“Let somebody else find that out for us,” Lawler told her. “Let Gabe Kinverson go over there, if he’s so brave. Or Father Quillan. Or Delagard. This is Delagard’s picnic: let him be the first to go ashore. I’ll stay here and watch what happens.”
“That makes sense, I suppose. And yet—yet—”
“You’re tempted.”
“Yes.”
“There’s a pull, isn’t there? I feel it too. I hear something inside me saying, Go on across, have a look, see what’s there. There’s nothing else like it in the world. You have to see it. But it’s a crazy idea.”
“Yes,” Sundira said quietly. “You’re right. It is.”
She was silent for a time, concentrating on the repairs. Then she climbed down to his level in the rigging. Lawler touched his fingertips lightly, almost experimentally, to her bare shoulder. She made a soft sound and pressed herself up against him, and together they stared out at the colour-stained sea, the swollen setting sun, the haze of bewildering light rising from the island across the way.
“Val, can I stay with you in your cabin tonight?” she asked.
She hadn’t done that often, and not for a long time. The two of them together were too big for the tiny cabin, for his narrow bunk.
“Of course.”
“I love you, Val.”
Lawler ran his hands across the strong ridges of her shoulders and up to the nape of her neck. He felt more strongly drawn to her than ever before: almost as though they were two halves of some severed organism, and not just two semi-strangers who had happened to find themselves thrown together on a bizarre voyage to a perilous place. Was it the peril, he wondered, that had brought them together? Was it—God forbid!—the enforced togetherness in the middle of the ocean that made him so open to her now, so eager to be near her?
“I love you,” he whispered.
They ran for his cabin. He had never felt this close to her … to anyone. They were allies, just the two of them against a turbulent, mystifying universe. With only each other to clutch as the mystery of the Face enveloped them.
The short night was a tangle of interwoven arms and legs, sweaty bodies slipping and sliding against one another, eyes meeting eyes, smiles meeting smiles, breath mingling with breath, soft words spoken, her name on his lips, his on hers, reminiscences exchanged, new memories forged, no sleep at all. Just as well, Lawler thought. Sleep might bring new phantoms. Better to pass the night in wakefulness. And in passion. The new day could well be their last.
He went on deck at dawn. These days he was working first watch. During the night, Lawler saw, the ship had passed within the line of breakers again. Now it was anchored in a bay very much like the first one, though there were no hills along the shore, only low meadows densely packed with dark vegetation.
This time the bay seemed to be accepting their presence, even welcoming it. Its surface was calm, not so much as a ripple; there was no hint of the flailing kelp that had driven them almost at once from the last one.
Here, as everywhere else, the water was luminescent, sending up cascades of pink and gold and scarlet and sapphire radiance; and on shore the wild looping dance of never-resting life was going on with the usual frenzy. Purple sparks rose from the land. The air seemed to be aflame again. There were bright colours everywhere. The insane indefatigable magnificence of the place was a hard thing to face first thing in the morning after a sleepless night.
Delagard was alone on the bridge, huddling into himself in an odd way, arms locked across his cheek.
“Come talk to me, doc,” he said.
Delagard’s eyes were bleary and reddened. He looked as if he had had no sleep, not just this night past, but for days. His jowls were greyish and sagging, his head seemed to have folded downward into his thick neck. Lawler saw a tic at work in Delagard’s cheek. Whatever demon had been riding him yesterday on their first approach to the shore of the Face had returned in the night.
Hoarsely Delagard said, “I hear that you think I’m crazy.”
“Does it matter a damn to you if I do?”
“Will it make you any happier if I tell you that I’m starting to come around almost to agree with you? Almost. Almost.”
Lawler searched for a trace of irony in Delagard’s words, of humour, of mockery. But there was none. Delagard’s voice was thick and husky, with a cracked edge to it.
“Look at that fucking place,” Delagard muttered. He waved his arms in loose looping circles. “Look at it, doc! It’s a wasteland. It’s a nightmare. Why did I ever come here?” He was shaking, and his skin was pale beneath the beard. He looked terrifyingly haggard. In a low husky voice he said, “Only a crazy man would have come this far. I see that clear as anything, now. I saw it yesterday when we pulled into that bay, but I tried to pretend it wasn’t so. I was wrong. At least I’m big enough to admit that. Christ, doc, what was I thinking of when I brought us to this place? It isn’t meant for us.” He shook his head. When he spoke again his voice was no more than an anguished croak. “Doc, we’ve got to get out of here right away.”
Was he serious? Or was this all some grotesque test of loyalty?
“Do you mean it?” Lawler asked him.
“Damned right I do.”
Yes. He really did. He was terrified, quaking. The man seemed to be disintegrating before Lawler’s eyes. It was a stupefying reversal, the last thing Lawler would have expected. He struggled to come to terms with it.
After a while he said, “What about the sunken city?”
“You think that there is one?” Delagard asked.
“Not for a second. But you do.”
“Like shit I do. I had too much brandy, that’s all. We’ve travelled a third of the way around the Face, I figure, and there hasn’t been any sign of it. You’d suppose there’d be a strong coastal current if there’s a gravity funnel holding the sea open up ahead. A vortex flow. But where the fuck is it?”
“You tell me, Nid. You seemed to think it was here.”
“That was Jolly who thought so.”
“Jolly was crazy. Jolly’s brains got cooked when he took his trip around the Face.”
Delagard nodded sombrely. His eyelids rolled slowly down over his bloodshot eyes. Lawler thought for a moment that he had fallen asleep standing up. Then he said, still keeping his eyes closed, “I’ve been out here by myself all night, doc. Working things out in my mind. Trying to take a practical view of the situation. It sounds funny to you, because you think I’m crazy. But I’m not crazy, doc. Not really. I may do things that look crazy to other people, but I’m not crazy myself. I’m just different from you. You’re sober, you’re cautious, you hate taking chances, you just want to go along and go along and go along. That’s all right. There are people like you in the universe and there are people like me, and we never really understand each other, but sometimes it happens that we get thrown together in a situation and we have to work together anyway. Doc, I wanted to come here more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life. For me it was the key to everything. Don’t ask me to explain. You’d never get it, anyway. But now I’m here and I see made a mistake. There’s nothing here for us. Nothing.”
“Pizarro,” Lawler said. “Cortes. They would at least have gone ashore before turning tail and running.”
“Don’t fuck around with me now,” said Delagard. “I’m trying to level with you.”
“You gave me Pizarro and Cortes when I tried to level with you, Nid.”
Delagard opened his eyes. They were frightfuclass="underline" bright as coals, fiery with pain. He drew back the corner of his mouth in what might have been an attempt at a smile. “Go easy, doc. I was drunk.”