The Wanderer

“But the new planet is making high tides,” she pleaded with him. “The first tide wasn’t so bad, but they’ll get higher. Florida’s not more than three hundred feet high anywhere. They may wash straight over it.”

He spread his hands, as if to invoke the testimony of the balmy night fragrant with orange blossoms, and chuckled tolerantly.

Barbara said: “I’m trying to warn you. That planet’s a doom-sign.” He continued to chuckle.

She felt herself seethe with sudden anger. “Well, if nothing that matters is happening,” she demanded, “why are you stopping all cars?”

The grin vanished. “We’re keeping order in Citrus Center,” he said harshly, moving toward the next car in line. “Tell your boy to drive on before I change my mind. Your boss ought to know better than to let his nigger girl talk for him. You college-educated niggers are the worst. They try to teach you science, but you get it all mixed up with your crazy African superstitions.”

They drove north in silence while the Wanderer slowly climbed, and the moon-spindle crawled across it, and the monster changed to a big purple D.

Knolls Kelsey Kettering III began to breathe gaspingly. Hester said: “We got to find him a bed. He got to stretch out.”

Benjy slowed to read a sign. “You are leaving Glades and entering Highlands County.” Suddenly he laughed whoopingly. “That high lands sure sound good!”

But would they be high enough? Barbara wondered.

Richard Hillary woke shivering and aching. He’d pushed aside in his sleep the straw covering him. And through the straw under him, crushed flatly, had mounted the chill of the ground — the chill of the Chiltern Hills, his mind, half sleep-locked, alliterated it. Overhead the strange planet flared, revolved back to its dismal D again. He recalled some of the other faces it had shown — equally ugly faces, looking more like signs or a psychologist’s toys than natural formations — one a bloat-centered X; another, a big yellow bull’s eye in a purple target. Still, it seemed to bulk out more like a true globe how, less like a circular flat signboard. And there was a beauty akin to that of Brancusi’s “Bird in Space” in its curving white half-ring. Could that last conceivably be the moon, as a fellow-trudger had assured him? Surely not. Yet the moon had traveled the sky all last night and where else was the moon now?

He sat up quietly, hugging himself for warmth, rebuttoning his coat collar and turning up the inadequate flap. The straw stack from which he’d taken his bedding was all gone now, and where he’d had at most a dozen comrades when he’d laid down some two hours ago, there were now scores of low straw mounds, each covering one or more sleepers. How quietly they had come — hushing each other, perhaps, as they scooped up and hugged their straw; late arrivers at a sleeping hostel. He envied those huddled in pairs their shared warmth, and he remembered very wistfully the Young Girl of Devizes who had seemed at the time so stupid and coarse. He remembered her sausage-and-mashed, too.

He looked toward the farmhouse where he’d bought a small bowl of soup last night and paid for his straw. Its lights were still on, but the windows were irregularly obscured. He realized with mild amazement that this was because of the people outside crowded together against its walls like bees for warmth. Surely many of the late-comers must have gone hungry; the ready food would be gone like the straw. Or perhaps the farmer’s wife would be baking? He sniffed, but got only a briny smell. Had she opened a barrel of salt beef? But now his mind was wandering foolishly, he told himself.

Despite the crowd of new sleepers, there seemed to be no more people coming. And the road beyond the gate, which had been loud with traffic when he’d gone to sleep, was quiet and empty.

He stood up and looked east. The valley through which he’d just trudged was now full of dark silvery mist, fingers of it stretching around the hill on which he was now, pushing up each grassy gully.

The mist had a remarkably flat top, gleaming like gun-metal.

He saw two lights, red and green, moving across it mysteriously, close together.

He realized that they were the lights of a boat and that the mist was solid, still water.

The stand of the high tide.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Doc and Margo scouted the rock slope to its crest and the road for two hundred yards beyond the boulder-block without finding any signs of human life, though they did disturb four lizards and a hawk. The valley ahead between the last two mountain ridges was all blackened. It held only wet ashes of its manzanitas and yuccas, and charred skeletons of its scrub oaks. Presumably it had been fiercely burned out a few hours before — Which helped explain why no more people had come this way.