Philip Jose Farmer - The Wind Whales Of Ishmael

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The Wind Whales of Ishmael

by Philip José Farmer

eVersion 4.0 / Scan Notes at EOF

Back Cover:

The earth never stopped shaking and the seas were dried up; the sun was a giant dying and the

moon was falling; and most of life had taken to the air which was itself disappearing. But human nature

had not changed as swiftly as the world in which it existed. . . and where there were whales, a whaler

from another age would always find a home.

With no more noise than of a ghost gliding over the ocean, the sea disappeared.

Night was replaced by day.

The ship Rachel was falling.

And Ishmael, the lone survivor of Ahab's Pequod and now of the Rachel, fell through the empty

sea-space and landed in another world.

Where he landed was a place on Earth, but not of his time. Here, without seas, was a place of

mighty whalers: of harpooners who flew their boats more than sailed them; and whales who soared for

the heights where the air was too thin for men, instead of diving for the deeps. Here, too, was the home

of the Purple Beast of the stinging death, but here also was the key to mankind's future.

Ace Books

A Division of Charter Communications Inc.

1120 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N.Y. 10036

The Wind Whales of Ishmael

Cover art by Kelly Freas.

Printed in U.S.A.

One man survived.

The great white whale with its strange passenger, and the strangled monomaniac its trailer, had

dived deeply. The whaling ship was on its last, its vertical, voyage. Even the hand with the hammer and

the hawk with its wing nailed to the mast were gone to the deeps, and the ocean had smoothed out the

tracks of man with all the dexterity of billions of years of prac-tice. The one man thrown from the boat

swam about, knowing that he would soon go down to join his fel-lows.

And then the black bubble, the last gasp of the sinking ship, burst. Out of the bubble the

coffin-canoe of Queequeg soared, like a porpoise diving into the sky, and fell back, rolled, steadied, and

then bobbed gently. The porpoise had become a black bottle containing a mes-sage of hope.

Buoyed up by that coffin, he floated for a day and a night on a soft and dirge-like sea. On the

second day, the devious-cruising Rachel, in her retracing search af-ter her missing children, found

another orphan.

Captain Gardiner thought Ishmael's story the stran-gest he had ever heard, and he had heard

many. But he had agonizing business to press and little time to wonder. And so the Rachel sailed on her

crazy path, looking for the whaling boat containing the captain's little son. The day passed, and the night

rushed over the sea, and lanterns were lighted. The full moon arose and turned the smooth waters to

patches of sable and sparkle.

The coffin-buoy of Queequeg had been raised to the deck, and there Captain Gardiner had

walked around it, eyeing it queerly, examining from time to time the strange carvings on its lid while

Ishmael told his story.

"Aye, I wonder what the heathen savage wrote when he fashioned these," the captain muttered.

"Curious that an unlettered wild man should make these letters. A prayer to one of his Baal-like gods? A

letter to some being he thinks dwells in the otherworld? Or perhaps these form words which, if uttered,

would open the gateway to some clime or time that we Christians would find very uncomfortable indeed."

Ishmael remembered these speculations. In after times he wondered if the captain, with his last

remark, had not struck deep into the lungs of the truth. Were the twisted carvings which began to slide

and melt if looked at too intently the outlines of a key that could turn the tumblers of time?

But Ishmael did not have much time to think. Cap-tain Gardiner, in consideration of the strain

through which he had gone, allowed him to sleep for the rest of the day and half of the night. Then he was

awakened and sent aloft to the head of t'gallant mast to watch and so earn his keep. With the lantern

blazing at his back, he scanned the sea which, having lost all move-ment, lay like quicksilver around the

Rachel. The wind was dead and so boats had been put out ahead of the Rachel to pull her along, and

the only sound was the splashing of the oars as the men strained and an oc-casional grunt from a

sweating sailor. The air seemed as heavy as the sea, and indeed it had assumed a silvery and heavy

shroud. The moon was full, drifting through a cloudless sky as if through a sluggish stream. Suddenly the

hairs on the back of Ishmael's neck, so accustomed these last few days to this reaction, stood on end.

The tips of the yardarms ahead and below seemed to be haunted with the ghosts of fire. And each of the

three-pointed lightning rods seemed to burn. He turned and looked behind him, and the tips of the

yardarms spouted phantom flames.

"St. Elmo's fire!" a cry arose.

Ishmael remembered that other ship and wondered if this, too, were doomed. Had he been

saved only to be killed shortly thereafter?

The men in the boats quit rowing when they saw the giant candles of the elemental fire, but the

officers in the bows of their boats urged them back to their work.

Captain Gardiner shouted up, "Ishmael, my man, do you see any sign of the lost boat?"

"Nay, Captain Gardiner!" Ishmael shouted back down to him, it seeming to him that his breath

made the nearest taper waver as if it were a candle of genuine fire. "Nay, I can see nothing -- as yet!"

But a moment later he started and gripped the nar-row railing before him. Something to the

starboard had moved. It was long and black, and for a moment he thought that it surely must be the boat,

perhaps half a mile away. But he did not cry out, wanting to make sure and so not gladden the captain

only to destroy his happiness. Thirty seconds later, the black object lengthened out, cutting the

mercury-colored sea with furrows of a lighter silver. Now it looked like a sea ser-pent, and it was so

long and slender that he thought it must be that beast of which he had heard much and seen nothing. Or

perhaps it was the tentacle of a kraken surfaced for some reason known only to itself.

But the black snaky thing suddenly disappeared. He rubbed his eyes and wondered if the

exhaustion of the three days' chase of the white whale and the ramming and sinking of the ship and a day

and a night and half a day of floating on top of a coffin had made him forever after subject to disorders of

the brain.

Another lookout cried out then, "A sea snake!"

Other cries arose, even from the men in the towing boats, who were not able to see nearly as far

as the men on the masts.

From every quarter, long thin black things writhed and spun and slid over the black-and-silver

waters. They seemed destined to drive their lancelike heads into the sides of the hull of the Rachel, and

then to evaporate. At first there were only a dozen; then there were two dozen and soon there were

several hundred.

"What are they?" Captain Gardiner shouted.

"I do not know, Captain, but I don't particularly care for them!" the second mate shouted back.

"Are they interfering with your rowing?" the captain said.

"Only to the extent that the men cannot keep their mind on their work!"

"They may do what they wish with their minds!" Captain Gardiner bellowed. "But their backs

belong to me! Bend to your oars, men! Whatever those things are, they cannot hurt you any more than

the corpo-sants!"

"Aye, aye, sir!" the second mate called back, though not cheerily. "All right, men, you heard the

captain! Dig in your blades and pull! Pay no attention to those mirages! Ah, that is what they are, mirages

of the sea! Phantoms, reflections of things that don't exist! Or, if they do, so far away they can't hurt

you!" The dip of the oars and the grunting of the men was heard again over the still waters and still air.

But now the serpentine "mirages" began to circle, as if they were trying to catch up with their own tails

and swallow them. Around and around they went, cutting deeper and brighter furrows in the sea, or

seeming to do so. And the corposants, the St. Elmo's fire, on the tips of the yardarms and the trines of

the lightning rods, seemed to burn more fiercely. They were no longer phantoms but living creatures

whose breath was hot.

Ishmael moved away from them, pressing his legs and stomach against the hard railing and

looking straight ahead, not wanting to look directly at either of the flames which flanked him.

There was a shriek from below, and a man ran into a hatch as a flame twice as tall as a man, and

bifur-cated, capered after him.

At the same time, the forward tips of the long black circling objects in the sea spouted St. Elmo's

fire. They were like those snaky whales of prehistoric times, the fathers of the present-day round

monsters, blowing out spouts of flaming brimstone.

Ishmael looked to left and right and saw that the tapers at each tip of the yardarm had split and

that one of each pair was dancing along the yardarm to-ward him.

Ishmael grabbed the railing and closed his eyes tightly.

The captain shouted, "Lord have mercy on us! The sea has come alive, and the ship is burning!"

Ishmael dared not open his eyes but he also dared not remain in ignorance of what was

happening. He saw that the ocean surface was a maze of whirling broken circles of black with a flaming

jet at each end. The ship itself, at every point where any object pro-jected upward more than several

inches, was crowned with a flame which no longer danced but gyrated. Around and around the flames

whirled. And the cor-posants which had been doing the minuet toward him had leaped while his eyes

were closed and fused di-rectly above his head. He could not see all of them, because they leaned when

he bent his head to look at them and so most of their "body" -- if they could be said to have a "body" --

stayed out of reach of his eyes, But enough light shone from them so that he could see their outer surface,

and he knew a moment later, on looking down at the officers and crew, that the corposants were gyrating

on top of his head, a slender toe of fire al-most touching the crown of his head.

The dark circling things on the ocean had joined and formed a writhing spiderweb. Illuminated by

the thou-sands of coldly burning tapers at the corners where the snakes had joined, the sea looked like a

cracked mirror.

Ishmael felt that the world was indeed cracking and that the pieces would fall on his head any

moment.

It was a terrifying feeling, one that drove him to pray out loud, which even the events of the last

three days on the Pequod had not made him do.

The flames went out.

The black web disappeared.

There was utter silence.

No man dared say a word or even sigh. Each feared that if he brought the attention of whatever

force it was that crouched above them, he would bring something down that would be worse than death.

A wind blew in from the west, rippling the sea, flut-tering the sails, then pushing them.

The Rachel heeled to starboard; the wind passed; the Rachel righted herself.

Silence again.

The silence and the agony of waiting were beaten out into a thin wire of apprehension.

What was coming?

Ishmael wondered if he had been spared from the horrible but quick doom of the men of the

Pequod for something unimaginably dreadful. Something that God might imagine but would repress in His

mind. What followed could be recalled afterward only be-cause he, Ishmael, could look back and

reconstruct. So that he did not so much remember as imagine. At the time, he could not possibly have

known what was hap-pening. All was strangeness and horror.

With no more noise than of a ghost gliding over the ocean, the sea disappeared.

Night was replaced by day.

The Rachel was falling.

Ishmael was too terrified to cry out, or, if he did cry out, he was too stunned to hear himself.

Falling through air, the Rachel turned over quickly, the weight of the masts and sails revolving her

to star-board because she had been leaning very slightly in that direction when the sea evaporated so

quickly.As if shot from a sling, Ishmael went out into the abyss and then was sinking through the whistling

sea of atmosphere by the side of the ship. He waved his arms and kicked his feet as if he were trying to

swim. The moon was with them, though its companion, night, had deserted it. But the moon was

enormous, fully three times as large, perhaps four times as large, as that he had known.

The sun was at its zenith. It was a sullenly red ball that had swelled fourfold.

The sky was a dark blue.

The air screamed past him and through him.

Below him -- no, below the Rachel -- was a strange craft sailing through the air.

He had no time to learn anything but its alienness and the sensation that it had been built by

intelligence. He did see some human beings running about it, and then the tip of the mainmast of the

Rachel crashed into it, and the rest of the ship followed, and the strange vessel of the air broke in two.

Perhaps a hundred feet below the two vessels, and below him, was what he had thought was the

top of the mountain. It was a vast russet-streaked, mushroom-colored thing which was the plateau-land

of the peak of a mountain that towered miles high.

He struck it, was hurt, and passed through a layer of something like thin flesh.

Again and again, he struck a layer and tore through it, each time feeling a jar that hurt but each

time be-ing slowed.

Then something ropy flashed by. He grabbed for it, missed, felt another ropy thing slide through

his hands, burning them. He cried out, plunged on through layer after layer, struck something solid that

exploded like a balloon, deafening him and filling his nose and burn-ing his eyes with a choking and

burning gas.

His hands closed on something he could not see.

He swung out, far out, almost losing his grip. He blinked his eyes to wash out the pain with tears.

Then he swung back and, still swiftly, but not fatally, fell at the end of a pulpy root attached to a

corpse-colored bladder which was flesh or plant or a mixture thereof.

He was still breaking through paper-thin skins. He understood, without thinking about it, that

there were thousands of bladders of many sizes that must hold up the thing, whatever it was.

The last layer broke beneath his feet so reluctantly that he thought for a moment that he would

have to kick through it. He feared to keep on falling, but he feared even more being stranded inside this

fragile, treacherous being.

Then he went through the hole, the bladder which he was holding sticking for a moment before

his weight pulled it through with a tearing of a skin layer. He was below a vast cloudlike mass of russet

streaks and mushroom-pale tissue. Below him was the edge of a dark blue sea and a jungle. The Rachel

had struck the sea and split into a hundred parts, which were lying on top of the sea as if it were made of

a jelly. The parts of the airship had not yet fallen to the sea. In fact, one part, being carried by the wind

further be-cause, he supposed, it was lighter, would land some-where in the jungle near the sea. The

other would land about half a mile beyond the Rachel.

Before he had fallen another mile -- or so he estimated, though he had no way of knowing for

sure -- he saw the first smash into and then be swallowed up by the jun-gle. It was as if the vegetation

had crawled over it after it had crashed.

The second and smaller half struck the surface of the sea hard enough to split it into a dozen

parts. Some re-bounded and floated westward for a considerable dis-tance before settling down again.

He wondered if he was falling swiftly enough to be smashed against the waters.

It was then that he saw that he was not alone in the sky.

So far away that he could determine only that it was human, but not its features or its sex, another

figure, clinging to the ropy snout of a flesh-colored bladder, was also falling slowly.

Something indefinable made him think that the other survivor was not of the crew of the Rachel.

The other person was higher than he, which meant that he had fallen later than Ishmael. Or

perhaps his bladder was larger than Ishmael's.

During one of his swings, for he was like a pendu-lum whose energy is decaying, he looked

upward past the round of the balloon-bladder. Near the center of the vast mass were several huge holes

torn by the bulks of the Rachel and the two parts of the airship. The holes that he and the other being had

made were invisible.

A moment later he struck the surface of the ocean feet first. He went completely under and came

up chok-ing. The water stung his eyes strongly; what he swal-lowed seemed almost solid with salt.

The bladder had burst on impact, being carried into the water with him. The gas made him cough

even more and his eyes felt as if a white-hot blade had been passed before them.

He found that he did not have to swim or make any special efforts to keep floating. This was a

sea even deader than the Dead Sea of Palestine or the Great Salt Lake of Utah. He could lie on his back

and look up at the great limburger-cheese-colored moon and the enormous red wheel of the sun and not

have to move a muscle.

Yet, though thick with the minerals, the waters moved with a current. The current was not,

however, with the wind but against it. And it was not a steady current. It was formed with the sluggish

waves that wandered westward and did not seem to be of the nature of waves he knew. Though he was

too numb with terror, past and present, to do much analyzing or speculating, he did feel that the waves

were more those of the land than of the sea. That is, they were gener-ated by earthquakes.

Then that strange thought passed, and he slept. Lifted up and lowered gently, moved slowly but

irresistibly to the west, face up, arms crossed (though he did not know that until he awoke) he slept.

When consciousness returned, the sun had not de-scended much from the zenith, though he felt

as if he had slept eight hours or more.

Something bumping into his head had brought him out of a sleep deep in dreams that circled his

wounded mind like sharks around a man thrashing in the water.

He reached up and pushed himself away, sliding only a foot or so in the stiffly yielding waters.

Then he swam to one side and found that he had collided with Queequeg's coffin-buoy. It floated with

only an inch or two draft and seemed to say, "Here I am again, your burial boat, also undestroyed by the

fall." With an effort that left him gasping, he hauled him-self up on top of the box, the carvings allowing

him a purchase for his fingertips. The coffin settled down a few more inches. Lying with his chin against

the edge, he reached down on both sides and paddled toward the shore. After a while, tiring, he slept

again. When he awoke, he saw that the great moon had moved far, but that the sun had not advanced

more than a few degrees.

The vast cloudlike creature through which he had plunged, and one of whose organs he had torn

out, was gone. But in the west another one loomed. This was much lower than the first, and, when it got

closer, he could see that hordes of strange creatures with wings like sails were tearing at it.

There were many different types of eaters, but there were several kinds, similar yet

distinguishable, which he came to call air sharks. Since they were about five thousand feet high, they

could not at that time be seen in detail. But a later meeting enabled him to see them much more closely

than he cared to.

The smallest of the species was about two feet long; the largest, eight to ten feet. All were

scarlet-skinned. All had heads which were enormous in relation to their bodies. These were

torpedo-shaped, and the mouths were split far back with rows on rows of tiny white triangular teeth. The

top of the head bulged out as if internal pressure were about to blow it up and scatter the brains, if any,

for yards around. The analogy was not exaggerated, since the top did contain a bladder filled with

lighter-than-air gas. There was also a huge hump on the body just back of the head, the two humps

creating a dromedary effect that was more sinis-ter than comforting. No man would care to ride

be-tween those hump bulges.

The body was shark-shaped, and the skin that cov-ered the fragile bones was very thin. When

one of the creatures got between Ishmael and the sun, its skele-ton and internal organs would be

silhouetted.

The end of the tail had two vertical fins more like a ship's rudder than a fish's fin. Both extended

so far that they looked heavy enough to drag the air shark's tail down, but they, too, had diaphanous skin

and thin bones.

The beasts apparently were dependent upon the wind for their main means of locomotion, though

they could propel themselves somewhat with a sidewise mo-tion of the tail that enabled the tail fins to be

used as a shark's. The double pair of very long wings, like a dragonfly's, that extended from just behind

the head, could be rotated almost 360 degrees and raised and lowered slowly. The black-and-white

checked append-ages were more sails than wings. But the beasts knew by instinct how to sail

close-hauled against the wind, how to tack, how to do all the maneuvers that human sailors have to be

taught. The great russet-and-mushroom-colored cloud-crea-ture swept overhead, harried and eaten

alive -- if it was alive -- by the multitude of air sharks. Then it was gone to the east, blown toward the line

of purple moun-tains far away.

Ishmael did not know why the first cloud-creature had been undisturbed by the scarlet

check-winged predators and the second attracted so many. But he was glad that they had been absent

when he had been born into this world.

He lay on his back while the coffin-canoe lifted and lowered with the quakes passing through the

heavy waters. After a while, he saw another vast cloud, but this was pale red, and its outlines changed

shape and area so swiftly that he doubted it was anything but a peculiar cloud. And why not peculiar?

Was not every-thing in this world bound to be peculiar, except him-self? And from the viewpoint of this

world, was he also peculiar?

When it passed over him, a tentacle, or a pseudo-pod -- it was too blunt and shapeless to be a

tentacle -- put out from the cloud toward the earth. The sun shone through it so that it looked more like a

beam of dust motes than a living thing.

A few pieces of the pseudopod drifted by him and separated into tiny objects. They did not

come close enough for a detailed examination by him. But against the dark blue sky the red things looked

many-angled in the lower part. The upper part was umbrella-shaped and doubtless acted as a parachute.

Other creatures followed the vast red cloud as bats follow a cloud of insects or as whales follow

a cloud of brit, the tiny creatures that compose the bedrock of all sea life and are swallowed and strained

out of sea water by the mighty right whales.

Indeed, that analogy was not exaggerated. The mon-strous things that spread their fin-sails and

plowed into the red cloud, their giant mouths wide open, must be the right whales of the air of this world.

They were too high for Ishmael to have described them with particularity. But they were

enormous, far larger than the sperm whale. Their bodies were shaped like cigars, and the heads, like the

sharks', were so large they were almost a second body. The ends of their tails supported horizontal and

vertical fin-rudders.

The wind took cloud and cloud-eaters out of his sight.

The sun descended, but so slowly that he feared this world would come to an end before its sun

touched the horizon.

The air became hotter. When he had first crawled up onto the coffin-buoy, he had thought that

the air was just a little too chilly to be comfortable. When he had awakened, he had thought that the heat

was a little too much to be comfortable.

Now he was sweating, and his throat and lips were dry. The air seemed to lack moisture, though

it was directly above the sea. And the shore was still so distant that he could not see it. He could only

float or assist the nat-ural drift with his hands. He began to paddle, but this increased his rate of sweating

and, after a while, he was panting. He lay face-down with his chin on the edge of the coffin, and then he

turned over. Another great red shape-shifting cloud was far overhead with its attendant leviathans of the

atmosphere.

He began paddling again. After about fifteen minutes he saw land ahead, and this renewed his

strength. But hours passed, with the sun seemingly determined to ride forever in the daytime sky. He slept

again and when he awoke the west was definitely a coast with vegetation. Also, his lungs were turning to

dust and his tongue to stone.

Despite his weakness, he began paddling again. If he did not get to the shore soon he would end

up dead on top of the coffin instead of inside it, where he would properly belong.

The shoreline remained as far away as ever. Or so it seemed to him. Everything in this world,

except for the creatures of the wind, crept painfully and maddeningly. Time itself, as he had thought once

when on the Pequod, now held long breaths with keen suspense.

But even this world of the gigantic red sun could only delay time for so long. The last of the sea

waves deposited the fore-end of the coffin upon the shore.

Ishmael slipped off the coffin onto his knees, up to his groin in the thick water, and felt himself

rise and then subside with the swell of the sea-bottom. And, when he staggered onto the land and pulled

the coffin-canoe the rest of the way out of the water, he felt the ground quake under him. The shimmying

made him sick.

He closed his eyes while he picked up one end of the coffin and dragged it into the jungle.

After a while, knowing that the earth was not going to quit trembling and quit waxing and waning,

he opened his eyes.

It took a long time to get used to the earth being a bowlful of jelly and to the palsied plants.

Creepers were everywhere on the ground and in the air. These varied in size from those as thick

as his wrist to those large enough for him to have stood within if they had been hollow. Out of them

sprang hard, fi-brous, dark brown or pale red or light yellow stems. These sometimes grew up to twenty

feet high. Some were bare poles, but out of the side of others grew horizontal branches and tremendous

leaves big enough to be hammocks. They kept themselves from sagging by putting out at their free ends

tendrils that snagged neighboring stems and then grew around and around them. In fact, every plant

seemed to depend upon its neighbors for support.

There were also a variety of hairy pods, dark red, pale green, oyster white, and varying from the

size of his fist to that of his head.

He could find no water, though he described a spiral through the jungle and then returned to the

seaside. The ground under the creepers was as hard and dry as that of the Sahara Desert.

He studied the plants, wondering where they got their moisture, since they had no roots into the

earth. After a while it occurred to him that the bare stems rising into the air might be the roots. These

could gather whatever moisture was in the atmosphere. But where did the vegetation get its food?

While he was pondering that, he heard a chirruping sound. Then two pairs of long fuzzy antennae

slid out from behind a leaf, and a globular head with two huge lidless eyes followed. From the feelers and

the head, he had expected the rest of the body to be insectlike. But it was bipedal, and the neck, chest

and two hands were definitely mammalian, monkey-shaped and cov-ered with a pinkish fuzz beneath

which was a pale red skin. The legs and feet were bearlike.

The animal was two feet high and, in the light of the red sun, its two insectlike pincers were

revealed as outwardly curved double noses. The lips underneath were quite human; the teeth were those

of a carnivore.

Ishmael felt threatened. The creature could inflict a nasty bite which, for all he knew, might be

poisonous.

It did not, however, offer to attack him. It cocked its head while its antennae vibrated and then,

still chir-ruping, flashed away into the jungle. A moment later, Ishmael saw it seated on a branch, where it

was tear-ing a large pale-green pod from its stalk. The creature turned the pod until a spot, darker green

than the rest of the pod, was visible. It jabbed a rigid finger at the spot, and the finger sank in. The beast

pulled the finger out and then inserted one of its noses into the hole. Evidently it was drinking.

After it had emptied the pod, it squatted immobile so long that Ishmael thought it had gone to

sleep. The lidless eyes became dull, and a film crept over them. Ishmael, feeling it safe to approach,

discovered that the film was a semiopaque liquid, not a lid. He also saw that a thin, pale green creeper

had lifted itself and moved up the beast's back and entered its jugular vein. The creeper became a dull

red. After a while, the creeper delicately and slowly re-moved its tip, reddened with blood, from the

vein. It withdrew snakishly down the creature's back and slid into a hole in the stem out of which it had

come. The eyes of the beast lost the milky film, it chir-ruped feebly and then it stirred. Becoming aware

that Ishmael was standing so close, it ran into the jungle. But it had not moved as swiftly as before.

Ishmael had been about to imitate the creature and stick his finger into a dark spot in a pod and

drink from it. But now he feared to do so. Was there something in the water that temporarily paralyzed

the drinker? And did a creeper come out and tap the drinker's vein every time? Was this a strange

symbio-sis, sinister to him but only natural in its ecology?

There was, of course, nothing to prevent him from tearing off a pod and running into the sea,

where a creeper could not get at him while he drank.

But what if the water contained some drug which would paralyze more than his body? What if it

were a sort of lotos, which would so influence him that he would return to the jungle and invite the

bloodsucker to feast on him?

While he stood in indecision and his body ached for the water so available yet so remote, he saw

a number of creepers slide out from many holes in stems. They converged on the pod, covered it, exuded

a greenish slime which cut through the shell of the pod, and presently each creeper withdrew with a

section of shell held in a coil at its end.

No wonder the earth was so bare. The plants ate of their own substance. No doubt they also ate

anything else that was dead. And the food they needed over and above their own detritus was provided

by blood.

Acting quickly, so that he would not get to thinking too much of the possible consequences, he

tore a pod loose. He turned and ran until he was standing in the sea up to his thighs. He tilted the pod

above his head and let the water run out into his mouth. The liquid was cool and sweet but there was not

enough. There was nothing else to do but return and break off another pod.

As he started back, he saw a shadow flash by him, and he spun around and looked upward.

In the distance was still another great red cloud with its devouring attendants, the wind whales.

But the shadow had come from something much nearer. An air shark had sped over him at about

thirty feet from the ground, and behind it were three more.

The first two had made a surveillance pass, but the last two in line had decided that it was safe to

attack him.

They dived toward him, the wing-fins changing their angle, and their great mouths open.

He waited until the first was within six feet. It was then only a foot above the water, and it was

hissing. That mouth looked as if it could not miss biting off his head, which must be what it planned to do.

It surely could not snatch him into the air, and if it landed it would be at a disadvantage in the water. Or

would it?

Ishmael went completely under, his eyes and mouth closed and his fingers pinching his nose. He

counted to ten and emerged just as the lower tail-fin of the last air shark trailed by him, dragging in the

water. Getting out would have been swifter in less thick water and if he had not been so fatigued. He

thrust his legs forward while he looked to his left and then he was on the narrow beach, diving into the

shelter of the jungle.

The beasts had lifted slightly and were sailing close-hauled to the wind. They cut at an angle away

from him out over the lake for a quarter of a mile. Then they turned and sailed at an angle toward the

west, and then turned again, their wings rotated to catch the wind in full.

Ishmael tore off a pod and punched a hole with his finger and drank. The excitement and danger

had made him forget his caution, and that, he thought a minute later, was his undoing.

The first time he had drunk, he had not felt the paralysis he'd expected. He had been braced to

step forward so that if he became so paralyzed he fell, he would fall with his face out of water. He had

felt nothing. But this might have been because he was so much larger than the double-nosed beast; much

more of the narcotic in the water would be needed. Also, the excitement from the sharks may have

counteracted the effect he should have felt.

But two drinks in such rapid succession did their work. He immediately felt numbed and could

not move. He could see, though through a twilight, and he could feel the creeper slithering up his back

and a dull pain when the sharp end penetrated his jugular.

The air sharks swept over him, having spotted his head projecting above the vegetation. He had

made a mistake by picking this place to drink when he could have chosen one with much higher and

much more dense plants.

However, the beasts were necessarily cautious. They came close the first time but did not try

anything. Doubtless they were trying to estimate the chances of ! getting caught in the vegetation if they

tried for a bite.

He did not fully understand how they operated. Blad-der gas made them buoyant, he was sure of

that. And it seemed to him that they could not lose much altitude without discharging gas. That might be

the hissing noise which had come from the first shark.

To gain any altitude, they would have to use the same tactics as gliding birds. And if they were to

stay aloft they would have to generate more gas. To do this, they would have to use something in their

bodies. Fuel was necessary, and to get fuel, they had to eat. That much should be certain, if anything in

this world was certain.

Theorizing was fine, in its place. What he needed was to act, and he could not move.

It seemed a long time before the sharks appeared again far to the windward and turned onto the

final leg of their maneuver. The heat had built up; the vegetation cut down most of the wind. He was

sweating, and the first insect he had seen scuttled out on a branch a foot away.

It was the representative of an ancient and success-ful line, a breed that had learned to live with

and off man. It even put out to sea with man and was much more successful at its parasitism than the rat.

It was a cockroach, at least nine inches long.

It crept out cautiously, its antennae wiggling, and presently it was on his shoulder. Its familiarity

showed that it was acquainted with the paralyzing effects of the pod-water.

He could not feel its legs on his skin, but he could feel a dull pain on the lobe of his right ear.

He should have drowned with the crew of the Pequod.

There was a rustle -- his hearing wasn't dulled -- and he was staring at a face that had appeared

from behind a mass of leaves.

The face was as brown-skinned as that of a Tahitian maiden. The eyes were extraordinarily,

almost inhu-manly, large, and were a bright green. The features were beautiful.

The language she spoke, however, was none that he had ever heard, and he had heard most of

the world's languages.

She stepped forward and batted at the cockroach, which sprang onto a branch and disappeared.

At the same time, he felt the end of the creeper withdrawing.

He had expected her to pull the creeper out, since she had rescued him from the insect. She,

however, went after the huge thing with a stick and in a minute re-turned holding it by several of its legs.

It was still kicking, but its guts were oozing out of a big crack across its back.

She held the thing up and smiled and spoke melodi-ously. He tried to open his mouth to reply but

could not. Evidently she knew he would not reply, because she sat down and began to hack the creeper

open with a stone knife.

Ishmael had forgotten, though only for a moment, that the sharks were swooping at him. Now he

tried to open his mouth to shout a warning. Perhaps she could push him over so that the plants would

keep them off him. Or she could. . .

The girl must have sensed that he was warning her. His eyes were rolling in terror. She stood up

and turned and looked up just as the first shadow fell. She screamed and jumped back, bumping into him

and toppling him over backward. His head struck some-thing. He awoke to feel the earth, as always,

trembling beneath him and rising and falling as if there were a tiny tide sweeping through it. That might not

be so far-fetched, he mused. Actually, on the earth he had known, the ground did rise and fall, pulled by

the moon and the sun. But it was such a small phenomenon that man never noticed it.

Here, where the moon and the sun were so enor-mous, earthtides were detected even by the

most in-sensitive.

He felt sick at his stomach. Either the sucking of his blood had been accompanied by an injection

of some poison or he would have to reaccustom himself to the quivering of the land.

He tried to sit up and found that his hands and feet were tied.

The girl was gone.

Apparently she was not as friendly as she had first appeared. She had not seemed anxious about

him then because she knew he was unable to hurt her.

He did not blame her, since he was a stranger and she would have been a fool to have

approached him without caution. Perhaps she would not have been a fool, though, if she lived in a world

where human be-ings were friends and murder and war were unknown.

That she had bound him showed that she did not live in such a utopia.

He sighed. It was too much to expect of any world that human beings should all love and trust

each other. As on Earth, so here. So every place, probably. For-tunately, Ishmael did not have to be in a

Utopia or seeking one to be at ease.

He was not at ease now, of course. But he felt relieved and even optimistic. He was not the only

human being in this world, and once he learned the girl's language, he would get answers to some of his

questions.

Ishmael smiled at her as she expertly butchered a double-nosed monkey-bear beast. While she

worked, he inspected her closely. She wore a large white comb of some ivory-like substance in her hair,

which was as long and free and black as any maiden's of Typee. Her ears were pierced to hold thin rings

of some jet-black stony material in each of which was set a large dark green stone. This stone bore in its

interior a bright red object that looked like a spider.

Around her neck was a ruff of short feathers of many colors, and around her waist was a thin,

semitransparent belt of tanned leather. On the lower end of the belt were bone hooks which supported a

kilt that ended just above the knees and was of the same material as the belt. Her sandals, of a thick dark

brown leather, en-cased feet with four toes, the little toe having been exiled by edict of Evolution.

Her figure was slim. Her face was definitely triangu-lar. The forehead was high and wide. The

enormous luminous green eyes were shadowed by eyebrows ex-cessively thick and black but arched by

nature. The lashes were tiny spears. The cheekbones were high and broad but still less wide than the

forehead. The lower jaw angled inward, ending in a chin which he would have expected to be pointed

but which was rounded. It was the chin that saved her from ugliness and car-ried her off to beauty. The

mouth was full and pleasant, even when she began to bite off pieces of the animal's fat.

Ishmael, having seen many savages who ate raw meat, and having himself indulged, was not

repulsed. And when she offered him a large piece of meat, he accepted with thanks and a smile.

Both ate until their stomachs were packed rightly. The girl found a stone and cracked open the

animal's skull and dug out the brains and ate this. Ishmael might have accepted her offer to this, if he had

been starving. But he shook his head and said, "No, thanks."

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TheWindWhalesofIshmaelbyPhilipJoséFarmereVersion4.0/ScanNotesatEOFBackCover:Theearthneverstoppedshakingandtheseasweredriedup;thesunwasagiantdyingandthemoonwasfalling;andmostoflifehadtakentotheairwhichwasitselfdisappearing.Buthumannaturehadnotchangedasswiftlyastheworldinwhichitexisted...andwherethere...

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Philip Jose Farmer - The Wind Whales Of Ishmael

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