“You think so?”
“What do I know?” Felk said.
Leo Martello said, “Do you have a minute, doc? I want to show you something.”
Lawler was in his cabin, sorting through his papers. He had three boxes here of medical records for sixty-four former citizens of Sorve Island who presumably had been lost at sea. Lawler had fought bitterly with Delagard for the right to bring them along when the fleet left Sorve, and for once he had managed to win. What now? Keep them? For what? On the chance that the five vanished ships would reappear with all hands on board? Save them to be used by some future historian of the island?
Martello was as close to being the island’s historian as anyone was. Maybe he’d like these useless documents to work into the later cantos of his epic.
“What is it, Leo?”
“I’ve been writing about the Wave,” Martello said. “What happened to us, and where we are now, and where we may be going, and all of that. I thought you might want to read what I’ve done so far.”
He grinned eagerly. There was a bright glow of excitement in his glossy brown eyes. Lawler realized that Martello must be tremendously proud of himself, that he was looking for applause. He envied Martello his exuberance, his outgoing nature, his boundless enthusiasms. Here in the midst of this desperate doomed journey Martello was capable of finding poetry. Amazing.
“Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself?” Lawler asked. “The last I heard, you had just got up to the emigration from Earth to the first colonized worlds.”
“Right. But I figure I’ll eventually reach the part of the poem that tells of our life on Hydros, and this voyage will be a big part of it. So I thought, why not write it down now while it’s still fresh in my mind, instead of waiting until I’m an old man forty or fifty years from now to do it?”
Why not indeed, Lawler thought.
Martello had been letting his shaven scalp grow in, over the past few weeks: dense, rank brown hair now had sprouted. It made him look ten years younger. Martello would probably live fifty more years if anyone on this ship did. Seventy, even. Plenty of time to write poetry. But yes, it was better to get the poetic impressions down on the page right now.
Lawler extended a hand. “Okay, let’s have a look at it,” he said.
Lawler read a few lines of it and pretended to scan the rest. It was a long scrawled outpouring, the same awkward mawkish stuff as the other piece of the great epic that Martello had allowed him to see, though at least this segment had the vigour of personal recollection.
Lawler glanced up.
“It’s very powerful stuff, Leo.”
“I think it’s a whole new level for me. All the historical stuff, I’ve had to feel my way into it from the outside, but this—it was right here—” He held up his hands, fingers outstretched. “I simply had to write it down, as fast as I could get the words on paper.”
“You were inspired.”
“That’s the word, yes.” Shyly Martello reached for the sheaf of manuscript. “I could leave it with you, if you’d like to go over it more carefully, doc.”
“No, no, I’d just as soon wait until you’ve finished the whole canto. You haven’t done the part about our coming out on deck afterwards and finding ourselves far out in the Empty Sea.”
“I thought I’d wait,” Martello said. “Until we get to the Face of the Waters. This part of the voyage isn’t very interesting, is it? Nothing’s happening at all. But when we get to the Face—”
He paused meaningfully.
“Yes?” Lawler said. “What do you think’s going to happen there?”
“Miracles, doc. Wonders and marvels and fabulous things.” Martello’s eyes were shining. “I can’t wait. I’ll do a canto about it that Homer himself would have been glad to write. Homer himself!”
“I’m sure you will,” said Lawler.
Out of the emptiness came hagfish yet again, suddenly, rising by the hundreds without warning. There was no reason to expect them: if anything, the sea seemed emptier here than it had been since the voyagers had entered it.
But at torrid noon it opened and besieged the ship with hagfish. They launched themselves all at once from the water, leaping across the midsection of the vessel in thick clouds. Lawler was on deck. He heard the first whirring sounds and ducked automatically into the shadow of the foremast. The hagfish, half a metre long and thick as his arm, came through the air like swift deadly projectiles. Their angular leathery wings were outspread, the rows of needle-sharp bristles on their backs were erect.
Some cleared the deck in a single swooping arc and landed splashing in the sea beyond. Others cracked into the masts, or the forecastle roof, or piled up in the bellying sails, or simply exhausted their trajectories amidships and landed in angry lashing convulsions on the deck. Lawler saw two go right past him side by side, dull eyes sparkling malevolently. Then came three flying even closer together, as if yoked; then more than he could count. There was no way to reach the safety of the hatch. He could only hide and huddle and wait.
He heard a scream from farther down the deck, and from another direction came an irritated grunt. Looking up, he caught sight of Pilya Braun in the rigging, struggling to hold herself up while beating off a swarm of them. One of her cheeks was torn and bloody.
A plump hagfish grazed Lawler’s arm but did no damage: the bristly side was facing away from him. Another crossed the deck just as Delagard was emerging from the hatch. It struck him across the chest, ripping a jagged, rapidly reddening line through his shirt, and fell writhing at his feet. Savagely he brought his heel down on it.
For three or four minutes the onslaught was like a rain of javelins. Then they were gone. The air was quiet again; the sea was still and smooth, a sheet of ground glass stretching toward infinity.
“Bastards,” Delagard said thickly. “I’ll wipe them out! I’ll exterminate every fucking one!”
When? When the Face of the Waters had made him supreme ruler of the planet?
“Let me see that cut, Nid,” Lawler said to him.
Delagard shook him off. “It’s just a scratch. I don’t even feel it any more.”
“Whatever you like.”
Neyana Golghoz and Natim Gharkid appeared from belowdecks and began sweeping the dead and dying hagfish into a heap. Martello, who had taken a bad slice in the arm and had a row of hagfish bristles embedded in his back, came over to show the damage to Lawler. Lawler told him to go below and wait in the infirmary for him. Pilya descended from the rigging and showed Lawler her wounds also: a bloody slash across her cheek, another just beneath her breasts. “You’ll need a few stitches, I think,” he told her. “How badly are you hurting?”
“It stings a little. It burns. It burns a lot, in fact. But I’ll be all right.”
She smiled. Lawler could still see the affection for him, the desire, whatever it was, shimmering in her eyes. She knew he was sleeping with Sundira Thane, but that hadn’t seemed to change anything for her. Maybe she actually welcomed getting chopped up by these hagfish like that: it would get her his attention, his touch would be on her skin. Lawler felt sorry for her. Her patient devotion saddened him.