Margaret St. Clair (23 page)

We swam closer. The ocean river —it must once have been the California current, but it was running very differently now —was alive with sharks, and no wonder. Among the floating timbers, sides of houses, sheets of plastic and uprooted trees were many bodies of Splits. The sharks slashed and tore at the fresh dead, greedily delighted, and when one body was stripped as clean of flesh as its clothing would allow, there was always another body to take its place at the sharks’ feast. There was n o danger for us or our passengers —the sharks were too absorbed in their gluttonous enjoyment.

We swam back to the others. We did not tell Sven or Sosa what we had seen. There was no use in distressing them. But Ivry and Pettrus knew, of course.

In late afternoon we all saw a ship, a dot on the horizon, with lifeboats around it. Nobody said anything. There was nothing we could do.

We dolphins had begun to swim more slowly —we were far enough out at sea so that additional distance from shore would do us no good, and we weren’t swimming with any definite goal. But we had to keep swimming, of course. To have stopped would have left us with (no way with which to meet the force of the waves.

It kept on raining. It was still raining at sunset and it rained most of the night. The sea was somewhat calmer than it had been, and there were no more big waves, but we were all much more tired than we had been on the night before. Our relative lack of buoyancy in the fresher water weighed on us constantly. It was st r ange for us sea people, in our own element, to be so heavy and slow.

Morning came at last. It was still raining. The two Splits had not said anything for hours. Now Sven addressed me. “Amtor, do you know where we are?” He was so hoarse that I could hardl y understand him. His voice was almost a croak.

“More or less,” I said after a minute. “I saw the navigational stars once during the night. Why?”

“Because we’ve got to rest. We’re all exhausted. Maddy and I have been sitting in the same position for th irty-six hours now, and you sea people are worn out, too. I can tell from the way Pettrus swims.

“Is there any place you can put us ashore for a while? We’ve got to rest.”

“We’re a long way from a real shore,” I said. “But there used to be a rock not t oo far from here. It goes straight up from deep water, so the currents around it oughtn’t to be dangerous even now. We might be able to put you ashore there.”

“Good. Let’s try it,” he croaked. “How far is it?”

“I’m not sure. About a couple of hours.”

Now that we had a definite goal, we swam faster. We got to the rock —a tiny thing, only a few yards across —by mid-morning.

I was astonished at how deeply the rock was submerged. The triangular vertical face, streaked with bird droppings, which had always been a good twenty feet above sea level, was almost under the water. It occurred to me that if the water rose much more our Split friends might be drowned while they slept. But Sven was right, they must rest. It had to be risked.

Ivry and Pettrus swam b eside each other, and Sven managed to undo the knots at Sosa’s ankles. The leather had swelled from the water, and it took him some time. Then he released his own feet.

Pettrus swam in close to the rock with him. Sven, as he said afterwards, was paralyze d from the waist down, but he caught a protrusion with his fingers and dragged himself up on a small horizontal shelf.

He sat there for some minutes, rubbing his legs and trying to get command of his body again, while Sosa waited below on Ivry’s back, he r head sunk on her breast. At last he was strong enough to put his hand out to the girl and pull her up beside him on the narrow shelf.

They both rested here a while. Then they turned and crawled painfully up to the top of the rock. Their legs were still quite unreliable, and we dolphins watched their progress anxiously.

At last they reached the crest. Here, Sven said, they found a little sea grass growing in a hollow at the very peak. They lay down on the coarse stuff, clasped in each other’s arms for warmth, and were immediately asleep.

They slept for nearly twenty hours. During the rest of the day, the water rose slightly, and we watched its movement up the triangular rock face nervously. We were afraid we would have to call our Split friends and ha ve them get on our backs again. But about sunset the level began to fall slightly, and by the next morning the water was four or five feet below the triangular face.

While Sven and Moonlight slept, we dozed, caught fish and talked to each other. We felt we were beginning to make some bodily adjustments to our lessened buoyancy, though it was still irksome to us, and would be so for a long time. Once we smelled a shark, but it was a long way off and seemed to be in distress. It did not bother us.

Toward dawn the skies cleared and the rain died away. By the time our friends woke up, it was a reasonably good day, with the sun visible from time to time.

“I’ve been thinking,” Sven said after we had exchanged greetings with our friends. “The water’s fallen a good deal.

That means that the flood from the North Polar ice melt has begun to equalize itself, and the South Polar flood hasn ‘t yet begun.”

“Or hasn’t got here yet,” I said.

“Yes. Well, when it does come, this rock is probably going to be submerge d. Maddy and I can’t ride out another flood, a longer-lasting flood than the one we just went through, on your backs at sea. Amtor, is there any place where you dolphins could put us down on the mainland? Some place with mountains behind it? If we have tim e, we can try to get to high ground.”

I blew water. “I don’t know. I mean, I know about how far we are from where the coast used to be, but I can’t possibly tell what it’s like now. There will be a lot of new currents, for one thing. But we can try it. There’s not much else we can do.”

“Where are we now?” Madelaine asked.

“We’re opposite a place about a hundred miles below that big river that doesn’t have any bay.”

“The Klamath River?”

“I guess so. We don’t always know the names you Splits have fo r things.”

“Never mind that,” Sven said. “Let’s get going. If he means the Klamath River, there’s high ground not too far from it. We’ve eaten all our food.”

He began helping Moonlight down toward the water. They both moved stiffly and awkwardly. Rain and salt spray had washed most of the dye from the girl’s hair. I was glad to see it its usual color again.

With a good deal of difficulty, the Splits got on Pettrus’ and Ivry’s backs. “Northeast, I think,” Sven said. “The farther we can get from the So uth Polar flood, the better. And east, of course, because we want to get back to the American coast.”

“All right,” Ivry said.

As the day grew brighter, all our spirits rose. The sea was smooth, and we made very good time, particularly since there was a current flowing east. It hadn’t been there before.

Late in the afternoon, Djuna and I went fishing. We fed Ivry and Pettrus, and then, since we knew the two Splits hadn’t had anything to eat, offered part of our catch to them.

“It’s not alive, you kno w,” I said as Djuna held the salmon out to Sven in her mouth. “She bit it in the head.”

“I—thank you. Madelaine, are you hungry enough to try raw fish?”

“Not yet. But put it in your jacket, Sven, and keep it. We may be short of food after we get ashore .”

At sunset, the Splits tied their legs together under the two dolphins’ bellies. The sea continued calm. The moon rose. It was hardly well up in the sky when we saw land ahead.

It was very different from how I had remembered it-Buildings rose straigh t out of the surface of the water, and the mass of land lay far behind them. There were no lights anywhere.

“Be careful,” Madelaine said as we swam in slowly. “We don’t know how deep the water is, or what’s under it.”

“Of course,” I answered. “Djuna an d I will go ahead and act as pilots, since we can dive to see if there’s danger.”

Cautiously we swam in beside the drowned city. The water was quite deep, thirty or forty feet, and it occurred to me that we were following the streets of the submerged cit y. There were many bodies of Splits floating among the buildings. We avoided them as much as we could. The moonlight robbed them of color and made them look unreal.

Madelaine stirred uneasily on Pettrus’ back. “I wonder what city this was,” she said. I n oticed how softly she and Sven were speaking. “Amtor, are we near the river you spoke of?”

“We’re somewhat north of it.”

“Then this is probably Crescent City,” Sven replied.

Neither of them said anything more as we left the city behind and approached a range of low hills. The water grew shallower. I dived and found land, still covered with grass, only two or three feet below me.

“We’ll have to let you off here,” I said.

“Yes.” Sven undid the straps from his ankles, and slid into the water. He help ed Madelaine untie herself. Then they both waded toward the hills.

“Good-bye,” Madelaine said. She turned toward us, holding out her hands. “When the waters start to go down,” she said quickly, “call us to you. Use Udra. We’ll come. We will meet again, m y darlings! I know it. I am sure of it.”

“So are we, Sosa,” I answered. This was true. And yet, our good-byes made, we were all heavy-hearted as we started back to deeper water. It was the first time since Sosa had come to us at Drake’s Bay, months befor e, that we had been parted from her.

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Chapter 20

The old man held up the lamp and peered at them doubtfully. The scattering of white hairs on his scalp glistened in the light. “You’re refugees?” he asked.

“Yes,” Sven answered. “All we want is to get in out of the rain for a while and a place to cook. Here.” He produced the salmon Djuna had caught —it was still fresh enough to be desirable —and showed it to the old man. “We’d be glad to share with you. I can’t get a fire started outside. Everything’s so wet.”

The old man did not move away from the door. “I don’t need your food,” he said. “I’ve got a whole freezer full of stuff that’s spoiling since the power went off. I’m sorry, but I can’t take you in. You’l l have to be on your way.”

Madelaine stepped forward, so that the light of the lamp fell on her face. “Are you afraid of us?” she asked directly.

“Afraid?”

“Yes. You might be. You don’t know anything about us, or what we might do.”

The old man laughed. “I’m still strong enough to take care of myself,” he said. “I’m not afraid of you as people. But I heard on the radio that diseases are breaking out. They’re giving everybody in the refugee camps shots.”

“We haven’t been near anybody since before th e flood started,” Madelaine said. “We were at sea all during it. That’s how we got the fish. But we did have to swim through water where bodies were floating. That was when we were coming ashore.”

“At sea? I guess that’s why none of the ‘copters or plane s picked you up. They’ve been trying to evacuate people. My neighbors wanted me to leave, but I told them I’d stay. I’ve been growing fruit on this land all my life. Well, I don’t suppose you’d have caught anything just from swimming through water where th ere were bodies.” The old man seemed to be weakening.

“I could cook,” Madelaine said. “I could get a nice meal for the three of us from the things you have in the freezer.”

The old man looked at th em a little longer. They could hear his shallow breathing. “All right,” he said at last. “You’ll have to cook on a wood stove, since the power is off. And you’re to go away after you eat, do you understand? I don’t want you staying here.”

“All right.”

Once Sven and Madelaine were over the threshold, they realized how wet they were. Puddles formed around them on the floor immediately. The fruit grower brought them towels, and they dried themselves as well as they could. Madelaine squeezed most of the wa t er from her hair, and Sven took off his shirt and jacket, wrung them out in the sink, and hung them to dry on the back of a chair. The girl and the young man were both still wet enough to leave splotches on the linoleum floor when they walked.

Tired as she was, Madelaine found she was glad to be cooking again. Sven gutted the fish and cut it up for her, and she found fat in a cupboard. Since the food in the freezer, as their host had said, was on the edge of spoiling, she saw no reason to be economical w i th it. They sat down to a meal of fried salmon, six vegetables, and biscuits baked, scone fashion, on top of the wood stove.

“Maddy,” Sven said after they had eaten enough to take the first sharp edge off their hunger, “Mr. Fletcher was telling me he saw the flood sweep over New York.”

“Yes,” said the old man. He was growing more expansive. “I saw it on television. The waves were fifty feet high, coming up from the harbor, and they were full of bodies and pieces of wrecks. Nobody on the East Coast belie ved the warning, you see, and so nobody got out ahead of time.”

“There was a warning?” Sven asked.

“Yes, so I heard. The Secretary of Welfare went on the air and told everybody to get out of lowlying areas. But in the middle of a sentence he was cut o ff, and the announcer said a mistake had been made. It would have been better if people had believed him. I’ve heard that two-thirds of the people who lived in New York City are believed to be dead.”

“I don’t understand why so many died,” Sven said thoug htfully. “Even if the water was fifty feet deep in the streets, weren’t people safe in the upper stories of buildings? For a while, I mean.”

“I guess they would have been. But all the power was off, and none of the elevators was working. People clustered just above the water, on cornices and looking out of windows. When the earthquake came-“

“Earthquake?” Madelaine said. “In New York?”

“Yes. There’ve been earthquakes all over the world, no t to mention cyclones and hurricanes. But as I was saying, when the earthquake came, the tall buildings shook like —like straws. Like the tines on a tuning fork. People began to fall out of the buildings. I saw them falling like ‘cots off the trees in a h i gh wind. Then the picture went off. Now the only news I can get is fifteen minutes a day, just at noon, over my battery-powered radio.