Watson, Ian - Black Current 01 (3 page)

 
          
The
dusty complexion of the country did not change markedly till we were almost at
Gangee itself; then quite suddenly green hills bunched up, and foliage
proliferated, and the semi-arid land disappeared—not to be seen again should
we sail on as far as Ajelobo. For the Pecawar section marks the closest
approach to civilization of the eastern deserts that parallel the whole course
of the river from tropics to cooler north, generally at from ten to fifteen
leagues' distance.

 
          
What
was beyond the eastern deserts, further to the east? There was no way of
knowing. Some expeditions had gone into the deep desert, in the past. One or
two disappeared; one or two returned with the hard-won but unexciting news that
the desert just went on and on.

 
          
Gangee,
anyway, is on the very edge of the southern tropics, and is rather a fly-blown
town, of sandstone buildings and rank weeds. It has neither the scoured dry
neatness of Pecawar—with its shady arcades and secluded retreats of courtyards
and fountains—nor the luxuriant bloom-bright tangle of cities further south.
It's neither one nor the other; so it's weedy rather than lush, and stony
without bothering to beautify. Still, I visited the bazaar, and the rather
clammy river-aquarium with
all its
exotic southern
species—frills and teeth and blobs of paint—next to its collection of dourer
northern specimens.

 
          
Then
it was time to sail back down midchannel to Pecawar again.

 
          
The
Sally Argent
carried a complement of
twenty, with one berth still empty; and on the whole my riversisters treated
this apprentice in a brisk and friendly way. The boatswain, Zolanda, was a bit
of a sod at times, usually in the mornings, as though she always woke up with a
headache (and perhaps she did); but my special friend was a rigger, Hali, a
dumpy but energetic twenty-year-old with curly black hair and milky opal eyes:
depending upon the light these either looked enchanting, or else slightly
diseased with incipient cataracts.

 
          
The
voyage downstream was straighter sailing than all the tacking upstream had
been, and swifter with the tail wind. And less than a third of a league to port
flowed
the black current—which was the closest I had
ever seen it, though it wasn't close enough for it to seem anything other than
a thin strip of crepe ribbon laid along the entire midriff of the water.
Actually, the current was about a hundred spans wide.

 
          
Remarkably,
now that I thought of it—for it wasn't something that one generally wondered
about in Pecawar, with only one sample of barren shore opposite—there was no
river traffic at all discernible across the water to the west, not even the
smallest inshore fishing craft, so far as I could see. What's more, there
seemed to be no villages on that other bank—let alone towns—yet the land was
obviously inhabited, judging by the occasional wisp of smoke and, once, a tower
on a hilltop way inland. Didn't they know what boats were, over there?
Or that there were tasty fish in the river?
(And who
were
"they", anyway?)

 
          
I
was relaxing on deck, soaking up the spring sunshine with Hali during a slack
time two days out of Gangee, and staring vaguely at the black current—which was
so much a natural part of the river that it was hard to remember that it meant:
madness,
and
death
—when the events of my secret initiation popped back into my
mind, prompting a question that I hoped was discreetly phrased, so that it
didn't violate my oath on
The Book.

 
          
"Did
you ever eat a black slug, Hali, before you joined the guild?" I asked
quite lazily and casually.

 
          
And
no sooner had I asked the question than I felt as sick as though I had indeed
just crammed a garden slug, fresh from a bed of lettuce, into my mouth and was
trying to swallow the slimy thing. I had to scramble up, rush to the rail and
vomit over the side.

 
          
Hali
was behind me, steadying my shoulders. "All of us," she whispered,
"ask the question once. I was wondering when you would, Yaleen. You see,
we are of the river now; and we obey its rules—we break them at our
peril."

 
          
The
convulsions in my guts were easing.

           
"
Riverside
?" asked a familiarly abrasive voice.
It was Zolanda, of course.
"What, on this titchy little
swell?"

 
          
She
stared at me coolly, as I wiped my mouth; and I realized that she was offering
me an excuse—because she must have known.

 
          
"I'm
all right," I mumbled.

 
          
"Too
much basking in the sun, that's your trouble. Get some work done." And she
set me a whole heap of tasks.

 
          
Of
course, my vomiting was probably all psychological. To violate an oath, or try
to circumvent one—particularly one taken on
The
Book of the River
, which is our whole life, and all there is for us—is a
pretty slimy thing; and essentially in such situations one punished oneself,
and sharpish too. So that night in my bunk, as we rode at anchor, I experienced
an awful dream in which the black current reared up high out of the river like
a serpent, developed a gaping mouth, full of void, and descended on me blindly.

 
          
I
woke up with a cry, convinced that I'd been about to die. Soon a scantily-clad
Hali was comforting me; and presently she was doing so a little too intimately
for my taste—or for my depths of inexperience—so that I cooled off from her
somewhat for a few days, though we still remained friends. And the dream did
not recur; because it didn't need to. I worked at being a good boatwoman.

 
          
And so back to Pecawar, to pick up a load of spices.

 
          
And
home for one night. I even invited Hali home, reasoning that if she liked me,
she might like my twin brother too.

 
          
And
Capsi had gone. Quit the nest.
Trekked off northward,
leaving his panorama of the further shore and his home-made spyglass behind as
though they were but childish toys.

 
          
I
had to spend some time consoling and reassuring Mother and Father—not so much
because Capsi had absconded (a man eventually ought to leave home), nor even
because he had departed unwed, as because of the double desertion within such a
short span of time. True, / would be returning home, but the voyage down to
Umdala and back was a matter of months, not weeks. And who knew whether I would
be returning on the
Sally Argent
at
all? Or if I did stay with the boat, whether it would be sailing as far upriver
as Pecawar the next time?

 
          
I
told Father that I would try to look out for Capsi in Verrino, though this was
a fairly vain undertaking since we would be sailing into and out of Verrino
before Capsi could possibly have reached the town on foot. I was careful not to
promise
to find him, even on the
return trip.

 
          
So
the overnight stay was a rather muted affair, even though Hali did her best to
sparkle. I was only too glad to say goodbye the next morning.

 
          
You
can spot Verrino from a long way upriver on account of its Spire, the natural
rocky column rising from a particularly steep hill behind the town. On top of
the Spire, up hundreds of steps with only a guiderope to stop you falling
off,
was where the little band of observers lived in
presumably spartan circumstances, staring across at the further shore through
telescopes till their eyes grew dim. From the town itself one couldn't see
anything of their activities, and the steep steps were quite a disincentive to
further investigation. I did climb up as far as the base of the Spire itself,
then
gave up, feeling obscurely that I had done my duty. In
any case it was quite impossible that Capsi could be up there yet.

 
          
So
I turned my attention, instead, to exploring the town proper: a pleasant
bustling twisty up-and-down place, with sudden arbours and piazzas, wooden
footbridges hung with clemato and cisca-vine crossing over alleys, which in
turn tunnelled through rock or under buildings, themselves to emerge
unexpectedly at rooftop height: rooftops crammed with terracotta urns of
fuchsias. After the flatness of Pecawar, I adored Verrino, though the place
made my calves and ankles ache. The people scampered everywhere, chattering
like monkeys, many of the men with laden baskets balanced on their heads, the
further to defy gravity—though no one that I saw ever went so far as to shin
down vines as a short cut from one level to the next.

 
          
Yet
scamper about though they might, it certainly wasn't fast enough for
boatmistress Karil, who by the second day was grumbling about demurrage
charges, and by the third was inveighing that we would have to spend the whole
damn week here, the way things were going.

 
          
What
was holding us up was a large consignment of spectacle lenses from the
glassworks and grindery inland—another reason, by the by, in addition to the
towering vantage point of the Spire, why the observers congregated above
Verrino—and since lenses are such a costly item compared with their size, and
since they were bound all the way to Umdala, Karil was loth to sail off and
leave the freighting to a subsequent boat, thus losing a handsome percentage.

 
          
So
the crew were free to roam—one or two to go looking, speculatively, for
possible husbands; those older women such as Zolanda, who were already married
with a husband ensconced in some far port, to go hunting discreetly for a spot
of carnal appeasement and amorous intrigue with married men; and some of the
younger women with whoever took their fancy.

 
          
Naturally,
married men whose wives were absent were bound to be the husbands of other
riverwomen; and you might have thought it was rather poor form for one
riverwoman to have fun with another riversister's man while she was away. But
actually this was something of a game and generally winked at; and when I came
to think of it, it made sense. Some women might be away for months, even as
long as a
year,
and during this time obviously they
nursed desires—as did their spouses back home. Better, much better, that there
should be a kind of covert swap arrangement, all within the embrace of the
guild, even if nobody admitted it publicly.

 
          
But
besides these stranded husbands, there were always a number of adventurous and
available young men—who could hardly look to the girls of their own town to
marry; and this firm custom cast a risky pall over seducing those girls, or
even flirting too boisterously.

 
          
So
the next secret of the guild that I learned—from Hali, who else?—was how to
avoid getting pregnant in foreign ports, a skill without which these
shore-leave adventures could have proved bothersome. A drug, which in river
argot was simply called "Safe" —thus keeping it our own preserve,
should shore ears be wagging— could be extracted by boiling up the entrails of
the barbel-fish.

 
          
Not
that it was any crime to become pregnant, though given the exertions of our
work this could end up by "beaching" a riversister for quite a while;
and you would sometimes see girl children on passing boats, though generally
all kids were left at home in the husband's care.

 
          
Girl
children: that was the real
problem. Boy children could no more sail the river repeatedly than could youths
or grown men— which would mean that boys bom or wombed on the river would, when
they grew up, have to walk all the way to a future wife's town, should she care
to put up with this inconvenience for the sake of love; and sometimes the river
might even take exception to a male foetus well before its term, making the
mother miscarry; and who was to know whether a foetus was male or female? So a
riverwoman contemplating pregnancy generally arranged this with some care, and
beached
herself
for the full term. Many riverwomen
played it safe permanently; and would only consider adopting a family. And many
never bothered marrying at all.

 
          
So,
on what was to be our penultimate evening in Verrino, Hali winked at me.
"Let's try the night life out," she said, and handed me a little blue
phial of fish juice.