The chief navigator had taken up a position on the high platform to starboard where once he had made his observations and calculations of latitudes and longitudes. Now he capered like a deranged beast, strutting back and forth, flinging out his arms, shouting incoherently, singing raucous snatches of balladry, denouncing Lavon as a fool who had deliberately led them into this trap. A dozen or so members of the crew were gathered below, listening, some jeering, some calling out their agreement, and others were arriving quickly: this was the sport of the moment, the day's divertissement. To Lavon's horror he saw Mikdal Hasz making his way out onto Galimoin's platform from the far side. Hasz was speaking in low tones, beckoning to the navigator, quietly urging him to come down; and several times Galimoin broke off his harangue to look toward Hasz and growl a threat at him. But Hasz kept advancing. Now he was just a yard or two from Galimoin, still speaking, smiling, holding out his open hands as if to show that he carried no weapons.
"Get away!" Galimoin roared. "Keep back!"
Lavon, edging toward the platform himself, signaled to Hasz to keep out of reach. Too late: in a single frenzied moment the infuriated Galimoin lunged at Hasz, scooped the little man up as if he were a doll, and hurled him over the railing into the sea. A cry of astonishment went up from the onlookers. Lavon rushed to the railing in time to see Hasz, limbs flailing, crash against the surface of the water. Instantly there was convulsive activity in the dragon-grass. Like maddened eels the fleshy strands swarmed and twisted and writhed; the sea seemed to boil for a moment; and then Hasz was lost to view.
A terrifying dizziness swept through Lavon. He felt as though his heart filled his entire chest, crushing his lungs, and his brain was spinning in his skull. He had never seen violence before. He had never heard of an instance in his lifetime of the deliberate slaying of one human by another. That it should have happened on his ship, by one of his officers upon another, in the midst of this crisis, was intolerable, a mortal wound. He moved forward like one who walks while dreaming and laid his hands on Galimoin's powerful, muscular shoulders and with a strength he had never had before he shoved the navigator over the rail, easily, unthinkingly. He heard a strangled wail, a splash; he looked down, amazed, appalled, and saw the sea boiling a second time as the dragon-grass closed over Galimoin's thrashing body.
Slowly, numbly, Lavon descended from the platform.
He felt dazed and flushed. Something seemed broken within him. A ring of blurred figures surrounded him. Gradually he discerned eyes, mouths, the patterns of familiar faces. He started to say something, but no words would come, only sounds. He toppled and was caught and eased to the desk. Someone's arm was around his shoulders; someone was giving him wine. "Look at his eyes," he heard a voice say. "He's gone into shock!" Lavon began to shiver. Somehow — he was unaware of being lifted — he found himself in his cabin, with Vormecht bending over him and others standing behind.
The first mate said quietly, 'The ship is moving, captain."
"What? What? Hasz is dead. Galimoin killed Hasz and I killed Galimoin."
"It was the only possible thing to do. The man was insane."
"I killed him, Vormecht."
"We couldn't have kept a madman locked on board for the next ten years. He was dangerous to us all. His life was forfeit. You had the power. You acted rightly."
"We do not kill," Lavon said. "Our barbarian ancestors took each other's lives, on Old Earth long ago, but we do not kill. I do not kill. We were beasts once, but that was in another era, on a different planet. I killed him, Vormecht."
"You are the captain. You had the right. He threatened the success of the voyage."
"Success? Success?"
"The ship is moving again, captain."
Lavon stared, but could barely see. "What are you saying?"
"Come. Look."
Four massive arms enfolded him and Lavin smelled the musky tang of Skandar fur. The giant crewman lifted him and carried him to the deck, and put him carefully down. Lavon tottered, but Vormecht was at his side, and Joachil Noor. The first mate pointed toward the sea. A zone of open water bordered the Spurifon along the entire length of her hull.
Joachil Noor said, "We dropped cables into the water and gave the dragon-grass a good jolt of current. It shorted out their contractile systems. The ones closest to us died instantly and the rest began to pull back. There's a clear channel in front of us as far as we can see."
"The voyage is saved," said Vormecht. "We can go onward now, captain!"
"No," Lavon said. He felt the haze and confusion lifting from his mind. "Who's navigator now? Have him turn the ship back toward Zimroel."
"But-
"Turn her around! Back to Zimroel!"
They were gaping at him, bewildered, stunned. "Captain, you're not yourself yet. To give such an order, in the very moment when all is well again — you need to rest, and in a few hours you'll feel—"
"The voyage is ended, Vormecht. We're going back."
"No!"
"No? Is this a mutiny, then?" Their eyes were blank. Their faces were expressionless. Lavon said, "Do you really want to continue? Aboard a doomed ship with a murderer for a captain? You were all sick of the voyage before any of this happened. Don't you think I knew that? You were hungry for home. You didn't dare say it, is all. Well, now I feel as you do."
Vormecht said, "We've been at sea five years. We may be halfway across. It might take us no longer to reach the farther shore than to return."
"Or it might take us forever," said Lavon. "It does not matter. I have no heart for going forward."
"Tomorrow you may think differently, captain."
"Tomorrow I will still have blood on my hands, Vormecht. I was not meant to bring this ship safely across the Great Sea. We bought our freedom at the cost of four lives; but the voyage was broken by it."
"Captain—"
"Turn the ship around," said Lavon.
When they came to him the next day, pleading to be allowed to continue the voyage, arguing that eternal fame and immortality awaited them on the shores of Alhanroel, Lavon calmly and quietly refused to discuss it with them. To continue now, he told them again, was impossible. So they looked at one another, those who had hated the voyage and yearned to be free of it and who in the euphoric moment of victory over the dragon-grass had changed their minds, and they changed their minds again, for without the driving force of Lavon's will there was no way of going on. They set their course to the east and said no more about the crossing of the Great Sea. A year afterward they were assailed by storms and severely thrown about, and in the following year there was a bad encounter with sea-dragons that severely damaged the ship's stern; but yet they continued, and of the hundred and sixty-three voyagers who had left Til-omon long before, more than a hundred were still alive, Captain Lavon among them, when the Spurlfon came limping back into her home port in the eleventh year of the voyage.
FOUR
Calintane Explains
Hissune is downcast for days after that. He knows, of course, that the voyage failed: no ship has ever crossed the Great Sea, and no ship ever will, for the idea is absurd and realization of it is probably impossible. But to fail in such a way, to go so far and then turn back, not out of cowardice or because of illness or famine but rather from sheer moral despair — Hissune finds that hard to comprehend. He would never turn back. Through the fifteen years of his life he has always gone steadily forward toward whatever he perceived as his goal, and those who faltered along their own routes have always seemed to him idle and weak. But, then, he is not Sinnabor Lavon; and, too, he has never taken life. Such a deed of violence might shake anyone's soul. For Sinnabor Lavon he feels a certain contempt, and a great deal of pity, and then, the more he considers the man, seeing him from within, a kind of admiration replaces the contempt, for he realizes that Sinnabor Lavon was no weakling but in fact a person of enormous moral strength. That is a startling insight, and Hissune's depression lifts the moment he reaches it. My education, he thinks, continues. All the same he has gone to Sinnabor Lavon's records in search of adventure and diversion, not such sober-minded philosophizing. He has not found quite what he sought. But a few years afterward, he knows, there was an event in this very Labyrinth that had diverted everyone most extremely, and that even after more than six thousand years still reverberates through history as one of the strangest events Majipoor has seen. When his duties permit, Hissune takes the time to do a bit of historical research; and then he returns to the Register of Souls to enter the mind of a certain young official at the court of the Pontifex Arioc of bizarre repute.