In Forest Afloat Upon the Sea

Four

By the time the discussion group began to assemble, the Furnace had settled nearly to the horizon. The air had cooled noticeably from the morningwatch’s heat, and high clouds over the south end of the float were beginning to dissipate—though those that remained were painted gold and orange by the sunset.

Telly found Eppie at the edge of the village. She was not alone. Mark Wayland, the apprentice navigator, was with her. He was the last person Telly wanted to see now.

“I’ve never seen a Determinist discussion group before,” Wayland said.

“I have, and you’re not missing much,” Eppie shot back. “Just don’t tell my grandfather about it. Skeptics aren’t supposed to show an interest in such things.”

“Secrets shared are secrets safe,” Telly said, eliciting a sudden glance of confusion, then understanding, from Eppie.

They found a place on the edge of the permanent seating—wooden benches set in great circles around the shore of the lagoon between the trees and the water. They set themselves down on the enchanted forest ferns that covered the ground like a soft mat.

The benches filled with older adults—Telly’s father and mother among them, although his aunts stayed home. Perhaps a quarter of the float had turned out for the discussion, and half of them took seats near the water.

The air was full of the buzz and chatter of hundreds of conversations, punctuated by the shouts and cries of children running through the trees. Then a long procession emerged from the woods along the path out of the village, led by Pastor Kline and including the entire float council and the officers of the Relief.

When Pastor Kline reached the edge of the water and the rest of the procession took their seats along the line of benches, a hush flowed out like ripples in a pond.

“Welcome, my friends, to tonight’s discussion group,” he said, his high tenor voice cutting through the still air. “May we find our way together to understanding God’s Plan.”

Kline was as slight and vague in his words as he was in body. When he was younger, Telly had liked the pastor, largely because of his easy way with children and his eagerness to organize games and activities for them.

But as he matured, Telly had realized that his contribution to discussion groups was shallow and insubstantial. Tonight was no different.

“We’ve come together tonight for two purposes,” Kline said. “The first is to recognize and honor our guests from the hospital ship Relief. We should thank them all for their kind efforts and their ministrations to our sick and aged. Let’s hear a cheer for them.”

The assembled floaters rose to their feet and individual leaders started the chant: “Hut-hut… HUZZAH!”

It repeated three times, then faded into chaotic mumbling.

“And the second reason for tonight’s gathering is to consider the twining that occurred yesterday,” Kline continued when order restored itself. “For those of you who have not yet heard—and I doubt there are many of you—the navigator of the Relief turned out to be none other than the long-lost brother of our own chief navigator, Duncan Blake.

“I think we should take some time together to discuss what possible meaning there might be in this event, bearing in mind that there are no clear messages from God and that His plan is always difficult to divine.”

Henry Adorno, leader of the Council, was the first to speak. “Have either of the two brothers suggested any reason for their reunion?” he asked. “And do they have any suggestion that it might have some significance for Schenker Float?”

Duncan Blake rose from the bench where he sat beside his brother. “Malcolm and I have talked for two days of many things: our family, our lives over the years since we were separated by the war, the thoughts of two old men who’ve seen much of this world. But neither of us has come up with anything that would give God a reason to smile upon us by bringing us together once again.”

“I fear we will have to go farther afield to find the meaning in this twining,” Kline said. “It is often so, you all realize. God points with one hand while working with the other. And it is often great folly to go chasing after the sign while ignoring the act.”

Others rose to speak, mostly mimicking the pretentious but empty style of Pastor Kline—but with less skill at oratory.

Behind him, Telly heard a loud sigh. It was Wayland, making it plain that he was bored and amused by the whole process.

“Silly people,” he said once he saw that he had the attention of Telly and Eppie. “They argue about fantasies and imaginings. Can’t they see that there is no meaning here? The two of them came together by chance. There are only so many floats in the sea and only so many navigators. Sooner or later, they had to meet.”

“You know what the Skeptics aboard Relief think? They’re calling it the Gilligan’s Float Syndrome.”

“The what?” Eppie asked.

“The Gilligan’s Float Syndrome. It’s based on an old story about a group of castaways on a lost float. In the course of their adventures, they are visited by just about everyone on the sea—as if theirs was the only lost float in the ocean. It’s the same principle here. If you go to every float that passes by Bishop Anchorage, after a side-year or two, you’re bound to run into someone you know. Even your long-lost brother.”

Eppie laughed, but not sincerely. Telly just looked puzzled. It was a story and an idea he had never heard before. His first thought was out of his mouth before he had time to consider it. “But why now? Why not some other time?”

“What’s so special about now? And why wouldn’t you think it was special some other time? No—the problem is that you people are imposing meaning on a basically meaningless world. The doctors all think so—they’re just too polite to say so.”

Telly glared at the apprentice. Why didn’t he reef his sails for the day? He was as wrong as the pastor. They both talked as if the sea was big and flat and endless. That lines went out into infinity straight and true without end.

But they did not. And Wayland, at least, should have known that. Every straight line to a navigator was actually a great circle. Head off in one direction and sooner or later, you were bound to return to where you started, but coming from the opposite direction. And every little piece of a line was a segment of a great circle. You could measure those arcs, find the intersection of the circles, and know where you stood.

That was the basis of navigation.

If the world were as flat and Euclidean as Pastor Kline seemed to think, it would all be a lot simpler. Plane trigonometry was a lot easier than spherical trig. But life was much more complicated. Cosines of cosines, sines of sines, angles of angles, all turning in on themselves, all returning to themselves. Like Duncan Blake’s brother.

Telly wanted to tell Wayland what was special about this moment, but he could not. Not without leaving himself vulnerable to his scorn. Once again, he sought to avoid the other’s arguments.

“Stow it, navigator,” he said sharply.

“Don’t tell me you believe all this?” Wayland said. Eppie gave him a look that said the same thing.

“I’m not sure what I believe,” Telly said. “But I can do without your commentary.”

Wayland looked surprised at Telly’s brazenness and his refusal to suffer rudeness silently. He prepared to say something in reply, then stopped, seeming to think better of it.

Telly was glad. For once, he wanted to hear what Kline and the others had to say. For once, their words had a significance that Telly could not dismiss—at least not the way Wayland had just done.

He fell silent just as Kline was making another empty remark. Though to Telly’s ear, this time it rang true in a way that the pastor could not have known.

“Most times, the message and meaning are plain and clear to those who are willing to look at what is before them,” he said. Telly winced and wrestled with the contradictions of his faith once again.

Why was it Duncan whose brother had arrived? Why not the ship’s master or one of the doctors? They could just as easily have had relatives here from before the war. Enough families had been broken up by it.

Because they were both navigators, Telly realized. And the twining clearly had something to do with navigation. And who was there when the Relief was first spotted? Telly and Eppie and a few others. But Telly was the one who wanted to go to Navigation School—more than anyone on Schenker Float. It was true before the Relief arrived and it would be true long after it had gone back to Bishop Anchorage.

It was plain and clear to the eye. But if it was true, if it was part of God’s Plan, then what kind of a God did Telly’s world have? One that would strand Duncan Blake here for a side-year to teach Telly navigation just so he could be here when his brother arrived to make a twining? One that would give Telly a mother who wouldn’t let him go?

And if Telly couldn’t go to Bishop Anchorage, what kind of message was He sending? Was it just some cruel joke He was playing?

“What do you think, Telly?” Eppie asked. “What does the twining mean?”

“I don’t know if I want to talk about it with a couple of Skeptics,” Telly said, immediately regretting the wounded look in Eppie’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have put it that way.”

“Just because I’m a Skeptic doesn’t mean I think like him,” she said, jerking her thumb sideways at Wayland. “There are different kinds of Skeptics. Some who don’t believe anything unless they have evidence—and some who just don’t believe anything. I’m the first kind, he’s the other.”

“I don’t know what to believe,” Telly said. Then he swallowed hard and took the risk of baring his soul to Eppie. “But if I was to take a guess at what the twining means, at least to me, it’s pretty easy to figure out. This is my chance to leave for Bishop Anchorage and Navigation School. At least, that’s what the pastor and everyone else seems to be saying. You’re supposed to look at the simplest, clearest, most obvious meaning to these things, and that’s what I come up with.”

Wayland snickered. “I don’t know which is funnier,” he said. “That you could believe you’re good enough to get into Navigation School or that you could believe it’s part of God’s Plan.”

“I told you, I don’t know what to believe,” Telly said, the impulse to lash out at Wayland’s insult nearly submerged in his own inner turmoil. “1 mean, think about it. What kind of God would send a message like this?”

“The kind that would strand thousands of colonists on a world without a landfall and then sink the ship that held their equipment,” Wayland said. “How’s that for a sick joke?”

“Then I don’t want to believe in Him,” Telly said. “And I don’t want to believe in His plan or His message.”

Telly jumped to his feet and twisted his hands together in frustration. The last thing he wanted to hear now was more pointless rambling by people who didn’t know what they were talking about.

He was so angry at the shallowness of the discussion that he stormed off from the assembly without even making a by-your-leave with Eppie or Wayland. He made his way into the woods, and took the path aft through Lagoon Village, cutting through to the edge of the sea on the far side of the settlement. It was a long walk, a few thousand meters, and took nearly half an hour—time that Telly spent rehashing the elements of his theological struggle to no particular effect.

By the time he reached the shore, the Furnace had set, bringing on darkness with tropical suddenness. The sky still maintained a burnished gold glow in the west, but the stars and planets and moons were already emerging.

Telly picked out the navigational stars quickly. Off to the north was red Antares, the pole star—or within a degree of the true pole. And to the east was the Navigator’s Star—Iris, messenger of the gods, which patrolled Okeanos’s Prime Meridian in a lazy figure-eight north and south of the equator.

Achernar, the brightest star in Telly’s sky, was rising out of the trees behind him. Aldeberan was high overhead, and Beta Centauris burned blue-white over the heart of Schenker Float.

Of the planets, only Hermes and Phoebe were visible, trailing after the Furnace as they descended into the western sea. And of the moons, only Calypso and Leucothie could be seen, one waxing full in the east and the other a slim crescent in the west.

Telly watched as the rest of the stars began to twinkle to life, naming those he could, casting about for the identities of those he could not.

And as he made his way through the sky, he lost his anger and frustration. There were still no answers, but the journey to the moons and planets and stars freed him from his float-bound troubles. He lost all sense of time and mass and social gravity, drifting upwards into the bottomless dark. His breathing slowed, his heart stopped its pounding, and his aching limbs relaxed.

He’d been there a long time when the skittering of a tree crab pulled his spirit back down into his body.

Then he saw that the tree crab had been disturbed by an intruder—Eppie. “Dr. Stoddard was a terrible bore, so I followed after you,” she said. “What’s wrong, Telly? You look terribly upset.”

Telly scowled. He didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. Then he saw the soft compassion in Eppie’s eyes and relented. She was only trying to help, he realized, and could not be criticized for that.

“It’s just me,” he said. “All of a sudden my life is a mess, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Your mother won’t let you go to Navigation School?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t asked her yet.”

“I’ll tell you what my grandfather would say, Telly. If you have to ask, you’re not ready to go.”

He felt suddenly sick at heart at that thought and snorted out a bitter laugh. “Thanks.”

“I’m sorry,” Eppie said. “It’s just that you haven’t looked very happy the last couple of days, and I want to help.”

“I don’t think you can.”

“You can tell me what’s bothering you. Are you still worried that your mother has other plans for you?”

“I don’t know,” Telly said. “I guess so. I don’t know what I’m worried about now. When the Relief first got here, I was afraid that she would tell me it was God’s Plan for me to stay right here on Schenker Float for the rest of my life. And I didn’t want to believe in God’s Plan because that wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“And you don’t think that way anymore?”

“I don’t know. Now I look at the twining with Duncan Blake and his brother and wonder if maybe there is a plan—and maybe it includes me.”

“Then why don’t you tell your mother that?”

“Because she’s not that kind of believer,” Telly said, realizing the truth for the first time. “She’s one of those who thinks God’s Plan is an excuse to keep doing the same thing year after year. Like Pastor Kline—it means pretending you aren’t there, pretending you don’t have dreams and plans of your own.”

“And you think it means something else?”

“Maybe. Maybe God’s Plan is something you have to figure out only for yourself. And it’s different for everyone. Maybe you just have to listen to what He’s telling you and never mind what everyone else says.”

“Maybe,” Eppie said. “Or maybe you’re making it more complicated than it really is.”

Telly looked at her face, but could see little expression in the fading twilight. He realized with a start how late it must be.

“We’ve got to go back,” he said suddenly. “We’ll be late for the festival.” And worse than that, he thought, he might be too late to find his mother before she dropped off into the dark depths of her night mood.

“Do you really want to leave Schenker Float, Telly?” Eppie asked as they picked their way through the gloom to find the path.

For a moment he was ready to tell her how much he hated his cramped and limited world, where the only adventure consisted of a few brief years in late adolescence when boys and girls wondered which of them would wind up paired off with the other. But he thought better of it.

“I really want to go to Navigation School,” he said. “Come on, let’s go. Here’s the path.” He picked up the pace, almost leaving her behind as he nearly sprinted back to the waters of the Great Lagoon.

By the time he reached the water-front, torches and oil lamps had been lit, the assembly of the discussion group had been transformed into the audience for the festival, and charcoal grills had been set up for barbecuing pork ribs, phib legs, and fish.

Telly arrived just as Duncan Blake walked into the glare of the footlamps set up along the front row of benches.

“My friends, before I begin tonight’s presentation, I just want to thank you all for your kindness and attention,” he said, with a bow and a sweep of his hand. “I am still in something of a fog at the reunion with my brother, but I would like to introduce him to you all now. For more than a side-year, we have been apart, but now we are together—Menelaos to my Agamemnon, Marc Antony to my Caesar.”

Malcolm Blake stepped into the light and bowed his head at the round of applause.

Telly walked through the rows of benches, the smell of roasting meat drifting on the air around him, as he searched for his mother. She would be here somewhere—she never missed a festival.

“Tonight, I will continue with The Iliad,” Duncan Blake said when his brother had resumed his seat and the crowd had grown quiet again. “We left off last time with Book Five, which sings the praises of Diomedes.”

Blake turned his back on the audience and reached down into a rucksack on the ground. He pulled out a leather helmet with a tall bristling brush along the crest and placed it on his head, then removed a wooden breastplate and strapped it loosely across his shoulders. When he turned back to face the audience, he had transformed himself into an Akhaian warrior, telling the tale of humanity’s first and greatest war.

“ ‘No gods, but only Trojans and Akhaians were left now in the great fight upon the plain.’ ” Blake recited. “ ‘It swayed this way and that between the rivers, with levelled spears moving on one another.’ ”

He went on, describing the slaughter of the Trojan battlefield, Achaian and Trojan killing one another in intricate and bloody detail.

Telly spotted his mother and father sitting together at the end of a bench. They chewed on grilled phib legs, his father wiping his fingers on his tunic and his mother pulling the meat apart nervously.

He stopped and watched from where he stood, afraid to get any closer. If he sat with them now, his mother would only harass him and argue over imaginary problems. And there was no way of predicting where that would lead.

No. it would be best to wait until the moment was right. Perhaps at the end of tonight’s Homer, before the play. His mother didn’t like Shakespeare—it required too much concentration to make sense of the dialog and the plot. She would head for home when Blake was through.

Telly grabbed a small rack of pork ribs, using a leaf for a napkin, and found a place to sit where he could watch his parents, biding his time, as Blake told the story of Hektor’s return to Troy.

Before Telly realized it, Blake’s show was over, and the crowd was on its feet cheering. He lost sight of his parents and felt a stab of fear.

He saw them again, gathering their things together, a blanket against the chill of dark and a basket of food. They pressed their way through the crowd towards the path back to Workshop Village.

Telly struggled against the mass of people as he tried to follow them, growing panicky as the people closed in around him. Time was critical now. He had to catch his mother as quickly as possible. Her mood turned so swiftly, and there was seldom any warning. She would be approachable for only a short time. He tried not to think that it might already be too late.

Despite the crowding, Telly worked his way into the open in a couple of minutes, only a few dozen meters behind his parents. He raced to catch up with them.

“Telly,” his father called when he approached. “I didn’t see you back there.”

“I was sitting in the back,” he said, pausing to catch his breath, labored now from the sudden exertion and from his nervous fear. “Mother, I have to talk to you about something.”

Telly studied her face in the flickering torchlight at the edge of the assembly area. She looked surprised and puzzled, but she seemed to have lost the hard edge of the day’s frenzied rhythms. “Talk? What about? Are you in trouble?”

“No, Mother. I’m not in trouble. I need to talk to you about Navigation School.”

Telly felt his body dissolve into nothingness. He seemed to float in the air before his parents, watching himself watch himself talk.

“Navigation School? What about it?”

“Mother, I want to go. I want to be a navigator. I’m Duncan Blake’s best student. His best ever. He told me so himself. And he said he would get me into the school. And I want to go.”

“But the Navigation School is in an anchorage,” she said. Telly saw the shadows under her deepset eyes and the wrinkles around the shadows. She looked tired and older than her years.

“Yes, it is. In Bishop Anchorage. Where the Relief came from.”

“Bishop Anchorage?”

“Yes, Mother. I want to go with the Relief. Tomorrow, when they sail for home.” Telly felt the words clog in his throat. He was afraid, afraid to say what was in his heart. Finally they came spilling out, like water overflowing the edge of a bucket. “Can I go? Will you let me?”

Chris McMahon’s eyes suddenly lit up as she realized what her son was asking. And just as suddenly they burned right back at him.

“Can you go?” she said, a harsh edge to her voice. “Of course not. What do you mean? You’re just a boy.”

Telly’s heart sank, down into the ground, then below, to the depths of the bottomless ocean itself. He heard the rest of his mother’s words, but he barely listened to what she was saying.

“You can’t leave me, not now,” she said. “I can’t bear to lose another child. Not after all the others. And we’re heading into the Chandler Drift. If you went to Bishop Anchorage now, you’d never find your way back to Schenker again.”

“But Mother, I’d be a navigator,” Telly protested. “I could find my way to any place.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. How would you know where to look? Who knows where the Chandler will send us? We could end up in the Newton Ocean or be caught in the West Wind Drift for a side-year.”

“I’d still find you,” Telly said defiantly.

His mother leaned back and looked him over. Telly studied her in return. This was no dark or manic mood. His mother was indeed as he’d hoped to find her—in full possession of herself. And it wasn’t enough. He knew that now. It never would be enough. Nothing he could say or do would change that. He could argue about God’s Plan, but to no avail. He could prove to his mother that there was no place on Okeanos that he could not find, given a sextant and a compass, but in vain.

He looked to his father, pleading with his eyes for support. But he knew there was no point.

“No,” she said. “And 1 won’t hear of it again.”

The words had the finality of death.

Telly’s parents turned and continued on towards home, leaving him standing on the path in his own darkness. And as they disappeared into the shadows of the forest, he remembered Eppie’s words: “If you have to ask, you aren’t ready to go.”

It was true, and he knew it. If he were truly ready, he would have left right now, marched right into the quarterdeck of the Relief and asked for passage to Bishop Anchorage. But he could not. If he were capable of that, he would never have feared what his mother would say.

If he were capable of that, he would have already done it.

And he had not.