by Greg Bear
On the bow, away from the general activity of the crew, we watched the broad blue ocean and cloudy, milky sky, the blurred ball of the sun. “Do you ever think we should have died?” she asked, eyes crinkled, lips drawn up in a half grimace.
“Why?” I asked.
“They were our shipmates. Our captain died.”
“No reason for us to join them,” I said, with perhaps too much briskness.
“I wonder...”
“Don't,” I said, irritated. “That nonsense just makes things worse. We're here because we survived, by chance and our best efforts. We can't be blamed for their deaths.”
“Will you ever be part of anything?” she asked, glancing at me with quizzical eyes.
I could give no honest answer.
“You have always been a terrible risk, Ser Olmy,” she said, looking away.
I tried to steer our talk in another direction. “I've been incredibly lucky, actually,” I said.
“Why lucky? And why do you never—”
“I was lucky to find a berth on Vigilant. I was lucky to survive its sinking. And now I'm lucky to be sailing to Naderville with Able Lenk.”
She could not guess how true this was. If I was to be at the center of things, I had been placed in remarkably apt situations many times. The gate opener had found his mark with supernatural skill.
She puffed out her cheeks dubiously. “You don't make any sense,” she said.
“I'm lucky to be placed beside you.” There; the maneuvering was fairly begun again.
“You want to see my tits?” she asked, totally serious.
Again I laughed, and this time her eyes narrowed in pain.
“You are remarkable,” I said.
“Do you know what I mean when I say that?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“The obvious. I'm joking, and this time, I'm not joking. All right?”
She had me baffled.
“Ser Olmy, whoever you are, whatever you really want, I think I know one thing about you, one thing certain right now. We almost died. That makes us horny. Your body wants me. You want to take me someplace private but we'll do our little social dance on the deck first. Your mind thinks you'll make a small commitment and that'll be enough, and that I'm weak enough and my body wants you enough to make it happen.” While she said this, a little smile formed. “And you're not wrong.”
“Your body wants me?”
She nodded. “When the time is right. It isn't right now, of course, because we're very tired, and I'm sad. But I'll get over that. And when I do, you'd better say yes and make your move the next time I ask, or you'll never get a chance again.”
In all my experience with women, I had never encountered such an analytical and verbal approach. In the company of lovers on Thistledown, the graces of centuries of spaceborn civilization, of the highest of technologies and the closest of associations, the most sophisticated of cultural educations, had finally produced so many easeful ways for partners to join in the physical act of love that, it now seemed to me, much of the interest in such proceedings had been drained away.
I had some small clue for the first time why I had broken my proposed bond in Alexandria.
I stared out over the rail.
“I put you at a loss,” Shirla observed.
“Not for the first time,” I said.
“My tits,” she said, “are not my finest feature.”
“What is your finest feature?” I asked.
“My heart,” she said. “It is a strong heart. It could beat with yours.”
The warmth spread from my cheeks through the center of my chest, to my groin. I was in the presence of natural genius.
As castaways, we were treated with a delicate deference, as if we were ghosts or small gods of ill omen. Castaways rarely survived on Lamarckia. Humans were few and far between on this world. Losing a ship was tantamount to losing your life. Still, the officers and politicians treated us politely enough, and around our first dinner, in the rank's mess, Randall told our story to the assembled officers and craft rates.
The captain, Lenk himself and most of his aides were not present, but Lenk had sent his second, a slender woman of middle years named Allrica Fassid, who listened to Randall's telling with solemn fascination.
He did not mention the humanoid skeletons, by prior agreement with Salap, who thought that news should be reserved for Lenk's ears only. I suspect they still thought they could get another expedition out of the news, once these troubles blew over. After the story, the first officer, a tall, well-built woman named Helmina Leschowicz, called for a toast to “survivors, one and all.”
Three stewards cleared the tables efficiently and sharp Tasmanian wine was served in crystal goblets. I had still not developed a taste for Lamarckian alcoholic beverages, but Salap, Randall, and Shatro savored theirs with an intensity that brought smiles from the assembled men and women. Shirla accepted her glass, but barely touched it.
The lights over the long table swayed in the gentle sea. Around the walls, A.B.s and some apprentices had crowded in to listen to the proceedings.
“Your story is grim,” Fassid said, as we worked in traditional fashion toward another toast. “Your survival is surely a gift of fate. Your courage is an example to us all.”
Lifted glasses around the table.
“Beyond the loss of good humans, the greatest loss is wit and knowledge,” she continued. “Lenk himself funded Captain Keyser-Bach in his endeavors.”
I studied Fassid, but she was too practiced to reveal much about herself. As with the best politicians I have known, she seemed at once present and real, yet gave out little useful information. She had learned her trade in rough times, at the knees of a master.
As we left the officers’ mess, she approached Salap and whispered something in his ear, then hurried off. Salap approached Randall, who stood by Shirla and myself in a corner. Shatro stood in the shadow of a doorway. When we were on the deck and alone, a firm cool breeze blowing on us all, Salap said, “Able Lenk requests our presence later this evening, about midnight.”
Shirla sighed. We were all still very tired.
Salap continued, “He wishes our advice. There is disturbing news from Hsia, from Naderville. Lenk only brought one expert researcher with him, thinking this would be purely a political journey. We may be of use.”
“Shall we tell them tonight about what we've seen?” Randall asked.
Salap frowned and cocked his head to one side. “I do not know. None of this feels right.”
We had four hours between the end of dinner and our scheduled appointment with Lenk. The deck was lightly crewed at night, in such fine weather. Shirla and I walked the deck again, saying little, but keeping our eyes open for privacy. At the bow, behind an equipment locker, a bale of mat fiber lay in shadow. The moons were down and we sat in starlight only, and after five minutes talking undisturbed, we undressed each other to the extent that caution and need demanded.
She accepted me with a tense and earnest eagerness that I found very exciting. I had seldom made love with such simplicity and speed—fashions and centuries of development on Thistledown had given sex a rich clutter of nuance as formal as a ceremonial feast. Shirla knew none of this. As she had said, her body wanted me, and that was more than enough. When we finished, her face was slick with both sweat and tears and gleamed in the starlight. We caught our breaths, then fumbled to clothe ourselves in the dark.
“You haven't done this in a long time,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“Have you?”
“No,” I answered.
“I didn't show you everything,” she said.
“What, your tits?” I asked, but my face was in shadow and she could not see my smile.
“No, idiot,” she said gently. “In my village, when a woman chooses a man—”
“Not the other way around?”
She put her finger on my lips. “When that happens, we make a fine picnic
and take it in a basket into the silva, find an open place, maybe beneath a cathedral tree, spread a blanket ... I ask about your family, and you ask about mine. We talk about mutual friends, what our plans are. The rule is that we have children soon. We talk about that.”
“I've met a woman here who resented being made into a brood mother.” After saying this, I realized the phrasing might seem odd. I was speaking like a newcomer. Shirla mulled in silence before asking,
“Who was that?”
“The master's bondmother. In Calcutta.”
We sat up on the makeshift mattress. Shirla idly poked fiber back into the bale. “Some women feel that way. Maybe more than just a few.”
“And you?”
She lifted her eyes. They glittered faintly in the dark. “I think Lamarckia will be the next Earth,” she said. “I don't know why, but I see us prospering here ... And I still do, despite what Salap found.”
“So you won't mind having many children.”
“I've never had any,” she said. “Would you mind?”
I had never given the least thought to having children. On Thistledown reproduction was if anything more ritualized and nuanced than sex; most Geshel couples chose ex utero births. Many Naderites did as well; it was cleaner and certainly less painful. But none of that had ever seemed real to me. I was much too young to be a father. The one artificial capability not removed from my body was conscious choice of whether or not to be fertile.
“I asked you first,” I said. My throat caught and I coughed.
“Makes you nervous.”
“I suppose it does. It certainly should.”
“Me, too. I've always been a little odd. I don't know whether the world needs children like me.”
“Everybody feels that way,” I said, though I could hardly know that.
“Not my sisters. They're already lost in thickets of kids. At any rate...” She held my shoulders and squeezed lightly. “I do not do this to obligate you.”
I said nothing. I could not tell her how unobligated I was forced to be.
“But I've never protected myself, either. I follow Lenk's dictates. I'm a little in awe that he's on the same ship with us...”
I had a sudden image of Lenk personally encouraging Shirla to propagate.
“He'll be such a somber man now,” she said. “And old. All this must wear him down.”
“What, meeting us, out here?”
She pinched my nose. “I've always had bad taste in men.”
Salap, Randall, Shatro, Shirla and I walked forward along the corridor to Lenk's quarters. Keo met us midships. The craftsmanship on the Khoragos was particularly beautiful as we approached the forecastle. The walls gleamed black and gray and brown, using the inlaid cores of some Tasman arborid I could not identify. Electric lights gleamed steadily every two meters, shining down on elegant carpet woven in earthly floral patterns. Our muffled footfalls alerted a male guard, who came to stiff attention, a short, broad rifle cradled in his thick brown arms.
“This is the first time in our history on Lamarckia that Able Lenk has felt it necessary to keep armed security around him,” Keo explained, nodding at the guard, who glanced at us with flat, emotionless eyes. It was warm in the corridor and his face beaded with sweat.
Keo knocked on the door twice. It was opened by a thin, graceful young man dressed in a formal gray suit. He swung his arm wide with a cautious smile. “Able Lenk is just finishing a nap. He'll be with us in a few minutes. My name is Ferrier, Samuel Inman Ferrier.” We shook hands formally.
A mechanical clock mounted on the bulkhead over the door chimed midnight. Salap sat on a couch. Shatro sat beside him, eyes darting nervously, as if he were a little boy about to see a doctor. Shirla, Randall, and I sat in individual chairs spaced around the cabin, which stretched across the bow of the ship. The cabin beyond, Lenk's sleeping cabin, was much smaller. I thought it odd that he would choose the bow; apprentices much preferred to stay out of the bow, especially in heavy seas. Perhaps he had a perverse sense of asceticism.
Shelves on the bulkhead opposite my seat contained a few dozen books, none of them ornately bound, and all of them well-used. They seemed to include statute books and city record summaries.
I wondered where the clavicle was kept. Would Lenk take it with him on a journey as uncertain as this?
Ferrier served us mat fiber tea on a black lizboo tray. As we drank, I heard faint shuffles behind the door of the sleeping cabin.
The door opened, and Jaime Cart Lenk entered. I had seen pictures of him from forty-five years before. Then, he had been a vigorous man of natural middle age, handsome and conservatively dressed, with a presence even in the records that radiated assurance and power. Now, Lenk was still tall, unbent by his years, his hair still mostly dark, his face deeply wrinkled but in all the right places: laugh lines at corners of lips and eyes, lines of sternness near the laugh lines, and a brow that seemed monumentally smooth and untroubled, a tall, unfurrowed brow whose owner had slept cleanly and in assurance of the truth for many decades. He wore a simple long green robe. His sandaled feet, peeking from beneath the hem of the robe, were broad and splay-toed. He slowly turned to face us and shake hands all around.
“Thank you for being patient,” he said, staring at us one by one as if we were old friends. “Ferrier, I'll take a cup of that tea.” He sat in a large black high-backed chair bolted in the corner, beneath the books, and when he was settled, he looked up in sadness and said, “I deeply regret the loss of Captain Keyser-Bach and his researchers. The loss of a ship full of men and women is one thing, evil enough and hard to bear, but the death of such a man...” He shook his head and accepted the cup of steaming tea, then set it on a side table, ignoring it. “I am gratified, of course, that you survived. Sers Keo and Fassid have told me some of your story—about the storm, how our escort of Brion's ships may have frightened you into its winds...” He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing in his wrinkled, corded throat. His sadness was genuine. Despite his clear brow, he had obviously experienced a lot of sadness recently.
“You could not have known, Ser Lenk,” Salap said. “It is remarkable fortune to be rescued by you.”
“These seas are so rarely traveled ... If any ships would have picked you up, that they would be part of this absurd entourage only adds a peck to the improbability. And that is the main part of our problem, no? I go to Hsia, to Naderville, precisely because we have had so little traffic with the people who live there.” He examined us closely, his jaw working. He lifted the cup and sipped from it. The warm liquid seemed to invigorate him. “You are Ser Salap.” He turned his head to Randall. “And you are Ser Randall. Both of you sailed often with Captain Keyser-Bach. When he made his request, he spoke of you as necessary members of the expedition.”
Randall inclined his head, then looked up at Lenk with calm, large eyes.
“We've made important discoveries, Ser Lenk,” Salap said.
Lenk followed his own line of thought. “I'll read your reports when they're written. Now, there's so little time ... I have been in need of more researchers. Questions of considerable importance have arisen. Difficulties of some magnitude.”
Salap, rebuffed so smoothly, stared a little pop-eyed at Lenk, but even he lacked the gall to interrupt Jaime Cart Lenk.
“The Naderville researchers claim to have made great strides with the ecos on Hsia. The researcher on my ship does not credit these reports. I don't know what to think.”
“What sort of strides?” Salap asked.
Lenk looked over our heads and lifted his cup. He smiled as if at some great joke, too large to deserve laughter. “Queens and hidden masters, palaces in the clouds, Cibola, Atlantis, the Afterlife. I do not know which Brion means. But I see his ships, and I know the power that he shows us, that he's amassed in the past two years and has used against us.” He made a little shrug and lowered the cup. “He is not mad, whatever his generals do.”
“Blockades, sieges, piracy,” Randall said.<
br />
Lenk leaned his head to one side, scratching at the lobe of one ear. “General Beys accompanies us,” he said.
“He raided nineteen villages before we left Calcutta,” Randall continued. His face colored with anger. “Stole tools and metal stores. Took children. Killed some or all of the citizens.”
“It pains me to think of the children and citizens,” Lenk said softly. “I hate to bargain under those circumstances, but there was no choice.”
“Brion denies it all, of course,” Allrica Fassid said, entering the cabin on soft slippered feet. She closed the door behind her, nodded casually to Lenk, gave Randall a stern, half-puzzled look, and apologized for being late. “I've just come back from number fifteen. Beys and Captain Yolenga say they've received their final instructions. May I speak before our guests?”
Lenk gave permission with a lift of his hand.
“We're to sail to the main port and up a canal to an inland lake. Our charts indicate this canal has been modified by the ecos, and that the lake is isolated from Naderville proper. It may be the site of these alleged researches. Ser Keo, have you told our guests what to expect?”
“As much as we know,” Keo said. “A magnificent lack of detail.”
“Good. We'll have little time to talk once we arrive, and not much more on the way there. But you must keep your eyes open and digest what you see. It may be crucial to our negotiations.”
“We need to know if it's a bluff,” Keo said, then his face flushed as if he had spoken out of turn.
“No bluff,” Lenk said, shaking his head.
“Not everyone agrees with you, Jaime,” Allrica said. “I personally regard Brion as a compelling liar.”
“He is a force of nature,” Lenk said. “I unleashed his kind when I brought us all here.”
“We shouldn't confuse Brion with the Adventists.” Her glance at Salap seemed particularly significant. “Brion has no honor. He's interested in power and position. He uses Beys as his iron fist, and hopes to isolate himself from the moral consequences.” Fassid stood beside Lenk and examined him solicitously, touching his wrist like a doctor. “You're tired, Jaime,” she said. “Time for a good night's sleep.”
