“Are we likely to be attacked?” she asked.
“Hardly,” he murmured with a sniff. “For we are on the Lord Paramount’s business.”
Halfway through the journey Genevieve wished they would be attacked, just to break the boredom. The voyage was supposed to take ten to fifteen days by the calendar—depending upon the wind, which kept trying to push them back to Haven—but it seemed to be lasting a year. Each day she did her exercises and ate the dull food which always tasted the same though it was called different things on successive days. Each day she read until her eyes were tired, avoided her father, the Prince, and the Invigilator, none of whom would look at her anyhow, talked to the men on board, the ones who would talk, until she knew all their life stories intimately, played cards with the baby-tender or with Aufors, and at night, tried fruitlessly to sleep. Aufors was her almost constant companion, and she queried him endlessly about his childhood and career and demanded to see the pictures that he carried of his mother and his brothers. Unfortunately, the berths were too narrow to allow double occupancy, even by slender people.
She spent hours watching the sea. The captain, who noticed her boredom, gave her a copy of the chart of islands and suggested she amuse herself by modifying the coastlines as required as they flew over.
“They change a little, all the time, as the ocean rises,” he said.
“Why does everyone say the Inundation is over?” asked Genevieve. “It’s obviously not.”
“For the most part it is. There are no more polar icecaps, not above the ocean, but we believe there is some ice left in caverns at the poles. We don’t expect it to rise much farther, but it’s still useful to modify the charts.”
When they flew low, she could see shadows moving in the water, the shapes of great sea creatures, and sometimes she even saw them at the surface, though always from afar. When Genevieve searched the sea’s surface through her glasses, she occasionally saw a pool of that same glowing gold she had seen in Merdune Lagoon, and at night she sometimes wakened to the sound of singing, a deep and urgent melody, like the song a mountain might sing. With other persons so close around her, she made no attempt to answer. Aufors, queried, said he didn’t hear it. She didn’t ask anyone else.
One day Genevieve and Aufors were on the tiny deck while one of the men was fishing, his line tied to a strut. Something huge caught hold of the line and pulled. The ship tilted to one side, Genevieve and Aufors also fell across the railing where they clung, hanging over the side, staring down at an enormous creature below, one with shining hide and a huge maw that held the line in its teeth. The ship heeled violently with each twitch.
Genevieve leaned out over the sea, hearing it call to her. She loosed one hand and reached out, rising on tiptoes, feeling herself diving . . .
The shipman was clinging to a post, yelling. Aufors braced himself against the rail as the deck tipped toward the vertical and slashed at the line with his dagger. The taut line twanged away, the ship righted itself, Aufors grabbed Genevieve as the Captain came raging onto the deck to find out what had happened.
Genevieve was still bent over the railing, still feeling herself plunging through the air, arms extended over her head, diving . . . diving. There were people in the sea, struggling around the wreckage of a ship, trying to get a huge door open while waves washed around them . . .
“Jenny, get away from that railing,” Aufors cried, pulling her away. “What is it?”
She shook her head, her vision dimming. “It’s … it was a very big fish, wasn’t it?”
“All this excitement,” said Aufors with a forced smile belied by his extreme pallor. “Come away from there.”
She accompanied him, confusedly trying to sort out her feelings. Twice now she had felt that call from the sea. Twice she had seen the people in the waves, struggling. Something that had happened, or would happen. She said nothing to Aufors. He was already upset, and her confusion would only make it worse.