Robert Silverberg - The Face of the Waters

Kinverson said, “This was fouled in one of Gharkid’s nets, and I pulled it in to clear it. You know, you can spend your whole life out on this ocean and even so you never stop seeing new critters.” He prodded the animal’s side. It responded with a weak, faint motion of its tail. “This one’s a goner, wouldn’t you say? Pretty little thing.”

“Let me have a closer look,” Lawler said.

He knelt beside it and cautiously put his hand on its flank. The skin was warm, clammy, perhaps feverish. He was able now to detect the sounds of faint breathing. The animal rolled its eyes downward to follow what Lawler was doing, but without any sign of great interest. Then its mouth sagged open and Lawler was startled to see a peculiar woody network just within it, a spherical structure of loosely tangled white fibrous strands blocking the animal’s entire mouth and gullet. The strands coalesced into a thick stem that disappeared down the creature’s throat.

He pressed his hands along the animal’s abdomen and felt rigidity within, lumps and bumps where all should have been smooth. His hands had finally begun to lose their stiffness by this time, and he was able to read the topography of the creature’s interior as though he had laid it bare with a scalpel. Wherever he touched it he could feel the signs of something invasive growing inside. He rolled the creature over and saw strands of the same woody network emerging from its anus, just above the tail.

Suddenly the animal uttered a dry, hacking, ratcheting sound. Its mouth opened wider than Lawler would have believed possible. The woody tangle within it rose into view, jutting far out of the animal’s mouth as if on a pedestal, and started to weave from side to side. Quickly Lawler rose to a standing position and stepped back. Something that looked like a little pink tongue detached itself from the fibrous sphere and zipped madly about on the deck, darting back and forth with manic energy. Lawler brought his boot down on it just as it went past him heading toward Sundira. A second autonomous tongue erupted from the sphere. He smashed that too. The sphere waggled around sluggishly as if gathering the energy to emit a few more.

To Kinverson he said, “Throw this thing into the sea, fast.”

“Huh?”

“Pick it up and heave it. Go on.”

Kinverson had been watching the examination in a baffled, remote way. But the urgency of Lawler’s tone got through to him. He slipped one big hand under the animal’s middle, lifted, tossed, all in one swift movement. The creature went plummeting inertly toward the water like a mere inanimate sack. At the last moment it managed to right itself and hit the surface smoothly, head first, as though by inherent reflexes still partially functioning. It managed one powerful kick of its tail and glided out of sight underwater in an instant.

“What the hell was that all about?” Kinverson asked.

“Parasite infestation. That animal was loaded from its snout to its tail with some kind of plant growth. Its mouth was full of it, didn’t you see? And all the way down its body. It’s been completely taken over by it. And those little pink tongues—my guess is that they were offshoots looking for new hosts.”

Sundira shivered. “Something like killer fungus?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“You think it could have infected us?”

“It sure was going to try,” Lawler said. “In an ocean the size of this one, the parasites can’t afford to be host-specific. They’ll take root in whatever they can.” He stared over the side, half expecting to see scores of parasite-ridden animals drifting helplessly all about the ship. But there was nothing down there except yellow scum streaked with red. Turning back to Kinverson, he said, “I want you to suspend all fishing operations until we get clear of this part of the sea. I’ll find Dag Tharp and tell him to send the same order to the other ships.”

“We need fresh meat, doc.”

“You want to have the personal responsibility of examining everything that’s caught to see if it’s carrying that parasitic plant?”

“Hell, no!”

Then we don’t haul anything in around here. It’s that simple. I’d rather live on dried fish for a while than have one of those things growing in my gut, wouldn’t you?”

Kinverson nodded solemnly.

“Such a pretty little thing, it was.”

A day later, still sailing through the Yellow Sea, they ran into their first tidal surge. The only surprise was that it had been so long in coming, considering that they had been at sea for several weeks now.

It was impossible to escape the surges altogether. The planet’s three moons, small and fast-moving, swung round and round in intricately intersecting orbital patterns, and at regular intervals they were lined up in such a way as to exert a powerful combined gravitational effect on the great ball of water they orbited. That lifted a great tidal bulge which continually travelled around Hydros” midsection as the planet turned. Smaller tidal effects, the products of the gravitational fields of the individual moons, moved at angles to it. The Gillies had designed their islands to withstand those inevitable times when a tidal surge would come their way. On certain exceptional occasions the lesser tidal surges crossed the path of the great one, setting up the massive turbulence known as the Wave. The Gillie islands were built to resist even the Wave; but individual boats and ships were helpless against it. The Wave was what every mariner feared more than anything.

The first tidal surge was one of the mild ones. The day was leaden and humid, the sun pale, indistinct, bloodless. The first watch was on duty, Martello, Kinverson, Gharkid, Pilya Braun. “Choppy sea ahead,” Kinverson called from aloft. Onyos Felk, in the wheel-box, reached for his spy-glass. Lawler, who had just emerged on deck after his morning medical call to the other ships, felt the deck plunge and buck beneath him as if the vessel had put its foot down on something solid. Yellowish spray came whirling up into his face.

He looked up toward the wheel-box. Felk was signalling to him with brusque gestures.

“Surge coming,” the mapkeeper called. “Get inside!”

Lawler saw Pilya and Leo Martello securing the ropes that held the sails. A moment later they dropped down out of the rigging. Gharkid had already gone below. Kinverson came trotting past, beckoning. “Come on, doc. You don’t want to be out here now.”

“No,” Lawler said. But still he lingered a moment more by the rail. He saw it, now. It was heading toward them out of the northwest like a little message of welcome from distant Grayvard—a fat grey wall of water that lay at a sharp angle across the horizon, rolling down on them with impressive speed. Lawler imagined some sort of rod sweeping through the sea just beneath the surface, pushing up this inexorable distended ridge. A cold salty wind preceded it, a cheerless harbinger.

“Doc,” Kinverson said again, from the hatch. “Sometimes they sweep the deck when they hit.”

“I know,” said Lawler. But the power of the oncoming surge fascinated him and held him. Kinverson vanished with a shrug into the ship’s interior. Lawler was alone now on deck. He realized they might well close the hatch and leave him out here. He took one last look at the surge, and then he ran for it. Below, everyone but Henders and Delagard was gathered in the companionway, bracing themselves against the imminent impact.

Kinverson slammed the hatch shut behind him and dogged it.

An odd grinding sound rose from the depths of the ship, somewhere aft.

“Magnetron’s coming on,” Sundira Thane said.

Lawler turned to her. “You’ve been through these before?”

“Too often. But this one won’t be much.”