Edward Llewellyn - Prelude to Chaos

He beamed as he wrung my hand. “We thank the Light for returning our Physician. And we thank you, Brother Gavin, for aiding her return.” He moved to the steps of the Hall, holding up his arms to quiet the crowd. “Let us enter and give thanks to the Light for having shone upon us! Enter, all of you. And tonight we will eat together.” Chairman Yackle evidently doubled as the local Minister of Religion.

Judith flashed me a smile before disappearing into the Hall. I watched the others crowding in after her, astonished at the excitement our arrival had caused, at the warmth of Judy’s reception. What was so great about a doctor coming back to a village? Although the American Medical Association had striven to keep the physician/population ratio reasonably low to hold the fee scale unreasonably high, there was still a surplus of doctors in most cities.

In most cities! Of course. It would be very different for these people living on the edge of an empty ocean, isolated from the nearest town by thirty kilometers of dirt road and woods still reputed to be filled with unexploded missiles. The old and sick wouldn’t have been getting much in the way of physician care during the time Judith had been in jail. Physicians and soldiers have the same public image. I remember the rhyme I had seen on an old tombstone in Gibraltar:

“God and the Soldier, all men adore In times of troubles, and then no more.

When wars are over and wrongs are righted God is forgotten, the Soldier is slighted.”

I understood better the pleasure on the faces of the men and women coming up the street from the cove. Small-boat fishing is a dangerous trade at best. A lot of these people probably had had fish hooks taken from their hands, lacerations sewn up, bones reset, without benefit of anesthetics or strong analgesics. I remembered how uncomfortable even we Troopers had been if there was no medical corpsman with us when we went on a mission. Of how we would protect the one guy who could look after us, give us relief from pain— or a painless death—if we were hit.

There were many babies here. Most of them would have been born without even a skilled midwife in attendance. I had had to deliver a baby once myself and the memory still tended to leave me nauseated. The mother and child had lived, thank God! But during those terrible hours crouching in a ruined house, trying to help a young mother through her first labor with an ignorant old crone muttering that girl and child were lost because the head was locked or something— during those hours I would have welcomed the arrival of the worst product of any second-rate medical school in America.

Yackle reappeared on the porch. “Join us, Brother Gavin. Come and join us. Come and pray wih us. Praise the Light with us!”

I hesitated. Should I avoid hasslement by pretending to be a Believer? No, by God! I didn’t believe in their Light, but I’d be damned if I’d insult It—or Him—or Her—with hypocrisy. “I’m sorry, Mister Yackle. But Fm not one of the chosen.”

“Not a Believer?” His smile tamed to a flustered frown. “But you came with Doctor Grenfell—I had assumed—then please wait while we have our little service of thanksgiving.” He attempted another smile and followed his flock into the Hall.

I stood on the porch, alone with myself, two motorcycles, and an empty street. From inside the Hall came the roar of voices, lustily singing a hymn whose tune roused childhood memories but whose words differed from those I remembered. Their Teacher had borrowed tunes as well as myths to weave into his synthetic religion.

A single boat glided into the cove and moored alongside the pier. A heavyset weatherbeaten man in a windbreaker, cap, and seaboots climbed onto the wharf and started up the village street, moving like a sturdy ship breasting a rip tide. When he reached the steps he held out Ms hand. “You must be Mister Gavin. The gentleman who’s brought the Doc back. Heard about you on the radio. Like to thank you myself. My name’s Enoch.”

As we were shaking hands Barbara appeared in the doorway and snapped, “Come on, Dad! We’ve just started, “Coming, girl!” He smiled at me. “Reckon you’ve met my little girl already?”

“I have indeed!” I looked from one to the other. This large and friendly man seemed an unlikely father for the slim, detached Barbara, but the shape of his nose confirmed that he was.

She tugged at his sleeve, ignoring me. “Move it, Dad! Everybody else is inside.”

“Then I’d better be too!” He winked at me over the top of his daughter’s blonde head. “See you later, I hope, Mister Gavin.” And he followed her into the Hall. I looked after Mm. At least one of the natives appeared to be friendly.

The psalm-singing began to get on my nerves. To escape I walked down the village street toward the wharf, and began to revise my initial impression of Sutton Cove as a poor and primitive Settlement. The houses, though clad in unpainted singles, were solidly built on permacrete foundations. The people crowding into the Hall had been wearing worn but serviceable working clothes and were obviously well fed. And the boats at anchor in the cove made me realize that there was a lot more here than met the superficial eye.

They looked like traditional Cape Islanders. Between twelve and fifteen meters from stem to stem, high bows to shoulder through cresting waves and low counters for the easy hauling of lobster traps and trawl, a hull-form evolved from a hundred years of power-boat fishing on some of the roughest seas in the world. But the traditional Cape Islander had been planked with softwood and had had a working life of little more than a decade. These boats were built of veralloy and had a potential life of centuries. I hunkered down on the edge of the wharf, inspecting the boat moored alongside, Enoch’s Aurora.

Powered by a miniturbine, she had ample take-offs for traps, lines, and trawl. Inside her wheelhouse I could see the display scopes of radar, echometers, fish-finders, and navsat. I myself was no sailor, but like every Trooper in the Special Strike Force I had been taught to handle minicopters, air-cushions, hydrofoils, and light armored fighting vehicles. Even to ride horses. Almost anything that could be used to get a Strike Force section into position to strike. What I saw below me was an example of elegant engineering; a seaworthy hull, an advanced power unit, and the electronic technology of picrochip and minicomp. A boat which a lone helmsman could take through dangerous waters and fog-shrouded seas. A boat fitted to hunt the shoals of fish which were returning to the Bay of Fundy.

The hymn singing in the Hall rose to a crescendo, dropped to silence, and a few minutes later the population of Sutton Cove began to pour down the steps. Enoch was among the first out, and I stood up, not knowing how he might react to my inspecting his boat. But when he saw me he smiled and came toward the wharf, his daughter at his side.

“I hope you don’t mind my admiring your boat,” I said.

“Mind? It’s good to meet an outsider with the eyes to see and the sense to understand!” He stood beside me, looking down at Aurora with the pride of a man who owns something that is both beautiful and useful. “She’s trim! She’s trim! Best seaboat that ever fished these waters. Me and the missus—we’ve taken seven thousand kilos of cod in three hours. Filled her to the gun’ls, we did!” His face clouded. “That was when Vera was alive and fishing. Vera had a nose for the fish.” The cloud passed. “But me and my girl here, we’ve done almost as well at times.” He ruffled Barbara’s hair. “That was afore she got her boat. Now I fish Aurora by myself. Still do pretty good.” He filled his pipe.