Short Sun 01 - On Blue's Waters by Gene Wolfe

Author:Gene Wolfe [Wolfe, Gene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General, Adventure, Interplanetary Voyages, Police, Alleyn; Roderick (Fictitious Character)
ISBN: 9780312872571
Google: yNxevr3NJIMC
Amazon: 0312872577
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 1999-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

underneath, or anything like that. I think they lasted longer here.”

It was a new thought to me, and I suppose my face must have shown my

surprise.

“Out on this little island, so far from all the other land people. For a

long time they mended the walls and painted them, and dug up the trees and wild

bushes. Ten years, is that what you said?”

“Yes.” Another bush a little farther from us than the first had trembled

ever so slightly, a ghost of motion that would have been easy to miss.

“Ten years ago, they gave up. There weren’t enough left to do it anymore,

or it was too much work that didn’t make sense. I know you think I’m stupid—”

“I don’t,” I told her. “You’re naive, but that’s something else

entirely.”

“You think I’m stupid, but I can think of people, people like us?

Two-legged people like you and me and all the people on that boat living here,

and there wasn’t anybody else anywhere. We’d mend our boats and the walls we’d

built for a while, and then somebody would die, and there’d be more work for

everybody who was left. And somebody else would die. And pretty soon we’d stop,

but we wouldn’t be dead, not all of us. The last of us wouldn’t die for a long

while.”

“All right,” I told her. “If it’s one of the Vanished People, I won’t

shoot him. Or her, either. But I’d certainly like to see them.” I did not

believe that it was, and in that I was quite correct.

For a few minutes that seemed like an hour I scoured the bushes with

Babbie trotting at my heels; then a greenbuck broke cover and darted away,

leaping and zigzagging as they do. Babbie was after it at once, squealing with

excitement.

I threw my slug gun to my shoulder and was able to get off one quick

shot. The greenbuck broke stride and stumbled to its knees, but in less than a

breath it had bounded up again, cutting right and running hard. It vanished into

brush, and I sprinted after it, all my fatigue forgotten, guided by Babbie’s

agitated hunck-hunck-bunck!

Very suddenly I was falling into darkness.

Here and thus baldly I had intended to end both tonight’s labor and this whole

section of my narrative. I wiped this new quill of Oreb’s and put it away, shut

up the scuffed little pen case I found where my father must have left it in the

ashes of our old shop, and locked the drawer that holds this record, a thick

sheaf of paper already.

But it cannot be. It cannot be a mere incident like Wijzer’s drawing his

map and the rest. Either that fall must be the end of the entire work (which

might be wisest) or else it cannot close at all.

So let me say this to whoever may read. With that fall, the best part of

my life was over. The pit was its grave.

It must be very late, but I cannot sleep. Somewhere very far away, Seawrack is

singing to her waves.

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