A Century of Science Fiction

by Damon Knight

  The steady rain drummed against the twigs and small spring leaves, splashing in the deepening trickles of water that ran along the ground. Spet knew that somewhere the river was overflowing its banks and spreading into the forest and across meadows to meet and deepen the rain water. In the village the street would be muddy, and the children would be shouting, trying already to pole the boats in the street, wild with impatience for the rising of the river, to see again the cold swift flow of water and watch the huts of the town sag and flow downward, dissolve and vanish beneath the smooth surface.

  For a month in the time of floods everyone would live in boats. His tribe would paddle and pole up the coast, meeting other tribes, trading baskets and fishhooks, salt fish for salt meat, and swapping the old stories and songs with new variations brought from far places. Last time they had been lucky enough to come upon a large animal caught in the flood, swimming and helpless to resist the hunters. The men of the enemy tribe had traded skin for half the roast meat on a raft, and sung a long story-song that no one had heard before. That was the best feast of all.

  Then the horde of small boats would come home to the lakes that were-the draining meadows and forest, and take down the sick and dying young men who had been hanging in the trees, and tend and feed them and call them “elder.”

  They would then travel again for food, to fight through storms to salt the meat of drowned animals and hunt the deep sea fish caught in the dwindling lakes. When the rains had stopped and the land began to dry, they would return to the damp and drying land to sing and work and build a village of the smooth fresh clay left by the flood.

  But Spet would not see those good times again. He hung in his tree upside down with the rain beating coolly against his skin. It was growing too dark to see more than the dim light of the sky. He shut his eyes, and behind his shut eyes were pictures and memories, and then dreams.

  Here he is. How do we get him down. Did you bring a knife. How do we get up to him. It's slippery. I can’t climb this thing. Wait, I’ll give you a boost.

  A flash of light, too steady for lightning, lasting a full second. Spet awoke fully, staring into the darkness, looking for the light which now was gone, listening to the mingled voices in the strange language.

  “Don’t use the flashlight, it will frighten him.”

  “Going to try to explain to him what we’re doing?”

  “No, not right away. He’ll come along. Spet’s a pal of mine already.”

  “Man, do these trees have roots. As big as the branches!”

  “Live mangroves.”

  “You’re always claiming the South has everything. What are mangroves?”

  “Florida swamp trees. They root straight into deep water. Give a hand here.”

  “Keeps raining like this and they’re going to need their roots. How high can we climb just on the roots, anyhow?”

  “Think you’re kidding? Why else would they have roots like this? This territory must be under water usually, deep water. This flat land must be delta country. We’re just in the dry season.”

  “What do you mean delta country? I’m a city boy, define your terms.”

  “I mean, we’re at the mouth of one of those big wandering rivers like the Mississippi or the Yellow River that doesn’t know where it’s going to run next, and splits up into a lot of little rivers at the coast, and moves its channel every spring. I noticed that grass around the ship looked like salt-water grass. Should have thought about it.”

  A dark figure appeared beside Spet and climbed past him toward the branch where the rope was tied. The next voice was distant. “You trying to tell me we landed the ship in a river bed? Why didn't you say something when we were landing?'"

  “Didn't think of it then ” That voice was loud and close.

  “It's a fine time to think of it now. I left the ship wide open. You up there yet?"

  “Uh huh. I'm loosening the rope. Going to lower him slow. Catch him and keep him from landing on his head, will you?"

  “Ready. Lower away."

  The voices stopped and the world began to spin, and the bole of the tree began to move past Spet’s face.

  Suddenly a pair of wet arms gripped him, and the voice of the brown ghost called, “Got him."

  Immediately the rope ceased to pull at Spet’s ankles, and he fell head first against the brown ghost and they both tumbled against slippery high roots and slid down from one thick root to another until they stopped at the muddy ground. The ghost barked a few short words and began to untie the complex knots from Spet’s ankles and wrists.

  It was strange sitting on the wet ground with its coating of last year’s leaves. Even right side up the forest looked strange, and Spet knew that this was because of death, and he began to sing his death song.

  The brown ghost helped him to his feet and said clearly in ordinary words, “Come on, boy, you can sing when we get there.”

  His friend dropped down from a low branch to the higher roots of the tree, slipped and fell on the ground beside them.

  In Spet’s language the standing one said to the other, “No time for resting, Charlie, let’s go.”

  It was very dark now, and the drips from the forest branches poured more heavily, beating against the skin. The ghost on the ground barked a few of the same words the relative-ghost had made when he had fallen, and got up.

  The two started off through the forest, beckoning Spet to follow. He wondered if he were a ghost already. Perhaps the ghosts had taken him to be a ghost without waiting for him to die. That was nice of them, and a favor, possibly because they were kinfolk. He followed them.

  The rain had lightened and become the steady, light-falling spray that it would be for the next several days. Walking was difficult, for the floor of the forest was slippery with wet leaves, and the mud underneath was growing soft again, remembering the time it had been part of the water of the river, remembering that the river had left it there only a year ago. The ghosts with him made sputtering words in ghost talk, sometimes tripped and floundered and fell, helped each other up and urged him on.

  The forest smelled of the good sweet odors of damp earth and growing green leaves. The water and mud were cooling against his hurting feet, and Spet unaccountably wanted to linger in the forest, and sit, and perhaps sleep.

  The floods were coming, and the ghosts had no boats with them.

  “Come on, Spet. We go to big boat. Come on, Spet.”

  Why did they stumble and flounder through the forest without a boat? And why were they afraid? Could ghosts drown? These ghosts, with their perpetually wet appearance —if they had drowned once, would they be forced to relive the drowning, and be caught in the floods every year? A bad thing that happened once had to happen again and again in dreams. And your spirit self in the dream lived it each time as something new. There is no memory in the dream country. These ghosts were dream people, even though they chose to be in the awake world. They were probably bound by the laws of the dream world. They would have to re-enact their drowning. Their boat was far away, and they were running toward the watercourse where the worst wave of the flood would come.

  Spet understood suddenly that they wanted him to drown. He could not become a ghost, like these friendly brown ghosts, and live in their world, without first dying.

  He remembered his first thoughts of them, that they carried the illusion of water over them because they had once drowned. They wanted him to be like them. They were trying to lure him through waters where he would stumble and drown as they had. Naturally as they urged him on their gestures were nervous and guilty. It is not easy to urge a friend onward to his death. But to be shaped like a young one, merry, brown, and covered with water, obviously he had to be drowned as they were drowned, young and merry, before the hanging had made a sad adult of him.

  He would not let them know that he had guessed their intention. Running with them toward the place where the flood would be worst, he tried to remember on what verse he had stopped singing his dea
th song, and began again from that verse, singing to stop the fear-thoughts. The rain beat coolly against his face and chest as he ran.

  Each man in his own panic, they burst from the forest into the clearing. The engineers saw with a wave of relief that the spaceship was still there, a pale shaft upright in the midst of water. Where the meadow had been was a long narrow lake, reflecting the faint light of the sky, freckled with drifting spatters of rain.

  “How do we get to it?” Charlie turned to them.

  “How high is the water? Is the ramp covered?” Henderson asked practically, squinting through the rain.

  “Ramp looks the same. I see grass sticking up in the water. It’s not deep.”

  Charlie took a careful step and then another out into the silvery surface. Spongy grass met his feet under the surface, and the water lapped above his ankles, but no higher.

  “It’s shallow.”

  They started out toward the ship. It took courage to put their feet down into a surface that suggested unseen depth. The shallow current of water tugged at their ankles and grew deeper and stronger.

  “Henderson, wait!”

  The three stopped and turned at the call. The path to the village was close, curving away from the forest toward the distant riverbank, a silvery road of water among dark bushes. A dark figure came stumbling along the path, surrounded by the silvery shine of the rising water. Ripples spread from his ankles as he ran.

  He came to the edge where the bushes stopped and the meadow began, saw the lake-appearance of it, and stopped. The others were already thirty feet away.

  “Henderson! Charlie!”

  “Walk, it’s not deep yet. Hurry up.” Charlie gestured urgently for him to follow them. They were still thirty feet out, standing in the smooth silver of the rising water. It was almost to their knees.

  Winton did not move. He looked across the shining shallow expanse of water, and his voice rose shrilly. “It’s a lake, we need boats.”

  “It’s shallow,” Charlie called. The rain beat down on the water, speckling it in small vanishing pockmarks. The two engineers hesitated, looking back at Winton, sensing something wrong.

  Winton’s voice was low, but the harshness of desperation made it as clear as if he had screamed.

  “Please. I can’t swim—”

  “Go get him,” Henderson told Charlie. “He’s got a phobia. I’ll herd Spet to the ship, and then head back to help you.”

  Charlie was already splashing in long strides back to the immobile figure of the preacher. He started to shout when he got within earshot.

  “Why didn’t you say so, man? We almost left you behind!” He crouched down before the motionless fear-dazed figure. “Get on, man. You’re getting taxi service.”

  “What?” asked Winton in a small distant voice. The water lapped higher.

  “Get on my back,” Charlie snapped impatiently. “You’re getting transportation.”

  “The houses dissolved, and they went off in boats and left me alone. They said that I was an evil spirit. I think they did the hangings anyway, even though I told them it was wrong.” Winton’s voice was vague, but he climbed on Charlie’s back. “The houses dissolved.”

  “Speak up, stop mumbling,” muttered Charlie.

  The spaceship stood upright ahead in the center of the shallow silver lake that had been a meadow. Its doors were open, and the bottom of the ramp was covered by water. Water tugged against Charlie’s lower legs as he ran, and the rain beat against their faces and shoulders in a cool drumming. It would have been pleasant, except that the fear of drowning was growing even in Charlie, and the silver of the shallow new lake seemed to threaten an unseen depth ahead.

  “There seems to be a current,” Winton said with an attempt at casual remarks. “Funny, this water looks natural here, as if the place were a river, and those trees look like the banks.”

  Charlie said nothing. Winton was right, but it would not be wise to tell a man with a phobia about drowning that they were trying to walk across the bed of a river while the water returned to its channel.

  “Why are you running?” asked the man he carried.

  “To catch up with Henderson.”

  Once they were inside the spaceship with the door shut they could ignore the water level outside. Once inside, they would not have to tell Winton anything about how it was outside. A spaceship made a good submarine.

  The water level was almost to Charlie’s knees and he ran now in a difficult lurching fashion. Winton pulled up his feet nervously to keep them from touching the water. The plastic which they wore was semipermeable to water and both of them were soaked.

  “Who is that up ahead with Henderson?”

  “Spet, the native boy.”

  “How did you persuade him to stay away from the ceremony?”

  “We found him hanging and cut him down.”

  “Oh.” Winton was silent a moment trying to absorb the fact that the engineers had succeeded in rescuing someone. “It’s a different approach. I talked, but they wouldn’t listen.” He spoke apologetically, hanging on to Charlie’s shoulders, his voice jolting and stopping as Charlie tripped over a concealed tuft of grass or small bush under the water. “They didn’t even answer—or look at me. When the water got deep they went off in little boats and didn’t leave a boat for me.” Charlie tripped again and staggered to one knee. They both briefly floundered waist deep in the water, and then Charlie was up again, still with a grip on his passenger’s legs, so that Winton was firmly on his back.

  When he spoke again Winton’s tone was casual, but his voice was hysterically high in pitch. “I asked them for a boat, but they wouldn’t look at me.”

  Charlie did not answer. He respected Winton’s attempt to conceal his terror. The touch of water can be a horrifying thing to a man with a phobia of drowning. He could think of nothing to distract Winton’s attention from his danger, but he hoped desperately that the man would not notice that the water had deepened. It is not possible to run in water over knee height. There was no way to hurry now. The rain had closed in, in veiling curtains, but he thought he saw the small figures of Henderson and the native in the distance reach the ramp which led to the spaceship.

  If the flood hit them all now, Henderson and Spet could get inside, but how would he himself get this man with a phobia against water off his back and into the water to swim? He could visualize the bony arms tightening around his throat in a hysterical stranglehold. If a drowning man gets a clutch on you, you are supposed to knock him out and tow him. But how could he get this nonswimming type off his back and out where he could be hit? If Winton could not brace himself to walk in water up to his ankles, he was not going to let go and try to swim in water up to his neck. He’d flip, for sure! Charlie found no logical escape from the picture. The pressure of the strong bony arms around his throat and shoulders and the quick, irregular breathing of the man he was carrying made him feel trapped.

  The water rose another inch or so, and the drag of it against his legs became heavier. The current was pulling sidewise.

  “You’re going slowly.” Winton’s voice had the harsh rasp of fear.

  “No hurry.” With difficulty, Charlie found breath to speak in a normal tone. “Almost there.”

  The curtain of rain lifted for a moment and he saw the spaceship, dark against the sky, and the rampleading to its open door. The ramp was very shrunken, half covered by the rising water. It seemed a long way ahead.

  As he watched, a light came on.

  In the archway of the spaceship, Henderson flipped a switch and the lights went on.

  Spet was startled. Sunlight suddenly came from the interior of the hut and shone against the falling rain in a great beam. Rain glittered through the beam in falling drops like sparks of white fire. It was very unlike anything real, but in dreams sunlight could be in one place and rain another at the same time, and no one in the dream country was surprised. And these were people who usually lived in the dream country, so apparently t
hey had the power to do it in the real world also.

  Neverthless, Spet was afraid, for the sunlight did not look right as it was, coming out in a great widening beam across the rippling rain-pocked water. Sunlight did not mix well with rain.

  “Sunlight,” Spet said apologetically to his relative-ghost.

  The brown ghost nodded and led him down the slope of the ramp through the strange sparkling sunlight, with the ramp strange and hard underfoot.

  “Don’t go inside until I return,” the ghost said, mouthing the words with difficulty. The ghost placed his hands around the railing of the ramp. “You hang on here and wait for me,” said the brown ghost of someone in his family, and waded down into the water.

  Spet followed him down into the comfortable water until his sore feet were off the end of the ramp and in the cooling soft mud, and then he gripped the rail obediently and waited. The water lapped at his waist like an embrace, and the wind sang a death song for him.

  The bright glare of the strange sunlight on dancing water was beautiful, but it began to hurt his eyes. He closed them, and then heard a sound other than the wind. Two sounds.

  One sound he recognized as the first flood crest crashing through the trees to the north, approaching them, and he knew he must hurry and drown before it arrived, because it was rough and hurtful.

  The other sound was the strange voice of the black spirit which usually gibbered on top of the Box That Speaks. Spet opened his eyes and saw that the gibbering spirit was riding on the shoulders of the brown ghost, as he and his friend, the other brown ghost, moved through the waist-deep water toward Spet arid the ramp.