“What did the thing look like?” the Tribunal officer wanted to know, at the dinner table, though he asked Aufors, not Genevieve. He made it a point never to speak to Genevieve.
Aufors did his best to describe it. “Like a fish, I think. But very, very large.”
“The seas are full of huge beasts,” said Delganor. “The Frangian sailors have cataloged a great many of them.”
No further incidents of the kind occurred. They woke one morning to find themselves being circled by sea birds, and shortly thereafter they intersected the line of islands, tiny ones, then one larger and greener— the final one in the chain, said the Captain—and beyond it the low dark line upon the sea that marked the edge of Mahahm. They sailed over a flurry of white lace where the ocean surged upon outlying rocks, and then across a bay that stretched deep and blue and empty except for a two-masted ship anchored beside a jetty leading to a small, high-walled enclave.
“The Frangian enclave,” whispered Genevieve to Aufors. “Where the supplies from Haven are delivered.”
Aufors examined the coast. Aside from the Frangian boat, there was nothing on the sea or the coast: no swimmers, no fishermen.
“I should think they would fish that bay,” the Marshal said in a puzzled voice.
“There isno shallow water and the monsters lie just off shore,” Delganor announced. “Not the biggest ones, of course, but even the smaller ones are fearsome.”
The shore itself was barren, pierced here and there with tall, slender watchtowers, like nails fastening the land to the sea. A scattering of black tents marked the tide line, where sheep grazed upon piles of dark seaweed. Beyond the shore stretched a narrow line of dun-gray dunes, then the dun-gray city of Mahahm-qum—ghost-painted here and there with shadow tints of blue and rose—and beyond that nothing but angular rocky hills interrupted by flowing dunes to the limit of their vision. They lowered the ship on a rocky plain a kilometer from the sea, less than half a kilometer from the low town whose tallest structure, a tower covered with faded blue tile, was perhaps twenty meters tall.
No one came to help them moor the ship. Evidently this was expected, for shovels and sheets of canvas were dropped onto the ground, men slithered down swaying ropes to shovel sand onto the sheets, running ropes through loops around their edges to form sandbags that weighed them down. Solar-powered pumps compressed the gas into cylinders, and the gas bag dwindled in size and buoyancy. Other men went down, other bags were filled, until at last the ship could be winched down upon them, a flaccid fowl upon her eggs. The cargo balloon was similarly diminished and fastened down. A short gangway was dropped. They could clearly see the town and tower baking under the hot, yellow sun. The town, seemingly, did not see them.
They waited. The communications man flashed his mirrors at the walls and, when this drew no response, ran out a line of flags. Neither attempt drew any reaction from the town. The sun made a furnace of the sand. Those who had gone outside came in again, under the shade of the gas bag.
“The best thing to do,” said Delganor, “is simply to wait. Any show of impatience will only gratify them.”
Genevieve sat in her chair and stared at the city she had already seen in a vision or a dream. The actuality was, if anything, less attractive than her preconception. Walls and roofs were built of mud. Most buildings were only one story high with barrel-vaulted roofs, some few with groined roofs, fewer yet with wind burnished walls or domes, covered with faded tiles. The taller buildings had projecting beams at the level of the floors. The beams were of Danian cedar, one of the ship’s men said in answer to Aufors’s query, one of the items purchased by the Mahahmbi from Haven. The towers were laid up in circles of mud brick broken by upward spiraling arches that revealed the steps twining around the inside. At the tops were peaked pavilions of poles and faded fabric, also sand worn and tattered, though the banners flying above them bore blazing yellow suns on fields of utter black.