Страница 34 из 77
Beyond this, lastly, it might be mentioned that Gorean society, on the whole, tends to be tradition bound, and that there is little questioning of the wisdom of one's fathers; in such a society individuals usually have an identity satisfactory to themselves, and a place in which they feel comfortable; accordingly they are less susceptible ot the social confusions attendant upon a society in which greater mobility is encouraged and traditonal prestige considerations replaed with materialistic ones. A society in which each is expected to succeed, and it placed under conditions where most must fail, would be incomprehensible, irrational, to most Goreans. This will sound strange, I suppose, but the workers of the arsenal, as long as they make enough to live reasonably well, are more concerned with their work, as craftsmen, than they are with considerabley and indefinitely improving their economic status. This is not to say taht they would have any objection to being rich; it is only to remark, in effect, that it has never occurred to them, no more than to most Goreans, to take very seriously the pursuit of wealth as their universal and compelling motivation; being ignorant, it seems, they, like most other Goreans, are more concerned with other things, such as, as I have earlier noted, the building of fine and beautiful ships. I make no pronouncements on these matters, but report them as I find them. I would note, of course, that these weaknesses, or virtues, of the men of the arsenal are, of tradition, welcomed by the Council of Captains; without them the arsenal could not be as efficiently and ceonomically managed as it is. Again I make no pronouncements on these matters, but report them as I find them. My thinking on these matters is mixed.
Why, I asked myself, should Cos and Tyros consider bringing their fleets against Port Kar? What had changed? But then I recalled that nothing had changed. It was only a rumor, one which, it seemed, recurred at least every year in Port Kar. Doubtless there were similares rumors raising their small stirs, in the councils of Cos and Tyros. I recalled that the words of the seaman had been dismissed. Now, crying to come before the council, was the mad, half-blind shipwright Tersites, a scroll of drawings in his hand, and calculations.
At a word from the scribe at the long table before the thrones of the Ubars, two men put Tersites from the chamber, dragging him away.
Once before he had been permitted to present plans to the council, but they had been too fantastic to be taken seriously. He had dared to suggest a redesign of the standard tarn ship. He had wanted to deepen teh keel, to add a foremast, to change the rowing to great oars, each handled by several men, rather than one man to an oar; he had wanted ven to raises the ram above the waterline. I would have been curious to hear the arguments of Tersites pertinent to these recommendations, but before, when it had become clear how radical and, I gather, absurd were his proposals, he had been hooted from the chamber.
I recall men shouting, "Many men could not all sit through the stroke of an oar! Would you have them stand?" "So great an oar could not even be held by the hands of a man!" "Two masts with their sails could not be quickly removed before battle!" "You will slow the ship if you deepen the keel!" "If many men sit a single oar, some will slack their work!" "What good is a ram that does not make its stroke below waterline?"
Tersites had been permitted that once to address the council because he, though thought mad, had once been a skilled shipwright. Indeed, the galleys of Port Kar, medium and heavy class, carried shearing blades, which had been an invention of Tersites. These are huge quarter-moons of steel, fixed forward of the oars, anchored into the frame of the ship itself. One of the most common of naval strategies, other than ramming, is oar shearing, in which one vessel, her oars suddenly shortened inboard, slides along the hull of another, whose oars are still outboard, splintering and breaking them off. The injured gally then is like a broken-winged bird, and at the mercy of the other ship's ram as she comes about, flutes playing and drums beating, and makes her strike amidships. Recent galleys of Cos and Tyros, and other maritime powers, it had been noted, were now also, most ofte, equipped with shearing blades.
Tersites had also, it might be mentioned, though he had not presented these ideas in his appearance before the council, argued for a rudder hung on the sternpost of the tarn ship, rather that the two side-hung rudders, and had championed a square rigging, as opposed to the beautiful lateen rigging common on the ships of Thassa. Perhaps this last proposal of Tersites' had been the most offensive of all to the men of Port kar. The triangular lateen sail on its single sloping yar is incredibly beautiful.
Tersites had, some five years before, been removed from the arsenal. He had taken his ideas to Cos and Tyros, but there, too, he had met with only scorn. He had then returned to Port Kar, his fortunes exhausted, no place left to him in the arsenal. He now lived, it was said, on the garbage in the canals. A small pittance granted him by the shipwrights, of whm he had been one, was spent in the paga taverns of the city. I dismissed Tersites from my mind.
I had made, since coming to Port Kar, five voyages. Four of these had been commerical in nature. I had no quarrel with the shipping of others. Like the Bosk itself I would not seek for trouble, but, too, like the Bosk, I would not refuse to meet it. My four commercial voyages had been among the exchange islands, or free islands, in Thassa, administered as free prots by members of teh Merchants. There were several such islands. Three, which I encountereed frequently in my voyages, were Teletus, and, south of it, Tabor, named for the drum, which it resembles, and to the north, among the northern islands, Scagnar. Others were Farnacium, Hulneth and Asperiche. I did not go as far south as Anago or Ianda, or as far north as Hunjer or Skjern, west of Torvaldsland. There islands, with occasional free ports on the coast, north and south of the Gorean equator, such as Lydius and Helmutsport, and Schendi and Bazi, make possible the commerce between Cos and Tyros, and the mainland, and its cities, such as Ko-ro-ba, Thentis, Tor, Ar, Turia, and many others.
On these voyages my cargos were varied. I did not, however, in this early period, because of the cost, purchase cargos of great value. Accordingly I did not carry, in these first voyages, any abundance of precious metals or jewels; not did I carry rugs or tapestries, or medicines, or silks or ointments, or perfumes or prize slaves, or spices or ca