Robert Silverberg - The Face of the Waters

“I don’t like brandy,” Tharp said, sounding sullen. “You know that damned well, Gospo. And brandy’ll only make you thirstier, anyway. It dries out the mouth membranes. Doesn’t it, doc? You should realize that.” He let out his breath in an explosive sigh. “What the fuck, give me the raw fish!”

Lawler passed him the platter. Tharp speared a slice with his fork, studied it as if he had never seen a piece of raw fish before, and finally took a tentative bite of it. He moved it around in his mouth with his tongue, swallowed, pondered. Then he took a second bite.

“Hey,” he said. “That’s all right. That isn’t bad at all.”

“Asshole,” Kinverson said again. But he was smiling.

When the meal was over everyone went up on deck for the change of watch. Henders, Golghoz and Delagard, who were scrambling around in the rigging, came down and Martello, Pilya Braun, and Kinverson took their places.

The brilliant gleam of the Cross cut the black sky into quarters. The sea was so still that its reflection could be seen, like a taut line of cool white fire lying across the water and stretching off into the mysterious distances, where it blurred and was lost. Lawler stood by the rail and looked back toward the soft flickering points of light that marked the presence of the other five ships, moving along in their steady tapering formation behind them. Here was Sorve, right out there on the water, the whole little island community packed up in those ships, Thalheims and Tanaminds and Katzins and Yanezes and Sweyners and Sawtelles and all the rest, the familiar names, the old, old names. After dark every night each ship mounted running lights along its rails, long smouldering dried-algae flambeaus that burned with a smoky orange glow. Delagard was fanatically concerned that the fleet should keep together at all times, never breaking formation. Each vessel had its own radio equipment and they stayed in constant touch all through the night, lest any of them stray.

“Breeze coming!” someone called. “Let go the foretack!”

Lawler admired the art of turning the sails to catch the wind. He wished he understood a little more about it. Sailing seemed almost magical to him, an arcane and bewildering mystery. On Delagard’s ships, more imposing than the little fishing skiffs that the islanders had used in the bay and on their wary journeys just beyond its mouth, each of the two masts bore a great triangular sail made of tightly woven strips of split bamboo, with a smaller quadrangular sail rigged above it, fastened to a yard. Another small triangular sail was fixed between the masts. The mainsails were tied to heavy wooden booms; arrangements of ropes fitted with threaded beads and pronged jaws held them in place, and they were manipulated by halyards running through block-and-tackle devices.

Under ordinary conditions it took a team of three to move the sails around, and a fourth at the helm to give the orders. The Martello-Kinverson-Braun team worked under Gospo Struvin’s command, and when the other watch was on duty it was Neyana Golghoz, Dann Henders and Delagard himself handling the sails, with Onyos Felk, the mapkeeper and navigator, taking Struvin’s place in the wheel-box. Sundira Thane worked relief on Struvin’s watch, and Lis Niklaus on Felk’s. Lawler would stand to one side, looking on as they ran about shouting things like “Square the braces!” and “Wind abaft the beam!” and “Hard alee! Hard alee!” Again and again, as the wind changed, they lowered the sails, swung them around, rehoisted them in their new positions. Somehow, no matter whether the wind was blowing toward the ship or against it, they managed to keep the vessel heading in the same direction.

The only ones who never took part in any of this were Dag Tharp, Father Quillan, Natim Gharkid and Lawler. Tharp was too light and flimsy to be of much use on the ropes, and most of the time he was busy belowdecks anyway, operating the communications network that kept the ships of the fleet in contact. Father Quillan was generally regarded as exempt from all shipboard labour; Gharkid’s responsibilities were limited to galley duty and trawling for drifting seaweed; and Lawler, though he would gladly have lent a hand in the rigging, felt abashed about asking to be taught the art and hung back, waiting for an invitation that didn’t get offered.

As he stood by the rail watching the crew at work in the rigging something came whirring through the air out of the dark sea and struck him in the face. Lawler felt a stinging blow on his cheek, a painful hot rasping sensation as of rough scales scraping against his skin. An intense, unpleasantly sour sea-fragrance, becoming bitter and painful as it got deeper in his nostrils, rose up about him. There was a flopping sound at his feet.

He looked down. A winged creature about the length of his hand was flailing around on the deck. Lawler had thought in the first moment of impact that it might have been an air-skimmer, but air-skimmers were graceful elegant things, rainbow-hued, taut-bodied, streamlined for maximum aerodynamic lift, and they never went aloft after dark. This little night-flying monstrosity was more like a worm with wings, pallid and slack and ugly, with small beady black eyes and a writhing ridge of short, stiff red bristles along its upper back. It had been the bristles that had scraped Lawler as the creature smacked into him.

The wrinkled sharp-angled wings that sprouted from the thing’s sides moved in a disagreeable pulsing way, slower and slower. It was leaving a wet trail of blackish slime behind it as it jerked about. Loathsome though it was, it seemed harmless enough now, pitiful, dying here on board.

The very hideousness of it fascinated Lawler. He knelt to give the thing a close look. But an instant later Delagard, just down from the rigging, came up next to him and hooked the tip of one booted foot under the creature’s body. In a single deft motion he scooped it up atop his boot and with a quick kick flipped it on a high arc over the rail into the water.

“Why’d you do that?” Lawler asked.

“So it couldn’t jump up and bite your silly nose, doc. Don’t you know a hagfish when you see one?”

“Hagfish?”

“A baby one, yes. They get about this big when they’re full grown, and they’re mean sons of bitches.” Delagard held his hands about half a metre apart. “If you don’t know what something is, doc, don’t get within biting range of it. Good rule out here.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

Delagard leaned back against the rail and gave him a toothy grin, perhaps meant to be ingratiating. “How are you enjoying life at sea so far?” He was sweaty from his stint aloft, flushed, keyed up in some way. “Isn’t the ocean a wonderful place?”

“It’s got its charm, I suppose. I’m working hard at trying to find it.”

“Not happy, are you? Cabin too small? Company not stimulating enough? Scenery dull?”

Lawler wasn’t amused.

“Piss off, why don’t you, Nid?”

Delagard rubbed a little patch of hagfish slime off his boot.

“Hey,” he said. “Just trying to have a little friendly conversation.

Lawler went below and made his way toward his cabin in the stern. A narrow musty passage lit by the greasy, sputtering light of fish-oil lamps mounted in bone sconces ran the length of the ship on this level. The thick smoky air caused his eyes to sting. He could hear the thud of surface swells lapping against the hull, echoing through the ship’s ribs in a distorted, resonant way. From overhead came the heavy sound of the masts creaking in their sockets.

As ship’s doctor Lawler was entitled to one of the three small private cabins near the stern. Struvin had the cabin next to his on the port side. Delagard and Lis Niklaus shared the biggest of the three cabins, farther over against the starboard bulkhead. Everyone else lived in the forecastle, jammed together in two long compartments that were usually used to house passengers when the ship was serving as an inter-island ferry. The first watch had been given the port compartment, the second watch parked their gear on the starboard side.