The Blue World (17 page)

The following day a
convocation was called on Apprise Float. There were none of the usual
rambling introductory remarks. Morse Swin, the Apprise Arbiter,
Phyral Berwick’s one-time assistant, a big blond slow-spoken man,
went to the rostrum. “Yesterday occurred a great tragedy, a
futile useless tragedy, and all our wisdom is needed to resolve the
situation. One thing is certain: reproaches are futile. The folly of
attempting to attack the New Float has been made utterly evident, and
it is high time that these so-called Exemplars put aside their
pretensions or ideals or vanities—whatever one wishes to call
them; I have heard each word used, as well as others. In any event,
it is time that these idle men doff their uniforms and return to
work.”

Barquan Blasdel
jumped to his feet. “Do I hear aright?” he called in a
voice glacially cold.

Morse Swin looked
at him in surprise. “Intercessor, if you please, I am speaking
from the rostrum. When I am finished, you may have your turn.”

“But I will
not permit you to spout arrant nonsense. I thought to hear an
impassioned urge for all men to rededicate themselves to what now
must be our single concentrated goal—the absolute destruction
of the rebels!”

“Intercessor,
if you will restrain yourself, I wish to continue my remarks. I
definitely take a less vehement view of the situation. We have our
problems to solve; let us leave the folk of New Float to theirs.”

Blasdel would not
be quelled. “And what if they attack us?”

“They have
shown no disposition to do so. They defended themselves and defeated
you. If they planned an attack, they would never have allowed you to
return to Tranque with your survivors. You should give thanks for
your life and adjust yourself to the realities of the situation. I
for one will hear of no further such ventures.; the Exemplars must be
disbanded and return to earning their living. This is my feeling, and
I ask the approval of the convocation. Who agrees?”

There was vigorous
assent.

“Who
disagrees?”

In response came a
sound of much lesser volume but much greater emotion. It issued from
the throats of the intercessors and from the Exemplars themselves,
who, wearing their uniforms and helmets, stood in carefully ordered
groups.

Morse Swin nodded
his big, heavy head. “The verdict of the convocation seems
definite; still, anyone who wishes is entitled to speak.”

Barquan Blasdel
came to the rostrum. He put his hands on the rail, turned his dark
brooding gaze over the convocation. “You people who assented to
the view of Morse Swin did so after only the most superficial
attention. Shortly I will ask you to vote again.

“I wish to
make three points.

“First, the
setback of yesterday was unimportant. We shall win. Of that there is
no doubt. Do we not have King Kragen on our side? We withdrew after
sustaining losses, it is true. Do you know why this was made
necessary? Because upon these floats, perhaps here at the convocation
at this very moment, there are spies. Furtive, skulking creatures of
the most perverted and amoral attitudes imaginable! We expected no
serious opposition when we set sail but the spies had sent word
ahead! They prepared a dastardly and cruel ambush. What fiends these
rebels are, to hurl fire at defenseless boats! Our drowned comrades
will not go unavenged, I assure you! Do I speak truth, comrade
Exemplars?”

From the uniformed
groups came an impassioned “Truth!”

Barquan Blasdel
looked slowly around the convocation. “Morse Swin spoke of
realities. He is the man who is not realistic. King Kragen is
benevolent, but he is now wrathful. His is the might, his is the
force! We cannot deny him! He has ordained that his Exemplars act, he
has given them sharp weapons fashioned from the hardest stem, he has
given them his endorsement! The Exemplars act in King Kragen’s
behalf. They are men of true faith; they are forbearing and
benevolent, as is King Kragen, but like King Kragen, they are
terrible in their wrath. King Kragen’s Exemplary Corps must not be
contravened! They know the path of rectitude, which is derived from
the will of King Kragen; they will not be denied! When an Exemplar
speaks, he speaks with the voice and the will of King Kragen! Do not
oppose or contradict or fail to obey! Because first to be feared are
the sharp weapons, the daggers and pikes, and second, the source of
all awe and majesty, King Kragen himself. I, his Intercessor, and
Chief Exemplar, assure you of the ‘reality’ of this
situation. Who should know better?

“We now enter
a time of emergency! All must look as if with a single gaze to the
east, toward the float of the rebels. All must harden their minds,
put aside the soft ways of ease, until the rebels are destroyed and
the emergency is ended.

“During this
emergency we require a strong authority, a central coordinating mind
to ensure that all proceeds with efficiency. I have attempted to
withdraw myself from a post of such responsibility, but all insist
that I take this terrible burden upon myself. I can only, with
humility, profess my readiness to make this personal sacrifice, and
now so proclaim this emergency and this assumption of absolute
authority. I will be pleased to hear a unanimous hearty endorsement.”

From the Exemplars
and the intercessors came a great call. Elsewhere were frozen faces
and indignant mutters.

“Thank you,”
said Barquan Blasdel. “The unanimity of the endorsement will be
duly noted in the records. The convocation is now adjourned. When
circumstances warrant, when the emergency is at an end, I will
announce the fact and call another convocation. All may now return to
your home floats. Instructions as to how you best serve King Kragen
will be forthcoming.”

Sputtering with
anger, Morse Swin jumped to his feet. “One moment! Are you
insane? This is not traditional procedure! You did not call for
adverse voices!”

Barquan Blasdel
made a small, quiet signal to a nearby group of Exemplars. Ten of
these stalked forward, seized Morse Swin by the elbows, hustled him
away. He struggled and kicked; one of the Exemplars struck him on the
back of the head with the haft of his dagger.

Barquan Blasdel
nodded placidly. “I did not call for adverse voices because
there was obvious unanimity. The convocation is adjourned.”

Henry Bastaff
described the convocation to a silent conclave of notables on New
Home Float. “There was no core of opposition, no firmness. Old
Emacho Feroxibus was dead, Morse Swin had been dragged off. The folk
were stunned. The situation was too fantastic to be credible. No one
knew whether to laugh or scream or tear the Exemplars apart with
their bare hands. They did nothing. They dispersed and went back to
their huts.”

“And now
Barquan Blasdel rules the floats,” said Phyral Berwick.

“With the most
exacting vigor.”

“So then we
must expect another attack.”

Henry Bastaff
agreed. “Without any doubt whatever.”

“But how?
Surely they won’t attempt another raid!”

“As to this, I
can’t say. They might build boats with shields to divert fire-arrows,
or evolve a system to throw fire-arrows of their own.”

“Fire-arrows
we can tolerate,” said Sklar Hast. “We can build our boats
with kragen-hide rather than pad-skin; this is no great threat … I
can’t imagine how Blasdel hopes to attack us. Yet undoubtedly he does
so intend.”

“We must
continue our surveillance,” said Phyral Berwick. “So much
is evident.” He looked at Henry Bastaff. “Are you willing
to return?”

He hesitated. “The
risk is great. Blasdel knows we spy on him. The Exemplars will be
very much on the alert … I suspect that the best information will
be gained from under the pad, under the intercessor’s hut.

If Barway and Maible will return, I will accompany them.”

Phyral Berwick clapped him on the shoulder. “You have the
admiration and gratitude of us all! Because now our very lives depend
upon information!”

Four days later Roger Kelso took Sklar Hast to Outcry Float, where he
pointed out another contrivance whose function or purpose Sklar
Hast could not fathom. “You will now see electricity produced,”
said Roger Kelso.

“What? In that device?” Sklar Hast inspected the clumsy
apparatus. A tube of hollow stalk five inches in diameter, supported
by a scaffold, rose twenty feet into the air. The base was held atone
end of a long box containing what appeared to be wet ashes. The far
end of the box was closed by a slab of compressed carbon, into which
were threaded copper wires. At the opposite end, between the tube and
the wet ashes, was another slab of compressed carbon.

“This is admittedly a crude device, unwieldy to operate and of
no great efficiency,” said Kelso. “It does, however, meet
our peculiar requirements: which is to say, it produces electricity
without metal, through the agency of water pressure. Brunet describes
it in his Memorium. He calls it the ‘Rous machine’ and
the process cataphoresis. The tube is filled with water, which is
thereby forced through the mud, which here is a mixture of ashes and
sea-slime. The water carries an electric charge which it communicates
to the porous carbon as it seeps through. By this means a small but
steady and quite dependable source of electricity is at hand. As you
have guessed, I have already tested the device so I can speak with
confidence.”

He turned, signaled his helpers. Two clamped shut the box of mud,
others mounted the scaffold, carrying buckets of water which they
poured into the tube. Kelso connected the wires to a coil of several
dozen revolutions.

He brought forward
a dish. On a cork rested a small rod of iron.

“I have
already ‘magnetized’ this iron,”” said Kelso.
“Note how it points to the north? It is called a ‘compass’
and can be used as a navigational device. Now—I bring it near
the end of the coil. See it jerk! Electricity is flowing in the
wire!”

Sklar Hast was much
impressed. Kelso spoke on, “The process is still in a crude
state. I hope eventually to build pumps propelled by the wind to
raise the water, or even a generator propelled by the wind, when we
have much more metal than we have now. But even this Rous machine
implies a dramatic possibility. With electricity we can disassociate
sea-water to produce the acid of salt, and a caustic of countering
properties as well. The acid can then be used to produce more highly
concentrated streams of electricity—if we are able to secure
more metal. So I ask myself, where do the savages procure their
copper? Do they slaughter young kragen? I am so curious that I must
know, and I plan to visit the Savage Floats to learn their secret.”

“No,”
said Sklar Hast. “When they killed you, who would build another
Rous machine? No, Roger Kelso. What was MacArthur’s Dictum: ‘No
man is indispensable’? It is incorrect. You are too important
to risk. Send your helpers, but do not venture yourself into danger.
The times are too troubled for you to indulge yourself in the luxury
of dying.”

Kelso gave a
grudging acquiescence. “It you really believe this.”

Sklar Hast returned
to New Home Float, where he sought out Meril Rohan. He enticed her
aboard a small coracle and rowed east along the line of floats. Upon
a pad floating somewhat to the south of the line, they halted and
went ashore and sat under a thicket of wild sugar-stem. “Here,”
said Meril, “is where we can build our home, and this is where
we shall have our children.”

Sklar Hast sighed.
“It is so peaceful, so calm, so beautiful … Think how things
must be on the Home Floats, where that madman rules!”

“If only all
could be peaceful … Perhaps chaos is in our nature, in the nature
of man!”

“It would
seem,” said Sklar Hast, chewing on a stalk of sugar-stem, “that
we of the floats should by all rationality be less prone to these
qualities. The Firsts fled the Outer Worlds because they were
subjected to oppression; hence it would seem that their mildness and
placidity, after twelve generations, would be augmented in us.”

Meril gave a
mischievous laugh. “Let me tell you my theory regarding the
Firsts.” She did, and Sklar Hast was first amused, then
incredulous, finally indignant.

“What a thing
to say! These are the Firsts! Our ancestors! You are an iconoclast in
all truth! Is this what you teach the children? In any event, it is
all so ridiculous!”

“I don’t think
so. So many things are explained. So many curious passages become
clear, so many ambiguous musings and what would seem irrational
regrets are clarified.”

“I refuse to
believe this! Why—it’s … ” Words deserted him. Then
he said, “I look at you, and I watch your face, and I think you
are a product of the Firsts, and I know what you say is impossible.”

Meril Rohan laughed
in great merriment. “But I think, if it’s so, then perhaps the
Outer Worlds would not be such dreadful places as we have previously
believed.

Sklar Hast
shrugged. “We’ll never be sure—because we can never
leave this world.”

“Do you know
what someday we’ll do? Not you or I, but perhaps our children or
their children. They’ll find the Ship of Space, they’ll dive or send
down grapples, and raise it to the surface. Then they’ll study it
very carefully. Perhaps there’ll be much to learn, perhaps not …
But just think! Suppose they could contrive a way to fly space once
more, or at the very least to send some sort of message!”

“Anything is
possible,” said Sklar Hast. “If your violently unorthodox
theory is correct, if the Firsts were as you seem to believe, then
this might be a desirable goal.”

He sighed once
more. “You and I will never see it; we’ll never know the truth
of your theories—which perhaps is just as well.”

A coracle manned by
Carl Snyder and Roble Baxter, two of Roger Kelso’s helpers, sailed
west to the Savage Floats. Nine days later they returned, gaunt,
sunburned but triumphant. Carl Snyder reported to the counsel of
elders: “We waited offshore until dark. The savages sat around a
fire, and using a telescope, we could see them clearly. They are a
wretched folk: dirty, naked, ugly. When they were asleep, we
approached and found a spot where we could hide the coracle and
ourselves. Three days we watched the savages. There are only twenty
or so. They do little more than eat, sleep, copulate, and smelt
copper. First they heat the husks of the sponges to a char. This char
they pulverize and put into a pot to which a bellows is attached. As
they work the bellows, the charcoal glows in many colors, and finally
dissipates, and the copper remains.”

“And to think
that for twelve generations we have thrown sponge husks into the
sea!” cried Kelso in anguish.

“It would
seem,” reflected Sklar Hast, “that the kragen derive the
copper of their blood from sponges. Where, then, is the source of
iron in our own blood? It must be a found in some article of our own
diet. If the source was found, we would not need to drain ourselves
pale to obtain pellets.”

“We test every
substance we can lay our hands on,” said Kelso. “We have
created a white powder and a yellow powder, but no metal. Naturally
we continue with our tests.”

Several days later Kelso once more
invited Sklar Hast to Outcry Float. Under four long open-sided sheds
50 men and women worked at retorts fashioned from ash cemented with
sea-ooze. Bellows puffed, charcoal glowed, fumes billowed up and
drifted away through the foliage.

Kelso showed Sklar
Hast a container of copper pellets. Sklar Hast reverently trickled
the cold, clinking shapes through his fingers. “Metal! All from
kragen blood?”

“From kragen
blood and organs, and from the husks sponges. And here, here is our
iron!” He showed Sklar a container holding a much smaller
quantity of iron—a handful. “This represents a hundred
bleedings. But we have found iron elsewhere: in glands of the
gray-fish, in the leaves of bindlebane, in purple-weed pith. Small
quantities, true, but before we had none.”

Sklar Hast hefted
the iron. “In my imagination I see a great engine constructed of
iron. It floats on the water, and moves faster than any coracle. King
Kragen sees it. He is awed, he is taken aback, but in his arrogance
he attacks. The engine thrusts forth an iron knife; iron hooks grip
King Kragen, and the iron knife hacks him in two.”

Once again Sklar
Hast let the pellets of iron sift through his fingers. He shook his
head ruefully. “We might bleed every man, woman, and child dry a
hundred times, a thousand times, and still lack iron to build such a
kragen-killing engine.”

“Unfortunately
true,” said Roger Kelso. “The engine you suggest is out of
our reach. Still, using our wits, perhaps we can contrive something
almost as deadly.”

“We had better
make haste. Because Barquan Blasdel and his Exemplars think only of
bringing some terrible fate to us.”

Whatever the fate
Barquan Blasdel planned for the folk of New Home Float, he kept his
own counsel. Perhaps he had not yet perfected the plan; perhaps he
wished to consolidate the authority of the Exemplars; perhaps he
suspected that spies gauged his every move. In this latter conjecture
he was accurate. Henry Bastaff, in the role of an itinerant
spice-grinder, frequented Apprise Inn with ears angled toward the
Exemplars who primarily relaxed from their duties here.

He learned little.
The Exemplars spoke in large voices of portentous events, but it was
clear that they knew nothing.

Occasionally
Barquan Blasdel himself would appear wearing garments of new and
elaborate style. Over a tight black overall he wore a jacket, or
surplice, of broidered purple strips looped around shoulders, waist,
and thighs. From his shoulders extended a pair of extravagantly wide
epaulettes, from which hung a black cloak, which flapped and billowed
as he walked. His headdress was even more impressive: an elaborate
bonnet of pad-skin cusps and prongs, varnished and painted black and
purple—a symbolic representation of King Kragen’s
countenance.

Barquan Blasdel’s
dark, gaunt face was sober and harsh these days, though his voice,
when be spoke, was as easy and relaxed as ever, and generally he
managed a slight smile, together with an earnest forward inclination
of the head, which gave the person to whom he spoke a sense of
participation in affairs of profound importance.

Barway and Maible
had taken elaborate precautions against the vigilance of the
Exemplars. Their coracle was submerged and tucked under the edge of
the float; working from underwater, they had cut rectangular niches
up into the pulp of the float, with a bench above water-level and
ventilation holes up through the top surface into the shadow of a
hessian bush. In these niches they lay during daylight hours, making
occasional underwater visits to the hole in Vrink Smathe’s workroom.
By night they came forth to eat the food brought by Henry Bastaff.

Like Henry Bastaff,
they had learned nothing, Barquan Blasdel and the Exemplars seemed to
be marking time. King Kragen made his usual leisurely circuit of the
floats. Twice Henry Bastaff saw him and on each occasion marveled at
his size and might. On the evening after the second occasion, sitting
at his usual place to the back of Apprise Inn, he heard a brief
snatch of conversation which he considered significant Later in the
evening he reported to Barway and Maible.

“This may
mean something or nothing; it is hard to judge. I personally feel
that something is afoot. In any event these are the circumstances. A
pair of blackguards had come in from Sumber, and a Felon Elder asked
regarding Thrasneck and Bickle. The blackguards replied that all the
previous month they had worked at Thrasneck Lagoon, building
sponge-arbors in profusion: enough to serve not only Thrasneck but
Tranque, Bickle, Sumber, Adelvine, and Green Lamp as well: These
arbors were of a new design, heavier and more durable, and buoyed by
bundles of withe rather than bladders. The Felon Elder then spoke of
sponge barges his guild brothers were building on Tranque: a project
supposedly secret, but why maintain secrecy about a set of sponge
barges? It wasn’t as if they were attack boats for the Exemplars.
Here a group of Exemplars came into the inn and the conversation
halted.”