Neal Barrett Jr by Stress Pattern

Author:Stress Pattern
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-05-27T00:18:44+00:00

84

STRESS PATTERN 85

This was no longer a spring shower, or anything of the sort. I stood there inanely, holding my wet mat over my head, and wondered where in the bell I thought I was going. Drop by the neighbors? A friendly tavern?

Still, a man does not simply stand in the rain. He runs away from where he has been and toward something else. A flash of lightning gave me direction. I lowered my head and followed the path I’d worn to the edge of the grove. I huddled there and squinted out at the flatlands.

Quick flashes told me there was a shallow sea beyond the grove. The rain was pelting the earth with such force that a solid veil of whiteness rose from the ground. I wondered how the Ghroals were enjoying the weather.

My feet were slowly numbing and I looked down and saw the water was just past my ankles, for a while, I raised one foot out of the water, lowered it, and raised the other—then realized this idiocy would not keep me dry.

It was a first-class storm, and there was nothing else for it. But—-should the water be rising that fast? It hadn’t been raining all that long, really. And it struck me, then, that little of this water was running off into the ground. The water table was too near the surface. Everything that fell now was going to stay with us.

I checked my ankles again. The water was slightly higher, or I imagined it was. Lightning lit the flatland sea and I thought about it raining all over the great valley, and beyond that. The thought made me decidedly uneasy. There were more forces at work here than rain and a high water table. The valley was a big bowl, with flat, even terrain beyond. The water table was relatively high there, too. Rain that fell there would have no place to go. Except here. It was not a happy thought.

I pictured tons of water rushing down the shallow rim to fill the great sea that was forming about my ankles. No, past that. Well on the way to my knees.

A sudden moment of panic, then. What was I to do and where was I to go? I was on my own, and Rhamik couldn’t help me out of this one.

I stopped. Great God, I thought, he has, though. He already has\ I kicked myself mentally and wondered how I could have forgotten the stilt village. High up over the water. Rhamik’s Folly.

I plunged back toward the grove through rising water,

86 Neal Barrett, Jr.

feeling angry and relieved. You son of a bitch. You knew about this and didn’t tell me. Another stinking surprise.

It was hard going.

Rain lashed out in blinding sheets. Branches whipped across my face. More than once, my feet bogged in mud or tangled in bamboo and sent me flailing into the wafer.

It was up to my thighs. And climbing. I moved toward the Stilt house Rhamik had built for me and hoped to God I wasn’t going in the opposite direction.

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