The Florians Read online

  The weed was not such a hazard as I might have imagined. Close to the shore we moved amid the tips of the frond-forest, and there was no trouble save when I dipped an oar too deeply and contrived to get weed wound around it. Farther out, when we encountered the floating weed, we found the cohesiveness of the rafts rather less than I had imagined. Instead of the tightly knit mats we had found in the marsh—which one could almost run across—we found much less firmly bound aggregations which continually divided and rejoined, and which would part easily to allow the boat through. The weed making up this loose scum was made up of short, thin branching filaments. One could pick up handfuls of it, squeeze the water out, and be left with a pad of compressed tissue feeling something like blotting paper, but which could be pulled apart very easily.

  The sea seemed preternaturally full of sound. The sound of the wind—hardly more than a breeze—stirring up small waves which lapped the sides of the boat was negligible, and the muted splash of the oars hitting the water was ordinary enough. But there were other splashing sounds, midway between a clean plop and a glutinous gurgle, as vermiform creatures broke the surface and instantly submerged again.

  When I exchanged roles with Karen and moved up to the prow of the boat to guide us, I noticed that the water in front of us had a faint luminosity which disappeared as we cut into it and scattered the tiny organisms responsible. I imagined us leaving a black wake in a softly shining sea, but in fact the luminosity was patchy anyhow, and tended to fade as waves rippled through it. Only on nights of utter calm might the sea take on a radiant sheen stretching evenly for hundreds of miles. And even then, with the sea creatures forever blindly active....

  Nothing is perfect.

  One by one, the lights on the island began to go out. But some remained. Most were dim and yellow because the electric bulbs were not directly opposite the rather narrow windows, but one—the one I came to rely on more and more as a beacon—was pearly and clear. It was a window high in the largest building—the one on the peak. It was probably set just beneath the slanting roof. I wondered, idly, how to characterize that building, which was obviously the home of Floria’s historical architects. A citadel? A university? A fortress? A library? In a metaphorical sense, it was all of them...and perhaps in a literal sense it would have to fulfill all roles before its appointed mission was very much older. Times change, even if plans don’t.

  “How much farther?” asked Karen, not turning around to judge for herself lest she lose the rhythm of the oars.

  “Not far,” I replied, letting myself fall into Florian habits.

  “I don’t feel as if I’m getting any nearer,” she said. Her mood could not exactly be described as sunny. It had been a long day and at times we had lacked a certain bonhomie which seems to be essential to cooperative ventures in speculative heroism. In short, we were a bit pissed off with the whole issue, and maybe with one another as well. However, when needs must....

  And needs very clearly did.

  “It’s easy,” I assured her. “We’re doing fine.”

  “It’s getting bloody cold again. The trouble with weather is that it has no consistency.”

  “Keep hauling on the oars,” I advised. “Work keeps you warm.”

  I leaned over the prow and dabbled my fingers in the water, breaking up the bioluminescent glow a fraction of a second before the boat itself. There was a somewhat louder splash as a worm did its doubling-back flip within inches of the boat. I didn’t see the worm but I saw the ripples.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “Sea monsters,” I replied absently.

  She didn’t believe me.

  “Well,” I said, “maybe just a little one. But out in the deeper water...maybe the warmer water in the tropics...there are no limits to growth. The deep-living scavengers will be able to grow so big as to make the most gigantic squid ever reported on Earth look like something you’d put in a goldfish bowl. They wouldn’t be vicious, of course, but if one of them took sick and drifted up to the surface just as a little rowboat...or an ironclad liner...was making its innocent way home....

  “You’re a real joy to sail with, Alex,” she said.

  “What do you want me to do?” I replied, in a desultory tone. “Sing sea shanties?”

  “You’re so beautiful when you’re mad,” she countered.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to make the obvious reply, but I successfully avoided it. There was, however, nothing further to be said. The island was still “not far” away, but it would still take a lot of rowing to get there. I hoped I wouldn’t have to take a second spell at the oars, but Karen wasn’t about to let me get away with it. Plaguing the same unpracticed muscles a second time made them hurt, and all the blisters rubbed up on my fingers and thumbs burst under the renewed pressure. Even my head began to hurt again.

  But we got to the island. In the end.

  We were lucky, I suppose, in that we didn’t find any jagged rocks or sandbanks, which could have proved a nasty embarrassment, but the seacoast of Floria seemed to be a relatively placid and hazard-free place.

  We landed on a narrow “beach” beneath a shallow sandy cliff. The beach was composed of gravelly pebbles, and when we dragged the boat out of the water we made rather a clatter. The sandiness of the soil face extending into the night above and in front of us was due to the gradual pulverization of the rock by rain. The sand associated with seashores back home is the product of the more careful and extended work of the tides. On Floria, the mills of God were by no means so consistent or so powerful.

  The light in the high window was still visible, and we concluded that the cliff was by no means sheer. It still seemed like a good idea, however, to walk along the shore toward the shallower end of the island and then come back up the steady incline of the central plateau. It was the long way around but there wasn’t any climbing involved and we still had a lot of the night in hand.

  First, though, we searched out a crevice in the cliff—a kind of low-slung shelf rather than a bona fide cave—under which we could conceal the boat. It seemed the appropriate thing to do...I’m certain the Scarlet Pimpernel would have done no less.

  Walking—even walking in the dark—seemed easy after all that arm-work, but general fatigue induced by our long trek through the marshes soon made it painful. We had not gone far before I discovered a distinct limp caused by the fact that my right leg was trying to do more work than my left and was thus suffering more acutely. Karen seemed to have the same problem.

  “Heroism,” I commented, “is a degrading business.”

  But it wasn’t a very big island, and the stars were shining more brightly than they had during the previous night. Curiously, I still found my eyes searching the sky for familiar constellations—almost subconsciously—and inducing a sensation of dislocation which was quite different from the sense of strangeness I experienced during the day, when the whole alienness of the world was exposed in the bright sunlight. I suppose an alien Earth is one thing, but an alien universe—heaven with a new mask—is something different, affecting a different part of you. Perhaps, though, it was only the legacy of all those myths that Karen had quoted to me.

  The settlement on the island was more ordered in structure and layout than anything I had seen on the mainland. The whole complex measured nearly a half mile lengthways and two-thirds of that sideways. Being built at the higher end of the island it gave the impression of being an ornate architectural crown for an eternal natural formation. The individual buildings had little separate identity, being parts of a corporate whole.

  There seemed to be an awful lot of it, when one bore in mind Vulgan’s comment about a “handful” of recruits being taken to the island each year.

  The main building itself was at the northwestern tip of the isle, and the array of minor buildings was spread out on the shallow slope like a bridal train. The main building was more solid than its cohort, and—unlike virtually all edifices we had previously seen—looked structurally fin
ished: unalterable and aloof.

  “They didn’t throw that up in any tearing hurry,” I said. “It’s like a feudal castle,” said Karen.

  “That’s what we have here,” I observed. “An intellectual feudalism. It stands to reason that the acme of architectural achievement would be an impregnable temple of knowledge. I bet they keep the books in vaults, and the students wander around like monks in holy orders.”

  I was semi-serious. But as I was saying it, something pricked at my mind...a jarring note. Into such a system, where exactly did a man like Jason fit? He might be knowledgeable, but he was also tough. Who were his counterparts in Earthly history? Cardinal Richelieu? Savonarola? He didn’t really fit the picture at all. The thought of Jason made me uneasy.

  We made our way slowly and cautiously along the side of the citadel. The ground-floor windows were high, but I suspected that the intention had been to stop people peeping rather than to accommodate seven-foot giants. This place had been built by smaller people, and today’s Florians might be outgrowing its corridors and ceilings...so much for a structure built to outlast eternity.

  Eventually, we found a window with a light that would be accessible if we cooperated. As Karen was a good deal lighter than I, it was I who crouched in order to let her climb on my shoulders.

  Kneeling, with her unsteady feet on either side of my head, I waited for her to report. But all she said was, “Jesus, will you look at that!”

  Under the circumstances, it was not a helpful remark.

  She jumped backward and landed on her feet. Because I was taller I didn’t need as much lift to let me look in through the window, and so she was able to hoist me up for a few seconds simply by cupping her hands and hauling hard when I used them as a step. This way, I had only the barest glance of the contents of the room, but it was enough to let me see what had induced her exclamation.

  I got only the most fleeting impression of the inanimate contents of the room—its furniture and fittings—because my eyes were drawn immediately to its lone human occupant. She was reclining on a large, shallow couch, her body cradled by cushions and her head supported by cushions. She was reading by the light of an electric bulb. The book was a large volume, ill bound but undoubtedly heavy. It had obviously been produced here on Floria. She supported its weight easily, but the fingers with which she was controlling the pages were clumsy. Her hands were massive, but far more massive in terms of bulk than dimension.

  The same thing applied to her body. Its length was difficult for me to estimate but its mass was quite phenomenal.

  She must have weighed at least three times as much as myself. The flesh ballooned out from her frame, seeming to spill out onto the couch like a great fluid mass. Her forearms were thicker than my thighs.

  Her face was folded, because the aggregation of the flesh could not be constrained by the structure of the skull. It was discolored—yellowing in the cheeks and the chin. It was also wrinkled and lined...seemingly the wreckage of a face rather than anything real and alive. There were eyes, and a bulbous nose, and lips showing irregular teeth as breath oozed in and out of her mouth, but the whole impression of the visage was monstrous, hardly human at all.

  I could not judge her age from what I saw...but I could guess....

  When I hit the ground again as Karen released me I had not the presence of mind to save myself from falling. But the sound of the tumble was muffled, and must have gone unheard. We moved on a little way, though, before we risked whispering again.

  “Did you see it?” hissed Karen unnecessarily. “Like one of those goddamn jelly things you fished up out of the swamp mud.”

  “The similarity had struck me,” I murmured. “Everything grows big on Floria...it puts entirely new meaning into the phrase ‘growing old.’”

  “You think...,” she began.

  I interrupted quickly. “No, it’s not just a matter of getting old. It’s a matter of living a sedentary life. The people on the mainland are active—all of them. Everyone is involved in labor, in making things. They manage to strike a kind of balance. But here...the people who stay here, devoting their lives to the conservation and management of the legacy of Earth...they can’t balance it out. They’re completely at its mercy. Like the things in the mud, there’s no limitation on the ways of their growth...except that human bodies aren’t geared to put on mass indiscriminately....

  “It’s obscene,” she said.

  I shook my head slowly, forgetting that it was dark and that the gesture conveyed no meaning. “It’s normal,” I said. They’ve grown accustomed to it. They’re martyrs to it. It’s their price...the price they pay for assuming the burden of imitating God. These people have no problems...they say. And they mean it. They’ve absorbed this into the manner of their living...so far….”

  “But how much longer?” she asked. “If it’s still getting worse....”

  And that, of course, was the big question.

  I didn’t attempt to answer it. You can’t answer questions like that when you’re crouching in the dark and whispering. “Come on,” I said, instead. “Let’s find the door.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It wasn’t locked.

  They weren’t expecting burglars. They had built the place like a fortress, to withstand bombardment and siege, but they hadn’t bolted the door. Maybe they didn’t expect the revolution so soon. Maybe they were in for a big shock before too much water had flowed under the metaphorical bridge.

  As the door clicked behind us we paused to accustom our eyes to the light. It seemed as if it had been dark forever. We were standing in a short hallway illuminated by a naked electric bulb set in the wall at the foot of a narrow staircase leading off to the right. I moved forward to peer up the stairs, and saw that the corridor at the top was also lighted.

  “Must have money to burn,” I muttered. “Wasteful.” Again, I supposed, it was a matter of status symbology. Here, if nowhere else on Floria, the clothing of night had been banished.

  I glanced briefly along the corridor at the doors farther along, and then began to climb the staircase. Karen came after me, and whispered, “Where are we going?”

  “Exploring,” I replied. “I’m going to find that room under the roof with the bright light burning. It was still on when we came along the side of the building, though most of the others had been switched off.”

  “It might only be another fat lady reading in bed,” she said.

  “Not on the fifth floor,” I pointed out. “People built like that don’t climb stairs.”

  She shrugged, obviously being unable to supply a reasoned alternative. Actually, from here on in we were playing it strictly by ear. The object of going to look for the light was really a fake, just to help keep up the illusion that we knew what we were doing.

  The staircase doubled back at each floor, and from every landing corridors extended away in either direction. Each one extended into darkness, for the lights which burned permanently were apparently intended primarily to light the staircase itself.

  The top floor was, as I’d guessed, the fifth. We made our way carefully away from the stair head, feeling in more imminent danger as we moved between doors behind which were supposedly occupied rooms. It didn’t take long to find the one we were searching for, because the door was slightly ajar, allowing a tall, thin beam of light to cut across the deep shadow of the corridor. As we approached, we could hear the sound of voices within.

  Tiptoeing so lightly as not to make the slightest sound, we made our approach. I found that there was sufficient gap at the hinged edge of the door to peep through. I moved to do so, simultaneously extending my hand back to catch Karen and warn her to be still. As I touched her hand I felt her draw the iron bar from her belt. I wanted to tell her to put the damn thing away, but I daren’t make a sound—and in any case, once I realized who and what was in the room my mind was on other things.

  The who was interesting enough. It was Arne Jason in earnest conversation with a young man I hadn
’t seen before. But the what was far, far more interesting...because while Jason was leaning over the young man’s shoulder, the young man was manipulating the controls of a radio transmitter.

  So it was not just a matter of leaving certain technological toys undiscovered, I thought. The Planners had their privileged methods. This was how Jason had found out about us...he may even have picked up our signal from orbit but decided to let it go unacknowledged. And this was how information had traveled so much faster than the express train so that Jason had been on hand at Leander to meet us. Agents of the Planners moved in mysterious ways—ways which were mysterious, at any rate, to the people who were being manipulated.

  “Why don’t you leave it for tonight?” the young man was saying. “I’ll let you know immediately anything comes in.”

  Jason, with the edge of impatience in his voice, said, “How do you expect me to sleep? The whole mainland might be on the brink of falling in step with Ellerich and Vulgan...and all we get is silence. What’s the point of an information system if they won’t use it properly?”

  “Perhaps you’ve overestimated the danger,” suggested the other, with more than a touch of temerity.

  “I’ve underestimated nothing,” said Jason scathingly. “I know what Vulgan and Ellerich are up to even if the idiots that are supposed to be watching them don’t. We have to find out how the loyalties are going to divide, and we have to know tonight, not next week or next year. We’ve nothing on the two Earthmen and I still don’t know which way the Planners are going to jump despite the stuff I fed them. I should never have brought Parrick here...I should have dumped him in the sea and blamed Vulgan.”