The Blue World by Jack Vance Page B

failed. We are not criminals; we are simply not
as strong or as wicked as King Kragen.”
    “Are you
aware,” thundered Semm Voiderveg, “that King Kragen
reserves to himself the duty of guarding us from the lesser kragen?
Are you aware that in assaulting the kragen, you in effect assaulted
King Kragen?”
    Sklar Hast
considered; “I am aware that we will need more powerful tools
than ropes and chisels to kill King Kragen.”
    Semm Voiderveg
turned away, speechless. The people looked apathetically toward Sklar
Hast. Few seemed to share the indignation of the elders.
    Ixon Myrex sensed
the general feeling of misery and fatigue. “This is no time for
recrimination. There is work to be done.” His voice broke with
his own deep and sincere grief. “All our fine structures must be
rebuilt, our tower rendered operative, our net rewoven.” He
stood quiet for a moment, and something of his rage returned. “Sklar
Hast’s crime must not go without appropriate punishment. I ordain a
Grand Convocation to take place in three days, on Apprise Float. The
fate of Sklar Hast and his gang will he decided by a Council of
Elders.”
    Sklar Hast walked
away. He approached Meril Rohan, who sat with her face in her hands,
tears streaming down her cheeks.
    “I’m sorry
that your father died,” said Sklar Hast awkwardly. “I’m
sorry anyone died—but I’m especially sorry that you should be
hurt.”
    Meril Rohan
surveyed him with an expression he was unable to decipher. He spoke
in a voice hardly more than a husky mutter. “Someday the
sufferings of the Tranque folk must lead to a happier future for all
the folk, of all the floats … I see it is my destiny to kill King
Kragen. I care for nothing else.”
    Meril Rohan spoke
in a clear, quiet voice. “I wish my duty were as plain to me. I,
too, must do something. I must expunge or help to expunge whatever
has caused this evil that today has come upon us. Is it King Kragen?
Is it Sklar Hast? Or something else altogether?” She was musing
now, her eyes unfocused, almost as if she were unaware of her
father’s corpse, of Sklar Hast standing before her. “It is a
fact that the evil exists. The evil has a source. So my problem is to
locate the source of the evil, to learn its nature. Only when we know
our enemy can we defeat it.”

Chapter 4
    The ocean had never
been plumbed. At two hundred feet the maximum depth attempted by
stalk-cutters and pod-gatherers, the sea-plant stems were still a
tangle. One Ben Murmen, Sixth, an Advertiserman, half-daredevil,
half-maniac, had descended to three hundred feet, and in the indigo
gloom noted the stalks merging to disappear into the murk as a single
great trunk. But attempts to sound the bottom, by means of a line
weighted with a bag of bone chippings, were unsuccessful. How, then,
had the seaplants managed to anchor themselves? Some supposed that
the plants were of great antiquity and had developed during a time
when the water was much lower. Others conjectured a sinking of the
ocean bottom; still others were content to ascribe the feat to an
innate tendency of the sea-plants.
    Of all the floats, Apprise was the
largest and one of the first to be settled. The central agglomeration
was perhaps nine acres in extent; the lagoon was bounded by thirty or
forty smaller pads. Apprise Float was the traditional site of the
convocations, which occurred at approximately yearly intervals and
which were attended by the active and responsible adults of the
system, who seldom otherwise ventured far from home, since it was
widely believed that King Kragen disapproved of travel. He ignored
the coracles of swindlers, and also the rafts of withe or stalk which
occasionally passed between the floats, but on other occasions he had
demolished floats or coracles that had no ostensible business or
purpose.
    Coracles conveying
folk to a convocation had never been molested, however, even though
King Kragen always seemed aware that a convocation was in progress,
and