Antediluvian

by Wil McCarthy

  “Don’t unload the boats,” he said to the men.

  “What?” “What?” “We can’t leave these unguarded.” “What?”

  “Don’t unload the boats,” Manuah repeated. “We’re going back to Shifpar, any man who wants to. I believe we’ll be…safer there.”

  There was silence at that, until one of the men said, “What about our families?”

  And that stopped Manuah, because he hadn’t thought about it. His own family, yes, but there were thirty sailors here. The boats could probably carry thirty more people and still have room for this cargo, but he didn’t actually know that much about the personal lives of most of his men. A few were single, a few had wives, a few had wives and children, but here in this moment he couldn’t dredge up a single detail.

  “As many as we can safely carry,” he finally said. “I’ll decide.”

  There was silence again, until someone said in the darkness, “Captain, you are crazy. I’m going home.”

  There were murmurs of assent here and there, and several of the men started climbing out of the boats. But another voice—Letoni’s—said, “I believe you, Captain. I’m staying right here.” And there were murmurs to that as well.

  “Get what you need, and whom you need, and meet me back here as quickly as you can,” Manuah said to whomever was still listening. “Letoni, do you have a family?”

  “Only my ma,” Letoni said, “and she’s half blind and half lame, and sworn never to set foot on the water. I think she’ll be better off at home.”

  Manuah didn’t agree. He didn’t agree with that one tiny bit. But then again, did Letoni, really? They couldn’t take the entire population of The City with them, and what good would it do anyone, to fill the boats up with the old and sick? He didn’t argue the point.

  “We’ve eaten up all the food,” he said instead. “We can eat the cargo—plums will keep for another six or twelve days, and the apples for longer than that—but that’s not going to be enough. And there’s no time to dry or pickle anything, so we’ll have to bring our meat still on the hoof. Go to the houses of the animal vendors, and buy some chickens and goats. Tell them we’ll pay double. Triple if they carry it all down here, in cages, within an hurta. And get some hard biscuits if you can. As many as you can.”

  Letoni looked uncertain. “You’ll pay for all this?”

  “Yes! Yes! Now go!”

  To Hamurma he said, “Go home and gather up the family. All of them. Tell them to gather up only what they can carry, and bring it here immediately. No arguments.”

  To Sharama he said, “Go to the Hill of Stars and bring back your uncle. Tell him his older brother commands it. If I’m wrong, I’ll tithe heavily, but in the meantime he is to get his skinny blue robe down here on the dock. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Letoni and Hamurma and Sharama departed, with all the haste he could have wished for.

  “You’re crazy,” another one of the sailors said.

  “Fine,” Manuah told him. “I’m crazy. Get out of here.”

  He busied himself counting rope and spare sails, trying to figure out how well provisioned they were really. Not that there was much he could do about it.

  “The comet’s gone,” someone said.

  Manuah looked up. The statement wasn’t precisely true, because the tail of the comet still dominated the sky. Broader than ever, and seeming now to shimmer and flow right before his eyes. But the head of it had somehow slipped down below the northern horizon. It had moved quite a bit while they were looking away. But now they looked, and where the tail of the comet met the skyline of The City, there was a distant flash of light. Nothing all that big—like lightning in a far-off thunderstorm—but nevertheless unambiguous. And frightening.

  “What does it mean?” someone asked. It was Kop, right there by his side.

  “Nothing good,” Manuah said. He watched the horizon for a while longer, waiting to see if there would be more flashes. When nothing happened, he went back to his inventory.

  “You don’t have anyone?” he asked Kop as he counted extra paddles.

  “No.”

  “Hmm. Too bad.”

  “Or not,” Kop said. “Something bad is going to happen, isn’t it?”

  “I think so, yes.” He paused, not sure what else to say. He had no idea what was going to happen, and he was not a crackpot, and he was not ordinarily superstitious. And yet he was somehow very certain: the danger was real. The high water made this place vulnerable even to ordinary Earthly dangers, and what was happening here was neither ordinary nor Earthly. But how could he explain all that to a man like Kop? He could barely explain it to himself.

  Finally, he said, “We need to prioritize our deck space. Let’s get this wool out of here. I don’t think we’re going to need it.”

  “Hmm,” Kop mumbled. “Plenty of wool in Shifpar.”

  So Kop and two other men began grabbing the bales and setting them up on the docks. It didn’t take long. A little while later, they were moving paddles around, making sure each boat had exactly two spares, and Manuah was trying to remember to station the smaller men in the boats with the shorter paddles, because everyone knew you shouldn’t use one taller than the bottom of your ribcage—

  * * *

  The ground jerked. He watched it. While the water remained stationary, the whole landscape dropped a hand, and then raised two, and then dropped again to its original position. There was a sound like sixty sacks of gravel being dropped all at once, and then silence. All in the space of two handclaps. He might almost have thought he’d dreamed it, except that the boats were now lurching as well. Neat, round, foot-high rolling waves spread out across the harbor, rippling in the light of the comet’s tail. From inland, voices began shouting in The City.

  Dear gods.

  To the three men still here with him, he said, “Guard the docks. Don’t let anyone down here but our own people.”

  “What was that, Captain?”

  “Nothing good,” he repeated. “And nothing final.” He still didn’t know what was happening, but he knew that wasn’t the end of it.

  The other sailors began to trickle back. Some brought valuables with them—a copper lamp, a golden bracelet, a fine wedding robe. Others brought loved ones.

  Manuah called out, over and over again: “Passengers remain on land! Thank you! Sailors with me! Leave all your crap on the dock!”

  But he exposed himself for a hypocrite when Hamurma showed up with Emzananti in tow, and Sharama’s wife Telebabti, and Manuah’s youngest son Jyaphethti, and he let them all straight onto the largest of his boats. “Wives of my family, sit down on the deck and stay out of the way,” he barked, in a way that he wouldn’t dream of under ordinary circumstances. “Sons, get on the bow and stern and await orders.”

  “I can sail,” Emzananti offered. And it was kind of true; he’d taken her on pleasure cruises around the harbor, and occasionally even out into the open ocean. But always in good conditions.

  “Not tonight,” he said, more firmly than he probably should have. But he just didn’t know how much time they had, and Emzananti (gods bless her) didn’t argue.

  However, Manuah’s stepmother, Chatrupati, trailed behind the rest of the family.

  “What’s going on?” She demanded to know.

  “We’re moving to Shifpar, Mother.”

  “All of a sudden? In the middle of the night? Don’t be crooked with me, young man. I’ve known you too long. You’re escaping.”

  “Something’s happening, Mother. Didn’t you feel it?”

  “You’re escaping with your family, yes? Well, I’m not going.”

  “Mother…”

  “I’m not your mother, and I’m not going. Do you know what’s happening? Exactly?”

  “No.”

  “No, and how could you? These are strange days, and running away may be smart, but you listen to me, Manuah: you bring enough men and boys to crew these boats, no more. You fill the
m up with women and girls, and bring them to safety. Then you’re a hero, not a runner.”

  Manuah started to object, on several grounds. First, because he was already planning to transport as many women and girls as he could, and didn’t need a lecture about it. Second, because he’d been warning against disaster for a long time now, and didn’t need a lecture about that, either. Third, because he didn’t want people to see him getting yelled at by an old woman! But there was no time for any of that, either. What he said instead was, “Yes, Mother. May the next month be kind.”

  “And to you,” she said back, and then hugged him warmly. She wasn’t his mother, but something more like an aunt twice removed. But she’d lived in the house with him since he was five years old, and had been the only parent once Manuah and Adrah’s father had grabbed his chest and dropped dead on a voyage one day. Manuah didn’t know what kind of fate Chatrupati would face here—what he was abandoning her to—but he knew he didn’t like it.

  “Be good,” she said, very sincerely. And then she released him, and then she was off, marching back toward land, merging with the growing crowd on the Street of the Warehouses.

  To the sailors he—

  * * *

  The ground shook again, more violently this time, sliding sideways by two full feet, and then sliding back, and repeating the motion several times. The sound was a deep rumble, like thunder, and the water of the harbor began sloshing back and forth, almost like the water in a bucket. Manuah’s boats were tossed around like toys, and everyone lost their balance.

  * * *

  And then it stopped, and the water was just lapping heavily against the dock’s piles, and the boats were just rolling and rocking in their berths. And then everyone was shouting at everyone else.

  As loudly as he could, Manuah called out: “Sailors to me! Lash these boats together! The big one at the center!”

  “What, you mean side by side?” Kop shouted back over the hubbub.

  “No, in rows!” Manuah thought for a moment, and then said, “Two, then three, then two, then one! Like the shape of a fish. Like a sandbar in a river!”

  Looking around, he counted eleven sailors, including Hamurma and Jyaphethti. Was that enough? He hoped more would return. He hurried onto the dock, and thence to the cobblestone street, looking around.

  Presently, Sharama appeared, with his uncle Adrah in tow, gently carrying an oyster shell lamp as though its meager light were more important than moving fast.

  “It didn’t spill,” Adrah said, as if reading Manuah’s thoughts. “The whole city shook. Walls cracked. Roofs fell, I fell, but this lamp stayed right in my hand.”

  “You’re an idiot!” Manuah shouted back to him. Then, to Sharama: “I stole your boat! I’m sorry. We’re lashing them all together. I think it might get rough out there!”

  “All right,” Sharama agreed. “Where do you want me?”

  “At the center. At the sail.”

  He wanted to hug his eldest son, but they were both in motion, in opposite directions, and there simply wasn’t time.

  Including Manuah, that now made twelve and two sailors, for Adrah had crewed boats for several years before deciding he loved the stars more than the sea. And that still probably wasn’t enough, so Manuah prayed silently for more, and almost immediately Letoni appeared, with a parade of merchant men and women behind him, dragging animal cages on sleds. The bleating of goats and the clucking of chickens and the quacking of ducks added to the general sense of disorder.

  “Stack these cages up!” Letoni shouted over the crowd noise. “Onto the boats!”

  And Manuah looked around in the crowd. There were over sixty people assembled here, some because they were the family members of his crewmen, some because they were warehouse workers or fishermen or crewmen on other people’s merchant boats who hadn’t gone home yet, and some because they were ordinary citizens curious about all the commotion down on the docks. But the whole city was full of commotion now: fires and smoke and dust and even some rubble here and there. It wasn’t obvious that anyone should think Manuah’s boats were the safest spot in The City. Manuah was by no means sure of this himself! But still, if everyone here wanted rescue, he was not going to be able to take them all.

  “Raise your arm if you know how to sail!” he shouted to the crowd. Several arms went up—both grown men and good-sized boys. “I’m sailing tonight for Shifpar. Keep your arm up if you want to come with me!”

  Some of the arms went down, leaving him with three new sailors between the ages of ten and twelve-and-eight.

  “On the boats!” he told them. Then: “Women and girls who want to come! Show of arms!”

  That netted him a total of twelve-and-ten passengers.

  “Get out on the docks!” he told them. “Wait for further instructions!”

  “Not without my son!” a woman shouted indignantly. Several others joined her, and once all that had been sorted out, the passenger count rose to almost half a sixty.

  Manuah wasn’t sure he could take any more, so he asked everyone else to wait, except the people who didn’t want to come with him. Those he asked, as politely as he could, to disperse and go back to their homes. Some did; others didn’t.

  From there, it took a surprisingly long time to get everything settled. The seven boats, all lashed together, formed one giant boat—surely the largest the world had ever seen—and while it was capable of flexing rather than flipping as the harbor’s waves rolled under it, it was still an unwieldy contraption, far too large for the docks. And so only the rear two boats were moored, to the outermost dock, while the rest of the thing flopped and wagged like a skirt in the wind. And there was always one more passenger or apple basket to be moved from here to there, to balance the loads. One more line to be tied or untied or adjusted or moved. It was well over an hurta before they were ready to undock, and when they did, it was barely a noticeable event at all. The handful of remaining mooring lines were released, and the leather-wrapped wooden bumpers were hauled in, and still more weights were shifted around, and Manuah took up a position at the steering oar of the rearmost boat. He had actually intended for the boats to be lashed the other way around, so that this single boat would have been at the bow of the giant boat, rather than its stern. But he supposed it might be easier to steer this way.

  And so, before he even realized what was happening, they had drifted five feet away from the outermost dock, and their journey had begun.

  There were immediate shouts of protest from the crowd, which had gotten bigger again, and which surged out onto the dock as if to grab them. But Manuah looked around, and feared his contraption already held more people than could possibly be safe. He didn’t know anything about how this giant boat would handle—how they would tack it upriver with seven independent little sails, how it would pitch with a good-sized bow wave or—gods help them—a broadside wave.

  But among the milling throng he saw a girl, about fourteen years old, standing almost close enough to touch.

  “You have my brother,” she said, matter-of-factly, in the guttural accent of Larasha, the Big Shit.

  “Where are your parents?” he asked her.

  “Don’t have any. Just him.”

  “Let her onboard!” said an urgent sailor’s voice from one of the other boatlets.

  “What’s your name, girl?” The distance between them had now grown to six feet.

  She rattled off something guttural and complicated: “Na’elta-a-ma’uk.”

  “Let her on!” The sailor shouted again.

  And because it was the right thing to do, and because she seemed like a nice, smart girl, (and, truthfully, because she was very beautiful and his middle son Hamurma needed a wife), he reached out his steering oar to her and said, “Grab hold and jump.”

  And she did, and he caught her with his right arm, and set her down on the deck in front of him.

  “You’re strong,” she said, without any particular emphasis. “Thank you.”

  But
then there were more protests from the dock, at least twelve-and-ten people screaming at him. “Hey! Hey! Get back here, Harbormaster! Where do you think you’re going?”

  With a calm that wasn’t entirely feigned, he said, “I’ll be back in a few days. Anyone who still wants to come, can come with me then.” It wasn’t entirely a lie, because it might be true. He didn’t know. And so he started calling out commands, and together he and his men learned how to paddle this giant raft of boats.

  * * *

  Harv noted that he’d heard two different words for boat: tari and karsa. The word for raft was tarika, and he wasn’t sure how he knew that, because he hadn’t heard anyone say it. But in Manuah’s mind the concept of a “raft of boats” was rendered as tavitarka, and Harv grasped it instantly, marveling again at the beauty of this language. Some sort of proto-proto Indo-European?

  * * *

  And then, when they were perhaps half a kos from shore, the sky started raining fire. Well, not fire exactly. They were streaks of light: first one or two here and there in the sky, and then a dozen, and then sixty dozens.

  “Shooting stars!” Adrah called out, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Don’t worry; they’re usually harmless.”

  “What do you mean, usually?” Manuah asked, annoyed, because everyone knew what a shooting star was, and everyone knew they were just lights in the sky. How exactly could they not be harmless?

  “Um, they’re little rocks,” Adrah admitted. “Sometimes we can see them reach the ground, or the ocean. They can even bounce.”

  And that was not good news, because the whole sky was turning to shooting stars. “It’s the tail of the comet,” Manuah said. “It’s made of little rocks!”

  And indeed, the tail had widened to encompass the entire night sky, and instead of a featureless blur it was now intricately braided, and visibly moving, like white fire. And yes, the shooting stars seemed to be coming from it. And yes, one of them landed sizzling into the harbor, less than a kos away from them! One out of many sixties, but still terrifying!