The next day Pastor Coffin sent a messenger to the ship. This sullen, black-clad, heavily bearded young man presented Grimes with a sheaf of clumsily printed papers headed PORT REGULATIONS. These Grimes read with interest. There was much repetition. They boiled down, essentially, to a collection of Thou Shalt Nots. The ship's boats were not to be exercised. The ship's crew, of any rank whatsoever, were not to stray from the confines of the spaceport. No materials were to be removed from the spaceport workshop without the written permission of the Pastor. The workshop was not to be used on the Sabbath. And so on, and so on. The next evening Grimes, with Shirl, Darleen and Seiko, proceeded to break regulations. There was, he had already ascertained, a guard stationed at the gate to the spaceport area and other guards making their patrols. But these men did not possess the sharp night sight or the super-keen hearing of the two New Alicians and carried, should they feel the need for illumination, only feebly glimmering oil lanterns. Grimes, of course, was equipped with only normal human eyesight and hearing himself so was obliged to rely upon the faculties of his companions.
He and the girls were dressed in black coveralls and shod in soft-soled black shoes. Their faces and hands were coated with a black pigment that, according to Calamity Cassie, who had concocted it from the Odd Gods of the Galaxy knew what, could be removed by a liberal application of soap and hot water. (Grimes hoped that she was right.) Seiko carried a black bag in which the recording equipment had been packed.
The four of them stood in the after airlock, the illumination in which had been extinguished. They watched the bobbing, yellow light that was the lantern carried by a patrolling guard. The man seemed to walk faster as he approached the ship, was almost hurrying as he passed the foot of the ramp. Probably, thought Grimes, he felt some superstitious dread of these impious strangers from the stars. (Coffin, of course, would have told his people what an ungodly bunch Grimes and his crew were.)
"Now," whispered Shirl.
On silent feet she led the way down the gangway with Grimes close behind her, followed by Darleen, with Seiko bringing up the rear. The night was dark, not even the faintest glimmer of starlight penetrating the thick overcast. Grimes had to keep very close to Shirl, sensing her rather than actually seeing her. When she stopped suddenly he banged into her, kept his balance with difficulty. "What . . . ?" he gasped.
"Shhh!" she hissed.
Around the corner of a building came two patrolmen, their lanterns swinging. They were talking quite loudly. "Waste o' time, tha's what. Tell me, man, what we a-doing here, all blessed night? Wha' does he think that these ungodly out-worlders are a-going to do? Tell me that."
"He knows what he's doing, what he wants. He says that these spacers, ain't like t'others, that they're silky-lovers . . . "
"An" they'll come a creepin' out o' their ship in the middle o' the night to love silkies?" The man laughed coarsely. "Let 'em, I say—long's they leave their women so's we can love them. Did ye set eyes on their wenches? There's one or two o' them black ones as I'd fancy . . . "
"Watch yer tongue, Joel. That's Godless talk, an' you know it. The pastor'll not think kindly o' ye should I pass it on . . . "
The voices faded into the distance.
Twice more, before they reached the spaceport periphery, Grimes and his companions had to freeze into immobility, each time warned by the super-keen senses of Shirl and Darleen in ample time. They did not, of course, go out by the main gate but they scaled the fence, high though it was, without difficulty. On the other side there was bushland but not of the impenetrable variety. But by himself, even in broad daylight, Grimes would have become hopelessly lost. He was grateful when, at last, Shirl told him that it would be safe for him to use his pocket torch at low intensity. At least, now, he was not tripping over roots and getting his face slashed by branches. (It was just as well that these bushes were not thorn-bearing.)
Then, surprisingly, they came to a road, the coast road. They crossed it. There was more brush, then there was a beach, and the smell of salt water and the murmur of wavelets breaking on the shore, and a glimmer of pale phosphorescence at the margin of sea and land.
Seiko lowered the big, black bag to the sand, unpacked it, setting up the audio-visual recorder. Then she kicked off her shoes, shrugged out of her coveralls. Her body was palely luminous—and her black face and hands gave her a wildly surrealistic appearance.
She said, "All ready, John."
Grimes said, "Of course, we can't be sure that they will come."
"They will come," said Shirl.
"Sound carries a long way under the water," said Darleen.
Seiko waded into the sea. She was a long time vanishing from sight; here the beach shelved gradually. At last she was gone, completely submerged. Grimes filled and lit his pipe, walked up and down, staring all the time to seaward. On other worlds, he thought, there would be the running lights of coastwise shipping, but not here. And on other worlds there would be lights in the sky and the beat of engines, but not here. Did the Salemites put to sea at night? They must do so, now and again, he decided, but only on fur hunting expeditions to the silky rookeries. And there must be fishermen. There was so much that he did not know about this planet.
"Here she comes," said Shirl.
Here she came, at first only a glimmer of phosphorescence about her neck, her still-black face invisible against the black sea surface. And then there were her pale shoulders, and then her breasts, and her belly, and her thighs . . . She was not alone, was being followed up to the beach by six great arrowheads of bio-luminescence, six silkies that disturbed the water only enough to actuate the tiny, light-emitting organisms.
She walked up on to the firm sand. The sea-beasts wallowed after. Shirl and Darleen greeted them with musical grunts. The silkies replied. Grimes, squatting over the apparatus, made sure that all was being recorded. He envied his companions their gift of tongues. It seemed almost that those sounds were making sense. There was emotional content; he was sure of that. There was wonder, and there was sadness, and a sort of helpless bitterness.
Then Darleen said, "This is not fair, John. You are being left out of the conversation. I shall interpret what has been said already."
"Please," said Grimes.
"I speak as a silky," sang rather than said the girl. "I speak for the silkies. This is our world, given to us by the Great Being. It is said that, many ages ago, our wise beings, looking up to the night sky, reasoned that there were other worlds, that the lights in the sky were suns, like our sun, but far and far and very far away. And we—no, they—felt regret. We should never know the beings of those other worlds, should never meet them, should never talk with them in the friendship that all intelligent beings must feel toward each other . . . .
"But others preached hope.
"The worlds are many, the sky is vast
"And surely it must come at last
"That friends shall meet and friends shall talk
"And hand in hand in love shall walk . . . "
She laughed, embarrassed. "I am sorry, John; I am no poet. But I tried to translate one of their songs from the olden times. 'Hand in hand in love shall walk' is not, of course, a literal translation—but I had to make it rhyme somehow . . . " "You're doing fine," said Grimes. "Carry on, Darleen."
"I speak as a silky," continued the girl. "And for the silkies. We swam in our seas, and gathered on the meeting places for communion with our fellows, for the fathering and mothering of our children. We sang our songs and we made new songs, and those that were good were fixed for all time in our memories.
"And then came the ship . . . ." She paused, then said, "There is another song. "Came the ship and it gave birth "To the things that walk on earth, "With their sharp blades that hack and slay, "That stab and rip and gut and flay . . . " Shirl interrupted, saying, "I think that we should cut this short, John. Our silky friends are becoming restless; it seems that they must report to their council of elders, which is being held some distance away. And we have to get back to the ship. So I will summarize, without all the poetic language.
"When men, the first colonists, came the silkies were prepared to be friendly. From the sea they watched the strange, land-dwelling beings, decided that they were intelligent like themselves and decided, too, that there were no reasons for hostility between the two races. Men wanted the dry land. So what? They were welcome to it. Even so, they exercised caution. It was quite some time before the first emissaries came lolloping ashore to make contact with the humans, a party of woodsmen who were felling trees to obtain structural timber.
"Some of the humans ran in fear but most did not. The ones who did not run set about the silkies with their great axes. Two silkies out of half a dozen, both of them wounded, made it back to the sea to tell their story.
"But there must have been some misunderstanding, it was decided. There were other attempts at communication—all of them ending disastrously. The silkies decided that the humans just wanted to be left alone. Unfortunately the humans did not leave the silkies alone, although it was not until the start of the fur trade that they became a serious menace . . . ."
And how had the fur trade started? Grimes wondered. Probably some visiting star tramp, whose captain had been given or who had bought a tanned silky skin . . . This curio shown to some friend or business acquaintance of the tramp master, who realized the value of furs of this quality, especially at a time when humanitarians all over the galaxy were doing their best to ensure that practically every fur-bearing animal was well and truly protected . . .
Darleen said, "They ask, can they go now, John?"
"Of course," Grimes told her to tell them. "Thank them for the information. Let them know that it will be passed on to rulers far more powerful than the Pastor Coffin, and that these rulers will take action to protect the silkies. Oh, and say that I shall want more talks. Ask them if they are willing."
There was an exchange of grunts.
Then, "Come to this beach at any time," interpreted Shirl, "and when the not-flesh-and-blood woman calls, we shall come."
The silkies returned to the sea and Grimes and his people commenced their walk back to the ship.