Robert Silverberg: The Face of the Waters

That the plant still didn’t seem to be working yet was something of a setback for the grand plan that had come to Lawler in the night.

What now? Go and talk to them anyway? Make your florid little speech, grease the Gillies up with some noble rhetoric, follow through with tonight’s visionary impulse before daybreak robs it of whatever plausibility it might have had?

“On behalf of the entire human community of Sorve Island, I, who as you know am the son of the late beloved Dr Bernat Lawler who served you so well in the time of the fin-rot epidemic, wish to congratulate you on the imminent accomplishment of your ingenious and magnificently beneficial—”

“Even though the fulfilment of this splendid dream may perhaps be still some days away, I have come on behalf of the entire human community of Sorve Island to extend to you our profoundest joy at the deep implications we see for the transformation of the quality of life on the island that we share, once you have at last succeeded in—”

“At this time of rejoicing in our community over the historic achievement that is soon to be—”

Enough, he thought. He began to make his way out onto the power-plant promontory.

As he drew near the plant he took care to make plenty of noise, coughing, slapping his hands together, whistling a little tuneless tune. Gillies didn’t like humans to come upon them unexpectedly.

He was still about fifteen metres from the power plant when he saw two Gillies shuffling out to meet him.

In the darkness they looked titanic. They loomed high above him, formless in the dark, their little yellow eyes glowing bright as lanterns in their tiny heads.

Lawler made the greeting-sign, elaborately over-gesturing so that there could be no doubt of his friendly intentions.

One of the Gillies replied with a prolonged snorting vrooom that didn’t sound friendly at all.

They were big upright bipedal creatures, two and a half metres high, covered with deep layers of rubbery black bristles that hung in dense shaggy cascades. Their heads were absurdly small, little dome-shaped structures that sat atop huge shoulders, and from there almost down to the ground their torsos sloped outward to form massive, bulky, ungainly bodies. It was generally assumed by humans that their immense cavernous chests must contain their brains as well as their hearts and lungs. Certainly those little heads had no room for them.

Very likely the Gillies had been aquatic mammals once. You could see that in the gracelessness with which they moved on land and the ease with which they swam. They spent nearly as much time in the water as on land. Once Lawler had watched a Gillie swim from one side of the bay to the other without breaking the surface for breath; the journey must have taken twenty minutes. Their legs, short and stumpy, were obviously adapted from flippers. Their arms too were flipper-like—thick, powerful little limbs that they held very close to their sides. Their hands, equipped with three long fingers and an opposable thumb, were extraordinarily broad and fell naturally into deep cups well suited for pushing great volumes of water. In some unlikely and astounding act of self-redefinition these beings” ancestors had climbed up out of the sea, millions of years ago, fashioning island homes for themselves woven out of sea-born materials and buffered by elaborate barricades against the ceaseless tidal surges that circled their planet. But they still were creatures of the ocean.

Lawler stepped up as close to the two Gillies as he dared and signalled I-am-Lawler-the-doctor .

When Gillies spoke it was by squeezing their arms inward against their sides, compressing air through deep gill-shaped slits in their chests to produce booming organ-like tones. Humans had never found a way to imitate Gillie sounds in a way that Gillies understood, nor did the Gillies show any interest in learning how to speak the human language. Perhaps its sounds were as impossible for them as Gillie sounds were for humans. But some communication between the races was necessary. Over the years a sign language had developed. The Gillies spoke to humans in Gillie; the humans replied in signs.

The Gillie who had spoken before made the snort again, and added a peculiarly hostile snuffling whistling sound. It held up its flippers in what Lawler recognized as a posture of anger. No, not anger: rage. Extreme rage.

Hey, Lawler thought. What’s up? What have I done?

There wasn’t any doubt about the Gillie’s fury. Now it was making little brushing movements with its flippers that seemed plainly to say, Get away, clear out, get your ass out of here fast .

Perplexed, Lawler signalled I-mean-no-intrusion. I-come-to-parley .

The snort again, louder, deeper. It reverberated through the flooring of the path and Lawler felt the vibration in the soles of his feet.

Gillies had been known to kill human beings who had annoyed them, and even some who hadn’t: a troublesome occasional propensity for inexplicable violence. It didn’t seem deliberate—just an irritated backhand swipe of a flipper, a quick contemptuous kick, a little thoughtless trampling. They were very large and very strong and they didn’t seem to understand, or care, how fragile human bodies could be.

The other Gillie, the bigger of the two, took a step or two in Lawler’s direction. Its breath came with heavy, wheezing, unsociable intensity. It gave Lawler a look that he interpreted as one of aloof, absent-minded hostility.

Lawler signalled surprise and dismay. He signalled friendliness again. He signalled continued eagerness to talk.

The first Gillie’s fiery eyes were blazing with unmistakable wrath.

Out. Away. Go.

No ambiguities there. Useless to attempt any further pacifying palaver. Clearly they didn’t want him anywhere near their power plant.

All right, he thought. Have it your own way.

He had never been brushed off like this by Gillies before; but to take time now to remind them that he was their old friend the island doctor, or that his father had once made himself very useful to them, would be dangerous idiocy. One slap of that flipper could knock him into the bay with a broken spine.

He backed away, keeping a close eye on them, intending to leap backward into the water if they made a threatening move toward him.

But the Gillies stayed where they were, glowering at him as he executed his slinking retreat. When he had reached the main path again they turned and went back inside their building.

So much for that, Lawler thought.

The weird rebuff stung him deeply. He stood for a time by the bayfront railing, letting the tension of the strange encounter ebb from him. His great scheme of negotiating a human-Hydran treaty this night, he saw all too clearly now, had been mere romantic nonsense. It went whistling out of Lawler’s mind like the vapour it was, and a quick flash of embarrassment sent waves of heat running through his skin for a moment.

Well, then. Back to the vaargh to wait for morning, he supposed.

A grating bass voice behind him said, “Lawler?”

Caught by surprise, Lawler whirled abruptly, his heart thundering. He squinted into the greying darkness. He could just barely make out the figure of a short, stocky man with a heavy shock of long, greasy-looking hair standing in the shadows ten or twelve metres to the inland side of him.

“Delagard? That you?”

The stocky man stepped forward. Delagard, yes. The self-appointed top dog of the island, the chief mover and shaker. What the hell was he doing skulking around here at this hour?

Delagard always seemed to be up to something tricky, even when he wasn’t. He was short but not small, a powerful figure built low to the ground, thick-necked, heavy-shouldered, paunchy. He wore an ankle-length sarong that left his broad shaggy chest bare.