Poul Anderson - The Dancer from Atlantis

Lydra sat still; she might have been carved from the same marble as her throne, and in the dull uneasy light she had scarcely more color.

“The mainlanders could use the chance to seize your cities,” Reid plodded on. “If they do, they might regret it when the destruction comes. But we ought to plan against that event too. Everything, both the old story I read and what I have seen and heard in this age, everything makes me doubt Theseus.” He paused. “And that’s why I asked what message he has sent you, my lady:”

Lydra remained moveless, expressionless. Reid had started wondering if something was wrong with her when she said: “I’m sworn to secrecy. The Ariadne cannot violate her oath. However, you may have guessed that he is ... interested in the idea of closer relationships with the Labyrinth ... and would naturally see if I might be persuaded to help.”

“Diores told me that much, my lady. Uh, uh, could you keep him in play? Prolong negotiations, immobilize him till the crisis is past?”

“You have been heard, Duncan. But the Ariadne must decide. I will not receive you soon again.”

And suddenly, strangely, Lydra’s shoulders bowed. She passed a hand across her eyes and whispered, “It is no easy thing being the Ariadne. I thought .. I believed, when the vision came to me in that hallowed place ... I believed priestesshood would be unending happiness and surely the high priestess lived in the eternal radiance of Asterion. Instead—endless rites, endlessly the same—drab squabbles and intrigues—whisker-chinned crones who abide and abide, while the maidens come and serve and go home to be brides—” She straightened. “Enough. You are dismissed. Speak no word of what has passed between us.”

They sought their cove on another day. “Let’s swim,” Erissa said and was unclad and in the water before he could answer. Her hair floated black on its clarity, her limbs white below. “Nyah, afraid of cold?” she shouted, and splashed at him.

What the hell, he decided, and joined her. The water was in truth chilly. He churned it to keep warm. Erissa dove, grabbed his ankle and pulled him under. It ended in a laughing, gasping wrestling match.

When they went ashore the breeze made them shiver again. “I know a cure for this,” Erissa said, and came into his embrace. They lay down on a blanket. Presently she grinned. “You’ve stronger medicine in mind, haven’t you?”

“I, I can’t help it. 0 gods, but you’re beautiful!”

She said, gravely and trustingly, “You can have me whenever you want, Duncan.”

He thought: I’m forty and she’s seventeen. I’m American and she’s Minoan. I’m of the Atomic Age and she’s of the Bronze Age. I’m married, I have children, and she’s a virgin. I’m an old idiot and she’s the springtime that never was in my life before she came.

“That wouldn’t be good for you, would it?” he managed to ask.

“What better?” She pressed against him.

“No, hold off, seriously, you’d be in trouble, wouldn’t you?”

“Well—I am half consecrated while I’m here as a dancer—But I don’t care, I don’t care!”

“I do. I must. We’d better put our clothes on.”

He thought: We have to survive. Until what? Until we know if her country will. Afterward—if it does, will I stay here? If it doesn’t, will I bring her home with me? Can I do either? May I?

His tunic and her skirt resumed, they sat back down. She, snuggled. Her fingers ruffled his beard. “You’re always sorrowful, down underneath, aren’t you?” she asked.

“I have some knowledge of what is to be,” he replied, though he dared not get specific, “and it does hurt.”

“Poor darling god! I do think you’re a god, even if you won’t admit it. Must you live every unhappiness twice? Why not every happiness, then? Look, the sky’s blue and the water’s green and the sand’s soaked full of sunshine and here’s a beaker of wine „ no, let me hold it to your lips, I want your arm around my waist and your other hand right here—”

* * *

A good many compromises had had to be made as work progressed on the ship, some with Keftiu prejudices and requirements, some with the limitations of local technology, some with aspects of hydrodynamics that Reid discovered he had not known about. The end result was smaller, less handy, and less conspicuously extratemporal than he had hoped.

However, it was a considerable achievement. About eighty feet long, the slender hull was built outward and upward from a great dugout. Down the center ran a raised and bulwarked deck, beneath which passed thwarts for the rowers. The ram was a beak projecting at the waterline, bronze-sheathed, backed by heavy timbers. The twenty oars on either side were interrupted at the middle by lee-boards which had turned out to be more practical, on the whole, than a false keel or centerboard. Steering was by a true rudder. Two masts bore fore-and-aft rigs. Because. Sarpedon insisted—probably rightly, in view of the low free-board, the scanty ballasting, and the impacts sustained in battle—that they be readily unstepped, the masts were short. Reid gained sail area by using gaffs, and he had available both a genoa jib and a spinnaker; but the Minoan cloth, loosely woven, inclined to stretch and sag and absorb water, did not give the performance of canvas or dacron.

Thus the handling characteristics turned out so odd to him that his crew caught the knack about as fast as he did. Before long they were taking practice cruises on virtually every day of halfway decent weather. They were a hearty, laughter-loving two score and ten, youngsters in the late teens and early twenties, delighted at this novelty, bound and determined to master their ship and lay their wake in rings around those old fogies who grumbled at newfangled foreign foolishness. No longer needed as an instructor, Reid usually stayed behind with Erissa. Time for him and her was shrinking unbearably. And one of his sailors, a slim youth of good looks and good family, who could scarcely keep his eyes off the girl, was named Dagonas.

But she came aboard with Reid for the final test, the test of the ram, before the vessel was officially dedicated. The governor had released a hulk, traded to the state for cannibalizing by a merchant owner who hadn’t considered it worth his while to make those repairs which Sarpedon now carried out. A rival gang, envious boys and skeptical shell-backs, agreed to man the target craft and show up the radicals. Boats came along to rescue whoever got dunked.

It was clear and brisk offshore, whitecaps marching, the by now almost permanent black column out of Pillar Mountain shredded by a gleefully piping wind. Overhead trailed a flight of storks, homeward bound from Egypt to the northlands, heralds of spring. The ram ship leaped and rolled. Its sides were gay with red and blue stripes; on the sails were embroidered dolphins. The waters rushed, the timbers talked, the rigging harped.

Erissa, forward on the upper deck beside Reid, clapped her hands. The hair streamed back off her shoulders, the skirt was pressed against her loins. “Oh, see!” she cried happily. The vessel came about in a rattle of booms, gaffs, and blocks. It had just passed the bows of the conventional ship, which trudged along on oars, unable to come any-where near the wind.

“Stop your fancyfooting and let’s have some action!” bawled the distant skipper.

“Well, I suppose we should,” Reid told Sarpedon, “having proved they can’t lay a grapnel on us.” They looked at each other in shared unsureness. The boys on the thwarts raised a yell.

Standing off, the rammers lowered sail, racked masts, and broke out oars. The target crew poised uneasily at their own oars. They knew what happened in a collision. Both hulls were stove in, along with the ribs of any rowers who didn’t get clear.