Дэймон Найт - Orbit 6

Next day, though still he had not dreamed of the Islands again, Lif went on building his causeway. The sand began to shelve off more steeply as he went farther. His method now was to stand on the last bit he had built and tip the carefully loaded barrow from there, and then tip himself off and work, floundering and gasping and coming up and pushing down, to get the bricks leveled and fitted between the preset rods; then up again, across the gray sand and up the cliff and bang-clatter through the quiet streets for another load.

Some time that week the widow said meeting him in his brickyard, Let me throw ‘em over the cliff for you, it’ll save you one leg of the trip.

It’s heavy work loading the barrow, he said.

Oh well, said she.

All right, so long as you want to. But bricks are heavy bastards. Don’t try to carry many. I’ll give you the small barrow. And the little rat here can sit on the load and get a ride.

So she helped him on and off through days of silvery weather, fog in the morning, clear sea and sky all afternoon, and the weeds in crannies of the cliff flowering; there was nothing else left to flower. The causeway ran out many yards from shore now, and Lif had had to learn a skill which no one else had ever learned that he knew of, except the fish. He could float and move himself about on the water or under it, in the very sea, without touching foot or hand to solid earth.

He had never heard that a man could do this thing; but he did not think much about it, being so busy with his bricks, in and out of air and in and out of water all day long, with the foam, the bubbles of water-circled air or air-circled water, all about him, and the fog, and the April rain, a confusion of the elements. Sometimes he was happy down in the murky green unbreathable world, wrestling strangely willful and weightless bricks among the staring shoals, and only the need of air drove him gasping up into the spray-laden wind.

He built all day long, scrambling up on the sand to collect the bricks that his faithful helper dumped over the cliffs edge for him, load them in his barrow and run them out the causeway that went straight out a foot or two under sealevel at low tide and four or five feet under at high, then dump them at the end, dive in, and build; then back ashore for another load. He came up into town only at evening, worn out, salt-bleared and salt-itching, hungry as a shark, to share what food turned up with the widow and her little boy. Lately, though spring was getting on with soft, long, warm evenings, the town seemed very dark and still.

One night when he was not too tired to notice this he spoke of it, and the widow said, Oh, they’re all gone now, I think.

All? — A pause. — Where did they go?

She shrugged. She raised her dark eyes to his across the table and gazed through lamplit silence at him for a time. Where? she said. Where does your sea-road lead, Lif?

He stayed still awhile. To the Islands, he answered at last, and then laughed and met her look.

She did not laugh. She only said, Are they there? Is it true, then, there are Islands? — Then she looked over at her sleeping baby, and out the open doorway into the darkness of late spring that lay warm in the streets where no one walked and the rooms where no one lived. At last she looked back at Lif, and said to him, Lif, you know, there aren’t many bricks left. A few hundred. You’ll have to make some more. — Then she began to cry softly.

By God! said Lif, thinking of his underwater road across the sea that went for a hundred and twenty feet, and the sea that went on ten thousand miles from the end of it — I’ll swim there! Now then, don’t cry, dear heart. Would I leave you and the little rat here by yourselves? After all the bricks you’ve nearly hit my head with, and all the queer weeds and shellfish you’ve found us to eat lately, after your table and fireside and your bed and your laughter would I leave you when you cry? Now be still, don’t cry. Let me think of a way we can get to the Islands, all of us together.

But. he knew there was no way. Not for a brickmaker. He had done what he could do. What he could do went one hundred and twenty feet from shore.

Do you think, he asked after a long time, during which she had cleared the table and rinsed the plates in wellwater that was coming clear again now that the Ragers had been gone many days— Do you think that maybe. . this. . He found it hard to say but she stood quiet, waiting, and he had to say it: That this is the end?

Stillness. In the one lamplit room and all the dark rooms and streets and the burnt fields and wasted lands, stillness. In the black Hall above them on the hill’s height, stillness. A silent air, a silent sky, silence in all places unbroken, unreplying. Except for the far sound of the sea, and very soft though nearer, the breathing of a sleeping child.

No, the woman said. She sat down across from him and put her hands upon the table, fine hands as dark as earth, the palms like ivory. No, she said, the end will be the end. This is still just the waiting for it.

Then why are we still here — just us?

Oh well, she said, you had your things — your bricks — and I had the baby. .

Tomorrow we must go, he said after a time. She nodded.

Before sunrise they were up. There was nothing at all left to eat, and so when she had put a few clothes for the baby in a bag and had on her warm leather mantle, and he had stuck his knife and trowel in his belt and put on a warm cloak that had been her husband’s, they left the little house, going out into the cold wan light in the deserted streets.

They went downhill, he leading, she following with the sleepy child in a fold of her cloak. He turned neither to the road that led north up the coast nor to the southern road, but went on past the marketplace and out on the cliff and down the rocky path to the beach. All the way she followed and neither of them spoke. At the edge of the sea he turned.

I’ll keep you up in the water as long as we can manage, he said.

She nodded, and said softly, Well, use the road you built, as far as it goes.

He took her free hand and led her into the water. It was cold. It was bitter cold, and the cold light from the east behind them shone on the foam-lines hissing on the sand. When they stepped on the beginning of the causeway the bricks were firm under their feet, and the child had gone back to sleep on her shoulder in a fold of her cloak.

As they went on, the buffeting of the waves got stronger. The tide was coming in. The outer breakers wet their clothes, chilled their flesh, drenched their hair and faces. They reached the end of his long work. There lay the beach a little way behind them, the sand dark silver under the cliff over which stood the silent, paling sky. Around them was wild water and foam. Ahead of them was the unresting water, the gulf, the great abyss, the gap.

A breaker hit them on its way in to shore and they staggered; the baby waked by the sea’s hard slap cried, a little wail in the long, cold, hissing mutter of the sea always saying the same thing.

Oh I can’t! cried the mother, but the man took her hand more firmly and said aloud, Come on!

Lifting his head to take the last step from what he had done toward no shore, he saw the shape riding the western water, the leaping light, the white flicker like a swallow’s breast catching the break of day. It seemed as if voices rang over the sea’s voice. What is it? he said, but her head was bowed to her baby, trying to soothe the little wail that was all she heard in the vast babbling of the sea. He stood still and saw the whiteness of the sail, the little dancing light above the waves, dancing on toward them and toward the greater light that grew behind them.

Wait, the call came from the form that rode the gray waves and danced on the foam, Wait! — The voices rang very sweet, and as the sail leaned white above him he saw the faces and the reaching arms, and heard them say to him, Come, come on the ship, come with us to the Islands.