“No.” Russ shrugged. “I don’t know. It would to me, but we can’t think like that. Look, I ain’t a philosopher, I’m just a torpedoman at heart. You’re the one born with the big officer brain, but it just so happens I’m not a bad sailor, so they gave me a ship. That doesn’t mean I feel qualified to speculate on stuff like this.” He paused, still staring at the “frog-lizards.” “You know, we never could really figure out how the Japs think, even with Shinya to try and explain it to us, and at least they were humans. We still don’t have a clue what makes the Grik tick. I think it’s pretty amazing that us and the ’Cats are on the same wavelength on most things.” He nodded at the strange creatures. “For all we know, not killing them and doctoring them up might make them hate us even more.”
“So what do we do with ’em now?” Ben asked. “It’s going to be a hot day, as usual. We can’t just keep throwing water on ’em. The guys have too much work to do, both guarding and trying to refloat this tub. I guess we could put ’em down in the forward hold, but I was kind of hoping, if we raise steam, we might get it pumped out a little.”
Russ rubbed his eyes. “Let ’em go,” he said.
“Let them go?”
“Yeah. We might have a whole other batch to deal with tonight. But we know they talk to each other… sort of.” He shook his head and smiled. “Sorry. Tired. I’m rambling, I guess. Maybe what I’m hoping is that they’ll think things over. They came at us and got creamed. We treat their wounded and turn ’em loose, maybe that’ll at least confuse them enough to leave us alone for a while.”
Ben chuckled. “So you are hoping they think a little like us?”
“I guess. At least on the basic, ‘don’t sit on the blowtorch twice’ level.”
The natives were still restless, but now they were afraid, and somewhat perplexed. The attempt to recover the Warren had gone horribly wrong. The strange creatures that infested it possessed inconceivable magic, and capable notions of the art of territorial conquest and defense. The natives considered themselves practiced students of that art. They used it every day to hunt and simply survive. How else had they managed to maintain complete control of such a vast body of water as their lake for so long? Now, after the terrible losses of the night before, their very hegemony over the lake itself might be at risk. They couldn’t possibly mount another such attempt to retrieve the Warren. They’d be hardpressed just to defend their territory from others of their own kind. They had no doubt they would succeed; they practiced the art well, but it would be difficult for a time-and they would, of course, require a new Great Mother sooner than they’d hoped. It was all so inconvenient.
Their perplexity had more to do with the behavior of the strange creatures after the combat was over than anything else. First, to their amazement, the strange creatures-clear victors in the contest-did not consume the dead, as was their right. Instead, they threw them into the water for the natives to claim, almost as an offering to a respected adversary. The corpses were duly retrieved. Food was food, after all, and it wouldn’t do to refuse such an odd but flattering gift. The most perplexing thing of all, however, was that the strange creatures also released the wounded. This had almost never been done before. Ancient legends told of such deeds, often recounted when the natives gathered together in times of plenty to softly croak and wheeze their tales of mythic heroes. A favorite of these, and one of the oldest remembered, recounted the tale of a supreme Hunter and practitioner of the art who, after rending their own earliest ancestors in fair and honorable combat, displayed a barely remembered and vaguely understood virtue known as Mercy, before guiding their ancestors to this very lake and gifting them with its bounty.
Evidently, the strange creatures were not only consummate practitioners and students of the art, but they understood the mythic virtue of Mercy, even when they were the victors after a combat they did not start. Most odd.
That night, virtually every native of the lake gathered around the Warren, their bright yellow eyes staring in wonder at the magical spectacle before them. The strange creatures had somehow literally brought the Warren to life! It gasped in the darkness with luminous smoke and sparks spiraling upward like the distant burning mountains! Many bright white eyes glared from it in all directions, and the strange creatures moved about beneath them, tending the living Warren’s needs. Another string of floating things arrived, shortly after dark, bearing even more of the strange creatures, but the floating things were left in peace. The natives conversed in a muted rumble, so many voices at once, and came to the consensus that they’d been wrong to combat the strange creatures.
When the Warren first arrived, it had been sickly and wounded. The strange creatures had left it here. Presuming it to be a corpse, the natives had used it as they used all things in the world-for whatever it seemed best suited. They turned it into a shelter. It never occurred to any of them that it might be still alive, suffering the indignity of their trespass. Now the strange creatures had returned to what might even be Their Great Mother, with the sole intention of healing it-as they’d attempted to heal the wounded natives that attacked them!
Slowly, as the night wore on, yellow eyes dipped beneath the surface of the water and disappeared. Food was not a problem, thanks to the benevolence of the strange creatures, but a new Warren, of a more traditional style, would have to be begun. It would not be as convenient or enduring, but it would be theirs. Most would begin the work in a somber, meditative mood.
CHAPTER 14
Eastern Sea
N ervously, Matt endured the one-handed shave. Somehow-even Juan couldn’t remember exactly how or when-the Filipino had apparently broken his left arm during the terrible storm. He swore it hadn’t been when the ship nearly capsized; he’d have remembered that. He was darkly suspicious that it happened when Earl Lanier fell on him sometime later. Now the arm hung suspended in a sling while Matt did his best to project calm indifference as Juan’s shaky, unsupported razor scraped the stubble from his face. The sea was almost calm at last. The morning sky was blue, with a purple-tinged fleece of clouds. The typhoon, Strakka, or whatever it was, had passed, and like other Strakkas he’d experienced, there wasn’t any fooling around. When it was gone, it was gone. There was no lingering stormy aftereffect. In seas where land was near, there was always a tremendous detritus of shredded vegetation, trees, and tumbling corpses of fish and animals. The corpses never lasted long once the sea calmed down. At least within the Malay Barrier, flasher fish took care of that. Out here, in the broad Pacific, he didn’t know. Lanier, who fished over the side whenever the ship was at ease, hadn’t caught any flashies off their little atoll, although he caught plenty of other stuff. No, out here, the end of the Strakka had almost a cleansing effect; as if in its might it had absorbed and scoured the sea clear of all but the mildest weather.
They’d been lucky for once. The only thing that saved them, apparently, was that the monstrous wave hadn’t actually broken over the ship, crushing her like a bobbing beer can. Evidently, it had risen in their path, moving in vaguely the same direction they were. There’d been no real warning as such-even Chack hadn’t seen it in time for that-and all they’d been able to do was try to claw up its flank. They didn’t make it. The thing was just too steep, and even now no one had any real idea how high the wave ultimately crested. In spite of the wind and the direction of the swells, the top of the wave must have split of its own accord beneath the titanic weight it had amassed. Walker simply dropped over onto her side when part of this avalanche of falling sea landed upon her.
Matt, like all seamen, had long heard tales of “rogue waves” that reached to the sky, “white squalls” made of almost solid, windblown water. He admitted that he’d always put both in the same category as mermaids and sea monsters. Now he knew there were sea monsters and “white squalls” weren’t the most unusual squalls that one might encounter. Clearly, “rogue waves” existed too, and he wondered uncomfortably just how “rogue” they actually were on this world. The terror of the event still resonated within him, and even if the details of what he’d done and how he’d reacted had blurred, the overall sense of crushing, swirling hopelessness and failure wouldn’t go away. It had been that close.