Wingrove, David - Chung Kuo 02 (29 page)

The two women
sat there, watching him as he finished the apple, core and all,
leaving nothing.

He wiped his
fingers on the edge of the cloth, then looked up again, meeting Meg's
eyes. "I was thinking we might go along to the cove later on and
look for shells."

She looked away,
concealing her surprise. It was some time since they had been down to
the cove, so why had he suggested it just now? Perhaps it was simply
to indulge her love of shells, but she thought not. There was always
more to it than that with Ben. It would be fun, and Ben would make
the occasion into a kind of game, but he would have a reason for the
game. He always had a reason.

Ben laughed and
reached out to take one of the tiny radishes from the bowl. "And
then, tomorrow, I'll show you what I've been up to."

* *
*

warfleet COVE
was a small bay near the mouth of the river. A road led toward it
from the old town, ending abruptly in a jumble of rocks, the shadow
of the Wall throwing a sharp but jagged line over the rocks and the
hill beyond. To the left the land fell away to the river, bathed in
brilliant sunlight. A path led down through the thick
overgrowth—blackberry and bramble, wildflowers and tall
grasses—and came out at the head of the cove.

Ben stepped out
onto the flattened ledge of rock, easing the strap of his shoulder
bag. Below him the land fell away steeply to either side, forming a
tiny, ragged flint-head of a bay. A shallow spill of shingle edged
the sandy cove. At present the tide was out, though a number of small
rockpools reflected back the sun's brilliance. Low rocks lay to
either side of the cove's mouth, narrowing the channel. It was an
ancient, primitive place, unchanged throughout the centuries; and it
was easy to imagine Henry Plantagenet's tiny fleet anchored here in
1147, waiting to sail to Jerusalem to fight the Infidel in the Second
Crusade. Further around the headland stood the castle built by Henry
Tudor, Henry VII, whose son had broken with the papacy. Ben breathed
deeply and smiled to himself. This was a place of history. From the
town itself the Pilgrim Fathers had sailed in August 1620 to the new
lands of America, and in June 1944 part of the great invasion fleet
had sailed from here— five hundred ships, bound for Normandy
and the liberation of Europe from Hitler and the Nazis.

All gone, he
thought wryly, turning to look at his sister. All of that rich past
gone, forgotten, buried beneath the ice of the Han City.

"Come on,"
he said. "The tide's low. We'll go by the rocks on the north
lip. We should find something there."

Meg nodded and
followed him, taking his hand where the path was steepest, letting
him help her down.

At the far edge
of the shingle they stopped and took off their shoes, setting them
down on the stones. Halfway across the sand, Ben stopped and turned,
pointing down and back, tracing a line. "Look!"

She looked. The
sun had warmed the sand, but where they had stepped their feet had
left wet imprints, dark against the almost white, compacted sand.
They faded even as she watched, the most distant first, the nearest
last.

"Like
history," he said, turning away from her and walking on toward
the water's edge.

Or memory, Meg
thought, looking down at her feet. She took a step then stopped,
watching how the sharp clarity of the imprint slowly decayed, like an
image sent over some vast distance, first at the edges, then—in
a sudden rush—at the very center, breaking into two tiny,
separate circles before it vanished. It was as if the whole had sunk
down into the depths beneath the sand and was now stored in the rock
itself.

"Here!"
he called triumphantly. She hurried over to where he was crouched
near the water's edge and bent down at his side.

The shell was
two-thirds embedded in the sand. Even so, its shape and coloring were
unmistakable. It was a pink-mouthed murex. She clapped her hands,
delighted, and looked at him.

"Careful
when you dig it out, Ben. You mustn't damage the spines."

He knew, of
course, but said nothing, merely nodded and pulled his bag round to
the front, opening up the flap.

She watched him
remove the sand in a circle about the shell, then set the tiny trowel
down and begin to remove the wet hard-packed sand with his fingers.
When he had freed it, he lifted it carefully between his fingers and
took it to one of the rockpools to clean.

She waited. When
he came back, he knelt in front of her and, opening out the fingers
of her right hand, put the pale, white-pink shell down on her palm.
Cleaned, it looked even more beautiful. A perfect specimen, curved
and elegant, like some strange fossil fish.

"The
hedgehog of the seas," he said, staring at the shell. "How
many points can you count?"

It was an old
game. She lifted the shell and staring at its tip—its "nose"—
began to count the tiny little nodes that marked each new stage on
the spiral of growth.

"Sixteen,"
she said, handing the shell back.

He studied it.
"More like thirty four," he said, looking up at her. He
touched the tip of the shell gently. "There are at least
eighteen in that first quarter of an inch."

"But they
don't count!" she protested. "They're too small!"

"Small they
may be, but they do count. Each marks a stage in the mollusk's
growth, from the infinitesimally tiny up. If you X-rayed this, you'd
see it. The same form repeated and repeated, larger and larger each
time, each section sealed off behind the shellfish—outgrown, if
you like. Still growing even at the creature's death. Never finished.
The spiral uncompleted."

"As spirals
are."

He laughed and
handed her back the shell. "Yes. I suppose by its nature it's
incomplete. Unless twinned."

Meg stared at
him a moment. "Ben? What
are
we doing here?" His
dark-green eyes twinkled mischievously. "Collecting shells.
That's all." He stood and walked past her, scanning the sand for
new specimens. Meg turned, watching him intently, knowing it was far
more complex than he claimed; then she got up and joined him in the
search.

Two hours later
they took a break. The sun had moved behind them and the far end of
the cove was now in shadow. The tide had turned an hour back and the
sea had already encroached upon the sands between the rocks at the
cove's mouth. Ben had brought sandwiches in his bag and they shared
them now, stretched out on the low rocks, enjoying the late afternoon
sunlight, the shells spread out on a cloth to one side.

There were more
than a dozen different specimens on the bright green cloth—
batswing and turitella, orchid spider and flamingo tongue, goldmouth
helmet and striped bonnet, pelican's foot, mother-of-pearl,
snakeshead cowrie, and several others—all washed and gleaming
in the sun. A whole variety of shapes and sizes and colors, and not
one of them native to the cold gray waters of the English south
coast.

But Meg knew
nothing of that.

It had begun
when Meg was only four. There had been a glass display case on the
wall in the hallway, and noting what pleasure Meg derived from the
form and color of the shells, Hal Shepherd had bought new specimens
in the City and brought them back to the Domain. He had scattered
them by hand in the cove at low tide and taken Meg back the next day
to "find" them. Ben, seven at the time, had understood at
once; but had gone along with the deception, not wishing to spoil
Meg's obvious enjoyment of the game. And when his father had
suggested he rewrite his greatgrandfather's book on shells to serve
the deception, Ben had leaped at the opportunity. That volume now
rested on the shelves in place of the original, a clever, subtle
parody of it. Now he, in his turn, carried on his father's game. Only
two days ago he had scattered these shells that lay now on the cloth.

Seagulls called
lazily, high overhead. He looked up, shielding his eyes, then looked
back at Meg. Her eyes were closed, her body sprawled out on the rock
like a young lioness. Her limbs and arms and face were heavily
tanned, almost brown against the pure white of her shorts and vest.
Her dark hair lay in thick long curls against the sun-bleached rock.
His eyes, however, were drawn continually to the fullness of her
breasts beneath the cloth, to the suggestive curve of leg and hip and
groin, the rounded perfection of her shoulders, the silken smoothness
of her neck, the strange nakedness of her toes. He shivered and
looked away, disturbed by the sudden turn of his thoughts. So
familiar she was, and yet, suddenly, so strange.

"What are
you thinking?" she asked softly, almost somnolently. The wind
blew gently, mild, warm against his cheek and aim, then subsided. For
a while he listened to the gentle slosh of the waves as they broke on
the far side of the great mound of rock.

Meg pulled
herself up onto one elbow and looked across at him. As ever, she was
smiling. "Well? Cat got your tongue?"

He returned her
smile. "You forget. There are no cats."

She shook her
head. "You're wrong. Daddy promised me he'd bring one back this
time."

"Ah,"
he nodded, but said nothing of what he was thinking. Another game.
Extending the illusion. If their father brought a cat back with him,
it too would be a copy—GenSyn, most likely—because the
Han had killed all the real cats long ago.

"What are
you going to call him?" She met his eyes teasingly.
"Zarathustra, I thought."

He did not rise
to her bait. Zarathustra was Nietzsche's poet-philosopher, the
scathingly bitter loner who had come down from his mountain hermitage
to tell the world that God was dead.

"A good
name. Especially for a cat. They're said to be highly independent."
She was watching him expectantly. Seeing it, he laughed. "You'll
have to wait, Meg. Tomorrow, I promise you. I'll reveal everything
then."

Even the tiny
pout she made—so much a part of the young girl he had known all
his life—was somehow different today. Transformed—strangely,
surprisingly erotic.

"Shells . .
." he said, trying to take his mind from her. "Have you
ever thought how like memory they are?"

"Never,"
she said, laughing, making him think for a moment she had noticed
something in his face.

He met her eyes
challengingly. "No. Think about it, Meg. Don't most people seal
off their pasts behind them stage by stage, just as a mollusk
outgrows its shell, sealing the old compartment off behind it?"

She smiled at
him, then lay down again, closing her eyes. "Not you. You've
said it yourself. It's all still there. Accessible. All you have to
do is chip away the rock and there it is, preserved."

"Yes, but
there's a likeness even so. That sense of things being embedded that
I was talking of. You see, parts of my past
are
compartmentalized.
I can remember what's in them, but I can't somehow return to them. I
can't feel what it was like to be myself back then."

She opened one
eye lazily. "And you want to?"

He stared back
at her fiercely. "Yes. More than anything. I want to capture
what it felt like. To save it, somehow."

"Hmmm . .
." Her eye was closed again.

"That's it,
you see. I want to get inside the shell. To feel what it was like to
be there before it was all sealed off to me. Do you understand that?"

"It sounds
like pure nostalgia."

He laughed, but
bis laughter was just a little too sharp. "Maybe . . . but I
don't think so."

She seemed
wholly relaxed now, as if asleep, her breasts rising and falling
slowly. He watched her for a while, disturbed once more by the
strength of what he felt. Then he lay down and, following her
example, closed his eyes, dozing in the warm sun.

When he woke the
sun had moved further down the sky. The shadow of the Wall had
stretched to the foot of the rocks beneath them and the tide had
almost filled the tiny cove, cutting them off. They would have to
wade back. The heavy crash of a wave against the rocks behind him
made him twist about sharply. As he turned a seagull cried out
harshly close by, startling him. Then he realized Meg was gone.

He got to his
feet anxiously. "Meg! Where are you?"

She answered him
at once, her voice coming from beyond the huge tumble of rock,
contesting with the crash of another wave. "I'm here!"

He climbed the
rocks until he was at their summit. Meg was below him, to his left,
crouched on a rock only a foot or so above the water, leaning
forward, doing something.

"Meg! Come
away! It's dangerous!"

He began to
climb down. As he did so she turned and stood up straight. "It's
okay. I was just—"

He saw her foot
slip beneath her on the wet rock. Saw her reach out and steady
herself, recovering her footing. And then the wave struck.

It was bigger
than all the waves that had preceded it and broke much higher up the
rocks, foaming and boiling, sending up a fine spray like glass
splintering before some mighty hammer. It hit the big tooth-shaped
rock to his right first, then surged along the line, roaring,
buffeting the rocks in a frenzy of white water.

One moment Meg
was there, the next she was gone, Ben saw the huge wave thrust her
against the rocks, then she disappeared beneath the surface. When the
water surged back there was no sign of her.
"Meg!!!"

Ben pressed the
emergency stud at his neck, then scrambled down the rocks and stood
at the edge, ignoring the lesser wave that broke about his feet,
peering down into the water, his face a mask of anguish, looking for
some sign of her.

At first
nothing. Nothing at all. Then . . .
there.
He threw himself
forward into the water, thrusting his body down through the chill
darkness toward her. Then he was kicking for the surface, one arm
gripping her tightly.