Mer-Cycle

by Piers Anthony

  Proxy 5–12–5–16–8: Attention.

  Acknowledging.

  Status?

  Dismal. I dare not tell the truth for fear of sacrificing the mission, yet I cannot prevail otherwise. I think I can accomplish it only by the intercession of one member of the party, and I am unable to contact that one. I must bide my time, and hope.

  Then terminate it.

  No. Not until all hope is gone. Sufficient time must come for the one to be ready. Then if I can manage contact, I can still succeed.

  In view of the risk, we feel that greater judgment than yours should be invoked. Obtain our acquiescence before presenting the mission to your group.

  I will do so.

  “Atlantis,” Su-ri-mo agreed. “It is at least a civilized port.”

  A few days later a terrible storm formed, and for two days we rode before it, and two more within it, hardly knowing day from night. All our hatches and oar-ports were sealed, lest we be swamped; we rode blindly.

  Just when the winds were worst, they abruptly abated, and we sailed serene in sunshine. But the Admiral allowed no relaxation, and drove us all on all three ships to batten down even more firmly than before, with no sail and every oar-port closed. The men thought him moonstruck, and even I had my doubts—but suddenly a frightening wall of cloud swept over the horizon, and almost before we could fetch down our heads and cling to the beams the wind struck again, fully as fiercely as before. It was another storm—blowing from the other direction!

  Surely this ocean was cursed by the gods, to have such incredible storms. How was it that the first storm had not crashed headlong into the second, and so dissipated both? But the gods are not limited by such considerations; they do as pleases them, and it was evident that our presence here did not please them. For three more days we cowered before the awful wind, the huge waves striking our ship as if to sunder it in twain. The crewmen prayed valiantly to one god or another, but the elements seemed almost beyond the control of divinity.

  When at last the weather eased, we were alone and completely lost. Our sail was in useless shreds, our mast stripped bare. The admiral’s ship was gone, as was the third vessel; we could not ascertain their fate. We ourselves were helpless before the currents of the sea, for our oars had all been broken off.

  The ship’s captain supervised repairs, but there was no new tackle to mount and no new sail. Our hull at least was tight, for our own guild of shipwrights at Thera was ever the finest, and after bailing out the bilge and the wash from the storm waves we floated as high as we had before. We had a fair supply of food and wine, because of the staples the Admiral had laid in for the voyage to Atlantis, though we seemed unlikely to arrive there now. And of course we fished.

  Now fish is fit for kings, but seawater is not. As for imbibing the discolored juices of crushed fish in lieu of water, and drinking bilge salvaged from rain—well, then we really appreciated the hardships of existing on a derelict. I suspect that had we had good Cretan wine we might have endured even so without complaint, but what filled our supply jars was Megalithic Mash, as the cynical crewmen put it.

  The captain of our ship consulted with me, as I was now the ranking remaining officer of the fleet, but I could tell him nothing. It was not that I chose to preserve the secret of our destination from him; it was that it was pointless to tantalize him with it when we had no hope of achieving it. Even had I said it, no one had the bearing of Atlantis. Only the Admiral had that.

  On we drifted, ever father from our homeland, for the seas were moving west. Illness broke out among the crewmen, and we had no proper physician to attend to it. I suffered pains in my own bones, at times so pervasive that I lay in my cabin unable to move, seeking to alleviate my discomfort by consuming bad wine and dreaming of diversions of the past. I saw in my mind a gallery of our sprightly island ladies, with their long gaily colored skirts tiered with five and six bands of flouncing, bright bracelets on their wrists and ankles, their puffed sleeves and lush breasts standing behind thin gauze, their elaborate jeweled headdresses over curly black hair, a snakelike strand bobbing in front of each ear, large dark-etched eyes—ah, ah! Who can lay claim to knowledge of beauty, who has not gazed on such as these!

  At other times it seemed I was traveling down a street in my palanquin, passing well-kept houses flush with the edge of the pavement, their windows filled with taut oiled parchment panes. I would enter one, my slaves waiting outside. The sweet smell of cooking-smoke tantalized my nostrils, and I knew that a fine repast was in the making. I would sit on a red cushion on a fine stone bench in the pale blue chamber, awaiting invitation to the central patio. I do not know whose house it was; not my own. Just an average domicile in a better neighborhood. Perhaps that was the point of vision: its reassuring suggestion that such houses and such neighborhoods still existed, when I feared they did not. The life I had known lingered wistfully within me.

  Sometimes I recovered enough to sit on the open deck, and then my gaze fixed on the steady waves and I dreamed of the sea-ancestry of our culture. If our origins lay in Anatolia, yet we had been sea-faring before achieving fair Crete and fairer Thera—could these legends be reconciled? As I now analyzed them, two thousand years ago we were part of an empire of all the seas, whose ports touched on every shore. But slowly the waters rose and those fabulous ancient cities were drowned, and lacking the means to hold back the waters the empire fragmented, leaving pieces of itself scattered across the world like broken pottery sherds. One fragment became the Megalithics, another the Kingdom of Meluhha, yet others Egypt, Makan, Ubaid, and Dilmun. Even farther spread were the enclaves in southern Africa and eastward beyond the farthest reaches of the Sumerian trade routes—and of course Atlantis. Crete was only a minor refuge, then. Or so I conjecture, making allowance for the inflation of our own importance in our legends.

  I myself have visited a number of the old sites that produced such material as obsidian, that volcanic glass once so valuable for tools and weapons. Now we prefer bronze, of course, and iron when we can obtain it. But still the extent of that old empire is suggested by the ores it mined and the technologies it disseminated. If I could go back to learn the full history of that golden age of …

  At this point the first missing tablet manifested. Damn! Any loss from the narrative was painful, but when the discussion was on ancient history as seen by an ancient scholar, what a loss!

  Disgruntled by the insuperable interruption of the story, Don took a break. Splendid was glad to relax, too; she had been making notes on small waterproof sheets, recording this for her community.

  Don turned on the radio by force of habit, but Melanie still would not answer. Splendid noticing, smiled.

  Don’s frustration at the double balking by tablet and woman abruptly focused on what was available. “What are you laughing at?” he demanded.

  The mermaid was unperturbed. WHY NOT LET ME SHOW YOU, she wrote. WHILE THE MINOAN DRIFTS AND FRETS.

  “Show me what?” Then he remembered: how mermaids reproduced. She was teasing him, secure in the barrier of phase. Or was she trying to tempt him into some sexual attempt, that had to fail embarrassingly? Revenge for what Melanie had said to her?

  That reminded him of what Melanie had said about the balloons. All this time, he could have handled the Minoan tablets himself! Instead he had had to bargain with the mermaid, and compromise, translating only in her presence. That had not been a bad experience, actually, but he cursed himself for not thinking of the balloons before. Now she was cocksure, and his frustration found a way of expression.

  He brought out one of the balloons. It was very fine and flexible, and felt as if he were moving it through the resistance of water. As he was, now that it was no longer balled up. He stretched it carefully over his clumped and stiffened fingers, clamping it in place with his thumb. Hardly a perfect glove, but serviceable.

  “Come here, Splendid,” he said.

  She swam forward with enticing undulations, ready to play the futile game. Sh
e expected him to make a pass, literally: a sweep of his hand through her body without contact.

  He poked her left breast with the gloved fingers. Her flesh was firm and resilient, a genuine delight to poke. Splendid was laughing silently, enjoying her invulnerability.

  Then she realized that the touch was real. With one phenomenal thrust of her flukes she shot straight up a good two fathoms.

  Don’s pique dissipated, but he maintained a straight face. “Please do show me how,” he suggested as she leveled out and peered down.

  She touched her breast herself as if verifying what had happened. Now it seemed she was not so eager. She looked at the sheath on his hand, realizing that it did not have to be restricted to a finger. Her bluff had been called.

  “While the Minoan drifts and frets,” Don added encouragingly.

  Splendid glanced westward, as if debating whether to flee back to her village. He would not be able to pursue swiftly enough to keep her in sight, because of the difficulty of getting off the ship with his bicycle or out of the chasm the ship was in. Even on the level she could lose him, merely by swimming upward until gone.

  “If you go home, I shall continue translating on my own,” he said.

  That got to her. She was as eager as he to read that manuscript. Now he had possession.

  Then she dived purposefully for the tablets. She was going to carry them away!

  “No you don’t!” he cried, diving for them himself.

  They collided. This time flesh and bone passed through flesh and bone as before, but the balloon-glove got hung up against her torso just where flesh merged into scales. Don tried to yank back his hand, but his arm actually passed through her abdomen, leaving the hand at her rear, and he goosed her royally. Her mouth opened in an outraged O as she jackknifed, inadvertently showing him a bottom that resolved the long-standing question of “how.” It was all there in normal human order when the legs folded clear and the scales parted.

  Don had to roll away, finally managing to disengage, and go back to his bicycle for a breath of air. Splendid used the opportunity to pick up two of the tablets. Don, now aware of her liability, charged back balloon-first and tickled her under one raised arm, just where the breast began.

  She shrieked silently, squirming away, and dropped the tablets to the deck. One cracked apart.

  Appalled, they both broke off hostilities and stared. The damage was not total, as the tablet had split into two major portions rather than shattering. But had it not been buoyed by the water it would have been another matter. The look on Splendid’s face showed that she was as chagrined about the accident as he.

  She recovered her slate and wrote. I WILL NOT GO. I WILL MAKE IT RIGHT WITH YOUR FRIEND.

  Don merely nodded, putting away his balloon. Too bad it had taken this near disaster to straighten them both out. Yet now he realized that this was the first time he had had an interaction like this with a woman; his shyness had not gotten in the way. Ordinarily the mere thought of poking, grabbing, or goosing a woman would have made him flee, stutter-bound.

  Splendid wrote a treatise in German, and Don spelled it out over the unresponsive radio. He didn’t inquire what it said, and he had no evidence Melanie was listening, but it was the best he could do. He planned to broadcast it again in a few hours, and then yet again, until she picked it up.

  They returned to the manuscript, picking up the text after the missing tablet.

  … snake. Certainly we have many legends, and the serpent, as an aspect of the earth, is commonly worshipped in Crete. I use that term advisedly. Actually we worship no animals, as that is a practice for barbarians. We merely use them as adjuncts of the ritual in the worship of that divinity we may not approach directly. Yet this is difficult to justify to foreigners, and I have fallen out of the habit of trying. I myself have offered incense before the altar of the lovely Snake Goddess. And our regard for the bull as another aspect of that same Earth Spirit is too well established to warrant repetition here. Yet there are elements that do not entirely jibe, and the legend is in many ways alien to our comprehension. I shall present it here only in summary:

  Three thousand years ago—they are specific, as they possess a marvelously accurate calendar, but I round it off for convenience—there was an upright priest king who was identified with the Bull God for his strength and determination. No woman could resist him, and thus he attracted the romantic attention even of his sister, identified with the Bird God. She it was who nursed him when he was stricken ill as his penance for neglecting the Snake God, and in this case the Bird prevailed and she cured him. He was so joyous to be well again that he celebrated for forty days—some say four hundred. A ritual figure, subject to interpretation. She then tempted him with wine, making him intoxicated, and disguised himself so that he did not know her, and thereby seduced him. When he recovered equilibrium and realized what he had done, he built a great pyre and threw himself on it, ascending to the Heaven of the Bulls. But she endured alone and in due course gave birth to the Feathered Bull: a creature at once ferocious in animal aspect while well-favored in human aspect. He was both beast and god, but at the same time a man, with mannish appetites. This entity in due course became king, and set out to rule all the world of men. He discovered how to grow plants, how to sail a ship, and how to work with metal. His reign was long and glorious, extending over all the islands of the world and all the lands bordering on the sea. But in his old age, when he was five hundred years old—perhaps fifty, allowing for the rituality of figures—he became savage, for he was simultaneously a child of incest and miscegenation. He attempted to destroy what he had wrought, and at last his subjects had to confine him in a massive temple. For many years they fed him sacrifices of living flesh, but then they neglected him, and slowly he weakened. When he expired, the earth shuddered and groaned with the rage of a bull, and the sky whipped itself into a tremendous storm signifying the rage of the birds, and the sea came up in the rage of the Snake of the Water and inundated all the great cities of that kingdom, which was the original Atlantis. It fell apart and was no more.

  That, at any rate, is the legend. I have heard it in many variants, but all agree in essence. How strikingly it concurs with ours of the ancient sea-empire! Elements do seem contradictory, such as the father of the Feathered Bull becoming intoxicated by wine, when plant cultivation—surely including that of the vine—was discovered only later by his son. And I question the capacity of his subjects to imprison this powerful, god-imbued, man-bull-bird, however old he became. But as I noted before, legends of this nature must be taken allegorically, and the seeming errors analyzed for the more subtle truths they hint. What intrigues me primarily is the presence of the bull, for I have found no evidence of this animal existing in contemporary Atlantis.

  “So they made it Atlantis after all!” Don said, satisfied. “I rather thought they would.”

  BUT THEY WERE ADRIFT AND LOST, Splendid protested.

  “Haven’t you figured out where Atlantis is? The winds and currents naturally carried the ship there—which has to be the way the Minoans discovered it in the first place.”

  Her face lighted. AMERICA!

  “Certainly. It meets all the criteria. It is far across the sea to the west, beyond the Pillars of Hercules; it is larger than all of the Mediterranean lands combined—as far as they could tell, anyway, since they could not get around it either to the north or south; and it possessed great wealth and high civilization. Probably it was the major remnant of that worldwide maritime culture both legends speak of—a culture in its prime about 4000 B.C., before the celebrated Flood. But by 1500 B.C. only the Minoans maintained contact, as far as we or they knew. The Megalithics had declined and were no longer a significant maritime empire, despite their residence all along the European Atlantic coast. The several highly advanced cultures around the Arabian peninsula and India—Dilmun, Makan, and Meluhha, of which we have archaeological record—were blocked from it by the huge mass of Africa. The Chinese—you
r civilization—were balked by the sheer immensity of the Pacific. When the Cretan contact was severed by the eruption of Thera, it didn’t destroy the Minoan culture, but did end that contact with Atlantis. Atlantis became a myth.”

  BUT WHAT REALLY DESTROYED THE ORIGINAL MARITIME EMPIRE? she was writing.

  “The rising of the seas, of course. The melting ice of the glaciers of the ice age caused the water to cover much of the prior shoreline. The worldwide legends of the great flood may derive from—”

  THIS SHOULD NOT HAVE DESTROYED CIVILIZATION. IT WAS VERY SLOW IN TERMS OF MAN’S HISTORY.

  Don hesitated. “I suppose not. Certainly we owe much more to the ice age than it can ever have cost us, for the Magdelanean cave art culture derived from ice-age conditions. In fact, I’m sure those reindeer people migrated to the Near-East when conditions changed, building cities in Anatolia like Catal Huyuk of 6500 B.C. in which the cave motifs were transferred to house walls and ceramics, and metalworking first developed. But remember, two and a half thousand years elapsed between that civilization of 4000 B.C. and Pi-ja’s time. It could have atrophied, as all civilizations have well within that span, and the rising waters then covered up most of its architecture, leaving little evidence but legends. After all, consider how knowledge of the Minoan culture itself was lost for millennia, surviving only in that passing reference to Atlantis and such things as the Theseus legend.”

  She considered. YES, I SEE IT NOW. AND THE MAYAN LEGEND OF QUETZALCOATL, THE FEATHERED SERPENT.

  Don was electrified. “The feathered serpent? In American legend?”

  She looked askance. YOU ARE NOT FAMILIAR WITH THIS FAMOUS STORY?

  “I—I’ve concentrated pretty much on Crete,” Don admitted. “I guess I have heard of it, but I’m hazy on the details.”

  She provided them, and his wonder grew. The American Indian legend, common in many languages and variants in both north and south continents, told how the goddess Coatlicue gathered white feathers, placing them in her bosom; but she swallowed one and thereby became pregnant. She gave birth to Quetzalcoatl, whose name was a combination of Quetzal, a special green-feathered bird; Co, a snake; and Atl, water. Thus he represented air, earth, and water, and was a complex symbol of man’s condition and possibilities. He was the Feathered Serpent.