only four women here, to ten men."

  Delagard smiled. "The proportion of women to men isn't much in my control. We've got thirty-six females on this island and forty-two males. But eleven of the ladies belong to the fucking Sisterhood, don't forget. I'm sending them off on a ship by themselves. Let them figure out how to sail it, if they can. So we've got only twenty-five women and girls otherwise, five ships, mothers need to stay with their children, et cetera, et cetera. I calculated we had room for four on our ship."

  "Picking Lis I understand. How'd you choose the other three?"

  "Braun and Golghoz have both worked in my crews already, on the Velmise and Salimil runs. If I'm going to have women on board, I might as well have women who can do what needs to be done."

  "And Sundira? Well, she's a skilled equipment mender. That makes sense."

  "Right," Delagard said. "And also she's Kinverson's woman, isn't she? If she's useful, and they're a couple besides, why separate them?"

  "They aren't a couple, as far as I know."

  "Aren't they? Looks that way to me," Delagard said. "I see them together a hell of a lot. Anyway, there's our shipload, doc. In case the fleet gets separated at sea, we've got some good people with us to see us through. Now, ship number two, the Sorve Goddess, we'll have Brondo Katzin and his wife, all the Thalheims, the Tanaminds-"

  "Wait a second," said Lawler. "I'm not through with this first one. We haven't talked about Father Quillan yet. Another very useful choice. You picked him to keep yourself on the safe side with God, I suppose?"

  Delagard was impervious to the thrust. He let loose a thunderous guffaw. "Son of a bitch! No, that never crossed my mind. That would be a good idea, yeah, take a priest along with you. If anyone's got any pull upstairs, it would be him. But the reason I picked Father Quillan was just that I enjoy his company so much. I find him a terrifically interesting man."

  Of course, Lawler thought.

  It was always a mistake to expect Delagard to be consistent about anything.

  * * *

  In the night came the other Earth-dream, the one that hurt, the one he wished, he always wished he could hide from. It was a long time since he had had the two dreams on consecutive nights, and he was caught by surprise, for he had thought that last night's dream would exempt him from having the other one for some time to come. But no; no. There was no escaping it. Earth would pursue him always.

  There it was in the sky above Sorve, a wondrous radiant blue-green ball, slowly turning to display its shining seas, its splendid tawny continents. It was beautiful beyond all measure, a huge jewel gleaming overhead. He saw the mountains running along the spines of the continents like jagged grey teeth. There was snow, white and pure, along their crests. He stood at the top ridge of the wooden sea-wall of his little island and let himself float up into the sky, and kept on floating until he had left Hydros and was well out in space, hovering over the blue-green ball that was Earth, looking down at it like a god. He saw the cities now: building after building, not pointy-topped like vaarghs but broad and flat, one next to another to another across immense distances, with wide pathways between them. And people moving along the pathways, thousands of them, many thousands, walking swiftly, some of them riding in little carriages that were like boats that travelled on land. Above them in the sky were the winged creatures called birds, like air-skimmers and the other fish of Hydros that he knew that were capable of bursting up out of the water for short spurts of flight; but these stayed aloft forever, soaring splendidly, circling and circling the planet in great tireless sweeps. Amongst the birds were machines, too, that were able to fly. They were made of metal, sleek and bright, with little wings and long tubular bodies. Lawler saw them coming up from Earth's surface and moving at unthinkable speeds across great distances, carrying the people of Earth from island to island, from city to city, from continent to continent, a commerce so vast that it made his soul spin to contemplate it.

  He drifted through the darkness, high above the shining blue-green world, watching, waiting, knowing what would happen next, wondering if perhaps this time it wouldn't happen.

  But of course it did. The same thing as before, the thing he had lived through so many times, the thing that brought sweat bursting from his pores and made his muscles writhe with shock and anguish. There was never any warning. It simply began: the
hot yellow sun suddenly swelling, growing brighter, becoming misshapen and monstrous-the jagged tongues of fire licking out across the sky…

  The flames rising from the hills and valleys, from the forests, from the buildings. The boiling seas. The charred plains. The clouds of black ash darkening the air. The blackened land splitting open. The gaunt naked mountains rising above the ruined fields. The death, the death, the death, the death.

  He always wished he could wake up before that moment came. But he never did, not until he had seen it all, not until the seas had boiled, not until the green forests had turned to ash.

  * * *

  The first patient the next morning was Sidero Volkin, one of Delagard's shipwrights, who had taken a flameworm's prong in the calf of his leg while standing in shallow water trimming excess sea-finger growth from the keel of one of the ships. Something like a third of Lawler's work involved wounds that people got while in the gentle, shallow waters of the bay. Those gentle, shallow waters all too often were visited by creatures that liked to sting, bite, slice, stab, infiltrate or otherwise bedevil human beings.

  "Son of a bitch swam right up to me alongside the ship and reared up and looked me in the eye," Volkin said. "I went for its head with my hatchet and its tail came around from the other side and pronged me. Son of a bitch. I cut it in half, but a fucking lot of good that does me now."

  The wound was narrow but deep, and already infected. Flameworms were long wriggling creatures that seemed to be nothing more than tough, flexible tubes with a nasty little mouth on one end and a vicious stinger on the other. It didn't much matter which end they got you with: they were full of microorganisms that were symbiotic with the flameworm and hostile to humankind, and the bugs the worms carried caused immediate distress and complication when they encountered human tissue. Volkin's leg was bloated and reddened, and delicate, fiery-looking traceries of inflammation ran outward along the skin from the point of entry like the cicatrices of some sinister cult.