On Blue's waters

“We need new seed, Hide. More than that, we need pure strains that we can cross for ourselves. I imagine it would be possible to develop pure strains from what we have, and it may be that someone’s trying to, but it will take a long time. Before the next conjunction-”

Sinew interrupted you, as he invariably did. “We can’t even make needles, and they’re just little slivers of metal. Most of the slug guns people have can’t be used because there aren’t any more cartridges for them. Everybody’s worried about next conjunction. I think we’ll get by like we did before, but what about the one after that? Bows and spears, that’s all we’ll have. Anybody planning to be dead before then?” When none of us spoke, he added, “Me neither.”

I said, “We lost one whole level of knowledge when we left the Short Sun Whorl and went aboard the Whorl. We lived in there for about three hundred years, if the scholars are right, but we never got that knowledge back. Now we’re losing another level, as Sinew says.”

He made me a mocking bow.

“If it were just the weapons, that would be bad enough, but there are other problems I haven’t mentioned.”

You said, “We brought knowledge, even if it isn’t enough. People from other cities have landed all over this whorl. If all of us pooled what we know…?”

I nodded. (It seemed to me that I scarcely looked at her; yet I can see her face, scrubbed and serious, as I write.) “It might be, as you say. But to pool it we’d have to have glasses, when we don’t even have a Window for our Grand Manteion.”

Hide put in, “Amberjack says that old Prolocutor’s trying to build a Sacred Window.”

“Trying,” Sinew sneered.

I ignored it. “Or if we cannot make glasses, wings like the Fliers’, or vessels like the Trivigaunti airship.”

But now, darling, I have been reconstructing our suppertime conversation for several hours, exactly as you and I used to try to reconstruct Silk’s when we were writing our book. The work has rekindled many tender memories of those days; but you recall this conversation better than I, I feel sure, and you can fill in the rest for yourself. I am going to bed.

Three days in which I have had no chance to write in this sketchy half-book I have begun without Nettle’s help. I suppose it is no loss; she will never read it. Or if she does, she will have me at her side, and this account will be superfluous. Yet she may show it to others, as I said. Are not the people of our town entitled to know what became of the emissary they sent for Silk? Why and how he failed? Pig’s blindness, and all the rest? I will proceed, if I do, upon the assumption that it will be read by strangers and perhaps even copied and recopied as our own book-the book that ultimately brought me here-has been.

Our house and our mill stand on Lizard Island, as I should explain. Lizard Island is called by that name because we, seeing it from the lander, at once noted its resemblance to that animal; and not (as some now suppose) because it was first settled by a man named Lizard. No such person exists.

The head is more or less coffin-shaped. All four legs are extended, and their rocky toes splayed. The sandspit that forms the tail curves out to sea, then north, to shelter Tail Bay, which is where we keep our logs. A lengthy ridge of granite gives the lizard a spine. Its highest peak, near the tail, is called the Tor. The spring that turns our mill originates there, giving us a long and very useful fall. Our house is set back some distance from the sea, but the mill stands with its feet in the bay to make it easier to hook and drag out logs.

Let me see. What else?

The Lizard’s head looks to the north. Our mill and our house are on the weather side of the island, their site dictated by the stream. On the lee side is a fishing village that is also called Lizard; it consists of six houses, those of our nearest neighbors. Lizard Island lies well north of New Viron, a day’s sail in good weather.

That night, as I walked along the shingle, I recalled the whole island as I had glimpsed it from the lander twenty years before. How small it had appeared then, and how beautiful! A green and black lizard motionless upon the blue and silver sea. It came to me then, with a force that seemed to snatch away my heart, that if only we could build an airship like General Saba’s I might see it so again.

And be again, if only for an instant, young. What would I not give to be the boy I was once more, with a young Nettle at my side?

Time for court. More this evening, I hope.

A difficult case, and I must settle each case that comes before me on the basis of custom and common sense, having no knowledge of the law and no law books-not that Vironese law would have any force here.