He also had an extra pair of hands rowing, although they dared not get too far from Mogutu’s struggling boat. The supplies, among other things, were in that boat, and it was by no means certain that, if it tipped, either N’Gana or the Quadulan could swim. Father Chicanis seemed to be having a grand old time, not in the least bothered.
“You’ve sailed before on small watercraft,” Harker said to the priest.
“This very region, in fact, was where I learned to swim and to sail. We used to have regattas that went from Ephesus to Circe’s Island—well beyond Saint John’s, which is what we landed on. This was truly something of a paradise, Mister Harker. Warm climate, balmy breeezes, controlled moisture and well-managed lands, lots of natural organic farming of fruits and vegetables—not like the crap most folks in The Confederacy eat and think of as decent food. The greatest conflicts were boat races, and football of course, and chess, and arguing with the Copts over whose was truly the oldest tradition. Gentle stuff for a gentle world, Mister Harker. Gentle, yet swept so callously away… ”
His eyes grew distant and his voice trailed off, and Harker knew that he was seeing things as they were out here in the bright sunshine.
“Ship oars for a little, Father,” Harker called to him. “We’re leaving poor Sergeant Mogutu well behind.”
“Huh? Oh—yes, sorry. We ought to have tethered them to our boat, you know. Then we’d have at least three pairs of strong arms for this job and we’d not risk losing them.”
“We’d risk losing all of us in one unexpected swell if we did that,” Harker responded. “That’s all right. It’s nice to see those arrogant sons of—well, you know—taken down a peg. They’ll be all right if we have no unexpected nastiness, and if we do, it won’t be from this sea or from the weather, looking at the sky and the direction of the clouds.”
“No, it’ll stay this way if it starts out this way,” Chicanis agreed. “Where did you learn the water part of sailing, if I might ask?”
“It’s part of the training in the Navy, believe it or not. You not only learn how the Navy evolved from a seagoing one but the training centers are on worlds with oceans and bays and large rivers and you have to do a lot of work in small and medium-sized boats on them. These kind of boats, though—these were for Commando school. They didn’t let us have our fancy suits for the final exam. Stuck us in the water with one of these and very minimal supplies, a knife and a small concealed laser pistol like we’d crashed on some deserted water world. We had to make it into shore, after finding the shore, and, with no map, no real knowledge of where we were, we had to survive through the jungle and find our headquarters unit and report in. All we knew was that the unit was somewhere within a hundred and fifty kilometers of where we were dropped. Period. You just about couldn’t do it alone. They saw to that. You needed to find your mates, keep your own team together, and work as a unit. Everybody seemed to have some knowledge or skill the others lacked, or at least hadn’t paid attention to. That kept us from eating poisoned fruit or being strangled by a carnivorous vine. It was a problem a lot like this one, but with commonality of training.”
“You don’t approve of Doctor Socolov and me being along, I know,” the priest responded, “but, believe me, it’s part of the mix. Right now I know exactly where we are and what these waters are like. I know where we’re going to land.” He turned and looked at the land that seemed so close and yet was still several kilometers away. “Look at how gloomy and ominous it seems from here, with the clouds ringing and obscuring the mountains. And yet I spent many a summer in those mountains, hiking the trails, looking out on great natural beauty. Some of those peaks are close to six kilometers high. I never got that far, but even from a two-kilometer height down to sea level you can see forever, or so it seems.”
Harker looked at the mountains that seemed to form a ring around the flat plain to which they were now headed. “Do those mountains go around the whole continent?”
Chicanis laughed. “No, of course not! But they’re one of several great ranges on Eden, and the only one that actually does go round in sort of a U-shaped pattern. The passes are almost two kilometers up or higher, and it’s an effective barrier. It’s actually more than one range, and if you saw the maps you’d know that it only seems to make the U here, but, of course, for all practical purposes, it does and is. The landform and its proximity to the coast made it ideal for agricultural growth. You could grow anything in there. I think that’s why our indications are that there are many human survivors about on the plain. By the time they had to crawl out of their holes and forage, the place had been scoured and then the old plants started to grow and bloom once more. It’s all wild now, of course, but I’ll wager I can find the old company patterns.”
The priest had seemed energized since landing on the planet; for all the horrors and the unknown perils to come, he was home.
Harker looked around. The tide from Achilles’s pull was fairly strong, and it would take them in eventually no matter what they did. He wondered, though, what might be lurking below.
“Father, what sort of creatures live in these oceans? Anything we need to be worried about?”
“Not in this close, I shouldn’t think,” the priest replied. “There wasn’t a whole lot of land-based animal life when this world was discovered and developed, but the sea was filled with it. This is a water world, really; the two continents are relatively small, perhaps both of them together making up no more than thirty percent of the surface. Let us just say that the deep ocean creatures are not terribly friendly and are quite large, but that they are also quite alien in form. It’s the small creatures, the viswat as we called them, the ones that have the kind of ecological niche of small fish or shellfish here, that are nasty. They move by the thousands in swarms and they are very hard and have very sharp outlines, and they can cut you to pieces just going by. That doesn’t worry the predators; viswat are near the bottom of the food chain—but they do make it difficult to do ocean swimming.” He sighed. “I suppose the water ecology survived pretty well intact. It’s ironic, in a way. Almost like God was making a comment.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, consider. These Titans, whatever they are, are certainly land-based, and they like the sorts of places we like. So they scour and then remake the land to suit them, as we did, pretty well plowing under what humans built, so the only region that remains pretty much as God made it is the sea. These are the times when one almost questions whose side God is on.”
“How much longer, Harker?” Katarina Socolov called. She looked kind of green but hadn’t thrown up for a while, although perhaps that was because there wasn’t much left to heave.
Harker looked at the beach. “Twenty, thirty minutes, I’d say, unless we pick up speed with this incoming tide.
Don’t worry, Doc. You only wish you could die; you’ll be fine within minutes of our getting to dry land so long as you replace your fluids.”
Father Chicanis looked ahead at where they seemed to be going. “We’d best aim for Capri Point, there,” he said, pointing to a rocky outcrop. “There are some fairly nasty creatures that dwell under the sand and are particularly treacherous after it’s been wet down. That’s real rock there, a kind of shale, and there’s only a small stretch of beach to cover. When we get close, give me a rifle and you handle the boat and supplies.”