The Books of the Wars (24 page)

So usually he just did not think of such matters, content instead to ramble through the ruins, feeling the fine old steel and wondering, always wondering, how it must have been when the night sky still maintained enough regularity by which sailors could navigate.

Spring was late in VanRoark's nineteenth year. As he stood on the cathedral's grand steps and looked down through the Artillery Gate to the harbor, he could see that the ocean was still in its winter mood, heavy chop and spray geysering over the breakwater. He could also see one of the rare trails of smoke rising along the eastern edge of the world.

He stood watching for a while, wondering which way the invisible ship might be heading; but instead of moving off or away the smoke trail grew larger and thicker. By late afternoon a small gray dot could be observed under the column, apparently sailing for the city. Van-Roark felt a slight twinge of anticipation, for he had never seen a working steamship. Indeed, his father had said that the last one to visit their harbor had been an armed trawler from New Svald, running from Enador's shore batteries and monitors. Her remains could still be seen, beached on the same flats that the cruiser had briefly rested upon more than a century ago.

He ran into the cathedral to tell his father. When notified of the approaching ship, he could only say, "Ships have called at our port before, and I am sure they will continue to do so for quite some time. No need to get upset, Amon; if there is any danger to be had from her I am sure that the militia can handle it."

The younger man tried to point out that in its present condition the port offered no reason for merchantmen to call there, and the local forces would be fairly ineffectual against the guns that such an ancient ship probably carried. The elder VanRoark dismissed this with a fatherly smile and said that he must prepare for evening service.

Amon began to mention the Meadow Wars but his father froze him with a glance before the second syllable was out. "Not in the cathedral, not here," he said in a most unfatherly manner.

Amon retreated into the daylight, stumbling down the steps toward the Artillery Gate, more from sudden fear that he may have profaned the sacred precincts than from any burning interest in the ship.

She was only about five miles offshore by then, a rough pillar of gray alternately buried in the gunmetal Sea and then leaping free of it, white spray falling from her bow and decks with a strange delicacy.

The ship was approaching more slowly now with the clouds of vapor shrouding progressively less of her superstructure. A single twin turret, five-inch most probably, was set on the center line directly below the wide bridge; rough shapes, which VanRoark supposed were secondary gun mounts, bristled at odd intervals along her sides.

A mile from the harbor the ship turned to the wind and dropped anchor, apparently not wanting to risk entering an unknown channel with only a few more hours of daylight left. VanRoark supposed that in earlier days she would have been a moderately sized cargo ship, but she was the largest thing that had been seen along the eastern coast of the world for almost half a century. He wondered where she might have come from, from the Dresau Islands or perhaps from islands even farther to the east. And she was old, older even than the cathedral, it seemed. Her sides were streaked with rust and ancient oil. There were no lifeboats in the portside davits which now faced shoreward, although there was a rather sizable launch secured on the afterdeck, tied to the only remaining cargo crane. She had never been designed to take any armament, but in addition to the forward twin turret, duplicated aft, at least three large gun tubs could be made out on the facing side, their contents hidden under huge, dirty tarpaulins.

But the lines were still there under the dirt and the crudely welded repair sheets: the graceful curve and flare of the bows, the long waterline leading back to a short, cut-off stern; a low, beautifully terraced superstructure set well aft. VanRoark, quite surprising himself, thought that she was much too fine to still be afloat; she should have died along with the world that built her.

Dinner was an unusually tense affair for both of the elder VanRoarks, along with most of the city's population, who were determined not to acknowledge the ship's presence, even though her lights were clearly visible from every vantage point. The absence of any hostile action from her, in most minds, removed any cause for concern about her existence. However, if the crew wished to purchase any provisions, that was another matter.

The young man became more distressed with himself as the evening went on. Before, he could easily observe and speculate over dead and harmless places like the Old Navy Dock, its tiny, rotting fleet of sunken ships, and the illegible inscriptions on the monuments along the Avenue of Victories. Now these thoughts were intruding dangerously close to a full awareness; true, they could easily be nothing but fragments of truth, blown way out of proportion by his notorious imagination, but the refusal of anyone to discuss them, even on the most superficial level, only served to magnify them once again. His own speculations began to expand and connect themselves with childhood stories and legends told by pilgrims on the cathedral's steps; the ruins which had always been taken as a normal part of the city suddenly began to seem vaguely extraordinary.

His bedroom was on the third story of the VanRoark home (cathedral officials being among the better paid of the city's population). Unfortunately, it overlooked the bay and the ship's lights. The night sky was darkly thick with stars, and such a curious feeling it was to look down and see yet another constellation where the Sea should have been, until the rocking of the ship separated its lights from the welkin's. Electric lights. VanRoark guessed at this just as he was about to drowse off to sleep; electric lights had left the city along with the old cruiser a hundred years before. How cold they burned, so cold and silver . . . not with the nice, red flickering of the animal fur lamps used nowadays.

Around four o'clock the false dawn appeared, restoring the mere physical presence of the ship. As VanRoark finally fell to sleep he began to sense a movement that flowed westward from the Sea and the ship, through the city and, ultimately, to the Meadows. It was a completely insubstantial movement, and as far as the city was concerned a limited and retrogressive one. But the feeling was a tremendously perplexing and upsetting one, for it unavoidably displaced the static security of his education, his society, and the cathedral. Very slowly, VanRoark was beginning to rebuild within himself a sense of time and a sense of history, concepts which like the old ships and the electric lights had long ago departed from the world.

The young VanRoark had been apprenticed to one of the cartography firms still left in the city; it was something of a wonder that even these few had any business considering that not many people had use for maps. So, more and more, the chartmakers had turned to fancy and imagination, producing works of great artistic beauty but with only the most superficial claims to accuracy.

It was in his shop, seated before the old desk at the back and gazing continually at the old portfolios, where VanRoark had accumulated much of his latent store of bewilderment with his own home. How fascinating it was to trace the old maps, so yellowed and eaten through with worms, and then compare them with those of more recent vintage. Small wonder that the mapmakers had given up the real world in disgust, for even the ancient, seemingly exact maps showed monstrous discrepancies even within the space of several decades: the magnetic field of the earth had reversed itself at least twice in the past three centuries. VanRoark further came to the conclusion that the night sky over his home bore little resemblance to that which had existed even in the time of his father's youth.

He had chosen a roundabout way of going to the shop so that he could avoid any sight of the roadstead. But his mind was still unaccountably afire and it was useless to try to eat lunch; at noon, VanRoark gave in to himself and walked down Bergman Street to Admiralty Square along the harbor.

The old Square had once been a center of municipal life—a function now fulfilled by the cathedral—when the city still owed allegiance to the Sea. Weeds now poked between the marble paving blocks and even the great monumental column to the city's lost ships and sailors was cracked and tinged with blue-green mosses. Despite the low-tide stench that grew stronger as the harbor gradually turned itself into a swamp, it was still something of a gathering place; many of the poorer classes who did not feel entirely comfortable amidst the ornate splendor of the cathedral gardens, along with the old naval families whose heritage was tied only to the Sea, came to sun themselves and let the living Sea remind them that all was not yet dead or dying in the world.

VanRoark walked into the Square, briefly eyeing the anonymous captain who still looked seaward from atop the column, four seadragons guarding his high pedestal; then his eyes moved to the Sea, where the ship rode at anchor. But his attention was ripped back to the old docks that started at the southern end of the Square and then ran down to the commercial districts. A new craft was moored there and VanRoark guessed that it was the launch he had seen on the ship's afterdeck.

He moved toward it and would have broken into a dead run had he not been afraid it should turn out to be just another one of the infrequent hulks that still called at the port. It had to be the ship's; motor-driven, its lines resembled nothing he had ever seen except along the margins of old maps. She was very sharp, only about seventy feet long and obviously built for speed. VanRoark stared in deeper fascination as he realized the ship was in excellent shape and entirely free of rust; in the few spots where her gray and black colors had been chipped only the fresh silver of untouched metal showed through. There were no guns, not even any mounts or other signs that she had ever carried anything else but power; never had he seen anything so full of latent energy, and he could feel his mind being pulled along in her wake, splitting through the fragile, rotten immovability of the city.

The implied movement of the ship drew him back to the Square; a figure had mounted one of the seadragons. A group of sailors stood at its feet, waiting.

He was a rather tall fellow, probably thin for his height, but the shapeless robes he wore hid most of his build. VanRoark could see his face, even though he was still far away; he could see the eyes burning and glittering like gas torches. Loose brown hair fell from his head and down his back. But his eyes!

VanRoark tumbled forward, quite unaware of what he was doing or that others had joined him. He sensed another feeling growing within him, something far beyond those which the ships had conjured; so fantastically complex and alien it was, that it lost and blurred itself with its twistings and infinite surfaces. All he could really define was a shortness of breath and loss of balance, as if he were walking along the edge of a cliff with nothing but fog below him.

He stopped before the monument. He knew who the man was. Then a name, Timonias, drifted through the mob. Timonias. Vision became indistinct, especially along the outer edges of his sight. The gray-green of steps and seadragons seemed to merge with the brilliant white of Timonias' robes, moving slightly in the breeze. Words and thoughts flickered and turned outside VanRoark's suddenly narrowed world; only one voice and one idea and one person could now penetrate him. He had anchored his moment to the face and eyes and hands of Timonias; he did not have the slightest idea who Timonias was, but he knew him.

Then the hand, more pale than the robe around it, moved up before the diamond eyes and VanRoark was swept along. Never could he have conceived of a voice such as the one the man on the seadragon had: one that spoke, it seemed, without words or sound. The movement which all speakers seek to propel into the minds of their listeners was now existing as a force alive in itself.

Dust, and then from it, stars and planets; diagrams of creation unrolled in the space between Timonias' eyes and his weaving hand. Then history, a thing which Van-Roark had been gradually resurrecting within himself over his few years, came to his reeling mind, bludgeoning it back and forth against the limits of time.

He heard nothing, he was fairly sure of that; but like the name of the man atop the seadragon, the knowledge came to him, emerging and twisting within a consciousness that was unable to close and permanently grasp it—only to remotely observe it and attempt the frail lash-ups of memory.

Battles, cities, the conquest of the stars and then a retreat; spinning violence and the cool, grinding tragedy of things which he forgot even as they came to him flowed around the world of Admiralty Square. Rise and fall, bleeding defeat and stupid rebirth: things passed by him, and it came driving home that the wrecks had not always lain along the Goerlin's mud flats, that there had not
always
been ruins upon the earth. This he remembered; and because of this, some small, distant part of him sent up a terrible wailing and a sorrow he thought impossible to surpass.

Timonias was still speaking; the wailings died, the sorrow quickly calloused itself against any feeling. Now the pace rose and became even more fantastic; like the burning of blue diamonds and deep opals the "words" spun and sparkled far beyond the hand and eyes of the prophet, far beyond the tragicomic procession that had just bulleted through VanRoark's mind. Now came the final hope, the promise of peace and an ending, a truly brilliant, truly inspired end to the construct of the universe.

For a second, VanRoark drew back, awed and perversely proud of the neatly finished-off picture, the wonderfully complete aspect which time and history had suddenly attained from the words and gestures of Timonias.

Then the thoughts paled and turned to sand to drift away. Only a few grains were left . . . but they were enough.

VanRoark slowly regained his vision; his mind closed back upon itself to find the small fragments that remained. Timonias had gone, as had the sailors and the motor launch. The ship was still anchored about a mile offshore, but the thick stream of smoke that hung above her showed she would be leaving soon too.