Light flickered on the wet rocks as they entered the largest cave. Their eyes focused once more. Foam washed back and forth over the sandy floor, and black chains of weeds caught in crevices on the stone, twisted on the sand with the inrush of water. Webbed hands released them.
Brown rocks rose around them in the firelight. They raised their eyes to a rock throne where the Old One sat. His long spines were strung with shrunken membranes. His eyes, gray and clouded, were close to the surface of his broad-nostriled face. Water trickled over the rock where he sat. Others stood about him.
They glanced at one another. Outside the cave it was raining hard. Argo’s hair, wet to dark auburn, hugged her head, with little streaks down her neck.
A voice boomed at them, with more than just the natural sonority of the cave: “Carriers of the jewels,” it began. Geo realized that it was the same hollowness that accompanied Snake’s soundless messages. “We have brought you here to give a warning. We are the oldest forms of intelligence on this planet. We have watched from the delta of the Nile the rise of the pyramids; we have seen the murder of Caesar from the banks of the Tiber. We watched the Spanish Armada destroyed by England, and we followed Man’s great metal fish through the ocean before the Great Fire. We have never aligned ourselves with either Argo or Hama, but rise in the sexless swell of the ocean. We come only to touch men when they are bloated with death. You have carried and used the jewels of Aptor, the Eyes of Hama, the Treasure of Argo, the Destroyers of Reason, the playthings of children. Whether you use them to control minds or to make fire, all carriers of the jewels are maimed. But we can warn you, as we have warned Man before. As before, some will listen, some will not. Your minds are your own, that I pledge you. Now I warn you: cast the jewels into the sea.
“Nothing is ever lost in the sea, and when the evil has been washed from them with time and brine, they will be returned to you. For then time and brine will have washed away your imperfections also.
“No living intelligence is free from their infection, nothing with the double impulse of life. But we are old and can hold them for a million years before we will be so infected as you are. Your young race is too condensed in its living to tolerate such power in its fingers now. Again I say: cast them into the sea.
“The knowledge man needs to alleviate hunger and pain from the world is contained in two temples on this Island. Both have the science to put the jewels to use, to the good uses possible with them. Both have been infected. In Leptar, however, where you carry these jewels, there is no way at all to utilize them for anything but evil. There will be only the temptation to destroy.”
“What about me?” Argo piped up. “I can teach them all sorts of things in Leptar.” She took one of Snake’s hands. “We used one for our motor.”
“You will find something else to make your motor run. You still have to recognize something that you have already seen.”
“At the beach?” demanded Iimmi.
“Yes.” The Old One nodded, with something like a sigh. “At the beach. We have a science allowing us to do things that to you seem impossibilities, as when we carried you in the sea for weeks without your body drowning. We can enter your mind as Snake does. And we can do much else. We have a wisdom far surpassing even Argo’s and Hama’s on Aptor. Will you cast the jewels into the sea and trust them with us?”
“How can we give you the jewels?” Urson demanded. “First of all, how can we be sure you’re not going to use them against Argo and Hama once you get them? You say nobody is impervious to them. And we’ve only got your say-so on how long it would take you to fall victim. You can already influence minds. That’s how you got us here. And according to Hama, that’s what corrupts. And you’ve already done it.”
“Besides,” Geo said, “there’s something else. We’ve nearly messed this thing up a dozen times trying to figure out motives and countermotives. And it always comes back to the same thing: we’ve got a job to do, and we ought to do it. We’re supposed to return Argo and the jewels to the ship, and that’s what we’re doing.”
“He’s right,” said Iimmi. “Rule number one again: act on the simplest theory that holds all the information.”
The Old One sighed a second time. “Once, fifteen hundred years ago, a man who was to maneuver one of the metal birds that was to drop fire from the sky walked and pondered by the sea. He had been given a job to do. We tried to warn him, as we tried to warn you. But he jammed his hands into the pockets of his uniform and uttered to the waves the words you just uttered, and the warning was shut out of his mind. He scrambled up over the dunes on the beach, never taking his hands out of his pockets. He drank one more cup of coffee that night than usual. The next morning, at five o’clock, when the sun slanted red across the airfield, he climbed into his metal bird, took off, flew for some time over the sea, looking down on the water like crinkled foil under the heightening sun, until he reached land again. Then he did his job: he pressed a button that released two shards of fire metal in a housing of cobalt. The land flamed. The sea boiled in the harbors. And two weeks later he was also dead. That which burned your arm away, Poet, burned his whole face away, boiled his lungs in his chest and his brain in his skull.” There was a pause. “Yes, we can control minds. We could have relieved the tiredness, immobilized the fear, the terror, immobilized all his unconscious reasons for doing what he did, just as man can now do with the jewels. But had we, we would have also immobilized the…humanity he clung to. Yes, we can control minds, but we do not.” The voice swelled. “But never, since that day on the shore before the Great Fire, has the temptation to do so been as great as now.” The voice returned to normal. “Perhaps,” and there was almost humor in it now. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps the temptation is too great even for us. Perhaps we have reached the place where the jewels would push us just across the line we have never crossed before, make us do those things that we have never done.” Another pause. “There, you have heard our warning now. The choice, I swear to you, is yours.”
They stood silent in the high cave, the fire on their faces weaving brightness and shadow. Geo turned to look at the rain-blurred darkness outside the cave.
“Out there is the sea,” said the voice again. “Your decision quickly. The tide is coming in….”
It was snatched from their minds before they could articulate it. Two children saw a bright motor turning in the shadow. Geo and Iimmi saw the temples of Argo in Leptar. Then there was something darker, from Urson. And for a moment, they all saw all the pictures at once. And then they were gone.
“Very well, then,” boomed the voice. “Keep them!”
A wave splashed across the floor, like twisted glass before the rock on which the fire stood. Then it flopped wetly across the burning driftwood. They were hissed into darkness. Charred sticks turned, glowing in the water, and were extinguished.
Rain was buffeting them, hands held them once more, pulling them into the warm sea, the darkness, and then nothing….
Snake was thinking again, and this time through the Captain’s eyes:
The cabin door burst open in the rain. Her wet veils whipped about the doorframe; lightning made them transparent. Jordde rose from his seat. She closed the door on thunder.
I have received the signal from the sea, she said. Tomorrow you pilot the ship into the estuary.