He said, “Aren’t you ashamed to deny your own? Fifthorch knows me—why don’t the rest of you?”
“We know what we want to know,” said one of them, and there was a rumble of agreement.
“But you can’t! You’re underfed, you’re going crazy! Yet there’s food all around you!” Tenthag clenched his claws in impotent rage.
“We have to keep everything we can spare to trade with the People of the Sea,” said Ninthag obstinately. “Who knows how much they’ll demand for the secret of fertility? We must be sure that there’s enough.”
“But here I am, who was at Ognorit where the secret was discovered, and I bring data due to Gveest himself—free of charge!”
With that shouted boast Tenthag broke through their apathy. They reared back and gazed at him with pitiable eagerness. Even Fifthorch was taken off guard, and gapped his mandibles.
“Is it truly you?” whispered Ninthag, staring wearily. “Your voice, your scent … But it has been so long!” He summoned a last trace of his old authority. “Show what you’ve brought, then! Not to me, for my sight has failed. Where’s Thirdusk?”
“He betrayed us!” shouted Fifthorch. “He fled with the cowards who were prepared to let Neesos die!”
That statement made everything clear to Tenthag. He could picture how it must have been: one faction, the more rational, counseling that life go on as normal, with enough food eaten and enough new crops planted for the next year; the other so obsessed with the lack of new buds as to forget the need to provide for them if they happened, ultimately seizing the goods of their rivals and driving them away. It was much like what had happened at his other ports of call. But in his pith he had hoped that his own homeland might be a little different, a little better…
He’d been wrong. He knew that even as he proffered the documents he had brought, and a half-score of greedy eyes fixed on them as Fifthorch spread them out.
“There’s nothing here to touch the folk!” the latter yelled. “It’s all to do with plants and animals!”
“But if there’s not enough food—”
“We manage well with half the food we used to gobble! We must save the rest to pay the People of the Sea! You’re a coward like Thirdusk! You’re a traitor!”
All at once they were pelting him with insults and trampling his precious message underpad. He could do nothing but turn and flee, or they would have torn him torso from mantle in their fury.
Luckily—luckily!—they were too weak to overtake him on his way to the bay where he had left Flapper. By the time he stumbled into the shallows, he also was weakened by his efforts, and his perception was diminished. Had it not been, he would have reacted to what was happening on the skyline before he remounted his porp and turned her seaward.
Only then, though, and much too late, did he realize what was looming towards Neesos.
Here came the visitors the relic of the folk were waiting for: five junqs, four briqs, with bright banners on poles to tell the world—
WE HAVE THE SECRET OF FERTILITY! AND IT’S FOR SALE!
He crumpled on Flapper’s saddle, utterly dispirited, and offered no resistance when they detached him from his travel-harness, dragged him aboard the commander’s briq, and lashed Flapper to her side with yells of triumph.
He was too busy mourning for a world that never was.
IX
The commander of this raggle-taggle fleet still wore ancient symbols of rank on thongs crossed about his body: a spyglass lacking its objective, a briq-goad worn to a stump. Crusty-mantled from bad food and long exposure to the elements, he interrogated Tenthag about Neesos, wanting to know whether any folk were left, or whether they had all fled as from so many other lonely islands.
“They might as well have run away,” was Tenthag’s bitter answer. “They took leave of their senses long ago. But why ask me? I’m just a visitor, and there they are who can answer for themselves!”
He pointed. Those who had rushed in pursuit of him were milling about on the beach, amazed at the sight of the fleet, and he could almost hear the arguments over who must return to town and collect trade-goods.