Robert Silverberg - The Face of the Waters

As Delagard passed near the foremast in his frenzied circular flight he looked up and called out in a whipcrack voice to Pilya, suspended just above him on the yard, “Help me! Fast! Your knife!”

Swiftly Pilya unfastened the scabbard that held the blade of sharpened bone she always wore strapped around her waist and tossed it, scabbard and all, to Delagard as he went by beneath her. He snapped it out of the air with a quick fierce swipe of his hand, pulled the blade from its holder, gripped its haft tightly in his hand. Then he swung around, unexpectedly striding straight toward the astounded Henders, who was plunging along behind him at a pace too swift to check. Henders ran right into him. Delagard brushed the long gaff to one side with a stiff, brusque motion of his forearm and came in underneath it, bringing his arm upward and sinking the blade to its hilt in Henders” throat.

Henders grunted and flung up his arms. He looked amazed. The gaff went flying aside. Delagard, embracing Henders now as though they were lovers, clamped his other hand to the back of the engineer’s neck and with weird tenderness held him close up against him with the blade firmly rammed home.

Henders” eyes, wide and bulging, glistened like full moons in the grey of dawn. He made a thick sputtering sound and a spurt of dark blood shot from his mouth. His tongue came into view, swollen and lagging. Delagard held him upright, pressing hard.

Lawler found his voice, finally.

“Nid—my God, Nid, what have you done—”

“You want to be next, doc?” Delagard asked calmly. He pulled the blade out, giving it a savage twist as he withdrew it, and stepped back. A torrent of blood came springing forth once the knife was out. Henders” face had turned black. He took a shaky step, and another, like a sleepwalker. The look of astonishment still gleamed in his eyes.

Then he tottered and fell. Lawler knew he was dead before he reached the deck.

Pilya had come down from the rigging. Delagard tossed the blade across the planks to her. It landed at her feet. “Thanks,” he said offhandedly. “I owe you one for that.” Scooping Henders” body up as if it were weightless, one arm around the dead man’s shoulders and the other under his legs, Delagard strode quickly toward the rail, lifted the body high over his head, and flung it into the sea as though it was garbage.

Tharp hadn’t moved during the whole thing. Delagard went over to him and slapped him in the face, hard enough to send his head rocking back.

“You cowardly little fucker. Dag,” Delagard said. “You didn’t even have the guts to follow through on your own plot. I ought to throw you overboard too, but it isn’t worth the effort.”

“Nid—for God’s sake, Nid—’

“Shut your mouth. Get out of my sight.” Delagard wheeled around and glared at Felk. “What about you, Onyos? Were you part of this thing too?”

“Not me, Nid! I wouldn’t! You know that!”

“’Not me, Nid!’” Delagard mimicked savagely. “Cocksucker! You would have been if you’d had the guts. A coward from the start. And how about you, Lawler? Will you stitch me up, or are you part of this fucking conspiracy too? You weren’t even here. What did you do, sleep late for your own mutiny?”

“I wasn’t in it,” said Lawler quietly. “It was a dumb idea, and I told them so.”

“You knew, and you didn’t warn me?”

“That’s right, Nid.”

“If you’re not party to a mutiny, then it’s your obligation to notify the captain of what’s going on. Law of the sea. You didn’t do that.”

“That’s right,” Lawler said. “I didn’t.”

Delagard considered that for a moment. Then he shrugged and nodded. “All right, doc. I think I get your meaning.” He looked around. “Somebody clean up the deck,” he said. “I hate a messy ship.” He gestured to Felk, who looked dazed. “Onyos, take the wheel, as long as you seem to be awake. I’ve got to get this cut fixed. Come on, doc. I guess I can trust you to stitch me up.”

At midday a wind came up between one moment and the next, as if Henders” death had been a sacrifice to whatever gods ruled the weather on Hydros. In the vast quiet of the long calm there abruptly appeared the deep roaring of gusts that had travelled a long way: all the way from the pole, in fact, a sharp southerly blow, cold and crisp.

The sea grew high. The ship, stilled for so long, tumbled into a trough, heeled back, dropped into another. Then the sky darkened with a suddenness that was almost startling. The wind was bringing rain with it.

“Buckets!” Delagard bellowed. “Casks!”

No one needed to be urged. The watch below came awake in an instant and the deck was alive with busy hands. Anything that could hold water was set forth to catch it, not simply the usual jars and casks and pots, but also clean rags, blankets, clothes, whatever was absorbent and could be wrung out after the storm. It had been weeks since the last rainfall; it might be weeks until the next.

The rain was a distraction, easing the shock of Henders” abortive mutiny and violent death. Lawler, naked in the cool rain, rushing back and forth like everyone else to empty the smaller vessels into the larger storage containers, was grateful for it. The nightmare scene on deck had affected him in a wholly unexpected way, stripping him of layers of hard-won defences. It had been a long time since he had felt so naive, so callow. Spouting gouts of blood, raw torn flesh, even sudden death, they were all everyday things to him, part of his professional routine. He was accustomed to them; he took them casually. But a killing? He had never seen a murder before. He had never really even imagined the possibility of one. For all of Dag Tharp’s brave talk of throwing Delagard overboard in the past couple of weeks, Lawler could hardly believe that one man might actually be capable of taking another’s life. There was no question, certainly, that Delagard had killed Henders in self defence. But he had done it coolly, matter-of-factly, remorselessly. Lawler felt humiliatingly ingenuous, confronting these ugly realities. Wise old Doc Lawler, the man who has seen everything, shivering in his boots over a bit of archaic violence? It was absurd. And yet it was real. The impact on him was intense. It had been a shattering sight.

Archaic was the right word for it. The efficiency and indifference with which Delagard had rid himself of his pursuer had been positively medieval, if not downright prehistoric: a hand had risen up out of the shadowy past, a dark act out of mankind’s primeval dawn had been reenacted on the deck of the Queen of Hydros this morning. Lawler would hardly have been more surprised if Earth itself had appeared suspended in the sky, hanging just above the masts with blood dripping from every teeming continent. So much for all those centuries of civilization. So much for the earnest common belief that all such ancient passions were extinct, that raw violence of that bloody kind had evolved out of the race.

The rainstorm was a welcome distraction, yes, as well as a much-needed source of water. It washed the deck clean of the stain of sin. What had happened here today was something Lawler would just as soon forget as quickly as he could.

In the night came troubling dreams, dreams filled not with murder but with powerful erotic passions.

The shadowy figures of women danced around Lawler as he slept, women without faces, mere cavorting bodies, generic receptacles for desire. They could have been anyone, anonymous, mysterious, pure female essence without specific identity, blank tablets and nothing more: a procession of swaying breasts, broad hips, full buttocks, dense thick pubic triangles. Sometimes it seemed to him that the dance was made up of disembodied breasts alone, or a succession of endlessly parting thighs, or moist shining lips. Or wriggling fingers, or flicking tongues.