"No one ever knows what's in a Blessedm'n's heart. they have secret reasons and purposes for everything. Perhaps this one is benign, but we've no way of knowing." they walked on in silence, until they reached the vessel. It was two-masted, perhaps twenty-five feet long, its boards and wheelhouse painted scarlet and blue, though its voyages had taken their toll on both paintwork and boards. Its name, The Fanacapan, had been neatly lettered on its bow.
Hunger was beginning to gnaw at Joe, so he left Noah squatting in the lee of the vessel, and clambered on board to look for some sustenance. The narcotic effect of the painkillers was finally wearing off, and as he went about the boat, looking above and below for a loaf of bread or a bottle of beer, he felt a mingling of negative feelings creep upon him.
One of them was unease, another trepidation, a third, disappointment. He had found his way into another world, only to discover that things here weren't so very different. Perhaps Quiddity was indeed a dream-sea as Noah had claimed, but this boat, that had apparently crossed it, showed no sign of having been built or occupied by creatures of vision. Its two cabins were squalid, its galley unspeakable, the woodwork of its wheelhouse crudely etched with drawings of the obscenest kind.
As for nourishment, there was none to be found. There were a few scraps of food left in the galley, but nothing remotely edible, and though Joe searched through the strewn clothes and filthy blankets in the cabins in the hope of finding a bar of chocolate or a piece of fruit, he came up ty-handed. Frustrated, and hungrier than ever after his ons, he clambered back down onto the shore to find Noah was sitting cross-legged on the ground, staring up the shore with tears on his face.
"What's wrong?"
"It just reminds me Noah said, nodding towards the procession. Its destination was the crack, no doubt of that. Five or six celebrants, who looked to be children, and nearly naked, had broken from the front of the procession and were strewing a path of leaves or petals between their lord and the threshold.
"Reminds you of what?"
"Of my wedding day," Noah said. "And of my beloved. We had a procession three, four times that one. You never saw such finery. You never heard such music. It was to be the end of an age of war, and the beginning... " He faltered, shuddering. "I want to see my country again, Joe," he said after a time. "If it's only to be buried there."
"You haven't waited all this time just to die."
"It won't be so bad," Noah murmured. "I've had the love of my life. There could never he another like her, nor do I want there to be. I couldn't bear to even think such a thought until now, but it's the truth, Joe. So it won't be so bad, if I die in my own country, and I'm laid in the dirt from which I came. You understand that, don't you?" Joe didn't reply. Noah looked round at him. "No?"
"No," he said, "I don't have a country, Noah. I hate America."
"Africa then."
"I was never there. I don't think I'd much like that either." He drew a long, slow breath. "So I don't give a fuck where I'm buried." There was another long silence. Then he said: "I'm hungry. There's nothing on the boat. I'm going to have to eat soon or I'm going to start falling down." "Fhen you must catch yourself something," Noah said, and getting to his feet, led Joe down to the water's edge. The waves were not breaking as violently as they had been, Joe thought. "See the fisht' Noah said, pointing into curling waves.
The streaks of iridescence Joe had seen from the threshold were in fact,living things: fishes and eels, bright as lightning, leaping in the water in their thousands.
"I see them."
"Fake your fill." "You mean, just catch them in my hands?"
"And swallow them down," Noah said. He smiled, seeing the disgusted look on Joe's face. "They're best alive," he said. "Trust me."
The ache in Joe's stomach was now competing with that in his balls. This was, he knew, no time to be persnickety about his options. He shrugged and strode out into the water. It was balmy wartn, which came as a pleasant surprise, and if he hadn't known better he'd have said it was eager to have him in its midst, the way it curled around his shins, and leapt up towards his groin. The fish were everywhere, he saw; and they came in a number of shapes and sizes, some as large as salmon, which surprised him given the shallowness of the waters, others tiny as hummingbirds and almost as defiant of gravity, leaping around him in their glittering thousands. He had to exert almost no effort at all to catch hold of one. He simply closed his hand in their midst, and opening it again found he'd caught not one but three-two a reddish silver, the third blue-all flapping wildly in his palm. they didn't look remotely appetizing, with their black, black eyes and their gasping flanks. But as long as he and Noah were trapped here he had little choice. He either ate the fish, or went hungry.
He plucked one of the reddish variety off the plate of his palm, and without giving himself time to regret what he was doing, threw back his head and dropped it into his mouth. There was a moment of disgust when he thought he'd vomit, then the fish was gone down his gullet. He'd tasted nothing, but what the hell. This wasn't a gourmet meal; it was eating at its most primal. He took one more look at his palm, then he popped both the remaining fish into his mouth at the same time, throwing back his head so as to knock them back. One slipped down his throat as efficiently as the first, but the other flapped against his tonsils, and found its way back onto his tongue. He spat it out.
"Bad taste?" Noah said, wading into the surf beside Joe.
"It just didn't want to get eaten," Joe replied.
"You can't blame it," Noah replied, and strode on until he was hip deep in the waters.
"You're feeling stronger," Joe yelled to him over the sh of surf.
"All the time," Noah replied. "The air nourishes me." He plunged his hands into the water and came up not with a fish, but something that resembled a squid, its huge eyes a vivid gold. "Don't tell me to eat that," Joe said.
"No. No, never," Noah replied. "This is a Zehrapushu; a spirit-pilot. See how it looks at you?"
Joe saw. There was an eerie curiosity in the creature's unblinking gaze, as though it were studying him.
"It's not used to seeing your species in flesh and blood," Noah said.
"If you could speak its language it would surely tell you to go home. Perhaps you want to touch it?"
"Not much."
"It would please the Zehrapushu," Noah said, proffering the creature.
"And if you please one you please many."
Joe waded out towards Noah, watching the animal watch him. "You mean this thing's connected to other... what'd you call them... Zehra-what?"
"People call them 'shu, it's easier." He pressed the creature into Joe's arms. "It's not going to bite," he said.
Joe took hold of it, gingerly. It lay quite passively in his hands, its gaze turned up towards Joe's face.
"The oldest temples on the twelve continents were raised to the 'shu," Noah went on, "and it's still worshipped in some places." "But not by your people?"
Noah shook his head. "My wife was a Catholic," he said. "And I'm... I'm a nonbeliever. You'd better put it back before it perishes. I think it'd happily die just watching YOU." Joe stooped and set the 'shu back in the water. It lingered between his palms several seconds, the gleam of its eye still bright, then with one twitch of its boneless body it was away, out into deeper waters. Watching it go, Joe could not help but wonder if even now it was telling tales of the black man to its fellows. "There are some people," Noah said, "who believe that the 'shu are all parts of the Creator, who split into a billion pieces so as to pilot human souls in Quiddity, and has forgotten how to put the pieces back together again."