Then the day came when we too were to depart for Seevl. I was more nervous about the prospect of this than Alvasund. She said it was because she was involved in the work, had responsibilities and co-workers and a purpose. I supposed this meant that I had had time to think, and when I did I thought about where she was going and what she was likely to be doing. I was filled with a deep sense of dread for her. I could never forget that fugitive glimpse of Alvasund’s final moments of life, projected to me by the presumed living entity that now she was about to investigate — or to intercede with, in the jargon they used.
I needed something to involve me. I did not enjoy hanging around doing nothing while Alvasund was so active. In short, I wished I could find a job, but I was feeling indecisive about that. There were plenty of jobs available in Jethra, and with time I could probably find something that not only suited me but which I would do well. That, however, would place me permanently in Jethra, whereas I wanted to be with Alvasund on Seevl. Everyone I spoke to said jobs were scarce on the island, a place that had been depopulating for many years, and whose economy was mostly at subsistence level.
I wondered if I should make contact with the glass resources laboratory in Ia Town. They were still technically my employers but they now seemed half a world away. I was still trying to decide when Alvasund told me we would be sailing to Seevl the following day.
I had already met the other members of her team: six young people, four men and two women. They were all graduates. One had a master’s degree in psychology, another in geomorphology, another in biochemistry, and so on. The team leader, a woman called Ref, was a doctor of medicine, specializing in vascular anomaly. Alvasund was the only one of the team from an arts background, but her skills in imaging, perspective building and active viability put her second in the team, behind Ref.
Marse too was working in the Authority headquarters building — we were surprised to see him the day after our arrival. Both Alvasund and I were shocked by the change in his appearance. It was only a couple of weeks since that brief meeting on the street in Ørsknes, yet he looked haggard, neurotic, shrunken. He recognized neither of us, even though Alvasund made an effort to sit down with him and speak to him. He barely said a word, would not meet her gaze and answered her questions in subdued monosyllables.
Later Alvasund told me she asked Ref what had happened to him. Ref said that in the previous year Marse was on one of the teams who went to Seevl to carry out preliminary surveys of the towers. At that time, intercession workers were not provided with protective gear. He had been taken off the work when he showed the first signs of psychosis. The Authority staff found him alternative work to do while his condition was assessed — his posting to Ørsknes had been one of these jobs, but his health was now deteriorating rapidly. They were waiting for a place to come free for him at a neuropathology hospital.
‘Do they know what he’s suffering from?’ I asked Alvasund.
She simply stared straight at me, without saying anything. Then I held her to me.
‘It won’t happen again,’ she said. ‘Not now. We have protective gear, probably because of what happened to Marse.’
‘It’s dangerous,’ I said. ‘Must you go through with this?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
The next day, early morning, we were driven to the harbour passenger terminal in an Authority bus, all of us on edge, anticipating, excited, perhaps fearful. I was the only extra person on the team: everyone else had come without their partners.
We transferred to a launch for the trip across to Seevl, although first we had to go through exit formalities. Expecting this to be merely a technicality the group of us entered the border control building in lighthearted mood, but as we tried to pass through the exit channel we were delayed. The officials took a particular interest in Alvasund and myself because we were discovered to be Archipelagian nationals. The officials were suspicious of why we had visited the mainland for such a short time. How had we obtained permission to leave the Archipelago and why now were we departing, and did we intend to make more short trips to and fro across the international border?
They eventually accepted that Alvasund was a paid employee of the Authority, which they appeared never to have heard of, but which qualified her for an exit visa. They wondered aloud and lengthily about who I was, who was paying me, what my intentions were. My role was in their terms undefined. The interrogation, masked in a false bonhomie, seemed to go on for ever. Nothing I told them in answer to their questions seemed acceptable to them.
However, we were all in the end cleared for departure. We walked down through a maze of stairways and passages, finally emerging on the harbour apron. A steel-grey launch was tied up alongside, where our crates and cases were being loaded via a system of conveyor belts. There was a short delay while that was completed. When everything had been stowed below-decks the captain started the engines and the boat moved quickly away from the quay. I saw Ref leaving the wheelhouse. She went to the cabin below, where the others were.
Alvasund and I remained on the upper deck. We both anticipated the presence of islands. We sat together close to the prow, staring ahead at Seevl’s dark bulk.
From Jethra, even from the hotel situated in the centre of the business section of the city, well back from the coast, Seevl had seemed to be so close that it loomed against the city, but once we had eased out past the harbour wall into the choppier waters of the open sea, the island was no longer an oppressive sight. It now looked to be just another island, one of the hundreds Alvasund and I had each passed or sailed close to at different moments in our lives. It was true that the cliffs seemed greyer and steeper than those we normally saw, and that there was a fringe of white breakers around every part of the rocky shore, but to our eyes there was something familiar about it.
The only port on the island was Seevl Town, positioned at the head of a narrow inlet on the south-western corner. While we were staying in the hotel in Jethra I had examined a chart which was in a display panel in the reception area and I knew that to reach the port from Jethra entailed rounding a series of rocky cliffs and landslips called Stromb Head. Once we approached the cliffs in the launch it was apparent there had been many rockfalls over the years. The debris had created a series of shallow shoals stretching a long way out into the sea. A wide diversion was necessary. Also, I knew from the chart that the seas were often rough around Stromb because of a conflict of tides. The shape of the island caused a flow to north and south of it and the two tidal surges met up again near Stromb.
The launch we were in was a modern, stabilized boat, which moved smoothly and quickly through the waves. Standing next to Alvasund on the foredeck, I started to enjoy the voyage, with a pleasant sensation that I was regaining my sea legs after so long on solid ground. The high sides of the deck protected us from much of the headwind. As the boat finally turned past Stromb, it heeled over more sharply than we expected, the high superstructure catching the wind like a pair of sails. The skipper increased the engine revs and started to push at an angle into the waves, cutting directly through the swell.
The launch turned into the inlet almost before we realized we had reached it. The gap in the cliffs was unexpectedly narrow, although once we were through the sea-opening the waters widened and there was room to manoeuvre. The swell here was moderate — the skipper throttled back the engine. Seevl Town was in sight almost at once, a small township, ranked in terraces around the steep and hilly sides of the inlet, predominantly grey like the rocks on which it stood. We chugged smoothly towards it.