Involution Ocean

Nullaquan matron be­side me. Her natural distrust of sailors was only amplified by my being an off-worlder.

The train cars were little metal and plastic cubicles with room for only four people. Each car had two whalehide couches, one facing forward, one backward. With the re­turn of sobriety I noted that the two dour Nullaquan busi­nessmen in the seats facing me were giving me the stern benefit of their attention. I looked away and leaned against the side of the car, letting one arm droop languidly over the side. The car had a sunroof, but no windows. It didn’t need them. It never rained on Nullaqua.

Nullaquan sunsets were impressive, I noted comfortably to myself sometime later. The train was returning from the docks and was full of mustachioed fishermen. Shrimpers, mostly. They waxed the ends of their mustaches.

The sun had already sunk in the west. Now the ridged edge of sunlight was slowly crawling up the eastern cliff wall. The light was much sharper, much less roseate than the dust-altered clifllight at sea level. Up and up it went, unnaturally sharp, already far above the limits of the atmo­sphere. The rocks had an albedo of around 30 percent, more in spots where long melted streaks had given the cliff-side an obsidianoid sheen, piercingly bright where veins of metal were exposed. The stars were coming out.

The sunlight finished its performance by climbing to the lip of the cliffs. For an instant the broken crags at the very peak shone with stellar brilliance; then they winked out and joined the rest of the crater in shadowed dimness.

And at that very instant, calculated no doubt by parsi­monious mathematicians, the Arnar streetlights came on. They were weak. The light in the railroad car flickered on also, a single dim yellow bulb set above our heads in the sunroof.

Only the areas around the cliffside elevators were well lit. There were no excuses for sailors. I piled into the elevator with a dozen glum Nullaquans, and we flew down the cliffside with stomach-turning speed.

The docks were lit, too. There was no chance of stum­bling off a pier jnto the dust. And, there was a faint green glow by the docks. A sparse population of Nullaquan plankton had sprung up around them, nourished by water from occasional spills in loading and unloading.

The repairmen had finished their work; the Lunglance was in fine shape. Hie repair crew had even returned the tents and try-pots to the deck, now that it was newly sheathed in plastic. Government workers from the Synod of Ecology were loading whale eggs into the Lunglance’s port hull. The eggs, already fertilized, would be released over­board, three of them for every whale killed. It was no small task; the white, dimpled eggs were a foot across and weighed fifty pounds each. They came from the whale farm on another of the Pentacle Islands. There was a large de­pression in the top of one of the islands and it had been laboriously filled with dust, ton by ton. Now, captive whales fed and spawned in the shallow lake, and some at­tempts at specialized breeding were being made. Their young replenished the ocean, and for most of the incuba­tion period their eggs were safe from the needle-beaked octopi that, sucked most eggs dry and normally kept the whale population within bounds.

Very big on ecology, the Nullaquans. Very concerned with stability. Since I was growing a little dehydrated from processing the alcohol I had drunk, I went down to the kitchen for some water.

I had just finished my first glass when young Dumonty Calothrick came clattering down the stairs.

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “You were robbed. All your money’s gone.”

Calothrick looked puzzled. “Money? I got all my money. Somebody stole my Flare!”

“You mean that daisy didn’t rob you blind?”

“Aw, death, ho,” Calothrick said impatiently. “She charged me a monune and a half for bed space and left me alone. I wasnt in the mood. Especially not with her.” Calo­thrick shuddered. “Hey . . . you got some Flare left, right? Give me some.”

I noticed for the first time that the whites of Calothrick’s eyes were tinged with a film of yellow, a film like the thin striated layer that first forms on the surface of a pot of molten wax.

“I’ve got your packet,” I said. “I took it when we were in the alley.” I pulled the packet out of my shirt and held it out; Calothrick snatched it from my fingers. “You got the dropper too, huh?”

I handed him the dropper; he took it and glared at me resentfully. “You’re sharp, Newhouse. Mighty sharp. I see you’ve been helping yourself.” He looked at the lowered level of Flare in the packet and slurped up a full dropper.

“I was afraid you’d be searched. It’s illegal now, remem­ber?”

“Illegal. What makes you think any of these deadheads would have known what it was? I would have told them it was medicine.”

“You were pretty blasted.”

“You must think I’m some kind of rube!” snapped Calo­thrick, tilting his head back and taking a blast from the eyedropper. “Get this straight. I may be young, but I’m not blind.” He paused to belch. “You’ve been keeping most of the money and all of the Flare. I want some more. Maybe a bottleful. Especially if you’re going to be using mine all the time.”

I was angry. I stopped to yawn. “A bottle. What would you do with it? Where would you put it? The mates would find it for sure. If you want more, you can come down here after it.”

Calothrick hesitated; the Flare was taking hold. “Well, listen, man,” he said vaguely. “I’m not addicted to it or any­thing, see, but I’m getting more interested in it, and I feel like it’d be better if I always had some with me. What if it all gets stolen again? I need plenty. A couple of weeks’ worth at least.”

“How much is that?”

“Oh . . . about four dropperfuls a day . . . two or three packetfuls, I guess.”

“You’ve got till midnight,” I said. “Go up to Arnar and buy yourself some packets.”

Calothrick left, scowling. Four droppers a day, I re­flected. A dosage of that size would probably kill me. And if he kept it up at such a rate, Calothrick’s brain cells would be destroyed. Burnt out. Unless he was of unusual physical resilience, Calothrick would be reduced to a con­dition of imbecility within a few years.

But it was his brain.

The Lunglance left at dawn, with a full company. After the two-day debauchery, the crew was more dour than ever. Not a word was exchanged at breakfast; the crew ate like sullen machines.

We sailed northeast After two weeks we left the Pentacles behind. This part of the Sea of Dust was monopolized by a peculiar life form known as the lilypad. There were hundreds of acres of these strange plants. Their photosynthetic organ was a single round leaf, yards in diameter but less than an inch thick. It floated on the surface, spreading itself in order to absorb as much sunlight as possible. The gray sea was greenly polka-dotted with thousands of the plants; they were free floating and strangely sensitive. When disturbed, the leaf curled inwards, wrinkling over its entire surface and withdrawing completely into its root, a thick, round bulb. This immediately sank into the opaque depths, away from the reach of herbivores.

Many creatures lived in symbiosis or parasitism with the lilypad. Desperandum, who made a detailed study of the plant, isolated 257 separate species of associate organisms, including leaf nibblers, leaf miners, stem borers, leaf suck­ers, root feeders, and gall makers. Besides these there woe twenty-six species of predators, fifty-five species of primary parasites, nine secondary parasites, and three tertiary para­sites. Among all these creatures was a small six-legged crab that made a fine chowder. When our prows touched the lilypads they immediately shrank and sank, leaving their crabby passengers swimming frantically. Desperandum caught hundreds of the creatures simply by dragging a net after the ship.

Some of the lilypads were in bloom; they had a long straight stalk and a puffy white flower like a head of grain. Armored bees whined from stalk to stalk, scattering pollen. They were stingless, but inedible.

Everyone wanted chowder. Eventually I found a pair of crabcrackers in a bottom drawer, rattly geared objects with rusty hinges and sharp metal beaks, difficult to describe. One fitted a crab into a skeletal framework and pushed down on a worn plastic lever, neatly splitting its carapace and its legs.

The cook was expected to kill the crabs by dipping them in a dilute solution of his own blood. Nullaquans had a remarkably casual attitude toward bleeding. Besides, Da­lusa, whose mouth had now healed so that only a few small black scabs were left on the edges of her lips, would be unable to help me as she had offered to do, if the crabs were contaminated with human blood. So I found a use for the whiskey after all. The alcohol seemed to act like a nerve poison on fhe crabs, producing a brief epileptifc flurry followed by rapid death.

I cracked the poisoned crabs while Dalusa extraced their meat with her long, sharp-nailed fingers.