by Greg Bear
“It is alive!” Salap shouted above the steady, shrill scream of the wind. “It's in control!”
“What?” Keyser-Bach shouted back. “What's in control?”
A flight of triangles caught up against the masts, shattered, and slipped away in the storm. Pieces fell and whirled forward, blowing and flipping across the deck like leaves.
“It's a storm-beast! It's master of the warm water and the rising and falling air. We're not yet anywhere near the middle of it. We're on its outskirts. What must it be like farther in?”
Thornwheel scribbled quickly in his notebook. The pages bunched and tore beneath his pencil. Still, he kept writing: wind speed, pressure, the things we saw in air and water around us. He looked up, lips pulled back, squinting into the hot and cold winds.
Salap pointed dead ahead. “Everything in here is alive and growing, prospering! A garden in a whirlwind! Even so, if this is a cyclonic, there must be a calm center!”
Randall worked his way forward, stepping carefully over each safety rope, fastening his line, tugging it free with the secondary loop-line, refastening. He climbed onto the forecastle deck. “We're taking water like a colander,” he shouted at the captain. “Every board's been jarred. I've got half the crew below pumping and caulking, but I don't think we can last more than another hour.”
“Set the fore course and main lower topgallants,” Keyser-Bach said. “Keep the wind on our port quarter.”
“That will put us right into the center!” Randall shouted.
“That's where Salap wants to be!” the captain replied. The winds nearly drowned him out.
“Fine!” Randall said, raising his hands and preparing to head aft. He shook his fists at the chaotic sky until he reached the ladder, then glanced back and said something that nobody heard.
I turned to sight along the bowsprit. The waving and whirling fans had passed. Ahead, the ocean seemed covered with silvery grass taller than our upper topgallants, making great steady clockwise waves like cilia on the skin of a cell.
“Storm cell!” I said to Thornwheel. Salap turned to me. Both called out, “What?”
“We're inside a storm cell,” I said, but I could not convey my joke, if it was a joke; it might have been a serious observation, a clever metaphor, a crazy way of dealing with incomprehensible phenomena. I did not care. I felt so battered and dazzled, beyond fear, sliding smoothly into exhausted disengagement. The waving silvery grass ahead could have become the hair of some huge giant, rising from the sea like old Neptune, and I wouldn't have been much surprised.
With the sails set, our speed increased, and Vigilant moved at fifteen or twenty knots toward the immense rolling wall. The crew worked steadily on deck and in the rigging, Soterio guiding them as best he could from the main deck. Randall had climbed halfway up the shrouds, inspecting something on the foretree. I wondered if Shirla had been relieved on the wheel. I saw Ry Diem and Meissner hauling the tattered remains of a blown-out sail aft.
The fore and main trees and sails stood out brilliantly in a shaft of light like a searchlight beam, and I turned into its dazzle, high above the wall of grass. The sparkles had coalesced into a concentrated shimmer, throwing light on the sea around us like a lens or concave mirror. The whole storm was a system of reflection and absorption of sunlight, the scions in the atmosphere encouraging the heating or cooling of the surrounding air even as they flew through it, turning silvery white or dark black. The scions on the ocean's surface shifted and controlled the surface winds, and perhaps also conserved or radiated heat from the water itself.
Salap marched back and forth across the forecastle deck, staring hawklike port and then starboard, trying to see and understand everything. The captain paid attention to little but the ship and its immediate obstacles. He lifted his arm, bellowed something, and we all turned to look off the port bow. If we could turn the ship a few points more on the starboard bow, we could pass through an opening in the wall of grass, a space of wide water like the gap left by a swinging scythe.
Randall came forward and the captain gave his instructions. The crew worked—Ridjel took a starboard brace with Shankara and Kissbegh and turned the fore course yard—and slowly, as the wall approached, Vigilant aimed for the opening.
“We're going into its belly,” Thornwheel said. “How far in are we already?”
“I don't know,” I cried. “Seven, maybe eight miles.”
“Twenty at least, with that wind,” Salap said.
On either side, the grass rose around us, silvery tops swaying. Vigilant sailed into the gap. Abruptly, the wind stopped and the sails hung slack.
Keyser-Bach looked at them with a furrowed brow, obviously stumped. What to do next—put on more sail to take advantage of what little wind remained, or drift and wait for another blow? Salap offered no advice. We were all beyond any human experience.
Alternating red and black disks covered the water around the ship, a polka-dot sea as lurid in the glittering light as any child's drawing. The disks rose and fell on a gentle swell, while above the grass, and beyond the opening of the gap, the wind wailed like a fading echo.
The sky above filled with thick black streamers of cloud. Rain spattered down. A warm wind blew from directly ahead and the ship yawed to starboard. The wind ceased as abruptly as it began.
We lay in stillness, if not complete silence. A current in the water around Vigilant pushed us slowly, smoothly ahead, along the curve of the gap between the walls of grass. Randall went belowdecks to supervise the pumping. I felt guilty at not pitching in; but Salap shook his head at the look on my face, pinched his lips together, said, “Eyes and ears. Let the muscles work now. We'll pitch in if the master demands it.”
This did not make me feel any more comfortable, but it was an order.
A few hundred meters into the gap, we heard a steady thumping sound, like the beating of a huge heart, though rapid as a bird's. The sails had been set to the captain's satisfaction, the hand pumps seemed to be gaining on the water in the hold, and both master and mate were on deck to take in the scene around us.
Thornwheel had made all the notes there were to make at this point. The wind was light and steady at about five knots, the grass undulated as it had for the past ten or fifteen minutes, and he had recorded the beginning of the sound. We glanced at each other, nodded as if making acquaintance across a busy boulevard, and returned to gazing at the grass, the polka-dotted water, the bands of cloud and spinning scions high above.
“Is it worth it?” the captain suddenly asked Salap. We had grown so used to shouting that his voice boomed across the deck.
“You mean, is it worth my life, to experience this?” Salap asked in return.
“We've seen a lot together,” the captain said. “It would be fitting to die like this.”
Lamarckia is a good place to die. Swallowed by a living storm, with no chance to be of any use to the Hexamon, no longer seemed the best end to me. I had answered their question hours ago, but had changed my mind since.
“I have a lot more I'd like to see,” Salap said. “Things even more remarkable. And to die without telling ... With what we know...”
“I don't intend to die,” the captain said. “But my intentions don't mean much here.”
Salap said, “Cassir and I are going to take a few specimens at the stern.” He descended the ladder and walked aft, taking Cassir from his post. Pieces of shattered wind-driven scions lay brown and withered on the deck, their glory of white and silver fading quickly. Cassir retrieved a few and bottled them, then stowed the bottles belowdecks and returned with a specimen net and gaff to join the head researcher.
The thumping grew louder. Ahead, the walls of grass turned reddish brown, though each blade was still silver-tipped. The tips became flattened, and the stalks shorter, the rhythm of undulation more rapid. Breaks in the walls to either side allowed strong breezes to blow across the ship, heeling and pushing it one way and then back the other.
Soterio came forwa
rd. The captain asked who was steering, and the mate replied that Shimchisko had replaced Shankara, and that Ry Diem was on backup. Shirla had been relieved just after the beginning of the storm.
It all seemed more than just dreamlike; it seemed feverishly mad. The light on our faces was mottled white and pink, with flashes of silver from the clouds above. The fore course luffed and bellied in the alternating winds. All around us, the waving blades rose no higher than the yard of the course, and from the tops, Ibert called down that he could see an end to the grass a few hundred meters ahead.
Vigilant emerged from the grass ten minutes later. Ahead, a dense wall of gleaming white cloud churned. In the broad lane of sea before this wall, dozens of different kinds of scions eeled and floated through the water, passing broad black masses like small low islands. Atop the masses rose translucent pillars that gleamed like glass, but shivered with each thump like stiff jelly; within the pillars, long gray and blue cylinders clustered like wires through insulation. The pillars were about twice as high as the truck at the top of the maintree and two-thirds as broad as the Vigilant's length from jibboom to stern.
Above and ahead, the sky filled with detail that eluded explanation, confusing my eyes and mind. I saw pinwheels of darkness spinning lithe as snakes that fell behind the wall of cloud. One of the vortices broke through the wall and fell apart, scattering as sheets of very dark rain into the sea, which seethed like living soup. The thumping began to hurt our ears, a rapid surge in pressure as much as a sound, and we could not talk at all and be heard.
Vigilant would not be controlled. No matter which way we set the sails or steered, the thick mass of scions around us carried us in the flow, leaving the waving grass behind, like brown beach cliffs rising to a silvery prairie on a sloping hill. All behind was wrapped in drifts of brilliant white cloud, pierced by searchlight beams; and above, rising several thousand meters into the air, an immense curtain of black shot with spreading fans of powdery gold. I had never seen anything so awesomely beautiful, not even the advancing wall of a Jart offensive...
I felt like a Jonah lost in the belly of a godlike monster, this storm-beast as Salap had called it, the captain's nemesis, and my chest hurt with fear and something like shame. My throat clutched and even if I could have been heard, I couldn't have said a word.
Suddenly all my thoughts focused on Shirla. She was the closest thing to a woman and a friend I had on this planet; she was female. Being near her seemed essential. I looked back along the deck, actually made a step to go aft, caught myself and looked over my shoulder at Thornwheel. He had put away his sodden notebook and now lay curled up by the bowsprit, hands over his ears, trying to hide from the pounding triphammer pressure. Salap had fallen to his knees beside the port gunwale, his safety line tangled around his legs. The captain still stood, but leaned against the curved black vent over the galley, his face locked in a grimace of pain, eyes mostly shut.
So much energy, I thought. I turned about myself where I stood, taking it all in, for the moment losing all the pain in my ears, my lips calling for Shirla. I wondered if she were dead or alive. If I got out of this, I thought, I would give up everything—my mission, my reluctance to become part of the immigrants—everything, just to be with Shirla.
But Shirla became an abstraction. Suddenly I missed Uleysa, on Thistledown. The faces of several dozen other women, friends and lovers, chance acquaintances, came with extraordinary clarity. I was surrounded by them. I saw my mother, her angular, half-angry, half-puzzled face unable to comprehend that she had just hurt her small son with a sharp, unsympathetic word, and I loved her, forgave her, needed her.
The thumping stopped. Vigilant floated for the moment in comparative quiet. The other sounds—whistle of wind from our starboard quarter through the rigging, sloshing and slapping of water and the confused sliding whisper of scions in that water, came back only gradually, as if having been in hiding and only now emerging.
The quiet seemed like an indrawn breath before a scream, but no scream came.
“We are going to get out of this,” Keyser-Bach said, enunciating each word like a schoolmaster. He went to the rail. “I hope to breath and fate Cassir is taking specimens.” He pointed into the water, lips counting softly. “I can't count how many different types of scion there are. What do they do?”
The water around the ship seethed with color and form, as if Vigilant had been scooped up in a net filled with the concentrated creatures of an entire terrestrial ocean. Soterio came forward, a dirty white cloth wrapped around his head and ears. He removed the cloth sheepishly and cocked his left ear close to the captain's mouth to receive orders. But the captain said one thing, then belayed it; another, and belayed that, as well. There was nowhere to go, no clear direction for safety. We were turned around in the creature, and our compass was of little use. The storm could have shifted course around us as much as we turned within it. We had been inside the system for five hours; we could be as much as thirty miles from the perimeter, or even forty.
“Shit,” the captain finally said, throwing up his hands. He turned, stared toward the wall of mist, turned again and looked down a corridor between the false brown hills and silvery grass prairie, his eye following the curve off into more mist, black shot with gold and silver. “It's pure instinct, or guesswork, Ser Soterio.”
“Let it be instinct, sir,” Soterio said.
Salap and Cassir came forward. Cassir deposited the contents of a bulging net into a barrel, then poured a bucket of water over the contents, which seethed. With a look of fascination and caution, and a touch of disgust, Cassir clamped the lid down on the barrel.
“What do you see?” Randall shouted to Ibert and Shatro in the maintree top. I shielded my eyes against another flash of light and saw the two draped limply on the small platform high over the ship. Shatro raised an arm and pulled himself to a kneeling position, gripping the shrouds. He scanned the surrounding sea.
“I don't know,” he called back.
Ibert stood beside him. “None of it makes any sense,” he added.
“We're looking for a way out! What do you see?” Randall called up angrily.
“What would it look like?” Ibert asked plaintively.
“A door,” Thornwheel said, uncertain on his feet. “With a big brass knob.”
A large drop of black ink fell at his feet, splashing his shoes and pants. He stared at it dumbly, then looked up at us, What next? More drops fell, steam rising from the spreading stains. One struck me on the back and was hot enough to sting.
“Wonderful!” Shatro screamed from the platform. “We've gone straight to hell!”
We scrambled on the deck to get away from the sudden barrage of hot inky drops. All around, the sea was dappled and roiled with the dark rain, and the mass of writhing scions sank with a chorus of bubbling gurgles. In the tops, Shatro and Ibert screamed. Ibert came down the shrouds as fast as he could, stopping to shriek as a splatter of steaming rain struck his head and back. He nearly fell. Shatro lay on the platform, hands wrapped behind his head, yelling incoherently.
There was no place to hide on the forecastle deck. I saw Meissner run forward with scraps of ruined sail, throwing them at sailors cowering on the deck. Ibert tumbled the last few meters from the shrouds, landing heavily on the deck, and snatched a shred of canvas from the sailmaker. Everyone, covered or not, made a dash for the hatches and pushed and shoved their way below.
In the press of bodies, I found myself standing beside the carpenter, Gusmao, in her workspace in the ship's waist, beneath the upper deck. She blinked at the unwelcome intruders. She had not been on deck since we entered the storm. She was not a curious sort.
“My god, you're a mess,” she said to the four of us. “What's going on up there?”
Nobody answered for long seconds. “Black rain,” said Kissbegh, his face covered with thick splotches, almost unrecognizable beside the stocky, oily-black figure of Ry Diem.
“Who's steering?” Shirla asked, wa
lking down the aisle between the carpenter's shop and the sail locker.
“Shimchisko's still up there. Soterio's with him,” Shankara said. The ship rolled. The deck drummed with heavy rain. The air became stifling, and moisture thickened it until we could hardly breathe. Shirla put her hand on my arm, solicitous. I laid my hand over it and felt like a young boy. Thornwheel came down the aisle, calling my name. “Salap's forward,” he said, “in the lab. They got the specimens inside.”
I wiped black goo from my face. Where it had thickened, not quite dry, it caked and fell away, leaving no stain on the skin beneath. I touched Shirla's face and tried to wipe it. She held my hand and drew back slightly, but smiled. “It's in my eyes,” she said.
Gusmao recovered enough to order us out of her workshop. “I don't know what's happening topside, but the captain wants his barrels and boxes.” She shooed us into the corridor, where the air, away from the shop's vents, was even thicker.
“You're going to work in this?” Kissbegh asked, peering around the door into the carpenter's tiny workspace.
“I'm going to breathe, dammit,” Gusmao said, and shut the door in his face.
After a few minutes, the drumming stopped. We heard the wind pick up, and the creak of the trees and rattle of yards and rigging. We delegated Ridjel to poke his head up and see what there was to see. He climbed the steps, lifted the hatch cover, and said, “Salap's out there. The black stuff's stopped falling, but it's all over the deck. There's the captain—and Randall.”
We hastily climbed out on the quarterdeck and returned to where we had been before the black rain began, all but Ibert, who stood by the shrouds, calling up to Shatro. Shatro answered and said he was coming down. Soterio passed by, half-inked, half-clean, like a festival harlequin. He did not comment on Ibert's reluctance to go topside again.
All around, the ship drifted through twists and curls of fog. The air temperature had climbed at least ten degrees and our stained clothes clung to us. My throat was parched, but the water butts on deck had been bumped, losing their caps, and were fouled by ink. Leo Frey, the cook, and his assistant Passey emptied the contents of the butts and went below to bring up more water.
