Involution Ocean

It was an enormous relief to have them both gone. I leaned against the wall and drew in a long, cool breath. Things seemed to sort themselves out, and a buried mem­ory gnawed at my subconscious. An errand ... oh yes, the brandy.

I walked with excessive care out into the street and stepped onto a narrow, sluggish slidewalk. At length I slid by a bar that looked slightly less sleazy than most and stepped off the walk. Foot-high block letters, painted with greenish enamel that contained the bioiuminescent juices of Nullaquan plankton, read “Merkle’s Bar and Grill.”

I walked inside and put one foot on the brass rail at the bottom of the bar. Merkle, a squat, balding man with a tanned face and braided nose mustachios, appeared before me.

“What’ll it be, sailor?”

“Give me a shot of old redeye,” I growled in authentic sailor fashion.

’.’What the hell’s that?”

I explained. “Sorry, you won’t find any of that here,” Merkle said virtuously. “Nothing stronger than twenty proof.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s illegal.”

Surely I might have known. “Give me an ale,” I said. Even the relative mildness of the drinks was not enough to force a determined Nullaquan sailor into a state of sobriety. I was sluicing the taste of Flare from the back of my throat when I heard a sudden bellowing outbreak of hostility from the denizens at the end of the bar. There was a clank and a slosh as someone dented a metal tankard of beer against someone else’s head. It was followed by the quick meaty rap of knuckles on teeth.

“We’ll have none of that,” roared Merkle, picking up a long aluminum cudgel dotted with brass studs. “Go outside and settle your differences like gentlemen.”

“I’ll break his teeth in,” promised one of the combatants, draining the remnants of the beer in the doited tankard. Leaning across the bar and staring past the line of pale, inebriated sailors’ faces, I. recognized Blackburn, the Lunglance¹ s harpooneer. He and his opponent, a brawny Nullaquan whose nosehair was inextricably mingled with a large red mustache, walked out underneath a hanging whale-oil lamp.

I finished the ale. Scooping up a tip left for a waitress on a nearby round, plastic-topped table, I paid for the drink.

“Do you deliver?” I asked.

“Yeah, sure do, sailor.”

I ordered three quarts of the strongest ale he had deliv­ered down to the Lunglance and wrote our dock address on a plastic pad. Then I left.

Outside, Blackburn and his acquaintance were still at it. I shouldered my way through the crowd that had gathered and watched them shoving and squirming on the pavement. The hair in one of Blackburn’s nostrils was soaked and dripping with blood; his opponent had a split lip. Unable to regain their feet, they were raining blows on one-another’s midsections. Their punches were growing weaker and weaker, but since both men were also weakening, the blows had about the same effect as before. With every knuckly impact they opened their mouths and bawled, short basso profundo howls cut off by gasping intakes of air.

Finally, bruised and wheezing, they clung helplessly to one another, pulling in deep, quavery, achy breaths.

Slowly, with agonizing attention, the red-mustached sailor clenched his fist. Blackburn weakly lifted one hand. “To death with this,” he said through puffed lips. “Let’s get up off the street and go get laid.”

“Yeah,” said the other, nodding. Mumbles of disappoint­ment arose from the crowd as the two shakily helped one another to their feet and stumbled arm in arm to a cheery bordello just across the street.

It was time for lunch, I concluded, glancing up at the sun. I took the slidewalk up off Starcross Street into a more respectable part of town, where I stopped at a small out­door restaurant and indulged myself with a beefsteak. It was not up to par, the Nullaquan spices added In its preparation gave the juices a thin acid sting, and the salad that accompanied it had been assembled with startling incom­petence. I left without tipping and decided to go back to the Lunglance to check on Dalusa.

My progress was impeded slightly by a massive brawl on Starcross Street. Several Lunglance crewmembers were in­volved, and if they had seen me they would probably have insisted that I join in. I took a detour through Tailor Street. Perhaps that avenue had once been occupied by tailors, but if so, they had been displaced by mask salesmen. Store after store was open, their windows stocked with an amaz­ ing variety of paints. I still had some left over in my duffel bag, from when I had bought my mask in the Highisle. It seemed like years ago. It was only two months.

Remembering the elevator’s irritatingly slow crawl up the Arnarian cliffside, I expected a similar long wait to reach the docks below. Imagine my suprise when the ma­chine fell so swiftly that my feet were actually floating sev­eral inches above the elevator floor. My companions in the elevator already had their masks on; they floated as sol­emnly as would a Confederate jury handing down a death sentence. I quickly undipped my own mask and fumbled it on before the dust had a chance to attack my unprotected eyes and lungs.

When we reached the bottom quarter of the cliff the car began a deceleration that almost brought me to my knees. I stepped shakily out onto the docks and took a deep breath. At sea level the air was thicker and richer.

Aboard the Lunglance, shipwrights were repaving the deck, gluing long translucent strips of whalebone plastic onto the deck with a thin watery adhesive. Already new masts had been stepped and a half-dozen ship’s repairmen were replacing the lines aloft with tough new braided ca­bles. I whistled softly to myself inside my mask. It had taken a substantial sum to get this much work done this quickly. Most whaling captains caught in a similar situation would have applied to the Arnar branch of their whaling corporations, but Desperandum had no such backing. All the money was his alone. Impressive.

Dalusa’s tent was not set on deck. Not surprising. Ship­wrights were repaving the spot where it was usually pitched. Perhaps Dalusa was aloft somewhere. I decided to ask Desperandum if he knew where she was. Although my obsession—already I was wondering if I should call it love—did not have Desperandum’s wholehearted approval, I felt reasonably confident that he would tell me.

The hatch to Desperandum’s cabin was open, so I went down the stairway into the dining room. Desperandum had been eating on board; the litter of several meals, dirty plates with congealing gravy, covered the captain’s table.

I took off my mask and knocked on the door to Desper­andum’s cabin. “Come in,” Desperandum rumbled.

I swung the door open and was instantly aware of a strained silence. Desperandum was seated in his swivel chair; by the bunk, standing stiffly and facing the captain, was the Nullaquan sailor, Murphig.

“Ah, Newhouse,” Desperandum said with false joviality.

“Am I intruding?” I.asked.

“No, no. Crewman Murphig here has just made me a rather interesting proposal. Would you like to tell him about it, Murphig?”

Murphig only stared sullenly at the wall.

“No? Well, Murphig learned that I am something of a scientist, and he came here to discuss ... an apprentice­ship.”

I said nothing.

“But I’m afraid that Crewman Murphig and I differ rather radically on our ideas of the scientific method. Crewman Murphig has pronounced opinions.”

Murphig had apparently reached the limits of his self-restraint. “You think we’re barbarians, don’t you?” he said tightly. “You come out of nowhere in those shiny interstel­lar ships, and you think you’re dealing with a race of sub-humans. Well, God knows we’re sinners. God knows we’ve lost some of our ideals, but that doesn’t give you a right to treat us and our ideas like dirt.”

Desperandum smiled indulgently. “Crewman Murphig is upset because I revealed to him that his ideas are more mystical than scientific.”

“We’re not blind,” Murphig stated flatly. “We’re not stu­pid. We don’t talk about it, but we know there’s something under the dust, something old and awful and strong. It . . . they . . . have been down there for millions of