“They are not dead,” he said, trying to project reassurance across the gulf of incomprehension. “They are alive. I bring you news of them.”
“Leave us, child of Ka.”
Tarrant surveyed the scene helplessly, and tried to remember the name of the Clan leader which had been given to him. “I want to talk to … Solman.”
This time there was a different kind of response, one which gave, the impression of being less hostile, and several white figures swam towards the deep-bodied shape of the flying boat hull. Tarrant trod water to hold his position, and waited in silence. A minute later an elderly man with white, wispy hair swam towards him with ungainly strokes. His joints were visibly swollen with arthritis, and he was flanked by younger men whose duty it was to shepherd air bubbles into the filigreed cage which surrounded his head like a halo. He advanced as far as the front rank of his people then halted, his face impassive.
“Are you Solman?” Tarrant said.
“I am Solman.” The voice was hoarse, but firm and with an imperious quality to it. “How do you know my name?”
“Lennar told it to me.”
“I sent Lennar to his death.”
“Lennar is not dead. He is alive and. …” Tarrant stopped short of saying that Lennar was well. “I have come here to help you. To bring you to Lennar and his friends.”
“Where are they?”
Tarrant took a deep, quavering breath and launched into an attempt to describe, using the vocabulary of a child, the history of two worlds and two peoples, plus the theory of the Bergmann machines and their role in stabilising the land area of Earth. But long before he had begun to speak of a “gateway” at the centre of the globe of water, and of Solman’s duty to lead the people of the Clan through it, he saw the beginnings of the older man’s smile—which was both compassionate and scornful—and he knew he was defeated. He fell silent.
“I am grateful to you, child of Ka,” Solman said. “You have given me reassurance … that Ka has grown feeble. So feeble that he has to plead for us to give our bodies up to him.”
Tarrant stretched out his hands. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand all.” Solman glanced at the men and women near him and they nodded gravely, reaffirming his mandate.
“But. …” Tarrant thought of all the occasions in the past when he had found it impossible, even when speaking to a friend from his home town, to explain his ideas on clear-cut, familiar issues in words which retained the same meaning between leaving his lips and arriving at the other person’s ears. He looked at Solman, at the arrays of naked bodies suspended at the ends of their lines in a dim continuum of blue shade and silver bubbles, at the brooding hulk of the wingless flying boat whose present owners would never understand its original purpose—and a new kind of pain was born inside him.
“Time’s up, Hal” Martine’s voice reached him across an immense distance. “We have to go.”
“I have to go,” Tarrant repeated like a compliant child.
Solman pointed downwards. “Return to your master.”
Tarrant backed off a short distance by pushing at the water with his hands and feet, then turned and swam to the sled. In the blue half-light, even to his eyes, the four bulky, helmeted figures waiting by it could have been creatures worthy of the name, children of Ka. The sled itself looked like a squat marine creature, a diablo, with knowing, watchful eyes.
He returned to his niche behind the starboard fin and snap-hooked himself in place as the engine growled into life. Guided once again by its sensors, the sled began boring down towards the heart of the world, and as it picked up speed Tarrant had a final glimpse of the people of the Clan.
Indomitable, pragmatic, they had already begun to swim towards a haven which existed nowhere but in their own dreams.
Commander Leon P. Cavray, of the South Newzealand Navy, stared thoughtfully at the tactical display projected on the main screen in his operations room. His own ship—the corvette Dalton—was represented near the bottom of the screen by a slim ellipse from which sprouted an arrow indicating course and speed. A number of other vessels were scattered over the ten thousand square kilometres of the South Pacific covered by the display, and were indicated by various symbols. The image intensities of all but one had been muted—the exception being a red triangle which pulsed with an angry brilliance.
“That’s The Rose of York,” said Naipur, the weapons officer. “There’s no doubt about it.”
Cavray fingered his short beard. “You think there’s no doubt about it.”
“Excuse me, sir, but that’s a contradiction in terms.”
“I know.”
Naipur sighed noisily, not troubling to hide his impatience. He was a neat, ambitious man who had carried out a thousand successful long-range engagements of enemy ships on training simulators, and who desperately wanted to test himself and his charges in a real situation. The dispassionate peace which lay over the world, coupled with the growing scarcity of reliable Seafire nuclear torpedoes, had led him to despair of ever adding combat honours to his service record. And now that a perfect, heaven-sent chance had come his way he was baffled by his captain’s reluctance to carry out Staff orders.
“It’s in exactly the right area,” he said. “It’s exactly on course for Harpoon, it refuses to enter into radio communication, and all the other vessels in the designated area have been eliminated. What more do you want?”
“I’d like visual confirmation.”
“To get that you’d have to go in dose—and in a nuclear situation you can’t do that.” Naipur strode across the room and tapped the bright-flaring symbol with his finger. “This is The Rose of York.”
Cavray looked mildly surprised. “That, Mr Naipur, is a red triangle on a map. Send out a reconnaissance drone.”
“We’ve only got one left, and it’ll take a good thirty minutes to check it out.”
“All combat equipment is supposed to be in a state of instant readiness,” Cavray reproved. “But if you get the drone airborne within fifteen minutes I won’t mention this lapse in my report.”
“Thank you, sir.” Naipur gave a very correct salute, his face expressionless, and walked to the door. As soon as he was in the narrow gangway outside the operations room he broke into a silent-footed run, heedless of the stares of the ratings he almost collided with on his way to the weapons hangar.
As the darkness began to grow more intense around the sled Martine switched on its forward lights. Their twin beams lanced straight ahead, creating the illusion that the sled was winging along an alley swarming with alien life. Air bubbles appeared as solid globes of mercury which rushed forward, threatening in their massiveness, only to disperse harmlessly in the invisible bow wave. A dozen varieties of fish darted into the surrounding gloom or formated with the sled, effortlessly keeping pace with its descent.
“The lights aren’t a good idea,” Tarrant said. “They’re making us too conspicuous.”
“Okay. If you. …”
“Leave them on a minute,” Petersdorff said. “I can use some film of the fish.”
“Film?” Tarrant raised his voice in exasperation. “A few hours ago you were. …”
He, broke off as—with frightening suddenness—the nightmarish shape of a big squid appeared out of the murk, swimming parallel with the sled. The great triangular fins along the side of the pointed forebody writhed in a succession of sine waves, the tentacles pulsed in time with the creature’s breathing, and a huge eye reproached the five men for having strayed beyond their natural bounds. Tarrant’s mouth twisted in shock as he saw other similar outlines materialising from the darkness. He reached for the only underwater weapon he possessed, which was a sheath knife.