On Blue's waters

“Oh, they did. But it’s better to measure once and draw it up than to keep on measuring. I won’t ask you to tell me which of these was made back in the old place and which here. You could do it pretty easily, and so could any other man who had his wits about him. I want you to take them both in your hands, though. Look them over, and tell me if you think one ought to shoot better than the other, and why.”

I did, opening the action of each first to assure myself that it was unloaded. “The new one’s a little stiff,” I said. “The old one’s smoother and a fraction lighter. But I don’t see why they shouldn’t shoot equally well.”

“They do. They’re both mine, and I’ll consider it an honor to give either one to you, if you want it.” Marrow paused, his face grave. “The town ought to pay you. We can’t, or not nearly enough to make you want to go for the money. The question is, is New Viron going to be richer in a few years, or poorer? And I don’t know. But that’s all it is, not the rubbish about morals and so forth that the old Prolocutor goes on about. We need Silk for the same reason we need better corn, and we’re asking you to bring him here to us for nothing.”

I picked up the newly made slug gun, and told Marrow that I would need a sling of some kind for it.

“Aren’t you going to argue it with me? Your Caldé Silk would have, if you ask me.”

“No,” I told him. “If the parents are poor enough, the children starve. That would be enough for Silk, and it’s enough for me.”

“Well, you’ve the right of it. If they’re poor enough, the parents do, too. That boy of yours would tell me people can hunt, but you think about filling every belly here, year in and year out, by hunting. They’d have to scatter out, and when they were, every family’d have to hunt for itself. No more paper and no more books, no carpentry because they’d be moving camp every few days and tables and so on’s too heavy to carry. Pretty soon they wouldn’t even have pack saddles.”

I said it would not matter, since those who owned horses or mules would eat them after a year or two, and he nodded gloomily and dropped into a chair. “You like that gun?”

“Yes. Very much.”

“It’s yours. Take it out to your boat when you go back. Take that green box on the bottom shelf, too. It’s cartridges from a lander and never been opened. Our new ones work, but they’re not as good.”

I said that I would prefer new cartridges nevertheless, and he indicated a wooden box that held fifty. I told him about the paper I had on the sloop, and offered it to him to offset-in part, at least-the cost of the slug gun and the food he had promised me.

He shook his head. “I’m giving you the gun and the rest of it. The cartridges and harpoon, and the apples and wine and the other stuff. It’s the least I can do. But if you’ll let me have that paper, I’ll give whatever I get for it to your wife. Would you like me to do that? Or I can hold the money for you, until you get back.”

“Give it to Nettle, please. I left her with little enough, and she and Sinew are going to have to buy rags and more wood soon.”

He regarded me from under his brows. “You took your own boat, too, when I was going to let you have one of mine.”

“Sinew will build a new one, I’m sure. He’ll have to, and I believe it will be good that he has something to do besides run our mill, something he can watch grow under his hands. That will be important, at first particularly.”

“You’re deeper than you look. Your book shows it.”

I said that I hoped I was deep enough, and asked whether he had found anyone who had actually been to Pajarocu.

“Not yet, but there’s a new trader in the harbor every few days. You want to wait?”

“For a day or two, at least. I think it would be worth that to have firsthand information.”

“Want to see their letter again? There’s nothing there to tell where it is, not to me, anyhow. But you might see something there I missed, and you hardly looked at it back on your island.”

“I own only the southern part, the southern third or so. No, I don’t want to read it again, or at least not now. Can you have somebody copy the entire thing for me, in a clearer hand? I’d like to have a copy to take with me.”

“No trouble. My clerk can do it.” Again, he looked at me narrowly. “Why does my clerk bother you?”

“It shouldn’t.”

“I know that. What I want to know is why it does.”

“When we were in the tunnels and on the lander, and for years after we landed, I thought…” Words failed me, and I turned away.

“You figured we’d all be free and independent here? Like you?”

Reluctantly, I nodded.

“You got a farm, you and your girl. Your wife. You couldn’t make a go of it. Couldn’t raise enough to feed yourselves, even.”

This is too painful. There is pain enough in the whorl already, should I inflict more on myself?