The Blue World (5 page)

Phocan’s Cauldron,
rising into the sky, revealed the kragen in fuller detail. Sklar Hast
examined the four blind-seeming eyes in the turret, the intricate
construction of the mandibles and tentacles at the maw. He touched
the turret; peered at the dome-shaped cap of chitin that covered it.
The turret itself seemed laminated, as if constructed of sacked rings
of cartilage, the eyes protruding fore and aft in inflexible tubes of
rugose harsh substance.

Others in the group
began to crowd close; Sklar Hast jumped forward, thrust at a young
Felon float-builder, but too late: The kragen flung out a palp,
seized the youth around the neck. Sklar Hast cursed, heaved, tore;
the clenched palp was unyielding. Another curled out for his leg;
Sklar Hast kicked, danced back, still heaving upon the felon’s
writhing form. The kragen drew the felon slowly forward, hoping, so
Sklar Hast realized, to pull him within easier reach. He loosened his
grip, but the kragen allowed its palp to sway back to encourage Sklar
Hast, who once more tore at the constricting member.

Again the kragen
craftily drew its captive and Sklar Hast forward; the second palp
snapped out once more and this time coiled around Sklar Hast’s leg.
Sklar Hast dropped to the ground, twisted himself around and broke
the hold, though losing skin. The kragen petulantly jerked the felon
to within reach of its mandible, snipped off the young man’s head,
tossed body and head aside.

A horrified gasp
came from the watching crowd. Ixon Myrex bellowed, “Sklar Hast,
a man’s life is gone, due to your savage obstinacy! You have much to
answer for! Woe to you!”

Sklar Hast ignored
the imprecation. He ran to the warehouse, found chisels and a mallet
with a head of dense sea-plant stem brought up from a depth of two
hundred feet
[2]
.

The chisels had
blades of pelvic bone ground sharp against a board gritted with the
silica husks of foraminifera. Sklar Hast returned to the kragen, put
the chisel against the pale lamellum between the chitin dome and the
foliations of the turret. He tapped; the chisel penetrated; this, the
substance of a new layer being added to the turret, was relatively
soft, the consistency of cooked gristle. Sklar Hast struck again; the
chisel cut deep. The kragen squirmed. Sklar Hast worked the chisel
back out, made a new incision beside the first, then another and
another, working around the periphery of the chitin dome, which was
approximately two feet in diameter. The kragen squirmed and
shuddered, whether in pain or apprehension it alone knew. As Sklar
Hast worked around to the front, the palps groped back for him, but
he shielded himself behind the turret and finally gouged out the
lamellum completely around the circumference of the turret.

His followers
watched in awe and silence; from the others who watched came somber
mutters, and occasional whimpers of superstitious dread from the
children.

The channel was
cut; Sklar Hast handed chisel and mallet back to Elmar Pronave. He
mounted the body of the kragen, bent his knees, hooked fingers under
the edge of the chitin dome, heaved. The dome ripped up and off,
almost unbalancing Sklar Hast. The dome rolled down to the pad, the
turret stood like an open-topped cylinder; within were coils and
loops of something like dirty gray string. There were knots here,
nodes there, on each side a pair of kinks, to the front a great
tangle of kinks and loops.

Sklar Hast looked
down in interest. He was joined by Elmar Pronave. “The
creature’s brain, evidently,” said Sklar Hast. “Here the
ganglions terminate. Or perhaps they are merely the termini of
muscles.”

Elmar Pronave took
the mallet and with the handle prodded at a node. The kragen gave a
furious jerk.

“Well, well,”
said Pronave. “Interesting indeed.” He prodded further,
here, there. Every time he touched the exposed ganglions, the kragen
jerked. Sklar Hast suddenly put out his hand to halt him. “Notice.
On the right, those two long loops; likewise on the left. When you
touched this one here, the fore-vane jerked.” He took the
mallet, prodded each of the loops in turn, and in turn each of the
vanes jerked.

“Aha!”
declared Elmar Pronave. “Should we persist, we could teach the
kragen to jig.”

“‘Best
we should kill the beast,” said Sklar Hast. “Dawn is
approaching, and who knows but what … ” From the float
sounded a sudden low wail, quickly cut off as by the constriction of
breath. The group around the kragen stirred; someone vented a deep
sound of dismay. Sklar Hast jumped up on the kragen, looked around.
The population on the float were staring out to sea; he looked
likewise, to see King Kragen.

King Kragen floated
under the surface, only his turret above water. The eyes stared
forward, each a foot across: lenses of tough crystal behind which
flickered milky films and a pale blue sheen. King Kragen had either
drifted close down the trail of Phocan’s Cauldron on the water or had
approached subsurface. Fifty feet from the lagoon nets he let his
bulk come to the surface: first the whole of his turret, then the
black cylinder housing the maw and the digestive process, finally the
great flat sub-body: this, five feet thick, thirty feet wide, sixty
feet long. To the sides protruded propulsive vanes, thick as the
girth of three men. Viewed from dead ahead, King Kragen appeared a
deformed ogre swimming the breast-stroke. His forward eyes, in their
horn tubes, were turned toward the float of Sklar Hast and seemed
fixed upon the hulk of the mutilated kragen. The men stared back,
muscles stiff as sea-plant stalk. The kragen which they had.
captured, once so huge and formidable, now seemed a miniature, a
doll, a toy. Through its after-eyes it saw King Kragen and gave a
fluting whistle, a sound completely lost and desolate.

Sklar Hast suddenly
found his tongue. He spoke in a husky, urgent tone. “Back. To
the back of the float.”

Now rose the voice
of Semm Voiderveg the Intercessor. In quavering tones he called out
across the water. “Behold; King Kragen, the men of Tranque
Float! Now we denounce the presumptuous bravado of these few
heretics! Behold, this pleasant lagoon, with its succulent sponges,
devoted to the well-being of the magnanimous King Kragen—” The
reedy voice faltered as King Kragen twitched his great vanes and
eased forward. The great eyes stared without discernible, expression,
but behind there seemed to be a leaping and shifting of pale pink and
blue lights. The folk on the float drew back as King Kragen breasted
close to the net. With a twitch of his vanes, he ripped the net; two
more twitches shredded it. From the folk on the float came a moan of
dread; King Kragen had not been mollified.

King Kragen eased
into the lagoon, approached the helpless kragen. The bound beast
thrashed feebly, sounded its fluting whistle. King Kragen reached
forth a palp, seized it, lifted it into the air, where it dangled
helplessly. King Kragen drew it contemptuously close to his great
mandibles, chopped it quickly into slices of gray and black gristle.
These he tossed away, out into the ocean. He paused to drift a
moment, to consider. Then he surged on Sklar Hast’s pad. One blow of
his fore-vane demolished the hut, another cut a great gouge in the
pad. The after-vanes thrashed among the arbors; water, debris, broken
sponges boiled up from below. King Kragen thrust again, wallowed
completely up on the pad., which slowly crumpled and sank beneath his
weight.

King Kragen pulled
himself back into the lagoon, cruised back and forth destroying
arbors, shredding the net, smashing huts of all the pads of the
lagoon. Then he turned his attention to the main float, breasting up
to the edge. For a moment he eyed the population, which started to
set up a terrified keening sound, then thrust himself forward,
wallowed up on the float, and the keening became a series of hoarse
cries and screams. The folk ran back and forth with jerky, scurrying
steps.

King Kragen bulked
on the float like a toad on a lily pad. He struck with his vanes; the
float split. The hoodwink tower, the great structure so cunningly
woven, so carefully contrived, tottered. King Kragen lunged again,
the tower toppled, falling into the huts along the north edge of the
float.

King Kragen
floundered across the float. He destroyed the granary, and bushels of
yellow meal laboriously scraped from sea-plant pistils streamed into
the water. He crushed the racks where stalk, withe, and fiber were
stretched and flexed; he dealt likewise with the rope-walk. Then, as
if suddenly in a hurry, he swung about, heaved himself to the
southern edge of the float. A number of huts and thirty-two of the
folk, mostly aged or very young, were crushed or thrust into the
water and drowned.

King Kragen
regained the open sea. He floated quietly a moment or two, palps
twitching in the expression of some unknowable emotion. Then he moved
his vanes and slid off across the calm ocean.

Tranque Float was a
devastation, a tangle, a scene of wrath and grief. The lagoon had
returned to the ocean, with the arbors reduced to rubbish and the
shoals of food-fish scattered. Many huts had been crushed. The
hoodwink tower lay toppled. Of a population of four-hundred and
eighty, forty-three were dead, with as many more injured The
survivors stood blank-eyed and limp, unable to comprehend the full
extent of the disaster that had come upon them.

Presently they
roused themselves and gathered at the far western edge, where the
damage had been the least; Ixon Myrex sought through the faces,
eventually spied Sklar Hast sitting on a fragment of the fallen
hoodwink tower. He raised his hand slowly, pointed. “Sklar Hast!
I denounce you! The evil you have done to Tranque Float cannot be
uttered in words. Your arrogance, your callous indifference to our
pleas, your cruel and audacious villainy—how can you hope to
expiate them?”

Sklar Hast paid no
heed. His attention was fixed upon Meril Rohan, where she knelt
beside the body of Zander Rohan, his tine brisk mop of white hair
dark with blood. Ixon Myrex called in a harsh voice: “In my
capacity as Arbiter of Tranque Float, I declare you a criminal of the
basest sort, together with all those who served you as accomplices,
and most noteworthy Elmar Pronave! Elmar Pronave, show your shameful
face! Where do you hide?”

But Elmar Pronave
had been drowned and did not answer.

Ixon Myrex returned
to Sklar Hast. “The Master Hoodwink is dead and cannot denounce
you in his own terms. I will speak for him: you are Assistant Master
Hoodwink no longer. You are ejected from your caste and your
calling!”

Sklar Hast wearily
gave his attention to Ixon Myrex. “Do not bellow nonsense. You
can eject me from nothing. I am Master Hoodwink now. I was Master
Hoodwink as soon as I bested Zander Rohan; even had I not done so, I
became Master Hoodwink upon his death. You outrank me not an iota;
you can denounce—but do no more.”

Semm Voiderveg the
Intercessor spoke forth. “Denunciations are not enough! Argument
in regard to rank is footling! King Kragen, in wreaking his terrible
but just, vengeance, intended that the primes of the deed should die.
I now declare the will of King Kragen to be death, by either
strangulation or bludgeoning, for Sklar Hast and all his
accomplices.”

“Not so fast,”
said Sklar Hast. “It appears to me that a certain confusion is
upon us. Two kragen, a large one and a small one, have injured us. I,
Sklar Hast, and my friends, are those who hoped to protect the float
from depredation. We failed. We are not criminals; we are simply not
as strong or as wicked as King Kragen.”

“Are you
aware,” thundered Semm Voiderveg, “that King Kragen
reserves to himself the duty of guarding us from the lesser kragen?
Are you aware that in assaulting the kragen, you in effect assaulted
King Kragen?”

Sklar Hast
considered; “I am aware that we will need more powerful tools
than ropes and chisels to kill King Kragen.”

Semm Voiderveg
turned away, speechless. The people looked apathetically toward Sklar
Hast. Few seemed to share the indignation of the elders.

Ixon Myrex sensed
the general feeling of misery and fatigue. “This is no time for
recrimination. There is work to be done.” His voice broke with
his own deep and sincere grief. “All our fine structures must be
rebuilt, our tower rendered operative, our net rewoven.” He
stood quiet for a moment, and something of his rage returned. “Sklar
Hast’s crime must not go without appropriate punishment. I ordain a
Grand Convocation to take place in three days, on Apprise Float. The
fate of Sklar Hast and his gang will he decided by a Council of
Elders.”

Sklar Hast walked
away. He approached Meril Rohan, who sat with her face in her hands,
tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry
that your father died,” said Sklar Hast awkwardly. “I’m
sorry anyone died—but I’m especially sorry that you should be
hurt.”

Meril Rohan
surveyed him with an expression he was unable to decipher. He spoke
in a voice hardly more than a husky mutter. “Someday the
sufferings of the Tranque folk must lead to a happier future for all
the folk, of all the floats … I see it is my destiny to kill King
Kragen. I care for nothing else.”

Meril Rohan spoke
in a clear, quiet voice. “I wish my duty were as plain to me. I,
too, must do something. I must expunge or help to expunge whatever
has caused this evil that today has come upon us. Is it King Kragen?
Is it Sklar Hast? Or something else altogether?” She was musing
now, her eyes unfocused, almost as if she were unaware of her
father’s corpse, of Sklar Hast standing before her. “It is a
fact that the evil exists. The evil has a source. So my problem is to
locate the source of the evil, to learn its nature. Only when we know
our enemy can we defeat it.”