Involution Ocean

so bad. The punishment is all out of proportion to the poor shred of Joy—God is cruel to you, Dalusa.”

Her mouth moved painfully then, but I could not hear any words. “What?” I asked.

“Do you love me?” she repeated. “If you do, then it’s all right.”

“Yes, I do,” I said, and though it had begun as a lie, when I finished I realized with a strange trapped bewilder­ment that I had told the truth.

Dalusa began to weep silently, thin glistening tears that slid down her pale perfect cheeks with unnatural speed to touch the swollen edges of her mouth. Almost reflexively, I stood up to embrace her, but stopped. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, I was torn by an aching frustration.

“You don’t believe me,” I said, and my mind made a sudden intuitive leap. “You want me to hurt like you do. Your love is pain, so you can’t believe me unless I share your agony.”

Dalusa moaned, a strange gutteral sound that made my hair stand on end. “Why, why can’t we just touch each other? What have I done; what has been done to me?”

“Did you know I have a pair of gloves?” I asked.

Dalusa stared then broke into hysterical laughter. “Gloves? What are gloves doing on a whaling ship?” She suddenly leapt off the stool with a rustle of wings and, grabbing ha mask, she ran clumsily up the stairs and out through the hatch.

I sat down on the stool and then sniffed at the air. Da­lusa was wearing perfume.

Chapter 8 The Voyage Continues

After I finished the dishes I went back on deck. Dalusa had flown away. On my way back to the elevator I was met by a delivery boy from Merkle’s Bar and Grill with my order of ale. He was wearing a plain black duskmast that marked him instantly as a lubber. I paid him and took the bottles down into the kitchen. Then I cleaned out the dis­tilling equipment with a stiff wire, bottle-brush and started brewing whiskey.

Growing hungry again, I decanted the loathsome stuff into a bottle and put it away in a cupboard. With hick, I would never have to drink it Then I went back to the ele­vator. It crawled slowly up the shadowed side of the cliff. The sun was bisected by the western horizon, and the east­ern wall of the crater was providing most of the light. The first stars were dim flecks on the darkening sky.

I wait back to Starcross Street. There were no electrical display signs—they were forbidden by law—but heavy use had been made of the internal juices of Nullaqua’s luckless bioluminescent life-forms. To my right six unsteady Nulla­quan whalers were forming a human pyramid, preparing to climb into the second-story window of a house of ill repute. Loud tuba music emerged from several of the bars, punc­tuated by the flatulent shrieks of Nullaquan cornets. I stepped over a mumbling merchant sailor and looked for a quiet restaurant. There weren’t many, but I finally located one, an establishment that catered to Nullaqua’s decrepit senior citizens. Like all cultures with heavy restriction of technology, Nullaqua simply did not have the rejuvenation techniques necessary to prolong life beyond even a single century. The life expectancy on Nullaqua was only ninety, and the doddering gaffers around me, their nose hairs white with age, looked every year of that.

Still, though the citizens dropped like mayflies, Nullaqua’s civilization had remained fairly stable for the past four hundred years. And although the older generations were hurriedly shuffled into the crematoria, almost every­ one was able to have a direct lineal descendant of some kind. The subtle but insidious psychological effects of adult life without children were still being measured by extra-Nullaquan social scientists. And on those advanced planets which did not restrict population growth, the life expect­ancy, not counting abortions, was only twenty-three. They killed a lot of children on planets like that. And of course, future shock and death-wish encroachment eventually got everyone, especially on advanced planets. Deep down, deep down, we all wanted to die.

But I was in no hurry, I reflected, digging into a tasty octopus pie with an aluminum fork. My appetite was only slightly diminished by stares of dotty curiosity from the res­ident Nullaquans. An off-worlder was still an unusual sight to some of these relics. I wondered if I should get a nose-wig. On the other hand, my eyelids would still betray my origin; they were not corrugated and my lashes were not dense enough to pass for native.

After supper I lost a little money in a casino, not enough to hurt, but enough to keep me entertained. Then I found a hotel, refused the daisy that the management offered, and tried to sleep. My slumber was fitful, as a chorus of intoxi­cated sailors reeled beneath my window once every half hour, singing obscene whaling songs. It was impossible to tell whether it was the same chorus each time; at any rate, the singing was uniformly bad. At last, annoyed, I took a blast of Calothrick’s Flare, so potent that my ears rang like church bells and I left consciousness behind in a cloud of blue flame.

Next morning I was awakened by the shouts of a large crowd on Starcross Street, two blocks away. The Lun­glance had had the bad luck to land on the eve of a local festival, one of the most important of the year: Growth Day. Festivities began with a Wrestling contest. Wrestling bored me, so, after a leisurely breakfast in the hotel’s res­taurant, I went out and got drunk. Staggering into the street, I was accosted by a blonde Nullaquan daisy, who explained to me that she was offering special holiday rates. With unusual psychological insight for a Nullaquan, she even offered to clip her nose before our liaison.

There was no rational reason for refusal. She was cheap, clean, healthy, and devoid of any crippling emotional side effects. Also, I had been two months at sea.

But I was only beginning to plumb the depths of mas­ochism that Dalusa had revealed to me. I gave the daisy a Nullaquan three-monune piece and told her to leave me alone.

But I had reckoned without the Nullaquan’s hearty dis­taste for charity. She refused to take the money without performing a service in return. Obviously new to the trade, I thought tiredly. So, through a convolution of drunken logic that now seems incomprehensible, I told her to seek out Crewman Murphig of the Lunglance and convey to him apologies from John Newhouse. In return she could keep the money.”

“Apologies for what?” she asked.

“If you’re not gone by the time I count three I’ll inform the Trade Synod,” I threatened. She left in a hurry.

By now a parade was going on in the street. Parades have never held much appeal for me either, but, fortifying myself with a quarter-dropperful of Flare, I stood on the corner and watched the colors go by. I had trouble focus­ing my eyes. I seem to recall that a dozen Nullaquans came by directly in front of me, dressed in a gigantic black whale costume, but that may have been only a fiction of my fe­vered brain. Once in the mood, I kept feeding myself mini­mal doses of Flare, in order to maintain a steady glow.

Growing hungry, I bought a fried cylinder of meat-on-a-stick from a sidewalk vendor. I ate it to the accompani­ment of a large and thoroughly incompetent brass band.

The Lunglance would set sail tomorrow morning. It was imperative that I be aboard’before midnight There was plenty of time left, though. My head was beginning to dear again and I took another short blast of Flare. A large batallion of Nullaquan urchins, clad in identical lilac blue uni­forms, were marching down Star cross Street and chanting in unison. The sight would have been absolutely intolerable had I been sober.

I repressed any thoughts about Dalusa. Soon enough I would be back in the emotional pressure cooker of the Lunglance. At the thought a drug-inspired depression set­tled over me. Already I was beginning to feel sick, trapped, frustrated, and weak. A quick watery glimpse of Dalusa’s blistered face appeared in my mind, and I shuddered. I was like a man sick almost to death with nausea, wanting to thrash and struggle but knowing it could only increase the misery.

The Flare was getting me down, I concluded suddenly. An enterprising Nullaquan had set up a bar outside his es­tablishment and I ordered a light beer. I liked Nullaquan light beers, the lighter the better. The lightest ones were almost tasteless.

Four or five beers later I found myself on a whirring electric-powered commuter train, heading north to the sec­ond, northern, cluster of docks. From there one could take ferries to the other four islands in the Pentacle group. The train moved with irritating sluggishness, perhaps six miles an hour, the speed of a fast walk. I felt like getting out and pushing, but settled back against the whalehide seat, jos­tling the kerchief-headed, suspicious