Robert Silverberg - The Face of the Waters

Quillan said, “You know the whole Bible by heart, do you?”

“Only this little bit. It’s the first page. I couldn’t make any sense out of the rest of it, all those prophets and kings and battles and such.”

“And Jesus.”

“That part was in the back. I never read it that far.” Lawler looked toward the endlessly retreating horizon, blue curving away under blue toward infinity. “Since there’s no dry land here, obviously God meant to create something different on Hydros from what He created on Earth. Wouldn’t you say? “God called the dry land Earth.” And He called the wet land Hydros, I guess. What a job it must have been, creating all those different worlds. Not just Earth, but every single world in the galaxy. Iriarte, Fenix, Megalo Kastro, Darma Barma, Mentirosa, Copperfield, Nabomba Zom, the whole bunch of them, the million and one planets. With a different purpose in mind for each world, or else why bother creating so many? It was all the same god that created them all, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Quillan said.

“But you’re a priest!”

“That doesn’t mean I know everything. That doesn’t even mean I know anything.”

“Do you believe in God?” Lawler asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you believe in anything at all?”

Quillan was silent for a time. His face went completely dead, as if his spirit had momentarily left his body.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

The sea seemed flatter here, for some reason, than it did on the island. Darkness came suddenly, falling almost with a crash. The sun plummeted through the western sky, hovered for a moment just above the sea, and sank. Virtually at once the world turned black behind them and the Cross began to glow overhead.

“Mess call, first watch,” Natim Gharkid yelled, banging on a pan.

The working crew of the Queen of Hydros was divided into two watches, four hours on and four hours off. The members of each watch took their meals together. The first watch was Leo Martello, Gabe Kinverson, Pilya Braun, Gharkid, Dag Tharp and Gospo Struvin; the second watch was Neyana Golghoz, Sundira Thane, Dann Henders, Delagard, Onyos Felk, Lis Niklaus and Father Quillan. There was no special officers” mess: Delagard and Struvin, the owner and captain, took their meals in the galley with the others. Lawler, who had no fixed duty schedule himself but was on call round the clock, was the only one outside the watch system entirely. That suited Lawler’s biological rhythms: he took his morning mess with the second watch at dawn, his evening mess with the first watch at sundown. But it gave him an oddly free-floating sense of not really being part of things. Even here in the earliest days of the voyage the two watches were beginning to develop a kind of team spirit, and he belonged to neither team.

“Greenweed stew tonight,” Lis Niklaus said, as the first watch filed into the galley. “Baked sentryfish fins. Fish-meal cakes, suppleberry salad.” It was the third night of the voyage. The menu had been the same each night; each night Lis had made the same jovial announcement, as though expecting them all to be delighted. She did most of the cooking, with help from Gharkid and occasionally Delagard. The meals were spare, and not likely to get much better later on: dried fish, fish-meal cakes, dried seaweed, seaweed-meal bread, supplemented by Gharkid’s latest haul of fresh algae and whatever live catch had been brought in that day. So far the catch had been nothing but sentryfish. Schools of the alert, eager-looking spear-nosed creatures had been following the fleet ever since Sorve. Kinverson, Pilya Braun and Henders were the chief fishers, working from the gantry-and-reel fishing station aft.

Struvin said, “Easy day today.”

“Too easy,” grunted Kinverson, leaning into his plate.

“You want storms? You want the Wave?”

Kinverson shrugged. “I don’t trust an easy sea.”

Dag Tharp, spearing another fish-meal cake, said, “How are we doing on our water tonight. Lis?”

“One more squirt apiece and that’s it for this meal.”

“Shit. This is thirsty food, you know?”

“We’ll be thirstier later if we drink up all our water the first week,” Struvin said. “You know that as well as I do. Lis, bring out some raw sentryfish fillets for the radio man.”

Before leaving Sorve the villagers had loaded the ships with as many casks of fresh water as they had room for. But even so there was only something like a three-week supply on hand at the time of departure, figuring cautious use. They would have to depend on encountering rain as they went; if there was none, they’d have to find other means of meeting their fresh-water needs. Eating raw fish was one good way. Everybody knew that. But Tharp wasn’t having any.

He looked up, scowling. “Skip it. Fuck raw sentryfish.”

“Takes away your thirst,” Kinverson said quietly.

“Takes away your appetite,” Tharp said. “Fuck it. I’d rather go thirsty.”

Kinverson shrugged. “Suit yourself. You’ll feel different about it in a week or two.”

Lis put a plate of pale greenish meat on the table. The moist slices of uncooked fish had been wrapped in strips of fresh yellow seaweed. Tharp stared morosely at the plate. He shook his head and looked away. Lawler, after a moment, helped himself. Struvin had some also, and Kinverson. The raw fish was cool against Lawler’s tongue, soothing, almost thirst-quenching. Almost.

“What do you think, doc?” Tharp asked, after a time.

“Not half bad,” Lawler said.

“Maybe if I just took a lick of it,” said the radio man.

Kinverson laughed into his plate. “Asshole.”

“What did you say, Gabe?”

“You really want me to repeat it?”

“Go on deck if you’re going to have a fight, you two,” Lis Niklaus said, disgusted.

“A fight? Me and Dag?” Kinverson looked astonished. He could have picked Tharp up with one hand. “Don’t be silly, Lis.”

“You want to fight?” Tharp cried, his sharp-featured little red face turning even redder. “Come on, Kinverson. Come on. You think I’m afraid of you?”

“You ought to be,” Lawler told him softly. “He’s four times your size.” He grinned and looked toward Struvin. “If we’ve used up our water quota for this evening, Gospo, how about brandy all around? That’ll fix our thirst.”

“Right. Brandy! Brandy!” Struvin yelled.

Lis handed him the flask. Struvin studied it for a moment with a sour expression on his face. “This is the Sorve brandy. Let’s save it until we get really desperate. Give me the stuff from Khuviar, will you? Sorve brandy is piss.” From a cupboard Lis took a different flask, long and rounded, with a deep sheen. Struvin ran his hand along its side and grinned appreciatively. “Khuviar, yes! They really understand brandy on that island. And wine. You ever been there, any of you? No, no, I can see you haven’t. They drink all day and all night. The happiest people on this planet.”

“I was there once,” Kinverson said. “They were drunk all the time. They did nothing at all but drink and vomit and drink some more.”

“But what they drink,” said Struvin. “Ah, what they drink!”

“How do they get anything done,” Lawler asked, “if they’re never sober? Who does the fishing? Who mends the nets?”

“Nobody,” Struvin said. “It’s a miserable filthy place. They sober up just long enough to go out into the bay and find a batch of grapeweed, and then they ferment it into wine or distil it into brandy and they’re drunk again. You wouldn’t believe the way they live. Their clothing is rags. They live in seaweed shacks, like Gillies. The reservoir holds brackish water. It’s a disgusting place. But who says all islands have to be alike? Every place is different. One island is nothing like another. That’s the way it always has seemed to me: each island is itself, and no place else. And on Khuviar what they understand is drinking. Here, Tharp. You say you’re thirsty? Have some of my fine Khuviar brandy. My guest. Help yourself.”