Дэймон Найт - Orbit 9

And one of them was going to the president to tell him that the thing was urgent.

And there had been some early skirmishing, though of less than a month.

It had been time for the bears of Crater Valley to find themselves burrows and hibernate. They didn’t do it, though. Instead, they gathered together, the three hundred of them from the three thousand square miles of the valley; they climbed the south ridge of the valley, they went over it and continued to the south. Nobody had ever seen three hundred bears traveling together like that. But now a forest ranger saw them come out of the valley, and another ranger saw them a hundred miles further south, still going rapidly and happily. So the event was reported.

Red squirrels of the northern part of the country moved down into the territory of the gray squirrels of the south. It was no great thing, only three or four million squirrels. The larger gray squirrels did not oppose the red squirrels, they began to pack their own belongings to move out of their way. They were very slightly grumpy about it as if to say, “We’re going, we’re going, but aren’t you just a little bit early with it?”

Radio astronomers had reported that there had been, only last night, a break in the pervading sky harmony (which the radio astronomers do not refer to as the Music of the Spheres), that there had been a very intense high-pitched signal (“Like a whistle in the break in the music, the everybody-change-partners whistle in a country dance, the everybody-change-chairs whistle in Musical Chairs,” one of the astronomical assistants said), and that now there was pause with the sky harmony greatly muted.

And another bit of early skirmishing, less than a month a-going, twenty-seven days in fact: Charles Malaga was sweating as fry-cook in a little caféin Aloalo on a mid-Pacific island, and his friend Johnny Ofutino was eating fish of his fry.

“Somebody has to go first,” Johnny Ofutino said. “The ray-fish went this morning, the turtles are going to start this evening. What’s the matter with people?”

“I don’t know, Johnny, what’s the matter with us?” Charley Malaga asked.

“Somebody has to go first,” Johnny Ofutino still insisted. “Let’s us go first, and then some of the rest will follow along.”

“All right, wait’ll I turn the fires off,” Charley Malaga said.

“No, turn them way up,” Johnny Ofutino told him. “Throw stuff on the fires. Burn the café down.”

“Oh all right.”

They burned the café down and went out and launched a fishing boat that had paddles and a half-sail. The sea was running right for them, as they knew it would be. They went all that day and that night. In the morning a small engine-ship came by with half a dozen such small boats in tow. Men threw them a line from the ship, and Charley and Johnny also went into easy tow.

About eight hundred other such assemblages were afloat by the second day. It wasn’t a very long voyage: they had taken voyages twice as long in their earlier days. It didn’t take them much time, even under such small engines: twenty-seven days. So they came to a pleasant land and landed.

The Polynesians had finally discovered America. But their arrival caused only a small flurry of interest. Several dozen of these same Polynesians had been to America before; but if you consider that as an obstacle, then you do not understand the meaning of discovery.

Pacific ocean fish and cetaceans were crowded up at the Pacific end of the canal. Some of them seemed to be in a chomping hurry. Most of these had been able to get through the canal for several days, but now many more had crowded up at the Pacific end. And very many more were going around the Horn. There was no good reason for it. The Atlantic was not that much better an ocean than the Pacific. But there comes a time when it seems as if you have lived in one place long enough. It was just that the fish and cetaceans and shelleys and sea-stars felt that it was time to make a change.

“Did you get to make an appointment with the president, George?” Wilburton Romer asked as George Ruil returned to them.

“No need for an appointment now,” Ruil said. “They seem pretty informal there today and I got the president himself on the phone while he was having breakfast. I’m not sure that I got my message over to him, but something is moving with them there and I don’t believe it matters whether he understood me exactly. I don’t understand it exactly myself. ‘I believe you are absolutely right,’ the president told me. ‘I believe that everyone is absolutely right. And we are going to do something. I believe that we are all going to get in a plane. They are making a big plane ready now. It will hold nine hundred persons. I will get in it with the congresses and we will go somewhere. We aren’t decided yet whether we should blow up all the buildings here when we leave. There are dissidents who say that we should not.’ ‘Where will you go in the plane, Mr. President?’ I asked him. ‘I am not sure about that,’ he said. ‘Is it important which way a plane goes? There are several dissidents who see no reason to get on a plane and go somewhere today. There are always dissidents in government. They say that nothing has happened. I tell them that if all of us get on a plane and go somewhere that that will be something happening. It is possible that the pilot will know where the plane is going. If he does not know then perhaps someone will instruct him.’ That is what the president said. He didn’t seem to be his usual incisive self this morning.”

“Curious,” said Ralph Amerce. “I don’t seem to be my usual incisive self this morning either. You really believe, George, that there is a catastrophe brewing?”

“No, man, no! Does Jubilee sound like catastrophe to you? How could anyone misunderstand it so? It is the adjustment of the whole world. Oh, there will be what in other circumstances would be called destruction, but we will not call it that. Certain mountains will decide that they have been in one place long enough, and they will get up and walk. Why should the mountains be denied this pleasure? Is there not in scripture the passage about the hills gamboling like lambs? The ice, perhaps, will decide that it has been in bondage for too long a time and it will explode gloriously over great areas. Possibly the magnetism of the earth will be reversed; we know that that has happened before. How would you feel if you had been named North for a million years? And assuredly the fountains of the deep will be broken open. Some millions of persons will die, I’m sure: I am even more sure that they will die joyously. Get into the spirit of it, men.”

“To me the spirit of it is a lazy and peaceful one, George,” Wilburton Romer yawned. “Though the rational part of me says that nothing at all has happened, nevertheless I now accept that the renovation is about to happen. Will we keep our sane names, do you think?”

“Oh no, I’m sure we will not,” Amerce declared, himself getting into the spirit of it. “Why should we keep our same names? Why, there have been echoes of this all through plain historical times, George, and we all too deaf to hear them. The sober accounts of Velikovsky and Wesley Patten and Father O’Connell have been treated as if they were subject to doubt. Even the Fortean documentaries have been laughed away as if they were—well—Fortean. But I see pieces of it everywhere now. The folk-wanderings themselves were only aftermath to such a Jubilee. The simultaneous conflagrations all through the archaic civilized world were part of the thing itself. ‘Trees walking like men’ were only a small bright portion of it. What could have been more irrational than the Rhinoceros coming to Africa during one of the Jubilees, then the Camel appearing (of all places) in Asia during another? What could have been more outlandish than Madagascar sinking (all except the top of its head) into the Ocean, and the Island Africa rising to become a continent? We can look back on all these previous Jubilees with new eyes now. Well, but there should be portents bursting all over the place.”