“Darvin!”
A tiny figure skittered over indignant heads, leapt to his chest, grabbed the fur, and nuzzled his collarbone.
“Oh! Hello, Handful—” He looked around. “Kwarive!”
She sidled through a gap toward him. He caught her neck and stroked.
“It’s great to see you! Thanks for coming all this way, you shouldn’t—”
“I’m not here to see you off,” said Kwarive.
“Then why—” He stopped, shocked and delighted. “You’re coming on the expedition?”
“I most certainly am,” she said. “Sight’s orders.” She retrieved Handful. “I’ve been told it’s very important to talk to him a lot.”
“You’ll have plenty of time for that,” said Darvin.
“Oh, it’s not just me,” said Kwarive. “All of us. Don’t shirk it.”
“What can I talk to him about? Astronomy?”
“Yes.”
“Astronomy!” said Handful. “New moon!”
“You’re off to a good start,” said Kwarive.
They had at last reached the gangplank.
“Cold bad meat,” said Handful, sniffing the air.
“No, that’s salt,” said Kwarive. “Salt water.”
“Salt water cold bad.”
“Yes,” said Darvin, looking down at the black gap beside his feet. “Keep that in mind.”
The deck was made of long planks of a soft, resilient wood, like float-bark. The superstructure and fittings were of hardwood and brass. Southern crewmen leapt and flitted in the rigging. The air smelled of tar and rock-oil derivatives. Selohics and Gevorkians mingled, eyeing each other, trying out phrases. Grenadiers and sabreurs debated tactics and contrasted weapons in their martial Creole. Scientists of the three powers quibbled in ungrammatical Orkan. Stewards and clerks stalked the deck, fussed over ladings and fastenings, fluttered frantic pages of lists on clipboards.
Chains rattled. Late arrivals and departures took wing to or from the ship. Sails snapped to the wind’s attention. The deck began to vibrate. Water churned at the stern. The quay glided past. The town diminished. The western headland displayed its black muzzle and white teeth. The horizon became a line beneath the stars, that within two hours encircled the world.
After that it was just a sea voyage.
Black above the ocean rose the eroded volcanic sea mount. White around the foot of its pleated basaltic cliffs boomed the surf. A cloud floated high above the island’s plateau like a watercolour of ancient smoke. A hazy sun burned a line across the sea to the left.
Through binoculars Darvin watched the soaring white specks of cliff-dwelling sea flitters, and the broader and darker shapes of the island’s dwellers, some already wing-beating their way out to meet the ship. The distance, though diminishing as the ship approached, looked terrifying.
“Fly over water bad,” said Handful, from Darvin’s shoulder.
“Yes,” said Darvin, who had been impressing this on the kit for the past fortnight.
An unlikely looking harbour, a black-sand beach at the bottom of a steep cove, became visible as the ship angled in. Locals descended on the deck, neck bags and belt baskets laden with lewd or cute carvings of pumice, or with unknown fruits of dubious hue. The island was a Southern possession, languidly disputed by Gevork; the inhabitants, for the most part, the descendants of Selohic mutineers and maroons. They spoke all three main languages, but at the same time.
“These people are going to be a problem,” said Kwarive. “What if they’re superstitious?”
“No ‘if’ about it,” said Darvin. He inclined his head to the forward deck. Already the chief scientist and the ship’s priest busied themselves with explanations and invocations.
“Fortunately there are only a few eights of them,” said Lenoen. “A supply of stumblefruit has been set aside for their benefit.”
“Doesn’t it grow on the island?”
“A sour vintage,” said Lenoen. “The little carved idols are worth having, by the way. The prices drop on landfall.”
The originals of the carvings hove into view as the ship rounded into the harbour: on a slope that reached from the top of the cove to the lip of the plateau, gigantic statues, priapic or comic, leered down on the huddle of roosts around the tiny stone quay.
Sea beasts, like flitters but the size of a man, plump and streamlined, swimming with webbed feet and short fleshy wings, escorted the ship in and leapt for scraps. Kwarive was almost as delighted with the sight as Handful.
“Water-wing! Water-wing!”
“Clever Handful,” Kwarive murmered. She grinned at Darvin. “It’s the same word as the scientific name: aquopter.”
Darvin looked down at the darting, splashing animals.
“They have big heads,” he said. “Let’s hope the aliens don’t try to educate them.”
“Time to educate you,” said Kwarive. “The cranial bulge contains oil, not brain.”
“Reputedly delicious,” said Lenoen, “and it burns with a clear and smokeless flame.”
Kwarive pretended to cover Handful’s ears.
“That’s… horrible.”
“They swarm in the seas around the Southern pole,” said Lenoen, sounding defensive.
The ship hove to, dwarfing the quay, the top deck overlooking the native roosts. The turbines reversed and fell silent. Ropes were flung and caught, and inexpertly wound around boulders. After some commotion the expedition disembarked.
“There will be no flying,” said Markhan, addressing the teams. “The air currents and thermals around the cliffs are unpredictable and dangerous to all but the locals.”
Everyone gazed with envy at a brace of soaring natives, scouting high above for nests to rob.
“So how do we get up?” Darvin shouted.
Markhan pointed to a barely detectable zigzag of steps hewn in the side of the cove. “Climb.”
Two hours later they collapsed exhausted on the sharp grass of the cliff top. After a rest and a snack they made their way on, a long straggling line of four eights or so, mostly scientists, with here and there pairs of soldiers lugging etheric devices or sacks of supplies.
“We should have brought an aeroplane,” gasped Orro.
“And taken off from exactly where?” asked Darvin.
“A ramp built at the prow of the ship. Possibly assisted with… a catapult. Or rockets.”
Holder looked thoughtful.
“Big prick,” said Handful, touching a statue as they laboured past it.
“New word,” said Kwarive.
“Curiously,” said Lenoen, shaking sweat from his brows, “the stone of the statues is not native to the island. Its nearest quarries are on our northern coast.”
“Hence your claim,” scoffed Holder. “Despite the first historical sighting—”
“First in whose history?”
“Gentlemen,” said Kwarive. “Do spare your breath.”
A call from Markhan brought the line to a welcome halt. Soldiers lowered their loads. Nollam cranked up a generator and sent a taped etheric message into the sky. He had kept this up day after day since leaving Kraighor, to no response from above. None came this time either.
“Onward!” shouted Markhan.
The slope was worse than the cliff. It seemed endless, without even risks and slips and panicked flapping and flying to break the monotony. Darvin’s legs ached. Handful whined, demonstrating that he had learned a small vocabulary of complaint. Small lizards and skitters scuttled through the grass and cringed from circling patrols of predatory flitters.
After another hour the plateau spread out before them, black and bare, littered with boulders, crusted with salt, spotted with semi-saline pools above which minute endemic insects buzzed in sinister clouds. Everyone slumped down. Water bottles were passed back and forth, dried fruit and meat munched. The sun, now past noon, had dispersed the cloud and glared down from almost directly overhead in a deep blue sky. The heat was intense, the wind nugatory, every zephyr welcome. People stood and spread their wings, flapping slowly to cool their blood.