Pallahaxi Read online

  At this point mother broke off her quick-fire conversation with Gwilda. “That’s so nice of you, Wolff. You must be delighted to have made such a useful friend, Drove. Run along then, the two of you.”

  We walked down the street side by side and somehow I felt untidy and juvenile beside Wolff. “Did you know that Pallahaxi was founded by the Astans, originally?” he asked. “This is the nearest point to Asta, this side of the world. Pallahaxi was colonized by an Astan chieftain in the Year of Renaissance 673. His name was Yubb-Gaboa. Hundreds of years later the hordes of Erto swept down from the Yellow Mountains and pushed the Astans into the sea.”

  “Couldn’t they swim?”

  “History is a fascinating subject, Drove. I find that in learning about our ancestors I learn a lot about myself and those around me. Don’t you agree?”

  “Uh.”

  “Here we are. Silverjack’s yard. Now, who’s in charge here? Where’s your boat?”

  “Listen, I don’t know. I’ve never been in this place before.”

  Wolff strode confidently into the building and I followed. It was a huge barnlike structure, redolent of wood-shavings and tar, littered with boats in varying stages of completion. Men were working everywhere, bent over benches, crawling under boats. The place was an echoing din of hammering and sawing and seagoing oaths. Everyone ignored us. Wolff tapped the nearest man on the shoulder; he jerked around and peered at us, one-eyed. A huge scar ran down one side of his face from brow to chin.

  I looked away, feeling sick. Congenital deformity we hardly notice in Alika—you see it wherever you look—but the aftermath of physical accident is another matter. I noticed a man nearby with a finger missing; he had probably lost it at work. The noise of the place pressed in on me and I felt surrounded by sickness and horror; then Wolff was nudging me.

  “He says over there. Are you all right? You look a funny colour. Come on.”

  I found myself in a small office and the door slammed shut behind me, abruptly cutting off the din. A man was seated at a desk; on seeing us he rose to his feet and shambled towards us with an air of primitive menace; at first I thought he wore a fur jacket but then I realized he was naked to the waist—and maybe further, for all I could tell. He was the hairiest individual I have ever seen and he had a peculiar convex face; his chin sloped up to his nose and his brow sloped down to it, like a fish. As I stood goggling at him Wolff spoke calmly.

  “You must be Pallahaxi-Silverjack. Is the boat for Alika-Drove ready yet?”

  The brute—who had appeared to be about to dismember us—stopped in his tracks. Under his hair, a wide mouth appeared.

  “Why yes, lads. Of course it’s ready. Never let it be said that Silverjack’s late with a boat. Follow me. Follow me.”

  He led us through the yard, down to the water’s edge. There, a few paces from the lapping waves, lay the most beautiful boat I have ever seen. It was painted blue outside and varnished within. In the early summer twilight it seemed to glow. It was flat-bottomed and tallmasted, and looked fast, expertly designed to skim the surface of the grume. It was about four paces long, small enough for me to sail single-handed but large enough to take at least three passengers, if I so desired. “Looks all right,” said Wolff.

  “Finest little boat in Pallahaxi,” boomed Silverjack. “I’ll show you how to hoist the sails.”

  “That’s all right,” said Wolff. “I’ve handled boats before.”

  “Many’s the lad I’ve heard say that, and come to grief after,” shouted Silverjack indulgently, hoisting away. I warmed to the man; I had a feeling Wolff had met his match. Pale blue sail flapped in the light breeze; it seemed a pity we had to wait for the grume.

  Wolff eyed the sail. “Lateen rigged,” he murmured, taking up a varnished piece of timber. “This is the centreboard.”

  “No, no,” said Silverjack. “It’s obvious you know nothing about grume skimmers, young lad. That belongs to the dinghy over there. Skimmers have no centreboard. Look at the shape of the hull, now. See those keels, shallow ones, one on either side and one in the middle? that’s all you need with a skimmer. I figure you probably don’t know this part of the world. When the grume runs, you see, the water gets thick.” He made a flat gesture with his palm. “It’s the evaporation which causes it.”

  “I’m quite familiar with Pallahaxi, thank you. I come here often.”

  “Tourist, eh?” Silverjack grinned at Wolff in the friendliest fashion.

  “There you are, you see—it’s a good thing I took the trouble to explain. This boat is built for the grume. If you took it out today you’d have been in big trouble, my lad.” He gripped Wolff ‘s shoulder, roaring with laughter, and secretly I blessed him.

  “There’s very little swell running today,” observed Wolff coldly, squinting at the flat green water of the harbour. He glanced back at the boat. “She has enough freeboard for this weather. I think we’ll take her out, Drove.”

  I was in the grip of personalities I could not control. “Look, don’t you think we ought to wait, Wolff?” I said weakly.

  Silverjack was staring at us. “Whose boat is this, my lads? I was told it was for Drove, but Wolff seems to be running the show.”

  Wolff was gazing at me loftily. “Are you saying you’re scared?”

  My face felt hot as I bent down and took hold of the gunwale. Wolff lifted the other side and we slid the boat into the water. We climbed in, the light breeze filled the sail, we were moving away from the slipway. I caught sight of Silverjack’s hairy back disappearing behind a large upturned boat; he did not look around.

  I forgot Silverjack almost immediately in the thrill of gliding among the moored fishing boats, pleasure craft and dinghies which filled the inner harbour, seeing Pallahaxi from a new angle. Snowdivers watched us from mastheads as we passed, men paused in their work on the west shore and waved to us, sensing—in that strange way that one does—that a maiden voyage was in progress. At the east quay, the smaller fishing boats were offloading their catch directly into the open public market and hundreds of snowdivers jostled for position on the flat roof. Through a gap I caught sight of the Golden Grummet; someone was shaking a cloth out of a window. Peering around the sail I could see the opening to the outer harbour; the steam tram was puffing slowly along the breakwater. A white plume rose from the cab and seconds later the shrill sound of the whistle reached me as we passed a high stone jetty and ran smoothly into the deep blue water of the outer harbour.

  Wolff spoke. “There seems to be a lot of water in this boat,” he said.

  CHAPTER 4

  I was sitting on the stern thwart, holding the tiller, while Wolff sat amidships grasping the mainsheet. We had reached the outer harbour and were running out of the shelter of the cliffs; the breeze was freshening, driving us briskly towards the lighthouse at the end of the breakwater. The water was a little choppy here and every so often a wave slopped over the low gunwales.

  “Bail it out, then, Wolff,” I commanded, exerting my authority as skipper.

  He was fidgeting about nervously. “We don’t have anything to bail with.”

  “It’s only a few drops, anyway.”

  “It’s more than that. The boat’s leaking. It’s gushing in. Look!”

  As I shifted position a river of icy water soaked my foot and cold fear ran up my leg. We were sinking. The water was freezing cold. I looked frantically around for help. We were many paces from the nearest boat; doomed to death from exposure preceded by the terrible onset of insanity as the coldness of the water gradually chilled our bodies and froze our brains.

  Having faced the worst, I was able to devote my attention to more practical matters. “We’ll never reach the breakwater,” I said. To our left, the cliff loomed high and black. “Maybe we could paddle in there, out of the wind. Look, there’s a beach. We could get ashore. It’s not far.”

  “What do we paddle with?” asked Wolff helplessly. All the bombast was knocked out of him
and he looked suddenly shrunken, huddled on the centre thwart hugging himself and shivering as the water rose above his ankles. I could see the whites of his eyes. He started wildly as a snowdiver swooped past us and plunged below the surface; the boat rocked sluggishly.

  “We’ll use the rudder. You get the sail down and I’ll unship the rudder.”

  I twisted around and felt beneath the icy water for the nut securing the pintle. The boat rocked dangerously as Wolff, without warning, flung himself upon me from behind and smashed my face against the transom. I dragged myself away, fighting clear of something clammy and encumbering, receiving a sharp blow on the back of the head and finding Wolff’s crazed eyes staring directly into mine. The cold had got to him, sooner than I’d expected. I pulled my arm free and hit him in the face as hard as I could. He grunted and backed off, scrabbling for the gunwale; as his weight shifted I managed to knee him in the stomach.

  He gasped and I saw the terror in his eyes as he hurled himself at me again, hitting out wildly, screeching like a sea bird. I fell back again, half across the gunwale, averted my head to avoid his blows and saw the long black shape of a scavenger sliding through the water beneath us. I’ll swear its cold eye dwelt on me as it passed by about half a pace below the surface. I turned back and Wolff hit me again. I seized his arm and pulled, and we rolled grappling in the bottom of the boat. Eventually I found myself astride him. His struggles weakened as I gripped his throat and forced his head back towards the water which had risen rapidly as we fought.

  “Drove!” he grunted. “Let me go, you freezer! Pull yourself together. There’s nothing to be afraid of!”

  “Go to Rax!” I held on, but I was less sure of myself. The mad look had died from his eyes and suddenly I wondered if it had ever been there, or whether I had imagined it. “What did you attack me for, then?”

  “Yott attacked me, remember? You h-hit me in the face!”

  “Only after you flung yourself at me.”

  “I didn’t fling myself at you. The sail came down with a rush and I overbalanced. Then you went berserk.”

  “What are you talking about?” I thought about it for a moment while Wolff’s desperate face stared up from the bottom-boards and the water rose higher. It seemed there had been a misunderstanding. I released him, he crawled back to his seat and we eyed each other warily. The sail lay in a crumpled mass between us; the sight of the water rising around it got me moving again. “Try to unship the freezing rudder yourself,” I said irritably.

  We switched positions and Wolff fumbled under the stern, uttering whimpers of fear as the cold struck into his flesh. Soon he straightened up. “I can’t shift it.” He was almost crying. “I can’t shift the freezing thing. it’s stuck.” He stared around; we were under the gaunt black cliffs and I don’t suppose anyone had seen us. “We don’t stand a chance!” wailed Wolff.

  I was diverting my mind with a speculation. The boat was by now about half-full of water while, due to our weight, the water outside had almost reached the top of the gunwale and was lapping over. What would happen next? Would the sea pour in all round in a huge square cataract sending the boat and us plummeting to the bottom? Or would an equilibrium be reached resulting in the boat, though waterlogged, remaining afloat?

  The solution, announced by a cry of dismay from Wolff, was somewhere between these two possibilities. The skimmer filled with frightening suddenness but sank slowly and, in a very short time, stopped sinking, but remained totally submerged. The only items showing above the water were Wolff and I, from the chests up, and the mast. Despite the paralysing cold and consequent fear, I found time to hope that nobody could see me in this absurd position.

  “Wolff,” I said carefully. “Don’t move quickly or you’ll upset the whole thing. Just take the seat from under you and we’ll paddle to that beach. Right?”

  At the same time I groped about under the water and took hold of the stern thwart. The pair of us, shuddering violently, set about paddling an invisible boat to the shore. It was an unusual situation and I wondered if there was something wrong with my theory as we worked away, but judging by the way the surface debris was receding astern, we must have been moving. Eventually the skimmer grounded us, we stepped out and pulled it up the beach.

  “You’re going to have to do some explaining,” said Wolff. “Your father will want to know why you took the boat out.”

  I ignored him and took stock of our position. The cliff rose sheer about fifteen paces back from the water’s edge; we stood on a very small pebble beach some thirty paces long. The cliff was jagged and would have presented no difficulty to an expert, but I am scared of heights and had a suspicion that Wolff felt the same. In any case I didn’t relish the idea of him scaling the cliff, leading the rescue party and being acclaimed the hero. I didn’t mention the possibility of climbing; instead I pointed to a large circular hole about two paces up the cliff, from which dripped a nameless substance.

  “What’s that?”

  Wolff regarded the cloacal thing with distaste. “That’s a sewer.”

  “It’s big for a sewer, isn’t it? It’s big enough to crawl into.”

  “Yes, well you can forget that. I don’t propose to crawl up any sewers, Alika-Drove.”

  I explored our territory further; I was beginning to feel claustrophobic on this narrow strip of beach flanked by sea and cliff. I walked to the extreme eastern end and climbed a large boulder jutting out into the sea, thinking there might be a way round, but merely found a further jumble of rocks, a deep pool among them and tall cliffs above. The cliffs dripped guano from countless snowdivers’ nests.

  I climbed down to the edge of the pool and peered into the depths. It was clear and green—seemingly empty, and I was about to turn away when I thought I saw a movement at the bottom among a nest of waving green fronds. I was looking for a stick to poke about with when a white form darted past me. A snowdiver had seen the same movement. I flinched involuntarily—the bird had passed close to my head—but I heard no splash.

  When I opened my eyes the entire rock pool was opaque and sparkling; the bird’s hindquarters protruded from the surface, transfixed in mid-dive. Its webbed feet were paddling ineffectively and as I watched the movement became spasmodic, then died. I shivered. The whole thing had happened so suddenly—and I might easily have put my hand into that pool. I picked up a stone and threw it; it skittered across the hard scintillating surface, bounded over the far side and splashed into the sea. Dimly I heard Wolff call me but I continued to watch the pool in unhealthy fascination. I had almost given up when abruptly the strange crystalline structure deliquesced to clear water again and the snowdiver was bobbing with the ripples, dead. As I watched, a thin strand of silver-flecked blue thread rose from the bottom of the pool and wrapped itself gently around the bird, drawing it below the surface.

  I climbed back over the boulder, shaken, to rejoin Wolff. He stood with a number of kids who seemed to have materialized from the living rock; they were examining the boat.

  “There’s an ice-devil back there,” I said by way of greeting, then I was silent, staring, as they turned to me. Besides Wolff there was another, smaller boy; and two girls.

  One of the girls was Pallahaxi-Browneyes.

  She looked at me in shy recognition then looked away again; she said nothing and there was nothing I could think of to say either; except to grunt an acknowledgement of the presence of the three of them. The other girl was taller and looked as though she had a good opinion of herself—a female counterpart of Wolff, in fact. The small boy was just that: a scruffy, dirty, small boy, and beneath contempt.

  He was the first to speak. “How can you expect a boat to float if you don’t put the bungs in?” he asked shrilly.

  Mortified, I bent down. He was right. There were two draining holes in the transom into which corks should have fitted. Due to the circumstances of our departure from the boatyard I had forgotten to check. I glanced at Wolff accusingly. He loo
ked straight ahead, flushing a little. “You’re the skipper,” he said distantly. “You ought to know enough to check your own boat before putting to sea, AlikaDrove.”

  “You’re tourists, I suppose,” said the tall girl, putting a wealth of contempt into her words. “Ignorant tourists, trying to make like sailors.”

  “Shipwrecked sailors,” added the small boy.

  “Shut up, Squint. Well, it’s lucky for you we’re around, isn’t that right, Browneyes? We know the country, you see. We live here, all the year round. Right, Browneyes?” I stole a glance at Browneyes and she looked as pretty as the pink twilit sky. I wished the others weren’t there—but even if she and I had been alone, I wouldn’t have had the nerve to speak. She didn’t see me looking at her; she was watching a large fishing vessel disgorging its entrails into the steam tram, and I wondered if maybe she didn’t like me as much as I liked her. But she had recognized me, at least.

  “Right,” said Squint, munching at something.

  “Listen, will you hold your tongue, Squint? Now…” The tall girl regarded us triumphantly. “I suppose You’re relying on us to get you out of this mess you’ve got yourselves into.”

  “They crawled out of that sewer, Drove,” said Wolff wearily. “Like drivets.”

  “Any more of that and we’ll leave you to starve, or go mad with cold. And if you went into that storm drain you’d never find your way out, not without our help—it’s like catacombs.”

  “A boy I knew got himself lost in there once,” piped the irrepressible Squint through an unidentifiable mouthful. “He wandered for days and went stark staring mad and when they found him he was just a skeleton, bleached bones, and the birds had picked out his eyes.”

  The tall girl was silent for an instant as she digested this vivid, if inconsistent, picture; then she nodded approvingly. “I remember that. Do you remember that, Browneyes?”

  Browneyes was still staring out to sea. “Leave them alone, Ribbon, can’t you see they’re wet and cold and if we don’t get them away from here soon they’ll die and if you want that to happen well I don’t.” She ran all this together as a quick gabble and her face was fiery red.