Lennar looked mildly surprised. “Such enthusiasm! I wish every team I led would pay as much attention to my instructions.”
“Nobody’s paying any attention to you,” Caro said with a challenging smile. “It was Solman who put the fear of Ka into them. He’s in a bad mood.”
“I can get into bad moods too, you know.” Lennar made an attempt to look ferocious.
“That must be very frightening.” Caro’s smile grew broader. “Will you swim with me?”
“I’m going up with Myrah, but I’ll come back with you if you want.”
Caro looked disappointed as she turned to Myrah. “I might have known you’d get in first. I don’t know why you haven’t been pregnant three times over.”
Myrah considered explaining that Lennar had made the proposal, but decided it would seem too defensive. She was twenty-three years old and for some time now had been concerned over her apparent inability to contribute to the strength of her family. Caro, on the other hand, was a ripe-bodied seventeen-year-old, filled with confidence in her own fertility. She had set her sights on the rare prize of double motherhood and seemed likely to achieve her goal.
“There are other men going with us,” Myrah said.
“I know, but I like Lennar.” Caro gave him a direct smile.
“Swim with him, then—I’m not all that interested.”
“Myrah, I asked you,” Lennar said, showing some displeasure.
“I know you did.” Myrah was unhappy about the way the discussion was going, but she had decided to appear diffident—rather than compete with Caro—and was prepared to accept the consequences. “But today I’m not all that interested.”
“All right, Myrah.” Lennar gave her a look of concern before turning to Caro. “What about this early start we’re supposed to be making? We’re wasting too much time.”
He checked the straps of his bubble cage, then led the way outside. Caro went closely behind him, with one hand tucked possessively into his belt, and Myrah and Geean followed. Geean gave Myrah a sympathetic glance, but she did not acknowledge it because that too would have been an admission that she had wanted to swim with Lennar. Privately, she hoped that this new mood of disillusionment and discontent would evaporate before it made her life any more complicated.
As soon as they were clear of the Home’s defensive mesh the members of the group ranged themselves in a line for the obligatory inspection by the leader. Their bodies, naked except for the patterned belts denoting their families, reflected the blue morning light as they gently trod water, but in the virtual absence of gravity these movements were so slight that they could have been taken for an optical effect. The only noticeable breaks in the line occurred when a man or woman moved to ensnare a fresh air bubble from the hordes of silvery spheres which drifted all around. Myrah, positioned at one end of the line, noticed that the bubbles were indeed moving downwards, and her sense of unease returned in strength.
Lennar swam slowly along the line. He collected from each female a small tally which was her House Mother’s testimony that she was near the midpoint of her menstrual cycle and therefore was unlikely to perfume the water with blood. The precaution was a vital one on all long-range forays, because some of the most dangerous predators could detect blood at great distances and were strongly attracted to it. Lennar then extracted from each member of the party a formal statement that he or she had not begun to cough—lung damage could also result in blood passing into the water—and completed his inspection by assuring himself that nobody present had skin lacerations.
Satisfied that all was well, he gave a signal and the group began to swim upwards. The sentry at the Topeast entrance waved farewell to them and retired into the comfort of his bubble net.
As the indistinct outline of the Home sank away beneath them, the members of the group arranged themselves in traditional formation. Lennar and the other two men moved to a central position, and the three women with whom they had elected to swim closed in with them. As a necessary preliminary to sexual union, each pair linked themselves together by intertwining their belts, and then settled into the slow-surging, erotic rhythms of the swim. Their bubble cages were pressed together, symbolically uniting their air supplies. The four remaining women took up their stations in an outer circle, with the double duty of watching for possible dangers and occasionally steering large air bubbles towards the couples in the centre.
Myrah swam easily and economically, her spear held lightly between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. As they moved up through the euphotic zone, hour after hour, the light grew stronger, and shades of red and green began to appear in the towering root column beside which they were travelling. At these levels there was very little chance of encountering any Horra, who preferred to roam the darkness, and Myrah found herself watching the three couples in the heart of the formation. The sight of men and women locked together at mouth, waist and loins was a familiar one to her. Fertility was low among the people of the Clan, mortality from many causes was high, and the only way they could maintain their numbers was by maximising the chances of conception.
In the past, observing the sexual play of men and women swimming together had always stimulated Myrah’s own desire, but on this occasion, quite abruptly, she discovered in herself a profound emptiness. She watched Lennar and Caro with detachment. She noted the subtle way in which Caro sometimes made her swimming strokes fractionally later than Lennar’s so that the disparity in their movements reinforced his penetration of her body—and none of it meant anything to her. Even her sense of rivalry with Caro, a petty but human emotion, had faded away, leaving her as spent and lifeless as one of the fragile mollusc shells she sometimes saw drifting down into the dark heart of the world. The feeling was a new one for Myrah, and part of her mind was afraid of it, but there was nobody to whom she could turn for reassurance.
Moving her arms and legs automatically, trapped in her own intangible bubble of loneliness, she continued her slow progression to the surface.
CHAPTER TWO
Hal Tarrant was eating a light supper consisting mainly of dried fruit and cereals, while seated at his usual place by the window.
The large, north-facing window was the best feature of his house, with its jewel-bright views of the island’s green slopes and the ocean beyond. He kept a large table at it and liked to sit there for all meals and while attending to paperwork connected with the farm. Even when he was relaxing in the evenings he tended to sit at the table, rather than in an armchair, and cover it with his paraphernalia for relaxation—the books, the pipes and tobacco, the wine bottle and his single antique crystal glass.
As he chewed the unprocessed food, Tarrant’s gaze moved continuously over the geometrical patterns of the algae beds which began close to the shore and extended almost to the horizon. An occasional boat still moved in the waterways which separated the beds, but the day’s work was practically over and in the lingering red-gold light of the sunset the farm looked as peaceful as a private park.
It was a scene from which Tarrant normally derived comfort—the visible testimony that men could still work together—but on this evening his grey eyes were sombre and intent. Several times during the simple meal he picked up his binoculars and used them to identify farm boats as they drew in to the ragged line of jetties far below him. He was a tall man of thirty, with a spare, flat-chested build which would have made him look like a teenager had it not been for the adult identity, ratified by experience, which was impressed on his features. Each time he set the binoculars down his expression grew more thoughtful and the tension he was feeling became more apparent in the quick restless movements of his hands.