Robert Silverberg - The Face of the Waters

The grinding sound grew louder. The magnetron sent down a shaft of force that pressed against the ball of molten iron at world’s core and provided a lever capable of lifting the ship a metre or two out of the water, or a bit more if necessary, just enough to carry it over the worst force of the surge. The magnetic displacement field was the one piece of super-technology that the humans of Hydros had managed to bring with them from the worlds of the galaxy. Dann Henders once had said that a device as powerful as the magnetron would have other applications far more useful to the settlers than keeping Delagard’s ferries afloat on turbulent seas, and very probably Henders was right about that; but Delagard kept the magnetrons sealed aboard his ships. They were his private property, the crown jewels of the Delagard maritime empire, the foundation of the family fortune.

“Are we up yet?” Lis Niklaus asked uneasily.

“When the grinding stops,” Neyana Golghoz said. “There. Now.”

All was silent.

The ship was floating just above the crest of the surge.

Only for a moment: the magnetron, potent though it was, had its limits. But a moment was long enough. The surge passed by and the ship drifted gently over it and down its far side, landing lightly in the pocket of displaced water beyond. As it resumed its place in the water it swayed and shuddered and shook. The impact of the descent was greater than Lawler had expected, and he had to fight to keep from being thrown down.

Then it was all over. They were afloat on an even keel again.

Delagard emerged from the hatch that led to the cargo hold, grinning in warm self-congratulation. Dann Henders was right behind him.

“That’s it, folks,” the ship-owner announced. “Back to your posts. Onward we go.”

The sea, in the wake of the surge, was gently perturbed, rocking like a cradle. When he went back up on deck Lawler could see the surge itself retreating to the southeast, a diminishing ripple cutting across the scummy surface of the water. He saw the yellow flag of the Golden Sun , the red one of the Three Moons , the green and black of the Sorve Goddess . Farther beyond he was able to make out the remaining two vessels, safe and apparently sound.

“Wasn’t so bad,” he said to Dag Tharp, who had come up just behind him.

“Wait,” Tharp said. “Just wait.”

The sea changed again. A fast cold current was sweeping through it here, coming out of the south, cutting a swathe through the yellow algae. At first there was only a narrow band of clear water through the scum, then a wider strip, and then, as the flotilla entered the main body of the current, all the water around them was a pure, clean blue again.

Kinverson asked Lawler if he thought the marine life here would be free of the parasitic plant. The voyagers had had no fresh fish for days. “Bring something up and let’s see,” Lawler told him. “Just be careful when you get it on deck.”

But there was no catch for Kinverson to be careful with. His nets came up empty, his hooks went untaken. Fish lived in these waters, plenty of them. But they kept their distance from the ship. Sometimes schools of them could be seen, swimming vigorously away. The other ships reported the same thing. They might as well have been sailing through desert waters.

At mealtimes there was grumbling in the galley.

“I can’t cook ”em if nobody catches ”em,” Lis Niklaus said. “Talk to Gabe.”

Kinverson was indifferent. “I can’t catch ”em if they won’t come near us. You don’t like it, go out there and swim after them and grab ”em with your hands. Okay?”

The fish continued to stay away, but now the ships entered a zone that was rich with algae of several new kinds, floating masses of an intricate tightly-woven red species mingled with long strips of a wide-leafed, highly succulent blue-green type. Gharkid had a glorious time with them. “They will be fine to eat,” he announced. “This I know. We will get much nourishment from them.”

“But if you’ve never seen these kinds before—” Leo Martello objected.

“I can tell. These will be good for eating.”

Gharkid tested them on himself in that innocent unfearing way of his that Lawler found so extraordinary. The red alga, he reported, would be suitable for salads. The blue-green one was best cooked in a little fish oil. He spent his days on the gantry bridge, reeling in load upon load, until half the deck was covered with piles of soggy seaweed.

Lawler went up to him as he sat sorting through the slimy mess, which still was streaming with water. Small creatures that had come up in the net wandered amidst the tangled algae: little snails and crablets and tiny crustaceans with very bright red shells that looked like fairy castles. Gharkid seemed unperturbed by the possibility that any of these minute passengers might have poisonous stingers, little jaws that could deliver big nips, toxic excretions, perils of unknown sorts. He was brushing them away from his algae with a comb made of reeds, and using his hands where that was quickest.

As Lawler approached, Gharkid gave him a broad smile, white teeth shining brilliantly against the dark background of his face, and said, “The sea has been good to us today. It has sent us a fine harvest.”

“Where’d you learn all that you know about the sea plants, Natim?”

Gharkid looked puzzled. “In the sea, where else? From the sea comes our life. You go into it, you find what is good. You try this and you try that. And you remember.” He plucked something from a knotted clump of the red weed and held it up delightedly for Lawler to inspect. “So sweet, it is. So delicate.” It was a kind of sea-slug, yellow with little red speckles, almost like an animated chunk of the yellow scum in the sea that lay behind them. A dozen curiously intense black eyes the size of fingertips waved on stubby stalks. Lawler failed to see either sweetness or delicacy in the blobby yellow thing, but Gharkid seemed charmed by it. He brought it close to his face and smiled at it. Then he flipped it over the side into the water.

“The sea’s blessed creature,” Gharkid said, in a tone of such all-loving benevolence that it made Lawler feel sour and irritable.

“You wonder what purpose it was made for,” he said.

“Oh, no, doctor-sir. No, I never wonder. Who am I to ask the sea why it does what it does?”

From his reverent tone it seemed almost as though he regarded the sea as his god. Perhaps he did. One way or another it was a question that required no answer, an impossible question for anyone of Lawler’s cast of mind to deal with. He had no wish to patronize Gharkid and certainly none to offend him. Feeling almost unclean in the face of Gharkid’s innocence and delight, Lawler smiled quickly and moved along. Farther up the deck he caught sight of Father Quillan studying them from a distance.

“I’ve been watching him work,” the priest said as Lawler came by. “Picking through all that seaweed, pulling it apart, stacking it up. He never stops. He seems so gentle, but there’s a fury inside that man somewhere. What do you know about him, anyway?”

“Gharkid? Not very much. Keeps to himself, doesn’t say a lot. I’m not sure where he lived before he showed up on Sorve a few years back. Nothing seems to interest him except algae.”

“A mystery.”

“Yes, a mystery. I used to think he was a thinker, working out the Lord only knows what philosophical problem in the privacy of his own head. But now I’m not so sure that anything goes on in there except contemplating the different kinds of seaweed. It’s easy enough to mistake silence for profundity, you know. I’m coming around these days to the view that he’s every bit as simple as he appears to be.”