The Blue World (13 page)

The aperture thus
left vacant would become the float lagoon: an anchorage for coracles,
a pond for captive food-fish, a source of scenic delight, and a
locale for water sports.

While the nigglers
stripped pad-skin from the future lagoon, others cleared away waste
vegetation, which was burned for ash; boys climbed the central spikes
with buckets, to collect pollen from the great fruiting pods, and
this when tested proved to be a quality even finer and more fragrant
than the famed Maudelinda yield, it which was a cause for great
pleasure.

As soon as withes
had been seasoned, larceners and felons set to work constructing
huts, while the bezzlers, traditionally the monitors of sanitation,
cleanliness, and the purity of the water supply, constructed
reservoirs to store the afternoon rainfall. At all these tasks the
intercessors, their spouses and children, assisted with more or less
good grace and gradually became divided into two groups: those who
gave over their initial resentment and began to adapt themselves Ito
the new life, and those others—about half—who would
not be reconciled and held themselves dourly aloof. Of the latter
group Barquan Blasdel was the most notable representative, he made no
secret of his continuing resentment. All were careful to observe the
restraints put upon their movements, and night after night the
coracle alarm remained undisturbed.

One evening Sklar
Hast joined Roger Kelso and Rohan at a bench where they were
comparing the one Memoria which had been confiscated from Barquan
Blasdel with those that Meril Rohan had copied for herself. “I
presume there are differences?” Sklar Hast asked.

“Indeed,”
said Kelso. “It’s inevitable. The Firsts, whatever their other
talents, had few literary skills; some of the books contain much
repetition and dullness,

others are vainglorious and devote
pages to self-encomium. Others are anxious to explain in great detail
the vicissitudes that led to their presence on the Ship of Space.
Some of this, inevitably, is omitted in the copying so that every new
edition, in a sense, becomes a set of analects.” He tapped
Barquan Blasdel’s books. “These are very old and are the most
complete of my experience.” He opened one of the books, looked
along the pages. “The Firsts were, of course, a very mixed
group, derived from a social structure far more complicated than our
own. Apparently, they might belong to several different castes at
once. There are hints of this situation that I do not even profess to
understand.”

“According to
my reading of the Analects,” said Sklar Hast, “all describe
the Home Worlds as a place of maniacs.”

“We have to
take some of this with caution. Never forget that the Firsts were
human beings very little different from ourselves. Some were of the
most respected castes of the Home World society, until, as they
explain it, persons in authority turned on them and instituted a
savage persecution, ending, as we know, in our ancestors seizing
control of the Ship of Space and fleeing here.”

“It is all very confusing,”
said Sklar Hast. “None seems to have much contemporary
application. For instance, they do not tell us how they boiled
varnish on the Home World, or how they propelled their coracles. Do
creatures like the kragen infest the Home Worlds? If so, how do the
Home Folk deal with them? Do they kill them or feed them sponges? The
Firsts, to my knowledge, are silent on these points.”

“Evidently
they are not overly concerned,” said, Kelso reflectively.
“Otherwise they would have dealt with these matters at length.
There is much that they fail to make clear. As in our own case, the
various castes seemed trained to explicit trades. Especially
interesting are the memoirs of James Brunet. Like the others, he
professes several castes: Scientist, Forger, Caucasoid. All are
extinct among us, as the Forgers have all become scriveners. A part
of his Memorium consists of rather conventional exhortations to
virtue. But at the beginning of the book he says this.” Here
Kelso opened a book and read:

“To those
who follow us, to our children and grand-children, we can leave no
tangible objects of value. We brought nothing to the world but
ourselves and the wreckage of our lives. We will undoubtedly die here—a fate probably preferable to New Ossining, but by no means
the destiny any of us had planned for ourselves. There is no way to
escape. Of the entire group I alone have a technical education, most
of which I have forgotten. And to what end could I turn it? This is a
soft world. It consists of ocean, air, sunlight, and seaweed. There
is land nowhere. To escape—even if we had the craft to build
a new ship, which we do not—we need metal, and metal there is
none. Even to broadcast a radio signal we need metal. None … no
clay to make pottery, no silica for glass, no limestone for concrete,
no ore from which to smelt metal. Still, on reflection, all is not
hopeless. Ash is similar chemically to fire clay. The shells of
foraminifera are silica. Our own bones become a source of lime. A
very high-melt, if low-quality, glass could result if the three were
fused in the proper proportion. Presumably the ocean carries various
salts, but how to extract the metal without electricity? There is
iron in our blood: how to extract it? A strange helpless sensation to
live on this world where the hardest substance is our own bone! We
have, during our lives, taken so many things for granted, and now it
seems that no one can evoke something from nothing … This is a
problem on which I must think. An ingenious man can work wonders, and
I, a successful forger—or rather, almost successful—am certainly ingenious.”

Roger Kelso paused
in his reading. “This is the end of the chapter.”

“He seems to
have been a man of no great force,” mused Sklar Hast. “It
is true that metal can be found nowhere, except where the savages
contemptuously discard it.” On the bench before them was the bit
of metal which had once graced the workroom of Barquan Blasdel. Sklar
Hast lifted it, hefted it. “Obdurate stuff indeed.” He
reached for the crude copper necklace that they had found on the wild
floats. “Here is the great mystery: Where, how do the savages
derive this?”

Roger Kelso heaved
a deep sigh, shook his head in perplexity. “Eventually we will
learn.” He returned to the book. “He writes his next
chapter after a lapse of months:

“
Before I
proceed, I must provide as best I can a picture of the way the
universe works, for it is clear that none of my colleagues are in any
position to do so, excellent fellows though they are. Please do not
suspect me of whimsy: our personalities and social worth undoubtedly
vary with the context in which we live.
”

Here Kelso looked
up. “I don’t quite understand all of his implications. Does he
mean that his colleagues are excellent fellows? Or were not? Why
should he say this? His own caste doesn’t seem to be the highest… I
suppose that the matter is unimportant.” He turned the pages.
“He now goes into an elaborate set of theorizations regarding
the nature of the world, which, I confess, I find over complex, even
artificial. There is no consistency to his beliefs. Either he knows
nothing, or is confused, or the world essentially is inconsistent. He
claims that all matter is composed of less than a hundred ‘elements,’
joined together in ‘compounds.’ The elements are
constructed of smaller entities: ‘electrons,’ ‘protons,’
‘neutrons,’ and others, which are not necessarily matter,
but forces, depending on your point oft view; when electrons move,
the result is an electric current: a substance or condition—he is not clear here—of great energy and many capabilities.
Too much electricity is fatal; in smaller quantities we use it to
control our bodies. According to Brunet, all sorts of remarkable
things can be achieved with electricity.”

“Let us
provide ourselves an electric current then,” said Sklar Hast.
“This may become our weapon against the kragen.”

“The matter is
not so simple. In the first place, the electricity must be channeled
through metal wires.”

“Here is
metal,” said Sklar Hast, examining the fragments before him,
“though this is hardly likely to be sufficient.”

“The
electricity must also be generated,” said Kelso. “On the
Home Planet this seems to be a complicated process, requiring a great
deal of metal.”

“Then how do
we get metal? Are we so backward that, while even the savages strew
it around like sponge-husk, we have none?”

Kelso tilted his
head dubiously sidewise. “On other planets there seems to be no
problem. Ore is refined and shaped into a great variety of tools.
Here we have no ore. In other cases, metals are extracted from the
sea, once again using electricity.”

Sklar Hast made a
sound of disgust. “This is like chasing oneself around a pole.
To procure metal, we need electricity. To obtain electricity, metal
is required. How does one break into this closed circle? The savages
are more adept than we. Do they also wield electricity? Perhaps we
should send someone to learn from them.”

“Not I,”
said Kelso. He returned to the book. “Brunet mentions various
means to generate electricity..,There is the ‘voltaic cell,’
where two metals are immersed acid. He describes a means to derive
the acid, using rain-water, sea-brine, and electricity. Then there is
thermoelectricity, photoelectricity, chemical electricity,
electricity produced by cataphoresis, electricity generated by moving
a wire near another wire in which electricity flows. He states that
all living creatures produce small quantities of electricity.”

“What of
metal?” asked Sklar Hast. “Does he indicate any simple
methods to secure metal?”

Kelso turned pages,
paused to read. “He mentions that blood contains a small
quantity of iron. He suggests a method for extracting it, by using a
high degree of heat. But he also points out that there is at hand no
substance capable of serving as a receptacle under such extremes of
heat. He states that on the Home World many plants concentrate
metallic compounds, and suggests that certain of our own sea-plants
might do the same. But again either heat or electricity is needed to
secure the pure metal.”

Sklar Hast
ruminated. “Our first and basic problem, as I see it, is
self-protection. We need a weapon to kill King Kragen in the event
that he tracks us across the sea. It might be a device of metal—or it might be a larger and more savage kragen, if such exist … ”
He considered. “Perhaps you should make production of metal and
electricity your goal, and let no other pursuits distract

you. I am sure that the council will
agree and put at your disposal such helpers as you may need.”

“I would be
pleased to do my best.”

“And I,”
said Sklar Hast, “I will reflect upon the kragen.”

Three days later a
kragen was seen, a beast of not inconsiderable size, perhaps twenty
feet in length. It came cruising along the edge of the float and,
observing the men, stopped short. For twenty minutes it floated
placidly, swirling water back and forth with its vanes. Then slowly
it swung about and continued along the line of floats.

A month passed,
during which the community achieved a rude measure of comfort. A
large quantity of stalk and withe had been cut, scraped and racked. A
rope-walk had been rigged, and root-wisp was being twisted into rope.
Three large pads had been cut from the side and center of the float,
creating a large lagoon with a relatively narrow mouth—this
at the request of Sklar Hast. Arbors were constructed, seeded with
sponge-floss, and lowered into the water.

During this period
four kragen had passed by. The fourth occurrence seemed to be a
return visit of the first. On this fourth visit the kragen paused,
inspected the lagoon with care. It tentatively nudged the net, which
had just been set in place, then backed away and presently floated
off.

Sklar Hast watched
the occurrence. Then he went to inspect the new-cut stalk, which now
was sufficiently cured. He laid out a pattern, and work began. First
a wide base was built near the narrow mouth of the lagoon, with a
substructure extending down to the main stem of the float. On this
base was erected an A-frame derrick of glued withe, seventy feet
tall, with integral braces, the entire structure whipped tightly with
strong line and varnished. Another identical derrick was built to
over-hang the ocean. Before either of the derricks were completed, a
small kragen broke through the net to feast upon the yet unripe
sponges. “At your next visit, you will not fare so well,”
Sklar Hast called to the beast. “May the sponges rot in your
stomach!”

The kragen swam
lazily off down the line of floats, unperturbed by the threat. It
returned two days later. This time the derricks were guyed and in
place, but not yet fitted with tackle. Again Sklar Hast reviled the
beast, which this time ate with greater fastidiousness, plucking only
those sponges which like popcorn had overgrown their husks. The men
worked far into the night installing the strut which, when the
derrick tilted out over the water, thrust high the topping-halyard to
provide greater leverage.

On the next day the
kragen returned and entered the lagoon with insulting assurance, a
beast somewhat smaller than that which Sklar Hast had captured on
Tranque Float, but nonetheless a creature of respectable size.
Standing on the float, a stalwart old swindler flung a noose around
the creature’s turret and on the pad a line of fifty men marched away
with a heavy rope. The astonished kragen was towed to the
outward-leaning derrick, swung up and in. The dangling vanes were
lashed; it was lowered to the float. As soon as the bulk collapsed,
the watching folk, crying out in glee, shoved forward, almost dancing
into the gnashing mandibles. “Back, fools!” roared Sklar
Hast.

“Do you want
to be cut in half? Back!” He was largely ignored. A dozen
chisels hacked at the horny hide; clubs battered at the eyes. “Back!”
raged Sklar Hast. “Back! What do you achieve by antics such as
this? Back!”

Daunted, the
vengeful folk moved aside. Sklar Hast took chisel and mallet and, as
he had done on Tranque e Float, cut at the membrane joining dome to
turret. He was joined by four others; the channel was swiftly cut,
and a dozen hands ripped away the dome. Again, with pitiless outcry,
the crowd surged forward. Sklar Hast’s efforts to halt them were
fruitless. The nerves and cords of the creature’s ganglionic center
were torn from the turret, while the kragen jerked and fluttered and
made a buzzing sound with its mandibles. The turret was plucked clean
of the wet-string fibers as well as other organs, and the kragen lay
limp.

Sklar Hast moved
away in disgust. Rollo Barnack jumped up on the hulk. “Halt now!
No more senseless hacking! If the kragen has bones harder than our
own, we will want to preserve them for use. Who knows what use can be
made of a kragen’s cadaver? The hide is tough; the mandibles are
harder than the deepest stalk. Let us proceed intelligently!”

Sklar Hast watched
from a little distance as the crowd; examined the dead beast. He had
no further interest in the kragen. A planned experiment had been
foiled almost as soon as the hate-driven mob had rushed forward. But
there would be more kragen for his derricks; hopefully they could be
noosed by the sea-derrick before they broke into the lagoon. In years
to come, strong-boats or barges equipped with derricks might even go
forth to hunt the kragen … He approached the kragen once again,
peered into the empty turret, where now welled puddle of viscous dark
blue blood. The sight something deep in his brain; a response, a
recollection, a reference. In the Analects? It came to him: The blood
of certain sea-creatures of Earth also ran blue: lobsters and king
crab, whatever these might be.

Kelso shared a
similar interest in the dark blue fluid. He brought buckets with
which he hailed out the blood and conveyed it to a barrel. Sklar Hast
watched interest. “What do you propose?”

“Nothing
definite. I am collecting substances. The savages found metal
somewhere. If I collect enough materials and try various methods of
extraction on all, I will be able to achieve what the savages have
already done.”

“The savages
are proving a great inspiration,” said Sklar Hast. “I
wonder what other wonders and accomplishments they could teach?”

“Here would be
a good use to make of the intercessors,” observed Rollo Barnack.
“So far they have showed little enthusiasm for the new life.”

“The death of
the kragen has made them very glum,” said Wall Bunce jocularly.
“Hey, intercessors! What do you think now?”

The intercessors,
who had watched the killing of the kragen from a distance, turned
away in contempt and disgust. Sklar Hast strolled over to where they
stood talking in low voices. “Do you still think that we need
fear harassment by the kragen?” he asked. Luke Robinet spoke in
a voice quivering with detestation. “These are small fry and not
King Kragen. Someday he will find you and punish you for breaking the
Covenant. Then all your ropes and pulleys and derricks will be of no
avail whatever!”

Sklar Hast nodded
dolefully. “It would be a sad affair. King Kragen should have
been killed when he first appeared, as we have killed the sea-beast
today. Think how much easier life would have been for all of us!
Instead he was fed and fawned upon, and now he looms over all our
lives.”

Barquan Blasdel
said in his even, easy voice: “You are an insensitive man, Sklar
Hast. You see only what is before your nose; you are ignorant of the
spiritual benefits to be derived from self-abasement.”

“Absolutely
true,” said Sklar Hast. “I fear I have suffered serious
disadvantages in this respect.”

The Wyebolt
Intercessor, a thin, hot-eyed old man with an undisciplined mop of
white hair, rasped: “Your sarcastic fleers and flaunts will
avail little when King Kragen at last demands an accounting!”

Sklar Hast noted
certain uneasy movements and grimaces among the intercessors. “How
do you expect that will come to pass?”

The Wyebolt
Intercessor ignored the wry looks of his fellows, or perhaps, sensing
them, he modified his reply. “What will be, will be. It
certainly must be assumed that King Kragen will not allow his
intercessors to be so misused.”

“The beast
neither knows nor cares,” scoffed Sklar Hast, hoping to
infuriate the Wyebolt Intercessor to the point where he might make an
indiscreet revelation. Barquan Blasdel performed a large, almost
indulgent gesture. “This conversation is bootless. You have us
at a disadvantage. Eventually these poor folk will tire of your crass
materialism and reject all that you represent. Until then we must be
patient.” With a quick but monitory glance around the circle of
intercessors, he crossed to his hut and disappeared within.

Sklar Hast moved
on, across the float to where Meril Rohan had established what she
called a “school” for the instruction of children. This was
an institution not absolutely unknown on the Home Floats—in
fact, the Quatrefoil Academy for the training of scriveners was
notable—but children usually were educated through guild
agencies.

Meril had watched
the landing of the kragen but had taken no part in the frenzied
death-rite. Instead, turning her back, she had gone to her “school”,
which, of course, had been vacated by reason of the excitement at the
other side of the float.

Here Sklar Hast,
coming through the still heavy tangle of vines, found her, sitting on
a bench looking out across the blue water. He approached and sat
beside her. “What are you thinking about?”

She was silent a
moment. “I was thinking about the times to come, and wondering
what is to befall us.”

Sklar Hast
laughed; “I can’t allow myself to wonder. The problems of Now
are too great. If I wondered where all was to lead, I’d be halted.”

Meril making no
reply, nodded slowly as if at some profound inner discovery.

“And where
does all your wondering take you‘2” Sklar Hast asked.

“No single
place. We are of the Eleventh generation; already there are Twelfths
and Thirteenths; It seems that over all these years we have been
living dreams. The Floats were so easy and fertile that he one has
ever been forced to work or think or suffer. Or fight.”

Sklar Hast nodded
gloomily. “Undoubtedly you are right—but now we have
been forced, and we are fighting. Today we won our first victory.”

“But such a
cheap victory. And what is the fight for? Merely that the kragen
should not eat our sponges, that we should be allowed to continue
this dreaming placid life; that it might go on forever!… I am not
proud of myself. I was sickened by the death of the kragen. We fled
the Home Floats. It was the right thing to do—but is this the
end of our ambitions? A life of lagoons and sunlight, without even
King Kragen to worry us? It frightens me somehow, and I wonder if
this is all my life is to be: something without achievement or
victory or meaning of any kind whatever.”

Sklar Hast
frowned. “I have never thought exactly in these terms. Always
the immediate problems seem urgent.

“I imagine
that this would always be the case, no matter how trivial the
problems. In her Memorium Eleanor Morse speaks of her ‘goals,’
and how they moved further and further into the distance, and so to
achieve them she forced herself to become a Bezzler. This has no
particular meaning for us, except that it illustrates how ambition
forces folk to better themselves. So I have been trying to form some
goals for myself, that I might just possibly hope to achieve.”

“What are
they?”

“You won’t
mock me? Or laugh?” Meril turned grave eyes upon him.

“No.”
Sklar Hast took her hand, held it.

Meril looked
around the array of crude benches, “I attended the Scriveners’
Academy on Quatrefoil. There are four large structures furnished for
study, a refectory, and two dormitories. I want to bring such an
academy into being here. Not just a place for scriveners, but an
academy for the advancement of all knowledge. There are hints of what
is to be learned in the Memoria … it is my goal to establish this
academy, where the young people learn their guild skills, learn the
Memoria, but, most important, learn the same dissatisfaction that I
feel, so that they, too, shall have goals.”

Sklar Hast was
silent. Then he said, “You shall certainly have all my help …
And you shame me. I ask myself, what are my own goals? I am sorry to
say that they were satisfied, at least in part, when the derrick
lifted the kragen from the water; I had thought no farther ahead.
True, I want this float to be prosperous and happy … ” He
frowned. “I have a goal. Two goals. First: I want you for my
spouse. I want no other. Second: I Want to destroy King Kragen.”
He took her other hand. “What do you say to this?”

“Destroy King
Kragen, by all means.”

“And what of
the first goal?”

“I would
think it is—attainable.”

A hand shook Sklar
Hast. He awoke to see a dark form standing above him, black against
the stars. “Who is it? What do you want?”

“I am Julio
Rile; I guard the coracles. I want you to come with me.”

Sklar Hast lurched
to his feet, pulled on a cloak, slipped his feet into sandals. “What
happens? Are they stealing our floats?”

“No. There is
a strange noise coming from the water.”

Sklar Hast went
with the youth to the edge of the float. Kneeling, putting his head
close to the water, he heard a groaning, scraping, wheezing sound,
unlike any that he had ever heard before. There was one that had been
similar … Sklar Hast turned, went at a lope to the hut that housed
the horn taken from Barquan Blasdel’s pad at Apprise Float. He
brought it forth, carried it to the edge of the float, lowered it
into the water. The sound was startlingly loud. Sklar Hast turned the
horn, noted the direction from which the sound reached a maximum
intensity. He grinned a sudden angry grin. “Go, wake Phyral
Berwick and Rollo Barnack and Rubal Gallager. Make haste. Bring them
here.”

Sklar Hast awoke
Poe Belrod and Roger Kelso. The whole group listened at the horn and
looked in the direction from which the sound seemed to emanate: the
hut occupied by Barquan Blasdel.

Sklar Hast
whispered: “Someone will be watching at the front; let us
approach from the back.”

They moved quietly
through the shadows, around the rear of Barquan Blasdel’s hut. Sklar
Hast brought out a knife. He slit the pad-skin, pushed through into
the interior.