Seas of Ernathe (15 page)

Nale'nid, upon appearing in the Ernathene settlements and ships, remained inconspicuous at need, almost to the point of invisibility.
Focus
: upon suppression of the sea-human aura, the electric field of the living body that betrays that body's presence non-visually and non-audibly, that signals to other bodies,
"There is someone here
.
"

Nale'nid moved to and from the high-pressure environment of the undersea city without a trace of decompression sickness.
Focus
: upon control of the physiological balance, upon containment and orderly removal of unwanted gases from within the bodily tissues.

Nale'nid traveled virtually anywhere in their world; at the speed of a whisper and an eyeblink.
Focus
 . . .

Ah, this was the perplexing one, the exciting one, the giveaway to all the rest.

It was dizzying to think about, but Seth was beginning to get used to the dizziness.

"You travel through flux-space, don't you?" he asked Lo'ela, and felt that for the first time he was asking an educated question.

That is what you call it, the world within the world? Yes, then, we do
. She lightly rubbed the top of his right hand and reached to give him a quick tickle in the ribs; this was a trick she had just learned, and she thought it great fun.

"Stop that!" he shouted, squirming and slapping at her hand.

"Ha-ha, ho!" she said, going after him again. He could not keep from laughing this time, but he shook a warning finger at her.

She fell suddenly sober, solemn.
You wish to learn more of this "flux" business
.

"It could be very important."

Whether, maybe, it is the same as the "flux" business of your own people?

Seth nodded.

I don't know. Perhaps if you told me more of it, so that I could gather an image as you talk
.

He considered that. "All right." And he talked, much as before, about the flux-space in which his ship and others operated—what was known of it, what not known, how it was thought that it might be mastered more efficiently, the currents and energies harnessed . . .

Yes. Yes, Starman Friend, it is the same. But this travel from world to world
—
that is something of which we know nothing. We do not build ships, we build homes and things of this world
. Lo'ela gazed at him with a deeply interested frown.

"Then—" and he stopped. The thought went no further. What was it he ought to be thinking of?

The watery light outside the dome was fading to a somber indigo blue, as evening settled downward through the sea to the ocean-floor city of the Nale'nid. Pal'onar was an assortment of gloomy, gray shapes on the darkening seabed—and though Seth could no longer actually see the movements of people in the other domes, he knew that life and movement went on as always. Soon the soft glow of the luminescent sea-mosses and the cultured anemones would begin to appear, to gently push back the cold dark of night from the bottom of the sea.

"Is flux—is it the source of your other powers, also?" he asked softly.

Lo'ela looked at him with uncertain eyes. A welter of perplexed thoughts struck him, rattled around, and subsided. Lo'ela suddenly became shy.
How can I say, without better knowing your ways of thinking? But I believe, yes, you might call it a "source"
—
or, perhaps better, a "focus."
She sighed, her eyes wide.

Seth realized that questions-and-answers would only take him so far; the best he might do would be to puzzle out as much as possible himself, and meanwhile to immerse himself in Nale'nid ways, until he knew he understood. But then, that was what he wanted to do, anyway. He gazed at the sea-girl and accepted her smiling stare in return. Lo'ela was, he realized, beginning to
focus
more keenly upon him than ever before. But he would not yet admit that the same might be true of him, as well.

* * *

Later, he asked Lo'ela to tell him something of the history of her people.

I can find someone who knows of it, if you would like
, she responded brightly. That surprised him, but she explained that there were relatively few persons who
focused
upon such matters as history, parentage, and the like.
There are a few things I can tell you, though,
she added on second thought.
We came to live beneath the sea many generations ago, but not beyond the memory of our learned rememberers. We came because the sun was harming us, and we were a failing people. We learned not to fail here.

Learned to
focus
beneath the sea? Seth wondered. Unstable Lambern—yes, and some day it would act up again and drench the Ernathe landscape with killing or mutating radiation. Was that it, then, was
focus
a result of forced evolution? "Many generations" ago could have been near the time of the entropy wars. Had Ernathe been settled at that time, a planet whose danger was never suspected? Were the Nale'nid evolved humans, an offshoot of his own people?

That, Lo'ela did not know.

But it made the entire human-Nale'nid confrontation seem that much more ludicrous. Though when he considered the matter, he thought of the Nale'nid as "people"—regardless of whether or not they were of "true human" origin.

It was time, perhaps, that he asked the questions he had been putting off for so long. "Lo'ela, why are your people at war with my people? What have we done that has so disturbed you—or the others?"

War? Disturbed?
She blinked rapidly.

"The things they are doing to our settlements, disrupting production plants, and harvesting ships. And—" suddenly it came back, in a nerve-jarring rush—"Lo'ela, when my own ship was arriving, coming to land on this planet—you, somebody, some of the sea-people attacked us."

Lo'ela looked at him blankly, wonderingly.

"They took over the defenses that protect the planet from intruders, they took over those weapons and attacked us. My ship, Lo'ela. We weren't harmed, fortunately, but we might well have been destroyed.

"Why?" he demanded softly, only half trying to keep the until-now repressed anger from his voice.

Lo'ela's face changed slowly, to an expression of concentration.
Well
, she thought slowly and very deliberately,
I do not know of these things, myself, so I can only tell you why they would have occurred if in fact I did know of them
.

"Yes, please."

Curiosity.

He stared. "Curiosity? That's all? Curiosity?" What madness was this? Shooting at starships, sabotaging ocean-ships—out of curiosity?

Curiosity, yes. To learn of your kind, to experiment. I have heard it said by others of my own that you seem such
structured
creatures. That has been found remarkable
—
your human unadaptability.
She swallowed uncomfortably and looked as though she wanted to get off the subject. A Nale'nid reaction, or a human one?

Seth's mouth froze in a crooked, disbelieving gape—while his thoughts churned. Well, he'd wanted to know, so he had it coming. "Are you all in on this?" he asked tightly, sounding a bit more paranoid than he had intended.

Oh no, no. I am not certain, even, just who is involved. Only those who
—

"—focus," he said sourly, even as she finished the thought.

She grinned uncertainly.

Seth sighed. "Lo'ela, I have a friend. An Ernathene. His name is Racart, and—"

I do not know.

"You—"

I do not know if he is with my people. Or if he is safe. That is what you wonder. I—

"Can you find out? It is very important." He told her of Racart's first abduction and return, and of the affair on the harvester
Ardello
. "Of course it is possible that he may have come back to the settlement by now."

She listened thoughtfully. She seemed saddened by the tale, and worried that it had upset Seth.
I will ask Al'ym and Ga'yl to ask of people they know. Perhaps we can learn of your Racart that way.

Seth relaxed somewhat. For reasons undefined, he felt no genuine urgency; he knew that time was slipping by, that he should report to his people, find Racart, make arrangements—but there was much to be done here, as well, and time seemed not so important as continuity, balance, and finding his way into the many-layered ways of Nale'nid thinking, Nale'nid being. And, there was Lo'ela.

He would remain here a while, doing what he was doing. That resolution gave him a quiet, and an unfamiliar, peace of mind.

He said, touching her cheek, "I suppose we will find these things out if we are patient."

Lo'ela said nothing, but once again she was smiling.

* * *

Later, she asked if they might go together to look at the stars. Seth agreed willingly enough but asked her, as she touched him to begin the "flux" journey, if she had not already seen the stars many times.
It never occurred to me to notice them,
she answered.
Now come
—
you are attuned enough that we should no longer need Al'ym or Ga'yl to travel.

Quickly, quietly, they traveled from the city to a place on the nightside surface. It was cloudy; blanketed. They moved again. And again. The third time landed them on a high, flat promontory—under a sky fantastically showered with rivets of flame, the fires of a hundred thousand Cluster suns.

Lo'ela stared up at the sight, reacting slowly, her thoughts concentrating on Seth's and slowly filling with her own sense of awe as she absorbed his fascination. It had been weeks since Ernathe's cloudy skies had given Seth such a splendid view of the Cluster. Scattered fragments of cloud framed the sky near the horizon and a few scudded high overhead, lending perspective and depth to the clear, unparalleled spectacle. No part of the sky was without stars, but they concentrated smoothly, gradually, toward the central regions of the Cluster, which from this vantage point appeared slightly to one side of the zenith. Here the bits of flame clustered so densely as to merge into smudges of bright color. Looser and lonelier suns were flung in raindrop spatters against darkness, or against the glittery blur of dimmer, distant light.

Automatically, Seth searched for the suns of the Central Worlds, but it was an impossible effort; they were hopelessly lost in the sea of pointed lights. Lo'ela stirred against him, pressing close to his side. Her face was turned upward, her mouth open wide, her left arm half raised to point at the stars, her right arm tightly linked in Seth's. Her mind touched his with raw emotional static; she was experiencing joy, terror, awe, lust—perhaps it was just the winds of idle thoughts touching him, subdued emotions scattering free in confusing signals. Seth couldn't be sure, but he felt a kinship in everything he sensed from her, and in answer he moved his arm around her waist and squeezed affectionately, surprised again by the suppleness of her body beneath the curious, silken garment.

She pressed closer and said, so softly he did not know whether it was a whisper or a thought,
"Your worlds?"

The memory of his homeworlds rushed over him in a swirl and rumbled away lost behind the sensation of the sea-woman at his side, and he pointed awkwardly, just to the right of the thickest concentration of stars, and said, "There . . . somewhere there."

It is so difficult to tell?

"Very difficult, Lo'ela." He gazed at her and knew that he was drifting into a deadly and beautiful state of mind, and he cared not at all that he knew it. Looking up from her eyes, back into the sky, with blurry eyes of his own, he felt his mind opening in a great rush and a hopeless scramble. In it and around it was the presence of Lo'ela the sea-woman, the Nale'nid. Her thoughts touched and danced about, and filled his, and sighed within his mind; and he held her tightly, then, hugging as she put her arms around his neck. For the moment he knew that he had found unexpected happiness, and he determined that, as long as he knew the presence of her human, Nale'nid love, gentle as the caress of her thoughts, this was something with which he would never willingly part.

On a later day, Lo'ela announced that it was time, if Seth was willing, to travel to witness the "grotto-heralding." She gaily refused to give any details, and simply insisted that it would be an experience different from any he had had so far among the Nale'nid. She said it would help him to make sense of his ideas about her people. They would be underwater,
in
the water, most of the day—so Seth would be wearing underwater breathing equipment, to keep matters simpler.

Seth examined the diving gear with great care; it had been "secured" for him by Ga'yl, in a trip the Nale'nid had made to Lambrose. (That gave Seth a bad moment of suspicion as to Ga'yl's possible role in some of the Nale'nid disturbances, but Lo'ela assured him that her brother was innocent of such matters.) Lo'ela explained to him that the gear would make his safety easier to ensure.
I could see to your air-needs as I have in the past to your tissue gases
—
bends?—but it would be tiring, and for such a long time your own methods are more suitable
. She waited expectantly while he fitted the tubes of the film-mask together with the air-extraction regulator and tiny reserve bottles and then sat back to study the assembled contrivance.

Though he had dived before, he had never used a device quite like this, and he was slightly unnerved by its apparent simplicity.

"All right," he said, "I guess I'm all set." He was already stripped down to the simple wrap-on shorts Lo'ela had given him. She herself was wearing very little, just two stretchy swaths that offered modest protection but no more, and that only at Seth's rather distracted request; with her lightly tanned flanks exposed, she looked more than ever like an adolescent girl, but in her carriage she was as graceful as an adult dancer. Seth cleared his throat and looked back to the details of his gear.

First he put on the light, skintight jacket, with the accompanying buoyancy-control belt. Then he strapped the regulator and two miniature bottles to his waist, switched on the breather unit and checked a small gauge for proper airflow before fitting the featherweight film-mask over his face and head. The transition to breathing inside the glovelike mask was so easy as to be unnoticeable; the diaphragm-film covering his mouth and nose flexed gently with his breath and with the surge of circulating air. His voice was only slightly distorted by the diaphragm as he spoke. "Okay. I think." As a sudden afterthought, he stooped and picked up the foot fins lying beside him on the floor.