Seas of Ernathe

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  Weaponry technicians were still busily installing and tuning delivery systems, adjusting control-locks, and tinkering to devise new protections against Nale'nid meddling. The weapons would be hellishly complex to fire, what with multiple combination locks on the vital controls and safety systems requiring simultaneous count-sequences; but it was hoped that the systems would deter even the cleverest of the sea-people from causing malicious firings. Holme had objected to the inclusion of explosive projectiles among the armaments, maintaining that intense light charges could effectively scare the Nale'nid without necessarily being destructive or fatal; but the point had been overruled by Mondreau, who insisted upon a full range of choices. There was logic in that, of course; but Holme was less than fully convinced as to the effectiveness of the safeguards.

  He watched the passing lands and sea. Water plunged noisily under the harvester's wide bow, and rushed past the hull like crumpled cellophane, blue green and brilliant in the sun. As the flotilla had progressed northward from one semi-enclosed sea to another, the waters had changed to a clearer, deeper blue, relatively devoid of the plankton haze. The seas ranged deeper, with steeper and more irregular bottom profiles, while the land masses here were narrower and more twisted, more like island chains. They were venturing into unfamiliar territory, not only to the star-crew but to the Ernathenes as well. The rules of the sea might well be different here—weather, sea conditions . . . and inhabitants.

  Holme could not help silently comparing the number of unknowns with the probability of trouble. He rather wished that he were aboard the flagship Ardello, where he would at least be more immediate to the crucial decision-making. The shores were angling closer, now, suggesting the approach of yet another strait. Holme leaned out over the rail to look ahead and back, and he saw that the flotilla was being stretched along its length to negotiate the narrows. He had the feeling that he was back on his home world, Rorcan, on just one ship of a steady traffic flow: hulking gray merchantmen crushing the waves both to the fore and aft, laden with ores for the foundries of the continent. His thoughts came moodily back to the present. Though he was glum about the prospects of this mission, he was still quite curious about the Nale'nid and their home—and if nothing else he was moving closer to them. Then, too, there was Seth's fate, and Racart's, to worry about—and the chances for their survival. He remembered Mona's stoic expression as she had boarded Ardello, her eyes alert but withdrawn, her mouth set in a straight line. As part of the sonar crew, she could well be called to contribute to action endangering Racart; yet she would not have stayed behind in Lambrose if ordered.

  "Mr. Holme?" A crewman was at his elbow—Stanton, one of his own men. He looked disturbed. "Word just came down from the bridge, Mr. Holme. Line-of-sight from the air units—they've completed all the sonar mapping and survey, and have pinpointed targets. The implication was that flag-command is considering a demonstrative strike to pay them back for that ruckus on board Barsuthe." That ship, with Orregi, was still in the Jamean Sea; the Nale'nid had recently invaded it in a manner reminiscent of the Ardello incident. Stanton added, "No word on sending a contact party."

  Holme nodded, unsurprised. He looked at the sky, saw that it was clouding, this time with dark, angry clouds from the northeast. "Rough weather coming," he said, scowling. It occurred to him that the flotilla was right now militarily at its most vulnerable—strung out to navigate the strait. Ardello was probably already in the narrows. How easy it would be for the Nale'nid to strike, to throw the fleet into chaos—they could have every one of the Ernathene ships on the rocks with only minor effort.

  But then, it did not seem as though the Nale'nid worked that way, or even thought that way. Did they?

  The fleet continued on through that strait, and the next, and the next, toward the rendezvous with Orregi and Barsuthe. There was no harassment, nor sign that the approach had been noted by the Nale'nid.

  But the weather, as Holme had predicted, turned bitter and turbulent. The following day, as it sailed into the southern limits of the Jamean Sea, the flotilla received a taste of tropical electrical storms. High chop frosted the water, and winds gusted alarmingly, bringing lightning and rain combined with steamy, oppressive heat. Altogether it was strange weather, and. more than one sailor's thoughts drifted back to the weather that had afflicted Lambrose for a time and the speculation that had caused concerning the sun.

  Nonetheless, the way ahead seemed clearer, and the fleet continued sailing, undelayed, toward the waters of the undersea city.

  * * *

  A wordless gabbling filled his cranium, the echoes of a mind awash in fear. For a time, as he wandered into the dark of an unrestful sleep, Seth thought that the fear was his own. That it was his soul that was weeping. Later, he drifted higher in the dark seas and, just before breaking the fragile surface to consciousness, perceived that the sounds were not his own, but another's. Later still, he opened his eyes. The inside of a dome curved like an eggshell over his head, transparent and green and full of light in the undersea morning. The mat beneath him was hard, uncomforting, and cool; and he wondered how he had managed to sleep so soundly, or at all. It took a minute more to notice the soft, strange quilt covering him, and even longer to remember Lo'ela's catching him, as he was falling unconscious. He still felt drained, barely awake.

  He turned his head, recalling the unhappiness that had stirred him to awakening. Lo'ela sat near his feet. She was hunched over, her back to him, crying, and trying to stifle the sound of her sobs. Seth looked at her in confusion, turned his head back to stare up at the top of the dome, and tried to sort things out. Lo'ela's crying. His feeling as though he had made six flux-drive passages in one night, and then fallen over a cliff at the end. So far, they wouldn't sort. Racart—

  Where was Racart?

  He rolled his head the other way. Racart was lying on a mat on a higher floor-level. Apparently he was asleep. That seemed satisfactory, no problem. What should he be thinking of, then?

  As though a switch had clicked closed, images flashed on in his mind. Lambrose: baffled people shaking their heads at another ruined batch of mynalar, guards struggling with their own rebellious, deadly weapons. The scarred dead man, the Nale'nid. Ardello: chaos, rollicking Nale'nid. The Warmstorm Mission: not understanding—not without help, his help. Racart: aura-deprivation, terror. And him; the control pit of Warmstorm, or the rig of a new kind of ship, mynalar-g pulling him into the deadly, precarious dreamland of flux-space, the splintering, sparkling, misty world within the world, between the worlds.

  Or was it to be the caverns of the Nale'nid, focusing upon the dramas? The image of Racart, again: suffering.

  And what of Lo'ela, caught as he was between two worlds?

  As sharply as the images flickered, almost cinematically, across his mind, came a striking realization. That the Nale'nid world was an alien world to him. He had flirted with the Nale'nid reality—but did he want it, really, did he want it even with Lo'ela?

  She called him her "starman"—because she knew what he was, and what he would remain.

  Lo'ela's sobs broke through his thoughts, and finally he understood why she was crying. He sat up, dizzily, and said, "Lo'ela." He had spoken too softly, so he called again, louder, "Lo'ela." She did not respond, except to cry harder. Moving awkwardly to sit beside her, he touched her bare shoulder with just his fingertips. She trembled at the touch, but though she kept her head averted, she did not pull away. He sighed, and closed his eyes wearily. Lo'ela, Lo'ela. I do still—

  I have lost you, she told him flatly.

  He blinked his eyes open. "Have you?" he said. He was quite unsure, himself. He resisted an urge to put his arms around her and instead got shakily to his feet. Haven't I? she questioned, looking up at him for the first time. Her face was dark, streaked with tears; she astonished him with the hurt she displayed, the fear. Was this the way a Nale'nid would react? It is part of my focus, starman, she advised him coldly.

  He nodded, knowing that the s
tatement was true, but not in the way that she meant him to believe it. She was far more, now, than just a Nale'nid. Seth scowled. "Lo'ela, damn it, there's more to this than you and me!" Thinking of the havoc that rocked the Ernathene colony, that had assailed Racart's mind, he knew that he had been failing in his duty—or he would fail if he did not return to it now. He could feel guilty for having accomplished nothing, or he could set to work with the understanding he had gained. The Nale'nid—damn them, they would have to be made to comprehend the damage they were doing, and the very meaning of the word.

  He gazed down at Lo'ela, wondering how to start, what to say.

  Lo'ela did it for him. She stood, came to him, raised her hands to touch his cheeks. Tilting her head slightly, she blinked wet eyelids and almost smiled, painfully. There is much to be done, is there not? said her eyes and her thoughts. My people must learn of yours—as you have of them.

  "You do very well at reading my thoughts," he answered. "But I can't teach them, or return to their—your—ways."

  "No," Lo'ela said very firmly. But perhaps I can.

  Seth looked at her questioningly. She averted her eyes to watch Racart, motionless on the mat nearby. A clear expression of pain gripped her, and she waited for it to pass before she looked back at Seth.

  What I have learned from you, they can learn from me. I know the meaning of pain, of hurt. Of those words as you know them. I must go, now, to find a way to make it clear for them, to give them that focus. She stepped back from him and looked him up and down carefully. Then she turned and walked quickly from the dome.

  Seth stared after her for a long time, wondering what she would do, wondering if she was right—that he had, in fact, lost her. Finally, he shook the thought from his head and went over to look at Racart. His friend was quiet, his face washed of color in the blue light penetrating the sea; he was in a state that seemed more trance-like than sleeplike. The Ernathene's eyelids slid slowly open and closed, at intervals of a few seconds. Seth was puzzled at this, and for a while he did nothing except watch Racart's eyes. He seemed to be blinking, but as if in greatly slowed motion. A consequence of whatever strange realm he was trapped in—time itself perhaps flowing at an altered rate of speed? Cautiously, Seth felt Racart's forehead; it was cool, unfevered. His face and neck muscles seemed relaxed, except for occasional slow, exaggerated twinges.

  Racart's eyes suddenly flicked open, fluttered in a blur of speed, and settled open again, staring directly, startlingly up into Seth's. "Racart?" he called softly. "Are you waking?" Racart's sea-green irises constricted and dilated uncertainly, as if homing in on their proper setting. It was not clear whether or not he was aware of Seth—until he spoke: "I am not sure that it is something I wish to leave." He gazed narrowly, closely, at Seth and then immediately focused elsewhere.

  "Racart," Seth called, shaking him gently. "Racart!"

  The Ernathene gave no response, though his lips moved silently, while his eyes stared up through the starman. Whatever he was saying, or thinking, it was not for his friend. Finally, he focused, again, on Seth and murmured, "You will return to your stars, then. Your Cluster. Your ship." Stated, not asked. "That must be expected."

  Seth was taken aback. Had Racart been awake, earlier, listening? Or had he another way of deducing Seth's intentions? Was he feverish, delirious, were his eyes wandering incoherently? No. "Racart," Seth said, "will you feel well enough to return with me? To Lambrose?" He studied his friend closely.

  Racart watched right back. He seemed fully conscious, but his face was dark, brooding. He closed his eyes, then, as if to sleep, as if everything were settled. "Your people," he said in a conversational tone, "are over our heads right now." His voice became strained. "They will, I think, take the next action soon."

  Seth stared in surprise. Racart had gone immediately to sleep—real sleep, it appeared. But what had he meant: "Your people—"? "Over our heads"? Meaning: "Beyond our control"? Or had a party come to rescue them? Or had Racart lost reign of his senses after all?

  Pacing along the other side of the dwelling, Seth gazed out through the ribbon-welded, glid walls of the dome, seeing the network of bubbles and tubes of the Nale'nid city as the fragile and complex structure that it was. Where was Lo'ela? Was she accomplishing anything among the Nale'nid, or would it matter in the end? Perhaps as a society the Nale'nid were incompatible with humankind as he knew it; perhaps his own kind would have to leave this planet altogether, or—more likely, since they were not about to give up the only available supply of mynalar-g—simply eliminate the Nale'nid, ruthlessly and regretfully, as a nuisance.

  "Lo'ela," he said softly, "can you do it in time? Can you do it at all?" And he remembered then, and wondered how it could possibly have taken so long to penetrate his mind, that the Nale'nid were not merely some remarkable (and easily underestimated) people. They were the masters of flux-space—they were unthinkable, natural navigators of the "world within the world."

  If anyone could sail the flux-space between the stars, could not the Nale'nid?

  Perhaps they were descendants of flux-riggers of the past, lost and abandoned on this world in the forgotten years of entropy wars. Perhaps not—it hardly mattered—perhaps their skills had evolved right here on this world.

  Lo'ela had said that they did not build ships, did not travel from their own world. But would they take to the stars now, if given the chance?

  Surely. Surely they must. Lo'ela, have you seen that in my thoughts—even when I did not? He pressed his hands to the shell of the dome, put his face close to the glid, and stared into the blue green mist of the Ernathene sea, and over the intricacies of the Nale'nid cityscape, wishing that his gaze and his thought alone could summon the attention of his focus-friend Lo'ela.

  * * *

  He sat by Racart for a long while, after that, watching the still face, the even rise and fall of the breast. The Ernathene remained deep in the shadows of sleep, with only an occasional flicker of expression crossing his brow. Seth, after a time, got up again and helped himself to several pieces of the fruit that Lo'ela had left in a bowl. He wished that he could do something constructive; but, after all, there was little that could be done until Lo'ela returned from her efforts. Still, he felt useless, and wished that something would happen.

  Hearing Racart stir, Seth hurried back to his friend's side. Racart had not awakened, but his facial expression had changed; his brow was creased, his lips tight but stretched into a slight scowl, and the tic had returned to his left eye. What, Seth wondered, could he be dreaming of?

  Seth glanced up and saw a movement outside the dome, across the city. He went over to the glid wall to look more closely; whatever was moving in the still mist was too large to be a swimming person. He squinted; it moved closer. "A submarine!" he exclaimed softly. "I'll be damned." It was a sub, a small Ernathene vessel. Had the city been found, then, and a contact mission sent? Had Racart really known what he was saying when he said that his people were overhead? He watched in astonishment and wonder.

  A small, dark shadow, the sub glided slowly around the outer edge of the city, its headlight flashing visibly now as it moved in Seth's general direction. "Keep coming," Seth urged softly, coaxing it forward. Perhaps, if it were a lookout sub, divers would come from it to enter the city. The sub was closer, now, and clearly visible. It halted, hovered. "Come on!" Seth muttered.

  The sub turned in place. It spat a small object from its bow, and half a moment later a bubble-dwelling exploded in a blue flash and a boiling froth of water and air. Seth stared, disbelieving. "My—" A concussion clapped the glid dome and rocked him off his feet. He sprawled backwards to the floor—catching himself to get to his feet again as the shock wave rumbled off into the distance. "Damn!" he breathed. He spun, saw no damage to the dome around him, saw that Racart seemed undisturbed, and rushed back to the wall. The sub was backing away. Where the bubble-dwelling had been, there were only shards and bits of ruin; a cloud of turbidity drifted slowly away from the s
ite, carried by the bottom current. "No," he whispered. "No." He was too horrified, too stunned to say or think more.

  Turning smoothly again, the sub moved off in the direction from which it had come, and sped silently into the distance. The city was as it had been—a maze-pattern of gleaming structures in the still blue mist—with a single component of the maze destroyed, devastated, lifeless.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The afternoon was drawing into its late hours when Seth became aware that he had been sitting, motionless, staring at the site of the attack, for a good part of that afternoon. Racart was still asleep, and it did not seem wise to attempt to awaken him. What would be the point, in any case? What good could Seth do? He recalled bitterly Racart's prediction that the Ernathenes and the Warmstorm people would be the next to act. Well, Perland? What will be the next prediction? Destruction of the city, perhaps? It had not escaped his notice that he and Racart had apparently been declared expendable; well, that was understandable enough, if one accepted the notion that such violence was necessary in the first place. And apparently the Mission had.

  The important question was: how were the Nale'nid reacting to all this?

  Seth heard a sound and looked up. Al'ym and Ga'yl had come home. He stumbled to his feet to greet them, and instantly felt his face growing red. Here were two Nale'nid to answer his question. The two stood in the center of the dome and observed him unconcernedly, though they did acknowledge his presence with vaguely courteous nods. Lo'ela's influence, at least, had apparently reached them; it was the first such acknowledgement Seth could recall from any sea-person other than Lo'ela.

  "Did you see what happened?" he asked, pointing toward the view of the demolished dwelling. He spoke awkwardly but very deliberately, hoping that perhaps enough of Lo'ela's focus had reached them to allow them to understand.

  Al'ym turned around in a full circle, perplexedly, while Ga'yl tilted his head and suddenly, maddeningly grinned. Seth frowned. "There." He exaggerated his pronunciation—"They-air—" and pointed repeatedly and forcefully out into the sea. "There. Did you see?"