Robert Silverberg - The Face of the Waters

“What kind of bullshit are you two discussing?” said Delagard, who had come up behind them.

“Theological bullshit,” Quillan said.

“Ah. Ah. A new revelation?”

“Sit down,” said the priest. “I’ll tell you all about it.”

Inflamed by the logic of his new revelation, Quillan went about the ship offering to share it with anyone who would listen. But he found few takers.

Gharkid seemed the most interested. Lawler had always suspected that the strange little man had a deep streak of mysticism in him; and now, enigmatic as always, Gharkid could be seen sitting with shining eyes in a pose of the deepest attention, drinking in everything that the priest had to say. But as ever Gharkid had no comments of his own to offer, only the occasional soft query.

Sundira spent an hour with Quillan and came to Lawler afterward looking puzzled and thoughtful. “The poor man,” she said. “A paradise. Holy spirits walking around in the underbrush, offering benedictions to pilgrims. All these weeks at sea must have driven him out of his mind.”

“If he was ever in it in the first place.”

“He wants so badly to give himself over to something bigger and wiser than he is. He’s been chasing God all his life. But I think he’s really just trying to find his way back to the womb.”

“What a terribly cynical thing to say.”

“Isn’t it, though?” Sundira laid her head on Lawler’s lap. “What do you think? Did any of that mathematical mumbo-jumbo make any sense to you? Or the theology? Paradise? An island of holy spirits?”

He stroked her thick, dark hair. The weeks and months of the voyage had coarsened its texture, giving it a crisped, frizzled look. But it was still beautiful.

He said, “A certain amount. At least I can understand the metaphor he’s using. But it doesn’t matter, do you know? Not to me. There could be an infinity of distinct layers of gods in the universe, each one with exactly sixteen times as many eyes as the ones in the layer below it, and Quillan could have absolute irrefutable proof of the existence of the whole elaborate rigmarole, and it wouldn’t mean a thing to me. I live in this world, and only in this world, and there aren’t any gods here. What might be happening in the higher levels, if there are any, doesn’t concern me.”

“That doesn’t mean the higher levels don’t exist.”

“No. I suppose you’re right. Who knows? The old sailor who told us all about the Face in the first place also had some wild story about an underwater city of super-Dwellers just off shore. I can believe that just as easily as I can all of Quillan’s theological hodge-podge, I guess. But in fact I can’t believe any of it. One notion’s just as crazy as the other to me.”

She craned her head around to look at him. “But let’s say for argument’s sake that there really is a city under the sea not far from the Face, and some special kind of Dwellers live there. If that’s so, it would explain why the Dwellers we know regard the Face as a holy island, and are afraid or at least unwilling to go near it. What if there are god-like beings living there?”

“Let’s wait and see what’s there when we get there, and then I’ll give you an answer to that, okay?”

“Okay,” Sundira said.

Halfway through the night Lawler found himself suddenly awake, in that kind of hyper-wakefulness that is certain to last until dawn. He sat up, rubbing his aching forehead. He felt as though someone had opened his skull while he slept and filled it with a million bright strands of fine shimmering wire, which now were rubbing back and forth against each other with every breath he took.

Someone was in his cabin. By the faint gleam of starlight that came through his single porthole he saw a tall square-shouldered figure against the bulkhead, quietly watching him. Kinverson? No, not quite big enough for Kinverson, and why would Kinverson invade his cabin in the dead of night anyway? But none of the other men on board were nearly this tall.

“Who’s there?” Lawler said.

“Don’t you know me, Valben?” A deep voice, resonant, wonderfully calm and self-assured.

“ Who are you? ”

“Take a good look, boy.” The intruder turned so that the side of his face was in the light. Lawler saw a strong jaw, a thick, curling black beard, a straight, commanding nose. Except for the beard the face could have been his own. No, the eyes were different. They had a powerful gleam; their gaze was at once more stern and more compassionate than Lawler’s. He knew that look. A shiver went down his back.

“I thought I was awake,” he said calmly. “But now I see that I’m still dreaming. Hello, father. It’s good to see you again. It’s been a long time.”

“Has it? Not for me.” The tall man took a couple of steps toward him. In the tiny cabin, that brought him practically to the edge of the bunk. He was wearing a dark ruffled robe of an old-fashioned kind, a robe that Lawler remembered well. “It must have been a while, though. You’re all grown up, boy. You’re older than I am, aren’t you?”

“About the same, now.”

“And a doctor. A good doctor, I hear.”

“Not really. I do my best. It isn’t good enough.”

“Your best is always good enough, Valben, if it’s truly your best. I used to tell you that, but I suppose you didn’t believe me. So long as you don’t shirk, so long as you honestly care. A doctor can be an absolute bastard off duty, but so long as he cares he’s all right. So long as he understands that he’s put here to protect, to heal, to love. And I think you understood that.” He sat down on the corner of the bunk. He seemed very much at home. “You didn’t have a family, did you?”

“No, sir.”

“Too bad. You’d have been a good father.”

“Would I?”

“It would have changed you, of course. But for the better, I think. Do you regret it?”

“I don’t know. Probably. I regret a lot of things. I regret that my marriage went bad. I regret that I never married again. I regret that you died too soon, father.”

“Was it too soon?”

“For me it was.”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose it was.”

“I loved you.”

“And I loved you too, boy. I still do. I love you very much. I’m very proud of you.”

“You talk as though you’re still alive. But this is all only a dream: you can say anything you like, can’t you?”

The figure rose and stepped back into the darkness. It seemed to cloak itself in shadows.

“It isn’t a dream, Valben.”

“No? Well, then. You’re dead, even so, father. You’ve been dead twenty-five years. If this isn’t a dream, why are you here? If you’re a ghost, why did you wait until now to start haunting me?”

“Because you’ve never been this close to the Face before.”

“What does the Face have to do with you or me?”

“I dwell in the Face, Valben.”

Despite himself, Lawler laughed. “That’s a thing that a Gillie would say. Not you.”

“It isn’t only Gillies that are taken to dwell in the Face, boy.”

The flat, quiet, appalling statement hung in the air like a miasmic cloud. Lawler recoiled from it. He was starting to understand, now. Anger began to rise in him.

He gestured irritably at the phantom.

“Get out of here. Let me have some sleep.”

“What way is that to talk to your father?”

“You aren’t my father. You’re either a very bad dream or a lying illusion coming from some telepathic sea urchin or dragonfish out there in the ocean. My father would never have said a thing like that. Not even if he came back as a ghost, which is also something he wouldn’t have done. Haunting wasn’t his style. Go away and leave me alone!”