“No, I don’t want to,” said Mada, watching as the gigantic breakers swept the foreign visitor up onto their crests.
And suddenly all the holidaymakers on the beach stirred in amazement.
The swimmer chose the moment when a particularly big wave lifted him up on its crest, jumped to his feet and waved his arms, as if wanting to fly like a bird. He did not take off, however, but simply kept his balance on the slippery board. He stood like that on the foaming crest and with frightening speed swept towards the shore, clad in foam and spray. It seemed incredible that he should stay on the moving watery mountain. But the madman not only held his position; laughing defiantly, he began gliding down the steep watery slope, then allowed the wave to throw him upon its crest again.
The crowded beach gasped at this bold display of skill.
“But I must see how that’s done,” said Mada determinedly, casting off the “ancient robe” and handing it to her worried nanny.
“What are you doing, my dear?” she protested, forgetting her recent advice. “He’ll bump you with his board. And is it fitting for the daughter of Yar Jupi to swim beside him?”
Mada ran into the sea and dived into an oncoming wave. The dark cap of stretch material protecting her thick hair from the water bobbed amid the foaming crests.
Mada swam as far as the breakwater and climbed onto it. From there she saw the foreign swimmer going back to the sea with his board for another ride on the breakers. She waved to him, although he could not see her.
There was unlikely to be as skilful a swimmer on the Great Shore as Mada. The ocean waves bore her up onto their crests and tried to hurl her back. But she was not accustomed to giving up once she had set her heart on something. She decided that she absolutely must stand on that magic board, and no force in the world could have stopped her.
The foreigner swimming away from the shore didn’t even look round.
Mada only had a glimpse of the stranger, but as she swam after him she had the distinct impression of an athletic figure in a loincloth, strong muscles rippling under the skin, and curly hair as tousled as that of a boy.
Suddenly, Mada saw him. He was standing on a foaming crest. The water seemed to be boiling under him, and with reckless abandon he began gliding down the watery slope straight at Mada.
Ave noticed her at the last moment and jumped, while Mada dived under the board.
It seemed to her that the wave had crashed down on her, but it was just the board grazing her slightly.
Mada surfaced and looked round. The stranger’s eyes met hers as he bobbed up to the surface. He laughed joyfully and promptly began swimming towards her, seizing the board on the way.
“Hold on!” he shouted while still some distance off.
Mada could not make anything out, but she smiled in answer, since she realised that he was hurrying to her assistance. When he swam up to her, she said:
“I want to stand on that…” and she pointed at the board.
“Ave Mar will be happy to help…”
“Mada Jupi.”
“You’ll learn the meaning of joy, strength and happiness!”
The people standing on the shore watched what was happening on the other side of the breakwater. A sigh coursed along the beach when the two figures appeared standing straight up on the crest of a wave, holding on to one another and each evidently standing with one foot on the board. It seemed like a miracle. With their arms round each other’s waists in full view of the onlookers and without falling, they were borne on the foaming crest towards the beach.
Never had Mada experienced such pleasure before.
Even so, when Mada and Ave crossed the breakwater and were returning with the board to the crowded beach, Mada felt uneasy. If someone had told her the day before that she was capable of such flightiness, she would have burst out laughing.
Ave held the board in one hand and was ready to help Mada with the other if the surf swept her off her feet. But Mada went ahead of him and, skipping over the gurgling foam with a laugh, was the first to run up onto the beach.
She seemed to be showing that, as the Dictator’s daughter, she could do whatever she liked!
Her anxious companion wrapped her charge up in the fluffy sheet.
“How good it was! If you only knew how good it was, Mother Lua!”
“As if I couldn’t know,” she grumbled. “I nearly died, waiting for you. If anything happened to you, I’d surely be executed by order of Yar Jupi (may he be happy, the great man!)”
“It’s a good thing you’re alive and can help me with one or two little matters.”
Mother Lua gave her a stern look.
“It frightens me to think of it, my dear.”
Mother Lua had guessed rightly about her charge’s intentions. Mada had always dreamed about a real Faetian, manly, noble and pure. The uncultured Faetians among the Superiors, flaunting a civilisation that had become static since ancient times, repelled her with their boorishness, arrogance and contempt for the roundheads, whose children her mother had once nursed. The stranger, as her nanny had told her, was alien to all gloomy superstitions of the Superiors; he was a scholar of Danjab who was not afraid to break free of the Science of Death there and end up at loggerheads with everybody. It was just such a Faetian that Mada could dream about, and he had, on top of all that, turned out to be athletic, daring and handsome.
It was innate in Faetians to be mutually attracted “at first sight”, which they did not always admit even to themselves.
The daughter of Yar Jupi had justified the name her father had given her—she had fallen in love straightway with a visitor clad in foam and, in Mother Lua’s opinion, had lost her wits.
“Think, my dear! If he was a longface, it would have been all right. But they’re going to call this one a half-breed. Contempt and hatred! Think again, my dear! I taught you the truth about all the Faetians, but not for that!…”
“No,” replied Mada firmly. “Let it be the way I want it. You will go to his companion and tell him where Ave and I are going to meet.”
“You’ll be noticed together! The Blood Guard will seize him. Don’t wish him harm.”
“It shall be as I have said. Others will not be able to look at us. We shall meet in the palace garden.”
“The garden behind the Wall?” echoed Lua in alarm.
“You will escort them through the Blood Door.”
Mother Lua looked downcast. But Mada paid no attention to her, walking on with her chin up.
The Blood Door! It was one of the most reliable of the devices in the Lair, as the Dictator’s palace was called. Yar Jupi had long been racked by persecution mania. It seemed to him that there were conspiracies under way everywhere to assassinate him. Consequently, he had been living for many cycles without leaving the territory of the Lair and never letting himself be seen outside its walls. He communicated with his subordinates only over closed TV. He trusted no one. Security was maintained at key points by automatons who admitted only chosen Faetians with identifiable brain biocurrents.
Only the Faetians closest to the Dictator could use the Blood Door. There was no other key to it and no outsider could open it.
And now Mother Lua had to escort foreigners into the garden outside the Wall. She knew that her charge would not change her mind. Moreover, she did not want to obstruct Mada in any case.
Need it be said that Ave, the young Faetian, had also fallen in love? Inclined to extremes by nature, time and time again he relived the moments when, with their arms round each other’s waists, he and the wonderful Faetess had ridden the surf together. He was in a fever, but he could not imagine how to see his beloved again, since she had turned out to be Yar Jupi’s daughter.