The Wild Shore: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych) (51 page)

He nodded. “You bet it’s good news.”

“Too bad we blew up those train tracks.”

“I don’t know if I’d go
that
far, but it is good news, no doubt about it. Well”—he waved one of his poles overhead—“Lousy weather to be standing around chattering in. I’m off.” And with a little whistle he snowshoed off through the trees, leaving a trail of deep tracks. And I knew I could finish.

*   *   *

The book lay on the table. One night (February the 23rd) the full moon was up. I went to bed without looking at the book, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking of it, and talking to the pages in my mind. I heard a voice inside me that said it all perfectly, said it far better than I ever could: this voice rattled off long imaginary passages, telling it all in the greatest detail and with the utmost eloquence, bringing it back just as lived. I heard the rhythms of it as sure as the rhythms of Pa’s snores (though the sense of it was not as clear), and it put an ache in me it was so beautiful. I thought, It’s some poet’s ghost come to visit me, maybe, come to show me how to tell it.

Eventually it drove me to get up and finish the thing off. Our house was cold, the fire in the stove was down to filmy grey coals. I put on pants and socks, and a thick shirt and a blanket over my shoulders. Moonlight poured in the window like a silver bar, turning all the bare wood furnishings into finely carved, almost living things. It was a light so strong I could write by it. I sat at the table under the window and wrote as fast as my hand would move, though what I wrote was nothing like the voice I had heard when I was lying down. Not a chance.

Most of the night passed. My left hand got sore and crampy from writing, and I was restless. The moon was dipping into the trees, obscuring my light. I decided to go for a walk. I put on my boots and my heavy coat, and shoved the book and some pencils in the coat’s big pocket.

Outside it was colder yet. The dew on the grass sparkled where moonlight fell on it. On the river path I stopped to look back up the valley, which receded through the thick air in patchy blacks and whites. There wasn’t a trace of wind, and it was so still and quiet that I could hear the snow melting everywhere around me, dripping and plopping and filling my ears with a liquid music,
plinka plonk, pip pip pip pip, gurgle gorgle plop tik tik plop, plop plop plinka plop pip pip pip.…
A forest water choir, yes, accompanying me as I slushed down the path, hands in my big coat pockets. River black between salt-and-pepper trees.

On the cliff path I had to step careful, because the steps were half slush, half mud. Down on the beach the crack of each little wave break was clear and distinct. The salt spray in the air glowed, and because of it and the moon hardly a star was visible; just a fuzzy black sky, white around the moon. I walked out to the point beside the rivermouth, where a fine sand hill had built up, cut away on both sides by river and ocean. On the point where these two little sand cliffs met I sat down, being careful not to collapse the whole thing. I took out the book and opened it; and here I sit at this very moment, caught up at last, scribbling in it by the light of the fat old moon.

*   *   *

Now I know this is the part of the story where the author winds it all up in a fine flourish that tells what it all meant, but luckily there are only a couple of pages left in this here book, so there isn’t room. I’m glad of it. It’s a good thing I took the trouble to copy out those chapters of
An American Around the World,
so that it turned out this way. The old man told me that when I was done writing I would understand what happened, but he was wrong again, the old liar. Here I’ve taken the trouble to write it all down, and now I’m done and I don’t have a dog’s idea what it meant. Except that most everything I know is wrong, especially the stuff I learned from Tom. I’m going to have to go through everything I know and try to figure out where he lied and where he told the truth. I’ve been doing that already with the books I’ve found, and with books he doesn’t know I borrowed from him, and I’ve found out a lot of things already. I’ve found out that the American Empire never included Europe, like he said it did—that they never did bury their dead in suits of gold armor—that we weren’t the first and only nation to go into space—that we didn’t make cars that flew and floated over water—and that there never were dragons around here (I don’t think, although a bird guide might not be where they were mentioned, I don’t know). All lies—those and a hundred more facts Tom told me. All lies.

I’ll tell you what I do know: the tide is out, and the waves roll up the rivermouth. At first it looks like each wave is pushing the whole flow of the river inland, because all the visible movement is in that direction. Little trailers of the wave roll up the bank, break over the hard sand and add their bit to the flat’s stippled crosshatching. For a time it looks like the wave will push upriver all the way around the first bend. But underneath its white jumble the river has been flowing out to sea all the while, and finally the wave stalls on top of this surge, breaks into a confused chop, and suddenly the entire disturbance is being borne out to sea—until it’s swept under the next incoming wave, and the movement turns upriver again. Each wave is a different size, and meets a different resistance, and as a result there is an infinite variety of rippling, breaking, chopping, gliding.… The pattern is never once the same. Do you see what I mean? Do you understand me, Steve Nicolin? You rather be holding on to what can be made to last than out hunting the new. But good luck to you, brother. Do some good for us out there.

As for me: the moon lays a mirrorflake road to the horizon. The snow on the beach melted yesterday, but it might as well be a beach of snow the way it looks in this light, against the edge of the black sea. Above the cliffs stand the dark hillsides of the valley, cupped, tilted to pour into the ocean. Onofre. This damp last page is nearly full. And my hand is getting cold—it’s getting so stiff I can’t make the letters, these words are all big and scrawling, taking up the last of the space, thank God. Oh be done with it. There’s an owl, flitting over the river. I’ll stay right here and fill another book.

By Kim Stanley Robinson from Tom Doherty Associates

Escape from Kathmandu

Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias

The Gold Coast

Icehenge

The Memory of Whiteness

Pacific Edge

Remaking History and Other Stories

The Wild Shore

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

THE WILD SHORE

Copyright © 1984 by Kim Stanley Robinson

All rights reserved.

This book was originally published in 1984 by Ace Science Fiction Books, a division of The Berkley Publishing Group, New York.

Maps by Mark Stein

An Orb Edition

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, N.Y. 10010

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Robinson, Kim Stanley.

The wild shore / Kim Stanley Robinson.

   p. cm.

ISBN 0-312-89036-2 (paperback)

1. Orange County (Calif.)—Fiction. I. Title. II. Series: Robinson, Kim Stanley. Three Californias.

PS3568.O2893W55   1995

813'.54—dc20

95-4273
CIP

eISBN 9781466861329

First eBook edition: December 2013