The Gradual (24 page)

‘And you say Pheelp made the same mistake?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, he was not as skilled as you thought.’

‘When we interpret the gradual tides that flow between the islands it is an art we perform, not a science we practise. We make honest mistakes. For us, a mistake is a learning skill. In this case it is easily corrected, made not to matter. It requires a short boat trip to one of the small islets. You and me.’

‘I was planning a quiet evening in the town,’ I said. ‘A boat trip would take too long. I am only here on Quy for one night.’

She seemed unconcerned.

‘What you do is what you do. You have paid me.’ She passed the stave back to me. ‘It is your decision.’

Her shrug was the sort that said the decision was mine, but also responsibility for the consequences of it.

‘What does that mean?’ I said.

‘You have accrued another gradual detriment. It may only be removed while you are here.’

‘How much is it? A loss of a few minutes?’

‘A few hours. They seem nothing to you. Perhaps they are. Time does not matter as it elapses. But those few hours are permanent – we can remove them here. They create bias. They always increase future detriments, out of all proportion.’

‘So you don’t agree with my decision?’ I said.

‘It is no problem if you wish to carry a detriment forever. For me no problem.’

‘Then we will do it your way.’

‘I am pleased.’

When I disembarked half an hour later, struggling again with my luggage, there was no sign of Renettia. I followed the group of other passengers to the quay and to the Shelterate & Havenic building. We waited in the hot evening air as we moved slowly forward in turn to have our papers checked. The cicadas were gradually quieting as sunset proceeded. Darkness was falling quickly. I saw the familiar group of adepts sitting on the canopied bench beside the entrance to the building, waiting for business. They were all young, or young-looking, and all were lightly dressed. They were taking little notice of the passengers – in fact, most of them were sitting with their backs turned against us. Two of them had the triangular knife dangling by a silver chain from their belts. Another had the same instrument poking casually out of a back pocket. Renettia was not with them. I did not stare, did not want any of them to notice me or pick me out because they had caught me looking at them.

Pheelp was there. I could not see his face, but I was certain it was him. I recognized his narrow, rounded shoulders, the straggle of hair and the balding patches, the filthy shirt. I had seen him from the back for most of the time I was with him. As I moved slowly forward he contrived to keep his face turned away, almost as if avoiding me.

Did this mean he too had travelled on the
Serquian
from Muriseay?

Inside the Shelterate hall my papers were checked only briefly and when I produced my stave the official gestured it away. I noticed that none of the other passengers around me were carrying staves, so I returned mine to my holdall.

There was a luggage storage area in a room set aside from the main hall. Because I had transferred to my backpack the few things I would need for an overnight stay, I bought a key token and placed everything else inside one of the lockers.

Renettia was waiting for me outside the Shelterate hall.

‘We sail to the little island now. I have arranged a boat.’

‘I’d like to go to my hotel first, and check in.’

Again I saw the displeased look on her face. ‘Give me your stave. We go now.’

‘I want to register at the hotel, and make sure my room is as I reserved it. I won’t be more than a few minutes.’

But seeing the expression on her face I slipped the stave out of my pack and passed it meekly to her.

‘Hotel not option. Check your wristwatch now!’

She turned away from me and set off up the sloping ramp of the quayside. She was holding my stave aloft, like a trophy, or a beacon I should follow.

Feeling stubborn I stayed where I was, pretending to check my watch. After a few more steps she turned back. ‘You following me. Bring all your luggage.’

‘I’ve put it in the lock-up, and I’ll pick it up before I sail tomorrow.’

‘You never want to see it again?’

I argued feebly but there was no resisting her.

I retrieved my bags from the lock-up. Manhandling them as awkwardly and reluctantly as before, I followed her up the concrete slope, away from the harbour and through the cluttered wharves, and after them the narrow streets of the port area. At one point we walked past the hotel where I had reserved a room, but I was learning that while I was with an adept I went where I was told.

Renettia always walked a short distance in front of me, not appearing to calculate or measure in any way. She held her head forward so that she could stare at the ground. Sometimes she appeared to be counting the number of buildings we were passing. She changed her mind several times, returning the way we had just walked. Once, for a short distance, she walked backwards and insisted I should copy her. She always made me follow her moves exactly. She took hold of the wooden blade of the stave several times, fingered it sensitively, stared around, deciding where to walk next. I had no choice but to accept all this, wait for her, follow her. My arms and back were aching.

I was learning something from the adepts at last, though. I was going to have to free myself of some of my luggage. In one of my suitcases, for example, I was carrying the two formal suits I had brought with me to wear – a last-minute thought that at some point I might be called upon to perform or appear in public. I knew now I would never need them. There was no point my hauling them around while I was sailing from one subtropical island to the next. If for any reason I needed formal clothes in the future, I could replace them.

Once started on this line of thinking I remembered the two pairs of patent leather shoes, a seemingly endless pile of socks, dress shirts, neckties – and warm clothes, ridiculous in this world I was now in, but the habits of a lifetime in a cold climate are hard to drop. Then there were the books I had brought and which were buried somewhere in my bags. And there were the many records – for which I had no playing equipment.

I was beginning to wish I had left everything in the lockers in the Shelterate hall, from which by some unexplained means they would allegedly disappear.

The sun had set soon after Renettia led me away from the harbour. We walked down darkened streets, where overhead lamps were intermittent and not bright. Finally we came to the river again. Steps led down to where several small boats were tied up. There were enough lamps on the jetty for us to see, but the river itself was dark. I was nervous of all this but Renettia walked to the far end of a narrow wooden mooring. A motor boat was there.

Looking around at the darkness, I said, ‘Couldn’t we do this better tomorrow, in daylight?’

Again I received the quick look of shedding responsibility, but this time she said, ‘No.’

She climbed aboard ahead of me. It was a familiar moment. Did every accrual of detriment have to be removed by uncharted trips in small boats? I followed her on to the boat and dumped my bags in the passenger well at the back. It was a slightly larger vessel than the one in which Pheelp had taken me around: the engine was inboard, and there was a tiny cabin in the bow.

Renettia gave me the stave to hold, injuncted me never to let go of it, then started the motor. Soon we were out on the dark river, the town on one side and a thickly forested hill on the other. The calm water looked black and our engine was the only sound. We passed other boats moored on the river but they were indistinct shapes. I was nervous of a collision and I stared ahead across the cabin housing, on the alert for other vessels moving about in the gloom. I could not understand how Renettia could steer so confidently.

After a few minutes we emerged into the sea. Almost as if the steep banks had in fact been shading us from the sky, there was a sense of twilight here. We could see ahead. The boat rose and dipped in the gentle swell.

We were steering in the general direction of a tall rocky outcrop far out to sea, presumably one of the islets Renettia had mentioned. I tried to relax, sitting upright on the hard bench around the well of the boat, but leaning out over the side, still watchful for other boats.

Renettia changed direction again, swinging the wheel, and I happened to glance towards her as she did so. She was standing. I saw a glow of brilliant golden light fall on her face and hair, her eyes shining. I stood up beside her to look at the source, and saw to my amazement that the sun, which had set at least half an hour earlier, was now low over the western horizon. It was a steady orange colour, the calm globe of sunset, but far too bright to be stared at. I shaded my eyes with my hand, trying to be certain of what I was seeing, that it was in fact the sun, not some other source of light.

Renettia looked across at me but she said nothing.

We continued to sail across the calm water. Gusts of warm air swept over us. Even the sun seemed to be radiating renewed heat. When I looked again the sun had risen higher still. At first I could think only that I had somehow missed the night, that I had lost consciousness and was now seeing the dawn of the next day. But the sun was looming in the west, the direction from which I had sailed only an hour or two earlier. Then the daylight had been starting to fade.

It was not a sunrise. I was seeing a sunset in reverse.

‘Where you going after you leave Quy?’ Renettia’s abrupt question surprised me, shaking me out of my confusion about what was seeming to happen.

‘Do you mean which island?’

‘Next island, town … it doesn’t matter.’

‘I think it’s Tumo,’ I said. ‘Is that likely?’

‘You tell me.’

‘I meant – is that close to here?’

‘Could be. Don’t you know?’

‘I’m travelling with an itinerary. It’s printed out in a folder, somewhere in one of these bags. I’m going from one island to the next – most of them are just names to me.’

‘Same for me.’

‘I thought you knew where we are.’

‘I’m a gradual adept, not a tour guide.’

‘To be honest I’m not sure what the difference is.’

She swung the wheel suddenly causing the boat to tip and rock. Still worrying about her skill as a sailor I strained to see what it was she had been avoiding, and saw a patch of troubled water dead ahead of where we had been going. The erratic shapes and brittle edges of rocks broke the surface as the swell moved across them. When we were past the danger she turned the wheel again and resumed our former course. I noticed she briefly reached over to touch the wooden surface of the stave.

‘So after Tumo, where?’

‘I can’t remember every detail, every island. I’d have to look in my itinerary.’

‘Where is it?’

‘In one of these bags. Do you need to see it?’

‘No – where are you going, at the end, finally, ultimately?’

‘Temmil. Do you know it?’

‘Choker of Air – what they call the place. You been there already?’

‘On my last trip,’ I said. Of course I knew the patois name, but it was not something that had immediate associations for me.

‘Then you know the place stinks. Volcano fumes.’

‘I never noticed that,’ I said.

‘Lucky. Must have been asleep then.’

‘The fumes are only around the crater. I was taken up there – a tourist excursion. It smells of sulphur dioxide, unsurprisingly. But you can’t smell it in the town. In fact, what I remember best is the scent of flowers.’

She frowned disbelievingly and turned away from me, staring ahead across the waves.

She was making me think of the day of that trip to the summit of the Gronner, then later, looking back across at Temmil from across the strait, on the beach of Hakerline, the island adjacent to it. It was then that my determination to move to Temmil, perhaps forever, had formed. From Hakerline I had seen the plume of grey from the mountain: ash or smoke, whatever it was, but I had never been aware of the smell in the town, and the plume was not normally visible from there. I had been in Temmil Waterside for a few days.

I briefly remembered the night I had spent with the concert pianist, Cea Weller. A twinge of familiar guilt rang through me. Guilt then because of being unfaithful to Alynna, guilt now because the feeling had never left me, even though I had rarely thought about Cea in the years since the tour finished.

There was a long silence from Renettia as the sky brightened and the waves seemed higher, but then she spoke.

‘Your itinerary. You know without adepts, you miss every ferry, lose all your property. Time betrays the eastward traveller.’

‘I’m aware of that,’ I said. ‘The last time I was here I was travelling west.’

‘It’s on your stave. No difference, east, west. You can go south too. Tonight you’ll be safe in your hotel, tomorrow the ship will be there to take you across to the next place.’

‘Will you be on the ship?’

‘Might.’

The air temperature was rising noticeably, from afternoon warmth to midday swelter. I glanced up at the sun again – now it was high in the sky. Filmy white clouds in the stratosphere were skimming past at great speed, semi-transparent, filtering the light. They looked like they had been filmed with a time-lapse camera. There was only a light breeze at sea level and in the open well of the boat, where there was no shade, the radiant heat from the sun was oppressive. The hat was protecting my face and neck, but where my arms were bare I could feel the sun burning down. I was shifting position as the boat moved about in the waves, trying to keep my exposed skin in the shade.

We were now close to the tall outcrop of rocks, steering a wide circle around them. I stared down at the water, knowing how relatively shallow the sea was around any of the islands and anxious about what might be perilously present beneath the surface, but the waves made it too difficult to see anything.

We completed a circuit of the rocks, then, instead of heading back, Renettia took us for a second loop around. After this, I noticed that the sun had passed back through its noontime zenith, and was appearing to head on down towards the east, from where it normally rose. Renettia’s silence was constant. Whenever I glanced at her she was sitting in the stern of the open boat, holding the wheel, staring intently ahead at where we were sailing. She was alert and upright, watching what she was doing.