The Jewels of Aptor by Samuel R. Delany (most read books .txt) 📖

"Yes, you, up to the top spar there."

"You can't send him up," Urson called out. "He's never been topside at all before. It's too choppy for any lad's first time up. He doesn't even know ..."

"And who asked you?" demanded the mate.

"Nobody asked me, sir," said Urson, "but—"

"Then you get below before I have you brigged for insubordination and fine you your three gold baubles. Don't you think I recognize dead man's gold?"

"Now look here," Urson roared.

Geo glanced from Argo to the captain. The bewilderment that flooded the face of the Priestess shocked him.

Jordde suddenly seized up a marlin pin, raised it, and shouted at Urson, "Get down below before I break your skull open."

Urson's fists sprang up.

"Calmly, brother bear," Geo began.

"In a bitch's ass," snarled Urson and swung his huge arm forward. Something leaped on Jordde from behind—Snake! The marlin pin veered inches away from Urson's shoulder. The flung fist sunk into the mate's stomach and he reeled forward, passing Urson, with Snake still clawing at his back. He reached the rail, bent double over it, and Snake's legs flipped up. When Jordde rose, he was free of encumbrance.

Geo rushed to the edge and saw Snake's head emerge in the churning water. Behind him, Urson yelled, "Look out!" Jordde's marlin made an inch of splinters in the length of wood against which he had been leaning.

"Not him!" cried Argo. "No, no! Not him!"

But Jordde had seized Geo's shoulder and whirled him back against the rail. Geo saw Urson grab a loose rope behind them and suddenly swing forward, intending to knock Jordde away with his feet. But suddenly Argo moved in the way of his flying body, turned, saw him, and raised her hands to push him aside so that he swung wide of them and landed on the railing a yard from where they struggled.

Geo's feet slipped on the wet boards, and he felt his body suddenly hurled backwards onto the air. Then his back slapped water. As he broke surface, Urson, still on the rail called to him, "Hang on, friend Geo, I'm coming!" Urson's arms swung back, and then forward as he dove into the sea.

Now Geo could see only Argo and Jordde at the rail. But they were struggling. Urson and Snake were near him in the water. The last thing he saw was Jordde suddenly wrest something from Argo's neck and then fling it out into the sea. The Priestess' hands reached for the flying jewel, followed its arc as she screamed toward the water.

Then hands were at his body. Geo turned in the water as Snake disappeared from beside him and Urson suddenly cried out. Hands were pulling him down.

Roughness of sand beneath one of his sides and the flare of sun on the other. His eyes were hot and his lids were orange over them. Then there was a breeze. He opened his eyes, and shut them quick, because of the light. Then he turned over, thought about pillows and stiff new sheets. Reaching out, he grabbed sand.

He opened his eyes and pushed himself up from the beach with both hands spread in warm, soft crumblings. Over there were rocks, and thick vegetation behind them. He swayed to his knees, the sand grating under his kneecaps. He looked at his arm in the sun, flecked with grains. Then he touched his chest.

His hand came to one bead, moved on, and came to another! He looked down. Both the chain with the platinum claw and the thong with the wire cage hung around his neck. Bewildered, he heaved to his feet, and immediately sat down again as the beach went red with the wash of blood behind his eyeballs. He got up again, slowly.

Carefully Geo started down the beach, looking toward the land. When he turned to look at the water, he stopped.

At the horizon, beyond the rocks, was a boat with lowered sails. So they hadn't left yet. He swung his eyes back to the beach: fifty feet away was another figure lying in the sun.

He ran forward, now, the sand splashing around his feet, sinking under his toes, so that it was like the slow motion running of dreams. Ten feet from the figure he stopped.

It was a young black, very dark, skin the color of richly humused soil. The long skull was shaved. Like Geo, he was almost naked. There was a clot of seaweed at his wrist, and the soles of his feet and one up-turned palm were grayish and shriveled.

Geo frowned and stood for a full minute. He looked up and down the beach once more. There was no one else. Just then the man's arm shifted across the sand.

Immediately Geo fell to his knees beside the figure, rolled him over and lifted his head. The eyes opened, squinted in the light, and the man said, "Who are you?"

"My name is Geo."

The man sat up, and caught himself from falling forward by jamming his hands into the sand. He shook his head, and then looked up at Geo again. "Yes," he said. "I remember you. What happened? Did we founder? Did the ship go down?"

"Remember me from where?" Geo asked.

"From the ship. You were on the ship, weren't you?"

"I was on the ship," Geo said. "And I got thrown overboard by that damned first mate in a fight. But nothing happened to the ship. It's still out there, you can see it." Suddenly Geo stopped. Then he said, "You're the guy who discovered Whitey's body that morning!"

"That's right." He shook his head again. "My name is Iimmi." Now he looked out to the horizon. "I see them," he said. "There's the ship. But where are we?"

"On the beach of Aptor," Geo told him.

Iimmi screwed his face up into a mask of dark horror. "No," he said softly. "We couldn't be. We were days away from her...."

"How did you fall in?"

"It was blowing up a little," Iimmi explained. "I was in the rig when suddenly something struck me from behind and I went toppling. In all the mist, they didn't see me, and the current was too strong for me, and ..." He looked around.

"You've been on this beach once before, haven't you?" Geo asked.

"Once," said Iimmi. "Yes, once."

"Do you realize how long you've been in the water?" Geo asked.

Iimmi looked up.

"Over two weeks," Geo said. "Come on, see if you can walk. I've got a lot of things to explain, if I can, and we've got some hunting to do."

Iimmi steadied himself once more, and together they started up the beach.

"What are you looking for?" Iimmi asked.

"Friends," Geo said.

Two hundred feet up, the rocks and torpid vegetation came down to the water, cutting off the beach. Scrambling over boulders and through vines, they emerged on a rock embankment that dropped fifteen feet into the wide estuary of a ribbon of water that wound back into the jungle. Twenty feet further, the bank dropped to the river's surface, and they both fell flat at the edge of a wet table of rock and sucked in cool liquid, watching blue stones and the white and red pebbles shivering six feet below clear ripples.

There was a sound. Both sprang back from the water, turned, and crouched on the rock.

"Hey," Urson said, through leaves. "I was wondering when I'd find you."

Light through branches lay on the gold coins hung against his hairy chest. "Have you seen Snake?"

"I was hoping he was with you," said Geo. "Oh, Urson, this is Iimmi, the other sailor who died two weeks ago."

Both Iimmi and Urson looked puzzled. "Have a drink of water," Geo said, "and I'll explain as best I can."

"Don't mind if I do," said Urson.

While the bear man lay down to drink, Geo began the story of Aptor and Leptar for Iimmi. When he finished, Iimmi asked, "You mean those fish things in the water carried us here? Whose side are they on?"

"Apparently Argo isn't sure either," Geo said. "Perhaps they're neutral."

"And the mate?" asked Iimmi. "You think he pushed me overboard after he killed Whitey?"

"I thought you said he was trying to kill Snake," said Urson, who had finished drinking.

"He was," explained Geo. "He wanted to get rid of all three. Probably Snake first, and then Whitey and Iimmi. He wasn't counting on our fishy friends, though. I think it was just luck that it was Whitey he got rather than Snake. If he can't read minds, which I'm pretty sure he can't, he probably overheard you assigning the bunks for us to sleep in, Urson. When he found out he had killed Whitey instead, it just urged him to get Iimmi out of the way more quickly."

"I could easily have been pushed," Iimmi agreed. "But I still don't see why."

"If there is a spy from Aptor on the ship, then Jordde is it," said Geo. "The captain told me he had been to Aptor once before. It must have been then that he was enjoined into their forces. Iimmi, both you and Whitey had also been on Aptor's shore, if only for a few hours. There must be something that Jordde learned from the island that he was afraid you might learn, something you might see. Something dangerous, dangerous for Aptor, something you might see just from being on the beach. Probably it was something you wouldn't even recognize, something you'd maybe not see the significance of until much later. But probably something very obvious."

Now Urson spoke. "What did happen when you were on Aptor? How were those ten men killed?"

Though the sun was warm, Iimmi shivered. He waited for a moment, and then he began. "We took a skiff out from the ship and managed to get through the rocks somehow. It was evening when we started and the moon, I remember, had risen just above the horizon, though the sky was still deep blue. 'This light of the full moon is propitious to the White Goddess Argo,' she said from her place at the bow of the boat. By the time we landed, the sky was black behind her, and the beach was all silvered by the light, up and down. Whitey and I were left to guard the skiff at the water's edge, and sitting on the gunwales, shoulders hunched in the slight chill, we watched the others go up the beach, five and five, with Argo behind them.

"Suddenly there was a scream, and the first man fell. They came from the air like vultures. The moon was overhead by now, and a cloud of them darkened the white disk with their wings. They scurried after the fleeing men, over the sand. All we could really make out was a dark battling against the silver. There were swords raised in the white light, screams, and howls that nearly sent us back into the ocean. But Argo and a handful of those men left began to run toward the boat. They followed them down to the edge of the water, loping behind them, half flying, half running, hacking one after another down with swords. I saw one man fall forward and his head roll from his body while blood squirted ten feet along the sand, crimson under the moon. One actually caught at her veils, but she screamed and slipped from it into the water now, and climbed back into the boat, panting. You would think a woman would collapse, but no. She stood in the bow while we rowed our arms off. They would not come over the water, apparently, and somehow we managed to get the skiff back to the ship without foundering against the rocks."

"Our aquatic friends may have had something to do with that," said Geo. "Iimmi, you say her veils were pulled off. Tell me, do you remember if she were wearing any jewelry or not?"

"She certainly wasn't," Iimmi said. "She stood there in only her dark robe, her throat as bare as ivory."

"She wasn't going to bring the jewel to Aptor where those monsters could get their hands on it again," said Urson. "But Geo, if Jordde's the spy, why did he throw the jewel in the sea?"

"Whatever reason he had," said Geo, "our friends have given it to me now."

"You said Argo didn't know whose side these sea creatures were on, Leptar's or Aptor's," said Iimmi. "But perhaps Jordde knows, and that's why he threw it to them." He paused for a moment. "Friend, I think you have made an error; you tell me you are a poet, and it is a poet's error. The hinge in your argument that Snake is no spy is that Argo must have dubious motives to send you on such an impossible task, without protection, saying that it would be meaningful only if all its goals were accomplished. You reasoned, how could an honest woman place