“But we saved something worth as much as any city,” said Barratong, and pointed to the glass tube holding the old star-maps, which had miraculously resisted the worst the waves could do.
Embittered, Yockerbow as well as Arranth railed at him, and to all their complaining he responded imperturbably:
“You will die, and I, and all we can create—why not a city? But if there is one thing that deserves to be immortal, it is knowledge. Perhaps in the far future like my web to catch the moon a means will exist to unite past and present, here and there, abolishing distance and anxiety at a blow. We spoke a while back, though—did we not?—of an observatory, and a city we shall dedicate to science?”
“A while back” had been very nearly a full year, and Yockerbow, overcome with misery and privation, had long ago dismissed his proposal to the realms of fantasy. He was amazed to hear the admiral repeat it seriously.
“It’s out of the question after a catastrophe on this scale,” he muttered. “And it isn’t over yet. It may take scores of years before the water-level stabilizes. If all the polar ice melts, there may be no dry land whatsoever.”
“I don’t believe it,” Barratong responded. “But even if that’s so, we shall build continents of floating weed! We’ll not go tamely to an accidental doom! And if we can’t learn about the stars, we’ll learn about ourselves and the life around us!”
He drew himself up stern and tall, and now he did overtop his companions, for their dispirited mood had sorely shrunk them.
“This you must understand at least: we are the Jingfired now.”
Eventually the implications of his words penetrated the dismal fog in Yockerbow’s mind, and he too straightened. He said, “You intend it seriously?”
“Oh, not at once, of course. First we have other duties to attend to. I shall break up the Fleet, and dispatch it to every corner of the world, bearing seed and medicine and knowledge above all. At every port of call my commanders will be instructed to inquire after secure sites where people may remove to, and rescue whoever needs to be conveyed thither. Also they shall diligently search out scientists and scholars, so that when we choose the site for our new city—not this year, not next, perhaps not in our lifetime—our successors will know where to recruit a population for it. Then let them assemble with their books and instruments and do as you, friend Yockerbow, suggested: combine their knowledge so that none be lost.”
“Will you be obeyed in this?” husked Arranth.
“Oh, I think pride will serve to persuade the ones I have in mind.”
“Pride in independence, because they will be in command of their own Fleets, with the right to take wild junqlings and increase them?” Ulgrim’s tone was cynical; for countless generations, it had been a punishable offense to do so.
“In part.” Barratong was unperturbed. “More to the prong, however, pride in ancestry—which I, an ex-landsider, cannot boast of. Think, Ulgrim! Think of how the People of the Sea must already be reacting to the news that their forebears chose correctly! We face nothing worse than storms and tidal waves. If an island we’re accustomed to put in at vanishes, we find another; if the waters rise and swamp what was dry land, so much the better, for where there were isthmi now we find new channels that will take us into undiscovered seas … Oh, we shall be rulers of the western ocean too, and very soon! And will not it make for pride that we give aid to those who boasted of security on land?”
“You think more clearly and more distantly than anyone,” said Ulgrim in a sober voice.
“Not I! Not I! But Arranth and her like. You chided me for not reacting to the fact the world is round! She saw the very stars moving apart like local floes!”
He gave a little crazy laugh. “That’s why I must break up the greatest fleet that ever was. There aren’t enough of us to fight the stars, and after this long melting we’ll be fewer still. We need a score of Fleets, a score-of-scores! We have to be so crowded and so crammed together that we can burst outward from the world—become like these!”