The Incredible Tide

by Alexander Key

  In quick anger Conan bruised his fist on the concrete enclosing him. Then he sighed and shook his head. He’d already guessed how it was here. Everybody afraid of everybody else—especially the branded ones, and the ordinary workers. If anyone so much as spoke to him, it would probably be reported.

  The lunch period was soon over and he watched the workers return. The thought of their synthetic food kept his appetite at bay, but his thirst was growing, and he wished someone would bring him a drink of water.

  By midafternoon it dawned on him that the work commissioner might keep him here for days until he was nearly dead of thirst. Fury boiled in him again, and without thinking what he was doing, he kicked viciously at the plastic door.

  A long crack appeared near one of the hinges.

  His eyes widened at the sight of it. Then he braced himself and started to kick again, harder.

  Abruptly he froze. Someone was coming.

  From around the corner of the projecting wall appeared a long cart with four rattling plastic wheels. It was being pushed by a very lean old man with a white beard and a wild mass of thick white hair. He was an irascible-looking fellow, made almost piratical by the black patch that covered one eye. On his forehead was a scarlet cross.

  As he shuffled past, scowling fiercely and muttering, Conan was astonished to see the good eye swivel quickly in his direction, then close in a wink.

  Man and cart vanished down the waterfront. Minutes later they reappeared, and now the cart was loaded with several sheets of heavy plastic. As they came again by the prison, the cart tilted suddenly on the broken paving, and the plastic sheets fell off.

  “Blow it an’ blast it!” the old pirate sputtered sulphurously. He began reloading the plastic, all the while muttering a stream of imprecations. In the middle of it, almost as if catching his breath, he whispered swiftly, “They call me Patch.… Take it easy, son.… See you tonight.…”

  A final whisper, sandwiched between mutterings, reached Conan’s ears as the cart began clattering away.

  “Lanna has Tikki again.”

  Shock held Conan rigid. Then he told himself he couldn’t have heard right. It was impossible. How could that incredible old rascal be the man he had to be in order to have uttered those last few words?

  But he was. Only Teacher himself could have learned about Tikki. Teacher was here, a prisoner of the New Order—but he had so changed his appearance and manner that there was no possibility of his ever being recognized by those who sought him.

  4

  ORLO

  LANNA FILLED THE TEAPOT, LET IT STEEP A FEW MOments, and brought it over to the table where Shann was huddled in heated conversation with Commissioner Dyce. She made the tea only because she knew Shann needed it, and not from any feeling of hospitality. The commissioner had been after Shann for days, threatening and bullying, first about one matter and then about another. This afternoon the argument was over the abandoned aircraft.

  “We must have them,” the commissioner was saying. “I absolutely insist upon it.”

  “No,” Shann told him wearily.

  “Don’t tell me no,” the other rumbled, his black beard wagging angrily. “You have no use for them whatever! Why, you can’t even repair them, and even if they could be flown, where would you find fuel—”

  “No,” Shann repeated. “The aircraft were not in the agreement we made with your survey people. Furthermore—”

  “Forget the agreement! I am the one in charge of trade.” The commissioner pounded the table with a heavy fist, making the dishes rattle.

  “Commissioner,” Lanna interrupted, “if you care to drink our tea, you’ll have to stop hitting the table so I can pour it.”

  “Eh? Tea?” The black beard jerked in her direction, and the small eyes under the heavy, scowling brows seemed to become aware of her for the first time. “Oh, very well. Pour it, girl. Pour it.”

  Lanna suppressed an impish temptation to dump the contents of the teapot down the man’s neck, and very carefully filled both cups. She heard Shann murmur, “Where’s Mazal?” and answered quietly, “Gone fishing.”

  Earlier Mazal had said, “If I have to listen to that toad again, I’ll lose my temper and make it worse for all of us. Anyhow, we need something for supper. Maybe I can catch a flounder.”

  Just before leaving, Mazal had said, “Don’t you want to try it—just once?” But she’d shaken her head quickly, frightened at the very thought of being so close to the strange sea she so feared and hated. Once she’d loved the water and the beaches, but now she could not force herself to go nearer than the harbor. It was protected, and the jutting headland blocked all view of the dreadful expanse that stretched beyond it to the horizon. But Mazal did her fishing along the open bay, which was just across the headland. Lanna couldn’t go there.

  As long as she lived, she knew she could never overcome her horror at that rising, roaring tide that swept the land the evening Mazal flew her up here. Their little craft, twin of the one Teacher used, had been dangerously overloaded with Shann’s medical equipment, and they hadn’t been able to keep up with the big craft ahead. They kept sinking, lower and lower …

  Suddenly Lanna found herself wondering again about a detail she had nearly forgotten.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the commissioner. He slurped noisily from his cup, then demanded, “What kind of tea is this, girl?”

  “Sassafras.”

  “Eh? What’s that?”

  “A tree that grows up here. We use the roots.”

  He took another long slurp. “Not bad. Not bad at all. I’d better have a few bales of those roots along with the other things.”

  Shann shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Eh?” The commissioner set his cup down slowly. “You say no to this. You say no to that. You are exhausting my patience, Doctor. I think you owe me an explanation.”

  “I don’t owe you anything,” Shann retorted, with a sharpness that surprised Lanna. He took off his glasses, rubbed his tired eyes, and said slowly, “We have just a few of those trees, and they give us our only beverage. Teacher had them planted before the Change, along with other things that don’t normally grow here. They spread rapidly, and in a few years we’ll have some to spare. But not now. They are among the items barred from trade.”

  “So? And who barred them?”

  “Teacher.”

  “And did Teacher bar the aircraft also?”

  “Certainly. And I wouldn’t think of going against his orders.”

  A dangerous redness was darkening the commissioner’s face. “Are you trying to tell me that this invisible Teacher of yours runs High Harbor and tells all of you what to do?”

  “Of course,” Shann replied. “Why shouldn’t he?”

  There was a silence. From some place in the grove of pines above the cottage, Lanna could hear the cawing of a crow. The sound came three times, and it was so real she might have paid little attention to it had she not been listening for it.

  She turned away from the cupboard she was cleaning—an excuse to remain in the kitchen—and started to get her cloak. Then she hesitated, for the commissioner had erupted again.

  “I’m getting tired of this runaround about Teacher,” he rumbled angrily. “Is he really alive? I’m beginning to doubt it. Now you listen to me.” A thick forefinger was thrust under Shann’s nose. “I’ve given your boys tools to cut the timber you promised, but you don’t get another thing until I see the logs on the beach—and the aircraft with them. I want the logs tied in rafts, and the aircraft taken apart so the pieces can be floated out on the rafts. Is that clear?”

  “No aircraft,” Shann said mildly.

  “Then you’ll get none of the cloth I brought, or the boots either!”

  Lanna wanted the cloth—any kind of cloth—desperately, as did hundreds of other girls. But suddenly she found herself saying, “Keep your sleazy old stuff! We can do without it. Why, all the girls are weaving their own—and it’s so much
better than what you showed us. That goes for the boots too. See?”

  She held up the wool-and-linen cape that had taken so much time and effort to make, and thrust forth a tiny foot encased in a short woven boot. Before the discomfited commissioner could recover and begin asking questions she preferred not to answer, she tossed the cape over her shoulders and started for the door.

  “I’m going to find our ax,” she told Shann.

  The crow signal came again as she went outside.

  At the corner of the cottage Lanna hesitated and looked carefully around to see if anyone might be watching. Reassured, she hastened through the trees in front of Shann’s office and began climbing the slope on the other side.

  Why, she thought unhappily, did anything as ordinary as cloth, which you couldn’t do without, have to be so terribly difficult to make by hand? It wasn’t just the weaving. That part of it she really enjoyed. But there was the endless preparation that came before—shearing the wool, planting the flax, and all the other steps you had to take without interrupting the main business of finding food enough to stay alive. You honestly couldn’t blame some of the young ones for giving up on the extra work and turning into savages.

  But the New Order’s cloth would help. It was sleazy, of course. It was about the worst stuff she’d ever seen. Yet it was better than no cloth at all.

  Halfway up the slope she stopped suddenly, thinking again of the thing she had nearly forgotten. It was something about the little aircraft that she and Mazal had used to fly up here. The twin of Teacher’s craft. The big machine they’d followed—which Shann had flown packed with children—had been a sort of helicopter. But the little craft wasn’t. It had been very different.

  What was so different about it?

  “Why,” she said aloud, “it didn’t have rotors!”

  It didn’t have wings, either—or anything that looked like a motor. With the heavy load she and Mazal piled inside, they barely managed to reach High Harbor. In fact, they came down in the woods two miles short of the harbor, and spent days carrying out the medical supplies. Oddly, they’d never gone back to the craft, and Mazal had hardly ever mentioned it—until last evening after she’d talked to Teacher.

  “I don’t know whether it’s me or the weather,” Mazal reported, “but I didn’t have the least trouble receiving this time. Teacher says we’re not to trade the aircraft, or any part of them, under any circumstances. I told him the little one was still hidden back in the woods, where we came down, and he said that was good, for he didn’t want those people to even see it.”

  To Lanna, now, the reason was all at once clear. Into the building of the two craft, especially the little one, had gone secrets the New Order could not be trusted to have.

  There had been more to Teacher’s message, and at the thought of it she felt again a quick fury and a joy. Fury that the New Order would treat Westerners as they did, and joy that Teacher had actually seen Conan and spoken to him. Not that Conan was any better off, but now she knew for certain where he was, and his being near Teacher made her feel worlds closer to him.

  The crow signal, somewhere near this time, brought Lanna back to the present and sent her hurrying up the slope. At the top she paused beside a twisted pine and searched the shadows on either side. She was careful not to turn her head too far, for the height gave a sweeping—and frightening—view of the sea.

  “Jimsy?” she whispered.

  A small, ragged figure, barefooted, redheaded, and incredibly freckled, appeared from behind a tree. In one grubby hand he clutched a crude bow and two arrows. In the other he held a dead squirrel.

  “Oh, Jimsy!” she exclaimed, stricken. “How could you? You’ve killed one of my pets!”

  Eyes as hard and cold as agates surveyed her from under the red thatch. “I gotta eat. An’ there’s two others I gotta help feed.”

  “But there’s fish!”

  “Aw, fish,” Jimsy said contemptuously. “You can have it. I want meat.”

  She sighed. Jimsy couldn’t be more than ten, and he was growing up wild. Why he still came to the class she managed somehow to teach two mornings a week, she didn’t know, but she was thankful that he remained her friend.

  “Did you find our ax?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, where is it?”

  Jimsy looked away and ran a pointed tongue over his grim mouth. “Orlo’s got it.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “That’s why I didn’t bring it.”

  “Where’s Orlo’s place?”

  “What you wanna know for?”

  “Because I want the ax—and I’m going to get it! Jimsy, that ax has to cut wood for twenty people. We simply can’t do without it.” It was more than just something to chop wood with, for it served as an all-around tool for a dozen purposes.

  Jimsy licked his thin lips again. Finally he said, “I wouldn’t go there if I was you.”

  “I certainly don’t want to go,” she admitted. “But who will do it for me?”

  “There ain’t nobody. All the guys are scared of him.”

  “Then it’s up to me. How do I get there?”

  “I—I can’t tell you. It’s a long way.”

  “Then take me close enough so I can find it alone. I’ll never tell anyone you helped me.”

  “You promise?”

  “Of course I promise! Now let’s go.”

  When Jimsy finally left her, she was on a ridge far south of High Harbor. Somewhere below, on her right, was a ravine where Orlo’s camp was hidden.

  The area seemed vaguely familiar, but she did not recognize it until she had crept down to the ravine and saw the tiny stream. Her eyes widened at the sight of water trickling over the flat rocks, making a series of pools. She knew the pools instantly. They were just as they were five years ago, when she and Mazal had stopped here to drink. The only change was in the trees. They’d been a thick, feathery growth when she’d first seen them, just right for cushioning the fall of the little craft when Mazal had been forced to land.

  She couldn’t make out the craft now, for the trees had grown tall enough to hide it completely. But she knew exactly where it was.

  For a moment she hesitated, knowing she would be foolish to go ahead. Then she thought of the precious ax. It was a slender tool of solid steel, light enough for a girl to use, and it had to serve everyone living at the south corner of the harbor.

  Her mouth set determinedly. She clenched her small hands and moved swiftly forward.

  Suddenly she smelled meat cooking, and seconds later found herself on the edge of a partially cleared space. Directly in front of her a boy was crouched beside a smoldering fire, slowly turning something spitted on a green sapling held up by forked stakes. It looked like the whole carcass of a goat.

  With one quick glance Lanna took in the empty huts and shelters on the right, the little aircraft that lay wedged in the trees like a flattened teardrop, and the pile of wood beyond the fire. The ax that had cut the wood lay on the ground beside it.

  It seemed almost too good to be true to find Orlo’s camp deserted save for the boy at the fire. The others were probably away foraging somewhere.

  With her eye on the boy, whose back was to her, she slipped quietly around to the pile of wood. The ax was almost within reach when she heard a small metallic sound on her left. Her head jerked about, and she froze.

  Orlo had just swung out of the little aircraft. He stood leaning against it, lazily chewing meat from a bone while he studied her insolently with narrowed eyes. He had the beginnings of a beard, of which he seemed very proud, for he kept twisting the point of it with his free hand. With his unkempt hair and soiled goatskin jacket he made her think of a young, and decidedly unpleasant, pagan deity she had once read about.

  “Well, well, well!” he said softly. “Just look who’s come to see papa!” Abruptly he flung the bone in the direction of the fire—an action that rewarded him with an instant yelp—and added, “Why didn’t you tell
me we had company, Limpy?”

  “I—I didn’t see her, Orlo!” Limpy protested. “Honest—”

  “Someday, Limpy, I’m gonna slice you up in little frying-size pieces.” Orlo’s eyes flicked back to Lanna. “Oh, no you don’t, chickie. The ax stays here.”

  “It does not stay here,” she said coldly, picking it up. “You’ve another ax yonder!” She pointed to one with a broken handle. “Why don’t you fix it? This one has to serve twenty people.”

  “Didn’t you hear me? I said it stays here. Put it down.”

  Lanna ignored him and whirled away. She heard his swift approach, and knew she could have stopped it with the ax. But she could not bring herself to use it as a weapon.

  She paid for her decision by having the ax snatched out of her hand. The next instant she received a vicious slap that sent her sprawling.

  Somehow she got to her knees, her breath coming in frightened gasps. This was a different Orlo from the rebellious youth who had given Shann so much trouble over a year ago. This was a dangerous animal who had discovered he could do exactly as he pleased. In some part of her mind that continued to work in spite of the blow, she realized two things in an instant—Orlo was going to be a menace to all of High Harbor, and she would never leave here safely unless she managed to trick him.

  “It’s time you learned about me,” she heard him say. “Get up, chickie. We gonna have a little talk. And don’t try skipping off, or you’ll really catch it.”

  She refused to move. I’ve got to make him knock me down again, she thought dazedly. And I must fall just right. But first I must make him mad.

  “You’re the worst kind of scummy thief,” she began, with all the cold loathing she could muster. “The rest of us work hard for what we have, and we share it so everyone can eat. But you don’t do a thing to help. You steal. Anyone so low that he’d steal food from young ones half his size—”

  “Shut up!”

  “—is worse than a rat. And you’re stupid! You’re actually killing the poor animals we’re trying to save for wool—”

  All at once, like a striking snake, his hand shot out and jerked her to her feet. The next instant she was reeling back from a tremendous blow against the side of her head. Only the rumpled hood of her cloak saved her from being knocked senseless. It was hard to keep her wits, but somehow she managed to fall close to the fire—so close that she could feel the hot ashes in her hands.