Kate Wilhelm in Orbit - Volume Two (6 page)

“How bad?”

“I don’t know. Shock.” He glanced quickly toward the fort. She was gone.

“For God’s sake, be careful!” he said moments later as they started to move Pitcock to the door, padded now with the beach mat. They covered him and fastened him down securely with the blankets, and then Lee and Eliot carried him to the motor launch. Mrs. Bonner met them at the dock.

“There’ll be an ambulance waiting.” She looked at Pitcock and turned white. “My God! Oh, my God!”

“Go with them,” Eliot said to her. “You, too,” he told Beatrice. “Get out of here.”

“No. I couldn’t help him.”

They got him on board and Lee worked with the mooring line. Eliot turned again to Beatrice. “Please go on. Stay with him. He might want you.”

“Don’t send me away, Eliot. Please don’t send me away.”

He nodded and the three of them stood on the dock and watched until the launch started to pick up speed in the smooth water of the bay. As the roar diminished, the silence of the island settled preternaturally. “Where’s Mary?”

“In our house.”

“Let’s get her. We have to stay together tonight.” They started across the island. Under the trees the light was a somber yellow, the air hot and still, thick and oppressive. Through the branches overhead the sky was dirty yellow, the color of Donna’s hair. No bird stirred, no tree frogs sang, the palm fronds stood stiff and unmoving. Eliot set a fast pace and they hurried a bit more. When they came to the ruins, twilight had descended, and rounding the aborted building they involuntarily stopped. Before them was a concrete ocean, gray on gray, the sea and horizon an encapsulat­ing solid that was closing the distance to them rapidly.

“Get Mary, fast. We’ll go to the office building.” Eliot’s hand closed hard on Beatrice’s arm. She was gazing about in wonder. She reached out to touch the granite block, then her hand swept through the air, her fingers spread apart, as if trying to feel for something not there. “It’s an illusion, a trick of the light. A storm’s coming fast.”

She looked at him, touched his cheek as she had touched the rock. “But I can’t tell the difference. This afternoon, I dreamed, I thought, or hallucinated, something. Everything was like a flat illustration from a book. I…” She shook herself and laughed self-consciously. “I found your watch. Here.” She pulled it from her pocket and handed it to him. Eliot stared at it for a long time. Then Lee and Mary were with them and they turned to go to the office building.

Halfway there, the wind came. It came with a shriek that was too high-pitched, and it carried sand and dust that brought night. The island shook, and the trees ground their branches together. Eliot grasped Beatrice’s hand and pulled her, blinded by flying matter and the driving wind that was tearing up rotted and rotting leaves and twigs and stripping leaves from the oaks and needles from the pines. It was a hot wind. When the noises ebbed they could hear the sea pounding. A tree shuddered and crashed down across the walk and they stopped, panting, then ran on, clamber­ing over the trunk. Now they could see the office building and the lake dimly. The lake looked like a saucer of water rocking back and forth. There was no sign of the waterfowl. They began to run across the parklike setting and the water rocked higher on the far side of the lake.

“For the love of God, hurry!” Eliot cried, and nearly yanked Beatrice off her feet. The water was swinging back now, and at the same time the wind increased, pushing the water up and out of its banks. Lee and Mary had reached the building, but Beatrice stumbled. Eliot knocked her to the ground and wrapped his arms around her, and the water hit them.

They rolled with the wall of water, tumbled over and over, grinding against the walk, against the sand and bushes. Beatrice went limp and Eliot held her head tight against him and let himself roll. He closed his hand over her mouth and nose so she wouldn’t breathe in the roiling water and dirt. When he knew he could hold his breath no longer, that Beatrice would die if she didn’t get air, the water abruptly fell. Everything stopped, even the wind paused. There were hands on him, Lee, trying to help him up. Eliot resisted feebly, the hands persisted, and the weight that was Beatrice was removed.

“Can you get up, Eliot? Can you move? I’ll carry her inside and come back for you.” Again the peace returned, but after an infinitely long time, he opened his eyes and knew that he had to get up, had to get inside the shelter of the building. The wind was start­ing to build again and he struggled to his knees, then pulled him­self upright and, staggering uncertainly, stumbled to the entrance as Lee was coming out for him.

He was hardly aware of being led inside, of anything that happened for the next few minutes. Beatrice smiled wanly at him, then lay back on the couch where Lee had put her. Outside, the storm built to a new intensity.

“How long has it been?” Mary asked much later. There was no light in the building, the electricity had long since failed. They could hear the howling wind, now and again punctuated by explosive noises as if a wrecking crew were hard at work destroying the island and everything on it.

Eliot looked at his watch; it had stopped. He shrugged. Some­thing crashed into the building and the whole structure shuddered.

“What is it?” Lee asked later. “A tornado would have gone long ago. There wasn’t any report of a hurricane. What is it?”

Eliot stood up. The building shuddered again with a new blast of wind. “I have to go find her,” he said.

“No!” Beatrice, pale and torn and cut and filthy, and very beautiful. He touched her cheek lightly. She backed away from him and sat down. Very frightened. Tears standing in her eyes. No one else said anything.

No matter which way he went the wind was in his face. The rain drove against him horizontally, blinding him, and he was buffeted with debris of the storm. There were trees downed everywhere, and he stumbled and fell over them and crawled and dragged himself to his feet again and again. He lost his sandals and knew that his feet were bleeding. His bare chest was hatchmarked by cuts and scrapes. Then he felt the smooth terrazzo underfoot and he knew that soon he would find her. He fell again, hard against a roughly worked block that was cold and wet. The pounding rain dissolved him; he flowed through the rock where there was silence and peace and no more pain. He rested. Very slowly, after a long time, he found himself withdrawing from the nothingness of rest; the rock was cutting into his chest, and where it had scraped his cheek raw there was pain. He pulled away. Lightning burned the air, sizzling so close that he was blinded. The thunder that was almost simultaneous with it deepened and he vibrated with the roar. Blinded and deafened, he pushed himself away from the rock, reeled backward and clung to the great oak tree until his vision cleared again. Then he lurched away from the place, toward the water’s edge and the jumbled rocks there. Behind him lightning flashed again, the tree exploded, showering a geyser of splinters over him. He didn’t look back. The tree crashed to the ground, one of the branch ends brushing him as it fell.

The thunder of the sea contested the thunder of the air, overcame it as he drew nearer until there was only the roar of the ocean. The waves were mountainous, crashing over the highest of the rocks now, grinding rocks against rocks, smashing all to a powdery sand that it would fling away to rest in a watery grave. Eliot saw her then.

I’ve come for you.

You can’t touch me.

Yes. I can. I know you.

She laughed and was gone. He waited, bracing himself against the wind, and lightning illuminated her again, closer.

Don’t run anymore. I’ll still be here no matter how far you run. Always closer.

A wave broke over his feet, and again she laughed and the moment was over. He didn’t move.

Eliot, go back to them. Or they’ll all die. And death is real, Eliot. No matter what else isn’t, death is real.

He had only to reach out to touch her now. Her flesh was as alive as his own, the arm that he caught twisted and pulled reassuringly.

You’ll kill them all, Eliot. Beatrice. Lee. Mary. They’ll die. Look at the water. It’s going to cover the island.

Another wave broke, higher on his leg this time. The water was rushing among the blocks, reaching out for the fort now.

She struggled to free herself, she clawed his face and bit and tried to bring her knee up. Eliot twisted her around and they slipped and fell together, his grasp on her arm broken. He brought his hands up her body and fastened them on her throat, and the waves were over his head as he choked her and beat her head against the rocks and knew that he was drowning, being swept out to sea by the furious undertow, but still he held her. Her struggles became feebler.

God! Help me!

He can’t! He brings destruction and plagues and wars and death. No help.

She was hardly moving, and they were both swept up together and dashed against the piled-up blocks. Eliot blacked out, but his hands didn’t let go, and when the pain released him, he knew that he still held her although he could no longer feel her.

God, please! Please.

He brings the floods and the winds and devastates the land and kills mankind. He is death and I’m sending you back to him.

You’re crazy. You can’t kill. They’ll punish you. They’ll hang you. Put you in an institution for the rest of your life.

And the spark of life that is stronger than all the powers of death commands the waters to be stilled, and they are quiet.

There was only silence now.

“Help me pull him out of there.” Lee’s voice. “Can you unlock his hands?”

“Is he dead? For God’s sake, Lee, is he dead?”

“No. Beatrice, get out of the way. He’s…”

Eliot opened his eyes to a tranquil night. He was between two stone blocks, waves breaking over his legs. His hands and arms ached and he looked at them; his fingers were locked together. There was no sign of her. Beatrice reached down to touch him and he felt his muscles relax, and took her hand.

“It’s over then?”

“Yes. How? What happened?” Beatrice shook her head vio­lently. “Never mind. Not now. Let’s get you inside. You’re hurt.”

They walked around the toppled oak tree, but in the wet black ground there were sprouts already, palely green, tenacious. There would be a grove there one day.

“The oak tree is the only casualty.” Lee said in wonder. “You’d think with all that wind, the thunder and lightning, the whole island would be gone. One tree.”

Eliot felt Beatrice’s hand tighten in his, but he didn’t say anything. She knows. A temporary displacement of the ego and she comes up with what I’m thinking, just like that. He didn’t find it at all curious that no one asked what had happened to Donna. They were on the spiral, safely now, and they would continue to search for patterns that would prove to be elusive, but maybe, now, not too elusive after all.

• • •

On the Road to Honeyville

(Orbit 11 — 1972)

Father died in April. In July Mother said, “We’re going home.”

Like that. We’re going home. Over the next four weeks, through packing and sorting and getting rid of, and real estate people, and prospective buyers, through it all I kept coming back to those words. Montauk was home, the only one I’d known, although Eleanor said she remembered a city apartment, and Rob insisted he did too, lying, because he was only a baby when they bought the Montauk house.

“You mean Lexington?” Rob asked.

Horses, rolling pasture, the old Widmer farm where Grandma still lived.

“No, I mean Salyerville.”

I was washing dishes. Eleanor was dashing around getting ready for a date and Rob was fixing the stereo, across the counter in the family room. There was a long quiet waiting time after Mother said Salyerville. Eleanor broke it. “Why? I thought you’d have to be carried back there, words to that effect.”

“Things change.”

“Well, not me. I have to be in Ithaca by the end of August and…”

“Of course,” Mother said. “We’ll get you settled in school first.”

“Are we broke?” Rob asked.

“Not completely. Near enough. Too broke to keep the house. I’ll work, but even so…”

He had a wreck the first day of March and died April 6, and in between had two operations and never left the hospital. I saw myself on the starched sheet, pale, hovering between life and death, the doctors thick around me, the first such case they’d ever seen. And such a pretty girl, so brave.

“I won’t go either. Those hick schools!”

“Rob!”

“I won’t!”

I turned from the sink to see her standing at the table looking at me. I knew that if I said no, too, we wouldn’t go. I knew that. She was waiting, not moving. Maybe not even breathing. And I thought, I can’t decide. I’m not old enough. I don’t understand enough. She waited, and I knew that I was afraid, not like in the movies, or reading a horror story, not like anything I’d ever felt before. I nodded.

So Eleanor went to college and Rob went to live with our uncle and Mother and I began the long drive home. I took a test once, along with some of the girls. It was a scientific survey to gauge the chances of your having a happy marriage. Joanne found it in a true love magazine. One of the questions was, “Are your parents (1) ecstatic together, (2) happy, (3) neutral, (4) unhappy, (5) miserable?” I checked number one. My score showed that I would have a much better than average marriage. They never fought, and it seemed natural to walk into a room where they were and see his arms around her, see them kissing, or something like that. I couldn’t really believe they’d still be interested in sex, he was already forty and she was nearly there. At the time I thought they’d had sexual intercourse in the past because they wanted a family, and I forgave them for it.

It rained almost every day in April. Toward the end of the month on a day when the sun finally came out I kneeled on the big red chair with my chin on the back, not thinking, not really looking out even. And suddenly I was crying, and I hated the day for being sunny and the air for being warm, and Rob for having band practice and Eleanor for having a part-time job.

“Elizabeth, honey,” She put her arm around my shoulders and I hated her because she wasn’t crying.