Part 17 (1/2)

'I'll come back after a few days,' said Carlyle.

The pair of them stood in a clear s.p.a.ce, looking out from the height of the plateau.

The three giant causeways in the rock were explained, three great chutes that drained off the deluge of rain from the high ground. The purple sea spread out be-neath them; the mee-haw trees marked the submerged islands. In a series of quick superimpositions Carlyle saw the great day when the flood receded altogether; when the star approached its apogee and the islands became dry land again.

'Yes,' he said. 'I'll be back to see that.'

As he turned to rejoin'-the landing party Carlyle took in the scene. The three men beside their vehicle, tall visitors in regu-lation silversuits, and a fourth man, unkempt and hairy, in ragged coveralls, communing at a distance with the members of a new species. The men looked curiously towards Carlyle; their anxiety did not quite diminish as he came closer. The distance between Carlyle and the landing party could not be taken up in a few small steps. They saw tomorrow's man, who by some chance operation of goodwill, some accident of under-standing, reached forward into new modes of being.

Death has been likened to an ocean. A talented writer tells us what it feels like to be swept along- ON THE RIVER.

By Robert F. Young Farrell was beginning to think that he had the River all to himself when he saw the girl. He had been traveling down-stream for nearly two days now - River days, that is. He had no way of knowing for certain, but he was convinced that River time had very little to do with real time. There were days and nights here, yes, and twenty- four hours elapsed between each dawn. But there was a subtle difference between time as he had known it once and time as he knew it now.

The girl was standing at the water's edge, waving a diminu-tive handkerchief. It was obvious that she wanted him to pole over to the bank. He did so, forcing the raft out of the sluggish current and into the shallows. Several yards from sh.o.r.e it nudged bottom, and he leaned on the pole, holding the raft in position and looking questioningly at the girl. It surprised him to; discover that she was young and attractive, although it shouldn't have, he supposed. a.s.suming that he had created her, it was only logical that he would have made her pleasing to the eye; and a.s.suming that he had not, it was illogical to conclude that merely because he had reached the age of thirty it was necessary for someone else to reach the age of thirty in order not to want to go on living. Her hair was only a shade less bright than the splash of afternoon sunlight in which she stood, and she wore it very short, A scattering of freckles lightly dappled the bridge of her delicate nose and the im-mediate areas on either side. She was willowy, and rather tall, and she had blue eyes.

'I'd like to share your raft,' she said across the several yards of water that separated her from him. 'My own broke loose during the night and drifted downstream, and I've been walk-ing ever since dawn.'

Her yellow dress was torn in a dozen places, Farrell noticed, and the slender slippers that encased her feet had already reached the point of no return. 'Sure,' he said. 'You'll have to wade to get on board, though. This is as far in as I can get.'

'I don't mind.'

The water came to her knees. He helped her up beside him; then, with a strong thrust of the pole, he sent the raft back into the current. The girl shook her head as though her hair had once been long and she had forgotten that it had been cut, and wanted the wind to blow it. 'I'm Jill Nicols,' she said. 'Not that it matters very much.'

'Clifford,' Farrell said. 'Clifford Farrell.'

She sat down on the raft and removed her shoes and stock-ings. After laying the pole aside, he sat down a few feet from her. 'I was beginning to think I was the only one making the journey,' he said.

The wind was moderate but brisk and was blowing upstream, and she faced into it as though expecting it to send her hair streaming behind her. The wind did its best, but succeeded only in ruffling the almost-curls that fringed her pale forehead. 'I thought I was all alone, too.'

'The way I had it figured,' Farrell said, 'the River was the product of my imagination. Now I see that it can't be - unless you're a product of my imagination also.'

She smiled at him sideways. 'Don't say that. I thought you were a product of mine.'

He smiled back at her. It was the first time he had smiled in ages. 'Maybe the River's an allegorical product of both our imaginations. Maybe this is the way you thought it would be, too. Drifting down a dark-brown stream, I mean, with trees on either hand and the blue sky above. Did you?'

'Yes,' she said. 'I've always thought that when the time came, it would be like this.'

A thought struck him. 'I took it for granted that because I'm here voluntarily, you are too. Are you?'

'Yes.'

'Maybe,' he went on, 'two people visualizing an abstract idea by means of the same allegory can make that allegory come to life. Maybe, down through the years and without our being aware of it, we brought the River into existence.'

'And then, when the time came, cast ourselves adrift on it? But where is the River?

Surely, we can't still be on earth.'

He shrugged. 'Who knows? Reality probably has a thousand phases mankind knows nothing about. Maybe we're in one of them... How long have you been on the River?'

'A little over two days. I lost time today because I had to go on foot.'

'I've been on it almost two days,' Farrell said.

'I must have been the first to come - the first to cast myself adrift then.' She wrung out her stockings and spread them on the raft to dry. She placed her bedraggled slippers beside them. She stared at the articles for some time. 'Funny the way we do such things at a time like this,' she said. 'Why should it make any difference to me now whether my shoes and stockings are wet or dry?'

'I guess we're creatures of habit,' he said. 'Right up to the very end. Last evening, at the inn where I stayed the night, I shaved. True, there was an electric razor available; but why did I go to the trouble?'

She smiled wryly. 'Last evening, at the inn where I stayed the night, I took a bath. I was going to put up my hair, but I caught myself just in time. It looks it, doesn't it?'

It did, but he didn't say so. Nor did he gallantly deny the fact. Somehow, small talk seemed out of place. The raft was drifting past a small island now. There were many such islands in the River - bleak little expanses of sand and gravel for the most part, although all of them had at least one tree. He glanced at the girl. Was she seeing the island, too? Her eyes told him that she was.

Still he was not convinced. It was hard to believe that two people - two people who did not even know each other, in fact - could have transformed the process of dying into an allegori-cal illusion so strong that it was indistinguishable from ordi-nary reality. And it was harder yet to believe that those same two people could have entered into that illusion and have met each other for the first time.

It was all so strange. He felt real. He breathed, he saw; he experienced pleasure and pain. And yet all the while he breathed and saw and experienced he knew that he wasn't actually on the River. He couldn't be on the River, for the simple reason that in another phase of reality - the real phase -he was sitting in his car, in his garage, with the motor running and the garage doors closed.

And yet somehow, in a way that he could not fathom, he was on the River; drifting down the River on a strange raft that he had never built or bought and had never even known ex-isted until he had found himself sitting on it nearly two days ago. Or was it two hours ago? Or two minutes? Or two seconds?

He did not know. All he knew was that, subjectively at least, almost forty-eight hours had pa.s.sed since he had first found himself on the River. Half of those hours he had spent on the River itself, and the other half he had spent in two deserted inns, one of which he had found on the River bank at the close of the first afternoon and the other of which he had found on the River bank at the close of the second.

That was another strange thing about the River. It was im-possible to travel on it at night. Not because of the darkness (although the darkness did impose a hazard), but because of an insurmountable reluctance on his own part - a reluctance compounded of dread and of an irresistible desire to inter-rupt his ineluctable journey long enough to rest. Long enough to find peace. But why peace? he wondered. Wasn't it peace toward which the River was bearing him? Wasn't the only real peace the peace of oblivion? Surely by this time he should have accepted a truism as basic as that.

'It's beginning to get dark,' Jill said. 'There should be an inn soon.' Her shoes and stockings had dried, and she put them back on.

'We'll watch for it. You keep an eye on the right bank and I'll keep an eye oh the left.'

The inn was on the right bank, built almost flush with the water's edge. A low pier protruded a dozen feet into the stream, and after .securing the raft to it with the mooring line, Farrell stepped onto the heavy planking and helped Jill up be-side him. So far as he could see, the inn - on the outside, at least - was not particularly different from the two he had already stayed overnight in. It was three-storied and square, and its tiers of windows made warm golden rectangles in the gathering dusk. The interior proved to be virtually identical too, give or take a few modifications - Jill's work, no doubt, since she must have collaborated on the creation. There was a small lobby, a bir, and a large dining room; a gleaming maple staircase curved upward to the second and third floors, and electric lights burned everywhere in the guise of counterfeit candles and imitation hurricane-lamps.

Farrell glanced around the dining room. 'It looks as though you and I are slaves to American Colonial tradition,' he said.

Jill laughed. 'We do seem to have a lot in common, don't we?'

He pointed to a glittering juke box in the far corner of the room. 'One of us, though, was a little mixed up. A juke box doesn't belong in an American Colonial setting.'

'I'm afraid I'm the guilty party. There was a juke box just like that one in the inn where I stayed last night and in the inn where I stayed the night before.'

'Apparently our inns vanish the minute we're out of sight. At any rate, I saw no sign of yours... I still can't help wonder-ing whether we're the only force that holds this whole thing together. Maybe, the moment we're de - the moment we're gone - the whole business will disappear. a.s.suming of course that it has objective existence and can disappear.'

She pointed to one of the dining-room tables. It was covered with an immaculate linen tablecloth and was set for two. Be-side each place, a real candle - real, that is, to whatever extent it was possible for objects to be real in this strange land -burned in a silver candlestick. '/ can't help wondering what we're going to have for dinner.'

'The particular dish we happen to be hungry for most, I imagine. Last night I had a yen for southern-fried chicken, and southern-fried chicken was what I found waiting for me when I sat down.'

'Funny, how we can take such miracles in our stride,' she said. And then, 'I think I'll freshen up a bit.'

'I think I will too.'

They chose rooms across the hall from each other. Farrell got back downstairs first and waited for Jill in the dining room. During their absence, two large covered trays and a silver coffee set appeared on the linen tablecloth. How this had been brought about, he could not fathom; nor did he try very hard. A hot shower had relaxed him, and he was permeated with a dream-like feeling of well-being. He even had an appet.i.te, although he suspected that it was no more real than the food with which he would presently satisfy it would be. No matter. Stepping into the adjoining bar, he drew himself a short beer and drank it appreciatively. It was cold and tangy, and hit the spot. Returning to the dining room, he saw that Jill had come back downstairs and was waiting for him in the lobby door-way. She had repaired her torn dress as best she could and had cleaned her shoes, and there was a trace of lipstick on her lips and a touch of rouge on her cheeks. It dawned on him all of a sudden that she was positively stunning.

When they sat down at the table, the lights dimmed, and the juke box began to play. In addition to the two covered trays and the silver coffee set, the magic tablecloth had also material-ized a mouth-watering antipasto. They nibbled radishes by candlelight, ate carrots Julienne. Jill poured steaming coffee into delicate blue cups, added sugar and cream. She had 'ordered' sweet potatoes and baked Virginia ham, he had 'ordered' steak and French fries. As they dined, the juke box pulsed softly in the ghostly room and the candle flames flicker-ed in drafts that came through invisible crevices in the walls. When they finished eating, Farrell went into the bar and brought back a bottle of champagne and two gla.s.ses. After filling both gla.s.ses, he touched his to hers. 'To the first day we met,' he said, and they drank.

Afterward, they danced on the empty dance floor. Jill was a summer wind in his arms. 'Are you a professional dancer?' he asked.