Poul Anderson - The Dancer from Atlantis

“The governor is most interested,” Reid finished pointedly, “and likewise the Ariadne.”

“Well, I’m interested too,” Sarpedon replied. “I’d like to try it. By Asterion’S tail, I would—! Um, beg pardon, Sister.... But I dare not pledge it’ll succeed. The work’d go slowly at best. Not only because we’ve no large facilities here. You wouldn’t believe how conservative shipwrights, carpenters, sailmakers, the whole lot of them are. We’d have to stand over them with cudgels, I swear, to make them turn out work as peculiar as this.” Shrewdly: “And no doubt we’ll have many a botch, many a detail nobody had thought of. And sailors are at least as hidebound as craftsmen. You’ll not get them to learn a whole new way of seafaring. Better you recruit among young fellows itchy for adventure. The town’ll have ample of those, now when winter’s closing down the trade lanes. However, training them up will take time, also.”

“I have time,” Reid snapped.

Lydra was not about to let him go. And she might well be right, that some such proof of his bona fides as this was needful. Though she’d been strangely hesitant to endorse the scheme—

He added: “The governor doesn’t want your promise that this ship will perform as well as I claim, Sarpedon. Only that it won’t be a total loss—that it won’t sink when launched, for instance, or that it can be reconverted to something more conventional if necessary. You can judge that for yourself, can’t you?”

“I suppose I can,” the yardmaster murmured. “I suppose I can. I’d want to talk over certain items, like ballasting when there’s this weight in the bows. And I’ll want a model made to demonstrate these crazy fore-and-aft sails. But ... yes, we can surely talk further?’

“Good. We’re bound to reach agreement.”

“Oh, wonderful!” Erissa hugged Reid’s waist.

He thought: Less wonderful than I’d hope for. It’ll keep me busy, what times you don’t, my beautiful; and that’s essential, or I’ll go to pieces brooding. It should win me more authority, more freedom, than I’ve got—maybe enough that I can persuade the Minos to save ... whatever is possible. And mainly, it’s one screaming anachronism for me to be aboard, so that maybe I’ll be noticed and rescued by the time travelers who’ll maybe come here to watch doomsday.

For us to be aboard, Erissa?

Christmas approached.

Reid could hardly think of the solstice festival under its right name. Now Britomartis the Maiden gave birth to Asterion, who would die and be resurrected in spring, reign with his consort Rhea over summer and harvest, and fade away at last before Grandmother Dictynna. Atlantis had less need of midwinter rejoicing than they did in the gloomy northlands, Reid remembered. But its people lived close to their gods. They honored the day by processions, music, dancing—in the streets, after the maidens had danced with a bull in the town arena—exchange of gifts and good wishes, finally feasts that often turned into orgies. For a month beforehand, they bustled and glowed with readymaking.

Erissa took Reid around as much as her duties and his shipyard work allowed. The purpose was to sound out prospective crewmen; but in this season especially, he and she were apt to be welcomed with wine, an invitation to dinner, and conversation afterward until all hours. The motive wasn’t only that her presence was considered to bring luck to a house and he was a celebrity—would have become more of one were he less withdrawn, less inclined to sad reveries. The Atlanteans were glad of any new face, any fresh word; their whole spirit was turned outward.

Often he couldn’t help sharing their gaiety and Erissa’s. Something might yet be done to rescue them, he would think. The construction project was going well, and fascinating in its own right. So if several rhytons had eased him, and Erissa sat gazing at him with lamplight soft upon her, and an old skipper had just finished some tremendous yarn about a voyage to Colchis, the Tin Islands, the Amber Sea ... once, by God, storm-driven to what had to be America, and a three-year job of building a new vessel after the Painted Men were persuaded to help, and a long haul home across the River Ocean ... he would loosen up and tell them, from his country, what he guessed they could most easily understand.

Afterward, walking to their boat, the links they bore guttering in the night 4and now lifting her out of shadow, now casting her back: he wasn’t sure if he himself understood any longer what he had been talking about.

The day after solstice dawned clear and quiet. In the town and the farmsteads they slept off their celebrations, on the isle their devotions. Reid, who had had little of either, woke early. Wandering down dew-soaked garden paths, he found Erissa waiting for him. “I hoped you would come.” He could scarcely hear her. The lashes moved along her cheekbones. “This is ... a free time ... for everyone. I thought—I packed food—I thought we might—”

They rowed, not to the city but to a spot beyond which she indicated. Their route passed through the shadow of the, volcano; but it too was still this day, and little silvery fish streaked the water. Having tied the boat, they hiked across a ridge, the narrowest on Atlantis, to the seacoast. She knew these hills as well as did any of the bulls they glimpsed, majestically dreaming near hay-filled racks in an otherwise empty huge landscape. A trail led them to a cove on the southern shore. Cliffs enclosed it, save where they opened on a blueness that sparkled to the horizon. Closer at hand the water was, green and gold, so clear that you could see pebbles on the bottom yards from the sandy beach. Wavelets lapped very gently; here was no wind. The dark bluffs drank sunlight and gave it back.

Erissa spread a cloth and on it bread, cheese, apples, a flagon of wine and two cups. She wore a plain skirt and in this sheltered place had thrown off shoes and cloak alike. “How peaceful the world is,” she said.

Reid gusted a sigh.

She considered him. “What do you mourn, Duncan? That you may never win home again? But—” He saw the reddening; she grew quite busy laying out their picnic. “But you can find a new home. Can’t you?”

“No,” he said.

She gave him a stricken look. “Why, is there someone?” And he realized he had never mentioned Pamela to her.

“I haven’t told you,” he blurted. “The Ariadne desired me not to. But I think—I know—I’m not here for nothing.”

“Of course not,” she breathed. “When you were brought that strangely from a land that magic.”

He dared speak no further. He looked at her and she at him.

He thought: Oh, yes, explanations are cheap, and Pamela (unfair; I) would be glib with them. This girl is over-ready for a man, and here I come as a mysterious, therefore glamorous foreigner. And I, I’ve known her older self, and fell a ways in love, as far as I’ve sometimes fallen in the (my) past, which was not too far to climb back out and refind reasonable contentment with Pamela; but how can any woman stand against the girl she once was, or any man?

He thought: Suddenly I have a new goal. To spare her what that other Erissa endured.

He thought: Those eyes, those half parted lips. She wants me to kiss her, she expects I will. And she’s right. No more than that ... today. I don’t dare more, nor dare say her the whole truth. Not yet. But the older Erissa told me that we will—but that’s in the future I must steer her from—but that’s thinking, and I think too much, I waste these few days in thinking.

He leaned toward her. A gull mewed overhead. Light streamed off its wings.

“Yes, your friends are doing fine,” Diores said. “They send their regards.”