Norvis nodded and headed for Room Thirty-four.
Four years of life at sea helped Norvis become sure of himself. He started out cleaning ship and waiting on the crew. The sailors, all guild members, did nothing but sail the vessel; none of the dirty, grimy jobs for them. That was for the swabhands, not for skilled labor.
It wasn't an easy life, not for a man used to the comparative luxury of the School. He took orders, but he didn't take them happily at first. But he was careful always to carry them out to the best of his ability; it wouldn't be wise to get jugged out of his sole remaining source of income.
After the first two trips, he found himself starting to rise aboard ship. He grew in responsibility, and the sailors began to accord him the privilege of a greeting. It was obvious to all, particularly to Captain Del peFenn Vyless, that this was an unusual swabhand; he quickly rose to first rank among the swabbers—a small victory, true enough, but a victory, nonetheless.
At the end of his first year aboard the Balthar, Norvis was eligible for membership in the guild, and he was voted in by overwhelming acclaim of the full-fledged sailors on board, with Captain Del's hearty approval. They gave him his certificate on the first really long journey they undertook, out around the coast to the distant seaport of Sundacor. Someone had painstakingly inscribed "Norvis peKrin Dmorno" on it, and he smiled over it; for all intents and purposes, Norvis peRahn Brajjyd was now dead and forgotten. It was just as well.
He rose rapidly in the guild; at the end of his second year, he was elected Spokesman by his fellow crew members, in deference to his eloquence and superior intelligence. By now, there was more than a little speculation aboard ship on the topic of Norvis peKrin's doings before joining the Mercantile, but he said nothing, and no one asked.
From there, the step up to the hierarchy was rapid and inevitable. He was made second mate by Captain Del peFenn—a powerful, dynamic man with an overbearing bass voice and a vivid contempt for some of the most deeply-rooted Nidorian mores. Captain Del came from a long line of ship-owners, and the seamen of Vashcor had always been fairly detached from the theocratic mainland life.
For long hours, as the Balthar, wind in its billowing sails, moved in dignified fashion over the sea, Norvis would sit, watching, quietly nodding, while the Captain would express opinions which would undoubtedly have resulted in his stoning, were he a landsman. Gradually, the Captain unburdened himself more and more bluntly. He feared the power of the Council of Elders, who had immediate control over his cargoes and were always happy to tithe him at both ends. He bitterly resented this, as had his father before him and his father, no doubt, but it was the first time Del had had a chance to unload this resentment to another.
Norvis, without committing himself, managed to let the Captain see that he was at least in partial agreement. It took an effort occasionally, for Norvis did not actually hold the same animosity toward the Council that the Captain did, and when Del peFenn spent the better part of one evening attacking the Elder Grandfather Kiv peGanz Brajjyd, it was all Norvis could do to restrain himself. After all, honor and love for one's ancestors was set forth on the very first page of the Scriptures, and, as little as Norvis cared for old Kiv, he still respected him, both as an Elder, and as his mother's father.
Del peFenn's grievance against Kiv was a simple one; his father, Fenn peFulda Vyless, had held a stranglehold on the shipping of Edris powder from one part of the world to another. When the youthful Kiv's revolutionary hugl-killing methods had ended the entire Edris industry, old Fenn peFulda's contracts had been voided, leaving him temporarily bankrupt.
Even though his fortune had been rebuilt, and his son Del had increased it twofold, he had retained this bitterness until he died, and his son had carried it on. Captain Del peFenn returned to the subject of Kiv peGanz Brajjyd more than once.
As the months moved on, the Captain and his former swabhand grew quite close. And when, in the third year of Norvis' first enlistment, a prematurely lowered boom carried Charnok peDran Yorgen, the Balthar's first mate, overboard, never to be recovered, who else would be the logical replacement but Norvis peKrin Dmorno?
As first mate, Norvis moved up to the second-best cabin, just next to the Captain's, and his wage went up considerably. In odd moments, it pleased him to contemplate the amount of money that was accumulating for him, to be paid in a lump at the end of the four-year voyage.
Each time the ship put into port, it was his task to supervise the loading and unloading of cargo, and to break in the new men Del peFenn was forever hiring. The swabhands had the occasional habit for jumping contract, apparently preferring to lose their pay for a year rather than sweat out three more of the same, and hardly a stop went by without some new swabhand coming aboard. They were generally tall, gawky boys, too restless to make good farmers, and not clever enough to get into Bel-rogas.
After a while, Norvis came to realize why his rise to the top had been so easy; he was a veritable intellectual giant among sailors. Since every sailor began as a swabhand, and since the swabhands were always green boys, without education or any particular ability, a man with several years of the Bel-rogas School behind him stood out aboard ship like the Great Light over the mountains.
And then, on a warm afternoon in Norvis' final year of duty, Ganz peKresh Danoy joined the crew.
"We've got a new swabhand," Captain Del told Norvis. "He's down on the forward deck now, getting some of the smell of the sea into his lungs."
"Another green kid, eh?" Norvis said. "Well, I'll try to make a sailor out of him."
The Captain smiled. "You'd better go down forward and see him before you make any decisions." There was a strange light in the Captain's eyes, and when Norvis got his first look at Ganz peKresh Danoy, he understood.
Ganz peKresh was no green recruit—not by thirty years or so. He was a man of middle age, short, stooped, and not very intelligent looking. His blunt, flat face had the blank and bewildered appearance of a man whose life had been shattered after fifty years of complacent routine.
"You're the new swabhand, boy?" Norvis asked, just barely managing to conceal his disbelief.
"That's right, Ancient," said he, "Ganz peKresh Danoy, Ancient." He spoke in a dull monotone, and his voice had the nasal twang of a farmer from the bleak, hilly province of Sugon.
"You're older than our usual run of men, you know."
"I know. But this is all I'm fitted for." He spread his hands in an eloquent gesture of defeat and despair. Norvis felt a sudden twinge of premonitory fear.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Sir, you don't know? What's happened to us, I mean?"
Norvis' expression became grim. "No," he said slowly. "Suppose you come back to my cabin and tell me all about it. I'm somewhat out of touch with things." It was not the custom for officers to invite swabhands to their cabins, but Norvis wanted to be sure this was a private conversation—and his respect for custom was rapidly dwindling, anyway.
III
The story Ganz peKresh unfolded was a gloomy one. He had been, as Norvis had guessed, a farmer from Sugon. He had had a small tract of barely marginal land in the southern tip of the province, in the foothills of the Ancestral Mountains. The farming there had never been profitable in the first place; the hundreds of small farms there, raising peych-beans almost exclusively, operated on just the flimsiest dividing line between profit and loss—with loss meaning starvation.
Norvis knew the situation in that part of Sugon; he had studied it, back in those almost forgotten days when he had been working on the growth hormone project. He suddenly grimaced at the memory. He had succeeded in burying it deep, the whole sordid business of the trumped-up ceremony for Dran peNiblo, his own expulsion and discrediting, and everything else. And now it came flooding back and hit him hard.