“Oh, you are a tease, my solemn brother!” Kamir chides.
I am rather relieved that some Mnerrin are “solemn”; my little mermaid’s unfailing merriment in the face of danger doesn’t strike me as a survival trait. And I notice again what I had felt with Kamir, the sense of this person’s profound civility. And he must be very tired; he apparently has been swimming for three days straight.
“You have eaten?” I inquire.
“Oh yes.”
“Then let us go back to sleep, night traveler!” Kamir laughs, flopping down on our boat bed.
“Right.”
Agna’s preparations are as simple as Kamir’s were; he untucks the tail of his finely decorated loincloth, sits down, and spreads it on the sand to protect his face and, saying, “Sleep well, little sister. Sleep well, ‘Om Jhared,” he lies back, face to the skies.
“Sleep well, Agna,” we say.
I close my eyes against the bright, tricolored moonlight, and hold her close in silence. So our halcyon time has abruptly come to an end. I sigh, sad beyond measure. And what is this Long Swim Agna spoke of? It must be the seasonal migration Kamir had told me of; apparently the Mnerrin spend the stormy months at another island far to the south. I will, of course, go with them, somehow. Tomorrow I must calculate my batteries; perhaps I will have to return to the lander for recharge on the way…
My last thought, as sleep takes me, is the inflexible value they seem to place on what they call personal beauty. It is almost tangible to them—yet Agna was willing to accept my relative viewpoint. Civilized!
The nightly chorus is tuning up again, the three little moons ride high. What will the morrow bring? No—the day after; Agna estimated we were about two days’ travel away in a straight line…. Out of the darkness comes a sleepy chuckle: Agna is laughing in his sleep. Kamir answers with an unconscious grunt, and I go to sleep.
The trip is dreamlike. Again I am struck by Mnerrin simplicity: next morning, after a quick breakfast and a pause to help me set a compass heading, Agna simply wades into the water and starts swimming. Through the pass, he turns due east, while Kamir and I pack up my gear and launch the boat.
It takes us a surprisingly long time to catch up to him—those pale flashing arms really cover the distance, and he swims in a knife-straight line. Kamir has shown me how her red “hair” works as a direction-finder in the sea. Still it seems strange to find a lone swimmer heading so confidently with no land in sight. I wish I could take him on board, but the dinghy only holds two.
We match our pace to his and settle down, sleepy in the balmy air. Kamir, too, is saddened by the end of our happy days. But presently she is restless.
” ‘Om Jhared?”
“What is it, darling?”
“If you would not be too alone, I want to swim for a time with Agna. I need exercise, and I’d like to see more in the sea.”
“I’ll miss you, my darling. But if you want to, go.”
So she tumbles overboard, and after that we go through regular exchanges, with Agna taking a rest now and then. As we follow Kamir, I think of how my little mermaid must have been before we met—a small person swimming alone in the wide seas. She had seen the fires of the lander’s retro-rockets, she’d told me, and come to investigate. Fearless little mermaid!
Agna proves to be pleasant company, with an inquiring and thoughtful mind. Like his sister, he has red “hair” and blue eyes, though his crest is darker and his eyes lighter than hers. His features would have been handsome had they not been so larded with fat.
Following my theory of the ultimately utilitarian base for standards of beauty, I ask him if the plumpness they value so has any purpose.
“Does it serve to warm you in cold water?”
“Oh, perhaps. But certainly it means long life.”
“Long life? How do you mean?”
“For the female, after bearing young. And for the male, too. It helps with the feeding time. See me; I have just finished feeding five young, so I am thin. But I could not have fed my babies so well, had I been this thin at the start.”
Complexities. I realize I have spent my time enjoying myself with Kamir instead of collecting data. Yet somehow I am unwilling to pursue the matter now, and am grateful when he says, reflectively: “Yes, I see what you mean. We have never thought of it like that—interesting! And thus you must have a different system, in which fat plays no part?”
“Yes, we do, although I’m not sure of the details of yours. But we regard fat as unhealthy. For us,
fat
seems to threaten short life.”
His eyes sparkle with interest.
“So! How fascinating. Yes, a good theory! But look, there is our dinner. Kamir!”
Without pausing, she shouts back over her shoulder, “I see it! Do you think I am asleep?”
“A reef, thick with
emalu,”
Agna explains to me. “A pity we cannot bring some back for the people, it is delicious.”
“We could pile it in the boat,” I suggest; hoping that “emalu” is not, say, a stinging jellyfish.
“No; it wouldn’t keep,” Agna says regretfully, and dives overboard.
Kamir, too, has submerged.
They come up with handfuls of a golden, anemonelike fuzz, which they devour like Human children into cotton candy. Emalu is, it seems, a fabulous treat. I get out my food bars.
And it is fabulous, dining there on the sea with a pair of merpeople. At the moment, no land at all is yet in sight. I somehow hadn’t realized, when Agna spoke of a two-day journey, that he meant two days and a night of simply swimming and sleeping on the open sea. Well, I’ll be comfortable in the boat, and the weather seems settled. How will they do? I’m aware that there are a million questions I should be asking. But somehow it is difficult, conversing with two heads bobbing about on the ocean. The truth is, I’m unwilling to break the spell.
Their dinner over, Agna starts off again, and they swim till darkness. Agna calls for a conference and pulls out his light, which proves to be a small bundle of a lichenlike plant.
“Fish come to this,” he explains to me. “I have to keep it in a dark pocket or I’d get no sleep! Tell me, little sister, do you wish to continue? I could lead with this light. But we have made good distance; I can feel home strongly. And there is a reef just ahead where we could have fresh breakfast.”
“I feel it, too,” says Kamir, who has been swimming with him. “I think we should stay here. I didn’t get enough sleep last night, thanks to you.” She laughs.
“Very well.” Agna repockets his light and swims to a tactful distance. “Good night, little sister. Good night, ‘Om Jhared.”
“Good night,” we call as Kamir climbs on board to join me.
We stretch out in the little boat and let the wavelets rock us to love and sleep.
But toward morning, Kamir nudges me awake. It’s bright moonlight.
“Dear ‘Om Jhared—I want to go in the sea now. To have a last sleep in the sea. Do you mind?”
“Yes, I mind. But go ahead, darling. Only don’t go too far away.”
“I won’t. Oh, my sweet darling, my mate-from-the-stars!” And with a hug and a kiss she has gone into the deep water. I shudder with unknown fear. But she simply says good night again and turns over, gills open, to sleep in the sea. I see Agna’s dark head floating, only a few yards away. Evidently there is no current here. I relax and try for sleep but it does not come. The image of my little mermaid slipping away from me into darkness haunts my mind. I watch her until the moons go down and I can no longer see.
Next morning we awaken still together, and the Mnerrin dive for their morning meal. Studying the horizon, I see, straight ahead, the kind of long, low cloud that means land. But the Mnerrin are scarcely interested; their senses had long told them it was there.
We set off as before. It is again dreamlike, but hour by hour the cloud grows higher, closer, until my binoculars show the island beneath, where the dream must end. Or change. But what a wonderful way to travel, I reflect, watching the two pairs of arms flash rhythmically. Living, sleeping, eating,
at home
in the sea. For all their Humanness, they are also aquatic animals….
And I catch them mind-speaking each other as they go.
“See, Agna—new fish over there. Yellow, red, black tail… Will you remember it? I have at least twenty new ones to report.”
“Yes… there must be a reef ahead,” comes Agna’s thought.
I am almost in a trance state when suddenly the unmistakable sound of voices singing comes across the water. We are arriving. I turn to my glasses and make out that we are coming to a large river estuary, surrounded by a low green swamp of delta, through which thread numerous streamlets. Behind the delta is the shore proper, a low bank running up to a plateau on which I can glimpse land vegetation, trees. And beyond that in turn rises a central mountain, green to its summit. A large island.
As we come closer I see that the swampy delta is full of small huts. And a column of smoke is rising from before a larger hut in the center. Most of the small ones appear in need of repairs, I see, as if no longer in use.
But most important, I see the people.
They are all on the beach, it seems, strolling or chatting in groups. One sizable group is lying down. And children are playing around them, seemingly all of one age. Babies, too, lie about doing Human-baby things, or are held in arms. All eyes are focused upon us; even through the glasses I can catch the gleams of blue. And I feel the feathery touch of mind-search.
I decide Kamir should arrive in style, so I bring her in the boat and put her up front with a paddle. As soon as we get closer I will hoist the motor and paddle her in.
The bay in front of the delta is quite narrow. Agna arrives at the reef and waves me to follow him through one of the many passes. Kamir is waving her paddle excitedly.
The mind-search and mind-greetings have become overwhelming. My mind-speech has much improved, so I send a formal greeting to the people, who respond in a babble. Evidently they have no formal spokesman.
“Whom shall I speak to, Kamir?”
“Oh, call to Maoul. That tall old man, there.”
Agna is already wading ashore in Maoul’s direction; we follow him in. And from there on, the afternoon is a genteel pandemonium.
Maoul greets us cordially, having received Agna’s news. But everyone on the beach must receive it, too, and share it with others, and everyone must meet me and congratulate Kamir—with varying degrees of incredulity—and Agna disappears to go to his mate, who is one of the invalids lying down.
Finally he returns to direct us to his hut, and I make a fool of myself splashing through the swamp carrying my stuff, until someone points out that one walks in the little hard-bottomed rivulets, one of which, I now see, runs by every hut. By the time we get the boat and the gear up to Agna’s terrain, after demonstrating everything to the crowd, dark is falling. And Maoul, it appears, has laid out a feast of celebration. They have caught a large fish to roast in cenya leaves, with various delectable fruits.
“Whoee!” Kamir laughs, plumping down on the boat after our last load. “That was fierce! Oh, ‘Om Jhared, how I wish we were back alone with our islands!”
For me, too, the afternoon has been a melee of pale plump genial gentlemen in loincloths, eager children, ethereal invalids opening huge blue eyes at my strangenesses, and endless repetition by mind and speech.
“Me too.” I hug her. “But what is the bad news Maoul started to explain? I got carried off to be shown to the ladies. What’s the matter with the women, by the way? They’re so thin. Emaciated. Have you had an epidemic?”
“Oh, no!” Kamir laughs. “It’s just the birthings. Well, Maoul said that one came, wounded, from the Souls of Aeyor, the next encampment, to say that they had been set upon by terrible gold-skinned people, who tried to kill—yes, actually
murder
—all of them. Some have escaped by going in the sea—the gold-skinned ones do not swim, it seems—but the rest were killed. Isn’t that terrible? What could such people be, how can it
happen?”
I am shocked into sobriety. Oh gods, my paradise planet isn’t all paradise, it contains others who are killers. Homo Ferox. Unless by chance this is an invasion of Black Worlders or other moral barbarians with high technology, out to conquer an attractive world?
But no, Kamir tells me. They are people of this world, only with strange tools to hurt and kill. And they have only the crudest mind-speech, and do not go in the water, as she’d said. The man who swam here—two days, with a bad spear cut in his side—said they had come from somewhere far, far to the west. “Where legends say we also came from,” Kamir adds.
That would be the small continent Pforzheimer had seen, I figure. Perhaps it is still spawning out new races of Homo Wettensis, as a part of Old Terra once did. A dreadful parallel jumps to my mind; I push it aside resolutely.
“Kamir, I have seen such things on other worlds. I must talk with Maoul tonight. If this is what I think, you are in danger here. These gold-skins will not stop with one encampment.”
“Oh, no… Yes, you must speak with Maoul. And why don’t you talk with Elia?”
“Who’s Elia?”
“The man who swam here. He is lying in the big hut, ill with his wound. Maybe you can help him. Oh, ‘Om Jhared, I showed your beautiful bracelet”—she points to her ankle—“to Maoul. He said they were pictures of sounds, and we should learn them and make one for everybody.
And
make a picture of important things, too. I didn’t understand it all but he was very excited.”
Fantastic. So I will end by having these people transcribe their speech into Galactic! I must see more of Maoul. Is he a lone genius, or is this the level of their intellects? Meanwhile, it’s a good idea to talk with this Elia.
I do talk to Elia, and am not made happy. These goldskins appear to be journeying from island to island, attacking everything they meet. They cross the sea by large, ugly war canoes. And they have lost their flock, or herd of some kind of land animal, so that they’re hungry.
“How did you learn all this?” I ask Elia.
“I hid two days, watching and listening, until I was able to travel,” he answers. “Man-from-the-skies, I thank you for your medicines. The people here have been very kind, they even made a song in my honor. But the relief from pain is better still!”