Who wish they were dead? For a moment Nortekku made no reply. He had never seen her look so deeply unnerved. It was easy enough to believe that there was something tragic about the expression in these creatures’ eyes: he had seen it himself, from far away. But how could she be certain of this startling interpretation of it? The grunting speech of the Sea-Lords and the mind-speech of the Hjjks were closed books to her, Nortekku knew.
“You heard the Hjjks tell this to Kanibond Graysz and Siglondan?”
She shook her head. “I got there too late to hear anything important. It was all winding down by then. I’m speaking purely intuitively.”
“Ah. I see. And you trust that intuition, Thalarne?”
“Yes. I do.” She was steadier now. “I looked into those eyes, Nortekku. And what they were saying was, We want to die. Show us how to do it. You are great ones who can cross the mighty sea; surely you can give this little thing to us. Surely. Surely. Surely.”
That was going much too far, Nortekku told himself. This was hardly the method of science, as he understood that concept. The look in their eyes: was something like that a sufficient basis for so fantastic a theory? But Thalarne seemed wholly carried away by it. He had to be careful here. Cautiously he said, “You may be right. But I just can’t help but think that you’re making an awfully big intuitive leap.”
“Of course I am. And I’ve already told you I’m not fully sure of it myself. Just go and stand close to them, though, and you can see for yourself. Those eyes are sending a message without any ambiguity at all. They’re pleading for it, Nortekku. They’re crying out for it.”
“For death.”
“For death, yes. For the extinction that somehow was denied them when the rest of the Great World was destroyed. They want to die, Nortekku, but they don’t know how to manage it. It’s almost as if they’re saying they want us to kill them. To put them out of their misery.”
“But that’s insane!” Nortekku said, brushing at the air as though to push the concept away.
“Well, then, so they’re insane. Or half-insane, anyway. Or perhaps they’re so terribly sane that to us they seem crazy.”
“Asking to be killed—asking to be made extinct—”
Perhaps there was something to it. He had seen those eyes himself. She was simply guessing, but the guess had a cold plausibility about it. But was Thalarne hinting, then, that she felt that their wish ought to be granted? Surely not.
The idea was repellent, unthinkable, horrifying. It was a violation of all she believed, and he as well. She was a scientist, not an executioner. She had come here to investigate this surprising remnant of the Great World, to learn all that could be learned about it, not to extirpate it. And for him the survival of these Sea-Lords was a marvelous boon, a miraculous restoration of a small piece of a vanished world.
With short, quick, troubled steps he began to pace back and forth, ankle-deep, at the margin of the gentle surf. Thalarne, moving along beside him, said, “Their whole context is gone. They’re all alone in a world they are no longer part of, one that they don’t like or understand. They have the intelligence their race had in the old days, or nearly so, but there’s nothing to apply it to, no framework to fit into, no world to belong to. So they swim and copulate and catch fish all day. Does that sound good to you? Then try it. Try it for ten, twenty, fifty years. Watch your parents growing old in such a life. Watch your children entering into it. They live a long time, Nortekku. They try not to bring new generations into being, but it happens. They think their gods have forgotten them. Their life is meaningless, and it goes on and on and on. It’s driven them halfway to madness. And so they want to die. If only they knew how.”
“Well, maybe so. We can’t really know. But of course, even if that’s what they want, we couldn’t possibly—”
“No. Of course not,” she said quickly. “How could we even consider it?”
That much was a relief, he thought.
“But that’s why this situation, if I’m right about it, is so tragic,” she went on. “And that’s why we need to find out much more about them.”
“Yes,” Nortekku said. “Yes, definitely.” He would have said anything, just then. He wanted to get away from this whole subject as fast as he could.
“Come with me,” Thalarne said abruptly. “Up there, behind those dunes, where Siglondan thinks there may be shrines. Places where artifacts are kept.”
That made him uneasy too. “Should we go there, do you think? Wouldn’t it be sacrilege?”
“Just to look. Siglondan and Kanibond Graysz surely will, before very long.”
Getting over the dunes was no trivial task. Very little vegetation of any kind grew on them, and the loose sand slipped and slid beneath their feet. Thalarne pointed out places where the Sea-Lords themselves had worn deep tracks, compacting the dunes with their flippers, and they followed those. On the far side the air was still and very warm, heavy with the stifling interior heat of this continent: nowhere could they feel the sea breeze that made the strip by the shore so pleasant. Strange spiky plants were growing here, tall, stiff-armed, leafless, bristling with spines. These stood everywhere about, like guardians in the sandy wasteland. It was hard to follow the track here, but after a little searching Nortekku found something that had the look of a path, and they took it.
By trial and error they made their way to a place where, no question about it, many flippered feet had passed. The sand was packed down hard. There was a second row of dunes here, much more stable ones, tightly bound by low sprawling shrubs interwoven with gray clumps of tough, sharp-edged grass. “Look here,” Thalarne said.
Three bare metal frameworks sat in a row at the foot of the dunes: mere shapes, the fragile outlines of things rather than the things themselves. But from those shapes it seemed clear that these were the remnants of three of the vehicles—chariots, Hresh had called them—by which the ancient Sea-Lords had traveled when ashore. The ghostly hints of levers, of wheels, of seats, all gave credence to that idea.
There was a sign, also, of a passageway into the dune, a tunnel roofed over by wooden arches. Nortekku and Thalarne exchanged glances. He saw her eagerness.
“No,” he said. “We mustn’t. Not without their permission.”
“Even though Kanibond Graysz and Siglondan will—”
“Let them. We can’t. This has to be a sacred place.” He knew that Thalarne conceded the strength of that argument. But in any case the decision was taken from their hands, for a Sea-Lord had appeared from somewhere, an elderly one, it seemed, a male, stooped and bowed, with silvered fur and veiled, blinking eyes, who came shuffling up to them and took up a stance between them and the three chariots. The custodian of this place, perhaps—a priest, maybe. He had the sadness in his eyes too, and possibly also the anger that Nortekku believed lay behind it, but mainly they were tired eyes, very old, very weary. The Sea-Lord said something in a barely audible tone, low and husky, and, after a brief silence, said it again.
“He wants us to leave, I think,” Nortekku said. But of course the old Sea-Lord could have been saying almost anything else.