Robert Silverberg - The Face of the Waters

When he reached the deeper waters close to the ship Gharkid put his head down and began to swim. His strokes were slow and serene, and he moved with ease and agility.

Kinverson went to the gantry and returned with one of his gaffs. His cheek was jerking with barely controlled tension. He held the sharp tool aloft like a spear.

“If that thing tries to climb up on board—”

“No,” Father Quillan said. “You mustn’t. This is his ship as much as yours.”

“Who says? What is he? Who says he’s Gharkid? I’ll kill him if he comes near us.”

But Gharkid had no intention, it seemed, of coming up on board. He was just off the side, now, floating placidly, holding himself in one place with little motions of his hands.

He was looking up at them.

Smiling his sweet, inscrutable Gharkid-smile.

Beckoning to them.

“I’ll kill him!” Kinverson roared. “The bastard! The dirty little bastard!”

“No,” said Quillan again quietly, as the big man drew back the hand that held the gaff. “Don’t be afraid. He won’t hurt us.” The priest reached up and touched Kinverson lightly on the chest; and Kinverson seemed to dissolve at the touch. Looking stunned, he let his arm sag to his side. Sundira came up alongside him and took the gaff from him. Kinverson hardly seemed to notice.

Lawler looked toward the man in the water. Gharkid—or was it the Face, speaking through what had been Gharkid?—was calling to them, summoning them to the island. Now Lawler felt the pull in earnest, no doubt of that, no illusion either but a firm unmistakable imperative coming in heavy throbbing waves; it reminded him of the strong undertows that sometimes came eddying up while he was swimming in the bay of Sorve Island. He had been able easily enough to withstand those undertows. He wondered whether he’d be able to withstand this one. It was tugging at the roots of his soul.

He became aware of Sundira’s ragged breathing close beside him. Her face was pale, her eyes were bright with fear. But her jaw was set. She was determined to hold her own against that eerie summons.

Come to me, Gharkid was saying. Come to me, come to me.

Gharkid’s soft voice. But it was the Face that spoke. Lawler was certain of it: an island that spoke, seductively promising everything, anything, in a word. Only come. Only come.

“I’m coming!” Lis Niklaus cried suddenly. “Wait for me! Wait! I’m coming!”

She was midway down the deck, near the mast, blank-eyed, trance-faced, moving uncertainly toward the rail with flatfooted shuffling steps. Delagard, whirling about, called out to her to stop. Lis kept on going. He cursed and began to run toward her. He caught up with her just as she reached the rail and made a grab for her arm.

In a cold, fierce voice that Lawler could barely recognize as hers Lis said, “No, you bastard. No. Keep away from me!” She shoved at Delagard ferociously and sent him tumbling to the deck. Delagard struck the planks hard and lay there on his back, looking at her incredulously. He seemed unable to rise. A moment later Lis was on the rail, and then over it, plunging in free fall toward the water, landing with a tremendous luminous splash.

Side by side, she and Gharkid swam off toward the Face.

Clouds of a new colour hung low in the hot, churning air above the Face of the Waters. They were tawny above, darker below: Lis Niklaus” colouration. She had reached her destination.

“It’s going to take us all,” Sundira said, gasping. “We have to get away from here!”

“Yes,” Lawler said. “Fast.” He glanced quickly around. Delagard still lay sprawled on the deck, more stunned than hurt, perhaps, but not getting up. Onyos Felk was crouching by the foremast, talking to himself in muzzy whispers. Father Quillan was on his knees, making the sign of the Cross over and over again, muttering prayers. Dag Tharp, yellow-eyed with fear, was clutching at his belly and rocking with dry heaves. Lawler shook his head. “Who’s going to navigate?”

“Does it matter? We just have to put the Face behind us and keep on going. So long as we have enough of a crew working the sails—”

Sundira circled the deck. “Pilya! Neyana! Grab those ropes! Val, do you know how to work the wheel? Oh, Jesus, the anchor’s still down. Gabe! Gabe, for Christ’s sake, heave the anchor up!”

“Lis is coming back now,” Lawler said.

“Never mind that. Give Gabe a hand with the anchor.”

But it was too late. Already Lis was halfway back to the ship, swimming powerfully, easily. Gharkid was just behind her. She paused in the water and looked up, and her eyes were new, strange, alien.

“God help us all,” Father Quillan muttered. “They’re both pulling on us now!” There was terror in his eyes. He was shaking convulsively. “I’m afraid, Lawler. This is what I’ve wanted all my life, and now that it’s here, I’m afraid, I’m afraid!” The priest extended his hands toward Lawler in appeal. “Help me. Take me belowdecks. Or else I’ll go over to it. I can’t fight it any longer.”

Lawler started toward him.

“Let him go!” Sundira cried. “We don’t have time. He’s no use to us anyway.”

“Help me!” Quillan wailed. He was moving toward the rail in the same dreamlike shuffle Lis had used. “God is calling me and I’m afraid to go to Him!”

“That isn’t God that’s calling,” Sundira snapped. She was running everywhere at once, trying to galvanize the others into motion, but nothing seemed to be happening. Pilya was looking up at the rigging as though she had never seen a sail before. Neyana was off by herself near the forecastle, chanting something in a low monotone. Kinverson had done nothing about the anchor: he stood stock-still amidships, vacant-eyed, lost in uncharacteristic contemplation.

Come to us, Gharkid and Lis were saying. Come to us, come to us, come to us.

Lawler trembled. The pull was far more powerful now than when it had been Gharkid alone who was summoning them. He heard a splash. Someone else had gone over the side. Felk? Tharp? No, Tharp was still there, a puking little heap. But Felk was gone. And then Lawler saw Neyana too, hoisting herself over the rail, plummeting like a meteor toward the water.

One by one they all would go, he thought. One by one, they would be incorporated into the alien entity that was the Face.

He struggled to resist. He summoned all the stubbornness in his soul, all the love of solitude, all the cantankerous insistence on following his own path, and used it as a weapon against the thing that was calling him. He wrapped his lifelong aloneness around him like a cloak of invisibility.

And it seemed to work. Strong though the pull was—and getting stronger—it couldn’t manage to draw him over the rail. An outsider to the last, he thought, the eternal loner, keeping himself apart even from union with that potent hungry thing that waited for them across the narrow strait.

“Please,” Father Quillan said, almost whimpering. “Where’s the hatch? I can’t find the hatch!”

“Come with me,” Lawler said. “I’ll take you below.”

He saw Sundira heaving desperately at the windlass, trying to get the anchor up herself. But she didn’t have the strength for it: only Kinverson, of them all, was strong enough to do it alone. Lawler hesitated, caught between Quillan’s need and the greater urgency of getting the ship aweigh.

Delagard, on his feet at last, came staggering toward him like a man who has had a stroke. Lawler shoved the priest into Delagard’s arms.

“Here. Hang onto him, or he’ll go over.”

Lawler ran toward Sundira. But Kinverson suddenly stepped out into his path and pushed him back with one big hand against his chest.

“The anchor—” Lawler began. “We’ve got to lift anchor—”