Chapter XVI
When first they woke, the People had no names. He who was Rrinn ashore was an animal at the bottom of the sea.
Its changes were what roused him. Water pressure dropped with the level; lower temperatures meant a higher equilibrium concentration of dissolved oxygen, which affected the fairly shallow depths at which the People estivated; current shifted, altering the local content of minerals raised from the ocean bed. Rrinn was aware of none of this. He knew only, without knowing that he knew, that the Little Death was past and he had come again to the Little Birth…though he would not be able to grasp these ideas for a while.
During a measureless time he lay in the ooze which lightly covered his submerged plateau. Alertness came by degrees, and hunger. He stirred. His gill flaps quivered, the sphincters behind them pumping for an ever more demanding bloodstream. When his strength was enough, he caught the sea with hands, webbed feet, and tail. He surged into motion.
Other long forms flitted around him. He sensed them primarily by the turbulence and taste they gave to the water. No sunlight penetrated here. Nevertheless vision picked them out as blurs of blackness. Illumination came from the dimly blue-glowing colonies of aoao (as it was called when the People had language) planted at the sides of the cage; it lured those creatures which dwelt always in the sea, and helped Wirrda’s find their way to freedom.
Different packs had different means of guarding themselves during the Little Death, such as boulders rolled across crevices. Zennevirr’s had even trained a clutch of finsnakes to stand sentry. Wirrda’s slumbered in a cage—woven mesh between timbers—that nothing dangerous could enter. It had originally been built, and was annually repaired, in the spring when the People returned, still owning a limited ability to breathe air. That gave them energy to dive and do hard work below, living off the redeveloping gills an hour or two at a stretch. (Of course, not everyone labored. The majority chased down food for all.) After their lungs went completely inactive, they became torpid—besides, the sun burned so cruelly by then, the air was like dry fire—and they were glad to rest in a cool dark.
Now Rrinn’s forebrain continued largely dormant, to preserve cells that otherwise would get insufficient oxygen. Instinct, reflex, and training steered him. He found one of the gates and undid it. Leaving it open, he swam forth and joined his fellows. They were browsing among the aoao, expropriating what undigested catch lay in those tentacles.
The supply was soon exhausted, and Wirrda’s left in a widespread formation numbering about 200 individuals. Clues of current and flavor, perhaps subtler hints, guided them in a landward direction. Had it been clear day they would not have surfaced immediately; eyes must become reaccustomed by stages to the dazzle. But a thick sleet made broaching safe. That was fortunate, albeit common at this season. In their aquatic phase, the People fared best among the waves.
They found a school of—not exactly fish—and cooperated in a battue. Again and again Rrinn leaped, dived, drove himself by threshing tail and pistoning legs until he clapped hands on a scaly body and brought it to his fangs. He persisted after he was full, giving the extra catch to whatever infants he met. They had been born with teeth, last midwinter, able to eat any flesh their parents shredded for them; but years remained before they got the growth to join in a chase.
In fact, none of the People were ideally fitted for ocean life. Their remote ancestors, epochs ago, had occupied the continental shelf and were thus forced to contend with both floods and drought. The dual aerating system developed in response, as did the adaptation of departing the land to escape summer’s heat. But being evolved more for walking than swimming—since two-thirds of their lives were spent ashore—they were only moderately efficient sea carnivores and “found” it was best to retire into estivation.
Rrinn had had that theory expounded to him by a Merseian paleontologist. He would remember it when his brain came entirely awake. At present he simply felt a wordless longing for the shallows. He associated them with food, frolic, and—and—
Snowing went on through days and nights. Wirrda’s swam toward the mainland, irregularly, since they must hunt, but doggedly. Oftener and oftener they surfaced. Water felt increasingly less good in the gills, air increasingly less parching. After a while Rrinn actively noticed the sensuous fluidity along his fur, the roar and surge of great wrinkled foam-streaked gray waves, skirling winds and blown salt spindrift.
Snowing ended. Wirrda’s broached to a night of hyaline clarity, where the very ocean was subdued. Overhead glittered uncountable stars. Rrinn floated on his back and gazed upward. The names of the brightest came to him. So did his own. He recalled that if he had lately passed a twin-peaked island, which he had, then he ought to swim in a direction that kept Ssarro Who Mounts Endless Guard over his right shoulder. Thus he would approach the feeding grounds with more precision than the currents granted. He headed himself accordingly, the rest followed, and he knew afresh that he was their leader.
Dawn broke lambent, but the People were no longer troubled by glare. They pressed forward eagerly in Rrinn’s wake. By evening they saw the traces of land, a slight haze on the horizon, floating weeds and bits of wood, a wealth of life. That night they harried and were gluttonous among a million tiny phosphorescent bodies; radiance dripped from their jaws and swirled on every wave. Next morning they heard surf.
Rrinn identified this reef, that riptide, and swam toward the ness where Wirrda’s always went ashore. At midaftemoon the pack reached it.
North and south, eventually to cover half the globe, raged blizzards. Such water as fell on land, solid, did not return to the ocean; squeezed beneath the stupendous weight of later falls, it became glacier. Around the poles, the seas themselves were freezing, more territory for snow to accumulate on. In temperate climes their level dropped day by day, and the continental shelves reappeared in open air.
Rrinn would know this later. For the moment, he rejoiced to tread on ground again. Breakers roared, tumbled, and streamed among the low rocks; here and there churned ice floes. Swimming was not too dangerous, though. Winter tides were weak. And ahead, the shelf climbed, rugged and many-colored under a sparkling sky.
Snow dappled its flanks, ice glistened where pools had been. The air was a riot of odors, salt, iodine, clean decomposition and fresh growth, and was crisp and windy and cool, cool.
Day after day the pack fattened itself, until blubber sleeked out the bulges of ribs and muscles. The receding waters had left a rich stratum of dead plants and animals. In it sprouted last year’s saprophyte seeds, salt and alcohol in their tissues to prevent freezing, and covered the rocks with ocherous and purple patches. Marine animals swarmed between; flying creatures shrieked and whirled above by the hundred thousand; big game wandered down from the interior to feed. Rrinn’s males chipped hand axes to supplement their fangs; females prepared lariats of gut and sinew; beasts were caught and torn asunder.
Yet Wirrda’s were ceasing to be only hunters. They crooned snatches of song, they trod bits of dance, they spoke haltingly. Many an individual would sit alone, hours on end, staring at sunset and stars while memory drifted up from the depths. And one day Rrinn, making his way through a whiteout, met a female who had kept close to him. They stopped in the wind-shrill blankness, the sea clashing at their feet, and looked eye into eye. She was sinuous and splendid. He exclaimed in delight, “But you are Cuwarra.”
“And you are Rrinn,” she cried. Male and wife, they came to each other’s arms.
While ovulation was seasonal among the People, the erotic urge persisted throughout winter. Hence the young had fathers who helped care for them during their initial months of existence. That relationship was broken by the Little Death—older cubs were raised in casual communal fashion—but most couples stayed mated for life.