Surfeit by Alan Dean Foster

Author:Alan Dean Foster [Foster, Alan Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1982-03-31T22:39:12+00:00

Abruptly the other rider let out an agonized cry of despair and started paddling for the monitor skimmer, taking himself out of competition for the swell, out of the day, out of the contest. Acorizal turned his head eastward and began paddling furiously, his balpole clipped lengthwise beneath his knees.

He was afraid he’d waited too long. For a long moment he hung suspended atop the swell. Then he was moving forward with less and less effort. He stopped paddling, continued to move, picking up speed and beginning to slide slightly downward. The swell continued to build and a giant green-black hand boosted him toward the sky. Now he could pick out the faint, far line of cliffs that marked the land.

He climbed to his knees from his belly, accelerating steadily. His toes tensed on the slightly resilient surface of the board. He stood, edged back on his rear leg an inch, then moved his front leg to match. The fingers of his left hand tightened on the ignition cord of the backpack.

He felt fine. The ride was smooth and easy, the board responding instantly to his subtly shifting weight and gentle toe-touches on the control studs. The balpole he held tightly in his right hand. He stopped rising, hung suspended in midair.

Then he looked down. His fingers tensed further on the loop of the backpack release as instinct almost betrayed him.

Far, far below was the surface of the water, flat and shining like steel in the rising sun. Air ripped at his face; salt stung his eyes. Wind whistled around him. His mind was momentarily numbed by the hundred-foot drop he overhung, but twenty years of practice took over, shifted his body.

Then he was screaming down the face of the gigantic wave, ten, twenty, thirty feet. He leveled off, keeping his weight back but centered, adjusting the airfoil to slow the precipitous drop. The stabilizers kept him level as the front four feet of his board hung over emptiness and sliced through the air.

An incredible rush went through him, an indescribable combination of sheer terror and pure ecstasy. To his right was a moving green cliff that towered over his head, thousands of tons of living water. To his left was nothingness.

He grew conscious of the steady, unvarying roar of the Monster, only now it was not terrifying but simply awesome. He was set on the board, had become part of it. He risked a look backward.

Behind him tons of water cascaded endlessly from thirty feet overhead to smash into the withdrawing waters seventy feet below. It formed a vast glassy green tunnel which rising sunlight turned into an elongated emerald: the tube. Wind blew out of it as curling water forced air ahead of the collapsing arc. It sounded a special, higher note in the overall thunder of the Monster.

He held tight to the balpole with both hands, letting loose of the pack release, and adjusted his balance.

Then he thought to check his suit chronometer. He’d been on the wave thirty minutes.

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