The Face of the Waters by Robert Silverberg
"This is going to hurt," Lawler said, dipping a long bamboo needle into a bowl of strong antiseptic.
"Don't I know it, doc."
Lawler probed the wound with the needle, pricking it here and there, getting as much of the antiseptic into the swollen flesh as he thought Volkin could endure. The shipwright remained motionless, cursing under his breath once in a while, as Lawler poked around in him with what must surely be agonizing effect.
"Here's some pain-killer," Lawler said, offering him a packet of white powder. "You'll feel lousy for a couple of days. Then the inflammation will subside. You'll be feverish this afternoon, too. Take the day off from work."
"I can't. Delagard won't let me. We've got to get those ships ready to go. There's a hell of a lot that needs to be done on them."
"Take the day off," Lawler said again. "If Delagard gives you any shit, tell him I'm the one he ought to complain to. In half an hour you'll be too dizzy to do any worthwhile work anyway. Go on, now."
Volkin hesitated a moment at the door of Lawler's vaargh.
"I sure appreciate this, doc."
"Go on. Get off that leg before you fall down."
Another patient was waiting outside: another of Delagard's people, Neyana Golghoz. She was a placid, stocky woman of about forty, with hair of an unusual orange colour and a broad flat face covered with reddish freckles. Originally she was from Kaggeram Island, but she had come to Sorve five or six years back. Neyana worked in some maintenance capacity on board the ships of Delagard's fleet, constantly journeying back and forth between the neighbouring islands. Six months ago a skin cancer had sprouted between her shoulderblades, and Lawler had removed it chemically, by slipping solvent-bearing needles under it until the malignancy dissolved and could be lifted away. The process hadn't been fun for either of them. Lawler had ordered her to return every month so that he could see whether any recurrence had developed.
Neyana stripped off her work-shirt and turned her back to him, and Lawler investigated the scar with his fingers. It was probably still tender, but she didn't react at all. Like most of the islanders, she was stolid and patient. Life on Hydros was simple, sometimes harsh, never very amusing for its human population. There weren't many choices, not a lot of options about what you did, who you married, where you could live. Unless you felt like trying your luck on some other island, most of the essential facts of your life were defined for you by the time you reached adulthood. If you went somewhere else, you were likely to find that your choices there were limited by many of the same factors. That tended to breed a certain stoicism.
"Looks fine," Lawler told her. "You keeping out of the sun, Neyana?"
"Damn right I am."
"Putting the ointment on?"
"Damn right."
"You won't have any problem with this again, then."
"You're one hell of a good doctor," Neyana told him. "I knew someone once on the other island, he had a cancer like this and it ate right through his skin and he died. But you look out for us, you watch over us."
"I do what I can." It always embarrassed Lawler when the patients were grateful. Most of the time he felt like a butcher, hacking away at them with such prehistoric methods, when on other planets-so he had heard from those who had come to Hydros from elsewhere-doctors had all manner of absolutely miraculous treatments at their command. They used sound waves and electricity and radiation and all sorts of things he scarcely understood, and they had drugs that could cure anything in five minutes. Whereas he had to make do with home-made salves and potions compounded from seaweed, and improvised tools made of wood and the odd bit of iron or nickel. But he had told her the truth, at least: he did what he could.
"Any time I can do something for you, doc, just ask."
"That's very kind of you," Lawler said.
Neyana went out and Nicko Thalheim came in. Thalheim was Sorve-born like Lawler. Like Lawler, too, he was First Family, a five-generation pedigree, right back to the penal-colony days: one of the island leaders, a bluff, ruddy-faced man with a short, thick neck and powerful shoulders. He and Lawler had been boyhood playmates and they were still good friends. Seven of the island's people all told were Thalheims, a tenth of the entire population: Nicko's father, his wife, his sister, his three children. Families rarely had as many as three children. Thalheim's sister had joined the group of women down at the far end of the island a few months before: she was known as Sister Boda now to everyone. Thalheim hadn't been pleased when she joined.
Lawler said, "That abscess still draining okay?"
Thalheim had an infection in his left armpit. Lawler thought he had probably been stung by something in the bay, but Thalheim denied it. The abscess was a messy one, pus constantly pouring out. Lawler had lanced it three times already and tried to clean it, but it had reinfected each time. The last time, he had had the weaver Harry Travish make up a little catch-tube of sea-plastic and had stitched it to Thalheim's side to collect the pus and carry it away from the trouble-spot.
Lawler lifted the dressing now, snipped the stitches that held the catch-tube in place, and peered at the infection. The skin all around was red, and hot to the touch.
"Hurts like a bastard," Thalheim said.
"Looks pretty lousy, too. You putting the medicine I gave you on it?"
"Sure I am."
He didn't sound convincing. Lawler said, "You can do it or not, as it pleases you, Nicko. But if that infection spreads down your arm, I may wind up having to take the arm off you. You think you can work okay with just one arm?"
"It's only my left one, Val."
"You don't really mean that."
"No. No, I don't." Thalheim grunted as Lawler touched the wound again. "I might have missed a day or two with the medicine. I'm sorry, Val."
"You'll be sorrier in a little while."
Coolly, unsparingly, Lawler cleaned the site as though he were carving a piece of wood. Thalheim remained silent and motionless as Lawler worked.
As Lawler was reattaching the catch-tube, Thalheim said suddenly, "We've known each other a long time, haven't we, Val?"
"Close to forty years, yes."
"And neither of us ever felt like going to some other island."
"It never occurred to me," Lawler said. "And in any case I was the doctor."
"Yes. And I just liked it here."
"Yes," Lawler said. Where was all this leading?
"You know, Val," Thalheim said, "I've been thinking about this business of having to go. I hate it. It's making me absolutely sick inside."
"I don't like it much myself, Nicko."
"No. But you seem resigned to it."
"What other choice do I have?"
"Maybe there is one, Val."
Lawler looked at him, waiting.
Thalheim said, "I heard what you said at the town meeting. When you told us that trying to fight the Gillies wouldn't work. I didn't agree with you that night, but when I thought things over I saw you were right. Still, I've been wondering if maybe there's some way a few of us can stay here."
"What?"
"I mean, say ten or twelve of us hide out down at the far end where the Sisters have been living. You, me, my family, the Katzins, the Hayns-that's a dozen. A pretty decent group, too, no frictions, everybody friends. We lay low, keep out of the way of the Gillies, do our fishing off the back side of the island, and try to go on living the way we lived before."
The idea was so wild that it caught Lawler in an unprotected place. For a crazy fraction of a second he actually was tempted. Stay here after all? Not have to give up the familiar paths, the familiar bay? The Gillies never went down to the far end. They might not notice if just a few of the island's people remained behind when…
No.
The nonsensical nature of the plan came crashing in like the fist of the Wave. The Gillies wouldn't need to go down to the far end to know what was happening there. The Gillies somehow always knew everything that happened anywhere on the island. They would find th
"What do you think?" Thalheim asked.
Lawler said, after a moment's pause, "Forgive me, Nicko. But I think it's as goofy as Nimber's notion the other night about stealing one of their idols and holding it for ransom."
"Do you?"
"Yeah."
Thalheim was silent, studying the swelling under his arm as Lawler bandaged it.
Then he said, "You always did have a practical way of looking at things. Kind of cold-blooded, Val, but practical, always practical. You just don't like taking risks, I guess."
"Not when the odds are a million to one against me."
"You think it's that bad?"
"It can't work, Nicko. No way. Come on: admit it. Nobody puts anything over on the Gillies. The idea's poison. It's suicide."
"Maybe so," Thalheim said.
"Not maybe."
"It sounded pretty good for a moment."
"We wouldn't stand a chance," said Lawler.
"No. No. We wouldn't, would we?" Thalheim shook his head. "I really want to stay here, Val. I don't want to go. I'd give everything I have not to have to go."
"Me too," Lawler said. "But we're going. We have to."
* * *
Sundira Thane came to see him when her supply of the numbweed tranquillizer was all gone. Her vivid, energetic presence filled the little reception room of his vaargh like a trumpet-blast.
But she was coughing again. Lawler knew why, and it wasn't because alien fungi had invaded her lungs. She looked drawn, tense. The brightness that gave her eyes such intense life was the brightness of anxiety today, not simply that of inner force.
Lawler filled the little storage gourd he had given her with a new supply of the pink drops, enough to last her until the day of departure. After that, if the cough was still with her when they were out at sea, she could share his supply.
She said, "One of those crazy women from the Sisterhood was in town just now, did you know? She was telling everyone that she's cast our horoscope and none of us will survive the voyage to the new island. Not a single one, she said. Some of us are going to be lost at sea and the rest are going to sail right off the edge of the world and end up in heaven."
"That's Sister Thecla, I'd guess. She claims to be clairvoyant."
"And is she?"
"She once did a horoscope on me, back in the days before the Sisterhood when she was still speaking to men. She said I'd live to a ripe old age and have a happy, fulfilled life. Now she says we're all going to die at sea. One of those two horoscopes has to be wrong, wouldn't you think? Here, open your mouth. Let me stare at your larynx for a minute."
"Maybe Sister Thecla meant that you would be one of the ones who's going to sail straight to heaven."
"Sister Thecla is not a reliable source of information," Lawler said. "Sister Thecla is a seriously disturbed woman, as a matter of fact. Open up."
He looked down her throat. There was a little mild irritation of the tissues, nothing special: just about what an occasional psychosomatic cough would be expected to produce.
"If Delagard knew how to sail to heaven, he'd have done it already," Lawler said. "He'd be running a ferry service back and forth. He'd have shipped the Sisters there a long time ago. As for your throat, it's the same story as before. Tension, nervous coughing, irritation. Just try to relax. Keeping away from Sisters who want to forecast your future for you would be a good idea."
Sundira smiled. "Those poor silly women. I feel sorry for them." Though the consultation was over, she seemed in no hurry to leave. She wandered over to the shelf where he kept his little collection of Earth artifacts and studied them for a moment. "You said you'd tell me what these things are."
He came up alongside her. "The metal statuette's the oldest one. It's a god that they worshipped in a land called Egypt, thousands of years ago. Egypt was a land beside a river, one of the most ancient places on Earth, where civilization started. He's either the sun-god or the god of death. Or both. I'm not certain."
"Both? How can a sun-god also be a death-god? The sun's the source of life, it's bright and warm. Death is something dark. It's-" She paused. "But Earth's sun was the bringer of death, wasn't it? You mean to say they knew that in this place called Egypt thousands of years before it happened?"
"I doubt it very much. But the sun dies every night. And is reborn the next morning. Maybe that was the connection." Or maybe not. He was only guessing. He knew so little.
She picked up the small bronze figurine and held it in her palm as though weighing it.
"Four thousand years. I can't imagine four thousand years."
Lawler smiled. "Sometimes I hold it the way you're holding it now, and I try to let it take me back to the place where it was made. Dry sand, hot sun, a blue river with trees along its banks. Cities with thousands of people. Huge temples and palaces. But it's so hard to keep the vision clear. All I can really see in my mind is an ocean and a little island."
She put the statuette down and pointed to the potsherd. "And this piece of hard painted material, that's from Greece, you said?"
"Greece, yes. It's pottery. They made it out of clay. Look, you can see a bit of a picture on it, a figure of a warrior, and a spear that he must have been holding."
"How beautiful the outline is. It must have been a marvellous piece of work. But we'll never know, will we? When was Greece? After Egypt?"
"Much later. But still very ancient. They had poets and philosophers there, and great artists. Homer was a Greek."
"Homer?"
"He wrote The Odyssey. The Iliad."
"I'm sorry. I don't-"
"Famous poems, very long ones. One was about a war and one about a sea voyage. My father used to tell me stories that came from them, the bits and pieces that he remembered from his father. Who learned them from his grandfather Harry, whose grandfather was born on Earth. It was only seven generations ago that Earth still existed. Sometimes we forget that: sometimes we forget that Earth ever existed at all. You see that round brown medallion there? That's a map of Earth. The continents and seas."
Of all his treasures, Lawler often thought that was the most precious. It was neither the most ancient nor the most beautiful; but the portrait of Earth itself was inscribed on it. He had no idea who had made it, or when, or why. It was a flat hard disc, larger than his coin from the United States of America but still small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. There was lettering around its edges that nobody was able to understand, and in the centre were two overlapping circles in which the map of Earth had been engraved, two continents in one hemisphere and two in the other, with a fifth continent at the bottom of the world in both circles and some large islands breaking the great expanse of the seas. Perhaps they were continents too, some of them: Lawler didn't quite understand where the boundary was between being an island and being a continent.
He pointed to the left-hand circle. "Supposedly Egypt was here, in the middle of this place. And Greece somewhere up here. And this may have been the United States of America, over on the other side, up here. This little metal piece is a coin that they used there, in the United States of America."
"For what?"
"Money," Lawler said. "Coins were money."
"And this rusted thing?"
"A weapon. A gun, it was called. It fired little darts called bullets."
She made a little shivering gesture. "You have just these six things of Earth, and one of them has to be a weapon. But they were like that, weren't they? Making war on each other all the time? Killing each other, hurting each other?"
"Some of them were like that, especially in the ancient days. Later it changed, I think." Lawler indicated the rough chunk of stone, his final artifact. "This was from some wall they
"But their world was."
"Very different, yes. A strange and wonderful place."
"There's a special look that comes into your eyes when you speak about Earth. I saw it the other night, down by the bay, when you were talking of how we all live in exile. A kind of glow; a look of longing, I guess. You said that some people think Earth was a paradise, and some that it was a place of horror that everyone wanted to escape from. You must be one of those who think it was a paradise."
"No," Lawler said. "I told you. I don't know what kind of place it really was. I suppose it was pretty crowded and shabby and dirty toward the end, or there wouldn't have been such a big emigration from it. But I can't say. I suppose we'll never know the truth." He paused and looked at her closely. "The only thing I know is that it was our home once. We should never forget that. Our real and true home. However much we try to fool ourselves into believing that Hydros is our home, we're all really just visitors here."
"Visitors?" Sundira said.
She was standing very close to him. Her grey eyes were bright, her lips were moist. It seemed to Lawler that her breasts were rising and falling more rapidly than usual beneath her light wrap. Imagination? Or was she coming on to him?
"Do you feel at home on Hydros?" Lawler asked her. "Really, really, feel at home?"
"Of course. Don't you?"
"I wish I did."
"But you were born here!"
"So?"
"I don't underst-"
"Am I a Gillie? Am I a diver? Am I a meatfish? They feel at home here. They are at home here."
"So are you."
"You still don't understand," he said.