Involution Ocean

Chapter 11 The Cliffs

Desperandum healed fast, except for his arm. He painted the slash with iodine but refused to cover the ugly black webwork of stitches put in by our first mate.

We continued to sail northwards and soon passed the halfway mark of our voyage, the Brokenfoot Islands. The settlements here had the best hydroponics labs on Nalluqua. They grow 90 percent of Nullaqua’s tobacco and over half the grain used in brewing beer. We did not land but exchanged greetings with several merchant vessels and a shrimp boat. I bought a new jackknife from an old man in a trading skiff.

I had lost my first knife to the glue in the false compart­ment of the Lunglance. I had often thought of confronting Desperandum directly with my knowledge of those hidden stores. It might even be possible that he did not know about the engine, the propeller, and the tanks of oxygen. But I decided against it.

We killed four more whales and laboriously butchered them. There were sharks here, too. They were a different subspecies from the sharks at the Seagull Peninsula, but they had the same vicious teeth, the same flying pilot fish, and the same disquieting hints of intelligence. Ignoring his wounds, Desperandum attacked the creatures with the rest of the crew, wielding a long whaling spade with extreme viciousness and every ounce of his incredible strength. The sharks attempted to give Desperandum a wide berth, and once a flying fish escaped Dalusa’s nets and bit a small piece out of Desperandum’s right ear, leaving it scalloped.

Desperandum snatched the fish from midair and stamped it to juice under his boot. After that he went after the eyes of the sharks. Blinded, they responded with suicidal ferocity, ramming the Lunglance’s sides with their snouts and leap­ing out of the dust to chew blindly on the railing. When the railing was down they chewed on whatever they could reach.

So far it had not been crewmen. Seeing the captain’s ex­cessive joy in slaughter, the crew grew nimble with ap­prehension. And the blinded sharks did not have long to strike. It never took Desperandum more than two seconds to spear his shark-slimed spade into the vital organs.

By now we were approaching another Landmark.

There had always been cliffs on the horizon, rugged bat­tlements whose roseate clifflight shed a crescent lunar glow at twilight. But now we were approaching the steepest edge of the Nullaqua Crater, that fifty-mile-long geological phe­nomenon known simply as the Cliffs.

The Cliffs are seventy miles high. They beggar descrip­tion. I believe I could write for hours without conveying the actual visceral impact of seeing something that is sev­enty miles high. But I’ll try.

How quickly can a man climb? Two miles a day, per­haps? Two miles, then. Reader, you would be two miles above sea level before you were even over the boulders that have piled at the foot of the Cliffs. After two days of climbing you would find it impossible to breathe. Putting on an oxygen mask you could possibly climb another mile. Then you would have to switch to a spacesuit. The sky would turn black before you were halfway up the Cliffs. After a month you would be climbing rock not disturbed in four billion years. Up there it is’ old, it is cold, it is dead. There is no wind up there to disturb the slow eons of dust. There are no rivers to carve the rocks, no water to freeze and split open cracks, no bushes or lichen to seek out flaws in the cliffside with clever fingers and patient tenacity. Per­haps, once a decade, a soundless trickle of dust cascades down the ancient rock to the dessicated sea below.

Eventually, sometime, you would reach the lip of the cliff. You would stand in an airless badlands of tortured, buckled rock, that is the silent, day-long victim of dreadful heat and deadly cold.

Turn and look behind you, reader. Can you see the cra­ter now? It is wide, round, magnificent; within it shimmers a sea of air above a sea of dust. Almost a million human beings live within this titanic hole, this incredible crater, this single staring eye in the face of an empty planet.

“In less than two months we ought to be docking safe and sound in the Highisle,” I told Dalusa, hugging her through the blanket. She gave a little moan of appreciation, and I grinned in the dimness.

“You said you wanted to leave Nullaqua,” I said.

“Yes.”

“So do I. And I’ll be coming into a sizable amount of money soon after we dock.” In about four months, I calcu­lated roughly. Long enough to inform the Flare dealers on Reverie of the tight conditions and my last big haul. A few samples of my brain-kicking brew and they would move heaven and earth to get me back. All hope was not lost. I knew chemists on Reverie. Perhaps they could synthesize Flare. Maybe even improve it.

“Plenty of money. Enough to pay our way off planet, both of us.”

There was no reply.

“I know the situation looks hopeless for us,” I said, em­phasizing the looks. “But nothing’s impossible with money. You can have your whole body chemistry altered; or, if that’s too difficult, I’ll alter mine. We can live together for years, maybe centuries. Even have children, if you want them.”

Still nothing. I did not allow the silence to become un­comfortable.

“I feel that we have something here, a relationship, that could be very strong, very long lasting,” I said. “I don’t know why, but I do love you, I love you very much. So”— I reached under the blanket and pulled out a ring, one of the few that I had brought with me on my voyage. I think I mentioned that I have a fondness for rings. This was dne of my favorites, a small Terran amphibious quadruped wrought in silver, one of its long powerful legs stretched in a circlet and touching its chin. I wore it on my little fin­ger.—“I brought you this ring. There is an ancient Terran custom I want to observe that involves it. It’s called be­trothal. If you wear it, it symbolizes our emotional dedica­tion to one another and to no other persons.”

“The ring is very beautiful,” Dalusa said hoarsely. I looked up at her, tears glistened dimly on her face. I was touched, having always thought that “weeping for joy” was only an expression.

“Don’t put it on yet,” I said hastily. “I haven’t sterilized it.”

“And when I do put it on, then we will be formally be­trayed?”

“Betrothed,” I corrected.

Dalusa began to weep aloud. Tm afraid,” she said. Tm afraid you’ll hate me, want to cast me out. I think youll look at me and wonder how you ever could have wanted me. What will I do when I lose you?”

“But you won’t,” I said. “I'll love you as long as tins personality exists; I’m sure of that. God knows we’ll change; we’ll both change. But there are decades, centuries ahead-of us both. When the time comes, you can decide what you want to do.”

“I’m afraid—"

“I’ll protect you. It’s a promise.” I stirred. “Come on, let’s boil the ring. Then you can put it on.”

Dalusa stood up and wiped her eyes with one hand. “Where will we go when the voyage is over?”

’To Reverie. You’ll like it there. It still has wilderness; population control is strict; the climate is very agreeable. I lived there before I came to Nullaqua. I still have friends there.”

“What if they don’t approve of us?”

“Then they won’t be my friends any more. I ... we don’t need them.” I put a pot on the stove, poured a few ounces of water into it, and set it to boil. I dropped in the ring.

“Don’t look so downhearted, Dalusa,” I said. “Give me a smile. There’s a good girl. Think of it, Maybe we can ar­range an actual Terran marriage, a traditional one. I doubt if there are any Terran religious sects on Reverne, but we can probably find a monotheist of some sort who’d be will­ing to preside. And after the operations we can live to­gether in a way that approaches normality ... except of course that few men are privileged to have a wife so beauti­ful.”

She smiled for the first time.

“Neither one of us can be strictly called normal,” I said, checking the ring in the boiling water. “But that doesn’t mean we have to be miserable. We have as great a right to a life without misery ana suffering as anyone else. No more pain, no more blisters or blood—"

I fished the ring out of the boiling water with a pair of pincers and waved it in the air to cool.

“Maybe we should wait,” Dalusa said finally, her dark eyes following the movements of the ring. “Maybe after we are on land again, when you have a chance to see normal women, maybe you won’t love me any more.” She seemed almost desperate.

My face didn’t move but I frowned internally. “I know my own mind. I think the ring’s cool now. Do you want it?”

She took it.