VII
And those isolated settlements, naturally, were the ones the couriers must leave to last…
Obeying Iyosc’s directive, the Guild mustered in force to distribute Gveest’s data concerning food-plants and—against their will—animals that had once been used for food. Scores of volunteers were impressed to make more and ever more copies, enclose them in waterproof capsules, bind them to the saddles of the porps. Meantime the nervograps were exploited to their utmost and beyond; the two which stretched furthest overland shriveled and died. Therefore old techniques had to be revived, so messages were sent by drum, or tied to flighters, or to bladders cast loose on the ocean currents.
“It must have been like this during the Thaw,” Tenthag said suddenly as he, Nemora, Dippid and other couriers readied their porps for departure. Dippid glanced round.
“How do you mean?”
“For the rising waters, put the People of the Sea.”
“Oh, yes!” said Nemora with a harsh chuckle, giving Scudder a final tap on her flank before ascending the saddle. “Eating away at our outlying coasts, while we make desperate shift to salvage what we can on the high ground! I’ve always been in love with open water, but for once I wish I could be a landliver, doing something direct and practical to stem the tide!”
“There’s nothing more practical than what we’re doing!” Dippid snapped. “No matter how much land you cultivate, no matter how many animals you help to breed, you can’t withstand the onslaught singleclawed! We must alert the world, not just a chosen few!”
“Oh, I know that.” She sounded suddenly weary as she secured her travel-harness. “But I have this lust for something basic instead of abstract! I want to puddle in the dirt and watch a chowtree grow! I want to see more life come into existence, instead of darting hither and thither like some crazy winget that doesn’t even drop maggors!”
Her voice peaked in a cry, and to the end of the porp-pens other people checked and gazed at her.
Tenthag, remembering Pletrow at Ognorit, said soberly, “You mean you want a bud.”
“Me?” She shook herself, like one emerging from a swim, and curled her mantle’s edge in wry amusement. “No, since you I’ve grown too accustomed to my solitary life! But what I would like is a bud from Scudder. Never was there such a swift yet docile porp, and now she’s old, and I must train a new one to replace her … Had it not been for this emergency, I’d have asked leave to try and breed her with a wild male. Probably it wouldn’t take, but I’d have liked to try, regardless. As things are, however—Oh, never mind my dreams! There’s work to do!”
And, shouting farewells, she plied her goad and drove the porp to sea.
Watching her go, Dippid said softly, “That’s one problem I hadn’t thought of.”
“You mean her wanting to raise a youngling of Scudder’s as a—what’s the word?—surrogate?” Tenthag suggested.
“Exactly. I suspect there may be many cases like hers, as soon as the implications of what the People of the Sea are doing have sunk in.”
“But they don’t take porps, only briqs and junqs,” said Tenthag, missing the point. “So even if they multiply—”
“Of course they don’t!” Dippid retorted. “Porps are what we couriers have made our own, of all the creatures on the planet! But even before Gveest’s discovery, we were looking forward to our own abolition. Have we not envisaged nervograps across the deepest oceans? Have we not heard of means to transmit images as well as symbols? And are there not scholars as brilliant as Gveest working on the idea of actual flight, with gas-bladders and musculators to carry folk aloft? Oh, I know what you’ll say to that—I’ve heard it often from the youngest couriers! Given that our ancestors were flying creatures, we could adapt to the air! Maybe you could. Not me, not Nemora. Yet it would be something to have passed on certain skills, in navigation, for example … But that’s not what threatens us now: not simple obsolescence. It’s actual disaster, the risk that in two or three generations’ time there won’t be enough sane folk to make new discoveries, there won’t be any news to carry, there won’t be any reports to publish, there won’t be scholars anymore, but just a pullulating mindless mass, alive enough to breed but not well fed enough to reason and to plan.”