A Door Into Ocean Read Free

Always a first time.”
    Shora, the Ocean Moon. Roald remembered, now. With their herbs and seasilk, moontraders brought holocubes of the women-like creatures who lived in the endless sea, women whose men were never seen, who subsisted on seaworms and could dive deep beyond light’s reach without going mad. Roald had never, believed half of it. Now, a bit of myth had turned solid in front of him. He stood up straight. “Very well, Sharer. Where’s your stonesign?” Her neck bore no mica chips to mark the textile guild.
    â€œWe have no stone. We weave but do not sell,” Merwen explained. “We carry herbs, but we do not trade.”
    The other asked, “Will coral or raftwood do?”
    Insolent as well as inconsiderate. “You’ve no business at all in the marketplace, then.” Roald raised his firewhip in warning.

    â€œYou are a soldier,” Merwen observed. “We too are soldiers, of a kind.”
    â€œMoon soldiers?” Behind him his subaltern’s weapon clicked to standby. The Ocean Moon was not officially under Valan authority, although Valan traders had done as they wished there for forty years. His eyes searched the Sharers. Sterilized Valan women often signed into armed service, but these two wore no uniforms. His eyes narrowed. “Show your weapons.”
    Merwen spread her hands like fans. “What more do we need than what is … inside?”
    Roald’s patience snapped. “Enough talk. Pack up, now, or we’ll do it for you, fast.”
    The Sharers both became very still. The guard shot a dull orange flame to the ground at their feet; sparks flew up to leave black pinpoints smoldering on the base of the spinning wheel. Yet the creatures remained, transfixed, a mosaic frieze. Then color began to drain from their limbs and faces, dissolved like a spent wave upon the sand, and faded through lavender to white at last, the ghastly whiteness of a dead squid dredged from the sea. White they were, but not from fear.
    â€œSir,” whispered his subaltern, “are they diseased?”
    Roald’s skin crawled, and he shifted his weight back. Disease warfare—he knew its history, from the early days when entire planets could succumb to a single virus, and more than one had done so rather than submit to the rule of the Patriarch of Torr. Such a scourge had never touched Valedon, but who knew what still lurked on the uncharted moon? He thought suddenly of his young wife at home: two children, and her gene quotient would permit a third.
    â€œWomen, who are you? What do you want here? What do you bear inside ?”
    No answer. Their bleached faces seemed to stare beyond him to the harbor where the rising tide splashed up at the docks.
    The firewhip fell to his side. Whatever lurked behind those fearless stares, Roald wanted no part of it, even if Rhodochron raged and sent him packing.
    â€œRemember,” he said curtly, “you’ve been warned.” The two men walked stiffly from the square, their shoulder-tip rubies flashing in the midmorning sun.

2
    THE SHARERS SOON regained color, but the villagers avoided them like the whitepox. When Spinel came back the next day, he was amazed to see the pair there again, beneath the netleaf tree.
    â€œHey, Melas,” he called. “What happened? How come the firemerchant let them alone?”
    Melas grimaced under a bushel of potatoes. “Indians in disguise. Some lord or other protects them, mark my words.”
    â€œBut why?”
    â€œHow should I know? Go run off with the other signless boys. I’ve bread to earn, and tax to pay besides.”
    The remark stung him. Torr knows, he should have earned a stonesign by age eighteen, but could he help it if he was no good for any trade?
    The paradox of the moonwomen; he would get it straight yet and show Melas a thing or two. Among the beaded skirts and baggy trousers of the crowd he spotted a patch of gray, the cowled robe