Robert Silverberg - The Face of the Waters

It was almost time to leave now.

It was late afternoon. Delagard had announced that departure would be at sunset. That they would be leaving the vicinity of the Face in the dark didn’t seem to trouble him. The light of the Face itself would guide the ship for a time; and after that they could sail by the stars. There was nothing to fear from the sea, not any longer. The sea would be friendly now. Everything on Hydros would be friendly.

Lawler realized that he was alone on deck. Most or perhaps all of the others had gone to the island: to make a farewell visit, he supposed. But where was Sundira?

He called her name.

No answer. For one wild moment he wondered if she had gone with them. Then he caught sight of her at the stern, up on the gantry bridge. Kinverson was with her. They seemed deep in conversation.

Quietly Lawler moved down the deck toward them.

He heard Kinverson telling her, “You can’t possibly understand what it’s like until you’ve gone over yourself. It’s as different from being an ordinary human as being alive is from being dead.”

“I feel alive enough now.”

“You don’t know. You can’t imagine it. Come with me now, Sundira. It takes only a moment. And then everything opens up for you. I’m not the same man I was, am I?”

“Not remotely.”

“But I am. Only I’m so much more, besides. Come with me.”

“Please, Gabe.”

“You want to go. I know you do. You’re staying only because of Lawler.”

“I’m staying because of me,” Sundira said.

“It isn’t so. I know. You feel sorry for the pitiful bastard. You don’t want to leave him behind.”

“No, Gabe.”

“You’ll thank me afterward.”

“No.”

“Come with me.”

“Gabe—please—”

There was a sudden doubtful note in her voice, a tone of weakening resolve, that struck Lawler with sledgehammer force. He jumped up on the gantry bridge next to them. Sundira gasped in surprise and backed away. Kinverson stood where he was, regarding Lawler calmly.

The gaffs were in their rack. Lawler grabbed one and held it out, practically in Kinverson’s face.

“Leave her alone.”

The big man eyed the sharp tool with amusement, or perhaps disdain. “I’m not doing anything to her, doc.”

“You’re trying to seduce her.”

Kinverson laughed. “She don’t need much seducing, do she, now?”

There was a roaring sound of fury in Lawler’s ears. It was all he could do to hold back from thrusting the gaff into Kinverson’s throat.

Sundira said, “Val, please, we were only talking.”

“I heard what you were talking about. He’s trying to get you to go to the Face. Isn’t that so?”

“I don’t deny that,” Kinverson said easily.

Lawler brandished the gaff, conscious of how comic his anger must seem to Kinverson, how petulant, how foolish. Kinverson hulked above him, still menacing for all his newfound gentleness, invulnerable, invincible.

But Lawler had to see this through. In a tight voice he said, “I don’t want you talking to her again before we sail.”

Kinverson smiled amiably. “I wasn’t trying to hurt her any.”

“I know what you were trying to do. I won’t let you.”

“Shouldn’t that be up to her, doc?”

Lawler glanced at Sundira. She said softly, “It’s all right, Val. I can look after myself.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

“Give me that gaff, doc,” Kinverson said. “You might hurt yourself with it.”

“Keep back!”

“It’s my gaff, you know. You got no business waving it around.”

“Watch it,” Lawler said. “Get away. Get off the ship! Go on: back to the Face. Go on, Gabe. You don’t belong here. None of you do. This ship is for humans.”

“Val,” Sundira said.

Lawler gripped the gaff tightly, holding it as he would a scalpel, and took a step or two toward Kinverson. The fisherman’s lumbering form rose high. Lawler drew a deep breath. “Go on,” he said again. “Back to the Face. Jump, Gabe. Right here, right over the side.”

“Doc, doc, doc—”

Lawler brought the gaff upward and forward in a short, hard thrust at Kinverson’s diaphragm. It should have speared right into the big man’s heart; but Kinverson’s arm moved with unbelievable swiftness. His hand caught the shaft of the gaff and twisted, and pain shot the length of Lawler’s arm. A moment later the gaff was in Kinverson’s hand.

Automatically Lawler crossed his arms over his middle to protect himself against the thrust that he knew must be coming.

Kinverson studied him as if measuring him for it. Get it over with, damn you, Lawler thought. Now. Quickly. He could almost feel it already, the fiery intrusion, the tissues parting, the sharp point going for the heart within the cage of ribs.

But there was no thrust. Calmly Kinverson leaned forward and dropped the gaff back in the rack.

“You shouldn’t mess with the equipment, doc,” he said gently. “Excuse me, now. I’ll leave you and the lady alone.”

He turned and went past Lawler, down the gantry ladder, to the main deck.

“Did I look very stupid just then?” Lawler asked Sundira.

She smiled, very faintly. “He’s always seemed a threat to you, hasn’t he?”

“He was trying to talk you into going over. Is that a threat or isn’t it?”

“If he had picked me up bodily and carried me over the side, that would have been a threat, Val.”

“All right. All right.”

“But I understand why you were upset. Even to the point of going after him with that gaff like that.”

“It was dumb. It was an adolescent thing to do.”

“Yes,” she said. “It was.”

Lawler hadn’t expected her to agree so readily. He looked at her, startled, and saw something in her eyes that surprised and dismayed him even more.

There had been a change. There was a distance now between the two of them that hadn’t been there for a long while.

“What is it, Sundira? What’s happening?”

“Oh, Val—Val—”

“Tell me.”

“It wasn’t anything Kinverson said. I can’t be talked into something as easily as that. It’s entirely my own decision.”

“ What is? For Christ’s sake, what are you talking about?”

“The Face.”

“What?”

“Come over with me, Val.”

It was like being pierced with Kinverson’s gaff.

“Jesus.” He took a step or two back from her. “Jesus, Sundira. What are you saying?”

“That we should go.”

He watched her, feeling as though he would turn to stone.

“This is wrong, trying to resist it,” she said. “We should have let ourselves yield to it, the way others did. They understood. We were blind.”

“Sundira?”

“I saw it, everything in one flash, Val, while you were trying to protect me from Gabe. How foolish it is to try to maintain our individual selves, all our little fears and jealousies and petty games. How much better it would be to drop all that, and join ourselves into the one great harmony that exists here. With the others. With Hydros.”

“No. No.”

“This is our one chance to let all the shit that oppresses us fall away from us.”

“I don’t believe you’re saying this, Sundira.”

“But I am. I am.”

“He hypnotized you, didn’t he? He put a spell on you. It did.”

“No,” she said, smiling. She held out her hands to him. “You told me once that you had never felt at home on Hydros, even though you were born here. Do you remember that, Val?”

“Well—”

“Do you? You said divers and meatfish feel at home here, but you don’t and never have. You do remember: I see that you do. All right. Here’s your chance to make yourself at home here, finally. To become a part of Hydros. Earth is gone. What we are is Hydrans, and Hydrans belong to the Face. You’ve held back long enough. So have I; but I’m giving in, now. Suddenly it all looks different to me, now. Will you come with me?”