by John Brunner
All of a sudden Yockerbow started to laugh. As soon as he could he recovered his voice and said, "Admiral—excuse me, because this is truly too silly—but you were right the first time, and this time you're wrong. It doesn't matter that someone else knows the inmost secret of the Jingfired ritual. What counts is that Ulgrim didn't."
"I think I see what you mean," said Barratong, and a waft of anger-stink blew away as he mastered himself. "Clarify!"
"How long ago was such a truth discovered, that may prove to be valid even in the case of the stars? Well before the Northern Freeze, we may be sure! What happened following the onset of it? Why, people driven crazy by hunger and despair felled great civilizations which otherwise might well by now have shown us things we regard as impossible—you might, for instance, have your spuder-web to catch the moon! But nobody among the Fleet would dare to undertake the necessary research because a fire literally cannot be lighted on a junq! Hence no metal—no glass—no melted rocks—no anything of the kind which pertains to such realities!"
He was downwind of Barratong as the Fleet bore into a strong northerly breeze. Whether it was because he scented the admiral's enthusiasm, or because the newly exposed lands which the ice had reluctantly let go were emanating signals from those who had once occupied them, he never knew. But in that moment he was as great a visionary as the admiral.
"Yet we can bring our knowledge all together!" he declared, and his weather-sense confirmed that he had safely picked a course into imagination, steering well clear of dangerous dreamness. "Knowledge borrowed from past time will guide us to the future we deserve for all the troubles we've endured! There must be suffering—would I knew why! I don't believe the stars decree it, for they're so remote they might as well be cool and stiff like arctic rocks, yet they can blaze up, and I don't want to think it's simply because they suck into themselves the vital force from planets like ours where life exists between the limits set by ice and fire!"
"Say it's because of ignorance," offered Ulgrim, and at once looked surprised at his own improbably philosophical suggestion.
"Yes! Yes!"—from Barratong. "Have we not found remains of animals such as none of us had seen or heard of? Have we not then encountered similar beasts in strange new waters? And are we ourselves not different from our ancestors? It follows that if the stars blaze up it must be for a reason we shan't comprehend until we work out why there are creatures—or were—unknown to us on this small planet!"
"We understand each other," Yockerbow said soberly. "I was so afraid when you invited us to come with you..."
"Ah, but we're all bound on one quest," Barratong stabbed. "Some of us seek an answer to a single mystery—you, Yockerbow! You wanted to find out why syphonids and cutinates could never pump water above a certain level. On the way to a solution, you saved your city from being washed away. You still don't know all the reasons why the original phenomenon presented, but you have suspicions, don't you? And Arranth has just drawn my dear old partner whom I've trusted in storm and floe-time, trusted under the onslaught of heaven's crashing meteorites— drawn him too by some miracle into the charmed circle where I hoped to lure him long ago" (this with a dip to her) "and for that I thank you, ma'am—"
Yockerbow was half-afraid the admiral had lost track of his own peroration, but he was wrong, for he concluded it magnificently.
"And here we are together on the sole straight course which any of our people ought to choose! All of us a little angry with the universe because it seems to want to mislead us—all of us determined to find an answer to at least one mystery before our time runs out—all of us resigned to the certainty that we shall uncover many other mysteries in the solving of our own! Perhaps the time may come when there are no more questions to be asked; if that is so, that's when the world will end!"
VII
Cooler it became, and cooler ... yet not cold. No frost-rime formed this season on the rigging of the haodahs, and the junqs themselves responded briskly to the increasing iciness of the water, as though they needed by activity to keep the ichor coursing in their tubules. Awed, those who rode them as they trespassed among bergs and floes under an amazing pale blue sky watched the bare brown land on either side slip by, and marked where it was suddenly not bare, as though the sun had charmed plants out of rock.
"We are approaching the polar circle," Barratong said. "We are the first to come by sea in who can say how long? But we are not the first of all. See how the flighters whirl who brought new life to these mud-flats!"
Watching their graceful swoops, as they glided back and forth and sometimes failed of their prey so they had to whip the water and achieve enough velocity to take off again, Yockerbow said, "How can they eat enough to fly?"
"Sometimes," said Barratong, "they can't, or so I was informed by a fisherman whom we rescued in mid-ocean the summer before last. They breed on high bluffs and launch their offspring into air by laqs at a tune when they burst the brood-sac. Those which catch enough wingets and flyspores grow; they soar and mate on the upgusts; then they hunger for what's in the water, and if they're large and fast enough they snatch the surface-breeding fish. If not—well, they can use up what fat they've stored and spring back into air from the crest of a rising wave. But this fish-hunter had many times trapped those which did so, and always found them lean and scant and taint of flesh. It's my view that flighters' natural zone is the air; by contact with either land—except to breed—or sea, they are diminished of their powers. Witness the fact that out of every brood-sac a score or two survive. And is not the same phenomenon apparent in ourselves? Had you and I, and all the other so-called worthy persons, bred at every pairing, would we not by now by laqs and craws have overswarmed the pitiful resources of the Age of Freeze? How many more of the folk could Ripar have supported before either they started to starve off into dreamness or some epidemic sickness rushed through them like a flame in dry brushwood? Hmm?"
Yockerbow, after a second's pause, admitted, "It is in the records of the city that Ripar came close to that."
"As did our Fleet," the admiral rasped. "How think you I—a landsider—was able to assume command? I was better fed than old Grufflank, and that's all! He dreamed away his days in nonsense visions! There was I fit and strong and offering suggestions so practical the captains' meet recognized the common sense of them. Yet, given a season's decent diet, any of them might have done the same, and more, for they had sea-experience, while I did not..."
He brooded for a moment; then he concluded, "At least I can say this. I'm still in the domain of imagination and not dreamness; my weather-sense assures me of it, and that's the sense that fails us last, even though the eye or the very mantle may be fooled. A sweet taste may deceive you; a fair odor; a sleek touch ... but weather-sense extends into your very pith and being, and even if you starve it's last to go. Moreover it's what leads us to trust out junqs more than ourselves. At Ripar, do they know the legend of Skilluck?"
Yockerbow looked blank, but to his surprise Arranth, standing by as usual but less bashfully than before, said, "If the name is Skilq, we have the same tale, probably."
"Who swam a wild briq across the western ocean when all others had lost their way, and salvaged something of a now-lost city?" Barratong rounded on her with excitement.
"They say he saved the telescope for us," Arranth concurred. "All younglings at Ripar are told the story."
Having dismissed fables of that sort from his conscious mind because his preceptors so ordered him when he entered into adult phase, Yockerbow was acutely embarrassed. He said, "I too of course heard such stories, but in the absence of evidence—"
"To starfire with your ideas of evidence!" roared Barratong. "For me, it's enough that someone in the Fleet should remember hearing a vague tale! It's because I want to turn the legends of the past into a new reality that we are here! Those which don't stand up to present discoveries may be dismissed as spawn of dreams! But anything I take in claw and hold and use—!"
He
broke off, panting hard, because he had involuntarily tallened again. Relaxing, he concluded in a milder tone, "Besides if the same tales survive on land as we know among the People of the Sea, there's a double chance of them being based on fact. Do inland folk recount the stories, too? If so, are they just borrowed from contact with mariners?"
The ebb and flow of talk surrounding Barratong was such as Yockerbow had never dreamed of. Once he dared to ask what mix of ancestry had given him rise, and met with a curt—though plainly honest—answer.
"I inquired about that, right up until I found I was a muke, and got no details; there was a famine which affected memory. And after I discovered that my line won't take, there seemed no point in pursuing the matter. I can only suggest and instruct; I cannot breed."
Timidly Yockerbow ventured, "A—a—what did you call yourself?"
"A muke! Take junqs from a northern and a southern herd, and they will mate eagerly enough, and often throw a bunch of first-class younglings. Yet when you try to make the strain continue, it's like me, and you, and—given she's tried me and Ulgrim and a score of others in the Fleet—Arranth as well. We call those mukes, and hope against hope the wild strains will continue to furnish us with the next generation..."
With an abrupt shrug of excitement, he added, "Yet there is hope! Suppose our heritage has lain under a mantle of impotence as the northern continent lay under ice: the end of the Northern Freeze may signal salvation for us mukes! I couldn't begin to tell you why I foresee this; it may be leaked from dreamness to my mind. Still, the border between dreams and imagination might very well fluctuate just as the boundary between ice and ocean does ... Oh, time will judge. Now watch the way the land is changing on this coast. Look not just for the flighters that bore back southern seeds when they quested their prey into these waters, because as you know some seeds pass clear through the digestion of a flighter and are nourished by the dung they're dropped in, nor for what they brought when it foliates and blossoms, but for what lay hid till now when the sun came back and released it ... Ah, but darkness falls. Tomorrow, though—!"
And he was right. He was astonishingly right. Next dawn revealed what he predicted, and Yockerbow decided—though he could not convince Arranth he was correct in saying so—that among Barratong's chief gifts must be the art of assessing whether someone who relayed a story to him told the truth.
For their course came to a dead end in a wide bay whose northern shores were still blocked off by a huge glacier. Some drifts of mist hung about it, but it was a fine morning and a brisk wind disposed of most of them within an hour.
And, either side of the steep bluish mass of ice, life was returning. Not only were the drab gray sand-slopes nearby aweb with creepers and punctuate with burrowers: the air was full of unexpected wingets. The mariners caught as many as they could, for some were known to lay maggors which infested junqs, and brought them to Barratong for examination.
"They're unlike any in the south," he stated. "Even if they are similar, then the colors vary, or the size, or the limb-structure. Is the Fleet still thriving?"
"As ever!" came the enthusiastic report. "We didn't expect to fare so well this far north, but the junqs' maws are crammed and we ourselves enjoy the food we reap from the sea!"
"Then here's our landfall, and our harvest will be knowledge!" cried the admiral. "Report to me whatever you find unusual—"
Something shot past him with a whizzing sound. A moment later, Ulgrim, who stood nearby, cursed and clapped a claw to his upper mantle. Withdrawing it, he displayed a pointed object with a pair of vanes on the after end. Similar noises continued, and complaints resounded from all the nearby junqs.
"What in the world—?" began Yockerbow, but Arranth cut him short.
"Those must be seeds!" she exclaimed. "Did you never play the game we did as younglings—placing seeds like those on a rock and shining sunlight on them through a burning-glass until they flew away?"
Once again Yockerbow found himself at an embarrassing loss. When he was a youngling, he had known nothing of such miracles as lenses, or indeed any form of glass. Attempting to recoup his pressure, he said, "You mean heat bursts them?"
"Burst? Not in the sense a bladder bursts, dear me! They emit some sort of stinking gas from one end, and that makes them leap through the air."
All this time, a horde of the things was descending on them, and Barratong—who else?—was reasoning about the strange phenomenon.
"They must be coining from up there," he said, and pointed to a bluff a little above their own level, where a dark shadow was growing more and more visible as ice melted and water cascaded down the lower rocks. "That's where we'll send explorers first. A sign of life is never to be overlooked."
"And the top of that bluff," said Arranth in high excitement, "would be just right to set up the telescope I brought! That is," she added hastily, "if the dark-time is as clear as this morning, and weather-sense indicates it may be."
Exuding an aura of puzzlement, Barratong said, "I fear you're right."
"Fear?"—from two or three voices simultaneously.
"Our whole voyage has been strange," the admiral said after a brief hesitation. "Too fair weather—no storms to mention—the bergs dissolving as we passed by ... There is a real change taking place in the world, and it disturbs me. We must seize our chance, though! Overside with you!"
The Fleet having been instructed to make all secure, a small group of crewmen was detailed to follow Ulgrim and find a way to the cliff-top where the telescope might be sited. Meantime Barratong, Yockerbow, and Arranth, who was too impatient to concern herself with preparatory details, set off along a sloping miniature watercourse towards the source of the flying seeds. Its bed was pebbly, and the flow chilled their pads, but they were able to obtain a good grip on the gradient, and shortly they found themselves looking at a shadow behind a veil of ice.
"Now there's a cave!" declaimed the admiral, loudly enough to overcome the rushing of streamlets which was greeting the advent of renewed summer. (Had there been one last year? It seemed unlikely; Yockerbow was prepared to believe that Barratong's weather-sense had picked the very first possible year for folk to return to these latitudes.) "What icefaw or what snowbelong may have laired here! What refuge it may have offered to beasts we exterminated when the Freeze drove them southward! You realize, of course"—lapsing into his most condescending and didactic mode—"that up here there may still be creatures which cannot live off vegetation but devour other animals, as sharqs eat other fish?"
For once the others paid him no attention. They were seeking the source of the flying seeds, and shortly found it: an ice-free patch was exposed to sunlight on the side of the adjacent rock, and a small, tough, low-growing plant was exerting its utmost efforts to reproduce itself, though by this time its main arsenal had been expended and only a few weak flutterings resulted.
Standing back, Arranth began, "I think—"
"Look out!" Yockerbow roared, and dived forward to push her clear of impending disaster.
Whether it was the effect of sunshine, or whether—as they later wondered—the mere vibration of their presence sufficed, the ice-veil before the cave was starting to collapse. A web of cracks appeared; a grinding sound followed...
"Down!" roared Barratong, and set the example as great frozen shards fell crunching and slid down the watercourse. They clutched at what they could, including one another, and somehow succeeded in not being carried bodily away.
And got uncertainly to their pads again, for nothing worse emerged from the cave than a most appalling and revolting stench, as of corpses shut up for uncountable years.
It blew away, and they were able once again to venture close, while the low northern sun beamed on them from a clear blue sky. At the cave-mouth things glistened wetly, and a few were instantly identifiable.
"There's a mandible," Barratong muttered, kicking it. "People too were here, you see?"
"Where there were people, I look for what people make!
" shouted Arranth, and began to scrabble among the dirt at the opening. And checked, and said something incomprehensible, and rose, clutching a long rigid cylinder such as no creature in the world had generated naturally.
"It's a glass!" she cried. "It's a glass tube! And I hear something rattling inside!"
She made as though to crunch the crackly-dry wax that closed the tube's ends, but Barratong checked her.
"Not here! Whatever's in it must be fragile, for it's certainly very ancient. We'll take it back to the junq and open it with great care in a safe place. Are there any other relics like it?"
Reaching for the mandible, he used it as a scraper, and the others joined him in sifting through the foul mass of putrid matter at the cave entrance. Shortly they were satisfied there was nothing else as durable as the glass tube, and returned on board.
There, quaking with excitement, Arranth broke the wax and removed a stopper made of spongy plant-pith. Tilting the tube, she shook from it a tightly rolled bundle of documents, inscribed on an unfamiliar off-white bark. The moment she unrolled the first of them, she exclaimed at the top of her voice.
"I can't believe it! It's a star-map!"
"Are you certain?" Yockerbow ventured.
"Of course I'm certain!" Studying it feverishly, she went on, "And either it's inaccurate, or ... No, it can't be! It shows the stars as they were before the Freeze, and straight away I can assure you: some of the constellations aren't the same!"
VIII
The past can communicate with us...
Echoes of Arranth's repeated argument kept ringing through Yockerbow's mind as he and Barratong, and the senior Fleet sub-commanders, gathered to hear the result of her and Ulgrim's researches. In spite of aurorae and shooting stars they had been pursued through every dark-time until now, when their weather-sense warned of an approaching storm and indeed clouds could be seen gathering at the southern horizon. Every junq had been ransacked for writing-materials, and meticulous sketches were piled before Arranth, each adjacent to one of the pre-Freeze maps. Yockerbow shivered when he thought of their tremendous age. Yet they had been perfectly preserved in their airtight container.
