Robert Silverberg - The Face of the Waters

Henders settled in behind him. “Ready, doc? Let’s go.”

Together, pedalling flat out, they were just strong enough to get the strider up to takeoff speed. The first moments were the hardest. Once they had come up to speed the uppermost set of hydrofoils that had launched them on their way rose up out of the water, reducing drag, and the smaller pair of high-speed foils beneath was able to carry them swiftly along.

But there was no easing off once they had begun. Like any swift vessel, the strider had to climb constantly through its own bow wave: if they slackened the pace even a moment, wave drag would carry them under. No tentacles slithered toward them during the short journey, though. No toothy jaws nibbled at their toes. Friendly ropes were waiting to pull them onto the deck of the Sorve Goddess .

The broken collarbone belonged to Nimber Tanamind, an egregious hypochondriac whose medical problem this time, for once, was unequivocably genuine. A falling boom had cracked his left clavicle, and the whole upper side of his stocky body was swollen and blue. For once, also, Nimber wasn’t uttering any complaints. Perhaps it was shock, perhaps fear, perhaps he was dazed by the pain; he sat quietly against a heap of netting, looking stunned, his eyes out of focus, his arms trembling, his fingers doing odd little jerking things. Brondo Katzin and his wife Eliyana stood beside him, and Nimber’s wife Salai was nearby, fretfully pacing.

“Nimber,” Lawler said, with some affection. They were almost the same age. “You damned idiot, Nimber, what have you done to yourself now?”

Tanamind raised his head a little. He looked frightened. He said nothing, only moistened his lips. A glossy line of sweat lay across his forehead, though the day was cool.

“How long ago did this happen?” Lawler asked Bamber Cadrell.

“Maybe half an hour,” the captain said.

“He’s been conscious the whole time?”

“Yes.”

“You give him anything? A sedative?”

“Just a little brandy,” Cadrell said.

“All right,” said Lawler. “Let’s get to work. Lay him out on his back—that’s it, stretch him out flat. Is there a pillow or something we can stick under him? There, yes, right between his shoulderblades.” He took a paper packet of pain-killer from his kit. “Get me some water to put this in. I need some cloth compresses, too. Eliyana? About this long, and heat them in warm water—”

Nimber groaned only once, when Lawler spread his shoulders out so that his clavicles would flex and the fracture drop back into its proper place. After that he closed his eyes and seemed to disappear into meditation while Lawler did what he could to reduce the swelling and immobilize Nimber’s arm to keep him from reopening the break.

“Give him some more brandy,” Lawler said when he was done. He turned to Nimber’s wife. “Salai, you’ll have to be the doctor now. If he starts running a fever, let him have one of these every morning and night. If the side of his face swells up, call me. If he complains about numbness in his fingers, let me know that too. Anything else that might bother him is likely not to be very important.” Lawler looked toward Cadrell. “Bamber, I’ll have a little of that brandy myself.”

“Everything going well for you guys?” Cadrell asked.

“Other than losing Gospo, yes. And here?”

“We’re doing just fine.”

“That’s good to hear.”

It wasn’t much of a conversation. But the reunion had been a strangely stilted one from the moment he had come on board. How are you, doc, nice to see you, welcome to our ship, yes, but nothing in the way of real contact, no exchange of inner feelings offered or solicited. Even Nicko Thalheim, coming on deck a little belatedly, had simply smiled and nodded. It was like being among strangers. These people had become unfamiliar to him in just a few weeks. Lawler realized how thoroughly he had become embedded in the insular life of the flagship. And they in the microcosm of the Sorve Goddess . He wondered what the island community was going to be like when it finally reconstituted itself in its new home.

His return to the flagship was uneventful. He went straight to his cabin.

Seven drops of numbweed tincture. No, make it ten.

Thoughts of lost Earth came to Lawler often as he stood by the rail by night, listening to the heavy mysterious sounds of the sea and staring into the empty impenetrable darkness that pressed down on them. His obsession with the mother world seemed to be growing as the six ships made their daily way across the vast face of the water-planet. For the millionth time he tried to imagine what it was like when it was alive. The large islands called countries, ruled by kings and queens, wealthy and powerful beyond all comprehension. The fierce wars. Spectacular weapons, capable of wrecking worlds. And then that great migration into space, when they had sent the myriad starships outward, bearing the ancestors of all the human beings who lived anywhere in the galaxy today. Everyone. All had sprung from a single source, that one small world that had died.

Sundira, wandering the deck by night, appeared beside him.

“Pondering the destiny of the cosmos again, doctor?”

“As usual. Yes.”

“What’s tonight’s theme?”

“Irony. All those years that the Earth people worried about destroying themselves in one of their feverish nasty little wars. But they never did. And then their own sun went and did it for them in a single afternoon.”

“Thank God we were already out here settling among the stars.”

“Yes,” said Lawler, with a cool glance at the dark monster-infested sea. “How fine for us that was.”

Later in the night she returned. He hadn’t moved from his place by the rail.

“That you still there, Valben?”

“Still me, yes.” She had never called him by his first name before. It seemed odd to him for her to be doing it now: inappropriate, even. He couldn’t remember when anyone had last addressed him as “Valben’.

“Can you tolerate some company again?”

“Sure,” he said. “Can’t get to sleep?”

“Haven’t tried,” she said. “There’s a prayer meeting going on down below, did you know that?”

“And who are the holy ones taking part in it?”

“The Father, naturally. Lis. Neyana. Dann. And Gharkid.”

“Gharkid? Finally coming out of his shell?”

“Well, he’s just sitting there, actually. Father Quillan’s doing all the talking. Telling them how elusive God is, how difficult it is for us to sustain our faith in a Supreme Being who never speaks to us, never gives us any proof that he’s really there. What an effort it is for anyone to have faith, and that that’s not right, it shouldn’t be an effort at all, we ought to be able simply to make a blind leap and accept God’s existence, only that’s too hard for most of us. Et cetera, et cetera. And the others are drinking it all in. Gharkid listens and now and then he nods. A strange one, he is. You want to go below and hear what the Father’s saying?”

“No,” Lawler said. “I’ve already had the privilege of hearing him hold forth on the topic, thanks.”

They stood together in silence for a time.

Then after a while Sundira said, apropos of nothing at all, “Valben. What kind of name is Valben?”

“An Earth name.”

“No, it isn’t. John, Richard, Elizabeth, those are Earth names. Leo, he’s got an Earth name. I never heard of any name like Valben.”

“Does that mean it isn’t an Earth name, then?”

“I just know that I know what Earth names are like, and I never heard of a Valben.”

“Well, maybe it isn’t an Earth name, then. My father said it was. He could have been wrong.”