A Gift Upon the Shore (17 page)

“That's too bad,” he says, shaking his head. “If you'd gone south, you might've found the Ark.”

I stare at him, and I have to control the caustic reply that comes first to my lips. He speaks out of ignorance and innocence, and I bring out a smile for him, then turn my attention to the diary.

“Once we crossed back over the summit of the Coast Range, we were in living forest again, and we bathed in a cold mountain stream and feasted on trout. I realized then that
we
lived in the green corridor. The only question was how far it extended. The road we took over the mountains joins Highway 101 about fifty miles north of here. There was a small town at the junction, but it was deserted, all the buildings in ruins. Well, it wasn't entirely deserted. We found a mother cat and her five half-grown kittens there. We managed to catch three of the kittens, and we were happy to discover that two were males. We made a cage of sticks and rope with a piece of plywood as a floor, and for the rest of the trip, the kittens rode in state on top of Silver's packs.”

Stephen laughs at that picture, and I add, “I don't think the kittens were impressed with this lofty perch. Anyway, that night we built a big signal fire. We thought if there were any survivors in the area, they'd see it. But there was no answer to our signal. The next morning, we continued north, then after a few miles, the forest suddenly ended, and we were in another bum. Forest fire, not firestorm. It went on for miles, for days. Dead, black trees as far as we could see. Sometimes we'd cross patches of green forest, but they were small. Most of the towns we went through along the way had been burned, too. Even when we found houses intact, no one was living in them. We saw a lot of little graveyards with wooden markers. None of the dates were later than four months after the End.”

I close my eyes, but open them again quickly. A montage of those poignant little graveyards waits in my mind's eye. Stephen remains patiently silent until I'm ready to continue.

“We kept going north on the coast highway, lighting signal fires every night, but there were no answering signals. Finally, we came to a junction with Highway 26. We'd been away from Amarna for nearly two weeks, and we couldn't stay much longer. Rachel got out her map and pointed to a cross mark just off Highway 26 about fifteen miles inland. Saddle Mountain. She'd been there Before—it was a state park—and she said there was a road to its base and a trail up to the summit. And Saddle Mountain is more than three thousand feet high. From the top we could see well over a hundred miles in every direction. We could see man-made smoke or fire, and our smoke or fire could be seen over all that distance. So we headed east, and when we got close to Saddle Mountain, we found it was in one of those islands the fires hadn't touched. The trail to the summit was passable, and at the top the old fire lookout cabin was still standing. That gave us some shelter. The wind was sometimes fierce, and nothing grew on the summit but stunted grass and salal.”

“What did you see from up there?”

“The world, Stephen.” I give that a laugh. “A small piece of it that seemed very large to us. To the south and east, we saw the burn we'd been traveling through, and above the haze on the eastern horizon, a few tiny, white cones—the high peaks of the Cascades. To the west we saw the ocean, and to the north, green forest and the Columbia River where it meets the sea at Astoria. Beyond the river lay more forest, but on the horizon we saw a strip of gray. We looked at it through the binoculars, and it was another burn. Then I turned the binoculars on Astoria. Most of the town was in ruins, but not all of it. Yet there was no sign of smoke—the kind produced by cooking fires, the smoke of civilization. That didn't discourage me. We planned to stay for a few days, and we'd have ample opportunity to look for smoke at every time of day and the lights of fires at every time of night. And sooner or later—so I told myself—someone would see our signal and answer it. From the beginning of our trek we were so desperate for a sign of human life, we'd put aside the old fear of strangers who might be killers.
We
were willing to take that chance, and I couldn't imagine that anyone out there wouldn't be willing to take that chance with
us
.” I pause then, and Stephen seems on the verge of a question, but he looks at me and says nothing.

And I go on. “So, we built a fire on top of Saddle Mountain and kept it burning day and night. We spent most of the daylight hours hauling wood up for the fire, but one of us always surveyed the countryside at least once every half hour. At night we went on shifts: two hours watching, two sleeping. The times weren't exact, but nearly so; Rachel's watch still worked. The first two days were clear, and the nights were dark—it was a new moon—but we didn't see any smoke or lights. Still, I kept thinking, one more day, one more night.
Someone
would answer our signal. On the third day the wind shifted to the south, and we could see clouds on the horizon, but we kept the fire going all day and into the night. And watched. Watched and hoped. And saw . . . nothing.”

Stephen reaches for my hand where it lies on the open pages of the diary. “Oh, Mary, weren't you sad when nobody answered your signal?”

My gentle Stephen. I remember that last night. . . .

“Yes, Stephen. Yes, I was sad.”

—JEHAN DE MANDEVILLE (SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE),
THE TRAVELS OF SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE
(c. 1371)

A
shadow of cloud hid the stars on the western horizon, but the rest of the sky was icily clear. Mary Hope looked up at Polaris, the North Star, the Lode Star, and wondered how many miles of trackless wilderness, how many leagues of unmapped sea human beings had crossed over the millennia, all guided by that constant star. Yet only an accident of location placed it in line with Earth's axis at this point in the planet's history.

The wind blew chill out of the south, carrying the pungent scent of smoke from the fire behind her. It was too far away to provide any warmth, but she could hear the rush of flames. She sat on a ledge of rock with only a blanket to soften its cold hardness, sat cross-legged like a sadhu on a mountaintop, tranced in search of wisdom, and watched Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper swing around the fulcrum of Polaris. The Milky Way cast a veil of stars on the endless black of absence where silence echoed, and the accumulated light of all those distant suns served to make the sky lighter than the land only by the fine degree that was to her eyes discernible. She felt her eyes wide open, pupils large and dark, reaching into the dark of the land. The sky was full of suns, yet she denied them, sought one light, one small sun in the darkness below the myriad.

Where are you
? You
must be out there. Just one light, that's all I ask
.

Behind her, behind the fire, the horses were tethered to forage on the sparse grass; Rachel and the dogs and kittens were asleep in the lookout cabin. Mary could hear no sound as evidence of their existence, and she was possessed by the conviction that they did not exist, that she was the only thing living in this fathomless darkness.

No, it was a sensation more than a conviction, but it was pervading. And it was new. Through three days and three nights of maintaining the fire and scanning the land for an answer, she had never doubted that she
would
see that wisp of smoke, that small sun of light.

Now, finally, doubt whispered its chill in the wind, and she began shivering and couldn't stop.

A sound behind her—loose rock displaced by light feet. Shadow came up beside her, nudged her elbow. Mary rubbed Shadow's back, wondering if Rachel was awake. It seemed too early for her shift. But a few minutes later Mary heard Rachel's footsteps on the stone along with the patter of Sparky's paws.

When Rachel sat down next to her, Mary asked, “Is it time?”

“Past time, actually. It's about twelve-thirty. Which makes it a new day.” She paused, then, “Do you realize what day this is?”

“No, I . . . I guess I've lost track of the days.”

“This is September fifteenth,” Rachel said dully. “The second anniversary of the End.”

The second anniversary. Two years. Mary looked out at the black world where nothing provided her any frame of reference for dimension. Or time. She made no response to Rachel's revelation.

At length, Rachel said, “Mary, we'll have to leave tomorrow. At this elevation and this time of year, that storm might mean snow.”

Mary closed her eyes, breath stopped by a rush of panic. She blurted, “We can't leave, Rachel! Just one more day—they'll answer our signal by then.”

A sigh in the wind. “They? If anyone were out there to see our signal, they'd have answered it by now.”

“Maybe they're afraid to answer. They don't know who we are—”

“Mary, please. You know better.”

Sparky whined and put his front paws on Mary's knees, and she stroked his head. Yes, she knew better. Her shoulders slumped with the release of unrecognized tension that left her muscles aching.

“Rachel, there
are
survivors out there.”

“Yes, there are survivors. Probably millions in the southern hemisphere managing to adapt to this new Stone Age. There must be survivors all over the world in isolated pockets like ours. But not here, Mary. Not here.”

Mary stared at Rachel but couldn't see her face, only the shape of her body limned by the firelight against the darkness. Her voice was quiet, nearly toneless, when it should have been strained with pain.

And Mary realized she was listening for her own pain.

She gazed out into the dark wilderness, and held back a cry.
Let me see a light. Just one tiny spark of light
.

Not here. Somewhere in the world, lights were burning on this night. Not here. The word that gagged in her throat was
loneliness
.

Human beings were social animals. They weren't made to live in solitude so absolute, so hopeless. They weren't made to live celibate, sterile lives, to die in a void.

“Rachel, if we could only go on farther, across the Columbia, maybe, or south into California . . .”

“Of course, we could go on, but we have to make up our minds whether we want to continue to be farmers, or to take another step backward and become nomads. You can't have both, Mary. We've been away from Amarna over two weeks, and we've covered less than two hundred miles. And even then, we may go home to find some of our animals dead, or something worse might've happened. The point is, if we choose to go searching over long distances for survivors, we'll have to forfeit Amarna, and I wonder how long we'd survive as nomads. Most of the land we'd be traveling through won't be exactly hospitable.”

Is that all
it
comes to
—
survival
?

And Mary knew the answer.

Without a whimper, the hope died and left within her an irrevocable silence.

She said, “It would've been easier—more merciful, anyway—if we hadn't lived through the winter.”

The wind gusted colder in the wake of those words. At length, Rachel said, “Maybe. And maybe something will put us out of our misery eventually. Right now, I'd prefer to pursue other options.”

“Other options?” Mary stared at Rachel's shadow shape. “What other options do we
have
?”

“Well, there's the problem of finding other survivors. Our trouble is there are only two of us. That forces us to choose between being farmers or nomads. But maybe somewhere—it'll have to be somewhere fairly near—others were luckier in terms of numbers, so some of them would be free to leave home to make the same kind of search we are now. They'd look for exactly what we're looking for. Maybe they couldn't actually see our fires, but they could see our smoke. There's hardly a day when we don't have a fire of some kind going. We can't find them, but they can find us—by our smoke.”

The hope that had seemed dead stirred. “Yes, anyone following 101 is bound to see our smoke, and that's the only way to travel along the coast.” Then the hope sighed into quiescence again. “So, all we can do is go home and wait and . . . survive.”

Rachel leaned forward, rested her elbows on her knees. “There's something else we can do. We can prepare our legacy to the future.”

Mary laughed, heard the acid edge in it. What kind of legacy could they leave? And to whom? To what future?

Rachel said levelly, “I've been thinking about it for a long time. There's nothing we can do about the hellish mess humankind has made of this living world, and there's nothing we can do about our lost civilization, except . . . Mary, when you try to define civilization, what you come up with has to include the factor of accumulation. The discoveries of each generation are its legacy to all those that follow.”

Unseen in some indefinable distance, an owl cried. Mary said, “But the chain is broken now.”

“Yes, but it's been broken before.” Rachel's voice was as soft and as poignant as the owl's. “Not so totally. Usually it breaks in one culture, while it's maintained in another. A great deal is always lost in those breaks. We don't know how much was lost in the dark ages in Europe, but we know what was saved. Western civilization was built on it.”

“And was that a good thing?”

There was a hint of annoyance in Rachel's reply, but it didn't last. “It depends, I suppose, on how you define
good
. A lot of extraordinary things happened, or were invented, discovered, or created in the context of Western civilization that I'd call good. I know far more about the universe than Solomon in all his wisdom, not because I'm so much wiser, but because of the two and a half millennia of civilization that occurred since he died. Every painting I did was a child of that civilization. And shards of that civilization
have
survived.”

“What, Rachel? What could
possibly
have survived?”

“I don't know what might have survived elsewhere. I only know what has survived in our possession. The books, Mary.”

Mary shuddered, folded her arms against her body, overtaken by a sensation of fear she could neither control nor understand.

Rachel meant the books at Amarna, her own and those she had scavenged the last two years. She had spent every hour she could purloin from their punishing schedule reading those books, sorting them by subject and author, separating out the duplicates. Mary had never taken part in that, had avoided looking at the books, much less reading them. She hadn't even recognized her denial of them, nor let herself wonder why she denied the written word, which had once been her craft, her art, her life.

Now, as she thought about the books, she found herself suddenly and silently weeping, and the ravening agony of grief doubled her over.

Now she understood.

It was fear of this knife-edged pain that had blinded her to what was so obvious to Rachel. For Mary, handling and reading those books was tantamount to touching and talking to the corpses of loved ones. They were reminders of what was lost. It was that loss she had wanted to deny as she wanted to deny the darkness before her now.

Yet now the grief, inch by inch, second by second, surrendered. She felt herself trembling, and it wasn't because of revived pain or even the cold wind. It was a manifestation of hope.

Our legacy to the future
.

The
future
. That was where hope lived.

Rachel said, “We have over six thousand books at Amarna now. Of course, it's a pitiful fraction of human knowledge. But it's all we have. I don't believe they're the only books left in the world, just as I don't believe we're the only survivors, but I keep thinking maybe we have the only existing copies of some books. They
must
be preserved if it's remotely possible. Mary, what else can I do for humankind? You're young and still capable of bearing children—if other survivors do find us—but I'm past that. And maybe those books will make more difference in the long run.”

Mary felt an encompassing calm, and she tried to remember when she had felt anything like it, when fear and doubt hadn't been foremost in her mind. Before the End, certainly. Yes, she could remember one moment in her life when she felt a similar calm: the night she finished the last page of the last revision of
October Flowers
. The calm arose from her realization that she had accomplished something worthwhile, and she had done it well.

She thought about that book, thought about
her
book being read in an unforeseeable future, and the idea was profoundly satisfying. She thought of the legions of writers—all dead now, probably, if they weren't before the End—who had written with the conviction that their words would be read by future generations they couldn't imagine.

She thought about the books at Amarna, the books she had denied for two years. She didn't know what Rachel had picked up in her scavenging, but she knew what had been there Before. The encyclopedias. At least, they offered summaries of knowledge. Books on science, especially earth sciences. On human history. On art. Yes, the children of the future would have some idea of what the Parthenon looked like, or the stricken gray figures of Kollwitz, the woodcuts of Hiroshige, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the seething sunflowers of Van Gogh, the columns of Karnak. For a moment the grief revived. Was that all the children of the future would know of those astounding creations? A few pictures in a few books?

But they would know
something
of them. They would know what was possible for the human mind.

Fiction. There wasn't much fiction at Amarna. At least, there was a complete Shakespeare. And a volume of Sophocles' plays. Dickens, Kafka, Melville, Tolstoy, Cervantes, Austen, Conrad, Steinbeck . . .

Yes, and poetry. Dickinson, Eliot, Yeats, Dante, Wordsworth, Sappho, Auden, Whitman . . .

So little, such a minute fraction, but Rachel was right. It was all they had.

Mary said on a long exhalation of breath, “Yes. Oh, Rachel,
yes
.”

Rachel laughed. “Yes, we should do it?”

“Yes, we must do it.” Then she hesitated. “But how? This climate is so damned hard on books.”