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Authors: Joan Slonczewski

BOOK: A Door Into Ocean
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ONE GLIMPSE OF the two worn envelopes filled Spinel with joy. He tore them open and feasted his eyes on the pages of ledger paper covered with his mother's dense, sloping handwriting. The first letter, dated two days after his departure, was full of news and chatter: how the stoneshop was doing a brisker business than usual, especially rubies, for lads off to the regiment, and Cyan had finished the tombstone for old Amberlite, and Beryl was holding up well, and Oolite was crawling forward as well as backward. And when was Spinel going write home about his new life?
It had never occurred to him to write, himself. Spinel could barely manage a sentence, in any case. Clickfly webspinning was much more fun. He glanced up at Lystra, who was eyeing the page curiously. “Could I send a clickfly to my mom?”
Lystra cocked her head to one side. “Would she treat it right?”
“Of course she would.” Indignant, Spinel turned to the second letter. This one was brief—one paragraph, scrawled three or four words on a line. Spinel frowned; his mother never wrote like that. My dear son, it read.
We are all well and please forgive me for not writing often. Your father has lots of orders. Beryl sends love, and Oolite. Work hard for your sponsors, and don't worry about us. Your loving mother Galena, Cyan stonecutter's wife.
Spinel looked up from the page.
“Well, what does it say?”
“It doesn't sound right.” Nothing, not even about Beryl, who would be expecting soon. What could have happened? Had the business finally gone under, despite the gift from his Sharer sponsors? His mother
would not lie outright, though like himself she would tell a tale in her own way. His lip twisted. “I better write back and find out.”
“Hurry up, then. Swallowers are getting so thick, soon we won't be able to sail to the traders' raft.”
He stood up to look out to sea, at the four or five spots, still distant, where raft seedlings were swirling toward oblivion. His muscles had hardened and he had gained height since he first arrived; his eyes were nearly level with Lystra's now.
Later, just before evening learnsharing, Spinel came upon Lady Nisi as she was pulling on a white blouse and tucking it into a severe black skirt.
He stepped back at the sight. The clothes were plain enough, but their unexpected appearance only exaggerated Nisi's female curves. A flush of heat came over him. “What's that for? You going home or something?”
She walked past him to her mirror. The tapping of her sandals brought back warm memories of footfalls on Chrysolite cobblestones.
“Lady Nisi, where are you going? Have you a lover among the traders?”
“Heavens, no. Your tongue grows as long as a shockwraith's arm.” She patted her scalp, as if arranging nonexistent hair.
“Why won't you tell me, Nisi the Deceiver?”
The lady paused, then spoke in her most cultured Valan tones. “I am due for a chat with the High Protector. Via image transmission.”
“The
High Protector of Valedon?
Oh, please, can I come too?”
“Please don't,” she said quietly. “It's … official.”
“I see. I guess he wouldn't give fool's gold for anything I'd have to say.” His toe traced a circle on the floor. “Well, even if my folks are common, could you just ask him to check up on them, in Chrysoport? Please, Nisi, I'm awfully worried about them.”
“I'll mention it.” She clipped her opal to her blouse and briskly stepped outside.
 
Within the submerged station, Berenice sat with her skirt tucked under, and Talion across from her. Talion's shape squeezed and expanded from signal interference, but otherwise he looked as usual, an aging, careworn administrator perpetually dressed for a board meeting. He brought welcome news: General Realgar, now High Commander, would escort the Malachite delegation to Shora.
“Marvelous. I'll be so glad to see him.” Realgar was the one part of Valedon she truly missed. “And such a diplomat he is, just right for the job.”
Talion's smile broadened. “I'm glad you are pleased.”
Why should she not be pleased? Then she recalled their confrontation in Iridis, before she left. “But of course, he'll just bring an honor guard for Malachite.”
“Of course. Now, my lady, a quandary for you: whom shall the Envoy call on, if Shora has no Protector?”
She smiled mischievously. “They have nine hundred thousand Protectors. Minus children,” she corrected herself.
Talion waved an impatient hand. “All-powerful though he is, Malachite can't very well visit every man, woman, and child of—you know what I mean. Surely there's some sort of authority figure, a chief witch-doctor or whatever.”
Her lips worked in and out, oddly reluctant to respond. Yet she had known from the beginning what she would say; why put it off? “There is one who enjoys respect in every ‘galactic' of raft clusters: Merwen the Impatient One.” She shrank from the role of kingmaker. Merwen's reaction, had she understood just what Berenice was doing, would have been unimaginable. Berenice, however, saw no other way.
“Merwen the Patient,” Talion noted for his monitor.
“Impatient,” she corrected. “And please tell—that is, ask Malachite to choose a ‘selfname' of some sort, or the Gathering will not receive him.” This, too, was bending the rules, and if Yinevra or Lystra were so impolite as to inquire further—
“How about Malachite the Lowly Worm?”
“Too conceited. Worms are highly useful creatures.” Talion, she thought, was definitely off-guard tonight, almost distracted. She wondered whether that signaled good or bad.
“Do not take offense, my lady. Merwen the Impatient will receive the Envoy, with all due honor. What a help you are, Berenice. I know I can always count on a Hyalite.”
She smiled despite herself. Thank goodness that boycott was over. “Since I'm so useful, may I ask a personal favor?”
“Whatever you wish.”
It felt almost like the old days, when she was first married, and Talion dined weekly with the House of Hyalite. “Please check the current status of one commoner, Cyan stonecutter of Chrysoport.”
Talion called at his monitor and watched something outside the range of her view. “Sorry, the file is inactive at this time.”
“Oh?”
“Dolomoth is still keeping the lid on, to consolidate their hold.”
“The town's occupied?”
“Dolomites have wanted a seaport for Torr knows how long, and now they've got it. It seemed appropriate, once the Pyrrholite siege was concluded, given their assistance with the campaign.”
“I see.” In fact, she had expected the siege to drag on a year, at least. She disliked to admit how out of touch she was. She would have to catch up at the trading post.
“Now, Berenice. This trade business is still a bit of a bother. We've made enormous concessions, as you know. Why hasn't trade volume got back to normal?”
She sighed. Where to begin? “The stone trade, for one thing. Its very existence is hateful to many Sharers.”
“If they hate it so much, why is stone our most lucrative commodity?”
For answer, she only returned his stare. Talion must know the sordid truth; why should he make her say it?
“Well, there you are,” said Talion at last. “If the natives can't reach consensus among their own ‘Protectors,' then by their own rules what can they demand of us?”
“Those who care the most shame the rest. And we're learning to do without Valan goods. Sharers have resourceful minds. And long memories, too; it's not nice to get dumped in the sea, even if you swim like a seal.”
“Why can't they be reasonable, for Torr's sake? This season is rough on us too. What about the trawler lost to a swallower last week?”
“So I heard. Who rescued the crew?”
“The natives were cooperative, in that case. But a good ship sank, which makes for red ink.”
“It is hard. We lose rafts every year.”
Talion was silent a while. Berenice shifted her legs beneath her skirt.
“Berenice, we have to get a handle on these people. The stone trade won't do, it's dead in the long run. I see how the wind blows, although the Trade Council may not yet. But what next?”
Suddenly she was wary. “What does Malachite suggest?”
Talion's pause was longer than time lag. “Malachite is inclined to consider this an internal matter.”
“Internal? Like one planet?” So the Sharer “Protector” might end up reporting to the High Protector of Valedon. This notion was new, the first she had heard of Patriarchal intent. She turned it over in her mind. “Then Sharers will get full protection of Valan law. That should simplify everything.”
“Yes, but you see, it will be up to us, myself in particular, to control them. How shall I do that?”
The question revolted her, and puzzled her as well. Was it not enough that Sharers went naked and unarmed? Her eyes narrowed. “I'll think it over,” she said politely. “Please remember, I am not your agent.”
“Then what are you? Would you like a salary?”
She was on her feet before she knew it. “You go too far.”
“Lady, I require certain information. I need to know where the weak links are—all of them. We can make it easy for you.”
“
Never!
If you set your Sardish mindbenders on me, I'll—” She stopped. Of course he would know her “final precautions,” since Realgar did. Except for one … . Her voice steadied. “I will disappear, now, for good. My parents never found me, the last time.”
“Go ahead, then. But first hear this: Pyrrhopolis is empty. Leveled. By the hand of Malachite.”
“Pyrrhopolis? Leveled? What do you mean?”
An age passed between them. “The city was evacuated beforehand, of course. He gave us time. Then his ship did something, and—” Talion shrugged. “The city crumbled to sand.”
Berenice fell back onto her bench, shaking.
“A vast beach of sand, all that's left.” Talion looked old, she realized; even his shoulders drooped forward. Pyrrhopolis, where the mightiest of architects built towers of gold. “Why?” she asked at last, though she knew the answer.
“The Patriarch could not wait for a year's siege, so Malachite said. The Envoy can stay only a few months before he reports back to Torr. He could hardly leave Pyrrhopolis in the hands of atom-smashers. The lives at least were saved, I—I pressed for that. But it had to be so.”
“Of course.” Atom-smashers smashed themselves in the end; that was the dogma of Torr.
“Berenice, the same holds for biological warfare. If Sharers have forbidden science—”
Her thoughts were in confusion. What could she tell him? How to subdue Shora? Who would more surely destroy Shora, Malachite or Talion himself? Not the Envoy, he was too wise. He would learn soon enough what Berenice knew, that Sharers were harmless despite their powers. But then he would depart, for ten long years. What dare she tell the High Protector of Valedon?
Share learning, always, so Merwen had said. Never fear to share what you know, because true strength frees itself.
But what did Merwen know of High Protectors?
Berenice studied Talion's eyes and the very fine lines that grew above and around them. For the first time she saw fear in them, fear of a greater power. What shame and despair it must have brought him to watch a Valan city crumble because he himself had ruled too lightly. And now he faced Shora … .
“My lord, I have one truth to share: So long as Sharers know that you are
human
, you have nothing to fear from Shora.”
It was said, and she nearly swooned. Then she saw that Talion did not understand, perhaps never would, no matter how hard she tried. Once again, despite herself, she had earned her name.
THE TRUE GIRTH and shape of a seaswallower was not known, even by Sharers who knew so much about lifestuff, down to the very atoms. At the water's surface, a single whirlpool could pull perceptibly within a range as broad as Raia-el. By now, the beasts crowded so closely that their ranges overlapped, and the sea was a mass of sinking holes.
Spinel watched from the rooftop, to see how close they would come to the raft. Lystra was outstretched in a blue curve of roofing, her
breasts braced against a seam. Her eyes squinted into binoculars. “They're moving in,” she said through clenched teeth. “Grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Thicker yet they'll get, before the crest passes.
“But they're practically on top of each other already.”
“Swallowers spread seed and eggs as they go. The closer they swim, the better chance for union.”
In that case, Spinel thought, they were grand
fathers
as well as grandmothers. But it was useless to point this out.
“Along the equator,” Lystra said, “the globe is wide and the crest spreads thin.”
“And we stay here, thanks to starworms.” Spinel knew she would appreciate that.
“And thanks to shockwraiths. Say, look there—beyond the branches.”
He started; the whirlpool was so big and close he had not noticed it.
“Looks like it's stalling.”
Spinel stared as if mesmerized. Would it engulf the vary raft?
A fountain rose at the spot, so tall that it brushed the clouds. Its foam fell slowly in the distance and turned to vapor before it rejoined the sea. For several minutes it stood, a white pillar erected by some mythic race to hold up the sky.
“That one got a mouthful of fleshborers,” Lystra noted.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if
you
swallowed a school of fleshborers, you'd spit up, too. And that would be your last meal.”
Spinel sickened at the thought. He wondered how long the fleshborers would last, to keep the swallowers away.
Lystra lowered her binoculars. “The offshoot rafts. They might break off.” She meant Rilwen, he knew.
“Usha will bring her in, like before, for health's sake.” Far off, another white column sprouted, in the vicinity of Umesh-el, Spinel guessed.
Lystra climbed down to the raft, and Spinel swung down after. A few sisters were still working on an emergency escape vessel, a long canoe with ten pairs of oars to speed off, in the event that the raft core broke up among the whirlpools. No glider squid could be controlled with swallowers about, but this vessel could probably make it to the nearest neighboring raft. Already the children from three families were
settled in the boat, for the dozen hours or so that the crest would last. To the side, a score of airblossoms were tethered, drenched in orange photophores. These would be released like balloons as a signal to other rafts, if the time came.
It was all for nothing, most likely, Spinel tried to tell himself. The raft of Raia-el was over a hundred years old, and each year the sea had swallowed twice, once from the north and back again from the south. But the wailing of children and the feverish activity of their mothers little helped to calm him.
Nisi and Perlianir were carving an extra oar; raftwood shavings scattered everywhere. At the sight of Nisi, Spinel remembered something. “Lady Nisi, what's the news of my folks? You did ask, didn't you?”
Nisi frowned and wrung her sore fingers. “He could not get through. Spinel, you belong on the boat.”
“What, with a bunch of babies?”
“You haven't a selfname,” said Perlianir.
Spinel kicked the side of the boat, disgusted. It was bad enough to have been drummed out of one world for lack of a stonesign. He'd be a troll's cousin if he'd let them nag at him for a ‘selfname.'
Behind him came the voice of Usha. “The Unspoken One refused to come in.”
Spinel turned. Usha was facing Lystra, who stood as if she were ready for a fight. “She would not come, that's all,” Usha repeated.
“Nonsense, mothersister. That branch may not last.”
“She Unspeaks us. It is her right.”
“Her right to die?”
“Even so.”
The two faced each other in a way that on Valedon would surely have ended in a fistfight or hair-pulling, but Lystra broke away and ran, down one of the long twisting branches.
Spinel's heart beat very fast. Something had to come of that exchange, maybe not like on Valedon, but something just as crazy. He raced to catch up with Lystra. He found her shoving her rowboat into the channel. “Hey, you won't make it back,” he called.
“Should I let her die?” Lystra's face was haggard.
“I'll call Merwen.”
“Call on Shora herself! I'm my own selfnamer, now.”
“Wait.” He sprang from the branch and landed in the boat, which rocked and nearly capsized. He sat up and rubbed a sore elbow.
Lystra stared at him in amazement. “You ‘trollhead,' what will Merwen say if I get you killed?”
“You're the selfnamer, Intemperate One.”
She wrinkled her nose but said nothing more. They rowed out beyond the channels, passing clumps of fleshborers that tore at each other, maddened by the great deathfeast that tinted the waves a dull cinnabar. Lystra followed the line of the submerged branch that led out to Rilwen's offshoot. The sea was a confusion of eddies and sharp currents, but together the two rowers managed to make headway. The speck of raft appeared at last, a green leaf upon an unquiet sea.
Rilwen sat crosslegged between her troll's hoard of gems and her ragged excuse for a shelter.
“Rilwen?” Lystra laid a hand upon Rilwen's sunken shoulder.
The frail sister would not reply.
“Rilwen, this branch can't last.”
A fountain roared up from the sea, the nearest yet. Waves came crashing onto the bit of raft and left a fleshborer stranded and snapping. The raft itself shuddered and swayed. Spinel lost his footing and caught hold of Rilwen's shelter.
Lystra was shaking her like a doll. “Rilwen, you have to come back. It's our duty; we share your protection.” But already Rilwen was turning white, and that was it, Spinel knew by now.
“Let's pick her up.” Spinel reached beneath Rilwen's arms to carry her, but Lystra pulled him off. “That's no use,” she said, “her heart will just stop.”
“What? But why? Of all the—” He let off a string of Valan curses. “Look, we can't just leave her here.”
“She seeks her Last Door.”
“It's not right, it's—it's against the—” He realized that he knew no Sharer word for “law.” His arms fell. Lystra watched Rilwen, and Spinel watched Lystra. From the fountaining seaswallower a mist drifted over.
“Go on back,” Lystra told him, still staring at Rilwen. “Take the boat, go on.”
“What about you?”
“I'll swim.”
“Among the fleshborers?”
“Rilwen may change her mind, if you leave.”
Wincing, he turned and walked back toward the boat. Brown water
already covered the branch that moored it. His feet stopped. Should he go? Would Rilwen really change her mind? He had to think fast, and that annoyed him; he just wasn't good at it, that's why he quit school when the master made him stammer out the square root of …
A wave lapped at his feet, and panic swept over him. Go now, said the wave; think later, safe on a dry mat in the silkhouse.
But his right foot carried a wrinkled scar.
His mind focused and centered on one thing.
His
face set, and he walked back to Lystra.
“You're still
here
?” Her lips contorted. “Get out!” she screamed.
“How will I tell Merwen I left you?”
“You shouldn't have come.”
“What are you trying to do, share death?”
That cooled her a bit. “Share nothing. If I die for love, what's it to you?”
Numbness filled him; he choked on his tongue. He really was a trollhead, not to have understood. He should not have come. But it was too late; his mind had set a course and he had no will left to change it.
Lystra was determined to change it. Her fingers clenched and straightened, and her will reached out to him, so strong it was almost palpable. But the more she willed him to leave, the more he intended to stay. She could not move him, for all that she was a wormrunner.
They stayed there, all three, a frozen mosaic, for what felt like hours but could barely have been minutes. Then another swallower fountained. The waves poured over, for a moment drowning the little offshoot raft. Rilwen's shelter shuddered and collapsed.
Lystra tore herself away and headed for the boat. Spinel jumped from his trance and joined her, pulling with all his strength at the oars. The core raft lay ahead, a haven tantalizingly near, but with the shifting currents it took an age to get there.
Exhausted, Spinel lay back on the dry raft surface to rest, never minding the scratchy vegetation. It was no shore of land, but by Torr it was all he had to count on.
A deep rumbling began beneath him. Everything vibrated, as if the raft was about to split in two. The escape boat, could he reach it in time?
The tremor ceased with a sudden snap that flung him sideways. Slowly Spinel raised himself and ventured to look out to sea. A vast whirlpool spanned where Rilwen's raft had been.
Though the raft was firm again, Spinel found himself shaking uncontrollably. He had to try twice to get up on his feet. As he turned back, he saw Lystra, several paces up-raft, sitting with her legs crossed, facing out. Already she was beyond reach, in whitetrance, to mourn her lost love.
 
Merwen came out with Spinel to see how Lystra was, and whether she had set herself safely up-raft. She had, of course; Lystra was at heart a very practical young sister. For a moment Merwen regarded her daughter, so still and white. Inwardly she bled for Lystra, and more for Rilwen, and most of all for Yinevra, who would live with this sorrow till her own Last Door. But Merwen tried not to pity her, for of all the well-meant emotions pity is the cruelest to share.
She bent down and lightly kissed Lystra on her scalp.
Spinel gasped and whispered, “Is that safe, in her trance?”
“Yes, but do not try to share words.”
“But she can hear us?”
“In a distant way, like an embryo in a womb turned inside out to enclose the outer universe.” Spinel would not understand this, not until he learned it himself. “A mental cord still connects her with this life. She hears us, but if our words tried to travel up that cord, it might snap.” Merwen opened a pod of sunscreen and began to smooth it into Lystra's back, gently, almost reverently. “If she stays here many days, she will need this to keep from burning.”
“Days, Merwen?”
“She was very close to Rilwen. Both of them were insatiably curious about the Stone Moon. Once they saved up seasilk together to trade for a—a ‘picture maker,' that makes ghost pictures of living things. Lystra was determined to find out how it worked. She learned to speak Valan fluently, and she found out a little, about the lenses and the sensing parts that make of such an object a seeing eye. Beyond that, I think, even the traders did not know, and they said ‘magic' because they knew no better.”
“Magic is nonsense.”
“Magic is anything you don't understand.” Merwen kissed her daughter once more, then turned away. “Lystra will need more lotion, and a shell of water each day she stays.”
“Oh, I'll bring that. But what if the raft breaks up?”
“The crest is passing, and the core raft is out of danger.” Otherwise
there would have been signs: great cracks in the soil and flooding of the inner chambers. Silently she walked home with Spinel and wondered yet again how much he understood. He was accepting of everything, even Lystra now, and that was a blessing to see. But was acceptance understanding?
She remembered that she herself must take time to mourn Rilwen, but she was not yet up to it. At the moment she needed another kind of solace, that which only her lovesharer could bring.
Merwen found Usha alone in a lifeshaping chamber, busily snaking nutrients into a vat of bacteria. “Will you never stop, dear one?” She kissed the nape of Usha's neck.
“Sickness doesn't wait. Suppose we get a flu epidemic, next?” Usha pointed to the vat. “Those unseen little sisterlings will make us lots of medicine.” But she let herself relax and leaned into a wall curve matted with leaves, her cheek next to Merwen's. Merwen nestled closer and breathed the scent of Usha, so much sweeter than raft blossoms.

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