Robert Silverberg - The Face of the Waters

Neyana stripped off her work-shirt and turned her back to him, and Lawler investigated the scar with his fingers. It was probably still tender, but she didn’t react at all. Like most of the islanders, she was stolid and patient. Life on Hydros was simple, sometimes harsh, never very amusing for its human population. There weren’t many choices, not a lot of options about what you did, who you married, where you could live. Unless you felt like trying your luck on some other island, most of the essential facts of your life were defined for you by the time you reached adulthood. If you went somewhere else, you were likely to find that your choices there were limited by many of the same factors. That tended to breed a certain stoicism.

“Looks fine,” Lawler told her. “You keeping out of the sun, Neyana?”

“Damn right I am.”

“Putting the ointment on?”

“Damn right.”

“You won’t have any problem with this again, then.”

“You’re one hell of a good doctor,” Neyana told him. “I knew someone once on the other island, he had a cancer like this and it ate right through his skin and he died. But you look out for us, you watch over us.”

“I do what I can.” It always embarrassed Lawler when the patients were grateful. Most of the time he felt like a butcher, hacking away at them with such prehistoric methods, when on other planets—so he had heard from those who had come to Hydros from elsewhere—doctors had all manner of absolutely miraculous treatments at their command. They used sound waves and electricity and radiation and all sorts of things he scarcely understood, and they had drugs that could cure anything in five minutes. Whereas he had to make do with home-made salves and potions compounded from seaweed, and improvised tools made of wood and the odd bit of iron or nickel. But he had told her the truth, at least: he did what he could.

“Any time I can do something for you, doc, just ask.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Lawler said.

Neyana went out and Nicko Thalheim came in. Thalheim was Sorve-born like Lawler. Like Lawler, too, he was First Family, a five-generation pedigree, right back to the penal-colony days: one of the island leaders, a bluff, ruddy-faced man with a short, thick neck and powerful shoulders. He and Lawler had been boyhood playmates and they were still good friends. Seven of the island’s people all told were Thalheims, a tenth of the entire population: Nicko’s father, his wife, his sister, his three children. Families rarely had as many as three children. Thalheim’s sister had joined the group of women down at the far end of the island a few months before: she was known as Sister Boda now to everyone. Thalheim hadn’t been pleased when she joined.

Lawler said, “That abscess still draining okay?”

Thalheim had an infection in his left armpit. Lawler thought he had probably been stung by something in the bay, but Thalheim denied it. The abscess was a messy one, pus constantly pouring out. Lawler had lanced it three times already and tried to clean it, but it had reinfected each time. The last time, he had had the weaver Harry Travish make up a little catch-tube of sea-plastic and had stitched it to Thalheim’s side to collect the pus and carry it away from the trouble-spot.

Lawler lifted the dressing now, snipped the stitches that held the catch-tube in place, and peered at the infection. The skin all around was red, and hot to the touch.

“Hurts like a bastard,” Thalheim said.

“Looks pretty lousy, too. You putting the medicine I gave you on it?”

“Sure I am.”

He didn’t sound convincing. Lawler said, “You can do it or not, as it pleases you, Nicko. But if that infection spreads down your arm, I may wind up having to take the arm off you. You think you can work okay with just one arm?”

“It’s only my left one, Val.”

“You don’t really mean that.”

“No. No, I don’t.” Thalheim grunted as Lawler touched the wound again. “I might have missed a day or two with the medicine. I’m sorry, Val.”

“You’ll be sorrier in a little while.”

Coolly, unsparingly, Lawler cleaned the site as though he were carving a piece of wood. Thalheim remained silent and motionless as Lawler worked.

As Lawler was reattaching the catch-tube, Thalheim said suddenly, “We’ve known each other a long time, haven’t we, Val?”

“Close to forty years, yes.”

“And neither of us ever felt like going to some other island.”

“It never occurred to me,” Lawler said. “And in any case I was the doctor.”

“Yes. And I just liked it here.”

“Yes,” Lawler said. Where was all this leading?

“You know, Val,” Thalheim said, “I’ve been thinking about this business of having to go. I hate it. It’s making me absolutely sick inside.”

“I don’t like it much myself, Nicko.”

“No. But you seem resigned to it.”

“What other choice do I have?”

“Maybe there is one, Val.”

Lawler looked at him, waiting.

Thalheim said, “I heard what you said at the town meeting. When you told us that trying to fight the Gillies wouldn’t work. I didn’t agree with you that night, but when I thought things over I saw you were right. Still, I’ve been wondering if maybe there’s some way a few of us can stay here.”

“What?”

“I mean, say ten or twelve of us hide out down at the far end where the Sisters have been living. You, me, my family, the Katzins, the Hains—that’s a dozen. A pretty decent group, too, no frictions, everybody friends. We lay low, keep out of the way of the Gillies, do our fishing off the back side of the island, and try to go on living the way we lived before.”

The idea was so wild that it caught Lawler in an unprotected place. For a crazy fraction of a second he actually was tempted. Stay here after all? Not have to give up the familiar paths, the familiar bay? The Gillies never went down to the far end. They might not notice if just a few of the island’s people remained behind when—

No.

The nonsensical nature of the plan came crashing in like the fist of the Wave. The Gillies wouldn’t need to go down to the far end to know what was happening there. The Gillies somehow always knew everything that happened anywhere on the island. They would find them in five minutes and toss them over the rear bulwark into the sea, and that would be that. Besides, even if a few people did manage to evade Gillie surveillance, how could they think that they could live as they had lived before, with most of the community somewhere else? No. No. Impossible, absurd.

“What do you think?” Thalheim asked.

Lawler said, after a moment’s pause, “Forgive me, Nicko. But I think it’s as goofy as Nimber’s notion the other night about stealing one of their idols and holding it for ransom.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah.”

Thalheim was silent, studying the swelling under his arm as Lawler bandaged it.

Then he said, “You always did have a practical way of looking at things. Kind of cold-blooded, Val, but practical, always practical. You just don’t like taking risks, I guess.”

“Not when the odds are a million to one against me.”

“You think it’s that bad?”

“It can’t work, Nicko. No way. Come on: admit it. Nobody puts anything over on the Gillies. The idea’s poison. It’s suicide.”

“Maybe so,” Thalheim said.

“Not maybe.”

“It sounded pretty good for a moment.”

“We wouldn’t stand a chance,” said Lawler.

“No. No. We wouldn’t, would we?” Thalheim shook his head. “I really want to stay here, Val. I don’t want to go. I’d give everything I have not to have to go.”

“Me too,” Lawler said. “But we’re going. We have to.”