The Crucible of Time
Page 11
He bustled about, issuing orders to the apprentices, but they were superfluous; all her life, Embery had been accustomed to sighting and using a telescope. She applied her eye.
And tensed. The tropical night had not yet fallen; the sun, behind a patch of western cloud, still turned the sky to blue. In a few moments it would vanish, but for the time being its rays slanted across the ocean.
"That's not the New Star rising, or the moon either!" she exclaimed.
"Patience, my dear!" said Chard indulgently. "Wait for nightfall. Then, just above the horizon—"
"Not above! On!"
"Are you sure?"
"Oh, don't be so silly! Look, quickly!"
Sliding aside, she almost dragged him into position behind the eyepiece.
After a long pause he said, "My dear, I owe you an apology."
Upside-down in his field of vision was something like a giant fang, neither white nor blue nor green but a shade between all three.
"I wish them well in the far north," he muttered. "That's all I can say."
"Why?" Embery was almost crying.
"I never saw one before, but I recognize it from the descriptions I've read and heard." Chard glanced at his niece. "I think you must have done the same."
"Yes, but I was so much hoping you would say I'm wrong!" Embery clenched her claws. "Is it—"
"I'm very much afraid it must be. Further south than anybody has ever met one: that's an iceberg."
"You mocked me publicly before the folk!" charged Knowelkin.
A sky full of racing black clouds leaned over Ushere; a bitter gale lashed the wharf, the harbor; snow turning to hail battered land and water like a forestful of spongids uttering their pellets of spawn in an evil season. Behind him ranged the muster of surviving chaplains: those who sacrificed bulk to tallness, who had been infuriated when Skilluck and his companions overtopped them. And all of them were exuding combat-stink of such loathsomeness that even the frigid blast of the wind did not suffice to protect those nearby.
What could protect anybody in the clutch of this terrible winter, when not even seaqs or dugonqs were to be trapped beneath the ice because there were no floes thin enough to stab through, when icefaws and snowbelongs rampaged into the middle of Ushere?
The chaplains said: the stars. But nobody had seen a star in four-score days...
Somewhat reduced from the great height they had attained at Hearthome, Skilluck and his comrades confronted them. The crew were at the wharf perforce, for Tempestamer had to be taken to sea once in a while to eat, there being no pickled weed or fish to spare from feeding folk. To the surprise and satisfaction of his captain, Wellearn too had volunteered to turn out, regarding himself now as a full member of the company.
More than one briq was unlikely to live until spring, being already too weak to face open water thanks to the neglect of her captain, but Tempestamer remained fat and energetic, and they meant to ensure she stayed that way.
"Who did the insulting?" Skilluck rumbled, rising to the bait. "Who declared that Tempestamer was too weak to swim through storms? Who said I was too bad a navigator to find a way home?"
"Who said we were crazy to trust to visions sent by the stars?" Knowelkin countered. "Who brought a benefit for all the folk and now is keeping it himself?"
"We're doling out our creshban to those most in need!" roared Sharprong, clenching into fighting posture. "Those who have nothing to offer the folk may mock—like you!—and we shan't care!"
"Scores will! Scores-of-scores! You're traitors to the Wego!" Knowelkin shrieked.
Standing a little apart, Wellearn suddenly realized what made the chaplains' stink so harsh: fanaticism. They were so far into the maw of dreamness, reason would not convince them. And already they had deranged Skilluck, normally so self-controlled...
"Captain!" he shouted. "They've taken the windward of us! Shift round—shift round or they will make us mad!"
Startled, Skilluck shook himself as though emerging on land after a swim. "You're right, by Jing!" he exclaimed. "Sharprong! Strongrip! Quickly! Follow Wellearn!"
And with short but menacing strides they marched into the snap of the gale before turning and confronting the chaplains anew.
That put a very different color on the mantle of the situation. The exudate of righteous anger was accessible to those not breathing their own wafts of madness. It made the chaplains think again.
"How fragile is our sanity!" Wellearn whispered, not meaning anyone to hear.
"Once more you're ahead of the rest of us," Skilluck muttered. "But most of them are well and truly dreamlost!"
"Dreamlost?" Wellearn cried, straining to make himself heard against the howling of the wind. "No! They're frightened! And I'll tell you why! It's because if we steer the only sensible course and remove to Hearthome, they'll meet people who can contradict their lies about Jing!"
Skilluck clutched at his mantle. "If you provoke them any more—"
"They outnumber us," Wellearn returned softly. "Surely our best hope is to make them quarrel among themselves?"
Skilluck's eye widened. "Neat!" he approved, and went on at the top of his voice.
"That's right! Now suppose instead of Knowelkin, someone like you, Lovirtue, or you, Grandirection, had been in charge of the bragmeet: you'd not have insulted me, would you? You wouldn't be so afraid of meeting strangers, either, I'm sure!"
"Of course not!" they both exclaimed.
"Nonsense!" Knowelkin roared, turning on them. It very probably was nonsense, but all their tempers were set to snap like saplings in the path of a gigant.
Grandirection, whom Skilluck had picked on because he was visibly near breaking-point, immediately raised his claws and bared his mandibles and began to pad around Knowelkin seeking an opening for attack. In the meantime, several people had emerged from nearby houses and were gazing in wide-eyed astonishment at these chaplains making ready to disgrace their calling.
"Now's our chance," Skilluck whispered. "And—and thank you, Wellearn! Much more of this, and I'll come to think you are as smart as you imagine!"
A few moments later, the crew were able to pry Tempestamer's cold-stiff tentacles free of their mooring and goad her towards open water. Such was the violence of the wind, she was already tossing before she quit the harbor-mouth.
"What a disgusting spectacle that was!" shouted Wellearn against the blast.
"There's nothing wrong with them that a mawful of decent food wouldn't cure," Skilluck replied. "If only more of the Hearthomer seeds had taken...!"
"How could they," Wellearn sighed, "in a year when even the pumptrees are chill?"
They stood in a grove at the center of Ushere; it had been because of them that the Wego made their original decision to settle here, rather than the harbor, which was like half a score others nearby. Their taproots were known to reach an underwater spring, far below the level where a storm could stir the sea, which brought heat from deep-lying rocks. Carefully pierced and plugged, they furnished a year-round supply of warm fresh water. It was said that in the old days the chaplains denied that heat could come from any source except the sun, holding the stars to be cool because the spirits of the righteous dead departed thither after separating from the unrighteous in the moon—whose phases showed the division taking place—and that it had been the start of their decline when brave divers wearing capsutes under their mantles for a store of air reported that the sea-bed was warmer than the surface at this spot ... a fact for which they had no explanation.
Accordingly the seeds and spawn from Hearthome, all of secondary and parasitic or symbiotic plants, had been carefully planted in crevices of pumptree bark, not because that was the species most resembling their usual hosts but because they were the only trees likely to remain sapswollen.
However, the diet didn't suit the strangers; some died off completely, some seemed to be lying dormant, and of those which had sprouted, none yielded the harvest that could be relied on at Hearthome.
/> Still, any extra nourishment was welcome...
Already, though, as the chaplains bore witness, voices were being raised against Skilluck and his crew, blaming them for what was not in their control: bringing the wrong sort of seeds, not insisting on being given more creshban, wasting space on spyglasses and articles of metal instead of food. It would be hard to keep their tempers in face of such taunting. Nonetheless it must be done. No other plan made sense than removal to Hearthome; no briq but Tempestamer could lead the fleet thither. There were no charts for her storm-distorted course.
So she must be fit and lively four-score days from now. Or they were doomed.
VII
For a while longer the fact that Skilluck and his comrades—surviving on what they had stored during their season of good eating but otherwise, save mentally, in little better shape than anyone else—struggled along the frost-rimed branchways to deliver doses of creshban, together with what scraps of fruit or leaf or funqi-pulp their exotic plantings on the pumptrees yielded, counted heavily in their favor, while the chaplains, who had disgraced themselves by their affray on the wharf, lost countenance.
Then the creshban started to run out, while the number of victims multiplied, and even some who had declared support for the idea of emigration took to accusing Skilluck of lavishing the medicine on himself at others' expense. By that stage it was useless to argue. People were taking leave of rationality and slumping into stupor from which a few at least would never revive.
The sole consolation was that, undernourished and sickly as they were, none of the Wego any longer had the energy for fighting. But that meant, of course, they would have none to prepare for a mass exodus when the weather broke, either.
"Why did we come home?" Wellearn mourned more than once. But Skilluck strictly reprimanded him.
"We had no way of knowing how bad this winter was to be! Nor would we have felt easy in our minds had we abandoned our folk to face it without help!"
"At least we needn't have found out until next summer," Sharprong grumbled.
"By which time our kindred and our young'uns could have been dead! As things are, we stand some slender hope of keeping a clawful of the folk alive."
"Slender..." Strongrip muttered, gazing at the drifts which blizzard after day-long blizzard had piled against the bravetrees. Many upper branches and almost all their fronds had frozen so hard the wind could snap them off, and every gust was greeted with their brittle tinkling.
"Next time we take Tempestamer to sea we'll hang a net while she feeds," Skilluck sighed. "Even a load of sour weed could save another briq or two."
"Captain, you can't keep our fleet in being singleclawed!" Strongrip began. Skilluck silenced him with a glare.
"Name me another captain who's fit enough to help?"
There was a dismal pause. At length Wellearn ventured, "Maybe Toughide?"
"One might well try him, sure. Wait on him and ask if he will join us. If he won't, I'll still do what I can to feed his briq, or anyone's!" Skilluck stamped his pad. "How many summers to catch and pith and train the briqs we need to replace Stormock and Billowise and the rest? For all we know, there may not be another summer!"
So it was done, and Toughide goaded his weak and weary Watereign forth in Tempestamer's wake the next clear day, and though she was less elegantly pithed, a lucky mawful of fish revived her and he was able to make it back to shore with a mass of weed caught on curved prongs, lacking nets such as Skilluck had preserved.
When it was noised abroad that those briqs too feeble to risk the winter ocean were nonetheless receiving fodder, a few score folk made their way to the wharf and watched the spectacle in silence. It was unprecedented. Never in history had any captain of the Wego acted to aid his rivals; rather, he should frustrate them so they would not win the wise'uns' prize.
It was a new strange thing. The onlookers dispersed and reported it. Next time the weather cleared not two but seven briqs put out: Riskall came, and Catchordes, and Shrewdesign's Neverest, and two more so young their captains had not named them, which seemed barely strong enough to quit the harbor.
Towards these last Tempestamer behaved most strangely, for she slowed her pace instead of exulting in the water, and kept them in her lee as though they were of her own budding. By now Wellearn was informed concerning the manner of pithing and breaking a briq, and therefore he exclaimed in amazement.
"Captain, had I known when I first joined your crew that you'd left Tempestamer with those nerves intact...!"
He left the rest unsaid. There was no need to explain he meant the nerves governing a briq's response to briqlings. It was generally held to be a recipe for disaster to do as Skilluck had done, for such a briq might fall in with a wild herd and become ungovernable.
Dryly Skilluck made reply, "Most likely my Tempestamer would cut younglings out of the herd without orders and drive them home with her! It's something I've always wanted to try. Is she not huger, even now, than any wild'un?"
It was true. There was no record, not even any legend, of a briq's surpassing her, and she was still growing despite the dreadful winter.
"We'll find a wild herd off the coast near Hearthome," said Skilluck dreamily. "We'll let her pick the young'uns she personally likes. We'll raise such a fleet as will conquer any ocean, any season. Before my time expires, I hope to see the Wego travel round the globe!"
"Captain!" said Strongrip with a sharp reproof. "We have to live until the summer first!"
"Agreed, agreed," the captain sighed, and raised his spyglass to search for weed among the random floes.
They returned with not only weed but plumpfish, for Tempestamer sensed a school of them and patiently circled until they had to approach the surface again where she and her companions could feed and nets haul up what was left. The other captains were loud in admiration, and Skilluck seized his chance to exact a pledge: were spring to be delayed, were the fields to lie under frost a moonlong past usual, they would take aboard whomever of the Wego wished to come and head south, following Tempestamer.
Hearing the vow taken, Wellearn almost collapsed from relief.
"Captain, we're saved!" he whispered.
"Didn't I tell you? A few score days of hunger and cold, and then a mawful of good food ... But we aren't on course yet. So many of us are too lost in dreamness to work out what's best for our salvation."
For at least a while, though, it seemed Welleam's prediction was assured of fulfillment. Revived by the gift of fish, half the Wego came to watch the next departure of the fleet—and help carve up the carcass of a briq that had died at her moorings, a tragedy for her captain but valuable food to the folk—and among them were Knowelkin and Grandirection, who had composed their quarrel. They made shift to chant a star-blessing on the departing briqs, and the crowd settled into familiar responses even though a few budlings, too young to have seen a clear sky, were heard to ask fretfully what stars might be.
Two calm days followed, and the nets were quickly filled, suggesting that warm water was working up from the south in earnest of springtime and bringing bounty with it.
But on the fleet's last night before returning home a fiery prong stabbed out of heaven and exploded on a berg, raising a wall of water high enough to swamp the smallest briq. There was a thunderclap, followed by a cascade of ice-chips, but this was not hail and that had not been lightning.
Tempestamer gave forth a cry such as no tame briq had ever been heard to utter, and for hours ran out of control, seeking the lost young'un. Although Skilluck finally mastered her again, and set course for Ushere well before dawn, it was obvious that some captains were regretting their pledge. After all, if despite the chaplains' blessing the sky signaled its enmity, what hope was there of carrying out Skilluck's plan?
"That was an omen!" was his retort. "If we don't move south, that's what we can look forward to more of! Wellearn, do the skies hurl such missiles at Hearthome?"
"Not that I was ever told!" Wellearn asserted.
Wellearn was taken aback until he saw what Skilluck was steering towards. Then he roared, "Safe? Did that prong strike from clear air? More likely the stars are warning us to move where we can see them and be seen, instead of hiding from them all the tune!" The force of his logic told to some extent, but what counted most was that their weather-sense had given no warning of that blow from heaven. Had it been a lightning-strike, it would have been preceded by a sense of uncomfortable tightness and uncertainty. As things were, the discomfort had succeeded the impact. The sensation was weirdly disturbing.
Shortly thereafter the chaplains, whose duties included keeping track of the calendar, marked the usual date of spring. Weather-sense contradicted that, too. Traces of a thaw did occur; many beaches were cleared of ice as warm water washed against them. But uplands to the north which ordinarily caught the early sun-heat remained capped with snow, and even in low-lying valleys there were places where the drifts endured. As for the ground where new crops should be planted, it was stiff as stone a moonlong later.
"I hold you to your vow," Skilluck said when that day dawned, and the other captains shuffled their pads noisily. "But for me, would your briqs be even as healthy as they are?"
"Ask the storm-lost," someone muttered.
"They're not here—we are!" Skilluck snapped. "So are what's left of the Wego. Must they stay and starve because the bravetrees are frosted and nothing grows on them, because the fields are hard as rock and all seeds die at the sowing?"
"To risk cresh on a crazy course to nowhere?" another cried.
"To suffer cresh right here, when creshban is to be had at Hearthome and Tempestamer can guide us thither?" Wellearn countered.
Of all the various arguments advanced, that struck deepest in his listeners' tubules. Even those who had best planned to cope with the winter were showing creshmarks now, and saw little hope of escape before the sickness claimed their powers of reason.