Seas of Ernathe Read online

  The bank surrounded them, troops massing in the quiet afternoon. Seth felt instinctively for the security of the rock beneath him, as mist swirled tickling about his ears and nose. His sight was obscured momentarily, and then it opened again as the front passed, leaving patches of visibility over the flat gray water.

  He squinted through the wafting scud and sat upright, stunned. Across the water, several darkish shapes were moving within the silvery earthly nebula like shadows of trees or persons. They were vague, roving figures, which without being distinguishable made him think instantly of the sea-people. His blood pounded with curiosity as he hunched forward, staring intently until the bank coalesced again and blocked his view. "The Nale'nid?" he asked Racart. His voice sounded wiry and strange against the solitude of fog.

  The answer was slow, in an awed and amused voice thinned as if by distance. "Perhaps. Keep watching."

  The mist paled, whitened, robbing the world of its last remaining color—and then it broke, shifted, and with a swirl reopened. Three distant but distinct figures moved across the water: two men and a young woman, human-figures but slenderer, smoother, fairer, and clad in the simplest fashion with dark glittering scales. They danced upon the water, stopped, twirled, and winked at him—and then the men whirled while the girl winked again. Seth was captured by astonishment and infatuation; they were distant as stage players set in another world, but every movement leapt to his eye as if fractured and magnified through a crystal. How could he see so clearly? They glided like skaters over the water, their blades the thinnest slips of mist. Laughter tinkled softly, distantly, as if spilled from the lips of others beneath the waves. They moved maddeningly fast, with the grace of deepwater fishes.

  However lucid Seth had felt earlier, he now stared as if in a dream, rapt by the vision of the sea-girl, of her men turning about her in nodding circles. Before Seth could breathe and decide if he were entranced in a hallucinatory vision, the mists closed again and moments later reopened—revealing soft, driftglass green water, and moving beneath it, closer now, three shadows like courtly humanfish. The silhouettes slowed for a moment of still-life, two sea-men and one sea-woman, who then danced in a lyrical flurry and fled, leaving only the green-glass memory of their presence.

  Too astonished to move or make a sound, Seth stared at the empty water and tried to hold the fading image in his mind. Its vividness vanished with the mist, and by the time he had sorted the impressions from his expectations he was hardly sure that he had seen anything at all, shadows or people. His hands pressed the rock, cold with airy dampness; the mist tickled again as its tail drifted past, and then suddenly it too was gone, receding across the water to the south. Seth slouched in the golden sunshine, letting its warmth drench his skin before he finally sighed, and turned to his friend. "They—"

  His words stopped in his throat. He blinked. Racart was gone.

  Now where? Seth twisted around to look, but his friend was nowhere on the promontory summit. "Racart!" He scrambled to his feet, walked along the edge of the summit, and looked down and around in all directions—but there was no sign of the Ernathene. "Racart!"

  Was this a prank? It would hardly befit Racart. Could he somehow have fallen into the water? No; Seth would have heard a splash. "Where are you?" he bellowed.

  The answer was a sigh of air over the water, and the soft lap of the sea against the rock face below. The outcropping tumbled to water on one end and to rock and moss on the other; Seth could not see any likely place of concealment. Kneeling at the seaward end, he gazed down carefully into the water, probing it with his eyes. There were no obstructions, so even if Racart had fallen he should have been uninjured and able to swim clear. An uncertain fear nudged Seth's mind, and sweat began to trickle down his neck as he swayed, standing. "Racart!" The call rang across the water and died.

  A lone skrell freewheeled into view, circled above the water at Seth's height and cried mournfully. Why would he be hiding, testing him? No, it was preposterous to consider that. Could the Nale'nid have done something? Perhaps, but what?

  He climbed down from the outcropping and scouted in a semicircle around the base of the promontory, inspecting every crevice and break in the rock. Something, he decided, must have happened to Racart—but nothing so simple as falling from the rocks. Uncertainty tugged at him, a feeling that there was something he was failing to consider, some danger he was overlooking. He was kilometers from the settlement. He could probably find his way back alone—but what would he do if he found Racart seriously injured . . . or would he be able to return in time with a proper search party?

  Damn it, had the mist snatched him away?

  Seth moved through the mazework around the pools and channels to the landward of the promontory, looking into each pool one by one, into each stream, as if he might find the grinning face of his friend, laid to rest by some dreadful assassin. He saw only dark-bottomed and mossy-edged pools, and cutting flows of water seeking the sea. He slipped; one knee banged hard on the rock, and his leg was soaked again. Water sopped coldly in his shoe, and his knee ached fiercely as he straightened it. Determinedly, he ignored the pain.

  He called, again and again. No answer . . . and the appearance of more sea-mist made even the attempt seem hopeless. Lambern turned a deeper gold as it sank lower in the sky, and he realized grimly that he would probably have to return alone and simply hope for the best—either that Racart would make his own way back or that a search party would find him.

  For a last look, he scrambled back onto the outcropping and searched anxiously in all directions. "Racart!" He stared, puzzled and frightened, into the water; the reeling sensation of depth reminded him curiously of his vision of the Nale'nid. There was no evidence that the sea-people were involved; but as a starpilot he depended professionally on intuition. A feeling that could not be ignored . . . and with a moment's reflection on it he was possessed of a strange peace of mind amid his disquiet.

  He moved down from the outcropping. Whether his friend was safe or not—and with the sea-people, who could tell?—it was past time to start the trek back.

  Chapter Two

  Finding the way back to Lambrose was not easy. The broken, indented shoreline and the drifting bits of sea-mist made it impossible to get a clear view of where he was going; Seth felt he was trying to negotiate a maze with bleary, sleep-filled eyes. He detoured inland to skirt a rugged lagoon, and then hesitated, unsure whether to angle back toward the sea where he could keep the Lambrose pier in sight, or to keep inland to avoid blind avenues onto outjutting peninsulas. He wished he had paid greater attention to the route when he had been with Racart.

  He turned seaward to follow the line of the shore; it seemed wiser to keep his destination in view as much as possible. But the groundrock dipped and rose in a clay-sculpture profile, so even that route provided a challenge. Perseverance brought him near to the actual coastline and directly into a silvery thick mass of sea-mist. Again? he wondered uncomfortably—but he shrugged and moved on along his path into the fog, changing his gait to a slow, cautious shuffle. His skin tingled, sensitive to the touch of the flowing mist, as if a mild electric current were charging the mass. The sounds of his shuffle were clear but muted. He stooped and strained forward with all his senses to detect any obstacles or pitfalls before his feet.

  He thought about Racart, who might be anywhere. Soon he was so lost in contemplation, and so keyed to the sound of his own movement, that when he heard other sounds he straightened with a start. Pat, pat of footfalls, a ripple of faint laughter like the chortle of a stream. The sounds were quiet, but very clear and very close. It seemed he was being shadowed. He stopped instantly and strained his ears to hear more.

  Nale'nid?

  There was no further sound. Hesitantly, he called out, "Hello? Who's there? Hello!" Silence answered. He tried again and received the same answer. Sea-mist had made the world a fuzz of soft gray, the landscape an indistinct montage of darker shapes. He looked around slowly, taking care
not to lose his bearings. "Racart! Racart!"

  When he gave up and moved on, he was more uncertain of his position than ever. Someone was playing a game at his expense, but he could not tell whether it was a malicious game or a friendly one. There was little else to do but continue walking. He heard the pat, pat of feet once more, and—he thought—a murmur of voices. Breaking through the mist once was a bright female voice, just a bit too fluttered, a bit too quick to be like any of the human voices he knew. The brief flurry of words, if "words" were what they were, fell in a strange tongue, enchanting—and he felt a sudden urge to abandon his path, to seek the voice's source. Could it be the girl he had seen earlier, could she know something of Racart?

  He caught himself in the act of moving that way—and firmly set his feet back on his own path. He called again, however—several times. When there was no response, he decided it would be useless to blunder after someone who did not wish to be seen, and he forced himself to move on.

  The sounds continued with him for a good distance, until the veil of mist shimmered with sunlight, and thinned, and finally parted to reveal the calm sea and the flattened path of rock along its edge. Lambern glowed golden and brown upon the coast, but it was lower in the sky than Seth had expected and he hurried along the shore path—feeling both anxiety and relief at the sight of Lambrose still several kilometers distant. He glanced quickly about, but all that was visible beneath the sky were the rocks, the sea, and mist in scattered fluffs. The mysterious sounds were gone.

  Here the path was familiar; it ran in a ledge just above water level, alongside an uplift to the left, and then ahead some distance it curved around the seaward side of a massive granite outcropping like the one from which Racart had disappeared. Seth was breathing hard, jogging now, but he did not slow as he rounded the outcropping. He slammed headlong into someone coming the other way, flailed off-balance, and toppled toward the water.

  An arm shot out to grab him, and before he could utter a cry Racart had pulled him back to safety.

  "Ahh!" Seth stumbled against the granite face and clutched hard for support. "Racart!" He stared at his friend in astonishment. "What?"

  Racart slumped wearily and returned Seth's look of amazement; then he leaned against the granite himself, stared out to sea; and chuckled. "Ho, brother! I was afraid I'd have to bring the whole town out looking for you—but you do pretty well, for a space pilot."

  "Where the hell have you been? You mean you took off—"

  "No," Racart interrupted softly. "I did not leave you on purpose. At least not my purpose."

  "Then the Nale'nid—"

  "Yes. And beyond that I don't know what to tell you." The calm left his face, to be replaced by an expression of pain, of confusion badly masked by his distant and intense gaze over the sea. When Racart turned to face the pilot, Seth saw the exhaustion drawn in the lines of his friend's face; Racart's eyes seemed as misty as the sea, and wearily unfocused. "There were others," Racart said dully, "not just the three you and I were watching. They came in the fog and took me . . . places . . . before they left me—farther up the way."

  Seth hesitated, wanting to ask where and how and a dozen other questions, but uncertain if he should press. "What places?" he said finally, softly.

  "Don't ask. Not yet." Racart looked at him for a long moment, then tossed his head southward and said, "Let's head back. It's starting to get chilly."

  Seth nodded and fell in behind him, or beside him when the path allowed. They walked mostly in silence; but when Racart asked if he had had any difficulties of his own, Seth described his search and his hike, and the sounds he had heard from the Nale'nid. "Different people," Racart declared firmly, but beyond that he would not go.

  Seth was concerned about Racart's reticence, but was afraid to disturb him further. Nevertheless, as they approached the Lambrose perimeter, the dwellings and shops and conversion-plants a welcome sight ahead, Seth reflected that the story would have to be heard, and soon. The mynalar problem involved not only Ernathe but the entire Cluster—and in the end that problem meant the Nale'nid. The decision of what to do would demand every available bit of information.

  He watched Racart swinging his small torso in a long, easy stride, his mouth set in a curious grimness, his eyes set straight ahead. Something Racart knew did not speak lightly of the Nale'nid; and that was too bad, because Seth would have preferred to believe that they were a friendly people. The memory of the sea-woman fluttered through his mind. He firmly tried to ignore it, to chase it away.

  The perimeter watch strolled by to greet them as they passed into the town, and with a gesture of exaggerated officiality checked their names off against the outbound list. They headed immediately for shelter and food.

  * * *

  "You're really sure, are you, that this mynalar is so important?" Racart asked furiously. He smote the table with a fist and ale sloshed over the rims of the two mugs . . .

  Seth looked around the bar with a wary eye, hoping no one would heed them. Tired and aching, he had suggested relaxing in the bar, with the intent of drawing Racart out on the afternoon's mysterious events. Instead he had elicited anger. Against all visible logic, Racart was defending the Nale'nid against the presumed danger of his own people. He seemed wholly unaware of the real importance of the colony, of the reason his people were here at the Cluster Council's expense. But then, he had been born here and had never had to concern himself with such matters.

  "Yes," said Seth.

  "Why? Just so the elite on a dozen worlds can be treated to longer lifetimes than the rest of us have?" Racart asked sarcastically. He snorted and drank from his ale.

  "No." Seth kept his face purposely expressionless. "Only the mynalar-e is used for the nerve regeneration—though you're partly right, it was originally the only mynalar. It's valuable, sure, and it's not used only for the old and the elite, by the way. But the truly important drug is mynalar-g." Racart looked blank. "It hasn't actually been used successfully yet."

  "So?"

  "It's a—hallucinogen. An unusual, and actually rather mild hallucinogen." Seth chose his words very carefully, trying to explain in a straightforward manner. "All right, let me go back a bit. You know that we, and I mean the council as well as the Transport Guild, have been trying to duplicate the old techniques of star-flight. Or maybe you don't know. Our flux-drive ships do the job, they tie some of the worlds together—but they're terribly, terribly inefficient. They bludgeon and struggle their way between the stars like fish trying to walk between streams.

  "The Old Cluster had a better way—starship-rigging. Most of the actual technology has been preserved, but it's really the art that was lost, not the science. And what an art—sailing huge vessels on the winds and tides and currents of flux-space, guided by nothing more than the pilot's mind! It was graceful and efficient, and we don't know how to do it.

  "We need it, Racart—we need to learn it again, it's the only way we can bring all the worlds of the Cluster back together."

  "Need?" Racart asked doubtfully. "Or want?"

  Seth breathed sharply and looked straight into his friend's eyes. "Need. There are only fourteen star systems joined now, and shakily at that, by the biggest fleet we can manage. Fourteen, out of nearly a hundred before the entropy wars—and that in the Cluster alone, never mind the Beyond. We've been to other systems, many of them still civilized if not spacefaring. Most of them would like to join the Cluster or could be persuaded, but we haven't the strength to bring them together, the distances are too great."

  "You spoke of need," Racart reminded him. His mouth and brows were set in stubborn resistance, barely softened by the gloom of the bar.

  "Yes—because if we don't do it now we may never have another chance." Seth was frustrated; he knew he was speaking of something that seemed to be beyond Racart's world. But it did matter to Racart and to Ernathe. "I don't know how much history or news reaches you here, but there are bad relations in the Cluster—races that would like us to f
ail. Holdover from the entropy wars, I suppose. The Lacenthi, who were human-friends in the Old Cluster, aren't anymore. And the Querlin have always been enemies—not just of humans but of all mammaloids. Racart, in not too many years this universe is coming alive in full bloom again, and we'd better have some accord when it happens—and not be just dozens of scattered worlds."

  Racart stared at him thoughtfully, his eyes not denying Seth's words, but also not yet conceding their importance. He clenched his mug with interlocking fingers and lowered his eyes to the table. "The council protects us here on Ernathe, doesn't it?"

  "There is a Lacenthi system only half a dozen light-years from here," Seth said, shrugging.

  "Okay, so maybe the Cluster has to be reunited—don't ask me, mind you, Ernathe is the only place I know—but supposing you're right. What does that have to do with us, with mynalar, with the Nale'nid?" Racart's eyes were directed into his ale, and his voice was low, seeking.

  Seth frowned, realized he had lost his original track. "Mynalar-g may be the answer to starship-rigging—or at least a part of it. The drug, itself, sets the mind free to ramble and blunder about in a fantasy world. And according to what we know that's the beginning of learning to fly a rigger-ship."

  He hesitated. The real argument had been made. Did Racart want to hear, now, about starpiloting? "It was the pilot who counted in those ships, Racart—not a machine, but a man who reached into the flux with his own mind through a sensory net, a sail. He visualized the tides between the stars and steered like a sailor on the sea, with rudder and keel and oars. He flew by building a fantasy—an image so real that it matched the real currents and storms of flux-space. That's all the flux is, Racart—a deep, unbottled fantasy that happens to be real.