On Blue's waters (3 page)

And Hide, “Did you give them credit, Father?”

“No,” I told him, “but I would have.”

“Those cardcases.” Sinew sneered. “You’d have had to.”

“You’re wrong,” I told him, and pointed the carving knife at him. “That’s what I have to make clear from the beginning. I don’t have to do what they want. They threatened me, or at least Gyrfalcon did. I ought to say he tried to, since I didn’t feel threatened. He could bring some pressure to bear on us, perhaps. But in less than a year I’d have him eating out of my hand.”

Sinew snorted.

“You think I couldn’t? You think it because I’ve always been gentle with you for your mother’s sake. It wasn’t like that in my family, believe me. Or in hers either. If you find yourself begging me before shadelow tomorrow,” to emphasize my point, I struck the table with the handle of the knife, “will you admit you were wrong? Are you man enough for that?”

He looked surly and said nothing. He is the oldest of our sons, and although I loved him, I did not like him. Not then, although things were different on Green.

Nor did he like me, I feel certain. (Nettle knows these things, naturally.)

She murmured, “This is worse than anything that they said to us.”

Hoof asked, “What did they say, anyhow?”

Hide seconded him, as Hide often did. “What did they want, Mother?”

It was then, I feel certain, that I passed the slice I had been cutting to you, darling. I remember what it looked like, which I find very odd tonight. I must have known that something enormously significant was happening, and associated it with our haunch of greenbuck. “In a way,” I told you, “you’re quite right. It was our book that brought them, though they were very careful not to say it until I got them in a corner. You, Hoof, are right too. Things are getting harder and hungrier for everybody every year. Why do you think that is?”

He shrugged. The twins are handsome, and to my eyes take after your mother more than either one of us, though I know you pretend to think they look like me. “Bad weather and bad crops. Their seed’s giving out.”

Hide said, “That thin one talked about that. I thought it was kind of interesting.”

I gave Sinew, who had always eaten like a fire in good times and bad, a thick slice with plenty of gristle. “Why is the seed yielding a poorer crop each year?”

“Why are you asking me? I didn’t say it was.”

“What difference does it make whether you asked or not? It happens to be true, and you being older than your brothers ought to be wiser. You think you are, so prove it. Why is the seed weakening? Or were you too busy throwing stones at the waves to listen?”

Hoof began, “I still want to know-”

“What those five people wanted. We’re talking about it.”

Sinew said slowly, “The good seed is the seed from the landers. That’s what everybody says. When the farmers save seed, it isn’t as nearly as good. The maize is worse than the others, but none of it’s quite as good.”

You nodded, Nettle darling. “That’s one of the things they said. I knew it already, and I’m sure your father did, too, but Eschar and Blazingstar lectured us about it anyway. Let’s talk about maize, for the present. It’s the most important, and the clearest example. Back home we had ever so many kinds. Do you remember, Horn?”

I nodded, smiling.

“At least four kinds of yellow maize that I can remember, and it wasn’t something I paid much attention to. Then there were black, red, and blue, and several sorts of white. Have any of you boys ever seen maize that wasn’t yellow?”

No one replied.

I had cut more slices while you spoke; I gave them to Hoof and Hide, saying, “I never saw any at home to equal the first crop we got on our farm. Ears a cubit long, packed with big kernels. The ears from the next planting weren’t any longer than my hand.” You said, “I’ve been seeing those here lately, in the market and the village gardens.”

“Yes, and here’s something I hadn’t known-something they explained to us. You get the best maize by crossing two strains. Some crosses are better than others, as you’d expect; but the best ones will yield a lot more than either of the original two, fight off blight, and need less water.”

I sat down and began to cut up the meat I had just given myself. It was clear from their expressions that neither Hoof nor Hide had understood.

You said, “Like crossing red and black maize. Isn’t that right, Horn?”

“Exactly. But according to what we were told, all those good qualities disappear in a year. The crop after the first is liable to be worse than either of the strains you crossed, in fact, and it’s always worse than the parent strain, the one from the crossing.”

Sinew muttered, “It doesn’t come from a pure strain at all. It comes from the good crop, and the good crop was good but it wasn’t pure.” He tilted his chair until its back struck the wall, something that always annoyed me. “The god that stocked the landers put all that mixed seed in them, didn’t he? No pure strains, so we can’t make new mixes ourselves.”

“Pas,” you told him. “Pas prepared the landers for us out of his infinite wisdom. You may not credit him, but Pas is a very great god.”

“Back on the Long Sun Whorl, maybe.” Sinew shrugged. “Not here.”

Hoof said, “All those gods you talk about, they’re only back there. Scylla and her sisters.”

Your smile was sad then, Nettle darling-it hurt me to see it. “Yet they are beautiful and true,” you told him, “as real as my parents and your father’s father, who are not here either.”

“That’s right,” I told Hoof, “but what you said wasn’t. You implied that Pas was a god only in the Long Sun Whorl.” Secretly I agreed with him, although I did not want to say so.

Sinew came to his brother’s defense, surprising and pleasing me. “Well, Pas isn’t much of a god here, no matter what the old Prolocutor in town says.”

“I agree. The point that you’re both forgetting… I’m not sure how I can explain. We call this whorl Blue, and call our sun here the Short Sun.”

“Sure.”

“At home, we called the whorl our ancestors came from the Short Sun Whorl. Your mother will remember that, I’m sure, and I remember talking with Patera Silk about all the wisdom and science that we left behind there.”

You said, “We put that in our book.”

“Yes, we certainly did.”

Hide had been waiting for a chance. “I don’t see what any of this has to do with maize.”

“It has everything to do with it. I was about to say that when Pas stocked the landers it was on that earlier Short Sun Whorl. He was a god there, you see, and I think probably the greatest. Since he was, he’s capable of becoming a god here, too, although he hasn’t done it, or at least hasn’t let us know he’s done it yet.”

No one contradicted me.

“One evening, when I was being punished for making fun of Patera Silk, he and I talked about the science of the Short Sun Whorl. The wrapping that healed his ankle had been made there. We couldn’t make it, we didn’t know how. Glasses and the Sacred Windows, and so many other wonderful things we had at home, we had only because they had been made on the Short Sun Whorl and put into ours by Pas. Chems, for example-living people of metal and sun-fire.”

At that, Sinew’s chair came down with a thump; but he said nothing.

I ate, and cut another slice for myself. “You used your bow when you killed this greenbuck for us,” I said.

He nodded.

“I’m going to offer a prayer. If any of you want to join in, you’ll be welcome. If you prefer to continue eating, that’s a matter between you and the god.”

Hide began, “Father, I-”

I was already making the sign of addition over my plate. I bowed my head and closed my eyes, imploring the Outsider, whom Silk had honored above all the other gods, to help me act wisely.

When I opened them and began to eat again, Hoof said, “You jumped from maize to all the other things you and Mother had in the
Whorl
.”

At the same moment, Hide said, “You promised you’d tell us what those people wanted.”

You motioned them to silence, telling Hide, “Your brother knows, I think. What was it, Sinew?”

Sinew shook his head.

Hoof asked him, “Why did he say about your bow?”

“He meant they had better things,” Sinew grunted. “Slug guns and needlers. But they’re making slug guns now in town. Father’s still got his needier. You’ve seen it. He let me hold it one time.”

“I am going to give it to you,” I told him. “Tonight or tomorrow, perhaps.”

Sinew stared, then shook his head again.

Hoof said, “If we could make those here, we’d have a lot more to eat, I bet.”

“The new slug guns aren’t nearly as good as the old ones,” Sinew told him, “but they’re still too expensive for us, and conjunction’s coming. It’s only a couple years now. You sprats don’t remember the last one.”

Hide said, “A whole bunch of inhumi came and killed lots of people.”

Hoof added, “If we had more needlers and a new slug gun, we could fight them better.”

You-I am nearly certain it was you, Nettle darling-said, “The slug gun we’ve got is just about worn out.”

No one spoke after that; the boys ate, and I made a show of eating, although I have never been less hungry than I was then. When a minute and more had passed, Sinew asked, “Why you?”

“Because I built our mill, and because I knew Patera Silk better than almost anyone else in New Viron did.”

Shaking his head, Sinew bent over his plate again.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Hide wanted to know.

“A great deal, I’m sure,” you told him, Nettle. “May I, Horn? I think I’ve followed everything.”

I suppose I said that you could, or indicated it by some gesture.

“We need new seed, Hide. More than that, we need pure strains that we can cross for ourselves. I imagine it would be possible to develop pure strains from what we have, and it may be that someone’s trying to, but it will take a long time. Before the next conjunction-”

Sinew interrupted you, as he invariably did. “We can’t even make needles, and they’re just little slivers of metal. Most of the slug guns people have can’t be used because there aren’t any more cartridges for them. Everybody’s worried about next conjunction. I think we’ll get by like we did before, but what about the one after that? Bows and spears, that’s all we’ll have. Anybody planning to be dead before then?” When none of us spoke, he added, “Me neither.”

I said, “We lost one whole level of knowledge when we left the Short Sun Whorl and went aboard the Whorl. We lived in there for about three hundred years, if the scholars are right, but we never got that knowledge back. Now we’re losing another level, as Sinew says.”

He made me a mocking bow.

“If it were just the weapons, that would be bad enough, but there are other problems I haven’t mentioned.”

You said, “We brought knowledge, even if it isn’t enough. People from other cities have landed all over this whorl. If all of us pooled what we know…?”

I nodded. (It seemed to me that I scarcely looked at her; yet I can see her face, scrubbed and serious, as I write.) “It might be, as you say. But to pool it we’d have to have glasses, when we don’t even have a Window for our Grand Manteion.”

Hide put in, “Amberjack says that old Prolocutor’s trying to build a Sacred Window.”

“Trying,” Sinew sneered.

I ignored it. “Or if we cannot make glasses, wings like the Fliers’, or vessels like the Trivigaunti airship.”

But now, darling, I have been reconstructing our suppertime conversation for several hours, exactly as you and I used to try to reconstruct Silk’s when we were writing our book. The work has rekindled many tender memories of those days; but you recall this conversation better than I, I feel sure, and you can fill in the rest for yourself. I am going to bed.

* * *

Three days in which I have had no chance to write in this sketchy half-book I have begun without Nettle’s help. I suppose it is no loss; she will never read it. Or if she does, she will have me at her side, and this account will be superfluous. Yet she may show it to others, as I said. Are not the people of our town entitled to know what became of the emissary they sent for Silk? Why and how he failed? Pig’s blindness, and all the rest? I will proceed, if I do, upon the assumption that it will be read by strangers and perhaps even copied and recopied as our own book-the book that ultimately brought me here-has been.

Our house and our mill stand on Lizard Island, as I should explain. Lizard Island is called by that name because we, seeing it from the lander, at once noted its resemblance to that animal; and not (as some now suppose) because it was first settled by a man named Lizard. No such person exists.

The head is more or less coffin-shaped. All four legs are extended, and their rocky toes splayed. The sandspit that forms the tail curves out to sea, then north, to shelter Tail Bay, which is where we keep our logs. A lengthy ridge of granite gives the lizard a spine. Its highest peak, near the tail, is called the Tor. The spring that turns our mill originates there, giving us a long and very useful fall. Our house is set back some distance from the sea, but the mill stands with its feet in the bay to make it easier to hook and drag out logs.

Let me see. What else?

The Lizard’s head looks to the north. Our mill and our house are on the weather side of the island, their site dictated by the stream. On the lee side is a fishing village that is also called Lizard; it consists of six houses, those of our nearest neighbors. Lizard Island lies well north of New Viron, a day’s sail in good weather.

That night, as I walked along the shingle, I recalled the whole island as I had glimpsed it from the lander twenty years before. How small it had appeared then, and how beautiful! A green and black lizard motionless upon the blue and silver sea. It came to me then, with a force that seemed to snatch away my heart, that if only we could build an airship like General Saba’s I might see it so again.

And be again, if only for an instant, young. What would I not give to be the boy I was once more, with a young Nettle at my side?

Time for court. More this evening, I hope.