“Here now, you can’t be messing with these boats. Owners and guests only. Get off of there now, before I toss you off.”
Jorl’s back had been to her and he turned at her approach. The woman continued barreling his way, seemingly intent on hauling him from the boat and perhaps heaving him into the water. She staggered abruptly, halting herself as she came close enough to see him. Or more accurately, see his forehead.
“Um … that’s not your boat.”
“No,” agreed Jorl. “It’s the academy’s.”
“Well, it used to belong to Grummel. I guess ownership reverted to the academy, but they didn’t tell me about anyone borrowing it.”
“That’s my fault. I guess these are for you.” Jorl took a sealed pouch from his cart, paperwork from the provost, and presented it to the attendant. She rifled through the pages, made a point of glancing up at Jorl’s aleph again, and shrugged.
“Okay. I guess that’s all right then. But, you didn’t complete this last section indicating your destination. It’s for your own safety, like in case you have an accident or something goes wrong and you don’t get there.” She pulled a stick of ink bamboo from a pocket and held it poised to fill in the missing information. “So, where are you going?”
“Yeah, about that. If you have to ask, I can’t tell you. But don’t worry. Nothing’s going to go wrong.”
Wishing he felt as confident as he sounded, Jorl waved the attendant toward the boat’s tie and motioned for her to cast off. He hauled the rope aboard and then settled in. It was three times the length of any of the rowboats he had used for past travels between islands, and even had a small shelter enclosed on three sides. Jorl didn’t mind sleeping out in the rain, but it was nice to know he wouldn’t have to.
* * *
FOR reasons that could only be appreciated by another academician, Grummel the oceanographer had named his craft Tenure Redeemed. Jorl passed plenty of other craft on their way moving from one island to another, from simple rowboats and small ferry rafts to larger ships with as many as three masts and sails all unfurled. It was the middle of the season of wind, the most popular time for travel, and Jorl kept a firm hand on the ship’s rudder. The near-silent engine of the academy craft gave him good speed, and he didn’t trust his own skill enough if he let himself come too close to any other boats. Eventually though, in the final moments of twilight, Jorl slid past the last island that lay east of Keslo and out into the open water beyond the edge of the western archipelago.
According to every map on Barsk, the next bit of land he could expect to see was Relfa, the western most island of the planet’s other chain of islands, a voyage that took a sailing ship at least twenty days. Jorl had never visited Relfa nor any of the islands beyond it, though he knew plenty who had. His own father had told him tales of setting forth in the company of several dozen other men in a co-opt-owned galley that made the trip several times a year. Common sense said that such a large collection of young bachelors and wandering husbands in a confined space, day after day, had to end badly. Once they reached adulthood, male Fant just tended to get surly around large numbers of their fellows. Each wanted to be off living his own way, master of his own destiny, and free of any reminders that someone else might have another way of going about things.
It had been less of an issue in the time before the Fant had come to Barsk. When the Lox and Eleph had been minority populations on mixed worlds of other races, seeing others of their kind, even other men, had felt more reassuring than confrontational, perhaps in part because of the general animosity they received from anyone who wasn’t Fant. Nonetheless, pilgrimages of collectives of men from one group of islands to the other happened, as much a rite of passage as the passage to distant lands. Tral had spoken of massive wrestling matches on the deck of his ship, the consumption of prodigious quantities of distilled spirits, and spontaneous songs being written and sung with so many verses that they could outlast the day’s light. But he’d also talked about how half of the men on that particular voyager had leapt from their ship when they’d come in sight of land, preferring to swim to shore than spend another moment in the company of others. Jorl had asked him once if he’d been among the Fant who’d stayed aboard and put into dock at Relfa, or if he’d opted to swim, but his father had only smiled and changed the subject.
As night fell, Jorl dropped anchor and retired to the boat’s enclosure. By lamplight he read through what he gratefully considered an idiot’s guide to the boat’s state-of-the-art navigation system, as fine a piece of Alliance technology as any he’d seen on Barsk. With the exception of those who worked in the planet’s pharming industry, most Fant eschewed complex devices. Jorl could imagine the cognitive dissonance someone like Grummel must have endured in a vessel perfectly designed for a stereotypically absent-minded academician. If not for his own time in the Patrol, he’d probably be in similar straits.
Over a dinner of citrus and sweet leaves, he reviewed the scrap of paper with Pizlo’s directions, as well as his own notes that he’d scribbled between lines. In the vast empty water that lay to the east, a mere three days journey given the speed of the Tenure Redeemed and far closer than distant Relfa lay his unnamed destination. He had no idea what he’d find there. As he lay himself down for sleep, his imagination served up a range of possibilities. Perhaps a beach overflowing with the rotting remains of rafts and boats that had carried their occupants on a final trip. Maybe the island held a rain forest like every other island on Barsk. Maybe the Dying had built their own version of a Civilized Wood filled with individual apartments where they enjoyed their last days. Or maybe he’d simply find a vast accretion of bones, the crumpled skeletons of eight centuries of Dying Fant, their flesh long since stripped away, strewn from one end of the island to the other, from its gravelly beach to the mud and streams of its Shadow Dwell. With images of animated corpses dancing in his head, Jorl wandered into sleep.
He rose at first light, the clouds on the eastern horizon beckoning him with a rosy glow, the sky overhead showering him with a light rain. With a yawn and a stretch he eased himself over the boat’s side, splashed himself to full wakefulness and tended to the morning’s ablutions. Clambering back aboard, he returned to Pizlo’s page and converted the boy’s route into terms the boat’s hardware could understand. It quickly returned a declarative ping, and its display informed him of his options: barely two days if he left immediately and continued nonstop, a bit over three if he maintained his intention of cruising only during daytime. He hoisted anchor and engaged the engine. The Tenure Redeemed surged forward and he sat back to enjoy the warm rain and the vast open sky.
Jorl had been too intent on beginning the voyage to give much thought of how he’d occupy himself during it. His focus had been on setting out, and now he had insufficient distractions for the trip, having failed to bring along so much as a book to help pass the time. Ironically, he had a collection of imramha he’d been meaning to read, written by a Speaker on Telba. Every few generations some young man went off in a boat and had a voyage filled with impossible adventures. The Speaker had summoned a dozen of them, one at a time of course, and compared their own experiences with the tales that had spawned.