A Door Into Ocean (8 page)

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Authors: Joan Slonczewski

BOOK: A Door Into Ocean
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Merwen tried to explain. “It's decorative, it's … a ‘fungus,' is that right?” she asked Lady Berenice.
“A
fungus
? All over?” He pulled away and frantically brushed off his arm. For once he appreciated his mother's strict housecleaning.
“Yes, isn't it beautiful? Flossa and Wellen have kept up the painting. Come, now, you have many sisters to meet … .”
The names all flew past him, except for old Ama, who reclined on a low couch that undulated slowly, as it was filled with water. Ama's hands were shriveled into birdlike claws, but they flickered a silent greeting. A seasilken blanket was wrapped around the grandmother; the others were all quite exposed. Spinel stared more boldly at the strangers than he had dared at Merwen or Usha. They were as hairless as infants, even below, and their skin had the same sheen all over, with
the faint puckering typical of Sharer complexion. Somehow he felt a letdown, perhaps because he had expected to be aroused but was not.
Meanwhile, Weia and Wellen had insinuated their fingertips under the flaps of his travel bag. Spinel hastily pushed them aside and opened it himself. The first thing he drew out was half of a cheese sandwich. “That's my lunch,” he told Wellen, adding the word for “sharing food.”
Wellen took the sandwich in the web between two fingers and flicked it with her thumb. She sniffed it gingerly, wrinkled her nose, and coughed hard. Then she ran off to. a large shrub that grew in the back of the room and stuffed the sandwich between a pair of broad, fleshy leaves. The leaves snapped shut. Wellen then pried open an adjacent leaf pair and scooped the contents out onto her palm.
This performance perplexed Spinel, but Lady Berenice's face softened with amusement, the first time he had seen her slip from her noble bearing. “Wellen thinks it makes good plant food,” she told him. “For the ‘pudding plant.' The leaf juices will digest it for a few days, and then it becomes ‘pudding.'”
Wellen proffered him a sample of what looked like a mixture of moldy cheese and clay.
“What was that stuff originally?”
“Probably squid entrails.”
Suddenly Spinel wished he had filled his whole pack with Ahn's vegetables before he left. “Uh, thanks, but—” He reached into the bag again. “Now here's something for you!” From his father's parting gift, a handful of quartz marbles fell to the floor.
The girls gasped and scooped up the shiny stones, fingering them avidly before passing them on to their elders. Voices died to a murmur.
Their distraction was a relief. Spinel yawned, and stretched his legs, and slumped against the wall again. There were no chairs, only mats on the floor. It must be midnight, he felt, yet it was still light outside. It did not occur to him that his accustomed time zone was irrelevant to Shora.
Once again the doorhole gaped open. An arm reached through, knotted and muscular. This Sharer entered with difficulty because she had to pull a large netted sack through the narrow opening. The sack held a writhing mass of tentacles—octopus, perhaps, but impossibly bright red, and they moved more swiftly than any octopus he had seen; their beaks snapped like crab claws.
The newcomer paused and drew herself to full height, a good hand's-breadth taller than Spinel. Veins twined her legs like ivy, and her firm breasts heaved with exertion. Her figure was like Usha's, but her face was a startlingly fierce version of Merwen.
“Lystra!” Merwen spread her arms.
“Mother!” Lystra dropped the sack and embraced her. One snapping octopod squirmed out of the sack; how could it move so fast? Weia shrieked, and Wellen hurried to retrieve the creature, while a couple of elder Sharers dragged the rest of the catch away.
Lystra and Merwen held each other, rocking slightly, then parted just enough to face each other and speak in low tones. There was no mistaking the emotion that stretched between them, binding the mother and daughter as if no one else existed. Spinel felt vaguely jealous.
Little Weia reached up on tiptoe and tugged Lystra's arm. She held up a tiny fistful of Spinel's polished stones.
At first Lystra did not notice, then she looked down blankly, as if puzzled. Her mouth opened in shock. Her arm swept Weia's aside; the marbles flashed and darted across the room. The little one screamed and sobbed, while Lystra turned and saw Spinel for the first time. A harsh note entered her voice, and the others became very still.
Unaccountably, Lady Berenice stepped forward beside Spinel, as if to claim kinship: she, a Lady of Hyalite. Spinel looked at Berenice, then at Lystra again—wild Lystra, whose very eyes spoke fury now, as if Spinel were a demon conjured up by a witch. By Torr and all the Nine Legions, what had he done?
 
Lystra glared in consternation at the new Valan creature her mother and mothersister had brought home. It stood there, swathed in “traders' rags,” head of a bristlefish and mouth agape stupidly. And carrying
stones
, no less; stones, to this of all silkhouses.
Merwen was squeezing her arm, pleading with taut insistence underneath. “He is young, he brought gifts, not to harm—”
Lystra wheeled on her.
“Why,
my mother? In the name of that which can't be shared, why did you bring a Valan malefreak to this very door? Do we not suffer enough traders, that we should take in extra?”
“This one is no trader. He will share learning with us. Why else did we cross the sky to the Stone Moon?”
Why, indeed. Anxiously Lystra studied her mother. Merwen looked years older after her mission to Valedon; her cheeks sagged, and new rills underlaid her eyes. Even mothersister Usha, the lifeshaper, was dusky of skin, and her muscles were slack. It seared Lystra's heart to watch her parents age so fast. Yet her ache for them, and her joy to have them home at last, was all muddled with her outrage at this creature they had brought. She took a deep breath and held it until her head cleared. “Mother,” she said quietly. “You went to Valedon to share judgment of them in their own habitat, to judge if they can be human. Surely you have your answer now.”
“Yes, in part, as they judged us.”
“Don't listen to Usha! It takes more than genes to prove—”
“That it does,” Usha's voice thudded. “Why do you think we spent two months on that half-dried-out planet?”
“And we barely scratched the surface,” said Merwen. “You are still young, Lystra. Nisi, you know, will take a selfname tomorrow.”
Her breath stopped short. “Then why does
Be-re-ni-ce
return to us as colorless as a stranded jellyfish?” She stared at Nisi while she addressed her mother.
“Lystra,” Merwen said, “Who pulled you from the water when the jellyfish stung? Who wove new housepanels, day and night, after the storm last year?”
“Yes.” She forced a whisper. “I know all that.”
Nisi said, “Lystra, I share your thoughts. I have done the best I can on Valedon, and I bring vital news for the Gathering.” At least Nisi had not lost the Sharer tongue.
But, young as Lystra was, she knew she was right about other Valans, the ones that swarmed in ever greater numbers over Shora, consuming entire populations of fish and poisoning others. And the traders who came to share seductively artful implements of stone and coldstone, they were the most dangerous of all. Stone was as hard as coral yet as empty as death. No living presence fashioned iron and quartz: these things grew in fire as coral grew in water, and for some the paradox consumed the mind in fire. Such things had no place on Shora.
BY EVENING THE neighbors had dispersed, leaving only Merwen's family and the apprentice lifeshapers to curl up on their mats in the communal sleeping room. Berenice was too exhausted even to shave herself smooth; her scalp and limbs still prickled from her depilation the night before. She missed her private bedroom and her servos, and already she longed for Realgar's embrace. Still, she had what she had come for: the free ocean, the purest air, and the love of her sisters who had given her soul second wind.
All was quiet except for wind against the seasilk, and waves upon the raft branches, and an occasional clickfly still chirruping the now tiresome news that Merwen the Impatient had indeed come back safely to Raia-el, with a Valan malefreak who might turn out to be human. Berenice cast one last resentful look at Spinel, who lay huddled in his clothes, having slept through supper, ignorant of the crisis that surrounded him. It was bad enough that she had to expose herself in his presence, lest the more conservative Sharers shun her; Realgar would be livid if he found out. Now she actually had to defend the boy, for the sake of her own roots on Valedon. If she denied his kinship at this crucial time, the Sharers might expect her to cut her Valan roots once and for all. It had never come to that, before today; Lystra's challenge shook her.
Of course she could not stay purple in Iridis, since the microbial symbionts were thought to be contagious. For Sharers, the issue was sensitive because the traders and other Valan settlers avoided the breathmicrobes, which seemed to highlight their supposed lack of “humanity.”
In the two months since she had left, events had moved swiftly on Shora. The living fabric of Shora was at stake, and Sharers across the globe were clamoring to
close the Door.
Even Merwen might not sway them this time. Tomorrow, Berenice would see for herself what the Raia-el Gathering of selfnamers had in mind, and she would offer what counsel they would accept. That Talion, curse his ancestors, was little help at all. If only the storm held off until Malachite came.
Spinel slept fitfully. He dreamed that he was lost at sea, outswimming an unseen seaswallower, while the pounding of marching boots reverberated in his head. He awoke with a start.
Something was knocking about in his travel bag. It was a portly fish with an ugly jaw and three pairs of lobed fins. At his shout, the fish scurried away, leaving a trail of slime. The bag was a mess, everything scattered and sticky. The bread and fruit he had saved for breakfast was either eaten or inedible, and his empty stomach was growling.
For several minutes he cursed Shora and everything connected with it, including Merwen for having brought him here, his father for not having beaten some sense into his head earlier, and himself for having been such a trollhead as to climb that old netleaf tree to spy on strangers. Then he tried to think. Daylight shone through slits in the upper panels, and everyone else was gone. From outside came the rhythmic banging sound of Merwen's handloom. He set out to find her.
He picked his way through the winding hallway. At one point a basin of water hung from the wall, filled by a trickling stream from some sort of foliage overhead. Weia was scooping out water with her flipper hands, but at his approach she toddled off. Plants watering people? Spinel could only shake his head.
At last he found the disk of the doorhole. He touched it: taut as a drumhead. Then abruptly it dilated like the iris of a great blue eye. Sunlight streamed through, and Spinel squinted hard as he stepped outside, following the sound of the loom.
To his disappointment, the weaver was not Merwen but Lady Berenice. “Good morning, my lady.”
“You may call me Nisi,” she said, in a tone that clearly commanded him to do so.
“Yes, Lady Nisi. Lady Nisi, a fish got into my food.”
“Don't keep food around, except in the pantry, which has herbs to repel legfish. Breakfast is ready there.”
“No, thanks.” None of that pudding stuff for him. Merwen would take him back to the trading post for some regular food. “Where's Merwen?”
“In the water, by the motorboat.”
Spinel found Merwen swimming in a channel among the branches, her head bobbing above the surface. He tossed off his shirt and slipped into the water, warm as a blanket of turquoise seasilk.
Something nibbled at his toes. His pulse jolted, and he kicked hard. Probably just minnows—he hoped. And below, who could say how many kilometers to the ocean floor … .
Merwen's arms swirled the water, and she smiled at him. Despite himself, Spinel smiled back. “Merwen, I'm hungry. A legfish got my food.”
“I'm so sorry.” She did not tell him to go get breakfast. She understood. “Spinel, would you spread some
fingershells
for me?”
Spinel blinked at the request, not wanting to refuse. In the boat was a sack full of tiny pearly shells; Merwen pulled herself up over the side to scoop out a handful of them, which she spread through the undergrowth from the raft branch. Spinel got some shells, but as soon as his hand reentered the water, red wormlets flickered from the shells, and he let go of them in a hurry. Each shell with its bunch of wormlets spurted off in a different direction, and soon all were lost among the coral stalks that reached up from the underside of the branch and paraded below as he swam. Bewhiskered fish swept past the coral, until a lump of mud and broken shells came alive to snap one up and tear it with its pincers. And everywhere, from nooks amid the coral, filaments of seasilk hung and pulsed to the rhythm of an unseen drummer, reaching deep among the branchlets that extended from the main trunk, down far as Spinel could see, an inverted forest.
Merwen was still spreading shells. “Listen, Merwen, what're you doing that for?”
“Fingershells eat parasites that ravage the silkweed when they grow too many.”
“So why not spray the raft with something to clear out the pests?”
“Then seasilk would choke the raft. And fingershells would go hungry, and tubeworms die of the poison; then fish and octopus would have nothing, and what would Sharers eat?”
“And what am I supposed to eat? Look,” he insisted, “I have to go back to the trading post or I'll starve out here.”
“Very well,” Merwen said, starting to swim off. “Lystra will take you this afternoon.”
“Lystra!
Not her.” That horrid creature who had slapped away his gift stones and glared bloody murder at him.
“Lystra always goes to the trader, for metal tools and even firecrystals.”
“But Lystra hates me.”
“She doesn't know you well enough to hate yet.” Merwen paused. “Lystra does know traders well. She will take enough seasilk to trade for your food.”
Spinel had not thought of that. For survival, he was utterly dependent on his Sharer hosts. But Lystra, he was sure, would as soon see him starve. Sullenly he splashed the water with his hands. “Why does Lystra bother with traders, if she hates them so?”
“Traders are human, too. They would be fine, if they became
selfnamers.
”
“What's a selfnamer?”
“Come, I'll show you.” She hauled herself up onto the branch. Spinel followed. He watched her breasts sway as she settled herself.
Merwen nodded at the water. “Now, what do you see there?”
Spinel looked. “The sea, that's all.”
“Look closer.”
“I see fish, lots of little ones, and turrets of coral.” On the surface, light patches bent and skittered. “I see—myself, on the water,” he added flippantly.
“Good, and what else?”
“What else is there?” he exclaimed. “I'm no good at guessing games, I don't know anything. In school all I did was dream about the mosaics on the wall. I'll never learn to be a judge. Why don't you send me home?”
“A lesser creature sees its rival on the water and jumps in to fight it. A human sees herself and knows that the sea names her. But a
selfnamer
sees every human that ever was or will be, and every form of life there is. By naming herself, she becomes a ‘protector' of Shora.”
“A Protector? You mean, everybody?” The bizarre logic of it struck him. Without any nobles and commoners, everyone got to be a High Protector.
Captain Dak was right, he decided. Even if there had been ten thousand worlds inhabited, he would never find one as ridiculous as this one.
 
In the hallway of the silkhouse, an unfamiliar member of the household was scraping something up from the floor. It looked like the trail from the legfish, now hardened to a plastic. Spinel shrugged philosophically and went his way to the pantry. Perhaps there would be something to stave off his hunger.
The pantry, a room as irregularly shaped as every other, was cluttered with bowls and spoons and clear, polished plates that looked more like glass lenses. Wellen was stacking bowls, while Weia sat on a mat and took spoonfuls from a bowl of that nauseating “pudding.” Weia fed the spoonfuls to Ama, the grandmother, who seemed very weak, almost paralyzed. Spinel only watched. He was not hungry enough for that stuff.
When Ama was done, Weia pushed the bowl toward him. Then she picked up a broom and started to sweep the floor. Somehow, though, her feet kept stepping on each other as soon as she fixed her attention on the broom, until her sister plucked it away to finish the job.
Spinel laughed and thumbed his nose at her.
Immediately they both sat down on the floor, their backs turned on him. Bewildered, Spinel blinked at their two small round backs, a silent reproach. “Well, don't dish it out, if you can't
take
it.” He stomped out, retraced his steps, and slapped the doorhole to get outside.
A few paces away stood Lystra.
Spinel caught himself, prepared to run, but Lystra had not seen him yet, or chose not to. Shadows rippled in the muscles of her calves and arms and beneath her firm breasts. Her build was magnificent—a wrestler could not have looked better—and in Spinel's experience people who looked like that usually were used to using it.
Lystra was absorbed with the clickflies that hovered before her, their lopsided mandibles scraping out squeals and pops. Some were swinging across a sort of fence of fine black meshwork, like a spiderweb, that had not stood there before. “Look, Valan,” she said at last. “It's a letter from across the sea.” Lystra spoke his language fluently. “You would do well to heed its message.”
Warily Spinel drew closer. The web was a fascinating pattern, but he could make nothing of it. Lystra's face was a bit harsher than he cared for, but there was a ghost of Merwen's eyes and cheekbones. And her cheeks were unlined; she could not be much older than himself.
Spinel lifted his chin. “What do you mean, a letter?”
She pointed to the clickflies. “They spin out their news so that all may read. In the Eighth Galactic, the Third Cluster, System Wan-elion, many things were dying: glider squid washed up on the rafts, starworms floated up with their bellies gray and swollen; even
shockwraiths were gone from the underraft. What was the cause? Your Valan sisters, of course, dumping poisons in the sea. But a lifeshaper of Wan-elion fixed that. She spread a slime mold that overgrew all the Valan fishing boats. Now the greedy fishers are gone from Wan-elion.” Lystra watched him expectantly.
“So what's that got to do with me?”
“Everything, Valan, everything. Already you're in league with the traders—I told Merwen so. So you're hungry, are you? I'll fix that; I'll feed you to the starworm!”
Spinel stepped back a pace, then had a maddening sense of being tricked.
“Trollhead,” Lystra muttered. “I'll feed you
after
I feed the starworm. Come on.” She started to turn away.
“No,” he burst out, “if you don't want me, then by Torr I want nothing from you.” He tensed his legs and put his fists at his hips.
She blinked a few times, as if rearranging a puzzle. “Well said, Valan. A pity more of your sisters don't agree. Perhaps you've got some brains beneath your fur.” She headed down toward the water. “Come along, Valan! You'll upset Merwen, if you don't.”
He had no choice, if he was to eat. How could Merwen have done this to him?
Lystra dove into the sea, swift as lightning. Spinel plunged in after, and his leg grazed a submerged branch. He gasped at the surface, his leg stinging. Then more cautiously he tried to keep up with Lystra as she darted through the maze of channels. Schools of fish scattered like jeweled rain. Opalescent jellyfish loomed ahead, and he swerved aside to avoid them.
Where had that monstrous Sharer got to now? Spinel paused at the surface to catch his breath, his feet paddling slowly.
A head popped up. “What's keeping you?” Lystra said. “Just go on down.”
Fear gripped him; something was wrong. His arm thrashed out to get hold of a branchlet, and the barnacles raked his palm.

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