Eight Against Utopia
Page 17
At full thrust the Vijaya Pandit rose out of the water like a hydroplane. A speedometer, graded in the unfamiliar units of M.P.H. was reading 85—just below a red quadrant, which could be reached by an emergency booster. The machinery was doing very well. Gaul thought he could live without testing it to MAX.
It was steady enough for Wanda to be singing about the house and there was all the power anyone could use for ancillary equipment. A small desalination plant had already provided fresh-water showers for all hands in a convenient washroom.
Hour after hour they reeled back the line penciled in on the chart. At N500 E080 Jane signaled a change and ran a new line to the tip of a small shield-shaped island. Swarbrick said, “Anglesey. Druids, mistletoe, soothsaying and that. A religious center.”
“They’ll be God’s frozen people if they stayed there.”
The island, low-lying and heavily forested, came into sight as the sun was bisected by the horizon. Gaul asked, “Can we make it before dark?”
“I think so. Anyway, we follow the coast from now. Through the strait will save time.”
“You’re the navigator.”
Steep slopes thick with trees to the water’s edge lined the narrow channel. Gaul reduced speed and the Vijaya Pandit sank down into the water and lifted two white flanking wings of water from her flared bows. Hills echoed the noise of their passing. Seabirds wheeled from every inlet and tideway.
It was cold now without direct sunlight. Very cold on the open deck. Leaving the narrows, they followed a bulging coast which only roughly met the expectations of the old chart. Ice pack and glacier had ground out new detail. But the wheel had come full circle and it was a northern temperate zone again with birch trees down to the water’s edge and any number of brand-new river deltas opening out. No mark of human settlement, however, broke the line.
Blood-red light followed them into the wide, shallow estuary of the Dee. It turned the trees dark. They threaded a tortuous path through a desolation of empty sands. It was a kind of homecoming out of “the wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters of the petrel and the porpoise.”
The size of the empty distances and the quality of the light made them silent. They were all on deck, except Shultz at the wheel. Goda went back inside and stood beside him.
Outside, Wanda was leaning comfortably back against Lee Wayne, who held her against the small sway of the launch. Cheryl and Peter Swarbrick were in the stern. They had sorted through the signal locker for the craft’s pennant—blue with the olive branch emblem in white—and they were bending it to a halyard on the stubby flagstaff. There would be no welcoming gun, but they felt that the occasion needed even unilateral ceremonial.
They rounded a bend in the sluggish channel. Here the river had carved out a natural harbor, with trees down to the water’s edge. Frank took them in at DEAD SLOW AHEAD and let go the anchor in a fathom of clear water. Then he said, “Everything’s very quiet outside. That leaves you and me. Give me a day or two, Goda. All will be well.”
“That’s all right. Take your time. We have plenty. I know she was very special to you.”
Jane turned to Gaul Kalmar and when he pulled her closely against him, he could feel her trembling, even through two thicknesses of AIR SEA RESCUE fabric.
“What are we doing here, Gaul?”
He said gently, “This is a great time to ask that question. We’re the second wave from the east. Or third, or fourth; who knows?”
“To do what?”
“To start homo sapiens on another circular tour.”
“And finish up like Fred?”
He was looking out at the low wooded hills which flanked the narrowing estuary, imagining the settlement they would build. There was land to be cleared for farming. Some power source to organize. Water, probably. That would be an interesting exercise; they were heavily weighted on the engineering side. Their pooled knowledge represented untold ages of patient accumulation, straw upon straw, of information which had finally built into the techniques which had preserved Carthage through the ages of ice and darkness.
There must be no regression to Fred. Somehow the salient points of all the disciplines must be codified and preserved for their descendants. There was no virtue in starting again from the beginning just to make it tough. Perhaps this time, with the start they could give, the end would not be the same. There could be a break out of the circle.
He said aloud, “What we will do will have been done before. Anything we discover has already been discovered and lost perhaps many times. Nothing we can feel or know will be new except to us. It doesn’t matter. The key is in the way we go on. How we do it, in fact.”
“Better to travel hopefully than to arrive?”
Jane was thinking about the role she would have in the new place. Here there would be no cushioning of the facts of life. They had bought independence at a price.
Children in Carthage had been cared for by the city; only allowed home when they were housetrained, biddable, on the way to their limited selfhood. Here, there would be everything to do. She and the other women would no longer primarily have a professional niche. They would be back at the hearth and skillet, with all the old traditional roles to fill. Goda would be a natural for it. Wanda too. Cheryl, not so definitely; but clearly she would accept a lot for her Swarbrick.
What about herself? The large firm hands, pulling flatly against her back, were slowly increasing their pressure. She found she had to move her feet to keep balance. They were very much aware of the form of each other’s body. The matter was resolved for her. There was no need to debate it. It was all right. She could stop thinking and simply be glad. Solution was not at a cognitive level at all, but was some deep intuitive thing.
The last of the red light was slanting across the deck and turning her hair into dark glowing copper. Tonight they would remain at anchor in the channel. Tomorrow the life of the new colony could begin. Endless work to do. Problems that would task every one of them to the limit of their resources in physical and mental strength. Eight sophisticates from an ultimate in technological development, from the far end of a cul de sac, had won out into a main stream again.
Gaul said, “More than that. How you travel is more important than where you go. Living is struggling. This is the unavoidable thing. We have to learn to like it.”
“You want me to struggle?”
“Not all the time.”
“As of tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow will be fine.”