“Things are never simple, my husband. It is not the way of the world.”
“Or the universe. Or universes.”
“You are a strange one, my husband. You came here speaking a strange tongue, wearing strange clothes, riding a chariot of the Old Gods. Yet you are a man. Are you a god as well?”
Gene raked his eye up and down Vaya’s exquisite body. “No. Just the best swordsman this side of Castle Perilous. And the luckiest guy in several worlds, I might add.”
She held out her arms. “Come to me, husband and lover.”
“Oy.”
Twenty-three
Island
Their house, sheltered by hill palms, had a beautiful view of the sea. A screened veranda jutted out to one side, and Sheila would sit there at all hours weaving baskets, mats, and other housewares. She liked watching waves break against the rocks and huge seabirds wheel in the sky.
The birds weren’t gulls; at least they didn’t look like sea gulls. They were eagle size but fatter, and they fished the waters of the lagoon. It was thrilling and a little frightening to watch them stoop, dive, and pluck a struggling fish out of the water, clutching their prey in great silver talons.
The weather was always beautiful. It rained sometimes at night, very softly, very soothingly on the thatched roof of their house. Trent told her that a monsoon season would come eventually, as this was standard procedure for tropical climes. But, then again, he didn’t know this world. Maybe the weather stayed fair all year long. Sheila hoped so.
After Trent finished the house, he spent his days building a raft. There was a reason for this.
The volcano had begun smoking about two months after their arrival. It had trailed wisps of white vapor for a week, then began putting up a steady column of dark smoke along with an occasional plume of ash. Every once in a while it would shoot out boulders the size of automobiles. Sheila watched them splash into the sea. Their island was in no danger at the moment, but the volcano was too close for comfort. Trent said that the presence of birds meant there had to be mainland near, or at least a bigger island, and they would have to reach it to be really safe.
So every day, Trent would go down to the lagoon — the “shipyards,” as he called it — and work on the raft. Sheila spent most of her time now braiding rope. The raft needed lots of it to hold its heavy logs together. Trent said that he would have built an outrigger canoe, had there been more time. But the raft would be seaworthy, of that he was sure. A square-rigged sail would have been ideal, if there had been any fabric to make a sail out of. As it was, they would have to trust in God (and the gods, in Trent’s case) and hope for a good current.
But Trent kept thinking about a sail.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a government research grant, usually. You’ll have to fish today while I go up the mountain and see if I can find anything.”
“I’ll dig up some shellfish and make chowder,” Sheila said. “You go do your research.”
“I knew you were a Democrat.”
When Sheila wasn’t braiding, she would work on magic, as did Trent when he wasn’t shipbuilding. They called it “Research and Development,” and although no breakthroughs had happened since Trent’s tentative levitation of a neo-coconut, Sheila felt that one was possible. There was some obstacle that she couldn’t quite see her way around. It was a difficult problem, and she needed more time.
Unfortunately the volcano’s output steadily increased, its smoke column turning black and ugly. There might not be any time at all. Trent said that an eruption was inevitable. It was just a matter of when and how bad.
R&D’s chief technological spin-off to date was fire. Their was no flint or chert to be had on the island, but a primitive spell made sparks fly when you rubbed two ordinary stones together. The grilled fish was delicious, but Sheila wouldn’t eat the lizard, even though Trent said it tasted exactly like chicken. She couldn’t bring herself to eat something that was green and looked like a miniature dinosaur.
But she was getting tired of seafood. Maybe eventually, when she got a real craving for meat …
Meanwhile, they led an idyllic life, swimming every morning in the bright surf and in the warm tides at evening. They made love on the beach every night, and afterward lay together beneath a night canopy of brilliant stars and smoky, spiral nebulae.
Sheila had asked Trent what they were.
“Galaxies,” he’d said. “This planet seems to be in the thick of a galactic cluster.”
“Why can’t you see any of those from Earth?”
“You can, you just need field glasses or a telescope.”
“They’re so beautiful.”
“They are. And so are you, my darling.”
“Thank you. But you do need glasses.”
“You keep throwing my compliments back at me. Don’t you know you’re a good-looking woman?”
“I guess not. I’m glad to hear it. Oh, I’m sorry, Trent. Really. I guess I can’t take a compliment, not even from you.”
“That’s sad.”
“Now you’re making me feel rotten.”
“Sorry.” He kissed her. “I want to make you feel good.”
“You have. You don’t know how much. After my marriage —”
“Tell me about it. About him.”
“He was a jerk. Oh, my God, was he a jerk.”
“Did he beat you?”
“No. I would have killed him, the rat. No, he just screwed around on me, drank like a fish, and peed away all our money. So I tell him to get out, and he gets ticked off. Refuses. Finally I pack up all his clothes and put them in his car, and he gets the idea. But when the process server gives him the paper, what does he do? He breaks into the house and trashes it from top to bottom, after he takes the stereo and the VCR and all his stuff out. Breaks up all the furniture, smashes windows. Does ten thousand dollars in damage.”
“Did you have the blackguard thrown in the clink?”
“No. What good would it have done? My lawyer filed a judgment on him for the damage, but I haven’t seen a penny. Meanwhile, I’m paying the mortgage on one salary.”
“On behalf of my sex, let me tender our sincerest apologies.”
“Don’t apologize for your sex. Your sex is fine with me. Even when it’s tender.”
“Oh. You mean that sex.”
“I love you, Trent.”
“And I you, beloved.”
“The way you talk sometimes, in that language. It’s so beautiful. And I understand it, too, somehow.”
“Of course. It’s Haplan, an ancient tongue. You hear it all the time in the castle. The servants speak it. It’s a great language for expressing poetic intimacy.”
“Is it ever. Say more.”
“Let me speak with another tongue.”
She drew a long breath.
Days passed, and the volcano spewed more ash, a fine gray film of it dusting the palms, the grass, and the rocks.
They put a crash raft-building program into action. After a day and a half of frantic preparation, the craft still wasn’t entirely ready, but Trent said that they would leave regardless on the morning tide.
“She’s not as big as I wanted, and the sail will never hold up in a high wind, but —”
“It’s a wonderful ship. How in the world did you do it with only stone tools?”
What Trent had constructed was a cross between a raft and a catamaran. It was little more than a deck of long thin logs lashed to a pair of larger, tapered tree trunks which formed a twin “hull.” These latter were solid; the
