Гарри Гаррисон - 50 in 50

"It's a dog," Carter said. "Very much like other dogs."

Bodum was offended, his voice as cold as shout can be. "Like them, perhaps, but not of them. Every bone broken I told you. How else could a dog have appeared here in this bay?"

"I'm sorry, I did not mean to suggest for an instant — down The Falls, of course. I just meant it is so much like the dogs we have that perhaps there is a whole new world up there. Dogs and everything, just like ours."

"I never speculate," Bodum said mollified. "I'll make some coffee."

He took the lamp to the stove and Carter, left alone in the partial darkness went back to the window. It drew him. "I must ask you some questions for my article," he said but did not speak loudly enough for Bodum to hear. Everything he had meant to do here seemed irrelevant as he looked out at The Falls. The wind shifted. The spray was briefly blown clear and The Falls were once more a mighty river coming down from the sky. When he canted his head he saw it exactly as if he were looking across a river.

And there, upstream, a ship appeared, a large liner with rows of portholes. It sailed the surface of the river faster than ship had ever sailed before and he had to jerk his head to follow its motion. When it passed, no more than a few hundred yards away, for one instant he could see it clearly. The people aboard it were hanging to the rails, some with their mouths open as though shouting in fear. Then it was gone and there was only the water, rushing endlessly by.

"Did you see it?" Carter shouted, spinning about.

"The coffee will be ready soon."

"There, out there," Carter cried, taking Bodum by the arm. "In The Falls. It was a ship, I swear it was, falling from up above. With people on it. There must be a whole world up there that we know nothing about."

Bodum reached up to the shelf for a cup, breaking Carter's grip with the powerful movement of his arm.

"My dog came down The Falls. I found it and stuffed it myself."

"Your dog, of course, I'll not deny that. But there were people on that ship and I'll swear — I'm not mad — that their skins were a different color from ours."

"Skin is skin, just skin color."

"I know. That is what we have. But it must be possible for skins to be other colors, even if we don't know about it."

"Sugar?"

"Yes, please. Two." Carter sipped at the coffee — it was strong and warm. In spite of himself he was drawn back to the window. He looked out and sipped at the coffee — and started when something black and formless came down. And other things. He could not tell what they were because the spray was blowing toward the house again. He tasted grounds at the bottom of his cup and left the last sips. He put the cup carefully aside.

Again the eddying wind currents shifted the screen of spray to one side just in time for him to see another of the objects go by.

"That was a house! I saw it as clearly as I see this one. But wood perhaps, not stone, and smaller. And black as though it had been partially burned. Come look there may be more."

Bodum banged the pot as he rinsed it out in the sink. "What do you newspapers want to know about me? Over forty years here— there are a lot of things I can tell you about."

"What is up there above The Falls — on top of the cliff? Do people live up there? Can there be a whole world up there of which we live in total ignorance I"

Bodum hesitated, frowned in thought, before he answered.

"I believe they have dogs up there."

"Yes.” Carter answered, hammering his fist on the window ledge, not knowing whether to smile or cry. The water fell by; the floor and walls shook with the power of it.

"There — more and more things going by." He spoke quietly, to himself. "I can't tell what they are. That — that could have been a tree and that a bit of fence. The smaller ones may be bodies — animals, logs, anything. There is a different world above The Falls and in that world something terrible is happening. And we don't even know about it. We don't even know that world is there."

He struck again and again on the stone until his fist hurt.

The sun shone on the water and he saw the change, just here and there at first, an altering and shifting.

"Why — the water seems to be changing color. Pink it is — no, red. More and more of it. There, for an instant, it was all red. The color of blood."

He spun about to face the dim room and tried to smile but his lips were drawn back hard from his teeth when he did.

"Blood? Impossible. There can't be that much blood in the whole world. What is happening up there? What is happening?"

His scream did not disturb Bodum, who only nodded his head in agreement.

"I'll show you something," he said. "But only if you promise not to write about it. People might laugh at me. I've been here over forty years and that is nothing to laugh about."

"My word of honor, not a word, just show me. Perhaps it has something to do with what is happening."

Bodum took down a heavy Bible and opened it on the table next to the lamp. It was set in very black type, serious and impressive. He turned pages until he came to a piece of very ordinary paper.

"I found this on the shore. During the winter. No one had been here for months. It may have come over The Falls. Now I'm not saying it did — but it is possible. You will agree it is possible?"

"Oh, yes — quite possible. How else could it have come here?" Carter reached out and touched it. "I agree, ordinary paper. Torn on one edge, wrinkled where it was wet and then dried." He turned it over. "There is lettering on the other side."

"Yes. But it is meaningless. It is no word I know."

"Nor I, and I speak four languages. Could it have a meaning?"

"Impossible. A word like that."

"No human language." He shaped his lips and spoke the letters aloud. "Aich — Eee — Ell — Pea."

"What could 'HELP' mean?" Bodum shouted louder than ever. "A child scribbled it. Meaningless." He seized the paper and crumpled it and threw it into the fire.

"You'll want to write a story about me," he said proudly. "I have been here over forty years, and if there is one man in the entire world who is an authority on The Falls it is me.

"I know everything that there is to know about them."

Francesco Bruno crossed himself, muttered the quick words of a prayer, then turned his attention to the metal plate on the splintered table before him. Hunger possessed him, he had not eaten in over twelve hours, or he would not have been able to face the little beans with the black markings, or the limp, greasy greens again. He ate quickly, aware of the dark figures silently watching him. There was only water to wash the food down with.

"Show him the paper," one of the men said and, for possibly the hundredth time in the last three days, Bruno took the creased and stained sheet from his wallet. A black hand reached out and took it from him. The newcomer carried it to the paneless window and held it to the light to read it. There was a muttered discussion. Bruno looked around, at the gnarled, white-haired woman bent over the stove, at the board walls — with gaps between the boards big enough to get a finger through — the poverty and the barrenness. Even the slums of Palermo, where he had grown up, were not this bad.

The newcomer brought the paper back. "What you got with you?" he asked. Bruno opened the stained canvas pack, with the weathered initials US on it, and began to spread its contents on the rickety table. They had given him this in place of the suitcase he had left the city with. The palm-sized TV camera, the recorder for it, the fuel-cell power pack, the extra reels of tape, a change of underclothing and his toilet kit. The man poked through everything, then pointed to the camera.