"Uh," he said, "we appear to have run out of sea."
YES.
"And land, too."
The captain tapped the rail. It was grayish, and slightly transparent.
"Uh. Is this wood?"
MORPHIC MEMORY.
"Sorry?"
YOU WERE A SAILOR. YOU HAVE HEARD A SHIP REFERRED TO AS A LIVING THING?
"Oh, yes. You can't spend a night on a ship without feeling that it has a sou-”
YES.
The memory of Fin of God sailed on through the silence. There was the distant sighing of wind, or of the memory of wind. The blown-out corpses of dead gales.
"Uh," said the ghost of the captain, "did you just say `were'?"
YES.
"I thought you did."
The captain stared down. The crew was assembling on deck, looking up at him with anxious eyes.
He looked down further. In front of the crew the ship's rats had assembled. There was a tiny robed shape in front of them.
It said, SQUEAK.
He thought: even rats have a Death . . .
Death stood aside and beckoned to the captain.
YOU HAVE THE WHEEL.
"But-but where are we going?"
WHO KNOWS?
The captain gripped the spokes helplessly. "But . . . there's no stars that I recognize! No charts! What are the winds here? Where are the currents?"
Death shrugged.
The captain turned the wheel aimlessly. The ship glided on through the ghost of a sea.
Then he brightened up. The worst had already happened. It was amazing how good it felt to know that. And if the worst had already happened . . .
"Where's Vorbis?" he growled.
HE SURVIVED.
"Did he? There's no justice!"
THERE'S JUST ME.
Death vanished.
The captain turned the wheel a bit, for the look of the thing. After all, he was still captain and this was still, in a way, a ship.
"Mr. Mate?"
The mate saluted. Sir!"
"Um. Where shall we go now?"
The mate scratched his head.
"Well, cap'n, I did hear as the heathen Klatch have got this paradise place where there's drinking and singing and young women with bells on and . . . you know . . . regardless."
The mate looked hopefully at his captain.
"Regardless, eh?" said the captain thoughtfully.
"So I did hear."
The captain felt that he might be due some regardless.
"Any idea how you get there?"
"I think you get given instructions when you're alive," said the mate.
"Oh."
"And there're some barbarians up toward the Hub," said the mate, relishing the word, "who reckon they go to a big hall where there's all sorts to eat and drink."
"And women?"
"Bound to be."
The captain frowned. "It's a funny thing," he said, "but why is it that the heathens and the barbarians seem to have the best places to go when they die?"
"A bit of a poser, that," agreed the mate. "I s'pose it makes up for 'em . . . enjoying themselves all the time when they're alive, too?" He looked puzzled. Now that he was dead, the whole thing sounded suspicious.
"I suppose you've no idea of the way to that paradise either?" said the captain.
"Sorry, cap'n."
"No harm in searching, though."
The captain looked over the side. If you sailed for long enough, you were bound to strike a shore. And no harm in searching.
A movement caught his eye. He smiled. Good. A sign. Maybe it was all for the best, after all . . .
Accompanied by the ghosts of dolphins, the ghost of a ship sailed on . . .
Seagulls never ventured this far along the desert coast. Their niche was filled by the scalbie, a member of the crow family that the crow family would be the first to disown and never talked about in company. It seldom flew, but walked everywhere in a sort of lurching hop. Its distinctive call put listeners in mind of a malfunctioning digestive system. It looked like other birds looked after an oil slick. Nothing ate scalbies, except other scalbies. Scalbies ate things that made a vulture sick. Scalbies would eat vulture sick. Scalbies ate everything.
One of them, on this bright new morning, sidled across the flea-hopping sand, pecking aimlessly at things in case pebbles and bits of wood had become edible overnight. In the scalbie's experience, practically anything became edible if it was left for long enough. It came across a mound lying on the tideline, and gave it a tentative jab with its beak.
The mound groaned.
The scalbie backed away hurriedly and turned its attention to a small domed rock beside the mound. It was pretty certain this hadn't been there yesterday, either. It essayed an exploratory peck.
The rock extruded a head and said, "Bugger off, you evil sod."
The scalbie leapt backward and then made a kind of running jump, which was the nearest any scalbie ever bothered to come to actual flight, on to a pile of sun-bleached driftwood. Things were looking up. If this rock was alive, then eventually it would be dead.
The Great God Om staggered over to Brutha and butted him in the head with its shell until he groaned.
"Wake up, lad. Rise and shine. Huphuphup. All ashore who's going ashore."
Brutha opened an eye.
"Wha' happened?" he said.
"You're alive is what happened," said Om. Life's a beach, he remembered. And then you die.
Brutha pulled himself into a kneeling position.
There are beaches that cry out for brightly colored umbrellas.
There are beaches that speak of the majesty of the sea.
But this beach wasn't like that. It was merely a barren hem where the land met the ocean. Driftwood piled up on the high-tide line, scoured by the wind. The air buzzed with unpleasant small insects. There was a smell that suggested that something had rotted away, a long time ago, somewhere where the scalbies couldn't find it. It was not a good beach.
"Oh. God."
"Better than drowning," said Om encouragingly.
"I wouldn't know." Brutha looked along the beach. "Is there any water to drink?"
"Shouldn't think so," said Om.
"Ossory V, verse 3, says that you made living water flow from the dry desert," said Brutha.
"That was by way of being artistic license," said Om.
"You can't even do that?"
"No."
Brutha looked at the desert again. Behind the driftwood lines, and a few patches of grass that appeared to be dying even while it grew, the dunes marched away.
"Which way to Omnia?" he said.
"We don't want to go to Omnia," said Om.
Brutha stared at the tortoise. Then he picked him up.
"I think it's this way," he said.
Om's legs waggled frantically.
"What do you want to go to Omnia for?" he said.
"I don't want to," said Brutha. "But I'm going anyway."