Robert Silverberg - The Face of the Waters

“Picking Lis I understand. How’d you choose the other three?”

“Braun and Golghoz have both worked in my crews already, on the Velmise and Salimil runs. If I’m going to have women on board, I might as well have women who can do what needs to be done.”

“And Sundira? Well, she’s a skilled equipment mender. That makes sense.”

“Right,” Delagard said. “And also she’s Kinverson’s woman, isn’t she? If she’s useful, and they’re a couple besides, why separate them?”

“They aren’t a couple, as far as I know.”

“Aren’t they? Looks that way to me,” Delagard said. “I see them together a hell of a lot. Anyway, there’s our shipload, doc. In case the fleet gets separated at sea, we’ve got some good people with us to see us through. Now, ship number two, the Sorve Goddess , we’ll have Brondo Katzin and his wife, all the Thalheims, the Tanaminds—”

“Wait a second,” said Lawler. “I’m not through with this first one. We haven’t talked about Father Quillan yet. Another very useful choice. You picked him to keep yourself on the safe side with God, I suppose?”

Delagard was impervious to the thrust. He let loose a thunderous guffaw. “Son of a bitch! No, that never crossed my mind. That would be a good idea, yeah, take a priest along with you. If anyone’s got any pull upstairs, it would be him. But the reason I picked Father Quillan was just that I enjoy his company so much. I find him a terrifically interesting man.”

Of course, Lawler thought.

It was always a mistake to expect Delagard to be consistent about anything.

In the night came the other Earth-dream, the one that hurt, the one he wished he always wished he could hide from. It was a long time since he had had the two dreams on consecutive nights, and he was caught by surprise, for he had thought that last night’s dream would exempt him from having the other one for some time to come. But no; no. There was no escaping it. Earth would pursue him always.

There it was in the sky above Sorve, a wondrous radiant blue-green ball, slowly turning to display its shining seas, its splendid tawny continents. It was beautiful beyond all measure, a huge jewel gleaming overhead. He saw the mountains running along the spines of the continents like jagged grey teeth. There was snow, white and pure, along their crests. He stood at the top ridge of the wooden sea-wall of his little island and let himself float up into the sky, and kept on floating until he had left Hydros and was well out in space, hovering over the blue-green ball that was Earth, looking down at it like a god. He saw the cities now: building after building, not pointy-topped like vaarghs but broad and flat, one next to another to another across immense distances, with wide pathways between them. And people moving along the pathways, thousands of them, many thousands, walking swiftly, some of them riding in little carriages that were like boats that travelled on land. Above them in the sky were the winged creatures called birds, like air-skimmers and the other fish of Hydros that he knew that were capable of bursting up out of the water for short spurts of flight; but these stayed aloft forever, soaring splendidly, circling and circling the planet in great tireless sweeps. Amongst the birds were machines, too, that were able to fly. They were made of metal, sleek and bright, with little wings and long tubular bodies. Lawler saw them coming up from Earth’s surface and moving at unthinkable speeds across great distances, carrying the people of Earth from island to island, from city to city, from continent to continent, a commerce so vast that it made his soul spin to contemplate it.

He drifted through the darkness, high above the shining blue-green world, watching, waiting, knowing what would happen next, wondering if perhaps this time it wouldn’t happen.

But of course it did. The same thing as before, the thing he had lived through so many times, the thing that brought sweat bursting from his pores and made his muscles writhe with shock and anguish. There was never any warning. It simply began: the hot yellow sun suddenly swelling, growing brighter, becoming misshapen and monstrous—the jagged tongues of fire licking out across the sky—

The flames rising from the hills and valleys, from the forests, from the buildings. The boiling seas. The charred plains. The clouds of black ash darkening the air. The blackened land splitting open. The gaunt naked mountains rising above the ruined fields. The death, the death, the death, the death.

He always wished he could wake up before that moment came. But he never did, not until he had seen it all, not until the seas had boiled, not until the green forests had turned to ash.

The first patient the next morning was Sidero Volkin, one of Delagard’s shipwrights, who had taken a flameworm’s prong in the calf of his leg while standing in shallow water trimming excess sea-finger growth from the keel of one of the ships. Something like a third of Lawler’s work involved wounds that people got while in the gentle, shallow waters of the bay. Those gentle, shallow waters all too often were visited by creatures that liked to sting, bite, slice, stab, infiltrate or otherwise bedevil human beings.

“Son of a bitch swam right up to me alongside the ship and reared up and looked me in the eye,” Volkin said. “I went for its head with my hatchet and its tail came around from the other side and pronged me. Son of a bitch. I cut it in half, but a fucking lot of good that does me now.”

The wound was narrow but deep, and already infected. Flameworms were long wriggling creatures that seemed to be nothing more than tough, flexible tubes with a nasty little mouth on one end and a vicious stinger on the other. It didn’t much matter which end they got you with: they were full of microorganisms that were symbiotic with the flameworm and hostile to humankind, and the bugs the worms carried caused immediate distress and complication when they encountered human tissue. Volkin’s leg was bloated and reddened, and delicate, fiery-looking traceries of inflammation ran outward along the skin from the point of entry like the cicatrices of some sinister cult.

“This is going to hurt,” Lawler said, dipping a long bamboo needle into a bowl of strong antiseptic.

“Don’t I know it, doc.”

Lawler probed the wound with the needle, pricking it here and there, getting as much of the antiseptic into the swollen flesh as he thought Volkin could endure. The shipwright remained motionless, cursing under his breath once in a while, as Lawler poked around in him with what must surely be agonizing effect.

“Here’s some pain-killer,” Lawler said, offering him a packet of white powder. “You’ll feel lousy for a couple of days. Then the inflammation will subside. You’ll be feverish this afternoon, too. Take the day off from work.”

“I can’t. Delagard won’t let me. We’ve got to get those ships ready to go. There’s a hell of a lot that needs to be done on them.”

“Take the day off,” Lawler said again. “If Delagard gives you any shit, tell him I’m the one he ought to complain to. In half an hour you’ll be too dizzy to do any worthwhile work anyway. Go on, now.”

Volkin hesitated a moment at the door of Lawler’s vaargh.

“I sure appreciate this, doc.”

“Go on. Get off that leg before you fall down.”

Another patient was waiting outside: another of Delagard’s people, Neyana Golghoz. She was a placid, stocky woman of about forty, with hair of an unusual orange colour and a broad flat face covered with reddish freckles. Originally she was from Kaggeram Island, but she had come to Sorve five or six years back. Neyana worked in some maintenance capacity on board the ships of Delagard’s fleet, constantly journeying back and forth between the neighbouring islands. Six months ago a skin cancer had sprouted between her shoulderblades, and Lawler had removed it chemically, by slipping solvent-bearing needles under it until the malignancy dissolved and could be lifted away. The process hadn’t been fun for either of them. Lawler had ordered her to return every month so that he could see whether any recurrence had developed.