“Do you have enough ships to carry us?”
“I’ve got six. Thirteen to a ship and we’ll make it without even feeling crowded. Stop worrying, doc. Have another drink.”
“I have one already.”
“Mind if I do, then?”
“Suit yourself.”
Delagard laughed. He was getting drunk, now. He caressed the sea-chart as though it were a woman’s breast; and then he lifted it delicately and stowed it once again in the cabinet. The brandy bottle was nearly empty. Delagard produced another one from somewhere and poured himself a stiff shot. He swayed as he did it, caught himself, chuckled.
He said, slurring his words, “I assure you of one thing, doc, which is that I’m going to bust my ass to find us a new island and get us there safely. Do you believe me when I tell you that, doc?”
“Sure I do.”
“And can you forgive me in your heart for what I did to those divers?” Delagard asked woozily.
“Sure. Sure.”
“You’re a liar. You hate my guts.”
“Come off it, Nid. What’s done is done. Now we simply have to live with it.”
“Spoken like a true philosopher. Here, have another.”
“Right.”
“And another for good old Nid Delagard too. Why not? Another for good old Delagard, yeah. Here you are, Nid. Why, thank you, Nid. Than you very much. By damn, this is fine stuff. Fine—stuff—” Delagard yawned. His eyes closed, his head descended toward the table. “Fine—stuff—” he murmured. He yawned again, and belched softly, and then he was asleep. Lawler finished his own cup and left the building.
It was very silent out there, only the lapping of the wavelets of the bay against the shore, and Lawler was so used to that that he scarcely heard it. Dawn was still an hour or two away. The Cross burned overhead with terrible ferocity, cutting through the black sky from horizon to horizon like a luminous four-armed framework that was up there to keep the world from tumbling freely through the heavens.
A kind of crystalline clarity possessed Lawler’s mind. He could practically hear his brain ticking.
He realized that he didn’t mind leaving Sorve.
The thought astonished him. You’re drunk, he told himself.
Maybe so. But somehow, somewhere in the night, the shock of the expulsion had fallen away from him. Altogether gone or simply temporarily misplaced, Lawler couldn’t say. But at least for now he was able suddenly to look the idea of leaving in the eye, without flinching. Leaving here was something he could handle. It was more than that, even. The prospect of going from here was—
Exhilarating? Could that be it?
Exhilarating, yes. The pattern of his life had been set, frozen—Dr Lawler of Sorve, a First Family man, a Lawler of the Lawlers, getting a day older every day, do your daily work, heal the sick as best you can, walk along the sea-wall, swim a little, fish a little, put in the required time teaching your craft to your apprentice, eat and drink, visit with old friends, the same old old friends you’d had when you were a boy, then go to sleep, wake up and start all over, come winter, come summer, come rain, come drought. Now that pattern was going to change. He would live somewhere else. He might be someone else. The idea fascinated him. He was startled to realize that he was even a little grateful. He had been here so long, after all. He had been himself for so long.
You are very very drunk, Lawler said to himself again, and laughed. Very very very very.
The idea came to him to stroll through the sleeping settlement, a sentimental journey to say his farewells, looking at everything as though this were his last night on Hydros, reliving everything that had happened to him here and there and here and there, every episode of his life. The places where he had stood with his father looking out at sea, where he had listened to old Jolly’s fantastic tales, where he had caught his first fish, where he had embraced his first girl. Scenes associated with his friendships, and with his loves, such as they had been. The side of the bay where he’d been the time he’d come close to spearing Nicko Thalheim. And the place back of the boneyard where he’d spied on grey-bearded Marinus Cadrell screwing Damis Sawtelle’s sister Mariam, who was a nun in the convent now. Which reminded him of the time he’d screwed Mariam himself, a few years later, down in Gillie country, the two of them living dangerously and loving it. Everything came flooding back. The shadowy figure of his mother. His brothers, the one who had died much too young and the one who had gone off to sea and floated out of his life forever. His father, indefatigable, formidable, remote, revered by all, drilling him endlessly in matters of medical technique when he’d much rather have been splashing in the bay: those boyhood days that hadn’t seemed like a boyhood at all, so many hard grim hours of enforced study, cutting him off from the games and fun. You will be the doctor some day, his father saying again and again. You will be the doctor. His wife Mireyl getting aboard the Morvendir ferry. Time was ticking backward. Tick, and it was the day of his trip to Thibeire Island. Tick, and he and Nestor Yanez were running, dizzy with laughter and fear, from the furious female Gillie that they had pelted with ginzo eggs. Tick, and here was the long-faced delegation that had come to tell him that his father was dead, that he was the doctor now. Tick, and he was finding out what it was like to deliver a baby. Tick, and he was dancing drunkenly along the bulwark’s topmost point in the middle of a three-moon night with Nicko and Nestor Lyonides and Moira and Meela and Quigg, a young merry Valben Lawler who seemed to him now like someone else he had once known, long long ago. The whole thing, his forty-plus years on Sorve viewed in reverse. Tick. Tick. Tick. Yes, I’ll take a nice long walk through the past before the sun comes up, he thought. From one end of the island to another. But it seemed like a good idea to go back to his vaargh before setting out, though he wasn’t sure why.
He tripped going through the low entrance and fell sprawling. And was still lying there when morning sunlight came in, hours later to wake him.
For a moment Lawler couldn’t quite remember what he had said or done in the night. Then it all came back. Being hugged by a Gillie. The scent of it was still on him. Then Delagard, brandy, more brandy, the prospect of a voyage to Velmise, Salimil, maybe even Grayvard. And that strange moment of exhilaration at the thought of leaving Sorve. Had it been real? Yes. Yes. He was sober now, and it was still there.
But—my God—my head!
How much brandy, he wondered, had Delagard succeeded in pouring into him last night?
A child’s high voice from outside the vaargh said, “Doctor? I hurt my foot.”
“Just a second,” Lawler said, in a voice like a file.
6
There was a meeting that evening in the community centre to discuss the situation. The air in the centre was thick and steamy, rank with sweat. Feelings were running high. Lawler sat in the far corner opposite the door, his usual place. He could see everything from there. Delagard hadn’t come. He had sent word of pressing business at the yard, messages awaited from his ships at sea.
“It’s all a trap,” Dann Henders said. “The Gillies are tired of us being here, but they don’t want to bother killing us themselves. So they’re going to force us to go out to sea and the rammerhorns and sea-leopards will kill us for them.”
“How do you know that?” Nicko Thalheim asked.
“I don’t. I’m just guessing. I’m trying to figure why they’re making us leave the island over a trivial thing like three dead divers.”