“Chance…” the admiral mused, making obvious reference to the gamesters. “Well, one can see why people tossed on the ocean by a life-tune of storms may hew to notions such as luck, but—You, Master Inventor! Do you believe your great achievements were the fruit of accident?”
Cautiously, for the “great achievements” were far behind, Barratong having concluded that his pumps could not easily be adapted for use on a junq, Yockerbow answered, “I think luck must be a different phenomenon from chance. I think the world goes about its own business, and those who are ripe to respond do so, much as a fertile plant catches the spores of its kin from a favorable breeze.”
“Diplomatic as ever!” said the admiral sourly. “How I wish you’d speak your mind openly! If you only knew how I hunger for someone who might amaze me—startle me by voicing one of my own ideas without being prompted! Better yet, mention something I never dreamed of even when I was half-starved as a youth, plodding from city to city in search of knowledge and instruction!”
“Is that how you began your career?” Yockerbow ventured.
“What else but the quest for knowledge would tempt a sane person away from a comfortable home? What else would persuade a landsider to take to the ocean, except the chance of getting to meet more strangers in a shorter time? Oh, I’ve sat with scholars in a score of famous cities, listening eagerly to what they purported to teach the world, and after a few years I realized: no one is making new discoveries any more! My sub-commanders long refused to visit Ripar, because last time the Fleet came so far north the junqs were set on by a gulletfish following the drift of the bergs, and two were lost. I acceded for a while, until I heard rumors about the Order of the Jingfired, and even then I held back until reports of your pumps reached me. I never expected them to be useful aboard a junq, but it was an excuse to swing the support of other commanders behind me. Then the absence of bergs during our trip this year came to my aid, and now they are agreed that if I’ve been successful so far the chances are good that I’ll continue to be so. Myself, I can’t but doubt it. And I have no one I can turn to for sane counsel.”
The last words were added in so low a tone that at first Yockerbow was unsure whether to reply. At length he made his mind up.
“Admiral, I recognize you for a visionary. Such folk have always encountered difficulties. In my humble way, I’ve done the same. But—well, since it wasn’t truly news of my inventions which drew you to Ripar, I deduce it was the hope that the Order of the Jingfired possessed data that you lacked.”
“Was I to know there would be a vacancy in the Order when I chose to turn up? The decision to head north this year was already taken.”
“Then”—boldly—”how did you plan to obtain the Order’s secrets?”
There was a long interval during which one of the outlying scouts reported a huge float of qrill, and the entire Fleet altered course fractionally to take advantage of it. When Barratong replied, there were loud squelching noises in the banner junq’s maw, and now and then the whole of her body rippled longitudinally and let go a puff of foul-smelling gas.
“Had I not been inducted to the Order,” the admiral said at last as though the interruption had not happened, “I did plan to choose Iddromane as my hostage for this voyage, or some other scholar well grounded in the so-called ‘secrets’ of the Order. I’d have relied on his terror during the first storm we met to make him reveal—”
Pride in his own city made Yockerbow risk breaking in. “It wouldn’t have worked!”
“It wouldn’t have been worth it,” Barratong retorted sourly.
Yockerbow was shaken. “You mean there’s nothing worth knowing in what they teach you?”
“I wouldn’t say nothing,” came the judicious answer. “I do accept that, acting as they do to preserve lore garnered in the far past, they have succeeded in assuring the transfer from generation to generation of certain indispensable facts. Of those you meet on the branchways of Ripar, or Grench or Clophical, come to that, or any city, or even as you pass from junq to junq of the Great Fleet, how many folk would you rely on finding whom you could talk to about what really matters—the nature of the universe, the fires of heaven and how they correspond with those down here, the beginning and the end of everything? Hmm? Many would be prepared to debate with you on any such subject, but how few would have solid evidence to back their views!”