The Blue World (16 page)

On the world which
had no name there were no seasons, no variations of climate except
those to be found by traversing the latitudes. Along the equatorial
doldrums, where floats of sea-plant grew in chains and each day was
like every other, and the passage of a year could be detected only by
watching the night sky. Though the folk had small need for accurate
temporal distinctions, each day was numbered and each year named
after some significant event. A duration of twenty-two years was a
“surge” and was also reckoned by number. Hence a given date
might be known as the 349th day in the Year of Malvinon’s Deep Dive
during the Tenth Surge. Time reckoning was almost exclusively the
province of the scriveners. To most of the folk life was as pellucid
and effortless as the grassy blue sea at noon.

King Kragen’s
attack upon Tranque Float occurred toward the year’s end, which
thereupon became the Year of Tranque’s Abasement, and it was
generally assumed hat the following year would be known as the Year
of the Dissenters’ Going.

As the days passed
and the year approached its midpoint, Barquan Blasdel, instead of
allowing the memory of his kidnapping to grow dim, revived it daily
within unflagging virulence. Each evening saw memorandum from Barquan
Blasdel flicker up and down the line of floats: “Vigilance is
necessary! The dissidents are led by men of evil energy! They flout
the majesty of King Kragen; they despise the folk who maintain the
traditions and most especially the intercessors. They must be
punished and taught humility. Should they dare to attack us, which is
not beyond the limits of their megalomaniac viciousness, they must be
hurled into the sea. To this end—King Kragen’s Exemplary
Corps!”

At a conclave of
notables he made a speech of great earnestness, depicting the goals
of the rebels in the most serious light, in which he was supported by
those intercessors who had been liberated and who had made their way
back to the Home Floats.

“Do we wish to
see their detestable philosophy transplanted here?” demanded
Barquan Blasdel. “A thousand times no! King Kragen’s Exemplary
Corps will act as one man to destroy the invading rebels, or, if a
policy of cauterization is decided upon, to wipe out the central node
of sepsis!”

Emacho Feroxibus,
Elder of the Quatrefoil Bezzlers, was not moved by Barquan Blasdel’s
vehemence. “Let them be,” he growled. “I have had long
association with some of these folk, who are persons of high caste
and good character. They obviously do not plan to invade the Home
Floats; such a thought is absurd, and so long as they do not molest
us, why should we molest them? No-one should risk drowning for so
dismal a cause.”

Barquan Blasdel,
containing his temper, explained carefully. “The matter is more
complex than this. “Here is a group who have fled in order to
avoid paying their just dues to King Kragen. If they are allowed to
prosper, to profit of their defection, then other folk may be tempted
to wonder, why do we not do likewise? If the sin of kragen-killing
becomes vulgar recreation, where is reverence? Where is continuity?
Where is obedience to High Authority?”

“That may be
true,” stated Providence Dringle, Chief Hoodwink for the
Populous Equity Float. “Nonetheless, in my opinion the cure is
worse than the complaint. And to risk a heretical opinion, I must say
the benefits we derive from High Authority no longer seem
commensurate with the price we pay.”

Barquan Blasdel
swung about in shock, as did the other intercessors. May I ask your
meaning?” Blasdel inquired icily.

“I mean that
King Kragen consumes from six to seven bushels of choice sponges
daily. He maintains his rule in the water surrounding the floats,
true, but what do we need fear from the lesser kragen? By your own
testimony the dissidents have developed a method to kill the kragen
with facility.”

Blasdel said with
frigid menace, “I cannot overlook the fact that your remarks are
identical to the preposterous ravings of the dissidents, who so
rightly shall be obliterated.”

“Do not rely
on my help,” said Providence Dringle.

“Nor mine,”
said Emacho Feroxibus. “I must also make note of the fact that
while heretofore each float maintained the establishment of one
intercessor, now there are two, not even to mention this corps of
uniformed ruffians you are training.”

“It is a
distressing sight,” said Barquan Blasdel in a voice quietly sad,
“to see a man once effective and orthodox decline so suddenly
into verbose senility. Emacho Feroxibus, speak on! Be sure that we
will listen to you with the respect your advanced age and long career
of service deserve! Talk as you will!”

Emacho Feroxibus’s
face was purple with rage. “You mealy-mouthed scoundrel! I’d
teach you senility with my bare hands, were it not for my detestation
of violence!”

The conclave shortly thereafter was
adjourned. King Kragen’s Exemplary Corps was one thousand strong.
Their barracks and training area was Tranque Float, which never had
been restored to habitation. They wore a smart uniform, consisting of
a gown somewhat like the intercessor’s formal robes, black in front
and white in back, with an emblem representing King Kragen sewed on
the chest. They wore helmets of pad-skin and rug-fish leather
well-varnished, with the varnished dorsal fin of the gray-fish for a
crest. For weapons they carried pikes of fine straight withe tipped
with a blade of the hardest stem-wood, and daggers of similar
quality. They lacked bows and arrows only because none of the
materials found on the floats or in the sea, offered the necessary
resilience. A dart thrower, on the order of an atlatl, was tested,
but accuracy was so poor that it was discarded.

The Exemplary
Corps, though it included men of every caste and guild, was mainly
comprised of those whose careers were not proceeding with celerity or
who disliked toil with unusual vehemence. The other folk of the
floats regarded the Exemplars with mixed emotions. They imposed
something of a strain upon the normal functioning of the economy, for
they ate a great deal and produced none of their own food. Meanwhile
King Kragen daily seemed to wax in size and appetite. The need for
such a large corps—or any corps at all—was
continually questioned. Few accepted the intercessors’ contention
that the dissidents planned an attack on the Home Floats.

Nevertheless the
corps made a brave, if somewhat sinister show, parading in platoons
of twenty with lances aslant over their shoulders, or rowing their
new twelve-man coracles at great speed across the ocean whenever King
Kragen was not about. For the intercessors, dubious of King Kragen’s
attitude, had kept from him the knowledge of the Exemplary Corps—though no one considered it likely that he would forbid the
organization if he knew its aims.

Barquan Blasdel,was
commandant of the corps and wore a uniform even more striking than
that of the Exemplars: a split black and white gown, tied at the
ankles, buttons of polished bindle-bane, purple epaulettes to
represent kragen mandibles, a purple helmet with a crest simulating
King Kragen’s maw, with palps and mandibles outspread: a fearsome
sight.

Daily the corps
drilled: running, jumping, thrusting lances into dummies, springing
in and out of their boats. Daily they heard Barquan Blasdel discourse
upon the infamy of the rebels and the vileness of their habits. Daily
the corps performed a ritual expressing homage devotion to King
Kragen and absolute obedience to those who interceded with him. Most
of the float notables in private expressed disapprobation of the
corps, and Emacho Feroxibus began to prepare an official sanction
against the corps. Immediately King Kragen appeared at Quatrefoil
Float, where Emacho Feroxibus was caste-elder, and remained four
days, eating with great appetite. The Quatrefoil arbors were barren
of sponges and finally the folk of the float in desperation prevailed
upon Emacho Feroxibus to modify his stand. He vented a great curse
upon Barquan Blasdel, another upon the Exemplars, and a final
objurgation against King Kragen, to the awe of all. Then he turned, a
feeble and embittered man, and walked slowly to his hut.

King Kragen
departed Quatrefoil Float. Three days later the body of Emacho
Feroxibus was found floating in the lagoon, an apparent suicide,
though many refuted this notion and claimed that in his grief he must
have wandered blindly into the water. A few hinted of circumstances
even more grim, but made no public assertion of their beliefs, since,
if they were right, the message was clear.

The day arrived
when in Barquan Blasdel’s opinion King Kragen’s Exemplary Corps was
ready to perform the duty for which it was intended. Across Tranque
Float went the word: “A week from today!”

A week later the
sun went down and Tranque Float was taut with expectation. Barquan
Blasdel, resplendent in his uniform, addressed the massed corps by
torchlight. “Brave members of the invincible Exemplary Corps!
The time has come! The detestable vermin who live across the water
pose a threat we can no longer tolerate. Along these beautiful floats
of our own, voices are whispering an envious desire for the depraved
east of the rebels! We must win them back to the right way, the
orthodox way! By persuasion if possible, by force if necessary! All
bodes well! King Kragen has graciously given us leave to trespass
upon his ocean and now relaxes near Helicon. So now—load
boats! Rack pikes! Embark all! We sail to the east!”

A great hoarse
shout rose from the Exemplars. With a will the coracles were loaded;
with rehearsed agility the Exemplars sprang aboard, thrust away from
Tranque Float. Oars dug the water; with another great guttural call
the coracles surged toward the east.

Dawn came; the
water reflected the color of silver ash, then milled to the morning
breeze. Big plum-blue square-sails were hoisted. They bellied; oars
were shipped. The Exemplars rested. Ninety boats sailed the morning
ocean, long low boats painted black and purple, with a
white-and-black kragen blazoned on each straining sail. In each boat
crouched 12 men in black-and-white gowns and black helmets with the
spined crest.

Directly into the
dazzle of the rising sun they sailed, and the glare served to conceal
the boats that waited for them. When the breeze died and he sun had
lifted, these boats were only a quarter-mile to the east: ten boats
of strange design. They were twice as long as the twelve man
coracles, and each carried about twenty men. They waited in a line
across the course of the Exemplar boats. The center boat, propelled
by 16 oars, advanced. In the bow stood Sklar Hast.

He hailed the
leading boat of the Exemplars. “What boats are you, and where
are you bound?”

Barquan Blasdel
rose to his feet. “Sklar Hast! You dare bring your boats so
close to the Home Floats?”

“We sailed
forth to meet you.”

“‘Then you
have sailed your last. We are bound to the new floats, to visit
justice upon you.”

“Turn back,”
said Sklar Hast. “Take warning! If you come farther, you are all
dead men!”

Barquan Blasdel
made a gesture to the other boats. “Forward! Pikes to hand!
Board, kill, capture!”

“Stand back!”
roared Sklar Hast. “Take warning, you fools! Do you think we are
helpless? Go back to the Home Floats and save your lives!”

The Exemplar
coracles sped forward. That one in which Barquan Blasdel stood moved
over to the side, to where he could command the battle. With only a
hundred feet between, men in the waiting boats suddenly rose to their
feet holding bows fashioned from kragen-turret splines. They aimed,
discharged arrows with flaming globular tips. The arrows struck into
the black coracles, broke to spread flaming oil.

In the first volley
twenty of the black-and-purple boats were aflame. In the second
volley, forty dared up. In the third volley sixty. The withe and
varnished pad-skin burned like tinder; fear-crazed Exemplars leaped
into the sea. The thirty boats yet whole backed water, turned aside.
Barquan Blasdel’s boat already was out of range.

Sklar Hast steeled
his heart, signaled. Another volley of flaming arrows set another ten
boats aflame, and an almost miraculous swiftness the proud black
fleet of King Kragen’s Exemplary Corps was destroyed.

“Forward!”
Sklar Hast ordered. “One more volley. We must make a total end
to this business!”

Reluctantly—for further action now seemed sheer slaughter—the archers
lobbed a final volley of fire-arrows, but now, whether because the
range was great or because the archers had no more will to attack,
only eight boats were struck.

The water seethed
with swimming shapes. As coracles burned and collapsed, cases of
stores floated loose, and the Exemplars clung to these.

Sklar Hast gave an
order; the boats from New Floats backed away from the scene of the
battle. Cautiously those coracles still afloat returned. Stores and
weapons were thrown overboard to lighten ship; swimming Exemplars
were taken aboard to the limits of capacity and ropes were thrown out
to those yet floating.

Sluggishly, towing
the men still in the water, the loaded coracles returned across the
sea toward Tranque Float.

Of the ninety proud
black-and-purple boats which set forth, twenty still floated.

Of a thousand
Exemplars, five hundred survived.

Sklar Hast listened
to the underwater horn and could detect nothing to indicate the
proximity of King Kragen. He gave an order to his oarsmen, and the
New Float boats followed the wallowing Exemplar fleet back to
Tranque. To complete Barquan Blasdel’s utter humiliation, when the
black boats were a hundred yards from Tranque, the New Float boats
moved in close, discharged two final volleys of fire-arrows, to
destroy all the Exemplar coracles. All, Barquan Blasdel included,
were forced to swim the last hundred yards to Tranque Float.