The Blue World (12 page)

“Yes, yes,”
cried Blasdel. “I agree to anything! But I must hurry to the
hoodwink tower. While we quibble Sklar Hast and his bandits are
capturing intercessors!”

“And what is
the harm there?” inquired Berwick mildly.

“You state
that King Kragen has been observed from Adelvine proceeding west;
hence the intercessors are in no danger and presumably will be
allowed to return once Sklar Hast is assured that King Kragen is no
longer a danger. Conversely, if the intercessors have betrayed Sklar
Hast and and given information to King Kragen so that he waits at the
far west off Sciona Float, then they deserve to die with the rest. It
is justice of the most precise and exquisite balance.”

“That is the
difficulty,” muttered Blasdel, trying to push past Berwick to
the door. “I cannot answer for the silence of the other
intercessors. Suppose one among them has notified King Kragen? Then a
great tragedy ensues.”

“Interesting!
So you can indeed summon King Kragen when you so desire?”

“Yes, yes,
but, mind you, this is a secret, And now—“

“It follows
then that you always know the whereabouts of King Kragen. How do you
achieve this?”

“There is no
time to explain; suffice it to say that a means is at hand.”

“Right here?
In your workroom?”

“Yes indeed.
Now stand aside. After I have broadcast the warning, I will make all
clear. Stand aside then!”

Berwick shrugged
and allowed Blasdel to run from the cottage, through the garden to
the edge of the pad. Blasdel stopped short at the water’s edge. The
coracle had disappeared. Where previously Apprise Float had raised
its foliage and its hoodwink tower against the dusk, there was now
only blank water and blank sky. The pad floated free; urged by the
west wind of evening it already had left Apprise Float behind.
Blasdel gave an inarticulate sound of fury and woe. He turned to find
Berwick standing behind him. “What has happened?” Blasdel
asked.

“It seems that
while we talked, advertisermen cut through the stem of your pad. At
least this is my presumption.”

“Yes, yes,”
grated Blasdel. “So much is obvious. What else?”

Berwick shrugged.
“It appears that, willy-nilly, whether we like it or not, we are
part of the great emigration. Now that such is the case, I am
relieved to know that you have a means to determine the whereabouts
of King Kragen. Come. Let us make use of this device and reassure
ourselves.”

Blasdel made a
harsh, throaty sound. He crouched and for a moment seemed on the
point of hurling himself at Phyral Berwick. From the shadows of the
verdure appeared another man. Berwick pointed. “I believe Sklar
Hast himself is at hand.”

“You tricked
me,” groaned Barquan Blasdel between clenched teeth. “You
have performed an infamous act, which you shall regret.”

“I have done
no such deed, although it appears that you may well have
misunderstood my position. But the time for recrimination is not now.
We share a similar problem, which is how to escape the malevolence of
King Kragen. I suggest that you now proceed to locate him.”

Without a word
Blasdel turned, proceeded to his cottage. He entered the main room,
with Berwick and Sklar Hast close behind. He crossed to the wall,
lifted a panel to reveal an inner room. He brought more lights; all
entered. A hole had been cut in the floor and through the pad, the
spongy tissue having been painted with a black varnish to prevent its
growing together. A tube fashioned from fine yellow stalk perhaps
four inches in diameter led down into the water. “At the
bottom,” said Blasdel curtly, “is a carefully devised horn
of exact shape and quality. The end is four feet in diameter and
covered with a diaphragm of seasoned and varnished pad-skin. King
Kragen emits a sound to which this horn is highly sensitive.” He
went to the tube, put down his ear, listened, slowly turned the tube
around a vertical axis. He shook his head. “I hear nothing. This
means that King Kragen is at least ten miles distant. If he is closer
I can detect him. He passed to the west early today; presumably he
swims somewhere near Vidmar or Leumar or Populous Equity.”

Sklar Hast laughed
quietly. “Urged there by the intercessors?”

Blasdel gave a sour
shrug. “As to that I have nothing to say.”

“How, then, do
you summon King Kragen?”

Blasdel pointed to
a rod rising from the door, the top of which terminated in a crank.
“In the water below is a drum. Inside this drum fits a wheel.
When the crank is turned, the wheel, working in resin, rubs against
the drum and emits a signal. King Kragen can sense this sound from a
great distance—once again about ten miles. Assume he is at,
say, Sankston, and is needed at Bickle. The intercessor at The
Bandings calls him, until the horn reveals him to be four or five
miles distant, where-upon the intercessor at Quatrefoil calls him,
then the Hastings intercessor, and so forth until he is within range
of the intercessor at Bickle Float.”

“I see,”
said Sklar Hast. “In this fashion Semm Voiderveg called King
Kragen to Tranque. Whereupon King Kragen destroyed Tranque Float and
killed forty-three persons.”

“That is the
case.”

“And you have
the hypocrisy to call us murderers!”

Blasdel once more
shrugged and said nothing.

Phyral Berwick
said, “Perhaps it is fortunate that Semm Voiderveg is already
dead. He would have been selected to accompany the emigration, and
his lot would not have been a happy one.”

“This is
unreasonable!” Barquan Blasdel declared heatedly. “He was
as faithful to his convictions as Sklar Hast is to his own! After
all, Voiderveg did not enjoy the devastation of Tranque Float. It was
his home. Many of those who were killed were his friends. He gave his
faith and his trust utterly to King Kragen. And, in return, was
killed.”

Sklar Hast swung
around. “And what of you?”

Blasdel shook his
head sadly. “I am a man who thinks at many levels.”

Sklar Hast turned
away in disgust. He spoke to Berwick. “What should we do with
this apparatus? Destroy it? Or preserve it?”

Berwick considered.
“We might on some occasion wish to listen for King Kragen. I
doubt if we will ever desire to summon him.”

Sklar Hast gave a
sardonic jerk of his head. “Who knows? To his death perhaps? He
turned to Blasdel. “What persons are aboard the float in
addition to us?”

“My spouse—in the cottage
two roofs along. Three young daughters who weave ornaments for the
Star-cursing Festival. Three older daughters who prove themselves to
three stalwarts. All are unaware that their pad floats on the deep
ocean.” His voice quavered. “None wish to become emigrants
to a strange line of floats.”

Sklar Hast said,
“No more do any of the rest of us—but we were forced to
choose. I feel no pity for them, or for you. There will be work for
all hands. Indeed, we may formulate a new guild: the Kragen-killers.
If rumor is accurate, they infest the ocean.”

He left the room
and went out into the night. Blasdel stood rigid, numbed by the
alteration in his circumstances. He slowly turned, cast a rancorous
glare at Phyral Berwick, who stolidly returned the gaze. Blasdel gave
an angry snort of sheer frustration. He went to listen once more at
the detecting horn. Then he also left the room.

Berwick followed
and lowered the panel. Both joined Sklar Hast at the edge of the pad,
where now several coracles were tied. A dozen men stood in the
garden. Sklar Hast turned to Blasdel. “Summon your spouse, your
daughters, and those who test them. Explain the circumstances, and
gather your belongings. The evening breeze is at hand and blows us
west. We journey east.”

Blasdel departed,
accompanied by Berwick. Sklar Hast and the others entered the
workroom, carried everything of value or utility to the coracles,
including the small metal relict, the sixty-one books, the listening
horn, and the summoning drum. Then all embarked in the coracles, and
Barquan Blasdel’s beautiful pad was left to drift solitary upon the
ocean.

Morning came to the
ocean and with it the breeze from the west. Sails were rigged and the
oarsmen rested. The floats could no longer be seen; the ocean was a
ruffled blue mirror in all directions. Sklar Hast lowered Blasdel’s
horn into the water, listened. Nothing could be heard. Barquan
Blasdel did the same and agreed that King Kragen was nowhere near.

There were perhaps
six hundred coracles in the flotilla, each carrying from three to six
persons, with as much gear, household equipment, and tools as
possible, together with sacks of food and water.

Two or three hours
after sunrise the breeze died. The sails were lowered and oars alone
propelled the coracles. At noon the sun burned brightly down, and
awnings were rigged overhead to fend away the glare.

Late in the day
several medium-sized floats were seen ahead and slightly to the
north. The Home Floats and King Kragen were still too close at hand
to make the idea of permanent habitation attractive or feasible, but
as the evening breeze would soon be rising, to blow the coracles back
to the west, the flotilla headed toward the floats in order to tie up
and save the oarsmen the effort of rowing into the wind. After
twenty-four hours in the coracles, a chance to disembark, to stretch
the legs and walk back and forth would be more than welcome.

With the sun low in
the west, shining over the backs of the voyagers, the coracles
approached the strange floats. They were in general appearance to the
Home Floats, but wild and less ordered, with vegetation rampant, so
that the central spike was almost a pyramid of foliage. The breeze,
blowing from the floats, brought an odor that astonished Sklar Hast.
He called to Roger Kelso, who rowed in a nearby coracle.

“Do you smell what I think I
smell?”

Roger Kelso tested
the air, raised his eyebrows. “I’m not sure. I smell
something… Perhaps just rubbish, or a dead fish.”

“Perhaps.”
Sklar Hast, standing in the coracle, looked carefully through the
tangle, but could see nothing. Other folk in other coracles likewise
had scented the stench from the float and were likewise looking
uneasily into the foliage. But nothing moved and no sounds were to be
heard. The first coracle nosed up to the edge of the float; the youth
in the bow jumped ashore with a stake and painter; others did
likewise, and presently all the coracles were tied up, either to the
float or to one another.

Not everyone
alighted, and those who did remained close to the coracles. Presently
one of the young men came upon the source of the odor: an area
littered with refuse. Nearby was a charred area, where coals still
glowed among ashes and smoldering sponge husks. The floats were
inhabited.

“By whom?”
whispered Meril Rohan. “Who can they be?”

Sklar Hast called
out to the jungle: “Come forth! Show yourselves! We mean no
harm!”

There was silence,
except for the rustle of the wind in the foliage. The sun was now
gone, and the afterglow began to darken over the float.

“Look here!”
This was the call of a young niggler who had ventured a few hundred
yards around the edge of the float. He came running back, holding an
object which he gave to Phyral Berwick: a necklace, or at least a
circular cord from which was suspended a number of glossy reddish
chunks of metal.

Sklar Hast looked
with awe toward the foliage. “Come forth! We wish to speak with
you!”

He received no
answer.

“Savages,
probably filthy and naked,” muttered Phyral Berwick. “But
they have what we don’t have—metal. Where do they get it?”

From the tangle now
came a screech, a terrible quavering sound full of rage and menace,
and at me same time a number of sticks came hurtling down from the
sky.

“We’re not
welcome,” said Sklar Hast. “This is clear. Back to our
floats.”

The voyagers
reembarked, with much more celerity than they had gone ashore. From
the foliage came another screech, this time of exultation and mirth,
and a series of mad hoots, which raised the hair on the necks, of the
voyagers.

The coracles were
cast off and drifted into the lee of the floats, a hundred yards
offshore, In the dusk the voyagers saw a number of pallid shapes
emerge from the foliage to run back and forth along the shore,
prancing and capering. Their faces and physiognomy could not be
discerned.

Sklar Hast rowed
hist coracle a cautious few yards closer, but was greeted by a new
shower of sticks and once again retreated.

Darkness fell, and
the coracles waited out the evening breeze. On the float a fire was
kindled, and two or three dozen manlike creatures emerged to stand in
the flicker. Roger Kelso called to Sklar Hast across the water:
“Somewhere I have read of a group of Second or Third folk who
committed unorthodox acts and were ‘banished’—a
word that well may mean ‘sent away’. If so, and if they came in
this direction, these must be their descendants.”

“It is
chilling to contemplate how little is the distance between us and
savagery,” said Sklar Hast. “Still—they have
copper, and we do not.”

“How is this?”
demanded Rubal Gallager. “Where does it come from?”

No one made
response, and all looked back across the dark water at the floats,
now silhouetted against the sky. With the end of dusk and the coming
of the constellations the wind died, and once more the flotilla
proceeded east, across water calm and smooth. All night some rowed
while others slept, until finally the first amber flash to the east
brought with it a whisper of the welcome wind from the west. Sails
were raised; into the dawn scudded the coracles, over a bright, empty
sea.

The second day was
like the first, with a brief rain squall halfway through the
afternoon, which served to replenish the jugs. Swindlers netted
various edible sea-creatures, and while the coracles carried ample
food, this demonstrated ability to subsist, if necessary, from the
ocean was reassuring, and there was singing and badinage between the
coracles.

On the morning of
the third day a small kragen was observed. It approached from the
north, swimming its lunging breast-stroke, and halted a hundred yards
distant to watch the flotilla pass. It twitched its vanes, darted
forward, almost as if in an effort to alarm the voyagers, then sank
abruptly below the surface. A moment later certain of the swindlers
gazing down through a water-box saw it pass below—a great
sprawling, writhing shadow. A quarter-mile to the south it surfaced
and lay floating quietly, then presently disappeared.

Toward the end of
the fourth day a line of floats was observed ahead, as rich and
beautiful as the Home Floats, though perhaps half as numerous. From
the voyagers came rapturous murmurs. Sklar Hast stood up in his
coracle, signaled for a conference, and all the other coracles drew
close, to form a great raft drifting and rocking on the water.

Sklar Hast said,
“Here are the first floats we have encountered, aside from the
floats of the savages. We move slowly. King Kragen can swim three
times our speed. In a single day and night—if he so chose,
and if he knew our whereabouts—he could come to find us. I
feel that we should not consider landing here, but should proceed
till we come to at least one other line of floats.”

Murmurs of
disappointment arose, for these floats, lush and heavy with black,
green, orange, and gold vegetation, after four days on the ocean,
seemed an Arcadian vision.

There was
discussion, a certain amount of argument, and some grumbling to the
effect that King Kragen would never see fit to swim this far, either
from curiosity or vindictive rage. Phyral Berwick sided with Sklar
Hast, as did most of the caste-elders and guild-masters; and finally
amid soft cries of regret the floats were left behind. Again the
flotilla sailed out upon the empty sea.

At noon on the
sixth day another line of floats was sighted, and all knew that here
was to be the new home. All were now happy that the first line had
been passed. These were as extensive, as spacious, and even more
numerous than the Home Floats, with myriads of the prized small pads
upon which a family could build and cultivate to its own taste.

The flotilla landed
at a large float near the center of the line. There were no evidence
of occupation, by savages or otherwise. The coracles were unloaded
and moved to a cove where they could not be seen from the sea. In the
evening, after a festive supper, there was an informal council of the
guild-masters and caste-elders.

“Our two
immediate problems,” said Phyral Berwick, “aside from the
inevitable toil of establishing ourselves in comfort and security,
are the disposition of our hostages, and our organization. These are
both problems of some complexity. The matter of organizing ourselves
into a responsible group is perhaps the simplest. The problem is
this: Looking around me, I see eight Master Hoodwinks, six Master
Larceners, sixteen Master Advertisers, and so on. Naturally all
cannot be masters. My suggestion is that the various guild-masters
confer and select one of their number as grand-master, by lot, by
seniority, or by any other means. Then we can function with more
decisiveness. This can be a temporary arrangement at least, until we
settle other of the floats.

“Secondly—what of those whom we have with us? What of them? They have served
their purpose, but now what? We can’t kill them, we can’t keep them
in a pen, we can’t let them return to the Home Floats—at
least not yet. We must consider the matter carefully?”

All turned to look
toward the group of intercessors who sat with their families somewhat
to the side. The intercessors themselves evinced glumness and
dissatisfaction in varying degrees. The spouses and older children
appeared less concerned, while the very young, romping with others of
their own age, were in the best of spirits.

Barquan Blasdel,
noticing that his case was under discussion, scowled, started to
rise, then thought better of it and muttered something to the
Parnassus Intercessor Luke Robinet.

Roger Kelso said,
“If we could trust them to leave us in peace, then there would
be no problem. We could give them coracles, stores, and wish them
well. But as sure as we sit here, as soon as they returned to the
Home Floats, there would be plots and schemes. Blasdel, for one,
would like nothing better than to bring King Kragen across the water
to punish us.”

“We must
destroy the beast,” said Sklar Hast in a voice of absolute
dedication.

“Easier said
than done. Though I expect that long years will pass before King
Kragen again ventures, near a hoodwink tower.”

“In the
meantime—the intercessors may not return,” said Phyral
Berwick. “This is a distasteful situation. The act of placing
restraints upon anyone violates our most cherished traditions—but it must be. The question becomes: how to enforce these restraints
without inflicting harshness?”

The problem was
debated at length, and finally a solution was achieved. Most of the
coracles were to-be taken to a distant float and hidden, where the
intercessors could not find them. Only sufficient coracles to serve
the needs of swindlers and blackguards and hooligans, at their
respective tasks of fish-swindling, arbor-building and
net-emplacement, would be retained. These would be moved to a
location forbidden to the intercessors on pain of incarceration in a
withe cage. To guarantee that coracles would not be stolen by night,
oars and sails would be impounded, in a locked and guarded case. Also—and this stratagem was propounded in a low voice by Roger
Kelso, so that the intercessors might not hear—to the keel of
each coracle, below the waterline, a line would be attached. This
line would run underneath the float and communicate with an alarm of
some kind. When the swindlers used a coracle, they would discreetly
detach the line, and restore it when they returned. Sklar Hast
suggested that four or five young swindlers be appointed to guard the
coracles and to make sure that the alarm lines were at all times
attached when the coracles were not in use.

The system was
accepted as that which imposed the least rigor upon the intercessors.
Barquan Blasdel, when the prohibitions were explained, waxed
indignant. “First you kidnap us and bundle us across perilous
seas, then you perform the infamy of proscribing to our feet certain
portions of the float! What do you expect of us?”

“We expect
cooperation,” said Sklar Hast in the driest of voices. “Also
work. Here, on the New Floats, everyone works, including
intercessors, because here there is no need for intercession.”

“You show no
more humility or spiritual sense than a six-barb conger,” said
Barquan Blasdel evenly.

Sklar Hast
shrugged. “Eventually we will kill King Kragen, then you may
walk where you will and be humble where you will—but until
the loathsome beast settles dead to the ocean’s floor, you must keep
a circumspect distance between yourself and our coracles.”

Barquan Blasdel
stared at Sklar Hast a full ten seconds. “You have further
designs upon the life of King Kragen?”

“Who knows
what the future holds?” said Sklar Hast.

On the following
day the great task of altering the wild new float began. Pads at the
center of the float were designated for removal, in order to form a
lagoon. Nigglers stripped away the surface skin, which would serve a
great variety of purposes. The pulp below was cut into strips, which
when dry and stiff would serve as insulation and planking, or when
plucked and shredded became cushioning, fuel, or an ingredient of the
coarse paper produced by scriveners. The ribs and tubes of the pads
were put aside to season, and the lower membrane, this of the fine
transparent quality suitable for windows, was taken. Below were the
great cantilever ribs, from which coracle keels and sponge arbors
were constructed, and below this the stems, over which sleeves were
now fitted to extend above the water level. Sap exuding was collected
in buckets, boiled and aged to make varnish. Later, perhaps in a
month or two when the sap had stopped flowing, the stem would be cut
by advertisermen, stripped of fiber for ropes and cordage, and woody
strips for withe.