“Look, Peregrino, I know perfectly well the conditions aren’t identical with Earth. I’ve tried them out, remember? Please remember, too, that I was sailing, in flimsier vessels than I like thinking about, two thousand years before you were born. Always the second law of the sea is ‘Take care.’ ”
“What’s the first?”
“ ‘It’s in the bilge!’ ”
They laughed together a bit. “Okay, okay,” Wanderer said. “So we both need to go walkabout, in our different ways. I suspect the same’s true for Corinne. She didn’t really have to confer with the Triune at this exact time.” He left unspoken: Escape, relief, slack off the tension that has built up in us through these past days of wrangling. Shall we abide here, shall we accompany the Ailoi when they leave, or what? Seek within ourselves for our true desires. We have years yet in which to decide, but the divisions between us have festered longer than that, ranker than we knew.
“Thanks for your help,” said Hanno.
“De nada, amigo.” They shook hands. It was the heartiest clasp Hanno had ever felt, or given, in Hestia. He couldn’t ask outright, but he believed Wanderer had altogether forgiven him. Well, whatever rift had occurred was not over something fundamental to the man’s life, as for some others; and from Wanderer’s viewpoint, events had fairly well vindicated his old friend. At these latest con-daves of the eight, they had argued side by side.
It wasn’t the same with Macandal, Patulcius, Aliyat, Tu Sfaan, Svoboda—Svoboda— Oh, she was perfectly gracious; after all, in principle she too favored exploring. But by tacit agreement, she and Yukiko stayed abed when their men got up to carry the gear down to the boat.
Wanderer turned. His stride whispered over the dock, bis tall form strode up the path and disappeared hi remnant darknesses. Hanno boarded. Quickly he uncovered and unfurled the mainsail, took the jib from its bag, raised them, cleated the sheets, cast off. Hie fabric stood ghost-white athwart strengthening dawn, slatted, caught wind and filled. Ariadne listed over and slipped downstream.
She was a sweet little craft, a six-meter sloop that on Earth would once have been an ocean racer (who there went sailing any more?), built at odd moments by Tu Shan with robot help according to plans in the database. Mainly, he had wanted to make something beautiful as well as purposeful. It turned out that nobody found time to use her much, finally not at all. The Ithagene were intrigued, but the layout was wrong for them. Hanno patted the deck beside the cockpit. “Poor girl,” he said. “Did you cry sometimes at night, lying always alone? We’ll take a real run today, we will.” Surprised, he noticed he had spoken hi Punic. When had he last?
The estuary broadened. Unhindered, the land breeze blew harder. He had it, the current, and the tide to bear him. Ebb should end just about when he reached the sea; stack water for the transition was desirable. Waves, rips, every kind of turbulence went faster, more forcefully, less foreseeably on Xenogaia, under its gravity, than on Earth. The sun rose ahead, blurred and reddened by overcast, not so far to starboard as it would have been on Earth at this latitude and time of year. Though the planet rotated somewhat faster, the axial tilt promised him a long, long summer day. Cloud banks towered murky in the south. He hoped they wouldn’t move northward and rain on him. The wettest season had passed, but you never knew. Xenogaian meteorology was still largely guesswork. The parameters were unfamiliar; the humans and their computers had too much else, too much more interesting, to consider. Also, it seemed the weather was highly unstable. Chaos, in the physics sense of the word, took over early in any sequence. Well, this was a sturdy, forgiving boat; he and Wanderer had carried down an outboard for her; if he got in bad trou- ble, he could call, and an aircraft would come take him off. He scowled at the thought.
Think about pleasanter things, then. Faring out again among the stars— No, that cut too near. That was what divided the house of the Survivors against itself.
You couldn’t blame those who wanted to stay. They’d toiled, suffered, wrought mightily; this had become home for them, it was the cosmos for their children. As for those who wanted to quest, why, Minoa with its multitudinous realms was only one continent on an entire world. For those who would liefest dwell near nonhumans, a whole new race of them was coming. What more dared you wish?
Dismiss it for now. Lose yourself in this day.
The sea opened before Ariadne, eunmetal whitecaps, surge and brawl, wind abruptly southeast and stiff. She leaped, leaned, ran happily lee rail under. It throbbed in deck and tiller. The wind sang. Spindrift blew salt kisses. Hanno closed his jacket and drew up its hood against the chill. Fingers brushed the gas cartridge that would at need inflate it. Tricky sailing, and nis muscles not yet fully retrained to bear his weight. He couldn’t have singlehanded -were it not for the servos and computer. At that, he must pay constant heed. Good. So did be wish it to be.
A native ship was inbound, beating across the wind, a bravery of sails. She must have lain out, waiting for the tide to turn. Now she would ride the flow upstream, doubtless to Xenoknossos. Probably she would have to take shelter in one of the bays .the Ithagene had dug along the banks, while the bore went rumbling by. It would be especially dangerous today; the moon was both full and close.
Northward, some five kilometers off the mainland, water churned and jumped white, black forms reared up —the Forbidden Ground, a nasty patch of rocks and shoals. A current from the south swept strongly around it. Hanno trimmed his sails. He wanted to be well clear before the incoming tide reinforced that rush.
Tacking, he made for the nearest of three islands that lay dim in the eastern distance. He would scarcely get that far before midafteraoon, when prudence dictated he turn back, but it was something to steer by.
A goal, he thought. A harbor I won’t make. Odysseus, setting forth from ashy Troy for Ithaca, lured by the Lotus Eaters, bereaved by the Cyclops, at strife with winds and wild men, seduced by an enchantress who took away humanity, descending to the dead, raiding the fields of the sun, passing through the gate of destruction, made captive by her who loved him, cast ashore at Phaeacia—but Odysseus came home at last.
How many ports had he, Hanno, foiled to make in his millennia? All?
Tritos climbed to a breach hi the overcast. Light flamed. He sailed on the Amethyst Sea, and it was strewn with diamond dust and the manes of the waves blew white. It was as lovely and wild as a woman.
Tanithel, her black hair garlanded with anemones, who whispered her wish that she had not had to sacrifice her virginity in the temple before she came to him; Adoniah, who read the stars from her tower above Tyre—twice he cast anchor, the lights of home glimmered through dusk, and then ebb tide bore that country off and he lay again on empty waters. Afterward—Merab, Althea, Nirouphar, Cordelia, Brangwyn, Thorgerd, Maria, Jehanne, Margaret, Natalia, O Ashtoreth, the dear ghosts were beyond counting or remembering, but had they ever been much more than ghosts, belonging as they did to death? To men he felt closer, they could not bear the same thing off with them— Baalram, Thuti, Umlele, Pytheas, Ezra, rough old Rufus, yes, that hurt, somewhere inside himself Hanno had forever mourned Rufus. Stop sniveling!
The wind skirled louder. Ariadne heeled sharply. The sun disappeared behind gray, beneath which wrack began to fly. CLoud masses bulked mountainous, drawing closer. Lightning sprang about in their blue-black caverns. The islands were lost in scud-haze, the mainland aft lay low and vague. “What time is it?” Hanno asked. He whistled when the computer told him. His body had sailed for him while his mind drifted awash hi the past, longer than he knew.
He’d grown hungry too without noticing, but would be rash to trust the helm to the machinery even to duck below and fix a sandwich. “Give me Hestia,” he ordered the communicator. “Summoning.”
“Hello, hello, is anybody there? Hanno calling.”
Wind tore Yukiko’s voice from the speaker, seas trampled its tatters underfoot. He barely heard: “— frightened for you ... satellite report ... weather moving faster and faster ... please—”
“Yes, certainly, I’ll return. Don’t worry. This boat can take a knockdown and right herself. I’ll be back for supper.” If I catch the tide right. Got to keep well offshore till I can run straight down the slot- Well, the motor has plenty of kilowatts. Better that to claw off with than men rowing till their hearts burst.
He didn’t want to use it unless and until he must. He needed a fight, wits and nerve as well as sinews against the wolf-gods. Coming around was a long and tough maneuver. Once a wave smashed clear across the deck. Ariadne shuddered, but still her mast swayed on high, an uplifted lance. Gallant girl. Like Svoboda—like all of them, Yukiko, Cor-inne, Aliyat, all of them Survivors in ways their men had never had to be.
He did let the servos keep the tiller while he shortened sail. A sheet escaped his grasp and slashed his wrist before he captured and cleated it. Spume washed the blood off. The world had gone dark, driving gray, save for the lightning flashes southward. Water swung to and fro in the cockpit till the pump flung it overside. He remembered bailing Pytheas’ ship during a Baltic storm. As he took the helm back, a song abruptly lilted through his head. “Oh, hand me down my walking cane—“ Where had it come from? English language, old, old, nineteenth or early
