“That doesn’t mean the higher levels don’t exist.”
“No. I suppose you’re right. Who knows? The old sailor who told us all about the Face in the first place also had some wild story about an underwater city of super-Dwellers just off shore. I can believe that just as easily as I can all of Quillan’s theological hodge-podge, I guess. But in fact I can’t believe any of it. One notion’s just as crazy as the other to me.”
She craned her head around to look at him. “But let’s say for argument’s sake that there really is a city under the sea not far from the Face, and some special kind of Dwellers live there. If that’s so, it would explain why the Dwellers we know regard the Face as a holy island, and are afraid or at least unwilling to go near it. What if there are god-like beings living there?”
“Let’s wait and see what’s there when we get there, and then I’ll give you an answer to that, okay?”
“Okay,” Sundira said.
Halfway through the night Lawler found himself suddenly awake, in that kind of hyper-wakefulness that is certain to last until dawn. He sat up, rubbing his aching forehead. He felt as though someone had opened his skull while he slept and filled it with a million bright strands of fine shimmering wire, which now were rubbing back and forth against each other with every breath he took.
Someone was in his cabin. By the faint gleam of starlight that came through his single porthole he saw a tall square-shouldered figure against the bulkhead, quietly watching him. Kinverson? No, not quite big enough for Kinverson, and why would Kinverson invade his cabin in the dead of night anyway? But none of the other men on board were nearly this tall.
“Who’s there?” Lawler said.
“Don’t you know me, Valben?” A deep voice, resonant, wonderfully calm and self-assured.
“Who are you?”
“Take a good look, boy.” The intruder turned so that the side of his face was in the light. Lawler saw a strong jaw, a thick, curling black beard, a straight, commanding nose. Except for the beard the face could have been his own. No, the eyes were different. They had a powerful gleam; their gaze was at once more stern and more compassionate than Lawler’s. He knew that look. A shiver went down his back.
“I thought I was awake,” he said calmly. “But now I see that I’m still dreaming. Hello, father. It’s good to see you again. It’s been a long time.”
“Has it? Not for me.” The tall man took a couple of steps toward him. In the tiny cabin, that brought him practically to the edge of the bunk. He was wearing a dark ruffled robe of an old-fashioned kind, a robe that Lawler remembered well. “It must have been a while, though. You’re all grown up, boy. You’re older than I am, aren’t you?”
“About the same, now.”
“And a doctor. A good doctor, I hear.”
“Not really. I do my best. It isn’t good enough.”
“Your best is always good enough, Valben, if it’s truly your best. I used to tell you that, but I suppose you didn’t believe me. So long as you don’t shirk, so long as you honestly care. A doctor can be an absolute bastard off duty, but so long as he cares he’s all right. So long as he understands that he’s put here to protect, to heal, to love. And I think you understood that.” He sat down on the corner of the bunk. He seemed very much at home. “You didn’t have a family, did you?”
“No, sir.”
“Too bad. You’d have been a good father.”
“Would I?”
“It would have changed you, of course. But for the better, I think. Do you regret it?”
“I don’t know. Probably. I regret a lot of things. I regret that my marriage went bad. I regret that I never married again. I regret that you died too soon, father.”
“Was it too soon?”
“For me it was.”
“Yes. Yes, I suppose it was.”
“I loved you.”
“And I loved you too, boy. I still do. I love you very much. I’m very proud of you.”
“You talk as though you’re still alive. But this is all only a dream: you can say anything you like, can’t you?”
The figure rose and stepped back into the darkness. It seemed to cloak itself in shadows.
“It isn’t a dream, Valben.”
“No? Well, then. You’re dead, even so, father. You’ve been dead twenty-five years. If this isn’t a dream, why are you here? If you’re a ghost, why did you wait until now to start haunting me?”
“Because you’ve never been this close to the Face before.”
“What does the Face have to do with you or me?”
“I dwell in the Face, Valben.”
Despite himself, Lawler laughed. “That’s a thing that a Gillie would say. Not you.”
“It isn’t only Gillies that are taken to dwell in the Face, boy.”
The flat, quiet, appalling statement hung in the air like a miasmic cloud. Lawler recoiled from it. He was starting to understand, now. Anger began to rise in him.
He gestured irritably at the phantom.
“Get out of here. Let me have some sleep.”
“What way is that to talk to your father?”
“You aren’t my father. You’re either a very bad dream or a lying illusion coming from some telepathic sea urchin or dragonfish out there in the ocean. My father would never have said a thing like that. Not even if he came back as a ghost, which is also something he wouldn’t have done. Haunting wasn’t his style. Go away and leave me alone!”
“Valben, Valben, Valben!”
“What do you want with me? Why won’t you leave me alone?”
“Valben, boy—”
Lawler realized suddenly that he could no longer see the tall shadowy figure.
“Where are you?”
“Everywhere around you, and nowhere.”
Lawler’s head was throbbing. Something was churning in his stomach. He groped in the dark for his numbweed flask. After a moment he remembered that it was empty.
“Whatare you?”
“I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”
“No!”
“God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—”
“This is lunacy! Stop it! Get out of here! Out!” Trembling now, Lawler searched for his lamp. Light would drive this thing away. But before he could locate it he felt a sudden sharp sense of new solitude and realized that the vision, or whatever it had been, had left him of its own accord.
Its departure left an unexpected ringing emptiness behind.
Lawler felt its absence as a shock, like that of an amputation. He sat for a time at the edge of his bunk, shivering, sweat-soaked, shaking as he had shaken during the worst of his period of withdrawal of the drug.
Then he rose. Sleep wasn’t likely now. He went up on deck. A couple of moons were overhead, stained strange purples and greens by the luminescence that rose out of the western horizon and now seemed to fill the air all the time. The Hydros Cross itself, hanging off in the corner of the sky like a bit of discarded finery, was pulsing in colour too, something Lawler had never seen before: from its two great arms came booming, dizzying swirls of turquoise, amber, scarlet, ultramarine.
Nobody seemed to be on duty. The sails were set, the ship was responding to a light steady breeze, but the deck looked empty. Lawler felt a quick stab of terror at that. The first watch should be on duty: Pilya, Kinverson, Gharkid, Felk, Tharp. Where were they? Even the wheel-box was untended. Was the ship steering itself?
Apparently so. And steering off course, too. Last night, he remembered now, the Cross had been off the port bow. Now it was lined up with the beam. They were no longer going west-southwest, but had swung around at a sharp angle to their former path.