Watson, Ian - Black Current 01 (2 page)

 
          
The
woman shook as though laughing silently; naturally I couldn't see her
expression.

 
          
"What
apothecary has the tools to analyse anything as alien as that? No, that isn't
why. But
this
is." And from a
shelf the boatmistress snatched a stoppered phial with wet darkness inside it.
"Do you still wish to be a riverwoman?"

 
          
I
hardly faltered, reasoning that the contents of that phial were surely simply
ink-stained water.
Or something similar.

 
          
"Yes, boatmistress.
I do."

 
          
She
unstoppered the phial and held it out to me.

 
          
"Then
drink. Drink of the black current."

 
          
"And
what will happen?" For maybe, after all, the liquid wasn't simple and
innocuous. Maybe it was exactly what she said it was.

 
          
"Why,
I'm still alive and of sound mind, aren't I, child?" murmured the
quaymistress, at my shoulder.

 
          
"What will it do to me?"

           
"It will make you a riverwoman.
Drink it quickly—all in one gulp."

 
          
Accepting
the phial in my hand, I sniffed it, detecting hardly anything at all: a smell
of . . . dankness, perhaps—and I drank.

 
          
The
sensation wasn't so much that of liquid flowing down my throat, as of
swallowing a fat garden slug whole.
Or a blob of jelly.
One moment it was blocking my throat entirely; the
next,
and it was gone.

 
          
I
held the phial up to the lantern light. The glass looked perfectly clean, with
no dregs or droplets clinging inside.

 
          
Laying
the empty phial down on the table before me I awaited ... I knew not what.
A sudden sunburst of light and understanding?
A plunge into terror or ecstasy?
Creeping
clammy cold?
Delirium?
Menstrual cramps? I sat and
waited; and my two witnesses— or assessors?—waited too.

 
          
Finally
the boatmistress nodded. "You're safe. The black current doesn't heed you.
You don't offend it."

 
          
"What
if I had?"

 
          
"Then
you would have run up on deck, leapt over the side and done your best to swim
oblivious of stingers all the way to the current to join it. In other words you
would be dead."

 
          
"I've
never heard of anyone doing such a thing."

 
          
"It
doesn't happen to female applicants very often.
Once in a
thousand times, if that.
And then we have to put it about that they
signed on and sailed away without telling friends or family, and had an
accident, or else that they stowed away and jumped the boat in a distant
port."

 
          
"So
I wasn't very worried," put in the quaymistress mildly.

 
          
I
laughed nervously. "You said 'female applicants', as though there could be
such a thing as a
male
applicant!"

 
          
"Poor choice of words.
Men may only sail once in their
lives, with their wife-to-be; thus our genes are mixed."

 
          
I
knew this, of course; it was laid down in the preface to
The Book of the River
(though I'm sure this boatmistress had no
more notion than I, exactly what "genes" were). "But what if men
do
sail twice? Or try to?"

 
          
"Ah,
there we have it. The black current calls them, and drowns them. The river is a
jealous female entity, I suppose. Once, she permits a man to sail, so that we
may thrive. Twice, and she kills."

 
          
"I
thought," said I, "that she simply ignored us?"

 
          
The
fish-mask dipped, as if in prayer. "Strange are the ways of the river. But
one thing's for sure: if you're a woman who's really a man, she'll cull you
out."

 
          
"A woman who's really a man?"

 
          
"You
know! Well, you're young yet, so perhaps you don't. . . ."

 
          
I
was sure (or at least halfway sure) that all this rigmarole was simply guild
lore that had bloomed in the misty dark age after our arrival on this world, as
a way of authenticating social patterns that had proved so stable and
self-perpetuating: with women being the travellers and traders, with men
marrying into their woman's household.
Matrilineal descent,
and so on and so forth.
It was really all gloss on the privileges of the
guild; and I reminded myself that any man who was so inclined, and sufficiently
energetic, could walk all the way back to his home town away from a wife he had
grown to hate, or anywhere else for that matter. But obviously out of
selfinterest in the status quo no boat would ease his passage.

 
          
The
boatmistress lifted her mask; she was a sharp-faced freckled redhead, perhaps
forty years old.

 
          
"That's
all over," she said. "Not a word, mind. Now you can forget about
it." She reached for a flask from the shelf containing a different kind of
liquid—ginger spirit—and brought down three glasses, too. "So: welcome to
the river and the guild, apprentice boatwoman." She poured. "Here's
to faraway places, and unfamiliar shores."

 
          
The
spirit was strong, and rushed to my inexperienced head.

 
          
"The
most unfamiliar shore," I heard myself saying presently, "is just a
league and a half away, right over there."
Nudging the
glass westward.

 
          
The
boatmistress looked angry, and I hastened to add, "I only mention it on
account of my twin brother. He wants to watch from Verrino."

 
          
"Verrino, eh?
That's a long walk, for a young
fellow." In the boatmistress's voice I caught a hint of vindictiveness, as
though Verrino was some bastion of rebellion against the rightful way, the way
of the river. If Capsi wished to get to Verrino he would have to hike the fifty
leagues; unless by some wild chance a husband-hunting girl from Verrino
decided to visit us in Pecawar, fell madly in love with young Capsi and carried
him back home with her to wed. I didn't think that Capsi quite qualified yet as
a noteworthy catch. Maybe in another couple of years he would. But equally, why
should some girl marry him just to provide him with an easy journey downstream
to that watchful fraternity of his?

 
          
"When
do I join a boat?" I asked, in more practical vein.
Wishing,
a moment later, that I hadn't—since I had no particular wish to bunk down on
the
Ruby Piglet
(named, perhaps, in
sardonic honour of its red-headed boatmistress?).
But I needn't have
worried.

 
          
Said the quaymistress, "There's a brig due in, day after
tomorrow, with two empty berths; bound for Gangee, carrying grain.
They
heliographed ahead
, wanting
crew. Then they're running
back all the way down to Umdala.
Far enough for you,
first-timer?"

 
          
I
got home at
nine o'clock
,
quite tipsy, and went up to Capsi's room; he was in, playing around with his
latest reconstruction of the original spyglass, adding an extra lens or
something. For all the good that would do. Perhaps my face was flushed: Capsi
gave me much more than a second glance.

 
          
"I've
joined the guild," I said proudly.

 
          
"Which
guild?" he asked with mock innocence, as though there was any other guild
for me.

 
          
"I'm
sailing out.
Thursday.
Bound for
Gangee, then Umdala.
On the brig the
Sally Argent."
As though the name of the brig would mean anything to him.
He
hadn't spent years hanging about the
quayside, sniffing around the ropes and bollards, and getting in the way of the
gangers unloading.

 
          
"Well,
Sis, if you're going to Gangee, you'll be back here in about three weeks."

 
          
I
advanced on him. "That's the last time you're to call me Sis! I'm older
than you, anyway."

 
          
"By
two minutes. Fancy some rough and tumble, eh?"

 
          
I
halted. "Not especially."

 
          
"Some
sublimated eroticism? Grope and squeeze?"

 
          
"How
dare you!"

 
          
'Well,
what do they get up to when you join the guild? Strip you naked and prod you
with a windlass handle? Splice your mainbrace, whatever that means?"

 
          
"What
makes you think they get up to anything? Well, they don't. So there."

 
          
"And
pigs can fly." Had he slunk down to the quayside, and spied on me? Or had
he just happened to notice that the
Ruby
Piglet
was in town? Or neither—since it's often said that twins are
empathic? Well, there was precious little empathy going on right now! At first
I couldn't understand it.

 
          
He
pointed his spyglass at me. "Seriously, Sis, you need a tumble. You'll
probably have to learn to fight with knives, if you're going on a boat."

 
          
"Oh,
I see. I
see.
You're bloody
jealous—because after I've been to Gangee and back, in another week or two I'll
be sailing smoothly into Verrino, while you'll still be stuck here burning your
eyes out staring at sweet all. Don't worry, Capsi: when I'm home, from Umdala,
in six months or so, I'll tell you what your darling Verrino's all about."

 
          
His
lips whitened. "Don't
you
worry.
I'll be there by then."

 
          
"In
that
case,"
and I peeled off one shoe, then the
other, "you'll be needing these, and more!"

 
          
The
first shoe missed him, bouncing off the wall where he had his pen-and-ink
panorama of nowhereland, the opposite shore, tacked up. But the second crashed
into his spyglass, spinning it from his hand, with a subsequent tinkle of
glass. Curiously, he disregarded its fate. At first, anyway; what happened
after, I don't know, for I was already fleeing from the
room.
No, I wasn't fleeing. I was withdrawing in haughty dudgeon.

 
          
During
my hastily organized going-away party the following evening Capsi hardly spoke
to me at all. Then, when I was on the point of leaving the house the morning
after, with my duffle bag over my shoulder—which wasn't too traumatic a
parting, from Mother and Father's point of view, since the run to Gangee and
back was short— he winked at me, and whispered, "See you in Verrino."

 
          
"I'm
sailing upstream first," I reminded him. "See you back here in three
weeks."

 
          
"Don't
be too sure of that, Sis." And he dealt me a playful punch on the
shoulder.

 
          
*
* *

           
Learning the ropes on the
Saily Argent
was no less—and no more—
strenuous, muscle-forming, et cetera, than I'd expected; and of course there
were no knife fights among the crew, or any other such garbage. Being a
riverwoman was just work, with free time sandwiched in between.

 
          
The
spring winds were blowing leisurely downstream, so our course—allowing for the
long slow curves of the river one way, then the other—was basically west of
south away from shore for a stretch till we were just over a third of a league
out, then east of south back inshore again; repeat
ad infinitum.
Downstream river traffic at this season kept to a
narrower sailing corridor nearer midstream, though always shunning by at least
a sixth of a league the vicinity of the black current.