Дэймон Найт - Orbit 10

But that was fair, he reminded himself. He lived the farthest out. With privilege go obligations. And he was through, for an­other twenty weeks, his obligations met.

At the station, he telexed his report to the Co-op office and trotted outside to meet Hazel. The other wives had driven away. Only his carryall sat idling at the platform edge. He knew he ought to look forward to relaxing at home, but the trip itself still preyed on his mind unaccountably. He felt irritation at his inability to put the skyers out of his thoughts. His whole day was spent working for their benefit; his evenings ought to be his own.

He looked back toward City, but saw nothing in the smog-covered bowl at the foot of the hills that stretched away to the east. If it rained tonight, it might clear the air.

Hazel smiled and waved.

He grinned in answer. He could predict her reaction when she heard what he’d been through: a touch of wifely fear and concern for him, and that always made her more affectionate. Almost a hero’s welcome. After all, he had acquitted himself rather well. A safe arrival, only a few minutes late, no injuries or major prob­lems. And he wouldn’t draw window seat for another several months. It was good to be home.

AT DUSK the barrier islands were like a string of jewels gleaming in the placid bay. The sea wasn’t reflecting now, the only lights that showed were those of the islands and the shore lights that were from two to four miles westward. The islands looked like an afterthought, as if someone had decided to outline the coast with a faulty pen that skipped as it wrote in sparkles. Here and there dotted lines tethered the jewels, kept them from floating away, and lines joined them one to another in a series, connective tissue too frail to endure the fury of the sea. Then came a break, a dark spot with only a sprinkling of lights at one end, the rest of the island swallowed in blackness of tropical growth.

The few lights at the southern end seemed inconsequential, the twinkling of hovering fireflies, to be swept away with a brush of the hand. No lines joined this dark speck with the other, clearly more civilized, links of the chain that stretched to the north and angled off to the south. No string of incandescence tied it to the mainland. It was as if this dark presence had come from elsewhere to shoulder itself into the chain where it stood unrecognized and unacknowledged by its neighbors.

It was shaped like a primitive arrowhead. If the shaft had been added, the feathers would have touched land hundreds of miles to the south, at St. Augustine, possibly. The island was covered with loblolly pines, live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, cypress and magnolia trees. The thickened end was white sand, stucco houses, and masses of hewn stones, some in orderly piles and rows, others tossed about, buried in sand so that only corners showed, tumbled down the beach, into the water where the sea and bay joined. Philodendron, gone wild, had claimed many of the blocks, climbing them with stems as thick as wrists, split leaves hiding the worked surface of the granite and sandstone, as if nature were working hard to efface what man had done to her island. Those blocks that had been lost to the sea had long since been naturalized by barnacles, oysters, seaweeds; genera­tions of sergeant majors and wrasses and blue crabs and stonefish had lived among them.

At low tide, as it was now, the water whispered gently to the rocks, secrets of the sea murmured in an unintelligible tongue that evoked memories and suggested understanding. Eliot listened hard, then answered: “So I’ll tell the old bastard, take your effing island, and your effing job, and your effing money and stuff it all you know where.” The sea mocked him and he took another drink. He sat on one of the stones, his back against another one, and he put a motor on the rocky end of the island and wound it up. It was a rubber-band motor. The arrowhead pointed due north and cut a clean swath, its motion steady and sure, like a giant carrier. And when he had circled the world, when he had docked at all the strange ports and sampled all the strange customs and strange foods, then he didn’t know what to do with his mobile island, and he sank it, deep into the Mariannas Trench where it could never be raised again, where it would vanish without a sign that it had existed. He drank again, this time emptying the glass. For a moment he hefted it, then he put it down on the rock next to him.

“Eliot! Where are you?”

He didn’t answer, but he could see the white shape moving among the rocks. She knew damn well where he was.

“Pit, old man, I’m through. I quit. I’ll leave by the mail boat in the morning, or swim over, or fly on the back of a cormorant.”

“Eliot! For God’s sake, don’t be so childish! Stop playing games. Everyone’s waiting for you.”

“Ah, Beatrice, the unattainable, forever pure, forever fleeing, and fleet.” But I had you once, twice, three times. Hot and sweaty in my arms.

“You’re drunk! Why? Why tonight? Everyone’s waiting for you.”

She was very near now, not so near that he could make out her features, but near enough to know that she wore a white party dress, that she wore pearls at her throat, near enough so that the elusive whisper of the sea now became water swishing among rocks. He stood up. She was carrying her sandals.

“You’ll bruise your feet. Stay there, or better, go back and tell them that I do not wish to attend another bloody party, not an­other one for years and years.”

“Eliot, the new girl’s here. You’ll want to meet her. And . . . it’s a surprise, Eliot. Please come now. He’ll be so disappointed.”

“Why? He already hired her, didn’t he? Tomorrow’s time enough for me to meet her. And the only surprise around here is that we don’t all die of boredom.”

He picked up his glass and let a trickle of melted ice wet his lips. He should have brought the pitcher of gin and lemonade. Have to remember, he told himself sternly, no half measures from now on. Been too moderate around here. Moderation’s no damn good for island living. He stood up. The sea tilted and the rock tried to slide him off into the water. He could hear vicious laughter, masked as waves rushed around stones. Beatrice caught his hand and led him out of the jumbled rocks.

“Come on, let’s take a walk,” she said. But the drunkenness was passing, and he shook his head.

“I’m okay,” he said. “Sitting too long, that’s all. Let’s go to the damn party and get it over with.”

She half led, half pushed him along the cypress boardwalk toward the main house.

“The new girl. What’s she like?”

“I’m not sure. You know she got over on the pretext that I had recommended her. Turns out that we lived in the same town back when we were growing up. So I should know her, except that I’m ten years older than she is. I dated her brother when I was sixteen, but I can’t remember much about her. Or her brother either, for that matter. She was Gina’s age when I saw her last. She’s twenty now, a student, looking for summer work, perfect to spell Marianne while she has her baby, and so on. But you’ll see.”

Just what we need, he thought. A young single girl to liven things up around here. “Is she pretty?”

“No. Very plain actually. But do you think that will make any difference?” Beatrice sounded amused.

How well we know each other. She can follow my thought processes, come to my conclusions for me, without even thinking about it. A simple temporary dislocation of the ego. The board­walk led them around the ruins, and they approached the house from the back. Curiously old-fashioned and unglamorous, one floor that rambled, deep porch; there was a lot of ironwork, grilles, rails, scrolls and curlicues that should have been offensive but were pleasing. They skirted a swimming pool that had been concerted to a sunken garden and walked along the ornate porch to the front entrance. Wide windows, uncovered, with massive shutters at their sides. View of a room the width of the house, fireplace on one wall, bar and stools, low, gold gleaming cypress furniture, red Spanish tile floors that didn’t show the scars of the constant polishing of the sand. Beyond the room there was a terrace, shielded from the sea wind by a louvered wall of glass. Moving figures broken into sections by the partly opened glass slats, the hum of voices, echo of Spanish guitars. All substantial and real, all but the fragmented people.