The storm lasted through the night. It washed away the shelter and the supplies. He clung to the log, and the lashing around his waist cut into him in the night. Warren let the water wash freely over the cuts, the salt stinging across his back and over his belly, because it would heal faster that way. He tried to sleep. Toward dawn he dozed and woke only when he sensed a shift in the currents. The wind had backed into the northeast. Chop still washed across the deck and a third of the raft had broken away, but the sea was lessening as dawn came on. Warren woke slowly, not wanting to let go of the dreams.
There was nothing left but the mast, some poles he had lashed to the center log and his knife and arrow. From a pole and a meter of twine he made a gaff with the knife. The twine had frayed. It was slow work and the twine slipped in his raw fingers. The bark of the log had cut them in the night and they were soft from the water and the rubbing. The sun rose quickly and a heat came into the air that worked at the cuts in him and made them sweat. He could feel that the night had tired him and he knew he would have to get food to keep his head clear. The Skimmers would come to him again he knew, and if there was a message he would have to understand it.
He made the knife fast to the pole with the twine but it was not strong and he did not want to risk using it unless he had to. A green patch of seaweed came nearby and he hooked it. He meant to use it for bait if he could, but as he shook it out small shrimp fell to the planking. They jumped and kicked like sand fleas, and without thinking Warren pinched off their heads with his finger-nails and ate them. The shells and tails crunched in his teeth and filled his mouth with a salty moist tang.
He kept a few for bait even though they were small. The twine was too heavy for a good line but he used it as he had before, in the first days after the Manamix went down, when he had tried with some of their food as bait and had never caught anything. He was a sailor but he did not know how to fish. He set three trailing lines and sat to wait, wishing he had the shelter to stop the sun. The current moved well now and the chop was down. Warren hefted the gaff and hoped for a Swarmer to come. He thought of them as moving appetites, senseless alone, but dangerous if enough came at once and butted the raft.
He bent over and looked steadily at a ripple of water about twenty meters from the raft. Something moved. Shifting prisms of green light descended into the dark waters. He thought about a lure. With Rosa it had been simple, a movement to draw them in and a quick shot. Warren turned, looking for something to rig to coax with, and he saw the trailing line on the left straightened and then the line hissed and water jumped from it. He reached to take some of the weight off and play in the line. It snapped. To the right something leaped from the water. The slim blue form whacked its tail noisily three times. Another sailed aloft on the other side of the raft as the first crashed back in a loud white splash. A third leaped and shone silver-blue in the sun and another and another and they were jumping to all sides at once, breaking free of the flat sea, their heads tilted sideways to see the raft. Warren had never seen Skimmers in schools and the way they rippled the water with their quick rushes. They were not like the Swarmers in their grace and the way they glided in the air for longer than seemed right, until you looked closely at the two aft tails that beat the water and gave the look of almost walking.
Warren stood and stared. The acrobatic swivel of the Skimmers at the peak of their arc was swift and deft, a dash of zest. Their markings ran downward toward the tail. There were purplings and then three fine white stripes that fanned into the aft tails. There was no hole in the gut like the place where the Swarmers spun out their strands. Warren guessed the smallest of them was three meters long. Bigger than most marlin or sharks. Their thin mouths parted at the top of the arc and sharp narrow teeth showed white against the slick blue skin.
It was easy to see why his clumsy fishing had never hooked any big fish. These creatures and the Swarmers had teeth for a reason. There were many of them in the oceans now and they had to feed on something.
They leaped and leaped and leaped again. Their fore-fins wriggled in flight. The fins separated into bony ridges at their edge and rippled quickly. Each ridge made a stubby projection. The rear fins were the same. They smacked the water powerfully and filled the air with so much spray that he could see a rainbow in one of the fine white clouds.
Just as suddenly they were gone.
Warren waited for them to return. After a while he licked his lips and sat down. He began to think of water without wanting to. He had caught some rain in his mouth the night before but it was little. When the waves were washing the deck he had been forced to stop because the salt water would set him back even though it would have felt good to drink it along with the rain.
He had to catch a Swarmer. He wondered if the Skimmers drove them away. To catch an ordinary fish would be a little help, but the ones out here did not give much liquid even when you squeezed the flesh and anyway he had only two lines now and the small shrimp for bait. He needed a Swarmer.
In the afternoon he saw a rippling to the east but it passed going north. The high, hard glare of the sun weighed on him. Nothing tugged at his lines. The mast traced an ellipse in the sky as the waves came. The current ran strong.
A white dab of light caught his eye. It was a blotch on the flat plane of the sea. It came steadily closer. He squinted.
Canvas. Under it was a blue form tugging at a corner. Warren hauled it aboard and the alien leaped high, showering him, the bony head slanted to bring one of the big elliptical white eyes toward the figure on the deck. The Skimmer plunged, leaped again, and swam away fast, taking short leaps.
Warren studied the soggy, bleached canvas. It looked like a tarp used to cover the gun emplacements on the Manamix but he could not be sure. There were copper-rimmed holes along one edge. He used them to hoist it up the mast, lashing it with wire and punching new holes to fasten the boom. He did not have enough lines to get it right but the canvas filled with the quickening breeze of late afternoon.
He watched the bulging canvas and patiently did not think about his thirst. A splash of spray startled him. A Skimmer—the same one?—was leaping next to the raft.
He licked his swollen lips and thought for a moment of fetching the gaff and then put the idea away. He watched the Skimmer arc and plunge and then speed away. It went a few tens of meters and then leaped high and turned and came back. It splashed him and then left and did the same thing again.
Warren frowned. The Skimmer was heading southwest. It cut a straight line in the shifting waters.
To keep that heading he would need a tiller. He tore up a plank at the raft edge and lashed a pole to it. Fashioning a collar that would seat in the deck was harder. He finally wrapped strips of bark firmly into a hole he had punched with the gaff. They held for a while and he had to keep replacing them. The tiller was weak and he could not turn it quickly for fear of breaking the lashing. It was impossible to perform any serious maneuver like coming about if the wind shifted, but the sunset breeze usually held steady, and anyway he could haul down the canvas if the wind changed too much. He nodded. It would be enough.
He brought the bow around on the path the Skimmer was marking. The current tugged him sideways and he could feel it through the tiller, but the raft steadied and began to make a gurgle where it swept against the drift. The canvas filled.