Under Plum Lake

by Lionel Davidson

Before we got to the dip, he put me in the air, and we went gently over it.

  Just then I started enjoying it. It was frightening, but it was fun. I'd got the idea, too. You had to crouch forward with your legs bent.

  At the other side of the dip he got on the ground himself, but he kept me in the air. He put his arm round me as we rounded the corner flag, and we went into the long last lap. He kept me in the air all the way down it, slowing us by turning his skis in. Somehow we managed it, but right at the end, where there were people waiting, he took his arm away, and I ended up in a heap, with my skis in the air. I couldn't touch ground, and went bobbing about upside down with my skis crossed, and everyone almost collapsed with laughter.

  He didn't mind. He was quite proud of me. I hadn't tripped him. I hadn't made a fool of him. He said he'd like to see anyone else try after just half an hour's practice. He said they'd been doing it for forty years. I was beginning to feel pretty good myself then, when he said we could try the real slopes now.

  I'd thought these were the real slopes.

  He said no, the real slopes were at the other side of the mountain. They had the mountain switched on there. They had to, to stop you falling off it.

  It was when we got there, and I saw how easy it was to fall off anyway, that I had that feeling I couldn't bear it.

  I was beginning to understand him. He was best at everything. It was why he'd gone round and made the speeches. It wasn't because his father was president. He had to be best; and he liked danger. Everything he did was dangerous.

  I'll say what he did.

  16. The Switched-On Mountain

  He did two runs, very carefully, without trying anything. He pointed out every detail to me. It's power tobogganing. The power comes from the mountain. The toboggan just has the controls. You sit one behind the other, tightly strapped in. You toboggan up the mountain as well as down it. There's an up-track and a down-track. You go up quite slowly. The toboggan grips the track like a magnet. Coming down, it still grips it tightly, but you're going faster. If you switch off, you're going much faster.

  That's the trick. You go as fast as you dare before switching on again. They have the same procedure, a starter on top and a judge below. But this way, it's pure speed. You get from top to bottom as fast as you can, in any way you can.

  He didn't tell me the various ways you could do it. He just did the first two runs nice and steadily.

  He showed me how you worked the toboggan. The front person worked the controls. The back person helped steer, leaning out sideways or backwards when the toboggan rounded a bend or leaped a hump.

  He gave me good warning when I had to do it. He'd yell “Right!” or “Left!” and I'd lean out to right or left, and we'd swish round the bend without the rear end wobbling. Or if a hump was coming, he'd yell, “Back!” and I'd lean out backwards and we'd sail over and land flat without the nose scooping. (The toboggan is heavier at the front because of the controls.)

  At the sharper bends there was a red sign, to give advance warning. But at some of them I saw a yellow sign, with an arrow pointing outwards from the mountain, and I asked why.

  He pointed over the side. “Lower track,” he said. “You can take a short cut.”

  Below, I could see the track zig-zagging down the mountain.

  Second time round, he showed me the short cut.

  Turning sideways at the yellow arrow, you could leave the track, grip tightly to the mountain with power on, and descend to join the next stretch of track below. You could save seconds that way.

  He told me when we were going to do it. He yelled, “Back!” and I stretched back as far as I could and we took a slow dive vertically down the mountain.

  My head swam.

  I was standing upright.

  We were stuck like flies to the side of the mountain. I felt my eyes glazing, my body rigid. Yet the moment we hit the lower track and he switched power off and we were whizzing away again, it felt like colossal fun. We did it four or five times, and by the end I was yelling, “Whee!” and laughing as gleefully as he did.

  His eyes were shining behind his goggles as we went up for the third run, and he said something to the starter.

  “We'll do a timing now,” he told me.

  I'd forgotten about the timing. He hadn't asked for a timing before.

  He started off fast right away, and he didn't even bother putting power on at the first wide bend, just yelled, “Right!” and I swung out and we lurched round the bend at speed.

  I felt my heart beginning to thud. I could see the red sign ahead for a hairpin bend. It came rushing up in a sickening blur, and he still didn't put power on. He began yelling, “Left! Left!” without slackening speed for an instant. I saw, without believing it, that he didn't mean to put power on at all. We were going racing into the hairpin bend. He was leaning out to left himself. I leaned out as far as I could. I leaned so far my head brushed the snow on the banking as we swished in a jack-knife curve round it, and levelled out into a wild dangerous wobble, racing from side to side of the icy track as we hurtled down it, not losing speed for an instant.

  I could hear him cackling in front. I could see another red sign coming up, with a yellow one.

  “Dido!” I yelled. “Slow down!”

  He couldn't hear me. The wind snatched my words away. I could hear him, though. He was yelling, “Back!”

  Back? He meant left. I had to bend left again. Another tight hairpin was coming. It was almost here.

  “Back!” he yelled. “Back!” and started straining back himself, so I did, too.

  He didn't turn into the bend. He followed the yellow arrow. He went full speed off the mountain.

  I thought my heart had stopped.

  We were in the air, off the mountain.

  Just as we lost contact, he snapped power on. I felt the magnet clamp tight. We fell and hit the lower track hard, and the instant we did so, he let power off, and we were still going at terrific speed.

  I couldn't bear it. I wanted to get out. I wanted to get off.

  He was cackling like a lunatic in front.

  I followed blindly whatever he said. “Left!” “Right!” “Back!” We skated madly round the banking. We flew through the air over humps.

  We came to another arrow.

  “Back!”

  Again we flew off the mountain. I wanted to close my eyes, but daren't. I was straining back, waiting for the thud of power to come on. It came on, and I clenched my toes, waiting for the thump. There was no thump. Almost immediately, he let power off again. The lower track sailed past us, and we were still dropping. He let one track, two tracks, flash past, before bringing on power, and we landed on the third. He switched power off just as we landed, but we did it with such a thud we leaped clear in the air, a good five feet, still scudding down at breakneck pace.

  I'd practically given up now. I wasn't even sure when it ended. We were stopped. People were jumping and yelling. The judge was checking the figures. He was checking them again. I hadn't even got out of the toboggan. I was still strapped in.

  “Well. Not bad,” Dido said. He'd shoved his goggles up, and was grinning. “Second best time for eighty years. What do you say to that?”

  I didn't say anything.

  “Barry?” he said. He seemed to be looking at me closely.

  Then I was in a hut, and he was giving me tigra.

  “Are you all right?” he said.

  I still couldn't speak.

  “Barry?”

  I sipped the tigra. I felt better every second.

  “Didn't you like it?” he said.

  “I hated it,” I said. “Don't do it again. Never do anything like that with me again.”

  He just blinked at me.

  “Have a nap,” he said. “It's time for one now.”

  I asked him about it later. I asked about the danger. I asked if it wasn't possible to be killed in Egon.

  He said of course you could be killed. If you smashed yourself badly, y
ou were killed.

  So he knew. He knew what could happen.

  17. The Lake Begins to Glow

  Killing is a hard word, and I had to put all that what he's like. The place isn’t like that. Their lives aren't that. It's all fun there. I'll say what it's like, from after a nap. You have a nap. I didn't even want a nap. He said you had to. It's for your body. They sleep the exact time they want. They always know the time. It's in their brains. If they want to sleep eight and a quarter hours, they sleep exactly eight and a quarter hours.

  We slept five minutes. Then he woke me, and I was dizzy.

  It's the air. You find you're smiling. You can't stop it. You do stop after a bit, but you keep on inside. You feel your inside smiling.

  We took a walk. He said we'd got our kites booked for later. I could see the kites out over the lake. I could see people in fish suits playing with fish under water. There were groups of people relaxing in water clubs. They were in floating armchairs, chatting or reading. Food tables were floating there and back between them.

  From the jetties, every kind of entertainment was going on. There was swimming and sailing and acrobatic diving and bat diving, with wings. There were things I'd never seen before. There was a Big Wheel, like at a fair, that whirled you up in the air and then round under water. There were kids with spring floats on their feet jumping on the lake like water insects.

  In the pleasure gardens other things went on. There were games and music, and performances of various kinds. But we ate just then. There were thousands of eating places and foamice places. I didn't put anything about foamice.

  It's icecream. You have to call it that, except it's a hundred times better. It squirts out of a machine and turns into foam, fantastically creamy. They have it in over ninety flavours. You have it with portions of nuts or chocolate, or various kinds of crunches, or raisins and mandaro (it's a kind of peel, like jelly). Or you have it with hot or cold fudge, or soft or semi-soft toffee. There are thousands of combinations.

  Also there are foamice chews. They're in wrappers that keep them compressed and frozen till you open them. It's an incredible sensation when you chew the hard bar and it swells into foamice in your mouth. Or you can get them in assortments, like little wrapped toffees, in a bag.

  We had some foamice. Then we ate. We ate pansa patty. I mainly ate that. It's a hamburger, though I never tasted a hamburger like it. You pick what shade you want it cooked, from a shade card. You can have it from pink to dark brown. You can have it from soft to crisp. There's no grease. You have it with chips and salad, and with any of about twenty or thirty sauces that you put on yourself.

  The meat is sensational, except it isn't meat. They don't eat meat. They don't eat fish, either, or any other creature. They understand the creatures and communicate with them, so it would be like eating people. Anyway, he said there was no sense in eating them.

  He said when you ate a steak all you were eating was grass that a cow had processed. He said you didn't have to kill the cow to get at the steak. You could make the steak, the same way the cow did. You could make anything, and they did. They made an unbelievable number of foods. They made more foods than people above ever knew, including all the ones they did know, and every one I tasted was better.

  It grew dark as we ate, and I saw the lake begin to glow. It glowed purple from underneath. The ragusa trees began to glow.

  I felt fantastic. I'd only slept five minutes but I felt I'd slept all night. I felt I'd just woken up, on holiday, full of sun and fresh air, and wanting to do everything in the world.

  We strolled along and met other kids. He said we'd do a pleasure drome next, but we'd do it after a ragusa. Second ragusa time was coming up.

  There were over a hundred of us in the garden when we had our ragusas this time. We swung in our hammocks, and ate our ragusas, and couldn't stop laughing, and again it was unbelievable.

  There was the glow in the trees. There were the stars up above.

  I looked at the stars, and wondered.

  He hadn't explained the stars yet, or the sun and moon. He'd explained hardly anything.

  And I haven't myself yet, though I knew more by then. I knew a lot more. I just can't tell it yet. Except I'll tell one thing. You read stories and you see films. They show you the future, and it's creepy. It's a terrible future with frightening people and mad-looking places. And they've got it wrong. I've been there, and it's great. It's a future full of fun. It's supposed to be. There's a reason for it, and I'll tell it.

  But right then I was swinging in my hammock, laughing at the stars and not knowing that trouble was coming. But it was coming pretty soon.

  18. The Pleasure Drome

  The trouble started at the pleasure drome where the manager didn't want to let me in. He said the pleasure was so strong it could burst my brain. He said I might be able to bear the next show, which was for small kids of seventy and eighty, and he'd think about it. We waited, and saw the people from the last show start coming out, and this was when I noticed their feet weren't touching the ground. They came floating out, and they were smiling. They had the weird kind of smiles that angels have in pictures.

  We didn't bother asking the manager. We just sneaked in, to the big hall. There were rows of seats circling a central space. There was no stage or screen. There was just a space, with a green carpet. It took a few minutes for everyone to settle. Then the lights went out and some of the kids started whispering, and some of the others told them to shut up.

  Nothing happened for a bit, then I realized that in the dark I could see the green carpet, and that it wasn't a carpet but the sea. It was bigger than I thought it was. It was higher than I thought it was. It was all round me and up to my chin, and I could feel it. It was past my chin. I was under it. There was green water all round me.

  My heart was thumping, and I heard the kids squealing. I felt Dido hanging on my arm. “It's okay,” he said in my ear.

  We were under water and breathing. I put out my tongue and tasted the sea. I could hear it surging. I could hear it whistling, and singing. It was uncanny singing, without words. It was a low moan going all the way up to a high shriek. It was unearthly and beautiful. It was like no music I'd ever heard; fascinating, of another world.

  “Whales,” Dido whispered in my ear. “The whales are singing.”

  And suddenly, in a colossal great smother of foam, three of them sprang up; massive whales, at least eighty feet long. They flashed past me, and I saw the whole length of them, mouths to tails, and swung round in my seat, and saw them fanning off in the sea all around. All the sea was lashed into luminous foam, and I heard the kids squealing, and saw their arms flickering up under water like seaweed to try and touch the whales.

  There was a fantastic volume of sound as the whales tore around and sang, and spiralled upwards, and we went up with them; up and up through glorious green depths, with the water suddenly sparkling and lightening, until we burst right out of it, and the whales blew.

  They blew huge spouts of water. We were cascading in the air with their spouts, and then had left them behind.

  They were far behind, far below.

  I could see them below; three whales, flicking their fan tails on the surface of the sea: tiny whales now, because we were going fast. We were going at fantastic speed. We were rushing through the air, and all the kids were squealing again because all around the blue sky was whistling with our speed, and we were in the world above.

  My brain was spinning. The world was spinning. I could see it below me, and our rocket dizzyingly turned, so that the world lurched upwards, until it was level, and I could see its curve. I saw the curve of the earth. I saw tiny mountains standing up, like on a relief globe. The globe slowly span. I saw Spain, and France. I saw Britain. I saw the finger of Cornwall. I saw where Polziel must be!

  I saw ocean, and Canada and the eastern coast of America all the way down to Florida; the whole shape of it slowly turning, until the distance was too great, and no detail cou
ld be seen, just the whole globe turning, turning. And also turning blue.

  The globe was blue now: a beautiful little planet, enclosed in its atmosphere, receding fast, at hundreds of thousands of miles an hour.

  It was whistling darkness now as the planet contracted; into a tiny sapphire, into a bit of diamond dust, into nothing.

  The kids had stopped squealing. In the rushing darkness, there was a kind of awe, and the rocket slowly revolved once more, and a little bright star passed on our left, with a tiny scatter of dust about it, and Dido said in my ear, “The sun. The solar system.” And it was gone.

  All gone. Everything was gone. There was nothing anywhere. There was no light. There was a roaring darkness, that was thudding, and thudding rhythmically. It was thudding like a heart. It was my heart. All of me was thudding, my feet, my hands, my hair. I was a part of the thudding. I was suddenly a part of everything, of the whole universe, of space. I was smaller than my own pulse. I was a beat in everything's pulse. I didn't exist. I hadn't been born. It was all blackness.

  It was fantastic blackness.

  I'd never known such blackness. I couldn't see any of myself. I couldn't even feel myself. I couldn't believe the blackness. In the darkest room, on the darkest night, behind closed eyes, you couldn't see such blackness. If you stared hard enough you could always see something, a fleck.

  I stared as hard as I could. I stared so hard my eyes ached, but I got a fleck. I got a spark. It was like a pain. It was red so I knew it was blood from the veins behind my eyes. Then it grew bigger, and I knew it wasn't.

  The spark was there. It hung in the blackness. It was brighter than a cigarette end, redder than a ruby. It was bigger than an egg, than a balloon, than the moon. It wasn't even red. In the thudding vibrations, it was changing colour. It was rose, and pink, apricot, peach, pearl. In steady throbbing waves it expanded everywhere.

  It washed over the front rows, and I heard the gasps of delight and saw the kids standing up; and felt it coming towards me, and got the first tremor myself. The sound was changing, too. The light was washing the harshness out of it. It was melting and softening into music. Then it touched me and a single gasp came out of me. I felt I was just born, out of nothing. I felt I was a baby being bathed. I felt I was being picked up. And unbelievably I was. The kids in front weren't standing. The light had lifted them. We were all floating in it.