Flood Tide

by C. J. Cherryh

That casual admission about Denny, though . . . that deserved a comeback. Jones fought the temptation for a moment, then gave in. "Yer know, he knows 'bout yer work, Rif. The weeds, I mean."

  Rif only raised an eyebrow. "Figured ye'd tell 'im," was all she said.

  Jones opened her mouth, then shut it again. No, no point pushing this game any further. No point threatening Rif on the best of days, and no point hinting that Mondragon might sell the news of Rifs work for the Janes to any bidder; they both knew damned well that one Altair Jones had been piloting that skip when the tangle-lily seeds were sown. Hang Rif, and hang Jones. Rif guessed, or knew from talking to Denny, that Mondragon wasn't about to do that.

  Jones steered through the narrow canals toward the lagoon, still angry with Rif, looking for some chink in that damned woman's armor. "Yer know, flood-tide's washed them damn lilies out ter sea," she tried. "Can't find 'em in the canals no more." And don't ye ask me to help seed the next crop!

  "Just the dead plant tops," Rif yawned again. "The roots're set well. Besides, they've seeded out all over town. Come warm weather, ye'll see 'em pokin' up again. It's the lagoon we gotter worry 'bout now; they don't wash outter there."

  Jones thought of the lagoon covered, meters deep, in floating masses of dead and rotting weed, and shuddered. "So whatcher gonna do?"

  Rif tapped her fingers on her shoulder-bag. "Sow somethin' else," she grinned. "Two somethin's, ter be precise. Eggs from a kind o' water-flea that eats the dead weed—that'll clear up any weed that folks don't harvest fer fuel. Then there's eggs from a kind o' crawdad that eats the water-fleas. Keeps things nice an' balanced. Crawdad eats deathangel eggs, too, so there won't be as many o' them in the lagoon next year."

  "Nice," Jones begrudged. "An' what eats the crawdads?"

  Rif laughed, genuine and merry. "Folks do! Poor folks eat crawdads. Ye scoop 'em up in fish-traps or bag-nets, grab 'em by the bucketful, steam 'em or boil 'em or eat 'em raw if ye're in a hurry. Cheap food, Jones. All over the lagoon, an' next year all over the canals, too, now the canals're clean enough ter grow food in."

  "Lord an' Ancestors!" Jones stopped poling for a moment to stare at Rif. The whole plan was so simple, so elegant, she could almost forgive Rif the scare and worry of the past year. Almost.

  "They look like little-bitty lobsters," Rif went on, "maybe seven, eight centimeters long. Cute little things. Crackin' the shells is a pain, but the meat's worth it." She looked back at Jones, smile turning intense. "Ye came an' told me, last season, we were gonna have poor folks goin' hungry what never was hungry before, 'member? An' didn' I tell ye then that Jane would provide?"

  "Damn." Jones dropped the pole back in the water, suddenly tired. She didn't want to get into this game; keeping herself and Mondragon safe was work enough. But still. . . The visible hints were so tempting. "Rif, what's yer game? I mean, all the Janes. What th'hell d'ye want, really?"

  As if she'd been waiting for the question, Rif raised three fingers. "Food fer the poor," she ticked off. "Medicine fer the poor. Tech fer the poor— simple an' widespread an' hidden, so the damn priests an' hightowners can't stop 'er an' the sharrh can't see 'er, not 'til she's way too late."

  "Too late fer what?"

  "Too late ter stop us goin' back ter space again, gettin' off Merovin, goin' back ter the other worlds an' all they've got. Most like, we won't see that— but our children er gran'children will. Meanwhile, we can do better nor bein' poor an' sick an' hopeless an' lorded over. Now, how's that sound ter you?"

  "Dreamin'," Jones muttered. But she knew that the front edge of the dream was real, real as the tangle-lilies and chugger and the new engines and now, maybe, free food growing wild in the canals. "Here comes the lagoon."

  The skip slid out through a screen of reeds and tangle-lily stalks, a stretch impassible in dry summer but deep enough now, into the deceptively calm water. Lily stalks rattled and fell before the skip's prow, a thick forest of them, tall enough to hide a low-riding boat. There hadn't been this many last time she'd come here; now, there seemed to be no open water at all.

  A flock of gray-teal rose flapping and honking in sudden thunder, surprising Jones so badly she nearly dropped the pole. The birds circled out over the lagoon, arched back to rest somewhere less than fifty meters off in the dense screen of lilies, and settled grumbling.

  "Sweet Jane!" Rif breathed, "There must'er been forty-fifty birds there. We hadn' expected that—not so soon, anyway. Goddess! This time next year, should be 'nough birds here ter feed most o' Merovingen-below. Oh, hell, don't tell anyone, Jones—least no one but a few close-mouthed friends— not 'til there's enough of 'em ter breed big. . . ."

  Jones only nodded, staring. She'd never seen so many gray-teal in her life. And this was only one flock. Oh, yes, by the Ancestors, let them breed up their numbers! She'd wager there was a good kilo of meat on each bird, and the eggs. . . .

  "Must nest in the lily-tangles," Rif was saying. "Where they grow thick, twine inter mats, be good fer water-bird nests. Goddess, what next? Neoswans?

  We knew she'd encourage water-wildlife, but this. . . . Ah, steer fer the middle, Jones. Let's see what else's come back here."

  Jones did so, steering by memory through the unfamiliar forest of lilies and reeds. Something about the lilies must have encouraged the reeds, too—unless more of Rifs friends had done that.

  Ahead, the smell of rotting lily-stalks grew stronger. She steered that way, wondering if the center of the lagoon was completely covered by the pesky stuff. The thicket of standing reeds and lilies thinned, showing open water for the first time.

  Sure enough, right ahead of them floated drifting mats of the dead weed. Jones swore, knowing all too well what it was like to pole through the nasty stuff.

  "Looks like I came just in time," Rif muttered, reaching into her shoulder-bag. "Try ter pole right around 'er, an' I'll throw the eggs as far inter center as I can."

  "Yey, do 'er." Relieved, Jones cut hard to port and began shoving the skip through the interface of dead and living weeds. It wasn't easy: gluey dead tendrils clogged the pole, snagged on the underlying engine propellor-cowl, bunched at the skip's nose. Still, it was a damn-sight better than trying to push into the main mass of that central sargasso.

  In the bow, Rif pulled two boxes out of her shoulder-bag, set them on the thwarts and opened them. The contents appeared to be some sort of coarse grayish powder. She took handfuls from both boxes and tossed them high overside, in the general direction of the central mass of dead weed, while muttering about wind directions and probable spread.

  Circling the border of the weed mass took long, and disturbed another colony of water-birds—long-legged brown heronets, these—which made Rif practically gloat at Mother Jane's bounty. The shocking abundance of wild food made Jones oddly uncomfortable. She hadn't wanted anything more to do with the Janes and their bizarre business, but damn, seeing the effects out here made Rifs hints and promises dangerously seductive. Cheap fuel and cheap food for the taking, apparently no karmic debt involved . . . Lord and Ancestors, yes, that would be hard for anyone in Merovingen-below to resist.

  "She's gettin' late," was the best defense Jones could come up with. "I got people waitin' fer me. How much longer's this gonna take?"

  "How fast can ye finish the circle?" Rif replied, dusting off her hands above the water. "I'm close ter done now."

  Jones leaned on the pole and shoved hard through the weeds. There—ah, there, right ahead—lay the fresh channel the skip had flattened on its way in. Rif saw it, too, sighed in relief, and simply dunked the boxes and their lids into the water.

  "That's done 'er. Let's get outta here."

  Jones leaned to the pole and shoved gratefully into the channel. Bit by bit, the clotted weed reluctantly slid off the bow and the pole. The skip was almost clean of weed by the time it reached the first line of the old sea-wall that marked the city proper. Nobody appeared to notice as they slid out into the backwater canals; traffic was light back here, and
Jones made good time.

  "I notice," Rif murmured, in that for-your-ears-only pitch, "that yer engine-prop dicta' hang up much in the weeds. She's shrouded, ney?"

  Jones hitched her shoulders, almost missed a stroke, jabbed the pole down with a muffled curse. Yes, trust Rif to notice a little thing like that. "All right, damn ye," she snapped. "Yey, I had ter trade in my old engine fer one o' them new ones yer friend makes. Ye happy now?" That had hurt, giving up that engine that'd been Mama's, and her mama's before her, but trade was competitive, and engine use meant engine wear, and after too many breakdowns there just hadn't been any choice.

  "Runs better an' lasts longer, don't she?" Rif shrugged. "Look, Jones; we made them things fer folks like you. They run simple, clean an' cheap, an' take ferever ter wear out. They'll stand ye in good stead. What more d'ye want?"

  What answer to that? "Well . . . They carry lots less metal nor the old ones. Ye know what good metal's worth."

  "Sure." Rif grinned. "If we'd traded old-fer-new with the same 'mount o' metal, folks would've thought 'twere a gift. Ooh, karmic debt! Seems there ain't nothin' a Merovingian fears more nor a free gift. We had ter look like we was makin' some kind o' profit, ney?"

  No, there was nothing to say to that. Jones gritted her teeth and poled onward through the sea-gate that would take her back toward Petrescu. No doubt Rif would say where she wanted to be let off.

  An odd, hollow thumping echoed through the canyon of close-set buildings: somewhat like troubled-engine noise and something like the sound of bad plumbing. There'd been a lot of that noise around in the past few weeks, since the beginning of flood-tide. Jones frowned and eyed the buildings warily, wondering if one of them were about to dump a mess of sewage right in front of her skip.

  "Hey, pull up at the next corner, Jones," Rif said. "I gotta do somethin' there."

  Mystified, Jones shoved the skip close to the building at the corner. She could see nothing there worth noticing: not even a tie-up ring, nothing but a bit of ceramic pipe sticking up out of the water.

  "Little further, little further," Rif urged. "There! Stop."

  Jones did, seeing that Rif leaned over the gunwhale within reach of that standing pipe. And then Rif pulled a long knife out of her sleeve and banged on the pipe, medium-hard irregular beats. Tap, tap-tap, tap . . .

  The sound echoed through the water. Same sound as before. What the hell?

  "Rif, what'n hell're ye doin?"

  "Uhm, nothin' much." Rif sat back in the boat, put her knife away and looked out over the water. ". . . Just knockin' loose some blocked-up sewer-gas, like a good citizen should. That stuff backs up, she can make 'er real bad inside a buildin. . . ." She wasn't looking at Jones. "Hmm, can ye make a small detour an' let me out at East Dike?"

  "Ney, I can't. I got business at Petrescu, an' she's already overdue."

  Rif shrugged. "Petrescu'd be fine."

  All the way down the canal, Jones wondered what that had really been about.

  "You're late," said Dr. Yarrow, as Rif came trotting through the door of the school-barge's office. "We've had the pipes ringing for two hours, now."

  "Sorry," Rif panted, dropping into the nearest chair. "I was out in the lagoon, sowing the eggs. Y'know. the wildlife's downright exploded out there. I saw flocks of gray-teal and heronet, near a hundred of 'em. It's comin' faster'n we expected. An' even Jones's got one o' the new engines now, an' I'll swear I smelled pressed-weed fuel-blocks hidden somewhere on 'er skip. I know I smelled a workin' slurry-tank. ..."

  "Later," said Yarrow. "We have a small crisis here. Cardinal Exeter's been sniffing around the school."

  "Hell," Rif snapped, sitting bolt upright. "She got somethin' against Farren Delaney, or what?"

  "No, this seems to be part of the general slap-around-in-the-dark.'' Yarrow picked up a slateboard covered with notes. "One of the kids—McGee's, no less—was grabbed by priests on the way home and questioned about what's being taught here. Fortunately, McGee's one of our late-starters—just learning letters and numbers, couldn't tell them anything but the basics. Also, he's in the habit of throwing crying fits whenever he's in over his head, and that worked, too. The priests let him go quickly. Problem is, he ran straight home and told his mother, who told other students' mothers, before the word got back to us. A couple of parents have already hauled their kids out of school for fear of worse."

  "Damn." Rif leaned back in her chair and thought hard. "I don't know how t'lure the parents back, but I've got some idea what t'do about the sniffin' priests."

  "Very good." Yarrow smiled wearily and dropped into her own chair. "If you can keep the priests off, I can get the parents back. What's your idea?"

  Rif grinned, nastily. "Farren Delaney's kids still comin' here?" she purred.

  Yarrow raised an eyebrow. "They are. Go on."

  "Simple, then. Tell me where the priests're likely t'lurk fer kids, an' let me talk with the oldest Delaney kid. With luck, we can pull this off right this afternoon."

  Yarrow shook her head. "First tell me, Rif. I'm not risking a child with anything heavy."

  " 'T'won't be heavy." Rif grinned wider. "We simply tell the kid we're layin' a trap fer some nosy priests who want ter discredit his daddy's project. That'll put the kid's back up, right proper. Then we just tell him what to say, and where to go—and just when ter drop the word that his daddy's the Prefect of Waterways. Now, will that back them bastards off?"

  Yarrow's shoulders shook for a moment before she finally gave up and laughed. "Lovely, lovely. We'll also have to warn the boy what not to say, too . . . and make certain he's not under any pressure to reveal it."

  "Hey, we've been spreading the pipe-code as a kids' secret game, haven't we? One kid ter another? Y'don't haveta say a thing; kids'll keep kids' secrets from the grownups come hell or high water."

  "True ..." Yarrow considered. "Hmm, we already have the high water. And here's another bit of hell. Rif, one of our College sources says that Exeter's sent down word to have you and' Rattail questioned. They could hit anytime in the next few days—sooner, if you stick to your uptown-parlor circuit. Do you want to have Ariadne change it?"

  Rif thought about that for a long moment. "No," she finally decided. "I'll see Rattail in an hour anyway, tell 'er what's goin' down. We got plans fer somethin' like this, no fear."

  "You realize you may be picked up at work tonight?"

  "Hmm. Well, the sooner the better. Longer we wait, the more questions the high-bitch'll think t'ask —an' maybe the hungrier she'll be fer someone else ter hang."

  Yarrow shivered. "You," she said, "have a weird sense of humor. Very well, let's go talk to the Delaney boy."

  Alexis Delaney, nine years old and raised in a family that rewarded wit, came home from school a good hour later than his younger sibs, sporting a righteous and determined air. Only his mother, Ariadne, might have detected a touch of theatrical swagger in his walk, and she was not the first or second person in the household to meet him. To the porter's greetings—half scolding, half dithered relief at the boy's return—Alexis only said: "I was forcibly detained, and I want to talk to Papa at once."

  The porter complied with alacrity, marching the boy straight to Farren Delaney's study. Farren, who hadn't realized that Alexis was late in coming home, only looked up from his papers and smiled.

  "Yes, son?" he asked, setting a tablet aside. "What can I do for you?"

  "Papa," said Alexis, unconsciously assuming a stolid parade rest position, "on the way home from school I was stopped and nearly molested by a gang of priests."

  "What?!" shouted Farren, almost bolting out of his chair.

  "I was coming up the main walkway from East Dike," Alexis proceeded with the story as he'd been practicing it for the last several bridges, "and some priests stepped out and barred my way. There were three of them, and the first two took hold of my arms and wouldn't let me go."

  "And the third?" Farren seethed. "What did the third one do?"

  Alexis f
rowned in concentration, being careful to remember details clearly as Ariadne had always taught him to do. "The third one leaned down close and smiled, and told me not to be frightened, he just wanted to ask me some questions. I said that what I wanted was to go home, but he wouldn't let me. He asked me my name, and I said it was Alexis and I wanted to go home."

  "And then?"

  "He said ..." the boy unconsciously mimicked the questioner's voice and stance. " 'In a moment, Alexis. There's a good boy. Just tell me about school. What did you learn in school today?' "

  "The school. . . ?" Farren frowned thoughtfully, mirroring his son.

  "I said: T learned how to do fractions, and the ge-ogerphy of the Det River valley, and how a hand-pump works, and we started on the history of the founding of Merovingen, and I made only two per-nunciation mistakes. Now can I go home?'

  "And he said: 'Oh, that's very good. You're quite a clever little boy. But didn't they teach you anything about Mo-rality, or Family Values or the Duties of the Soul?' And I said—" "Oho," Farren muttered.

  "And I said," Alexis forged on, " 'no, that's church stuff. I learn that at the church-school on Sunday when we go to church. And,' I said—" The boy couldn't help grinning a bit. " 'The church-school doesn't teach us anything about fractions or ge-ogerphy, either.' "

  "Good point," Farren acknowledged. "What did he say then?"

  "Then one of the other priests pinched my arm," Alexis glowered. "I yelled, 'Ouch! He hurt me! Help! That man's hurting me!' good and loud, and people on the walkway started slowing down and looking. The third priest looked real worried, and he stood up fast and shook his holy-stick and shouted 'Church business!' at all the people. I think he 'spected that'd make them go away, but they didn't. They kept on standing there and looking. The priest waggled his fingers at the other two, and they started to pull me away toward a doorway, but I yelled, 'Where are you taking me? Let go! I want to go home!' and the people started muttering real loud and angry, and they started moving toward the priests, so they— the priests, I mean—stopped right there."