Tatja Grimm's World

vivid imagination and it was working overtime now. Ancho responded to his fright, moving nervously on his neck.

They reached the landing bay, and Maccioso went off to get a crew. Tatja turned to Svir. She grasped his hand gently and moved close. “Thank you, Svir. Fantasie is the most valuable artwork in the world. I want to save that collection very much.” She slipped her arms around him. He felt her body against his, her lips against his. His fears and half-conscious plans to junk the whole project were erased. He would be back.

Seven

It was well past midmorning. Svir stood, with Ancho on his shoulder, at the edge of the deck that reinforced the barge’s bowform. Tatja had said she’d meet him here and take him on a tour.

The Tarulle Barge was especially impressive by day. Over the centuries, it had grown without any overall plan. New barge platforms had been added and built upon, then built over again until the mass resembled nothing so much as a man-made mountain of terraces, cupolas, and cranes. The rigging and much of the hull were of spun glass—the most modern construction material. Yet some of the inner hulls were braced by timbers three hundred years old. From the top of the main mast to the bottom of the lowest hold was almost three hundred feet.

Now the filmy sails were stretched taut as the barge tacked across the Monsoonal Drag that blew steadily off the Continent.

Svir grabbed the railing to steady himself in the wind. Just looking up at those masts was enough to make him dizzy. He turned back to the ocean, the whitecapped waves that stretched out to the horizon. Two company fastboats cut through the farther waters as they sailed out to minor ports of the Chainpearl Archipelagate.

And the Tarulle fleet was not alone on the main. Svir could pick out three cargo barges at various distances. The Chainpearls lay along one of the busiest trade routes on Tu. For all their cultural importance, the publishing lines accounted for only a small fraction of total ocean tonnage. Most publishing enterprises were operated landside, and contracted with shipping companies to serve other islands. Relatively rare were the huge publishing barges, like Tarulle, which toured the entire world and printed a variety of books and magazines.

“Hey, Svir!” Tatja’s voice came clearly over the wind. He turned to see her striding toward him. Her hair was caught in a soft reddish swirl tied with a clip to the front of her tunic. The wind blew it back and forth to caress the side of her face. She seemed small and delicate even in her coveralls, but when she came near, her eyes were level with his. Her smile sent a long shiver down his spine.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t get together earlier in the morning,” she said, “but things are really moving around here. The Chainpearl run is always the busiest of the circuit, and when we have monsoon winds, every press is running at the breaking point.”

“Uh, that’s all right; I’ve had plenty to see,” he replied. As a matter of fact, the wake period had been something of a bore so far.

Since lunch he had wandered about the decks. The crew was distinctly hostile toward nonessential personnel. His ears still burned from insults received when he walked in a door marked TRIPULATION ONLY. These people weren’t really stranger-haters. They just didn’t want nonprofessionals messing up their work.

Tatja reached out to pet Ancho’s neck fur. Ordinarily the little animal didn’t enjoy being fondled by others, but he had taken a shine to Tatja. He didn’t retreat from her hand, and after a moment began purring satisfaction. “Hello, Ancho. You don’t look a bit seasick… Keep a careful hold on him, Svir. Some of the areas I’ll show you could upset him. But I want to see how hardy he is.”

Ancho had recovered from his initial fear of sailing, though he clutched at Svir’s shoulders more tightly than was necessary to maintain his perch. Dorfoxes came from a single island far around the world. They were long-lived and relatively infertile. Most became mortally seasick when taken aboard a ship. Ancho was an exception. Betrog Hedrigs, the great explorer and Svir’s grandfather, had brought the animal to Krirsarque forty years before. Ancho was probably the only dorfox in the Chainpearls. Perhaps it was just as well, for if dorfoxes were common, they would have turned society upside down.

Svir and Tatja descended two flights of stairs, to the vat holds. This was a different world: the inside of a claustrophobe’s nightmare. The wind was no longer audible, but there was an ominous creaking from the hulls. Dim orange light filtered from half-dead algae pots. Worst of all was the smell. Svir had been raised near the ocean, and generally enjoyed the odors of the sea. But here, the essence of those smells was being distilled.

Some of the workers actually smiled at them: Tatja’s presence was safe conduct.

Tatja pointed to where the water was coming through the bow-form. “The whole papermaking operation runs at just the speed that water can flow through these hulls. Not much vegetation in this part of the sea—that’s good for the fastboats, and bad for papermaking. It’s still worth seeing, I think.”

The seawater flowed through the underpart of the barge like a subterranean river. Narrow catwalks hung inches above the dark water. Every forty feet they had to climb up a short flight of steps and then down again, as they moved from the hull of one barge platform to the next. They walked about two hundred feet through the gloom. Svir admired the graceful way Tatja moved along the catwalk, and cursed his own fearful, halting pace. Below them, the channels narrowed, and the stench of concentrated seaweed was overpowering. Workers dribbled reagents into the sludge, thickening it even more as it approached the pressing drums and its new life as paper.

Tatja gave a running account of what was going on. She also kept a close eye on Ancho for any signs of nausea or disorientation. But the dorfox seemed quite calm. It was a different story for Svir. The stench was beginning to get to him. Finally he asked, “How can the hull take these chemicals? I should think it would rot inside of a few quarters.”

“That’s a good question,” Tatja responded. “The processing seems to have just the opposite effect. The carbonates in this sludge seem to replace the wood fiber. Over the years, the timbers actually become stronger. And what we discharge beneath the hull is so concentrated it kills any parasites that might nest there. Oops!”

She slipped on the walk. Svir’s arm reached out and grabbed her waist as Ancho caught for his hair. The three of them teetered precariously for a moment. Then Tatja laughed nervously. “Thanks.”

Svir felt obscurely proud. He might move more slowly than she, but when it came to a test, his caution paid off. He didn’t remove his arm from her waist.

At last they reached the stern. Here the remaining water was pressed from the bleached sea mass, and the paper was actually formed. The fine sheets hung for several days before they were wound about drums and taken up to printing. They walked up to the next deck, where tons of newly printed magazines were stored. Here there was only a faint musty smell. Thank the gods the final product didn’t smell like seaweed.

Tatja hung close on his arm and became more talkative. The Tarulle Company put out five different magazines every eighteen days. Fantasie and a couple of vice magazines accounted for three hundred thousand copies per issue and provided the bulk of the Tarulle income. Since some copies were stocked for as long as two years before they were sold, the barge carried two hundred tons of magazines. Over the centuries, it had been a race to keep up with world population increase. The barge was ten times as large as its first platform. All the latest machinery was employed. But even with increased landside printing and the prospect of automatic typesetting equipment, they were still falling behind.

They came to one of the loading slips. The sound of the wind was strong; beyond the huge hole in the hull was a bright panorama of sky and sea. A fastboat was moored here, its sails reefed and booms raised. A fifteen-ton load of magazines was being hoisted onto the hydrofoil by one of the barge’s cranes.

They watched the scene for several minutes. Finally the operation was complete, and the boat pushed away from the barge. Its booms were lowered and the boomsails—like sheets on a clothesline—were hung out. As it moved out of the barge’s wind shadow, it gathered speed, and the booms tilted into the wind. The whole affair lifted up on the slender stilts of its hydrofoils, and the boat moved away at nearly forty miles an hour. Then the barge’s crewmen closed the loading port and everything was dim again.

Tatja frowned. “You know, I’ve always wondered why they tilt the boomsails like that.”

Svir grinned broadly and gave her an explanation of Dertham’s pressure theories, complete with an analogy to tacking. Her eyes showed scarcely concealed admiration. “You know, Svir, that’s the clearest explanation I’ve