Pallahaxi

by Michael Coney

  “You’re an inlander, I bet,” said my savior, whom I could hardly see through the mists of my shame. “A grubber. All the same, you should know better than to sail a skimmer upstream during the grume. All that fresh water coming down the river, huh? One minute you’re safe on the dense stuff, the next, whoosh.” She made a plunging motion with a small, plump hand. “Skimmers don’t have enough freeboard to sail on ordinary water.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, looking across the estuary, at the pale sky, anywhere. I heard her chuckle.

  “Mind you,” she said kindly, “I’ve never seen anyone sink quite so fast. You really didn’t have much of a chance.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s you name?”

  “Uh, Hardy. Yam Hardy.”

  “You come from Yam?” She was surprised; my village is half a day’s journey away by motorcart, a day on loxback. “Are you… important, in any way? I mean,” she grinned disarmingly, “I’d like to think I’ve benefited civilization, saving you from a watery grave.”

  “My dad’s Yam Bruno.” I tried to keep the pride out of my voice.

  “Bruno? The brother of your manchief?” She sounded reasonably impressed. “He’s here in Noss right now, isn’t he? I saw the Yam motorcart.”

  “He’s come to negotiate with the Noss chiefs.”

  “What about?”

  “Oh, supplies, trading, that kind of thing. Planning. Top level stuff. You wouldn’t be interested.”

  “You mean you don’t really know, right?”

  The subject needed changing. I seemed to be on the defensive again, as if the rescue operation hadn’t been humiliating enough. Anyway, who was this girl? Beginning to recover my composure, I was now able to see she was about my age and startlingly pretty, with round and warm brown eyes, dimples in plump cheeks and a smile brighter than Phu himself.

  But then, I was at an impressionable age. And men and women don’t mix much on our world; I’m not used to being close to such beauty. You probably find that odd. “You haven’t told me your name,” I said.

  She hesitated. Then, “Charm,” she said. “Noss Charm.” She hurried on, “I know it’s a funny name, but it’s because of this.” She reached inside the neck of her dress — which seemed to be fashioned out of expensive human fabric — and pulled out a crystal on a thin cord. Some kind of sparkly thing; I know nothing about jewels.

  But I do know I got the most powerful backflash at that moment.

  I stared from the jewel to her face; those brown, brown eyes, and it seemed I was looking back in time for as many generations as there have ever been. Long, long years, countless people passing on this little memory; it must be a very precious and meaningful one.

  The crystal, and the pretty girl… .

  “Oh,” she said quietly, staring at me.

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  It was her turn to gaze thoughtfully across the estuary. Seasuckers rose up the far shoreline, tall, green and cool. The ocean lay flat beyond the headland to our left, and a million pale birds swooped and screamed, plucking stranded fish from the surface. The Noss skimmers plied the waters with their nets, gathering the harvest of the grume — which Dad was negotiating about right now, because our grain harvest at Yam was looking pretty scanty.

  And I was sitting on the rocks with a girl flounder.

  It was time I took stock of my position. Flounders — coastal people — have peculiar habits and webbed feet. They worship waves and sea monsters and such, so I’ve been told. They are so different from us inlanders that some folk think they’re a different species, although this has been disproved on certain discreditable occasions. Their men catch fish and their women process them in various ways. Basic primitive lifestyle. No need for planning. Their lives are patterned by the annual grume, not by their own design. It’s even been said their blood runs thick during this time of year. Mister McNeil, our resident human, calls them hunter-gatherers.

  We inlanders, on the other hand, are a different breed.

  Certainly our men hunt. But it takes intelligence to understand the complex land migratory patterns, and skill to bring down the prey. And our women grow crops, which requires all kinds of planning. Mister McNeil told me this impressed the humans enormously when they first arrived eight generations ago.

  In short, we are more civilized than the flounders.

  Or so I believed, right up to that seventeenth birthday. Forgive me; I was taught that way.

  And I found it irritating that the flounders referred to us inland people as grubbers.

  I regarded the female flounder loftily. “I have to be going. My father will be wondering where I’ve got to. I expect he’ll have concluded his negotiations by now.” Belatedly, I realized I still had an unresolved problem. “Would you give me a hand with my skimmer?”

  “What? Oh, yes.” She came out of her trance and we hauled the skimmer up the steep bank. I pulled and Charm pushed, her heart-shaped face pink with effort. Finally we emerged from under the trees onto the road that runs beside the estuary, and later beside the river all the way to Yam and beyond. Once on the road the going was easier and we lifted the boat to carry it, one either side.

  “That’s funny,” said Charm.

  “What?”

  “There’s water coming out. Look.”

  A small pool lay on the dusty road. Lazy drops of grume water plopped into it as I watched. We turned the boat over… .

  Skimmers are of simple construction, unlike deep-hulled boats. They are little more than long, almost flat-bottomed boxes with transverse seats. Beneath the seats is the safety board, about a hand’s width away from the bottom of the hull, to keep the sailor’s feet away from direct contact with the boat’s cold bottom and the uneasiness — even fear — that such contact might cause.

  “There’s a hole,” said Charm.

  It was round, about two fingers wide. I felt the chill of fright. “I’d have sunk anyway, even without sailing into thin water.”

  “You must have hit a rock.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Then someone’s trying to kill you.” Charm regarded me wide-eyed. “Someone crept into your place at dead of night and punctured the boat. Probably wearing a mask. What fun! A secret enemy wants you dead. You must be even more important than you think. Perhaps you overheard a dirty political plot.” Her innocent expression slipped. “Or perhaps you hit a rock after all.”

  “I didn’t hit a rock, for Phu’s sake!. I think I’d have noticed, huh? No, this is deliberate. Either it was done before I left home, or it was done here in Noss. The boat was sitting on the motorcart for quite a while after we arrived.”

  Suddenly serious, she said, “No Noss person would damage a boat. We live off the sea and we know how awful it is to take on water.”

  “But you can swim.”

  “Not for long. Cold gets us just the way it gets you grubbers, uh, inlanders. It takes a while longer, that’s all. We’re even more scared of the sea than you are, because we lose people out there quite often. So we learn to swim. It’d never occur to anyone in Noss to put a hole in your boat.” Her tone was reproving.

  Maybe she was right; I didn’t know. I regarded the boat glumly. It had lost its newness. It was violated. Maybe I’d have to leave it in Noss for repairs; we don’t have boatbuilders at Yam. I’d bragged about the boat before I left; everyone had seen it on the motorcart as Dad and I had driven away. Now I’d be crawling home with it holed and despoiled. People would laugh. My sometime friend Caunter — who’d been secretly jealous of the boat — would be delighted. And my stupid cousin Trigger would ask stupid questions and offer mindless sympathy. And everyone would be quite sure I’d driven the skimmer up on a rock through sheer incompetence.

  Except the secret enemy… .

  Was there a secret enemy?

  Surely not. In those innocent days, I liked to think I was universally admired and re
spected. Adored, even.

  We walked on, carrying the boat between us. Soon we passed a cluster of women’s cottages; tumble-down piles of rock set into the rising hillside, roofed with broad sealeaves. Drivets scuttled among mounds of garbage. Quite a contrast to Yam’s neat women’s village. A woman leaned against a doorway, a baby in her arms.

  “Yah, grubber boy!” she shouted. “Go dig dirt!”

  Charm’s head whipped round. “Argh, go to Rax, Maddy!” she shouted back. She turned to me. “Sorry about that,” she said in normal tones. “Maddy has a big mouth.”

  “Anyway, it’s our women that grow the crops, not the men,” I said, aggrieved. “Not that there’s anything wrong in that.”

  I noticed a mischievous grin on Charm’s lips. “Well, you have to admit it’s a bit odd, spending your life scratching around in dirt. But it’s not for me to say. I’m just glad I was born a coaster.”

  An astonishing statement. I examined her from the corner of my eye as we carried the skimmer. Average height, not slim; not plump either. Quite strong-looking for a girl, with good sturdy shoulders and legs. Nice little tits, too, for her age. As my examination seemed to be turning to admiration I noted that she was unnaturally clean to the point of almost glowing, unlike good inlander women whose skin is ingrained with the grime of honest agriculture. She probably — I told myself — stank of fish.

  I couldn’t tell, because the whole area stank of fish. A lumbering loxcart passed, dripping with a load of glubb for the drying racks on the hillside behind the women’s cottages. Charm waved to the man leading the lox; he nodded back. A lorin shambled along beside him, wooly hand resting on the lox’s neck. Lox work much better with lorin as companions. I stole another glance at Charm. By Phu, she was gorgeous.

  Then the companionable silence was shattered by an angry shout.

  “Charm! What the freezing hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Rax!” Charm swore. “It’s Mom.”

  A tall woman strode toward us, long brown hair framing an expression of fury, dressed in the skin of some marine mammal so slick that she looked naked. Beside her trotted a fellow young enough to be her son. He was chunky and thick-set with a broad, pink face and yellow hair. An oddly assorted couple; but then, this was Noss.

  Charm said mildly, “I’m just helping with this boat. This is Yam Hardy, Mom.”

  Charm’s Mom drew up alongside like a stately freightsailer coming up into the wind. She began to murmur to her daughter in a tight and furious undertone. I caught a few words. “… will not have you parading in public… a freezing grubber… position to maintain… . would people think…” and so on.

  Charm merely looked sulky, interjecting “yeah, yeah” when appropriate. I stood by, outraged. This appalling Noss woman seemed to think her daughter was in some way better than I, an inlander!

  “You want to get your face smashed in?” the young fellow asked me, fancying himself a man of action.

  “Try it.”

  “If I catch you with Charm again I will!”

  “No, I meant try it here and now.”

  “By Phu, I will!”

  But he still hesitated, so I said sarcastically, “I’m not to clear on Noss customs. Does Charm belong to you in some way?”

  “My name’s Cuff,” he said as though it should mean something to me. “Son of Walleye, and don’t you forget it, grubber boy.”

  The Noss manchief’s son. No wonder he was an arrogant snorter. Now I noticed that one eye had a slightly milky cast. Cuff had inherited the legendary disability of his manline.

  By now Charm and her mother had concluded their one-sided conversation. The older woman turned to me. “So if you don’t mind carrying your boat yourself, young man, I’ll—”

  “Ah, Hardy. So here you are.” It was Dad, thanks be to Phu. Big and loose-limbed, his gait always reminded me of a lorin. His manner too, in many ways. Slow, easy-going and amiable. He addressed the appalling woman. “So you’ve met my son, Lonessa.”

  Lonessa! The dragon lady of Noss! And Charm was the daughter of this notorious womanchief? Poor girl. We laid the skimmer on the ground and I stepped over it to join the group. As Lonessa and Dad engaged in a moment of verbal grooming, Charm turned to me.

  “Sorry,” she whispered. “Mom’s a freezing snob. But she’s all right, really. And Cuff’s just a bully. You have to make allowances.”

  Meanwhile Noss Lonessa had fixed me with a bright smile. Her eyes were the same color as Charm’s. It seemed like sacrilege.

  “So this is your son, Bruno?” Her manner had undergone a swift change for the better. “I should have known. He has your features. A fine young man.”

  Dad was grinning at me in that false way fathers do when there are strangers in the midst. “Noss Lonessa, Noss Walleye and I had a successful meeting, Hardy.” As if I was really interested. Walleye, by the way, is not only half blind but walks with a stick due to some kind of fishing accident. It’s an example of how peculiar coastal society is, Walleye being crippled but still manchief. If our own manchief, my Uncle Stance — Dad’s brother — was crippled, he wouldn’t be able to lead the hunt. So his son Trigger would become manchief. Perish the thought, because Trigger’s a fool.

  And if Trigger got himself gored to death by a stamper, as he probably would, Dad would be manchief. And everything at Yam would be a whole lot better.

  And I would be next in line for manchief.

  My dream of glory was interrupted by the need to listen to Lonessa, who had deigned to talk to me. “Your father and I make a good team at the council table, Hardy. We both know how to get what we want. I think Yam can face next winter with confidence. Really, in these difficult times we have to pool our resources, don’t you think?”

  Well… . Times were difficult, no doubt about that. The Yam harvest looked to be even more thin than last year, and game animals were scarce. But reading between the lines, had Lonessa and Dad ganged up on poor old Walleye? And the way she stood close and smiled at him, you’d think… . No; my imagination balked at that. Dear old Dad wouldn’t countenance a sexual liaison with a coaster. It would be like bedding a big thrashing fish.

  On the other hand, Dad himself looked pretty good in the white ceremonial cloak he always wore when negotiating on behalf of Yam. My mother, Spring, had made it for him out of skins from the rare albino lox. It was the only one of its kind in Yam or Noss.

  “It was a cold spring,” I said dutifully.

  “Last night I stardreamed,” intoned Lonessa impressively, meaning that she riffled through her ancestral memories, “and I can tell you, young man, that it was the coldest spring Noss has known.”

  I shivered involuntarily as the specter of the dead planet Rax visited my mind again. Superstition is a rotten thing for a civilization to be based on.

  As we were about to leave, the oafish Cuff seized my arm. “What I said about Charm stands, you freezer,” he muttered. “And I’ll tell you this. When I’m manchief there’ll be no favors done to Yam, believe me. So far as I’m concerned, the whole lot of you can starve!”

  It was a long drive home. The Noss council house is situated half-way between the men’s and the women’s village, a logical arrangement. This meant that I didn’t get to see the men’s village on the way home, which was a pity. There’s something fascinating about a coastal men’s village — although I wouldn’t want Yam people to know I felt that way. The two types of boats, skimmers and deep-hulls; the nets all over the stone-built quay; the whirling clouds of grummets trying to steal fish; the harsh accents of the fishermen and the strange words they have for commonplace objects; it’s all quite exotic, really.

  Unlike the women’s village past which we now drove, very slowly, because children were everywhere, running around and yelling and trying the race the motorcart. Women stood in their doorways, watching us pass. A few lorin sat around too; they make excellent child-minders when a mother is temporarily absent. The pass
ing of a motorcart is an event; it only happens when something big is going on. One older boy was staring at me; he looked to be almost five and ready to move to the men’s village. I tried to look suitably important, scrutinizing the water gauge and squinting up critically at the smoky exhaust. The motorcart puffed on, the skimmer on the cargo platform. Dad had made light of the damage, may Phu bless him.

  “A couple more sticks, I think, Mister Stoker,” he said jovially. He was in expansive mood. Either he was pleased with the way business had gone, or he was all puffed up with Noss Lonessa’s attention. I swung open the firebox door. Yes, the fire could use some fuel. I tossed in an armful of the driftwood I’d gathered from the beach earlier.

  An interesting monster, the motorcart. It can burn wood, which is easily obtained but bulky. Or, on long journeys when space might be at a premium, it can burn distil through jets in the firebox. Distil is tedious to manufacture but takes up less room on board than firewood because it can be carried in cans or even skins. Wood or distil, the purpose is to heat the boiler and produce steam to drive a cylinder the size of a bucket, which in turn drives the wheels.

  Dad is easily Yam’s best motorcart driver. Nothing goes wrong when Dad’s at the tiller. Uncle Stance is a different proposition. I can remember several occasions when the motorcart has come trundling into the village late at night towed behind a team of lox, Uncle Stance sitting disgraced and shivering at the tiller, having run out of fuel somewhere in the wilds.

  It takes more than knowledgeable ancestors and accurate stardreaming, knowing how to handle the motorcart. There’s a knack to it that has little to do with genetics.

  I’m losing you again. I keep forgetting humans have to learn things. We stilks don’t. Knowledge is already there in our genetic memories — always provided one of our ancestors knew it, whatever it is. The trick is in locating it. Stardreaming. It must be very difficult for you humans having to restart knowledge every generation, rather like us having to light the motorcart’s fire every morning. No wonder you need books and tapes and discs and stuff like that.