“At that, they must have adapted; there must have been natural selection. Many can think craftily, like the female who reaved your holdings, Rolf Mariner. I wonder if her kind are not born dependent on the poison.
“You should thank her, though, that she got you cast out as early as she did!”
Ivar covered his face. “O God, no.”
“I need clean sky and a beast to hunt,” Erannath grated. “I will be back tomorrow.”
He left. Ivar wept on Riho Mea’s breast. She held him close, stroked his hair and murmured.
“You’ll get well, poor dear, we’ll make you well. The river flows, flows, flows … Here is peace.”
Finally she left him on her husband’s bunk, exhausted of tears and ready to sleep. The light through the windows was gold-red. She changed into her robe and went onto the foredeck, to join chaplain and crew in wishing the sun goodnight.
XII
South of Cold Landing the country began to grow steep and stony, and the peaks of the Cimmerian range hung ghostlike on its horizon. There the river would flow too swiftly for the herds. But first it broadened to fill a valley with what was practically a lake: the Green Bowl, where ships bound farther south left their animals in care of a few crewfolk, to fatten on water plants and molluscoids.
Approaching that place, Ivar paddled his kayak with an awkwardness which drew amiable laughter from his young companions. They darted spearfly-fast over the surface; or, leaping into the stream, they raced the long-bodied webfooted brown osels which served them for herd dogs, while he wallowed more clumsily than the fat, flippered, snouted chuho—water pigs—which were being herded.
He didn’t mind. Nobody is good at everything, and he was improving at a respectable pace.
Wavelets blinked beneath violet heaven, chuckled, swirled, joined livingly with his muscles to drive the kayak onward. This was the reality which held him, not stiff crags and dusty-green brush on yonder hills. A coolness rose from it, to temper windless warmth of air. It smelled damp, rich. Ahead, Jade Gate was a gaudily painted castle; farther on moved a sister vessel; trawlers and barges already waited at Cold Landing. Closer at hand, the chuho browsed on wetcress. Now and then an osel heeded the command of a boy or girl and sped to turn back a straggler. Herding on the Flone was an ideal task, he thought. Exertion and alertness kept a person fully alive, while nevertheless letting him enter into that peace, beauty, majesty which was the river.
To be sure, he was a mere spectator, invited along because these youngers liked him. That was all right.
Jao maneuvered her kayak near his. “Goes it well?” she asked. “You do fine, Rolf.” She flushed, dropped her glance, and added timidly: “I think not I could do that fine in your wilderness. But sometime I would wish to try.”
“Sometime … I’d like to take you,” he answered.
On this duty in summer, one customarily went nude, so as to be ready at any time for a swim. Ivar was too fairskinned for that, and wore a light blouse and trousers Erannath had had made for him. He turned his own eyes elsewhere. The girl was far too young for the thoughts she was old enough to arouse—besides being foreign to him—no, never mind that, what mattered was that she was sweet and trusting and—
Oh, damnation, I will not be ashamed of thinkin’ she’s female. Thinkin’ is all it’ll ever amount to. And that I do, that I can, measures how far I’ve gone toward gainin’ back my sanity.
The gaiety and the ceremoniousnesses aboard ship; the little towns where they stopped to load and unload, and the long green reaches between; the harsh wisdom of Erannath, serene wisdom of Iang Weii the chaplain, pragmatic wisdom of Riho Mea the captain, counseling him; the friendliness of her husband and other people his age; the, yes, the way this particular daughter of hers followed him everywhere around; always the river, mighty as time, days and nights, days and nights, feeling like a longer stretch than they had been, like a foretaste of eternity: these had healed him.
Fraina danced no more through his dreams. He could summon a memory for inspection, and understand how the reality had never come near being as gorgeous as it seemed, and pity the wanderers and vow to bring them aid when he became able.
When would that be? How? He was an outlaw. As he emerged from his hurt, he saw ever more clearly how passive he had been. Erannath had rescued him and provided him with this berth—why? What reason, other than pleasure, had he to go to the river’s end? And if he did, what next?
He drew breath. Time to start actin’ again, instead of bein’ acted on. First thing I need is allies.
Jao’s cry brought him back. She pointed to the nigh shore. Her paddle flew. He toiled after. Their companions saw, left one in charge of the herd, and converged on the same spot.
A floating object lay caught in reeds: a sealed wooden box, arch-lidded, about two meters in length. Upon its black enamel he identified golden symbols of Sun, Moons, and River.
“Ai-ya, ai-ya, ai-ya,” Jao chanted. Suddenly solemn, the rest chimed in. Though ignorant of the Kuang Shih’s primary language, Ivar could recognize a hymn. He held himself aside.
The herders freed the box. Swimmers pushed it out into midstream. Osels under sharp command kept chuhos away. It drifted on south. They must have seen aboard Jade Gate, because the flag went to half-mast. “What was that?” Ivar then ventured to ask. Jao brushed the wet locks off her brow and answered, surprised, “Did you not know? That was one coffin.”
“Huh? I—Wait, I beg your pardon, I do seem to remember—”
“All our dead go down the river, down the Yun Kow at last—the Linn—to the Tien Hu, what you call the Sea of Orcus. It is our duty to launch again any we find stranded.” In awe: “I have heard about one seer who walks there now, who will call back the Old Shen from the stars. Will our dead then rise from the waters?”
Tatiana Thane had never supposed she could mind being by herself. She had always had a worldful of things to do, read, watch, listen to, think about.
Daytimes still weren’t altogether bad. Her present work was inherently solitary: study, meditation, cut-and-try, bit by bit the construction of a semantic model of the language spoken around Mount Hamilcar on Dido, which would enable humans to converse with the natives on a more basic level than pidgin allowed. Her dialogues were with a computer, or occasionally by vid with the man under whom she had studied, who was retired to his estate in Heraclea and too old to care about politics.
Since she became a research fellow, students had treated her respectfully. Thus she took a while—when she missed Ivar so jaggedly, when she was so haunted by fear for him—to realize that this behavior had become an avoidance. Nor was she overtly snubbed at faculty rituals, meetings, dining commons, chance encounters in corridor or quad. These days, people didn’t often talk animatedly. Thus likewise she took a while to realize that they never did with her any more, and, except for her parents, had let her drop from their social lives.
Slowly her spirit wore down.
The first real break in her isolation came about 1700 hours on a Marsday. She was thinking of going to bed, however poorly she would sleep. Outside was a darker night than ordinary, for a great dustcloud borne along the tropopause had veiled the stars. Lavinia was a blurred dun crescent above spires and domes. Wind piped. She sprawled in her largest chair and played with Frumious Bandersnatch. The tadmouse ran up and down her body, from shins to shoulders and back, trilling. The comfort was as minute as himself.
The knocker rapped. For a moment she thought she hadn’t heard aright. Then her pulse stumbled, and she nearly threw her pet off in her haste to open the door. He clung to her sweater and whistled indignation.