The Sea Without a Shore

by David Drake

  Daniel hadn’t paid much attention to the audience. Logically he had nothing—well, almost nothing—to worry about, but millions of years of instinct told his nervous system otherwise. Then Adele called, “Good morning, Captain Monfiore,” and Daniel looked away from the surface of the pool.

  “Giorgi!” he said. “Say, you must have made good time.”

  Hogg placed the lure against Daniel’s chest and covered it with a length of cargo tape. The tape could be removed easily with alcohol, though it would leave a red patch that itched like a case of hives. That was inconsequential against what might happen if the lure didn’t stay in touch with his bare skin, masking Daniel’s own electronic signature.

  “When we get an offer like yours,” the young Ischian said, “we make the best time we can. And I’m here as a representative of the planet, not just the Monfiores. Though other clans will be sending their own negotiators shortly, you can count on that.”

  Monfiore shook his head with an expression of amazement. “Daniel,” he said, “you’ve saved Ischia. There’ll be a statue to you in every clan capital on the planet, I swear it. And any help I can give you myself, well, just let me know.”

  “You and Ischia generally have already helped a great deal,” Daniel said. “And believe me, you’re going to earn whatever haulage fees you work out with Commissioner Arnaud. But you’ll have to forgive me for the moment, because I have to clean up a little job right now.”

  Hogg had finished cross-taping the lure. He stepped away, looking at the readout on the controller. His face was stony.

  “What are you … ?” Monfiore said, looking down into the pool between himself and Daniel. He blurted, “By all heaven, Leary! Is that a firepot? I’ve never seen one that big! And what’s it doing here anyway?”

  “That’s what I’m going to learn,” Daniel said. “I think that a spacer named Captain Pearl brought it from Ischia, and I hope to learn that he brought something else with it.”

  Cleveland and Graves, the only civilians who knew what Daniel was about, waited patiently. It was a credit to their philosophy that they showed no signs of impatience. Though surely they must feel impatience?

  “Wait!” Monfiore said. “Daniel, you’re not thinking of getting in there, are you? Those pants won’t be any protection if the firepot grabs you, and one that size, well, I wouldn’t doubt if its tentacles could reach the whole length of this pond. You don’t know what the stings feel like, but trust me, it’s worse than you can possibly imagine.”

  “I’ll be all right, Giorgi,” Daniel said. “The sponge, the firepot, will think I’m one of its cleaner lice, that’s all. The trousers are for other things that might take a nip out of me. I’ll risk losing a finger, but there’s parts I won’t risk.”

  Daniel was impatient, however well the Transformationists were handling the delay. He sat on the lip of the pool and looked up at Hogg. “Ready, Hogg?” he said.

  “I’m ready,” Hogg said. “And you’re as pigheaded as any man born. Except that pigs is really pretty smart, and you bloody well aren’t!”

  “Daniel, please,” Monfiore said. “I was stung by a firepot when I was clamming, no bigger than my little finger, so I didn’t see it when I reached down to clear the scoop. I was in bed for a month!”

  He started to come around the pool, but he had fifteen feet to go and one of the Kiesches would stop him if necessary. They didn’t know what Six was doing, but they knew that no civilian was going to keep him from doing it while his spacers were alive.

  Daniel slid into the pool. Trickles dribbled down into his boots before the water really penetrated the fabric of his trousers. It was much colder than he had expected. He wondered what the rate of flow of the spring feeding the pool was.

  His feet squished onto the bottom, lifting the muck. The current was too slight for Daniel to notice a direction in the way the cloud spread. He didn’t move for a moment, waiting to see how the sponge would react.

  There was no reaction. Despite Monfiore’s warning, Daniel doubted whether the creature’s tentacles could reach him here; the handbook on Ischian natural history which Adele had found said that the tentacles rarely were longer than the firepot’s body. The specimen here was probably larger—and much older—than the creatures got on their world of origin where they faced predators; but even so.

  Daniel moved forward by slow steps. He’d be in over his head shortly, but he preferred to walk for as long as he could, hoping to make less disturbance that way.

  The water on his bare torso was startling at first, but as expected Daniel didn’t notice it after the first few moments. That was one of the reasons why he hadn’t gone straight into the deep end where the sponge was attached, though that would have been the least disturbing way of getting there.

  Entering at the deep end would also mean that his first contact with the sponge would be full-body. That seemed an even better reason to move up slowly.

  Weed rooted in the bottom trailed across Daniel’s skin. The leaves were fan-shaped but so thin that he hadn’t noticed them when he looked into the water from above. They were being browsed by inch-long creatures—worms? larvae?—wearing cases glued together from bits of debris. They must be why the weed hadn’t completely choked the pool, since the sponge wasn’t a browser.

  “Hey!” cried an onlooker. “Hey, get that feller outa there! There’s a thing in the end that’ll eat him alive, and I don’t mean maybe!”

  “Shut up, ye bloody fool!” Woetjans said. “Six knows what he’s doing!”

  I wonder if the weed and the insects are native to Corcyra? It was a less disturbing subject to consider than wondering whether tentacles were going to grip his waist and snatch him into excruciating pain. The Medicomp won’t help if I die of anaphylactic shock before they get me to the ship.

  Daniel’s next step put his chin into the water. He bobbed up and stroked forward easily with both arms. The trousers were a drag, and he wasn’t kicking his booted feet, but his arms would support him well enough for the few yards he had to go.

  Something trailed across Daniel’s bare belly. It had been a tentacle, six feet long at least. The natural history database had been wrong, or at least it wasn’t correct for Ischian firepots transplanted to Corcyra.

  The tentacle had brushed him instead of grabbing, and the stingers which covered the sponge’s arms as well as all other portions of its exterior skin had not come out. The tentacle had simply been moving the water to bring food toward the creature’s maw.

  Daniel took a deep breath. Another tentacle danced over his skin, trailing from his right shoulder to his left. It felt like the caress of an insect’s wing.

  He ducked under water. The sponge was a mass of pink and brown as big around as a washtub. The dark water muted its colors, but that filter blurred everything else to make the sponge stand out sharply.

  The creature was attached to the end of the pool. Daniel extended his right hand to feel the wall. The body of the sponge felt like a half-full wine sack against the inside of his arm. His fingertips touched a hard, slick surface, the pool’s plasticized end wall. The long side nearest the Manor was natural stone through which ground water percolated.

  Daniel pushed hard at the sponge, his mind disconnected from knowledge of the thousands of fiery cilia he was trying to squeeze out of his way. He touched a latch, but that took the last of his breath. He surfaced with a splash and a loud gasp, his eyes shut.

  “Six! You all right!” Woetjans bellowed. Other Kiesches were shouting a mélange of similar things.

  “It’s fine!” Daniel said and almost splashed under again. “I’m fine. I think I’ve found it.”

  He took three deep breaths in sequence. He didn’t try to answer questions as he trod water. With his lungs full, he ducked under again.

  Daniel knew where to go this time and thrust down with both hands. The sponge’s body resisted like a roll of rubber matting, flexible but too massive to be easily moved.

  Cleaner lice
the size of his thumbnail crawled onto his arm. His skin prickled as they nipped off hairs—dead protein.

  Daniel gripped the latch lever and tried to pivot it downward. The tentacles touched him, trying to shove him away the way they would have done a floating log. The sponge was a communal entity which had no central nervous system, let alone a brain. Nevertheless, the species’ responses had allowed it to survive since the appearance of multicelled life on Ischia.

  If the tentacles rip the lure off my chest … Daniel thought.

  Adrenaline—he wasn’t in a panic, but his glands operated on the orders of his lizard brain’s hundreds of millions of years of reflexes—flooded his system. His hands twisted convulsively, snapping the corrosion that had bound the latch.

  The access plate of what was intended for a filter compartment swung sideways, taking with it the sponge which was attached to the perforated panel. The creature’s body was so large that Daniel couldn’t open the compartment fully, but he was able to reach in with his right hand and grasp the drawstring bag his fingers found there.

  Daniel shoved himself back, popping to the surface well away from the wall of the deep end. He backstroked, kicking furiously this time.

  The sponge lashed the water wildly, much as it would have done if a storm tore loose the rock which held it to a shoreline. If a tentacle grabs me now, it’ll try to use me as an anchor, and I might very well drown.

  Daniel laughed at the thought. The spectators probably thought he was laughing in joy at having survived, but the truth was a little stranger than that. He wouldn’t try to explain it to anyone, though.

  Hands gripped Daniel’s upper arms and half-jerked, half-dragged him onto the plaza on his back. Cory had his left and—heavens, Adele!—had his right.

  Daniel looked up at her. “You’re stronger than I thought,” he said through wheezes.

  “Hysterical strength, I suppose,” Adele said, stepping backward.

  Daniel lurched into a sitting position, then rotated to bring his left hand down on the plaza to help him stand. The Kiesches were cheering. Actually, most of the spectators were cheering, even the majority who didn’t have any idea what was going on.

  Daniel turned to the Transformationists—who were cheering also. Their faith didn’t prevent them from defending themselves or from feeling enthusiasm about wholly nonreligious matters, apparently.

  “Master Cleveland,” Daniel said. “You might see what’s in here. I rather hope it’s what you were looking for.”

  He held out the bag. The fabric was an extruded synthetic, but the drawstrings appeared to be purple silk, tied off in a bow.

  Cleveland undid the bow, then carefully teased the mouth of the bag open. Instead of pouring the contents into the palm of his hand, he reached in with two fingers and brought out a jewel.

  It was a perfect ovoid about the size of a hen’s egg. Though the clear stone was smooth, not faceted, it blazed in the sunlight. Around it was a network of hair-fine metal with a purple cast.

  “I’m not an expert, Cleveland,” Daniel said, “but I would guess that you have a diamond. And I wouldn’t be greatly surprised to learn that the filigree is your unbihexium, Brother Graves, because it certainly doesn’t look like any metal that I’m familiar with.”

  There were more cheers. Daniel cheered too.

  * * *

  “I’ll report on the library’s installation when it’s complete,” Brother Graves said as he and Cleveland accompanied Adele down Central Street’s final slope to the harbor. “Is the best way to reach you through your townhouse in Xenos, or should I send the information in care of the navy?”

  Adele didn’t answer immediately, because the roar of the ship landing overwhelmed speech. The vessel’s computer tried to hold it in a hover, but its poorly synchronized thrusters started a wobble. It dropped the last ten feet into the water as the best alternative available to the machine intelligence.

  Adele’s tiny smile was perhaps colder than usual. The computer was correct, of course, but the crew which had just been badly jounced was probably cursing it rather than their own poor maintenance for causing the controlled crash. Saving stupid, lazy people often required hard measures. In Adele’s experience, they never thanked you for it.

  Brotherhood Harbor was much busier now than it had been when Adele saw it first from orbit. She would never have a real spacer’s eye for a ship, but she knew that the vessel was a moderate-sized freighter, an ordinary tramp though larger than most of the ships which called here while fighting was going on.

  Daniel—or even Evans—could probably have told her where the ship had been built. Study would accomplish many things, but real skill required a knack as well, a degree of focused interest which Adele would never have for starships.

  As the echoes of the splash receded, Adele said, “To Chatsworth Minor, I suppose. But there isn’t really any need to report. I’m pleased that you’ve taken on the task, since it needn’t have been any concern of yours. And that you’ve given refuge to Master Lipschitz as well.”

  “Master Lipschitz doesn’t appear to be any kind of burden, milady,” Cleveland said, smiling. “As thin as he is, he won’t be straining the commissary to feed him.”

  That’s the first time I’ve heard him joke, Adele thought. Perhaps he’s been taking lessons from Tovera.

  More seriously, Cleveland had been calmer and more centered since they had landed on Corcyra and he’d come back into contact with fellow Transformationists. That meant mostly contact with Graves, of course, who was looking better also. Adele wasn’t sure that a philosophy—or religion, whatever term one wished—that punished people who weren’t in the company of other people was a very beneficial one.

  Daniel was waiting with Hogg in the plaza where Central met Harborside. There was no longer a platoon of soldiers stationed there, but traders had laid out their wares on blankets—the same sort of food and tawdry whimsies that bumboats hawked to the anchored vessels.

  With peace had come buskers. A man was juggling, and a couple—the boy was young and the girl was very young—was singing a dialogue between Lord Randall and his mother. The girl wasn’t very convincing in the part of an old woman, but her voice was clear and pleasant.

  Adele stepped ahead of the Transformationist; they slowed deliberately to let her reach Daniel alone. Tovera had been following the three of them. The fact that she didn’t sprint ahead to put herself between her mistress and the two men showed either that she was mellowing or that she trusted Hogg to prevent Cleveland and Graves from attacking Adele successfully.

  That Tovera trusted Hogg seemed more likely.

  “Daniel,” Adele said, “I regret that I’m late. I wasn’t noticing the time or I would have informed you that it was taking longer than I’d thought to remove the last case of books from the rubble.”

  “We weren’t going to leave without you,” Daniel said, smiling. “With an ordinary spacer I might have sent out a squad under a bosun’s mate to check the bars and jail, but I didn’t think that would be of very much use in finding you.”

  He gestured the Transformationist forward. “Brothers,” he called. “I’m glad to see you again before we lift. Or have you decided to return to Cinnabar with us? You at least, Master Cleveland?”

  The juggler was using four cubes whose faces flashed changing imagery as they spun. His hat lay on the ground in front of him with a few coins in it, but a young boy was also working the spectators, offering to sell similar cubes.

  “Thank you, Captain,” Cleveland said. “I’m to go back to Pearl Valley as Brother Graves’ aide. Sister Rennie will be replacing him in the office here. She has the skills, and her, well, other skills don’t appear to be needed to defend the community at present.”

  “Will Colonel Rennie be bringing a companion?” Adele said. A few years ago she wouldn’t have spoken, and until she joined Daniel and the family of spacers around him, she wouldn’t even have understood the reason she was asking the question.


  “The workload in Brotherhood should drop back to its previous—pre-invasion—level,” Graves said, calmly but with a slight frown. “We need an agent here, but there’s no need for a second person to be removed from the community. Someone will replace Rennie in a few months.”

  Adele shrugged. It was none of her business, and she had never seen any point in arguing in support of the obvious.

  Daniel looked at her sharply, then said to the Transformationist, “You feel that separation from your community is a hardship. What Lady Mundy and I have noticed is that both of you seem much better off with the other’s companionship than you were while you were separated from all your fellows. Speaking as an RCN officer, if the operation were under my command, I would assign at least two personnel to every detached location.”

  He grinned and added, “Just as I would to a listening post. Eh, Hogg?”

  “It’d help if the folks assigned wasn’t rubes who couldn’t find their asses with both hands,” Hogg said. “But yeah, one guy alone is worse ’n useless.”

  Graves and Cleveland didn’t understand the background to the discussion, but they understood there was one—and that they were listening to experts. Adele would have let the Transformationists make their own decision, their own stupid decision. Daniel was treating them as ignorant, not stupid; which was kinder and probably more accurate.

  Adele smiled faintly. I will never become Daniel. But that doesn’t matter, so long as I have Daniel around.

  Cleveland looked at Graves. “I’ll stay with Rennie for, for a time,” he said. “You can do a better job of explaining to the community why we think the policy should change.”

  “No,” the older man said. “The rest of the troops from Hablinger will arrive this afternoon on their way back to Pearl Valley. I’ll speak with Brother Heimholz. I think he’ll agree to stay with Sister Rennie until they both can be replaced.”

  Graves gave Daniel a sort of smile. “I’ll borrow your analogy, Captain,” he said. “Rennie and Heimholz will understand it even better than I do.”