I woke up this morning from a nightmare of what would happen if the force barrier failed while we were still in deep space. From somewhere dark and Freudian my subconscious pulled up images of what would happen: the air exploding outwards into nothingness, a great and terrible wind pulling the air from our lungs. The water falling away, the sea forming a vast, fragmenting, boiling and freezing cloud of evaporating ice crystals. The land left bare, the plants blackened and frozen and quite dead, the Generator quiet, the pristine white buildings cracked and tumbledown… and somewhere there was I, asphyxiated, frozen, lungs torn apart from explosive decompression and yet somehow conscious and knowing that one of those flecks of ice drifting slowly away used to be my friends. And the island went on, tumbling slowly, falling through the dark where noone would ever find it…

Gah.

I have got to get some coffee. I’m still half asleep and quite morbid.

The apartment seems odd without the two sealin. That doesn’t make sense. They were only living here for two, three nights. But I suppose those were very significant nights, and I felt some sort of bond with them; all three of us were caught up in events we didn’t understand.

But I remember Black and his itchy nose. It seems so trivial; he kept wrinkling his nose, scratching it, sneezing periodically. My first impression was that he thought I smelt bad, but I quickly realised that it was nothing to do with me. It could be some sort of allergy, I suppose. But through the night, every half hour or so, I’d hear a short, explosive sneeze, followed by a single prolonged sniff, and then a sigh as he went back to sleep—if he was ever awake at all. I found it mildly annoying at the time, but now the apartment seems too quiet.

I’ve looked out the window but they aren’t around. They’ve probably headed on down the coast to get some privacy. I suppose they felt that they’d had enough of being cooped up with, okay, probably a quite smelly alien.

Mmm. Bath. I’ve just realised that now they’ve gone, I can turn the temperature of the pool up…

Now, that is something that makes me grateful for their absence.

[break]

I have itchy feet. Clean itchy feet, now.

Not literally, you understand. But I have a hankering to do something. I can’t just sit around the apartment or wander the island until the Big Ship gets whereever it’s going. I feel that I have to do something productive.

And I have a plan: I’m going to go over and look through the barrier at the stars going by. From here I can’t see anything, really. I’m going to have to be right up close to get a good view. But the island is surrounded by water, which means I’m going to have to build a raft.

I even know how: remember those forests that the megastorm knocked down? Lots of logs there. I bet the moving lianas would make good rope, too. I bet I could easily build a simple raft, tie it together, and paddle over to the force wall.

Right. Let’s go.

[break]

Okay, maybe it wasn’t such a good plan.

I went up to the forest. I quickly found a good tree lying flat in front of me. It looked a mess, but the trunk was about the right size and it was festooned with dead-looking moving lianas.

There was only one problem. Two problems, one at each end of the trunk. At one end was the root ball, pulled out of the ground, and at the other were all the branches. I didn’t have anything to cut the trunk with.

With a sickening slide I felt myself plunge from the good mood that the bath had given me back into depression again. I pulled out some dead lianas—might as well have a look—and headed back to my rock.

[break]

I feel like an absolute idiot. Green’s just gone back into the water, leaving me standing on the beach like a lemon.

While I was sitting on the rock, trying to tie knots in the lianas—and failing, by the way, they’ve gone pulpy and aren’t nearly strong enough—the two sealin suddenly surged out of the water on each side of me, getting me quite wet, and enthusiastically said hello. They looked happier than I’d seen them for days. Well, ever. Black’s gruff mood had returned, but I got the strong impression that it was just a pose; he rolled over and scratched his back against the rock with a most undignified wriggle.

Green started enthusing to me about how nice it was to get back out to the ocean, even if it was limited to a few kilometres around the island. This very quickly segued into an impromptu language lesson; we hadn’t tackled difficult words like ‘good’ or ‘nice’ yet, and she had to substitute ‘true’. (One of the things I like about Green is her willingness to bend the syntax of English to breaking point in order to get the meaning across. She wasn’t particularly interested in using correct English; she was far more concerned with using effective English. And, by god, I would like to see a human linguist do as well in the week or so I’ve known her.)

Eventually she got round to asking what I was doing; I was still playing with the lianas. I explained about the raft, and how it wouldn’t be possible without some way of cutting through trees.

She blinked at me, said, “Wait,” and dashed off for the Hotel. Five minutes later she came back with one of the machines-in-a-bubble, holding it by its mouth handle. She climbed onto the rock, concentrated, and to my utter astonishment a brilliant violet triangular blade of light appeared in front of the machine. She waved her head casually, cutting off a projecting piece of rock, which slid into the sea.

She dropped it by my feet, saying “I set it. You can want and it will cut.” Then she nudged Black and they both dived into the sea again.

The flat piece where the rock projection was is completely smooth when I rub my finger against it.

Oh, well. If Green wants to lend me her pocket knife to cut down trees with, it would be impolite not to take up her offer.

[break]

Five trees down and rolled to the beach.

That cutter is amazing. It’s easy enough to use; hold it gingerly by the handle, which is slightly damp; aim; want at it and wave the blade through the tree. The tree parts like there was nothing there.

The blade appears to be infinitely thin. I can hold it up edge-on to the sun and it very nearly disappears. It’s about fifty centimetres long and ten wide at the base; the flat of it is impenetrable and quite opaque. Cutting feels odd. There’s only any resistance if I try and twist the blade while it’s embedded in the wood.

And the edges it produces are fabulous. They’re so clean. Forget your plane and your sandpaper—a quick swipe with this widget and you have perfect, satin-smooth cleavages, ready for varnishing.

It would also make a dandy short sword. Parry with this and you could chop a thousand-year-old katana, the masterpiece of the swordsmith’s art, in two as if it was air. I’ve been extremely careful to only turn it on when both hands are firmly gripping the handle.

Why would Green, a linguist and historian, want such a fearsome weapon? The answer is completely obvious: to defend herself against me. I am, after all, the same species as the Builders (at least, I’m pretty sure I am), and the sealin are allied with the Enemy.

Although that seems all very remote now.

So I have my logs down by the sea. I even cut the ends into the traditional points, to make it more streamlined. I am going to have to paddle the thing, you know; another log, carefully carved with that amazing blade, became the paddle.

Now I just have to tie them together and I’m ready to go. I have some lianas. Let’s try.

[break]

This sucks.

The lianas are nowhere near strong enough. They’re pretty strong if I just pull them, but try and bend them around too small a curve—like, say, around one of my logs—and the edges crush, start oozing, and then quickly fray until the whole thing parts.

Without something to tie them together with, I don’t have a raft. Oh, the logs float well enough, and I could probably use one as a flotation aid. But I don’t want to swim out to the barrier clutching a knocked-down tree in my arms. I want to paddle out there like the tool user I am. I have hands, damn it, and even the sealin can’t say that. I want to use them.

All right, admittedly I couldn’t do it at all without Green’s magic pocket knife. But it’s a matter of principle.

Now. What else do I have around here that I can tie things together with?

[break]

I do not believe this. There is no way in which this can work.

The raft is ready, hauled up on the beach. It’s tied together with strips of blanket from my apartment.

My first effort was to use my own clothes. I tied two logs together with my shirt at one end and my trousers at the other. That worked, and was reasonably robust. Unfortunately I had now run out of clothes, and I didn’t feel it would be a good idea to tear my only outfit up into strips. The island’s climate under the fake sun was warm, but not that warm.

It was then I first thought of the blankets, but dismissed them immediately—nothing in my apartment was actually real; the bulk of it was just an illusion caused by the force field projectors that were, I assumed, hidden in the walls.

An hour of walking fruitlessly up and down passed before I finally gave in and went and looked at the blankets. They were eminently suitable. Good and strong, although not indestructible; a heavy weave that felt like wool. But of course, they only existed inside the apartment… so I tried taking one outside, to see what would happen. Shortly afterwards I was standing on the grass outside the foyer clutching a blanket that showed no signs whatsoever of dissolving into mist.

Oh well, I thought. If they can do it for the food.

The stitching around the edge thwarted my efforts to tear it up until I got out the cutter. From there it was easy.

But it’s now late afternoon. Night comes quickly, here—it falls with quite a thump—and I really do not want to be out on the water in the pitch dark. It may be calm but I can still drown in it.

So I’m going to leave things until tomorrow before trying the raft out.

[break]

Green and Black came to dinner. Apparently there aren’t many fish big enough to be worth them eating inside the barrier.

The food widget made them a couple of extremely large crab-like things with six legs, thankfully dead, which they crunched into little pieces all over my floor. I hadn’t realised crabs were so messy inside. I got, thankfully, a salad; unfamiliar plants, but it tasted good, and it came with a strange sweet-and-sour dressing that went very nicely with some sharp string-like vegetables. It managed to sustain my appetite despite the two sealin’s assault.

They also ate a human meal, which they persuaded me to order for them; a thick stew, with some more of those bread-stick things. I wasn’t entirely sure that cooked meat would agree with them, but they seemed to enjoy it. They even ate the breadsticks.

And then Green picked up the food widget again, did something to it I didn’t catch, and all the considerable mess was somehow gone, leaving nothing but clean pseudo-sand and some rapidly dissipating smells.

Black, via Green, asked me about the raft. I explained. They asked how I was going to fasten the logs together; I told them about the strips of blanket.

But how could the strips help, they asked. Ah, I said. I was going to tie them together.

Tie? they said.

This led to a demonstration. I swear, I don’t think they’d ever seen a knot before. I did all the knots I could remember, which isn’t very many, while they stared intently at my hands and nosed at the hard little lumps of blanket, arguing furiously. They were absolutely fascinated.

It makes sense, I suppose. A species with no fingers would never develop knotwork; and the Builders and the Enemy would have advanced enough technology that they wouldn’t have needed it.

I could have gone on tying things up for them all night, but I finally managed to kick them out at what was probably about 2330. Green took with her a souvenir; I’d tied a strip of blanket around her tail, just above the flukes, with a bow. She seemed very pleased with it.

[transmit]

Previous page Next page