The Blue World (8 page)

“Barquan
Blasdel,” said Phyral Berwick, “you are Apprise
Intercessor. Have you ever summoned King Kragen to Apprise Float?”

“As Semm
Voiderveg and I have incessantly pointed out, Sklar Hast is the
criminal at the bar, not the conscientious intercessors of the
various floats. By no means may Sklar Hast be allowed to evade his
punishment. King Kragen is not lightly to be defied! Even though the
convocation will not raise their collective list to smite Sklar Hast,
I say that he must die. It is a matter this serious.”

Phyral Berwick
fixed his pale blue eyes upon Barquan Blasdel. “If the
convocation gives Sklar Hast his life, he will not die unless I die
before him.”

“Nor I!”
called Poe Belrod. “Nor I!” This was from Roger Kelso. And
now all those men of Tranque Float who had joined Sklar Hast in the
killing of the rogue kragen came toward the rostrum, shouting their
intention of joining Sklar Hast either in life or death, and with
them came others, from various floats.

Barquan Blasdel
scrambled up onto the rostrum, held his arms wide, and finally was
able to make himself heard. “Before others declare themselves—look out to sea! King Kragen watches, attentive to learn who is loyal
and who is faithless!”

The crowd swung
about as it one individual. A hundred yards off the float the water
swirled lazily around King Kragen’s great turret. The crystal eyes
pointed like telescopes toward Apprise Float. Presently the turret
sank beneath the surface. The blue water roiled, then flowed smooth
and featureless.

Sklar Hast stepped
forward, started to mount to the rostrum. Barquan Blasdel the
Intercessor halted him. “The rostrum must not become a shouting
place. Stay till you are summoned!”

But Sklar Hast
pushed him aside, went to face the crowd. He pointed toward the
smooth ocean. “There you have seen the vile beast, our enemy!
Why should we deceive ourselves? Intercessors, arbiters, all of us—let us forget our differences, let us join our crafts and our
resources! If we do so, we can evolve a method to kill King Kragen!
We are men; why should we abase ourselves before anything whatever?”

Barquan Blasdel
threw back his head, aghast. He took a step toward Sklar Hast, as if
to seize him, then turned to the audience; “You have heard this
madman—twice you have heard him! And also you have observed
the vigilance of King Kragen whose force is known to all! Choose
therefore—obey either the exhortations of a twitching lunatic
or be guided by our ancient trust in the benevolence of mighty King
Kragen. There must be a definite resolution to this matter. We can
have no half measures! Sklar Hast must die! So now hold high your
fists each and all! Silence the frantic screamings of Sklar Hast!
King Kragen is near at hand! Death to Sklar Hast!”

He thrust his Est
high into the air. The intercessors followed suit. “Death to
Sklar Hast!”

Hesitantly,
indecisively, other fists raised, then others and others. Some
changed their minds and drew down their fists or thrust them high;
some raised their fists only to have others pull them down.
Altercations sprang up across the float; the hoarse sound of
contention began to make itself heard.

Barquan Blasdel
leaned forward in sudden concern, calling for calm. Sklar Hast
likewise started to speak, but he desisted—because suddenly
words were of no avail. In a bewildering, almost magical shift the
placid convocation had become a melée. Men and women tore savagely at
each other, screaming, cursing, raging, squealing, emotion
accumulated from childhood, stored and constrained, now exploded;
identical fear and hate prompted opposite reactions.

Luckily few weapons
were available: clubs of stalk, a bone ax or two, a half dozen
stakes, as many knives. Across the float the tide of battle surged,
out into the water. Staid Jacklegs and responsible Malpractors sought
to drown each other; Advertisermen ignored their low estate and
belabored Bezzlers; orthodox Incendiaries kicked, clawed, tore, and
bit as furiously as any varnish-besotted Smuggler. While the struggle
was at its most intense, King Kragen once more surfaced, this time a
quarter-mile to the north, whence he turned his vast, incurious gaze
upon the float.

The fighting slowed
and dwindled, partly from sheer exhaustion, partly from the efforts
of the most responsible, and the combatants were thrust apart. In the
lagoon floated half a dozen corpses; on the float lay as many more.
Now for the first time it could be seen that those who stood by Sklar
Hast were considerably outnumbered, by almost two to one, and also
that this group included for the most part the most vigorous and able
of the craftsmen, though few of the Masters.

Barquan Blasdel,
still on the rostrum, cried out, “A sorry,day indeed, a sorry
day! Sklar Hast, see the anguish you have brought to the floats!”

Sklar Hast looked
at him, panting and haggard with grief. Blood coursed down his face
from the slash of a knife; the garments were ripped from his chest.
Ignoring Blasdel, he mounted the rostrum and addressed the two
groups. “I agree with Barquan Blasdel: this is a sorry day—but let there be no mistake: Men must rule the ocean beast or be
ruled! I now return to Tranque Float, where the great damage must be
repaired. As Blasdel the Intercessor has said, there is no turning
back now. So be it. Let those who want free lives come to Tranque,
where we will take counsel on what to do next.”

“Barquan
Blasdel made a hoarse, peculiarly ugly sound: an ejaculation of
bitter amusement rendered glottal and guttural by hate. His ease and
facility of manner had deserted him; he crouched tensely over the
railing of the rostrum. “Go then to ruined Tranque! All you
faithless, you irreverent ones—get hence and good riddance!
Let Tranque be your home, and let Tranque become a name accused, an
evil odor, a vile disease! Only do not scream to King Kragen for aid
when the rogues, unchided by the great King, devour your sponges,
tear your nets, crush your coracles!”

“The many
cannot be as rapacious as the one,” said Sklar Hast.
“Nevertheless, do not be persuaded by the ranting of the
Intercessor. Tranque Float is ruined and will support but few folk
until the nets are repaired and new arbors seeded. For the present, a
migration such as Blasdel suggests is impractical.”

From the red-haired
Peculator came a call: “Let the intercessors take King Kragen
and migrate to some far line of floats; then all of us will he
suited!”

Blasdel, making no
response, jumped down from the rostrum and marched across the float
to his private pad.

In spite of the
strife, or perhaps because it did not seem real, and in spite of the
devastation, almost all of the Tranque folk elected to return to
their home float. A few, appalled by the circumstances, took up
temporary habitation elsewhere, perhaps at the hut of a caste cousin
or guild-fellow, but most decided for better or worse to return to
Tranque. So they did, silently rowing their coracles, nursing such
aches, bruises, or wounds as they had incurred, looking neither left
nor right for fear of staring across the water into the face of
friend or neighbor whom they had only just desisted from belaboring.

It was a melancholy
voyage through the gray-violet evening, down along the line of
floats, each with its characteristic silhouette, each with its
peculiar ambience or quirk of personality, so that a turn of phrase
might be noted as typically Aumerge or a bit of carved wood
identified immediately and unmistakably as the work of a Leumar
Niggler. And now Tranque, of all the floats, was devastated, Tranque
alone. It was enough to make tears of grief and bitterness well from
the eyes of the Tranque folk. For them all was changed; the old life
would never return. The resentments and bitterness might numb and
soar over, but the friendships would never again be easy, the trusts
whole. Still, Tranque was home. There was no other place to go.

There was small
comfort to be found on Tranque. A third of the huts were in ruins.
The granary and all the precious flour had been wasted; the proud
tower lay in a tangle of splinters and wreckage. Directly across the
float, in a great avenue of destruction, could be traced the course
of King Kragen.

On the morning
after the convocation the folk stood about in groups, working in a
desultory fashion, glancing sidewise in surly silence toward persons
whom they had known all their lives. Somewhat to Sklar Hast’s
surprise Semm Voiderveg had returned to the float, though his own
cottage had been crushed by King Kragen and now was only a tangle of
crushed withe and tattered pad-skin. Semm Voiderveg went to look
disconsolately at the mess, poking and prodding here and there,
extracting

an implement, a pot, a bucket, an
article of clothing, a volume of Analects sodden from water which had
gushed up from a broken place in the float. Feeling Sklar Hast’s gaze
upon him, he gave an angry shrug and marched away to the undamaged
cottage of Arbiter Myrex, with whom he was lodged.

Sklar Hast
continued toward his own destination: the hut of the former Master
Hoodwink, which also had suffered destruction, though perhaps in
lesser degree. Meril Rohan was hard at work, cutting up the rubbish,
stacking usable withe and such varnished pad-skin as might feasibly
be reused. Sklar Hast silently began to help her, and she made no
objection.

At last, protected
by a toppled cupboard, she found what she sought: sixty-one folios
bound in supple gray-fish leather. Sklar Hast carried the volumes to
a bench, covered them with a sheet of pad-skin against the
possibility of a sudden shower. Meril turned back to the ruined hut,
but Sklar Hast took her hand and led her to the bench. She seated
herself without, argument, and Sklar Hast sat beside her. “I
have been anxious to talk to you.”

“I expected as
much.”

Sklar Hast found
her composure baffling. What did it signify? Love? Hate?
Indifference? Frigidity?

She went on to
enlighten him. “I’ve always had contradicting impulses in regard
to you. I admire your energy. Your decisiveness—some call it
ruthlessness—makes me uneasy. Your motives are transparent
and do you no discredit, although your recklessness and heedlessness
do.”

Sklar Hast was
moved to protest. “I am neither one nor the other! In
emergencies one must act without vacillation. Indecisiveness and
failure are the same.”

Meril nodded toward
the ruins. “What do you call this?”

“Not failure.
It is a setback, a misfortune, a tragedy—but how could it
have been avoided? Assuming, of course, that we intended to free
ourselves from King Kragen.”

Meril Rohan
shrugged. “I don’t know the answer. But the decisions which you
took alone should have been taken jointly by everyone.”

“No,”
said Sklar Hast stubbornly. “How far would we get, how fast
would we be able to react, if at every need for action we were forced
to counsel? Think of the outcries and the delay from Myrex and
Voiderveg and even your father! Nothing would be accomplished; we
would be mired!”

Meril Rohan made
restless movements with her hands. Finally she said, “Very well.
This is clear. Also it echoes the Memorium of Lester McManus. I
forget his exact phrasing, but he remarks that since we are men, and
since most of us prefer to be good, we are constantly looking for
absolutes. We want no taint on any of our actions, and we can’t
reconcile ourselves to actions which are in any aspect immoral.”

“Unfortunately,”
said Sklar Hast, “there are very few absolutely moral deeds,
except possibly pure passivity—and I am uncertain as to this.
It may be there is no completely moral act. The more decisive and
energetic any act is, the more uncertain will become the chances of
its being absolutely moral.”

Meril Rohan was
amused. “This sounds like a certain principle of uncertainty
James Brunet, the scientist, mentions in his Memorium, but which
seems quite incomprehensible to me … You may be right—from
your point of view. Certainly not from Semm Voiderveg’s.”

“Nor King
Kragen’s.”

Meril nodded, a
faint smile on her lips, and looking at her, Sklar Hast wondered why
he ever had thought to test other girls of the float when surely this
was the one he wanted. He studied her a moment, trying to decide
wherein lay her charm. Her figure was by no means voluptuous, though
it was unmistakably feminine. He had seen prettier faces, though
Meril’s face, with, its subtle irregularities and unexpected
delicacies of modeling and quick, almost imperceptible quirks and
flexibilities, was fascination itself.

Now she was pensive
and sat looking east across the water, where the whole line of floats
extended, one behind the other, curving to the north just
sufficiently to allow all to be seen: Thrasneck, Bickle, Sumber,
Adelvine, Green Lamp, Fleurnoy, Aumerge, Quincunx, Fay, all these
last merging into the horizon haze, all the others no more than
lavender-gray smudges on the dark blue ocean. Above all towered a
great billowing white cloud. Sklar Hast sensed something of her
thoughts and drew a deep breath. “Yes …It’s a beautiful world.
If only there were no King Kragen.”

She turned
impulsively to him, took his arm. “There are other floats, to
east and west. Why don’t we go, leave King Kragen behind?”

Sklar Hast gloomily
shook his head. “King Kragen wouldn’t let us go.”

“We could wait
until he was at the far west, at Almack or Sciona, and sail east.
He’d never know.”

“We could do
that—and leave King Kragen supreme. Do you think this would
be the way of the Firsts?”

Meril reflected. “I
don’t know … After all, they fled the tyrants; they did not return
to attack them.” `

“They had no
choice! The Ship of Space sank in the ocean.”

Meril shook her
head. “They had no intention of attacking anyone. They
considered themselves lucky to escape … Frankly, there is much in
the Memoria that puzzles me, allusions I don’t comprehend, especially
in regard to the tyrants.”

Sklar Hast picked
up Meril’s concordance to the Memoria, opened the pages. Spelling out
the letters with difficulty, for his eyes and mind were attuned to
hoodwink configurations, he found the entry entitled “Kragen.”

Meril, noticing
what he read, said, “The references aren’t very explicit.”
She ran her finger swiftly along the references, opened books.

“This is
Eleanor Morse: ‘All is peace, all is ideal, save only for one
rather horrible aquatic beast: fish? Insect? Echinoderm? The
classifications are meaningless, of course; we’ve decided to call
them kragen,’ And Paul van Blee writes: ‘About our only
spectator sport is watching the kragen and betting which one of us
gets eaten first. We’ve seen some monstrous specimens, up to twenty
feet in length. Certainly no encouragement for aquatic sports!’
James Brunet, the scientist; says: ‘The other day Joe Kamy
stuck a tender young kragen, scarcely four feet long, with a sharp
stick. Blood—or whatever you wish to call it—ran
blue, like some of the terrestrial lobsters and crabs. I wonder if
that indicates a similar internal chemistry. Hemoglobin contains
iron, chlorophyll, magnesium; hemocyanin, as in blue lobster blood,
copper. It’s a powerful beast, this kragen, and I’d swear
intelligent.’ That’s about all anyone says about the kragen.”

Sklar Hast nodded.
“Something that puzzles me and that I can’t get away from: if
the intercessors are able to communicate with the kragen, even to the
extent of summoning it—how do they do it? Through the Master
Hoodwink? Does he flash some particular signal? I’ve never heard of
any such system.”

“Nor I,”
said Meril, rather stiffly.

“You can’t
know,” said Sklar Hast, “because you’re not a hoodwink.”

“I know my
father never called King Kragen to Tranque Float.”

“Voiderveg
admitted that he did so. But how?” He rose to his feet and stood
looking off across the float. “Well—I must work with the
others.” He hesitated a moment, but Meril Rohan offered him no
encouragement. “Is there anything you need?” he asked
presently. “Remember, I am Guild-Master now and you are under my
protection, so you must call me if there is any lack.”

Meril Rohan gave a
terse nod.

“Will you be
my spouse, untested?” asked Sklar Hast, rather lamely.

“No.” Her
mood had changed once more, and she had become remote. Sklar Hast
wondered why. “I need nothing,” she said. “Thank you.”

Sklar Hast turned
away and went to join those who disassembled the old hoodwink tower.
He had acted too precipitously, too awkwardly, he told himself. With
Zander Rohan only days dead, Meril undoubtedly still grieved and
could hardly be interested in offers of espousal.

He put her from his
mind, and joined the hoodwinks and larceners who were salvaging such
of the old structure as was useful. Broken withe, fragments of torn
pad-skin trash, were taken to a fire-raft floating on the lagoon and
burned, and in short order the look of devastation disappeared.

Hooligans meanwhile
had raised the net and were repairing the damage. Sklar Hast paused
to watch them, then spoke to Roger Kelso, the scrivener, who for
reasons of his own had come to Tranque Float. “Imagine a net of
heavy hawser hanging over the lagoon. King Kragen swims into the
lagoon, anxious to glut himself. The net drops; King Kragen is
entangled … ” He paused.

“And then?”
inquired Roger Kelso with a saturnine grin.

“Then we bind
him securely, tow him out to sea and bid him farewell.”

Roger Kelso nodded.
“Possible—under optimum conditions. I have two
objections. First, his mandibles. He might well cut the net in trout
of him, extend his palps, draw around more of the net, and cut
himself free. Secondly, the intercessors. They would observe the
suspended net, guess its purpose, and either warn King Kragen away or
invite him to come and punish the criminals who sought to kill him.”

Sklar Hast sadly
agreed. “Whatever means we ultimately fix upon, the intercessors
must never learn of it.”

The Master Larcener
Rollo Barnack, had heard the conversation. Now he said, “I have
also given thought to the problem of King Kragen. A solution has
occurred to me: a device of innocent appearance which, if all goes
well—and mind you, there is no guarantee of this—but
as I say, if all goes precisely, King Kragen might well be killed.
Best of all, the vigilance of Semm Voiderveg need not be aroused.”

“You interest
me extremely,” said Sklar Hast. “Describe this ingenious
device.”

Rollo Barnack
started to speak, but,noting the approach of Arbiter Ixon Myrex,
Intercessor Semm Voiderveg, and several others of like conviction,
held his tongue. Arbiter Myrex was spokesman for the group. His voice
was clear, firm, and unemotional; clearly the confrontation had been
discussed and rehearsed. “Sklar Hast, we speak to you now in a
spirit not necessarily of amity, but at least one of compromise?

Sklar Hast nodded
warily. “Speak on.”

“You will
agree that chaos, disorder, destruction, and contention must be
halted, absolutely and definitely; that Tranque Float must be
restored to its former high status and reputation.” He looked at
Sklar Hast expectantly.

“Continue,”
said Sklar Hast.

“You make no
response,” complained Ixon Myrex.

“You asked no
question,” said Sklar Hast. “You merely uttered an
assertion.”

Ixon Myrex made a
petulant gesture. “Do you so agree?”

“Certainly,”
said Sklar Hast. “Do you expect me to argue otherwise?”

Arbiter Myrex
ignored the question. “We must necessarily cooperate. It is
impossible that conditions can return to normal unless all of us
exert ourselves to this end, and—er—make certain
sacrifices.” He paused, but Sklar Hast made no remark.
“Essentially, it seems absurd and paradoxical that you, with
your fanatically unorthodox views, should continue in an office which
carries great weight and prestige. The best interests of the float
are served by your voluntary relinquishment of the office.”

“Indeed. And
what sacrifices do you propose to make?”

“We are agreed
that if you display a sense of responsibility, relinquish the
guild-mastership, make a sober, sincere profession of orthodoxy, we
will remit your delinquencies and hold them no longer, to your
discredit.”