In Forest Afloat Upon the Sea

Three

“What exactly is a twining?”

The question came from Hari Stoddard, the ship’s youngest physician, and it brought all other conversation in the small wardroom to a stop. Those who were asking themselves the same question fell silent to hear the answer. Those who already knew the answer fell silent and tried to put it into words.

Telly found himself in both categories. He knew what he’d been told all his life, but still did not understand. All he was certain of at the moment was that the reunion of Duncan and Malcolm Blake was certainly a twining—and a big one.

His teacher had been so shaken by the meeting that it took him nearly half an hour to regain control of himself. When he did, he insisted that Telly remain with him and join the reception dinner for the Relief.

“I need someone to keep a watch on me,” he said. “Make sure I don’t lose myself again.”

Telly’s throat choked up at the request, and he nodded vigorously.

The people of Schenker Float put on their best spread for the hospital ship, including both sacred foods—juicy roast pork, fresh-picked tomatoes, fried green peppers, and cockatiel squab grilled on a spit—and profane—fish stew, pinefruit, breadroot, barrel fern, steamed crusties, and boiled submarine.

The Relief had provided its own treats—including one the likes of which Telly had never seen before. It was a cloudy liquid, with pieces of lemon floating in it. They called the liquid “lemonade.” But the astonishing part came when they served it, pouring it into tall cups of clear blown glass. The cups had been filled first with what looked to Telly like chunks of raw glass, alternately clear and cloudy, fractured and cracked. He was reluctant to drink at first, until Duncan Blake urged him on.

“Go ahead, boy, try it. Ah, the wonders of electricity and refrigeration.”

“We need it for the medical staff,” his brother said. “They keep their samples and specimens in there.”

Telly sipped it at first—it was sour and made his lips pucker. But more amazing, it was cold! Like deep water in a pond at dawn or seawater drawn up from a well in the center of the float.

“What are these things?” he asked.

“Ice, Telly,” Duncan Blake said. “Water so cold that it freezes solid. They make it in a box belowdecks powered by electricity. Try and bite into it.”

He did and received a rude surprise. His teeth hurt to touch it and his head ached in places he’d never felt before.

Once he got over the odd taste of the lemonade, he found himself swallowing it in great gulps. It made his skin prickle and cooled his face.

The ship provided more delicacies—fruits Telly had never seen before, though aside from the lemons they were all profane, and oversize crabs that they said were unique to Bishop Anchorage.

When they were done, Pastor Kline made the customary speech. “Thank Noah for his presence of mind to rescue the sacred foods that sustain our bodies, the sacred books that sustain our minds, and the sacred knowledge that sustains our community.”

Everyone nodded, fresh glasses of lemonade were poured, and it was then that the physician asked his question.

“I take it you are not a Determinist, Doctor Stoddard,” Pastor Kline said.

“Afraid not,” he replied. He was a young man, his beard still dark and full, his eyes still bright, and his back still straight and strong. Telly felt the strength of the man’s spirit. He might not have been a believer, but that did not mean he had no faith.

“A twining is an unexpected moment of unity—like the reunion of two brothers separated for much of their long lives,” Kline said.

“Exactly like that,” Captain DuPage said, with a knowing nod.

“And it is a sign of God’s grace,” Kline added. “A way of telling us that He has a plan for us.”

“That’s what I had heard,” Stoddard said, slowly and carefully. Telly could see that the man was taking pains not to offend, even though he was not a believer. “But I don’t understand how a coincidence like today’s meeting implies the existence of God, His grace, or His plan.”

“Ah, then you are a Skeptic,” Kline declared.

“No, no,” Stoddard said. “Not at all. You can call me a humanitarian if you want to put a name to it. I’m prepared to be convinced, but you’ll just have to pardon my ignorance if I remain unenlightened. As 1 said, I simply don’t understand how the one suggests the other.”

“One has to put it into context,” Kline said. “Think of it from God’s point of view, humbly as you can, of course. Here on the North Einstein Gyre there are hundreds of floats—”

“Fifty-five hundred,” Duncan Blake said.

Kline frowned, then nodded. “But of these, only a few are populated.”

“One in five,” said Stoddard.

“That many?” Kline queried, and this time Stoddard nodded. “In any case, think of how the hand of God had to steer Schenker Float and Malcolm Blake together. A few days sailing or drifting by either one and the two would never have come together. Malcolm and Duncan would never have reunited. Clearly this is evidence of the hand of God.”

“Perhaps,” Stoddard said. “But I don’t see how it implies God’s plan. That is the center of your beliefs, isn’t it?”

“Certainly it is. But it is not simply a matter of rational deduction—the way the twining proves the existence of God. God’s Plan is first of all a matter of faith. We believe He has a plan for us because it gives order and meaning to our lives.”

“Precisely my point, Pastor,” Stoddard said. “How do you get from the coincidence to the meaning? How do you know that the twining has anything to do with God’s plan?”

Pastor Kline sighed, looking for words. Telly knew that he had reached his limits. He had seen the pastor in discussion groups before. He was good on the doctrine that he’d learned in seminary school—he was even competent at providing spiritual support for most of his parishioners. But he had trouble putting the pieces together from real life, from real things like today’s big twining and the dozens of smaller ones that happened all the time.

Telly smiled, then almost before he knew what was happening, words jumped from his lips. “We don’t,” he said. “We don’t know what the twining has to do with God’s Plan. Not right now.”

The others at the table all stared down at him, making his face feel hot and his forehead sweat. All were his senior, all except Malcolm’s apprentice, Mark Wayland, who sat across the table from Telly. Wayland had a constant sneer on his face. It was a consequence of eyes that were too far apart, separated by the oversized bridge of his nose, and a chin that was too small. Now he seemed to be mocking Telly’s boldness to enter into the conversation of adults.

“That’s true,” Pastor said, drawing the attention away from Telly and leaving him feeling terribly relieved. “We won’t know what it means until we’ve discussed it. And we may not know even then. Sometimes the meaning of a twining doesn’t emerge until days or weeks later. But let me assure you, when the meaning does become clear, there is no doubt that it was part of God’s Plan.”

“It sounds truly magical,” Stoddard said, using such a tone that Telly could not be sure if he was in awe or if he was being sarcastic. “I feel deprived of the experience of such certainty.”

“And well you should,” Captain DuPage said. “It is a wondrous thing. Though to tell the truth, the way I’ve always seen it is that God’s Plan is the duty to serve your fellow man, keep your honor, and protect your family.”

“Ah, now that’s a plan I could keep to,” Stoddard said. “With or without twinings to prove God’s hand in the matter.”

“To be honest,” Kline said, “much of the time, that seems to be what God is telling us.” The pastor looked down the table, and his eyes fell on Telly. For a moment, he felt as if those words had been meant for him. And for a moment he felt a fierce anger at the pastor.

Anger because he did not want that to be God’s plan for him. Not now, not ever. Because the way Pastor Kline interpreted those words, Telly knew it meant he should remain at home on Schenker Float with his parents.

And because Telly wanted to believe that the twining had a special meaning for him and him alone—that this ship was meant for him, meant to take him away to Bishop Anchorage and the Navigation School.

Telly cursed the tyrannies that set the limits of his life as he walked back home after the feast.

Chief among them was the slow crawl of time, of Okeanos itself making its long orbit of the Furnace. He looked up through the leaves at the white dot in the sky and tried to imagine a billion miles of distance between here and there. It was the long sidereal year of Okeanos that kept him prisoner here, a captive of his mother’s will.

Until he had made one full circuit around that bright young star, he would not know the freedom he longed for. That journey took more than nineteen long watch-years—nineteen Christmases and nineteen Easters and nineteen Feasts of Aidan. Telly hated the bitter knowledge that seventeen was not nineteen. And that he was not yet a man.

He had hoped to sneak into his hut unobserved, coming up on it through the pigtail ferns on the far side of the rational, away from the pond. But the Furnace was still high in the sky, and the two dogs under his porch—Smo-key and Harry—began to bark as soon as he was within earshot, running to him as he reached the edge of the yard.

“Telly, is that you out there?”

His mother’s voice cut through the barking of the dogs, who were now alternately nipping at his feet and leaping into the air in front of him. She stepped out from behind the far side of the house, a broomstick in her hand.

Chryseis McMahon was a tall woman with long hair the color of a golden sunset. Her youthful beauty had not faded with age, but it had become twisted ever so subtley by the pendulum of her moods.

She had been sweeping the door-yard, as she did whenever the watch-night fell during side-day. Hour after hour, she would scour the ground. No fern or seedling dared show its face in her corner of the rational or in the common area around the cook stoves.

Scrack… scrack… scrack.

The sound of the broom against the dark organic soil built up over hundreds of watch-years would go on and on into the night. The shutters could block out the light of the Furnace, but not the sound of his mother’s sweeping. She did it because there was nothing else to do—not after she had cleaned the hut, mended the clothes, and tended to the rational’s nightly chores.

“Yes, Mother,” Telly called to her. “It’s me.”

“Do you know how late it is? They sounded the nightwatch bell hours ago. Where have you been?”

Telly approached her slowly, dragging his heavy feet across the yard. He began to speak, to explain, but his mother cut him off.

“I know you’ve been up to something,” she said. “I can tell when you’re hiding your heart from me. Just look at you—all tied up in knots from holding it in. Well don’t just stand there—explain yourself.”

“I was down at the docks,” he said. “I went there with—”

“That’s what I thought. You’ve been out with that Skeptical girl again. That Eppie Borges. What have you two been doing? You know you can’t let yourself get involved with one of them. What would your aunts say?”

Telly felt his heart pound, and his mouth grew dry. He wanted to tell her about the feast aboard the Relief, but he was afraid that if he started talking, everything would spill out.

His mother was unrelenting. She went on and on about the embarrassment he could cause if he and Eppie did anything as foolish as producing a child. “I would just die. Do you know that, Telly? I would just die.”

Telly turned to his mother, took a step to close the distance between them, and put his hand on her shoulder. He waited until her eyes looked up from the ground and the broom, and met his.

“Mother, listen to me, please.”

She hesitated, then softened. The fire and electricity that seemed to possess her soul faded, and she sighed. “You know, son, sometimes you look just like your father did when he was your age.”

“Mother, I wasn’t with Eppie Borges. I was down on the ship that came in today with Duncan Blake. He invited me aboard for supper.”

She fell silent for a moment, and Telly was satisfied that she had listened to his words and even accepted them.

But then she came about and took off on a new tack. “You were eating down there when we had food for you waiting at the table here? What a waste. No wonder we had to throw the leftovers to the dogs. Where are those animals anyway? They’re good for nothing but food testing anyway.”

Telly swallowed the lump in his throat and dragged himself wearily up the steps to his hut and into his room. He knew that he would not try to talk with her any more tonight. There was no point. When she was like this, it was hard enough to get her to listen to even simple things. It was best to just go along with her and leave the matter until she was willing to hear him out.

Except that it would be too late by then. The Relief was indeed staying only two watch-days. Their powerful electric searchlights let them find their way through the bergs and pontoons that littered the seas and made sailing during side-night such a hazard.

And with it would sail his hopes of flying away on the wind to Bishop Anchorage.

He dropped the blinds, casting the room into darkness, and sank to the sleeping mat on the floor. Outside he could hear the sound of his mother sweeping the yard as he drifted off to sleep.

Scrack… scrack… scrack…