Majipoor Chronicles

"Plenty of plants are capable of motion. Minor oscillations of electrical current, causing variances in columns of fluid within the plant's structure — you know the sensitives of northwestern Zimorel? You shout at them and they cringe. Sea-water's an excellent conductor; these algae must pick up all sorts of electrical impulses. Well study them carefully." Joachil Noor smiled. "I tell you, they come as a gift from the Divine. Another week of empty sea and I'd have jumped overboard."

Lavon nodded. He had been feeling it too: that hideous killing boredom, that frightful choking feeling of having condemned himself to an endless journey to nowhere. Even he, who had given seven years of his life to organizing this expedition, who was willing to spend all the rest of it carrying it to completion, even he, in this fifth year of the voyage, paralyzed by listlessness, numb with apathy—

"Tonight," he said, "give us a report, eh? Preliminary findings. Unique new species of seaweed."

Joachil Noor signaled and the Skandars hoisted the tub of seaweed to their broad backs and carried it off toward the laboratory. The three biologists followed.

"There'll be plenty of it for them to study," said Vormecht. The first mate pointed. "Look, there! The sea ahead is thick with it!"

"Too thick, perhaps?" Mikdal Hasz said.

Si

"I mean fouled rotors, captain. If the seaweed gets much thicker. There are tales from Old Earth that I've read, of oceans where the weeds were impenetrable, where ships became hopelessly enmeshed, their crews living on crabs and fishes and eventually dying of thirst, and the vessels drifting on and on for hundreds of years with skeletons aboard—"

Chief Navigator Galimoin snorted. "Fantasy. Fable."

"And if it happens to us?" asked Mikdal Hasz.

Vormecht said, "How likely is that?"

Lavon realized they were all looking at him. He stared at the sea. Yes, the weeds did appear thicker; beyond the bow they gathered in bunched clumps, and their rhythmic writhings made the flat and listless surface of the water seem to throb and swell. But broad cha

The true menace, Lavon thought, is not seaweed but boredom. For months the journey had been so uneventful that the days had become voids that had to be filled with the most desperate entertainments. Each dawn the swollen bronze-green sun of the tropics rose out of Zimroel, by noon it blazed overhead out of a cloudless sky, in the afternoon it plunged toward the inconceivably distant horizon, and the next day it was the same. There had been no rain for weeks, no changes of any kind in the weather. The Great Sea filled all the universe. They saw no land, not even a scrap of island this far out, no birds, no creatures of the water. In such an existence an unknown species of seaweed became a delicious novelty. A ferocious restlessness was consuming the spirits of the voyagers, these dedicated and committed explorers who once had shared Lavon's vision of an epic quest and who now were grimly and miserably enduring the torment of knowing that they had thrown away their lives in a moment of romantic folly. No one had expected it to be like this, when they had set out to make the first crossing in history of the Great Sea that occupied nearly half of their giant planet. They had imagined daily adventure, new beasts of fantastic nature, unknown islands, heroic storms, a sky riven by lightning and daubed with clouds of fifty unfamiliar hues. But not this, this grinding sameness, this unvarying repetition of days. Lavon had already begun to calculate the risks of mutiny, for it might be seven or nine or eleven more years before they made landfall on the shores of far-off Alhanroel, and he doubted that there were many on board who had the heart to see it through to the end. There must be dozens who had begun to dream dreams of turning the ship around and heading back to Zimroel; there were times when he dreamed of it himself. Therefore let us seek risks, he thought, and if need be let us manufacture them out of fantasy. Therefore let us brave the peril, real or imagined, of the seaweed. The possibility of danger will awaken us from our deadly lethargy.

"We can cope with seaweed," Lavon said. "Let's move onward."

Within an hour he was begi

Vormecht said nervously, "Perhaps a change of course—"

"Perhaps," Lavon said. "I'll send a lookout up to tell us how far this mess extends."

Changing course, even by a few degrees, held no appeal for him. His course was set; his mind was fixed; he feared that any deviation would shatter his increasingly frail resolve. And yet he was no monomaniac, pressing ahead without regard to risk. It was only that he saw how easy it would be for the people of the Spurifon to lose what was left of their dedication to the immense enterprise on which they had embarked.

This was a golden age for Majipoor, a time of heroic figures and mighty deeds. Explorers were going everywhere, into the desert barrens of Suvrael and the forests and marshes of Zimroel and the virgin outlands of Alhanroel, and into the archipelagoes and island clusters that bordered the three continents. The population was expanding rapidly, towns were turning into cities and cities into improbably great metropolises, non-human settlers were pouring in from the neighboring worlds to seek their fortunes, everything was excitement, change, growth. And Si

But Lavon was in love with Majipoor and yearned to embrace it all. He had traversed it from Amblemorn at the foot of Castle Mount to Til-omon on the other shore of the Great Sea; and now, driven by the need to close the circle, he had poured all his resources and energies into outfitting this awesome vessel, as self-contained and self-sufficient as an island, aboard which he and a crew as crazy as himself intended to spend a decade or more exploring that unknown ocean. He knew, and probably they knew too, that they had sent themselves off on what might be an impossible task. But if they succeeded, and brought their argosy safely into harbor on Alhanroel's eastern coast where no ocean-faring ship had ever landed, their names would live forever.