The Incredible Tide (5 page)

No wonder they wanted to find Briac Roa!

He was wondering if it could be noon when a gong sounded in the building on his left. Men and women, dressed alike in the same cheap tunics, poured from a nearby entrance. Evidently they had heard about him already, for they all glanced at him curiously before turning and hurrying down the waterfront.

The last two workers swung in the opposite direction. As they passed, only a few feet away, they peered at him furtively, and he was startled to see that each had been branded on the forehead with a scarlet cross like his own.

“Hey!” he called. “Just a moment, please—”

They looked away without replying, and hastened out of sight around the projecting wall.

In quick anger Conan bruised his fist on the concrete enclosing him. Then he sighed and shook his head. He'd already guessed how it was here. Everybody afraid of everybody else—especially the branded ones, and the ordinary workers. If anyone so much as spoke to him, it would probably be reported.

The lunch period was soon over and he watched the workers return. The thought of their synthetic food kept his appetite at bay, but his thirst was growing, and he wished someone would bring him a drink of water.

By midafternoon it dawned on him that the work commissioner might keep him here for days until he was nearly dead of thirst. Fury boiled in him again, and without thinking what he was doing, he kicked viciously at the plastic door.

A long crack appeared near one of the hinges.

His eyes widened at the sight of it. Then he braced himself and started to kick again, harder.

Abruptly he froze. Someone was coming.

From around the corner of the projecting wall appeared a long cart with four rattling plastic wheels. It was being pushed by a very lean old man with a white beard and a wild mass of thick white hair. He was an irascible-looking fellow, made almost piratical by the black patch that covered one eye. On his forehead was a scarlet cross.

As he shuffled past, scowling fiercely and muttering, Conan was astonished to see the good eye swivel quickly in his direction, then close in a wink.

Man and cart vanished down the waterfront. Minutes later they reappeared, and now the cart was loaded with several sheets of heavy plastic. As they came again by the prison, the cart tilted suddenly on the broken paving, and the plastic sheets fell off.

“Blow it an' blast it!” the old pirate sputtered sulphurously. He began reloading the plastic, all the while muttering a stream of imprecations. In the middle of it, almost as if catching his breath, he whispered swiftly, “They call me Patch.… Take it easy, son.… See you tonight.…”

A final whisper, sandwiched between mutterings, reached Conan's ears as the cart began clattering away.

“Lanna has Tikki again.”

Shock held Conan rigid. Then he told himself he couldn't have heard right. It was impossible. How could that incredible old rascal be the man he had to be in order to have uttered those last few words?

But he was. Only Teacher himself could have learned about Tikki. Teacher was here, a prisoner of the New Order—but he had so changed his appearance and manner that there was no possibility of his ever being recognized by those who sought him.

4

ORLO

L
ANNA FILLED THE TEAPOT, LET IT STEEP A FEW MO
ments, and brought it over to the table where Shann was huddled in heated conversation with Commissioner Dyce. She made the tea only because she knew Shann needed it, and not from any feeling of hospitality. The commissioner had been after Shann for days, threatening and bullying, first about one matter and then about another. This afternoon the argument was over the abandoned aircraft.

“We must have them,” the commissioner was saying. “I absolutely insist upon it.”

“No,” Shann told him wearily.

“Don't tell me no,” the other rumbled, his black beard wagging angrily. “You have no use for them whatever! Why, you can't even repair them, and even if they could be flown, where would you find fuel—”

“No,” Shann repeated. “The aircraft were not in the agreement we made with your survey people. Furthermore—”

“Forget the agreement!
I
am the one in charge of trade.” The commissioner pounded the table with a heavy fist, making the dishes rattle.

“Commissioner,” Lanna interrupted, “if you care to drink our tea, you'll have to stop hitting the table so I can pour it.”

“Eh? Tea?” The black beard jerked in her direction, and the small eyes under the heavy, scowling brows seemed to become aware of her for the first time. “Oh, very well. Pour it, girl. Pour it.”

Lanna suppressed an impish temptation to dump the contents of the teapot down the man's neck, and very carefully filled both cups. She heard Shann murmur, “Where's Mazal?” and answered quietly, “Gone fishing.”

Earlier Mazal had said, “If I have to listen to that toad again, I'll lose my temper and make it worse for all of us. Anyhow, we need something for supper. Maybe I can catch a flounder.”

Just before leaving, Mazal had said, “Don't you want to try it—just once?” But she'd shaken her head quickly, frightened at the very thought of being so close to the strange sea she so feared and hated. Once she'd loved the water and the beaches, but now she could not force herself to go nearer than the harbor. It was protected, and the jutting headland blocked all view of the dreadful expanse that stretched beyond it to the horizon. But Mazal did her fishing along the open bay, which was just across the headland. Lanna couldn't go there.

As long as she lived, she knew she could never overcome her horror at that rising, roaring tide that swept the land the evening Mazal flew her up here. Their little craft, twin of the one Teacher used, had been dangerously overloaded with Shann's medical equipment, and they hadn't been able to keep up with the big craft ahead. They kept sinking, lower and lower …

Suddenly Lanna found herself wondering again about a detail she had nearly forgotten.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the commissioner. He slurped noisily from his cup, then demanded, “What kind of tea is this, girl?”

“Sassafras.”

“Eh? What's that?”

“A tree that grows up here. We use the roots.”

He took another long slurp. “Not bad. Not bad at all. I'd better have a few bales of those roots along with the other things.”

Shann shook his head. “I'm afraid not.”

“Eh?” The commissioner set his cup down slowly. “You say no to this. You say no to that. You are exhausting my patience, Doctor. I think you owe me an explanation.”

“I don't owe you anything,” Shann retorted, with a sharpness that surprised Lanna. He took off his glasses, rubbed his tired eyes, and said slowly, “We have just a few of those trees, and they give us our only beverage. Teacher had them planted before the Change, along with other things that don't normally grow here. They spread rapidly, and in a few years we'll have some to spare. But not now. They are among the items barred from trade.”

“So? And who barred them?”

“Teacher.”

“And did Teacher bar the aircraft also?”

“Certainly. And I wouldn't think of going against his orders.”

A dangerous redness was darkening the commissioner's face. “Are you trying to tell me that this invisible Teacher of yours runs High Harbor and tells all of you what to do?”

“Of course,” Shann replied. “Why shouldn't he?”

There was a silence. From some place in the grove of pines above the cottage, Lanna could hear the cawing of a crow. The sound came three times, and it was so real she might have paid little attention to it had she not been listening for it.

She turned away from the cupboard she was cleaning—an excuse to remain in the kitchen—and started to get her cloak. Then she hesitated, for the commissioner had erupted again.

“I'm getting tired of this runaround about Teacher,” he rumbled angrily. “Is he really alive? I'm beginning to doubt it. Now you listen to me.” A thick forefinger was thrust under Shann's nose. “I've given your boys tools to cut the timber you promised, but you don't get another thing until I see the logs on the beach—and the aircraft with them. I want the logs tied in rafts, and the aircraft taken apart so the pieces can be floated out on the rafts. Is that clear?”

“No aircraft,” Shann said mildly.

“Then you'll get none of the cloth I brought, or the boots either!”

Lanna wanted the cloth—any kind of cloth—desperately, as did hundreds of other girls. But suddenly she found herself saying, “Keep your sleazy old stuff! We can do without it. Why, all the girls are weaving their own—and it's so much better than what you showed us. That goes for the boots too. See?”

She held up the wool-and-linen cape that had taken so much time and effort to make, and thrust forth a tiny foot encased in a short woven boot. Before the discomfited commissioner could recover and begin asking questions she preferred not to answer, she tossed the cape over her shoulders and started for the door.

“I'm going to find our ax,” she told Shann.

The crow signal came again as she went outside.

At the corner of the cottage Lanna hesitated and looked carefully around to see if anyone might be watching. Reassured, she hastened through the trees in front of Shann's office and began climbing the slope on the other side.

Why, she thought unhappily, did anything as ordinary as cloth, which you couldn't do without, have to be so terribly difficult to make by hand? It wasn't just the weaving. That part of it she really enjoyed. But there was the endless preparation that came before—shearing the wool, planting the flax, and all the other steps you had to take without interrupting the main business of finding food enough to stay alive. You honestly couldn't blame some of the young ones for giving up on the extra work and turning into savages.

But the New Order's cloth would help. It
was
sleazy, of course. It was about the worst stuff she'd ever seen. Yet it was better than no cloth at all.

Halfway up the slope she stopped suddenly, thinking again of the thing she had nearly forgotten. It was something about the little aircraft that she and Mazal had used to fly up here. The twin of Teacher's craft. The big machine they'd followed—which Shann had flown packed with children—had been a sort of helicopter. But the little craft wasn't. It had been very different.

What was so different about it?

“Why,” she said aloud, “it didn't have rotors!”

It didn't have wings, either—or anything that looked like a motor. With the heavy load she and Mazal piled inside, they barely managed to reach High Harbor. In fact, they came down in the woods two miles short of the harbor, and spent days carrying out the medical supplies. Oddly, they'd never gone back to the craft, and Mazal had hardly ever mentioned it—until last evening after she'd talked to Teacher.

“I don't know whether it's me or the weather,” Mazal reported, “but I didn't have the least trouble receiving this time. Teacher says we're
not
to trade the aircraft, or any part of them, under any circumstances. I told him the little one was still hidden back in the woods, where we came down, and he said that was good, for he didn't want those people to even see it.”

To Lanna, now, the reason was all at once clear. Into the building of the two craft, especially the little one, had gone secrets the New Order could not be trusted to have.

There had been more to Teacher's message, and at the thought of it she felt again a quick fury and a joy. Fury that the New Order would treat Westerners as they did, and joy that Teacher had actually seen Conan and spoken to him. Not that Conan was any better off, but now she knew for certain where he was, and his being near Teacher made her feel worlds closer to him.

The crow signal, somewhere near this time, brought Lanna back to the present and sent her hurrying up the slope. At the top she paused beside a twisted pine and searched the shadows on either side. She was careful not to turn her head too far, for the height gave a sweeping—and frightening—view of the sea.

“Jimsy?” she whispered.

A small, ragged figure, barefooted, redheaded, and incredibly freckled, appeared from behind a tree. In one grubby hand he clutched a crude bow and two arrows. In the other he held a dead squirrel.

“Oh, Jimsy!” she exclaimed, stricken. “How
could
you? You've killed one of my pets!”

Eyes as hard and cold as agates surveyed her from under the red thatch. “I gotta eat. An' there's two others I gotta help feed.”

“But there's fish!”

“Aw, fish,” Jimsy said contemptuously. “You can have it. I want meat.”

She sighed. Jimsy couldn't be more than ten, and he was growing up wild. Why he still came to the class she managed somehow to teach two mornings a week, she didn't know, but she was thankful that he remained her friend.

“Did you find our ax?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, where is it?”

Jimsy looked away and ran a pointed tongue over his grim mouth. “Orlo's got it.”

“Oh, no!”

“That's why I didn't bring it.”

“Where's Orlo's place?”

“What you wanna know for?”

“Because I want the ax—and I'm going to get it! Jimsy, that ax has to cut wood for twenty people. We simply can't do without it.” It was more than just something to chop wood with, for it served as an all-around tool for a dozen purposes.

Jimsy licked his thin lips again. Finally he said, “I wouldn't go there if I was you.”

“I certainly don't want to go,” she admitted. “But who will do it for me?”

“There ain't nobody. All the guys are scared of him.”

“Then it's up to me. How do I get there?”