Beneath the Eye of God (The Commodore Ardcasl Space Adventures Book 1) (16 page)

"That's what my people call the Star of Evil," Ohan cried. "The one that's visible just after sunset and is not allowed to travel across the sky with the other stars."

"That appears to be the case. Though why it should represent evil, we don't yet know."

Silence settled around the little circle of travellers like the night. "Aren't you forgetting something?" Erol said at last.

"Who, me?" the Commodore asked. "Forgetting something? I don't believe so. What would I be forgetting?"

"I just thought you might want to apologize for all the nasty things you said about our world awareness theory," Elor said casually.

The Commodore tried to look innocent. "I? Would I say anything derogatory about the finest damn theory to come along in years? Don't be silly. And I do hope you boys got your clever little machine back together in time to take a reading at the ceremony."

Leahn was incredulous. "You mean you now believe that business about intelligent planets?" she cried.

"Either that or we all recently participated in a mass hallucination."

"But you said it was nutty," Leahn persisted.

"Ah." The Commodore shifted uneasily. "In that, I may have been a trifle hasty. What did the machine register?" he asked Erol.

"An immense surge of power far beyond anything we ever imagined. We are recalibrating the device in order to extend its scale on the high end by a factor of ten. It was like the opening of a window onto the inner consciousness of the world, then closing it again. When we monitored this area from the air, we found nothing. We would only have picked it up if a ceremony were actually in progress at the moment our ship passed over. The source we detected out on the coast, however, remains constant. I cannot imagine what we will encounter there."

Chapter 10

"I don't think I want to talk about this any more tonight," Leahn sighed. "I may not want to talk about it ever again. I just want to go to bed, though I probably won't be able to sleep. And if I do sleep, I'll probably have nightmares about cats and horses flying around in spaceships." She pulled her bedroll up over her head, then looked out at the Commodore accusingly. "You guys just tell me where you want me to go and what you want me to do. But don't explain any of it anymore. I liked it a lot better when I thought I knew who I was and what I was doing here. Goodnight."

The next days passed routinely as everyone settled back into familiar patterns of travel. Progress was relatively slow as there were no roads in the area and riding single file through the forest cut conversation to a minimum. Neither the Commodore nor the twins appeared to be in a hurry. Ohan and Leahn didn't know where they were going anyway so everyone relaxed and enjoyed the ride.

"I'm afraid I didn't find a girl for you back there, sport." They were sitting plucking feathers from some small birds they had caught for supper. "But there were some technical difficulties that got in my way."

Ohan sneezed, apparently from inhaling a feather. "Oh . . . well, I meant to explain that. I uh . . . "

"That's OK, sport. I heard how you worked it. None of the girls seemed very interested in you anyway."

"Oh?"

"Nope. I told them you were a pretty nice guy. There just wasn't much interest."

"Oh."

They worked a while in silence before Ohan ventured a comment. "Your friend, Neali, seemed nice."

"Did you like her? She was kind of cute, wasn't she? Listen, I gave her the old hard sell but she just wasn't interested."

"Well I . . . "

"Honest, I really tried but she said you were too old."

"Too old?"

". . . and stuck up."

"Stuck up? I'm not . . ."

"Well, I mean going around telling everybody you were a college graduate . . ."

"What? I never . . . I didn't . . ."

"I was trying to help you, sport, but you've got to cooperate. I can't do it all myself."

Distracted, Ohan had picked part of the skin off his bird. "Are you kidding me?" he asked finally.

"Yeah, I am." She dumped the pile of feathers over his head."

"Are you mad at me?" he asked, pulling a feather out of his ear.

"No, I'm not," she laughed. "And we all thought you were kind of cute. Dull, but cute. I told them all about you."

"All?"

"We discussed you in depth. Neali did think you were a little old for her."

"The Commodore says you're only as old as you feel."

"You phony. Half a season with Neali and you'd end up looking like that bird. Plucked."

Ohan held up the little carcass he had been attacking and laughed.

"And what about me?" Leahn asked.

"You?"

"Did you get any offers? Everybody knew I was available."

Ohan blushed. "You looked very pretty."

"And?"

"I was quite popular with all the young men. They all thought I knew you . . . "

"You do know me."

"I'm afraid I kind of . . . They wanted to know all about you and they would make up these wild stories and I would just kind of smile and look like I knew what they were talking about and . . ."

Leahn laughed. "Some father you turned out to be. The girls were right. You men are all alike."

***

The forest began to change. At first it was so subtle that only Ohan noticed. Then they all saw it. The nature of the trees changed, the water trees disappeared and the forest canopy grew lower and denser. The Commodore announced that he could smell the sea. Ohan had no idea what the sea smelled like but there was a difference in the air.

Then the ground gave way. It turned to marsh and the horses struggled for their footing. The Commodore called a halt and sent Ohan and Leahn ahead through the low branches to have a look. The trees were nearly all of a single kind now, with as many roots below as branches above. Ohan was alarmed to see the ground disappear completely. Only dark water lapped beneath them as they scrambled through the branches.

Long-legged water birds squawked and flew away. The trees began to thin and soon they caught glimpses of daylight ahead, then large patches and finally they clung to the last branches. They gazed out over a broad weed-choked expanse of glassy milk-white water, with flocks of strange birds wading among the reeds and only an occasional drowned tree to break the low horizon.

"This can't be the sea," Ohan said in surprise. "I've seen pictures of boats on it. You could never get a boat through all these reeds."

"It's not at all the way I pictured it," Leahn admitted. "Maybe it gets deeper farther out. I don't see how there could be any lost cities around here. Let's go back and tell the others."

The sea?" The Commodore laughed when they returned with their report. "No, no, children. You'll know it when you see it. That was one of a string of inland lagoons that lie along this coast behind the beach. The twins and I agree that we've struck the water a bit too far north. Our destination lies off to our right. We'll back track to give the horses a firmer footing, then head south."

Sea or lagoon, Ohan didn't care for it. The trees were unfamiliar, the thick underbrush made travelling more difficult, there were more insects and the air was hot and humid. It weighed on him oppressively, with a powerful stink of dried salt and rotting vegetation.

Once more that day and again the next, Ohan and Leahn were sent through the trees out over the still water to look for—they knew not what. "Anything different," the Commodore said. But the lagoon continued unchanged, an endless weed-choked expanse of milky water, home to flocks of long-legged and wide-footed birds all busily poking among the weeds.

On yet another visit early on the morning of the third day, the lagoon lay dead-still beneath a thin mist. Cries of distant birds seemed to echo far away. Ohan was watching a small wide-footed bird walk clumsily from weed to weed as it searched for things along the edge of a floating log when the log erupted with a splash and disappeared. The bird vanished with it. The two explorers kept well above the water line while returning to their companions.

When they returned to the lagoon again that afternoon, they found its end. Hard packed earth led them closer to the water's edge and the sea of reeds. It was clear that the tree line curved left, the end of the lagoon.

"From our aerial view, " Elor said, "it has the look of a natural break between two lagoons that may have been widened and filled in to make an all-weather causeway."

They urged their horses out around the water's end and soon left the last of the trees behind. There were blocks of stone, obviously brought in from some distance and set in place along the edge to anchor the causeway against the tides. It narrowed in places and there were signs that the water had washed over it in the past. Reeds from the lagoons on either side grew to the edge so that the travellers seemed to be riding into an endless world of mist and weed-choked water.

Ohan had spent most of his life under the forest cover. This vast horizon where water and sky blended together was unsettling. Only a dark line rapidly falling behind them showed where his familiar forest lay.

Erol took the lead with Elor close behind, then Leahn, Ohan and the Commodore. The causeway averaged ten feet across, with some narrower places. Wading birds grudgingly moved away before them and eyed them incuriously as they passed. Ohan thought of the log that ate the bird and pulled his feet up.

The sun, past midday, glared from the empty sky. The persistent mist kept it from burning through in its full intensity. When the line of forest fell away behind them, they were the only objects to be seen above the endless sea of reeds and slowly heaving, weed-choked water. An image of Alexander came to Ohan's mind, of the great tusker lying on his back, his white short-bristled belly in the air and a line of tiny insects journeying across its broad expanse. Ohan shook his head and tried to think of something else. Another dark line was rising in front of them. Unless they had somehow turned around, more trees lay ahead.

As they approached, Ohan saw more of the trees that had bordered the other side of the lagoon. But as the trail led to higher ground they changed to familiar forest types. He felt more at home. Yet something was different. Leahn put her finger on it. "Feel that air," she exclaimed. "It's cool and doesn't smell of rot."

"That, my dear, is the sea," the Commodore said. "A sea wind blowing in off a thousand miles of clean water. There's nothing like it in the universe."

The trees were not dense. At the top of the rise they looked out across a narrow, thickly forested valley to a higher ridge beyond. At the top of that hill they found a wider intervening valley, densely forested. They approached its far ridge with the expectation of more and found instead, the sudden falling away of the land to an infinite blue horizon—the sea.

"Oh," said Ohan.

"Ah," said the Commodore.

They rode out over the last low ridges and the dirt turned to sand. Even the horses took an interest in this new element. Ohan's mount cantered curiously up to the very edge of the small waves that rolled in across the wide beach. He went, in fact, closer than Ohan had any idea of asking him to, stuck his nose into the backwash and snorted. Surprised, he turned accusingly to Ohan who hastened to assure him that he had nothing to do with it.

"This is even bigger than the lost city water pit," Leahn laughed as she rode up and nudged Ohan's horse back toward dry land.

"We'll ride up the beach and make camp," the Commodore said. "You two can see if you might find us any dinner but don't go far in among the trees. Limit your foraging to roots and tubers. We still have a little meat left over from last night. Pity I didn't bring my fishing gear."

They built a fire near the crest of a hill beneath a fringe of wind-bent trees. After a light supper they settled in to watch the last rays of the sun gild the edges of some high thin clouds out near the horizon. As darkness fell, the Commodore said quietly to Ohan, "There won't be any trees or mist between you and the Eye of God tonight, lad. I think you'll see it as you never have before."

The light followed the sun from the sky. Its place was taken by the great spiral galaxy, three quarters risen from the sea. Ohan gasped. Each point of light—and there were millions of them—stood clear and distinct. At the center where the brilliance seemed smudged before, he now saw one clear white light piled upon another until he had to turn his gaze away.

The waves of the sea seemed sent from the swirl of silent light itself. They danced with fire reflected from the sky. Then, as they rolled in endless procession across the dark sand, their light arose from within themselves, countless microscopic creatures adding their bit of phosphorescence to the grand display.

"Impressive," exclaimed the Commodore. "It would almost be worth living out here on the backside of nowhere just to have this view of the galaxy at play." He was sitting on a log, his back against a tree trunk. He absently stirred the fire before him. Ohan and Leahn were seated off to one side. The horses had been staked and tied directly in front of them but further down the beach, a twin on either side. It seemed an unusual arrangement to Ohan until he realized that they were, again, prepared for visitors.

"It reminds me," the Commodore continued, "of people who like to live up in the hills above a great city. They sit behind their picture-windows and watch the weather cross the sky, the sunsets, the lights go on. They're spectators, children. That's what you are if you live here. It's pretty to watch for a while but I'd get bored. The action, the excitement, the push and shove of living beings—that's all downtown."

He waved his arm toward the swirling stars. "It fills your soul with its beauty but if I were marooned here, if I could only sit and watch—knowing I couldn't get in there where the romping and stomping was going on—then all that silent beauty would break my heart."

He turned to them. "It's a little like being around a beautiful woman, day after day. You see her changes and her moods. I've seen some that can make your heart ache just by walking across a room. But you can't watch forever. It's bad for your complexion. You have to either move in or move on. Isn't that so, lad?"

It took a second before Ohan realized he was being asked to respond. He struggled to collect his thoughts.

"You're comparing a galaxy to an individual?" Leahn asked.

"Not an individual, my dear. A woman. And mysterious beings they are. Even some of the warm-blooded ones are as distant and cold as those stars."

"I must confess," Leahn said, "the mystery of women is difficult for me to discern. Perhaps it comes from staying with your friend up on the hilltop, too far away, viewing them through a self-generated haze of romanticism. If you get close you might see them as individuals. If one is cold and distant, dump her and find a friendlier one."