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Authors: Robert Charles Wilson
Tags: SF
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horsecart passing in the night and a valley of cotton bedsheet between himself and the woman he loved. Was it possible to break an unspoken promise? The truth was that he hadn’t delivered Caroline to a safe place after all. He had traveled too far and too often: out west, and now here. Given her a fine daughter but brought them to this foreign shore, where he was about to abandon them… in the name of history, or science, or his own reckless dreams.
He told himself that this was what men did, that men had been doing it for centuries and that if men didn’t do it the race would still be living in trees. But the truth was more complex, involved matters Guilford himself didn’t care to think about, perhaps contained some echo of his father, whose stolid pragmatism had been the path to an early grave.
Caroline was asleep now, or nearly asleep. He put a hand on the slope of her hip, a gentle pressure that was meant to say But I’ll come back . She responded with a sleepy curl, almost a shrug, not quite indifferent. Perhaps.
In the morning they were strangers to one another.
Caroline and Lily rode with him to the docks, where the Argus was restless with the tide. Cool mists twined around the ship’s rust-pocked hull.
Guilford hugged Caroline, feeling wordless and crude; then Lily clambered up into his arms, pressed her soft cheek against his and said, “Come back soon.”
Guilford promised he would.
Lily, at least, believed him.
Then he walked up the gangway, turned at the rail to wave goodbye, but his wife and daughter were already lost among the crowd that thronged the wharf. As quick as that , Guilford thought. As quick as that.
Argus made her passage across the Channel in a fog. Guilford brooded belowdecks until the sun broke through and John Sullivan demanded that he come up to see the continent by morning light.
What Guilford saw was a dense green wetland combed by a westerly wind — the saltwater marshes at the vast mouth of the Rhine. Stromatolites rose like unearthly monuments, and flute trees had colonized the delta everywhere the silt rose high enough to support their spidery roots. The steam packet followed a shallow but weed-free channel — slowly, because soundings were crude and the silt often shifted after a storm — toward a denser, greener distance. Jeffersonville was a faint plume of smoke on the flat green horizon, then a smudge, then a brown aggregation of shacks built into reed-stalk hummocks or perched on stilts where the ground was firm enough, and everywhere crude docks and small boats and the reek of salt, fish, refuse, and human waste. Caroline had thought London was primitive; Guilford was thankful she hadn’t seen Jeffersonville. The town was like a posted warning: here ends civilization. Beyond this point, the anarchy of Nature.
There were plenty of fishing boats, canoes, and what looked like rafts cobbled from Darwinian timber, all clotting the net-draped wharves, but only one other vessel as large as the Argus , an American gunship anchored and flying her colors. “That’s our ride upriver,” Sullivan said, standing alongside Guilford at the rail. “We won’t be here long. Finch will make obeisance to the Navy while we hire ourselves a pathfinder.”
“We?” Guilford asked.
“You and I. Then you can set up your lenses. Capture us all at the dock. Embarkation at Jeffersonville. Should make a stirring photograph.” Sullivan clapped him on the back. “Cheer up, Mr. Law. This is the real new world, and you’re about to set foot on it.”
But there was little firm footing here in the marshes. You kept to the boardwalks or risked being swallowed up. Guilford wondered how much of Darwinia would be like this — the blue sky, the combing wind, the quiet threat.
Sullivan notified Finch that he and Guilford were going to hire a guide. Guilford was lost as soon as the wharves were out of sight, hidden by fishermen’s shacks and a tall stand of mosque trees. But
He told himself that this was what men did, that men had been doing it for centuries and that if men didn’t do it the race would still be living in trees. But the truth was more complex, involved matters Guilford himself didn’t care to think about, perhaps contained some echo of his father, whose stolid pragmatism had been the path to an early grave.
Caroline was asleep now, or nearly asleep. He put a hand on the slope of her hip, a gentle pressure that was meant to say But I’ll come back . She responded with a sleepy curl, almost a shrug, not quite indifferent. Perhaps.
In the morning they were strangers to one another.
Caroline and Lily rode with him to the docks, where the Argus was restless with the tide. Cool mists twined around the ship’s rust-pocked hull.
Guilford hugged Caroline, feeling wordless and crude; then Lily clambered up into his arms, pressed her soft cheek against his and said, “Come back soon.”
Guilford promised he would.
Lily, at least, believed him.
Then he walked up the gangway, turned at the rail to wave goodbye, but his wife and daughter were already lost among the crowd that thronged the wharf. As quick as that , Guilford thought. As quick as that.
Argus made her passage across the Channel in a fog. Guilford brooded belowdecks until the sun broke through and John Sullivan demanded that he come up to see the continent by morning light.
What Guilford saw was a dense green wetland combed by a westerly wind — the saltwater marshes at the vast mouth of the Rhine. Stromatolites rose like unearthly monuments, and flute trees had colonized the delta everywhere the silt rose high enough to support their spidery roots. The steam packet followed a shallow but weed-free channel — slowly, because soundings were crude and the silt often shifted after a storm — toward a denser, greener distance. Jeffersonville was a faint plume of smoke on the flat green horizon, then a smudge, then a brown aggregation of shacks built into reed-stalk hummocks or perched on stilts where the ground was firm enough, and everywhere crude docks and small boats and the reek of salt, fish, refuse, and human waste. Caroline had thought London was primitive; Guilford was thankful she hadn’t seen Jeffersonville. The town was like a posted warning: here ends civilization. Beyond this point, the anarchy of Nature.
There were plenty of fishing boats, canoes, and what looked like rafts cobbled from Darwinian timber, all clotting the net-draped wharves, but only one other vessel as large as the Argus , an American gunship anchored and flying her colors. “That’s our ride upriver,” Sullivan said, standing alongside Guilford at the rail. “We won’t be here long. Finch will make obeisance to the Navy while we hire ourselves a pathfinder.”
“We?” Guilford asked.
“You and I. Then you can set up your lenses. Capture us all at the dock. Embarkation at Jeffersonville. Should make a stirring photograph.” Sullivan clapped him on the back. “Cheer up, Mr. Law. This is the real new world, and you’re about to set foot on it.”
But there was little firm footing here in the marshes. You kept to the boardwalks or risked being swallowed up. Guilford wondered how much of Darwinia would be like this — the blue sky, the combing wind, the quiet threat.
Sullivan notified Finch that he and Guilford were going to hire a guide. Guilford was lost as soon as the wharves were out of sight, hidden by fishermen’s shacks and a tall stand of mosque trees. But
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