“If you’re so well grounded in star-lore, you can tell me the interval between conjunctions of Swiftyouth and Steadyman!”
“It depends on our world’s position in its orbit! The year of Swiftyouth is 940 days, that of Steadyman is 1,900, and our own—as you may perhaps know!—is 550.” Clenching her claws, she positively spat the words.
Softening a little, Barratong gave a nod. “Very good! Though I still say Ulgrim is the person you ought to be talking to, not me, a common mariner.”
“The most uncommon mariner I ever met!” blurted Yockerbow.
Pleased, Barratong gave a low chuckle. “I could honestly match the compliment,” he said. “For such a big city, it has precious few people in it worth meeting. I was introduced, though, to some folk called Chimple and Verayze, who do at least base what they say about the history of Ripar on solid evidence.”
“We found it for them!” Arranth exclaimed, then amended hastily, “Well, it turned up in the mud the pumps sucked…”
“Yes, of course: they told me so.” Barratong shook himself and seemed to return to reality from far away. “As it happens, I’m engaged to dine with those two, and it’s dark now. You come with me. I find you, as I just said, interesting.”
Neglected, insulted, the peers had long ago departed in high dudgeon. There was no one else on the sea-bank except a few dogged onlookers and a couple of Barratong’s aides.
“It will be an honor,” Yockerbow said solemnly, and could not resist whispering to Arranth as they followed in the admiral’s brisk pad-marks, “Isn’t this better than being on the outer fringes of some banquet in the Doqal Hall?”
Her answer—and how it carried him back to their time of courting!— was to squeeze his mantle delicately with her claw.
They met with Chimple and Verayze at Iddromane’s bower on the south side of the city, where the plashing of waves mingled with music from a flower-decked arbor. It was blessed with the most luscious-scented food-plants Yockerbow had ever encountered, many being carefully nurtured imports. Even the chowtrees had an unfamiliar flavor.
Yet the admiral paid scant attention to the fare his host offered, and at first the latter was inclined to be offended. Yockerbow too began by thinking it was because, after voyaging to so many fabulous countries, Barratong had grown blase. In a little, though, the truth dawned on him. The signs, once recognized, were unmistakable.
Barratong was in the grip of a vision budded of his vivid imagination, yet founded securely upon fact—a vision of a kind it was given to few to endure without slipping into fatal dreamness. Yockerbow trembled and lost his appetite. Now he understood how Barratong had attained his present eminence.
Musing aloud, the admiral captivated everyone in hearing with words that in themselves were such as anybody might have used, yet summed to an awe-inspiring total greater than the rest of them would dare to utter.
“The ocean rises,” he said first. “It follows that the Freeze is ending. If it began, it can just as well end, correct? So what will follow? We’ve tried to find out. The Fleet has put scouts ashore at bay after cove after inlet and found traces of the higher water-levels of the past. How much of the ocean is lucked up in the polar caps we shall discover when the continued warming of the sun releases it. You here at Ripar, despite your wealth and cleverness—despite your pumps!—will have to drag your pads inland and quarrel for possession of high ground with the folk who already live there. You!”—this to Iddromane—”with all your ancient lore, in your famous Order, why did you not speak of this when you inducted me?”
Iddromane’s notorious composure strained almost, but not quite, to the bursting point. He answered, “Truth is truth, regardless of when it was established.”
“I don’t agree. Truth is to be found out by slow degrees, and the world changes in order to instruct us about truth, to save us from assuming that what was so in the past is necessarily bound to be the case tomorrow, too. I’m sure our friends who study relics of the past will support me, won’t you?” This with a meaningful glare.