Antediluvian

by Wil McCarthy

  Or women; Manuah actually had three of them in his crews—spinsters almost Emzananti’s age—and while they weren’t quite as large or as strong as the men, they tended to be very good about staying synchronized, or setting the pace if they were in front. They were tough as well, in a female sort of way—sun-shriveled and leathery and sharp-tongued when crossed. They didn’t eat as much as the men, or weigh as much, but they also didn’t generate as much force against ocean waves, and there was the unseemly issue of performing bodily functions in front of the men, so he tended to keep them in the harbor or on very short trips upriver.

  Truth be told, Hamurma wasn’t much stronger than the women at this time, but that would come with practice.

  “Does he have a good raincoat? Just in case?”

  “Good enough for now, yes. It’s Sharama’s old one, and he’ll wear it to rags before he outgrows it. Jyaphethti will need a brand new one when he’s old enough to sail, but I think we can afford it.”

  “Hmm.” Manuah knew she was right, but a jacket of stiff, waxed wool did not come cheap, and thrift was a family tradition. Where money did get spent, it was generally in the service of making more money! On the other foot, it was bad business to let his sons be seen in rags, or to let them catch their death of cold, or to disregard the advice of Emzananti, whom his parents had engaged him to largely on account of her cleverness.

  He considered telling her that King Sraddah was planning to attack her childhood home in Surapp Great Town, but thought better of it for several reasons. First, because they would be in and out long before Sraddah’s army got anywhere close. Second, because Sraddah might regard that fact as a military secret, and might take an extremely dim view of Manuah blabbing about it, even to his own wife. Third, because it would cause her to worry more than she already did. Oh, she hid it well, but what mother could be complacent about watching her sons depart for the open ocean, much less for war?

  Changing the subject again, he said: “Where is Sharama? I’ll need him to take charge of the seawalls while I’m gone.”

  “I believe he’s crabbing. He was carrying traps when he left this morning.”

  “Again? Damn it, he won’t rest until all my boats reek of fish. I’ll have to sell my cloth to cooks and clammers!” He was partly joking, but also genuinely annoyed. This was a conversation he’d had with his eldest son more than once. He hadn’t strictly forbidden fishing and crabbing from his boats when they were idle, but he’d pointed out logically all the problems associated with it, and trusted Sharama to draw the right conclusions. But Sharama was nineteen, and had a wife to impress, and harbor crabs brought in good money.

  * * *

  Here, Harv Leonel felt some confusion, because money was a thing very much on the mind of Manuah Hasis, but Harv had yet to see any coinage, or any formal system for recording transactions or savings. Kingdom clearly had a barter system, where goods had fixed values in relation to one another—ten chickens to a goat, ten goats to a cow, et cetera—but there also seemed to be some nebulous concept of credit that Harv couldn’t quite pin down. These people must have good memories and a high level of trust, so that Manuah could worry about “money” without having any way to store it. Without even translating the concept into specific numbers or goods.

  And again Harv felt a touch of smugness, because this system, too, was primitive and silly—hardly the stuff of civilization. And on the heels of that, he felt a wave of protective worry, because the assholes on Wall Street could bankrupt Kingdom in a month by figuring out which animals had the best calorie-to-value ratio or flavor-to-growth-speed ratio, and then executing a series of increasingly rigged trades. No one here had figured this out yet, but that didn’t mean no one could. And the fact was, Harv was an amateur historian of sorts, and Kingdom was simply not a part of any historical record he’d ever come across. Something had laid these people low, and erased them from history, and their society seemed increasingly brittle to his modern sensibilities. What did they do about fires? Plagues? Floods? They were, in some ways, like babies not yet toddling—unaware of pain or the possibility of harm.

  But they were clever. With no real history of their own to fall back on, without horses or wheels or bronze tools, they’d nevertheless figured out how to build a great stone city, with paved roads and gutters, with towers and sea walls and firmly established trade centers. This place was the size of a major international airport, or twenty big shopping malls. Stone age, indeed.

  * * *

  “It might be a ploy,” Emzananti pointed out. “Sharama’s been wanting his own boat for quite a while now; this may be his way of telling you. You had one at his age, if I recall.”

  “Yes, well, stinking up my boats isn’t getting him any closer to my heart. Or my money.”

  “Well, then perhaps he’s saving up to buy his own. How many crabs would he have to sell?”

  “A lot. Confound it. If we can’t stop him crabbing, let’s at least have him put the catch in pots rather than baskets. Will he be home for dinner?”

  “I would think so,” she said. “You can lecture him then. Or have a real conversation; it’s your choice.”

  With a bow drill, a plank and some wood shavings, she deftly started a little kindling fire and gently set it into the stove—a slab of slate over a square fire pit, with a square hole though the outer wall of the house serving as a sort of chimney. Her motions were as quick and as natural as chopping vegetables; something she barely needed to think about. She then carefully piled sticks into the pit, and set the clay pan on top of the slab.

  Being the daughter of an aristocratic family, she also possessed a burning crystal—a type of rock that was as clear as water, and shaped by magicians so that it was capable of transmuting the light of the sun back into the fire that had spawned it. It was one of her most prized possessions, inherited from her mother and easily worth as much as a new boat. Manuah felt it was impractical and a waste of good magic, but Emzananti had been known to light a little torch with it and carry the torch indoors to the kitchen, just to prove a point. She also owned a thing called a fire tube which involved a hollowed out cylinder of wood and a thin, greased wooden plug and a little dab of wood dust, that somehow created fire without friction. It was an amazing device, and possibly also magical, but it required a lot of patience to operate correctly, and was really more of a hobby than an actual utensil. She had experimented with sulfur and sandstone as well, on the rumor that these could also produce fire, but she’d never gotten it to work. Emzananti loved her fire starters, but eleven times out of twelve she settled for the bow drill like any laborer’s wife.

  “You know,” Manuah said, “you could just bang two flints together like a wildman.”

  “Oh, hush.”

  “You could cook like one, too. They drop their pots into an open fire, and lift them out with gloves and rods. Everything is roasted or boiled, or sometimes steamed. They don’t fry anything, and since they never have salt, they load everything up with fennel and garlic.”

  “Nauseating,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

  “It’s not the only nauseating thing they do.”

  She held up a hand. “Enough, husband. You seem bored. If this is what a day off the water does to you, then it’s good you’re voyaging tomorrow. The sun doesn’t set for another three hurta; why don’t you go find a stone mason and get your son some rubble for his new project?”

  1.4

  “Lean into it,” Manuah told his middle son. “Don’t steer with your arms; steer with the weight of your body. These are real waves; they’ll tire you out in an hurta if you go at it like that.”

  “Yes, Father,” said Hamurma. “Thank you.” Unlike his older brother, he was generally eager to please, and eager to be taught rather than to learn everything himself, the hard way.

  “That’s it. Keep your back straight.”

  The waves weren’t bad at all by ocean standards, but Manuah felt there wasn’t much time to waste here. They’d gott
en a late start, thanks to Belurin the olive merchant being a total idiot, and the sun was already low in the sky.

  “We’re turning toward the shore,” Manuah warned. “Now you have to pull. Lean away from the oar, use your weight in the other direction. We’re not in the harbor; these waves will spin you if you let them.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  The shore was a kos away—far enough that they needn’t have any great fear of reefs or sandbars. A bit of bad steering didn’t present much danger, unless it got them sideways to a rolling wave. But it cost time, and it was sloppy. As it was, they’d be hugging the coast all day and night on their westward journey. Between The City and Surapp Great Town, the currents pulled generally eastward, although they were slower near the shore and faster a few kos farther out. The winds blew generally westward, and they were faster close to land, where the river valleys (for some reason) seemed to suck them in much of the time. And so one traveled to Surapp by hugging the coast, and back home from Surapp by keeping the shoreline halfway between the boats and the horizon.

  At this point Manuah called out, “Is this really your twentieth voyage, Letoni? Tighten that sail! Are you trying to rip it?”

  “No, Captain,” said one of the two men manning the sail. “Sorry, Captain.”

  The sail was a square made from two layers of untreated linen, which people were always advising Manuah against. It tears too easily, they would say. It soaks up water and gets heavy. Yes, well if you coated it with beeswax it was heavier still, and much more expensive, and it still had a tendency to tear without warning. And if you coated it with tallow, the seagulls would never leave you alone. No, the smart thing was to use the cheapest sails you could, and replace them often, and always carry a spare on every voyage, or two if you were going to be gone all month. And tie them down tightly so they didn’t luff and flutter in the face of the wind!

  Letoni was partnered with Kop—a short, heavyset man only a few years older than Hamurma—and together the two of them untied and re-tied the sail so that it was tighter. Still luffing, though, because the wind was nearly against them, and it was hard to keep the linen filled while Hamurma steered like a drunkard. But these were good sailors, and they knew that Manuah knew the blame wasn’t theirs.

  He’d brought a crew of ten on this short voyage, and with Letoni and Kop at the sail, and Manuah and Hamurma at the stern, that left six other men without much to do. Being also experienced sailors, they were presently sprawled on the wooden deck in between clay jugs of wine and pickled olives, with their faces covered, attempting to get some sleep while they could. One never knew when the sea’s mood might change and they might need to man a paddle for several days. Too, most traders anchored for the night, often hugging the shore just outside the surf zone, or sometimes even beaching at their own preferred, quasi-secret spots along the way, and having a delightful little campout on the beach. But that was hard on the boats, and wasteful of time; Manuah’s fleet sailed day and night, and the men who were sleeping now would be wide awake from midnight to dawn.

  Then things went quiet for a while, with only the creak of reeds in the hull, the gentle splashing of water, and the straining and fluttering of the sailcloth against the yard arm. If the wind cut any closer against their path, Manuah would have ordered the sail lowered, and if it increased in force he might even order the men to strike the mast. But for now they were enjoying smooth—if slow—sailing. Fine weather for training a new stern.

  After perhaps half an hurta of silence, Hamurma called out. At first Manuah though he’d lost his balance and was going overboard, and he turned toward his son, ready to grab him or dive in after him. But no, Hamurma was merely pointing.

  “Father, look! A spout!”

  And indeed, where Hamurma was pointing there was fountain of water and air in the distance, perhaps half a kos away.

  Manuah felt a tingle of fear. The only animals that spouted were dolphins and greatfish, and this spout was too large to be from a dolphin. Many sailors regarded greatfish as good luck, or at least not bad luck, but Manuah’s family had traveled too far and heard too much. He knew that greatfish came in a variety of sizes and shapes, and some of them had eyes the size of your head and teeth the size of your fist, and some of them would come up under your boat and capsize it for no apparent reason. He’d never heard of one eating a human being, or even accidentally drowning one, but they were certainly large enough to do either, and anyway they were unpredictable. He regarded them much the same way he might an untethered bull; not necessarily dangerous, but certainly not to be trusted. Of course, people were always telling Manuah that he worried too much.

  “Was it a greatfish?” Hamurma asked, while Letoni and Kop clapped their hands and called out in delight.

  “It was,” Manuah confirmed, trying to keep the tension out of his voice.

  “Will it spout again?”

  “In a few vimadi, yes. They always come back to the surface. I think it’s how they breathe.”

  Kop laughed at that. “A fish that breathes air!”

  To which Letoni said, “Have you been sneaking wine while our backs were turned?” Then, more seriously, “We’ll find it again, Hamurma. I’ll look this way. Kop, you look over there.”

  They waited for what seemed like a long time, but presently the spout came again, much closer—barely three sixties of feet away from the boat, and loud as a fat man snoring.

  “Found it!” Kop joked.

  The other men were looking up now, some alert and some rubbing the sleep out of their eyes.

  “Greatfish!” someone shouted, quite unnecessarily.

  The thing lifted its giant tail and submerged again, only to resurface in the same position a few vimadi later.

  “It’s following us,” Letoni said.

  “I think it likes you,” said someone else.

  And from there it devolved into comments Manuah would rather his fourteen-year-old son not hear. But of course Hamurma had spent his life around sailors, and already cursed like one when he thought his parents weren’t listening.

  But indeed, it did appear that the greatfish was following the boat, just tootling along behind them—sometimes closer and sometimes farther, but always nearby. Was it looking for scraps, like a gull? That seemed unlikely for such a large animal—easily twice the length of the boat itself. Perhaps it was just curious.

  In the west, the sun slipped down below the waves, and the sky grew yellow and then red and then blue and then black, and still the greatfish followed them. Despite the delight of the sailors, Manuah found his sense of foreboding growing only stronger. There was something not quite natural about this, something perhaps magical or divine, and that was a worse kind of unpredictability, because the gods seemed to get bored very easily, and you never knew what they might try next to entertain themselves.

  And then Hamurma was pointing again, this time at the sky. “Father, look! There’s something in the stars!”

  Manuah looked where his son was pointing, and saw…something. A smudge, a glow, a little spray of stars, just above the horizon. It wasn’t a cloud; it was behind the clouds, and also a different color. It was the color of stars, or of the thin sliver of moon that was following the sun down into the ocean.

  “What is it?” one of the sailors demanded.

  “I don’t know,” answered another.

  Letoni came forward. “Captain, do you know what this is?”

  It was a captain’s job to know the stars, to navigate by them on the rare occasions when land was not in sight. But Manuah had never seen anything like this, and he felt a clawing superstitious dread, because he had kept a secret from his wife, and he was planning on keeping it from the inhabitants of Surapp Great Town as well. People he counted as friends. Normally he wouldn’t think himself important enough that his own actions might anger the gods, and yet…the spray of stars was immediately behind the greatfish, and it seemed to him that the thing had spouted its mist all the way up into the sky. If
that was not a sign from heaven, then he didn’t know what possibly could be.

  But he dared not share these thoughts with his men—not in the middle of a voyage—so instead he said, “Hamurma, mind your steering!”

  And then, to Letoni and Kop, “Keep to your sail, my friends. I have some thoughts about this thing, but I’ll speak with my brother before I share them. Meanwhile, if it doesn’t help us steer, or sail, and it doesn’t help us carry olives to Surapp Great Town, then it’s a distraction we can’t afford.”

  “Yes, Captain,” said several voices from around the boat. But all heads remained turned toward the sky, and several of the sailors raised their hoods up over their hats, untied the straps from behind their necks, and tied them under their chins as if to ward off cold.

  * * *

  Manuah’s time in Surapp Great Town was marked by a great weight in his stomach. He steered the boat into their triangular harbor, noting that the mouth of it seemed wider than he’d ever seen it, even at the highest of tides. Surapp’s harbor was entirely natural, with no sea walls, no dredging of the bottom, no excavation or upbuilding of the low sandstone hills around it. But here, too, the water was rising. It was rising everywhere. He supposed the ocean must seek its own level, just like the water in a bucket, but where could all this extra water be coming from? The idea staggered his mind: if the ocean rose a foot—even a hand, even a finger—then the volume of added water was that finger, plus the finger next to it, and so on across all the area of the ocean itself. Could a mountain be that large? Could a whole range of mountains? If all the snow melted off of all the mountains in the world, how much water would that be?