Siglondan herself admitted to some vestigial guilt over the removal of the chariot. In a rare moment of openness she said to Nortekku, as they stood together by the shore watching the dinghy return, “I can’t help feeling that this is hurting them. That chariot is practically all that they have left to remember their ancestors by. We haven’t ever excavated a site that still has living descendants of the ancients on it before. But Kanibond Graysz thinks it’s such an important object that we simply have to take it. It’s not as though it’s their only one.”
It was the first sign Nortekku had seen of any compassion for the Sea-Lords in her, or of the slightest disagreement on a policy issue between Siglondan and her mate. Kanibond Graysz seemed all greed, all ice. Siglondan, at least, had revealed some flickerings of conscience just now.
He said, feeling some elusive need to reassure her, “Well, if they just don’t care about anything, if they even regret that they’re alive at all—”
It was the wrong thing to say. The Bornigrayan woman shot him a peculiar look. “That wild fantasy of Thalarne’s, eh? That they want to die? That they’re a bitter people who think their gods have forgotten them? That they’re looking for a way to get us to put them out of their misery? You believe it too, do you?”
“I don’t know what I believe. I have no evidence to work with.”
“Neither does she.”
“So you think she’s wrong?”
“Of course I do. Kanibond Graysz and I have had conversations with them, you know.”
“But everything gets filtered through the Hjjks, and who knows what distortions the things that they’re saying pick up along the way?”
She shrugged. “This isn’t a matter of translation. This is a matter of understanding the realities that are right here around us. The notion Thalarne is trying to put forth is crazy, Nortekku, completely crazy. The Sea-Lords have given us no indication whatever of a death wish. If she tries to propose such an idea publicly, we’ll oppose her at every step.” He could feel Siglondan drawing back, closing down. The openness of a few moments before was gone now. Her voice had taken on a cold, formal intonation. She was angry and defensive. “Has your—sister—told you that she not only believes they want to die, she’s willing to help them achieve it?”
“She told me that we mustn’t even consider it.”
“Well, she is considering it, regardless of anything she might have told you. I know that she is. But even if her theory about them is right, and there’s no reason to think that it is, we couldn’t possibly allow any such thing to happen. You understand that, I hope. These beings are infinitely precious. They’re the last few of their kind, so far as we know, the only survivors of a great ancient culture. We have to protect their lives at all cost. We’re preservers of the past, Nortekku, not destroyers.” And with a barren little smile she moved on toward her tent.
He stood looking after her, bewildered. He had no idea where he stood in any of this. After hearing Siglondan’s scornful dismissal, Thalarne’s theory did indeed seem wild, fantastic, almost frightening in its arbitrary assumptions. And yet, when you studied a Sea-Lord’s eyes, when you saw that terrible look that could only be an expression of intolerable grief and rage and longing and despair, it didn’t seem all that arbitrary. But as for enabling the Sea-Lords to die, as an act of compassion, if that was what Thalarne was advocating—and she had denied that, had she not?—the concept was too absurd even to consider. To kill the very creatures they had come here to find—no—no—
As he struggled with these matters Nortekku became aware of figures moving up the beach toward him—a couple of Sea-Lords, females, by the size of them, and one of the Hjjks trailing along a few paces behind. Automatically he turned to go. Even less than ever, now, did he want to be in any sort of proximity to a Sea-Lord.
But before he could take more than a few steps the bigger of the two Sea-Lords, moving with surprising swiftness, closed the distance between them in a few long sliding strides. One of its flippers shot out and grabbed his arm. The webbed fingers tightened around his wrist. Grunting, barking, it pulled him roughly toward it, swinging him around so that they stood face to face.
He was too amazed even to feel afraid. For a moment he was conscious only of the fishy reek of the creature, and of the great shining bristles that jutted from its muzzle, and—yes—of its huge glistening eyes, close to his own, staring at him with a frightful intensity. There was no way he could break its grip. The Sea-Lord was as big as he was, and much stronger. He leaned away as far as he could, holding himself rigid, averting his head. A further series of low barking grunts came from it.
“Tell it to let go of me,” Nortekku said to the Hjjk, who was standing by in utter unconcern.
“It will release you when it is ready to release you,” said the Hjjk in that dispassionate Hjjk way of theirs. “First it will finish what it is saying.”
Saying? Yes. Nortekku observed now that those grunts had a structured rhythm to them, the balance and even the audible punctuation of what must surely be a language. It was indeed trying to say something to him. But what?
“I can’t understand you,” Nortekku told the Sea-Lord futilely. “Let me go! Let go!” And, to the Hjjk: “What’s it saying, then?”
The Hjjk replied, evasively, in the clickings and chitterings of its own tongue, which Nortekku had never mastered. He glared at the insect-man’s great beaked face. “No,” he said. “Tell it so I can understand.”
“What it is is the usual thing,” said the Hjjk, after a moment. “It is asking for your help.”
“My—help?” Nortekku said, and a monstrous realization began to dawn in him. “What kind of help?”
The Sea-Lord was finished with its oration, now. It loosed its hold on Nortekku’s wrist and stepped back, watching him expectantly. Nortekku turned once more to the Hjjk.
“What kind of help?” he demanded again.
Once again the Hjjk answered him, maddeningly, in Hjjk.
Nortekku snatched up a driftwood log that was lying near his right foot and brandished it under the Hjjk’s jutting beak. “Tell it the right way, or by all the gods, I’ll pull you apart and feed your fragments to the fishes!”
The Hjjk showed no sign of alarm. Crossing its uppermost arms across its thorax in what might have been a gesture of self-protection, but which had more of an aura of unconcern, it said blandly, “It would like to end its life. It wishes that you would teach it how to die. This is the thing that they always are saying, you know.”
Yes. Yes, of course. Teach it how to die. Precisely what he had not wanted to hear, precisely what he would prefer not to face. Precisely what Thalarne had already guessed. It is the thing that they are always saying.
Thalarne did not seem surprised at all, when he told her of his encounter with the Sea-Lord. It was as if she had been expecting vindication of this kind to come at any moment.