Seas of Ernathe

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  Mondreau considered that, and conferred with Gorges. He turned back to Seth. "Well, since you seem to have an unusual facility for attracting these people, we're going to send you along on one of the land parties. Maybe you can help us net an emissary."

  "Very well," Seth replied. He was repelled by the man's glibness on the subject of the Nale'nid, but he had no real objections to the plan. Perhaps if he were not so tired—

  "I know," Mondreau cautioned, "that you will be tempted to turn this into a search for your friend. Remember, please, that you're going out to find and bring back a sea-person or persons. And that is your only responsibility."

  Seth shrugged. "I wouldn't know how to go about searching for Racart if you wanted me to. Sir."

  Mondreau looked at him sharply, but dismissed him without comment. Seth returned to the Warmstorm crew's quarters and went to sleep without speaking to another soul.

  * * *

  Seth's party assembled two days later, the last of the expeditions to set out. As the seven men gathered and sorted their equipment for the last time, the bad weather of the previous day subsided. The leader, Marq Senrith, paid particular attention to Seth and the other Warmstorm representative, Andol Holme (chosen to keep an eye on me? Seth had wondered, though not unhappily), making sure that they had their gear packed and secured properly, and repeating the cautions he had given several times already—primarily, don't get separated from the group. Seth thought mutely of Racart's experience and nodded assent.

  One of the Ernathenes, Coleman, was from Lernick; he had not previously been acquainted with the Lambrosians, but he joined with them in harboring reservations, not completely disguised, about the starmen's capacities for a lengthy trek on foot. Coleman was slightly paler than the Lambrosians; and like Damon, Reese, and Lanka, the other three, he was small by the standards of most worlds Seth knew, but lean, muscular, and weathered. Andol Holme was actually the largest of the group, rising slightly over Marq Senrith.

  "Ready for another round of this?" he asked Seth, who was still feeling rather bedraggled. He received a squint in reply and laughed. "You look like a scurv-otter who's gotten washed over a waterfall and left in the sun to dry. And that's a compliment."

  "Wrong planet," said Seth. "That is, I think so. But then, who knows? Around here, they just might have scurv-otters. Strange, isn't it, how little wildlife there is?"

  "The wildlife probably just avoids humans like the black Querlin death." Holme slung his pack and hiked it into a comfortable position on his back, then helped Seth. "Ready to go, looks like." The other five men were taking position, and Seth and Holme fell into line just ahead of Lanka, who was bringing up the rear. When Senrith was satisfied that the party was in order, he led them out of town, to the north—the same direction Seth had traveled with Racart.

  Lambern was out, pouring its morning light around the broken bits of cloud drifting eastward in the sky. The bay flashed and sparkled to their left, passing in and out of view as they marched out of town along a path which, from the outset, was torturous. Seth was overly warm almost immediately, and he loosened the front of his windbreaker to let a cool breeze fan across his chest. His thoughts went back to Mona; she had departed last night on another cruise aboard Ardello, and before leaving she had visited Seth to apologize for her earlier unpleasantness. She had sat, awkwardly, knowing she was interrupting Seth's preparations but looking desperately as though she wanted to give him encouraging words of her own. In the end, she had found none and had simply forced a farewell smile, touched his hand gently, and left to board Ardello. How would she feel if Racart did not return, Seth wondered, on this cruise or at all? And what was he, Seth, likely to accomplish gamboling about in the wilderness with six other equally helpless men?

  He picked up his pace to keep up with Holme and the rest. They were cutting inland now, from the shore route—or what Seth thought of as the shore—to take a path along a series of lagoons and channels, a twisty terrain, which to his eyes was impenetrable. After only a few hours travel, he gave up trying to maintain any sense of bearing with respect to Lambrose and the sea. In fact, sea-mist was beginning to move thickly enough across the landscape to give an impression of the land itself being in constant flux. "This is worse than a nest of serpents," Holme grumbled, waving Seth ahead of him over a narrow ledge, which broke off on one side to a treacherous-looking stream. "I've been through some mightily rugged terrain on Bargosi and Kormante, but nothing that seemed so endlessly chaotic. And so biologically wasteful."

  "That's at least partly due to the radiation cycle of Lambern," Lanka answered, trudging behind Holme. "Massive increases in the solar radiation—irregular, but averaging every couple hundred years or so—that has something to do with the influences of the heavy planets and the nearest stars. That's probably killed off many evolutionary lines before they could really much get started."

  Seth glanced back. "At least we're starting to see some plant life." He pointed ahead, to where some large bushes, rather like stunted trees, spotted the rock-maze at closer intervals. To Seth it was a welcome sight; he was growing weary of the desolation. The mist was thickening also, however, so that some of the trees vanished from time to time, or poked upward out of wispy white pools.

  The company broke for lunch, then moved on under a sky that was graying and beginning to sink groundward. Seth walked behind Holme and talked to Lanka for a while, but as the afternoon wore on they walked with long periods of silence. Even the whisper of the wind was muffled by the pools and shreds of ground fog. At times, the men looked to Seth like a company of soldiers fording a vaporous, smoking river, where the water parted just frequently enough to betray the path in its bed. Senrith had indicated that if the fog became much worse they would be forced to band together with lines, but for the sake of easy movement and speed he preferred to proceed unencumbered for as long a time as possible.

  So far, there had been not a hint of the Nale'nid.

  Chapter Six

  The fog worsened quickly. Seth was staring, with great concentration, diagonally to his left across a wide, bowl-shaped depression, where he had thought for an instant he had seen something moving. Trees obscured the far background, making it impossible to distinguish anything clearly, and he could only guess at what he might have seen.

  He turned to alert the others; but they had already moved on into the mist. Seth had not even been conscious of stopping, but he realized now that he had in fact stepped away from the path. Silvery vapor curled about him, reaching to touch his waist, and obliterating the topography. "Lanka!" he called, moving hesitantly in the direction that seemed to be the correct one. "Andol! Lanka! Hold it a minute!"

  He repeated the cry—and when there was no answer he thought quickly, and nervously, that the last thing he wanted was a repeat of his experience with Racart. When the group found him missing, though, they would surely retrace their path—but, in this confusion of land and mist, could they really backtrack flawlessly? Perhaps; but more likely not. Still, it was probably best to stay put, and not try blindly to catch them.

  After a minute of prolonged shouting, the only other sound he had heard was the cry of a wheeling skrell overhead. Fog lay over the land like snow, but above knee-height it moved in great curling masses, sometimes permitting a view and sometimes not; it seemed to absorb the sound of Seth's shouts like a wreath of insulation. Seth wished devoutly for a reliable communicator, but so erratic were the transmitting conditions in this country that only one had been provided for the party—and that with no great hopes for successful use.

  But he did carry flares.

  He quickly unslung his pack and unfastened the top. Sliding his hand along the inside surface of the fabric, he groped for the distress signals—and as he did so he looked up, across the rock hollow, and was startled to see the mists part to reveal a moving figure, or several.

  The mists closed.

  The figures, he was sure, had been Nale'nid.

  He located the fla
res, and pulled them out of the pack. Should he use them and perhaps alarm the Nale'nid—or would it be better to investigate while he could, and hope later to attract the attention of the others? No, he decided, he could not afford to let the party get too far away. And, for all he knew, the flares would attract rather than frighten the Nale'nid.

  The first flare, when he snapped the trigger, shot upward in a blossom of light, and as it settled into position high above Seth's head it commenced a loud, whistling wail. Seth crouched, and listened as the signal passed through a startling range of pitches, stuttering and ululating and hooting; the fire itself blazed pulsatingly from red to white and back. After a minute or so, the tirade collapsed, the light went out, and the empty casing fluttered lightly to the ground just beyond a small rise. Seth looked about, and waited. Presumably, if the flare had been heard or seen it would be answered.

  The silence was unstirring, and Seth took time to unwrap a biscuit-ration and drink from his canteen. The biscuit was dense and chewy, but he was hungrier than he had realized, and he gnawed at it vigorously until it was gone. The land was quiet, perhaps illusorily so; through the gauzy, and now thinning, mist to his left he saw a glint of water, perhaps another lagoon or a stream. He could not believe that the others—who could not, after all, be that far away—had not heard his signal or seen his flare. But on Ernathe nothing was to be taken for granted, seemingly. The mists, perhaps, had swallowed the sound of his signal as they had swallowed his companions.

  Could he truly be lost? He triggered off two more flares, one by one, and waited futilely for a sign of notice.

  Apprehension began to prey at him again, so he stood up for the sake of doing something, and paced carefully back and forth along a small and, by now, well-scouted length of rock path; and he studied the area in which he had seen the Nale'nid. If, indeed, he had seen them. There seemed to be more trees away from the path than he had realized, and they seemed fuller and darker now in the dissipating mist. Or was he imagining that, also?

  He gazed for a time, not really thinking beyond his immediate hope of being found—and was shocked suddenly to hear the sound of soft female laughter, familiar laughter. Without another thought, he shouldered his pack and stepped off the trail, determined to have a look at this Nale'nid female, regardless of the consequences. The ground tumbled slightly, and he scrambled downward to find a series of pools, which he had to circumnavigate to continue . . . west? A ridge bristling with squat-shaped trees jutted into his path to the left; and the sound of voices, like a rustle of musical-toned leaves, seemed to come from the far side of the ridge. He moved toward the sound.

  The air cleared before him, the last of the mist scattered as though by a clean, unfelt breeze, and when he rounded the point of the ridge he found the sun shining down softly into a tree-nestled hollow, containing a lagoon edged in large part itself by a dense border of the same dark kind of tree. Shreds of mist were interwoven through the border and lay in laces across the water, but left large open spaces through which the blue-green clarity of the water shone clearly. Seth breathed deeply: salt air. The sun and the clear arid tart air were as invigorating to his muddled brain as a clear draft of ale.

  A movement on the left caught his eye. But when he turned, there was nothing. He looked carefully up and down the shore, and blinked uncertainly.

  A girl moved out from the tree and stepped to the water, fifty meters away. He came about quickly, but she seemed not to notice him. Then another figure joined her, a sea-man. Seth held his breath. It was difficult to be sure, but they looked to be two of the three Nale'nid he had seen on the shore with Racart. His blood raced, and he prepared to move closer; but he hesitated, feeling a ridiculous bashfulness, akin to his feelings as a young man in approaching girls. The sea-girl intrigued him as much as any female he could remember; yet at that moment he could not move, and his face burned with irresolution.

  A third figure stepped out of a swatch of mist—and then he knew that these were the same three. The last figure looked up at him and made some gesture to the others; their voices murmured. He moved closer, finally, then stopped behind a stunted tree, his hands fidgeting with the waist-high upper branches.

  Come. The girl turned; suddenly all three were watching him.

  Seth stood rigid, startled. The voice in his mind had been that of the girl. He was sure. It called again, pleasantly: Come. Not a sound, precisely, but something which conveyed the word, and a softness and a welcome. The voice spoke a third time, the same message, and with the voice there was a momentary presence in his mind, a presence uncertain and faintly shy (reflecting, perhaps, his own confusion? he wondered).

  How to reply to such a voice? With the larynx, with the mind? Seth stared at the girl, but could not move; his muscles ignored his wishes. Do not be . . . afraid, beckoned the silent voice, faintly troubled, and yet responsive to his constrained eagerness. The girl's face was slightly averted, but her eyes flickered to meet his, and from a distance their gazes locked.

  "Hello!" Seth called, and wondered if he sounded silly.

  Hello.

  He walked slowly down the embankment to the water, and then along its edge toward the Nale'nid trio. He did not want to remove his gaze from them for a moment, and yet the bank was tricky and he had to step carefully to keep from stumbling. Amidst the gleaming sun, the brooding low trees along the shore, the red and brown rock, the clear glowing water of the lagoon—his eyes scarcely saw that world for their focus upon the slender figure of the sea-woman, fair, beautifully bronze-haired, and clothed in a satinlike sheen. And behind her the two male Nale'nid. It occurred to him for a moment, as a ludicrous thought, that he was supposed to capture these people, to team with his search party and shoot them with stunners. He chuckled.

  He approached to within a few meters of the Nale'nid and stopped. They were small figures, as small as adolescent Ernathenes; but they stood with poise, and with dignity, and appeared to be lost in contemplation.

  "Hello," he said again, tentatively. A curious sensation of warmth arose in him; he was beginning to feel that something enchanted was going on here—and he suspected that he was blushing.

  You are Seth? The woman scarcely stirred.

  "Yes. How did you know? Do you read all my thoughts?" A moment of apprehension, panic.

  It was at the front of your thoughts. Yes. Yes, so it had been, he realized. A part of him had been sternly self-conscious, and she wouldn't have had to probe deeply into his thoughts to learn his identity. That was a relief.

  "I am Seth. Who are you? Do you have a name?"

  The sea-woman tilted her head, her large-irised eyes shining, pleasantly setting off her hair with their greenish brown glow. I am Lo'ela. My . . . "brothers" . . . are Al'ym and Ga'yl. We are of Pal'onar, which you would call, I think, South City of the Nale'nid. You are surprised to see us?

  Seth was flustered, forgetting and then remembering that he had in fact come here with the expressed purpose of finding Nale'nid. "I . . . I don't know," he stammered. His original purpose paled, faded to insignificance in the back of his thoughts, giving way to others. It was strange, speaking aloud and then hearing the answers in his mind. He was no telepath; it was an experience he had never known. It was curious and delightful, as this mind-speaking woman was curious and delightful in her own right. "Can your brothers speak to me in this way, also?" he said.

  No. At this time I alone can reach you. Lo'ela spoke aloud suddenly, in the melodious voice he had heard previously; it did not, he realized with surprise, sound to his inner ear much like her mind voice. Still, it was quite pleasing. She spoke quickly, incomprehensibly, and it took Seth a minute to realize that she was speaking, not to him, but to Al'ym and Ga'yl. Several times, he heard a word that sounded in a transmogrified way like his own name.

  The two sea-men answered her in rapid tones, and she turned her attention back to Seth. My brothers find you of interest, but they cannot reach you. Al'ym . . . focuses . . . upon the circulation, the
deep fluids of the trees and the waters and the air, and of you and me. Ga'yl focuses upon color, colors, all the colors of the world. Her eyes widened, and fixed liquidly upon Seth's.

  Fluids, colors? he thought wonderingly. What was that supposed to mean? He said, "And you, Lo'ela—what do you focus upon?"

  I, Lo'ela—(was that a teasing tone in her voice?)—focus upon a stranger from beyond the sky, Seth Perland, a stranger whose thoughts meet mine. The eyes flickered—changing color?—and closed. Lo'ela stood peacefully before him, eyelids shut, as if purposely allowing him to study her, to carefully satisfy his curiosity without the distraction of her captivating eyes. Her expression was disconcertingly innocent; she was a delicate-framed girl, with slender hips, smooth and pale legs and arms, and breasts hardly more than round bumps beneath the top of her curious garment. Seth glanced at Al'ym and Ga'yl; they were watching him intently, but betrayed nothing in their faces. He looked back at Lo'ela, her half-smiling features, which among his own people might have been those of a girl fourteen—but the thoughts of Lo'ela struck him as those of a mature young woman. (But what is a mature Nale'nid? he wondered.)

  Was he supposed to reach with his own thoughts to touch hers?

  Lo'ela opened her eyes. She looked, it seemed, faintly hurt. The stranger does not focus upon me. A statement, not a question.

  And yet Seth felt compelled to answer. "If I am the stranger—" and he smiled awkwardly at the absurd qualifier, "I am not certain of what you mean, focus. And I am not sure it's something I can do."

  Lo'ela swayed contemplatively, her face relaxed again. Our word is something different, which you would not understand at all. Can you speak to me with your thoughts?

  "I don't know." Seth concentrated, found his thoughts growing erratic the instant he tried to concentrate. He tried to frame words, finally managed to think sequentially: I find you intriguing. I would like to understand you.