Under Plum Lake

by Lionel Davidson

  Now there were all colours, blue, silver, amber, emerald, and they were rippling through me. The colours and the sounds were going through me. I seemed to be shimmering in long ripples of pleasure. They got so intense, they came so fast, I could hardly bear it. Just when I couldn't bear it, and heard myself gasping again, a clear tide of sapphire blue washed through me.

  Everywhere the kids were gently floating. Dido was floating beside me. We were all smiling the weird smiles; we couldn't help it. I don't know how long it went on. There were several more of the spasms. They got stronger. The feeling of happiness was almost painful. Then it became softer and gentler, till we were lowered to our seats again, and there was a smell of flowers everywhere. I could smell them as we went bobbing out into the night. I couldn't feel the ground. It was like treading water. I was just full of pleasure.

  I was so full of it I forgot to tell him again not to do anything dangerous with me.

  And my time had come now. It was here.

  19. My Time Has Come

  Soaring in the night. It was the middle of the night. We'd soared so high, the lake far below, looked no bigger than a plum itself. The smell of ragusas everywhere in the purple night. I didn't ever want it to stop. There'd never been anything so beautiful. The pleasure drome hadn't been so beautiful.

  I was lying on the kite just gazing below. The moon was over Mount Julas. I was higher than Mount Julas. I could see the snow in the moonlight. And we were still rising. The scented air wafted up from the lake. I could feel the soft gusts trembling each wing under my body. It only needed a touch to correct the wings.

  We'd gone up first in a dual-control kite, and he'd shown me everything. He knew I was nervous, but he said there was nothing to it. And it was true. In just minutes he'd let me take control myself. You take off under power, nose upwards. Then a few hundred feet up, you level out, and feel the air currents underneath, and switch off. The air takes you then.

  Now we were on our own, and he was soaring twenty feet away. There were fifty of us over the lake, the maximum at night; some were already stunting and spiralling below. The kites flashed like fireflies in the moonlight. Far below, just a few hundred feet off the water, I saw somebody trying a slice. He did it cautiously, but pretty well. He levelled out just at the right moment, and then he was coming up again, under power.

  Dido just laughed. “Some slice!” he said scornfully. “I'll have to show him. You stay here. Stabilize now. You remember how.”

  He took me through it, and we both stabilized.

  It isn't hovering. You lock into position magnetically. You stay in one spot in the air. I felt the breeze on the wings but it couldn't shift the kite even fractionally.

  He de-stabilized and slipped away slightly in the air, and hovered a while, and I saw him tightening his straps.

  “Okay,” he said.

  He put the kite on its nose and took off like a bullet. He went so fast I knew he was on full power. Just a few hundred feet below he went into a slice! It's fantastically dangerous. At that height it's almost lunacy. He put the kite on its side so that he was slicing down like a knife. I saw him spreadeagled along the kite like an insect. In that position you can barely judge distance or direction. He'd explained all this to me! And I'd seen it. With power off, you've got practically no control. You can't manoeuvre the wings. If you're in trouble you need lightning reactions to snap on power again. And you can be in trouble in an instant. A sudden gust can throw you all over the sky. It can break the kite and snap you in two. It's why they'd all done it so cautiously and just a few hundred feet over the lake, where the air currents were manageable and they could judge distance.

  The lunatic was doing it from two miles up.

  And he'd got power off now, I could see. The thin knife edge of his kite gave a fast dangerous twirl every second or two. I could hear it whistling. Far below, the others could, too. I saw them swooping out of the way as his kite sliced down through the night, shrieking like a siren.

  About a mile below a gust caught him. He span completely round in the air, twice, fluttering like a moth. I could imagine him fighting for the controls, everything spinning fast round him. It didn't stop him for a moment. He didn't level out; he didn't slow. He got control, must have snapped on power for a second, and continued slicing down.

  He wasn't going to make it. He'd misjudged. He was going fast, much too fast. He was almost in the water.

  He was in it! He'd crashed. He'd misjudged and smashed himself in the water. I saw a huge column of spray leap up.

  And on top of it, there he was! He must have been just a few inches off the water when he snapped on power and levelled out. He'd been within a fraction of an inch of killing himself.

  I lay on my kite, two miles up, and trembled. He was mad. He was dangerous. I was frightened to touch any of the controls, even accidentally.

  I lay in the sky and watched him come shooting up. He did a complete victory roll round me, and finished upside down, exactly above. He locked in position there and looked down at me, grinning.

  “How was it?” he said. His face was a yard above mine, eyes shining. He was just breathing a bit hard.

  “It was mad!” I said.

  He laughed and leaned down and rumpled my hair.

  “It was fun,” he said. He unlocked and made a slow semicircle to stabilize beside me, and we lay in silence for a while, looking below.

  “All life's fun,” he said. “It's supposed to be. Don't you feel it?”

  “Not when it's dangerous,” I said.

  “There's no danger. Trust me.”

  I said, “You don't know what's dangerous. You don't know what it is to be frightened.”

  “I won't frighten you. I promise,” he said. “Do you want to do a couple of rolls now?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You'll love it. We'll do it gently,” he said.

  He took me through the controls again.

  The kite was a long triangle. You lay along the spine, strapped on, looking down on either side of the narrow point. The wings were of a thin metal, with movable flaps. You controlled them with a rudder bar and a nose stick. The bar steered you to left or right, and the stick brought the nose up or down.

  Beside the controls was the switch panel. The first switch was for the force line, and I'd got it on so I couldn't crash. The next was power with a turnable grip to control the speed. Last was the stabilizer lock. You could lock in any position. You could do it upside down, as he'd just done. You could stand the kite on its nose, or tail, and it would stay there. He'd told me to keep my hands away from it in flight, because it stopped you instantly, faster than the brakes of any car.

  We put all switches off, and did a slow spiralling descent.

  He did it carefully, bringing us down gently: sticks slightly forward to keep the nose down, rudder bars gently to the right.

  It was the most beautiful, graceful thing. We curved down and down through the purple night.

  We stopped before we came to the group below.

  “There's nothing to a roll, Barry,” he said. “The kite does everything. If you're nervous, do it on power.”

  He did one, very slowly, to show me, and then another. He carefully looped the loop round me. The second time, he locked, just as he went into the loop, and stayed there slanting in the air, to show me how he'd got the controls.

  There was nothing to it. You pulled the stick pretty far back to get into a steep climb. Just as the kite went vertical, you pulled the stick farther back, which carried it round in a circle, and you were upside down. As you came down the circle, you pushed the stick forward to level out; and as you levelled you pulled it back again.

  I tried it, very cautiously, bracing myself to lock if anything went wrong. Nothing went wrong. I did the most fantastic, gorgeous, incredible roll in the air. The whole world span, and I hung upside down in it, and slid down the other side, hooting with joy. I did another. The sky was under me, the glowing lake up in the sk
y.

  I just didn't want to stop doing it. But I was doing it on power — slow power — and I knew I'd have to do it without. It was what they were doing below, with several fancy tricks. He hovered, carefully watching me. He called out, “Okay. Lock,” and drifted over and locked beside me.

  “It's the same movement without power,” he said, “only you come down faster. You pull back quicker on the stick. If you get confused, go on slow power and lock.”

  He did it himself, to show me, calling out all the time. He did it slowly, but it still wasn't as slow as before; and then I was doing it myself.

  He drifted away to give me room, and I unlocked. I put the nose up and started the ascent. When I was vertical I pulled the stick back farther, and immediately flipped over on my back. I slid down the circle fast, very fast, and immediately began pushing the stick forward, and evened out, and went right up again.

  The first time I was so petrified I barely knew what I was doing. The second time I began to feel it. There was the breeze in my ears, the wings suddenly alive under me. After that, I went crazy. Every time I flipped, the blood rushed to my head, the lake was where the sky should be, and I let out a great hoot. I slid down the sky and heard myself cackling the way he'd cackled in the toboggan.

  I was a bird. I had wings. I was flying in the night.

  It's the thing I remember best. It's still the thing I remember best, even after my death. And that wasn't far off now. It was there, minutes later. It was in the air.

  20. Dying

  Oh I remember it. I remember it. I remember when everything went wrong, when I couldn't put it right. It happened below, way below. It was past where the sky- chasing was going on. He took me there when he saw I could handle the kite, and we joined in. It's a game, sky-chasing.

  You form a circle, with the chaser in the middle. You switch on the kite's computer, and also the force line. When the game begins you “scramble” and the chaser starts chasing. He has to make “hits”. He can't really hit. The force line stops him. But when he's near enough, the computer scores a hit.

  It happens in a space called the “box”. You mustn't fly out of the box. If you do the computer scores a hit against you for that, too. It scores everything.

  The games are fast and tight, inside the box. Everyone gets a turn. And everyone scored off me. And I scored off nobody. I was terrible.

  I was so terrible, Dido took me out of it, to show me some of the tricks to use. He took me well below the box. We went to seven or eight hundred feet. He showed me the flip and the slide and the drop. I was scared of all of them. He did them on full power. The game was on full power, which had confused me, anyway. The speed had confused me.

  The flip is a fast drop-turn. You drop and immediately turn in a way the chaser doesn't expect. He acted as chaser, and he said I had to keep changing the turn. I had to do it faster and faster. He made so many hits, he got irritable. He shouted, “Change your turn!” And just the moment he said it, I turned the same way, and he made another hit, and he yelled, “Again! Try again!” And I did it again, and found I was turning the same way again. It was all so fast. It was too fast for me. Just as I did it, he yelled, “Not that way!” And I slammed the rudder bar over, and that's when it happened.

  I slammed it too hard. The kite went into a spin. I was on full power, so it span like a top. I couldn't shift the rudder bar. I'd spun thirty or forty times when I started being sick. My eyes were glazed with fright, my fists clenched, my whole body hunched together like one terrified muscle. I blacked-out for a moment, but when I came to, everything was still spinning: sky, moon, lake . . . sky-moon-lake . . . skymoonlake. It wouldn't stop.

  He'd got as close as he could. He was yelling at me. I heard only snatches of words. “Rudder . . Leave it. . .Power. . . Get on slow power!”

  I got my hands off the rudder, and fought against the spin to find the switch panel. My eyes were full of tears and I couldn't see the panel. Everything kept spinning. I felt for the switches, found power, gripped the handle to slow it, and turned hard. I turned off! I'd switched it off.

  It slowed me right away. I had the rudder right away. I yanked it over fast. I came out of the spin, with a huge strain on the wings, and on my straps, and was vertical. I thought I was vertical. It took three or four seconds, my head still going round and round, to find that I wasn't vertical. I was sideways. I was in a slice.

  I pulled frantically this way and that on the rudder. The rudder worked, but the wings didn't. I remembered you had no control of them in a slice. I heard them begin to whistle. I hung sideways on the kite and cut down through the night. I saw the lake seven hundred feet below. It was purple. It was transparent.

  I saw fish below the surface. I saw people in fish suits. He was plummeting down beside me, shouting. I was too paralysed to do anything.

  He shouted, “Barry — get on power! Switch on power!”

  Sobbing, I tried to do it. I couldn't take my eyes off the lake. It was close now, three hundred feet, two hundred. I could hear a gurgling noise coming out of me. I felt for the panel, and counted off levers, and switched on power. Just the moment I did it, I knew it was wrong. It wasn't power. It was the stabilizer lock. I was just feet off the water. I was maybe inches off it. I felt a terrific wrench. I felt something like a wall slam into me. Then for a time there was nothing. I'd entered death.

  21. Who Am I Now?

  Polziel, Cornwall, August 18

  I'm too tired to write today. I've written too many days. Writing of my death tired me. I've been wondering who I am; if I'm the same person I was before I died. I know the body is the same. But is the mind? They played so many tricks with my mind. I wonder if it's the one I had before.

  I know he said you couldn't make a mind. He said only the brain made mind. But if the brain was changed, even accidentally, wouldn't it make a different mind?

  I kept asking him last night. I was down there till three in the morning.

  I've got the cave tidied up now. The steps are mainly cleared. I can get down in minutes. I keep a few things there. I keep a bit of food and a towel (for when I go in the flooded tunnel). I keep a spare flashlight and a rope. I've tied a noose in the rope, and hammered a bolt in the cliff, so I can lasso it and pull myself up if I get stuck by the sea. I don't want them finding out I'm missing and coming to look for me. I've got to be careful.

  I know so much. I see things so differently.

  I look at my parents, and I feel older than them. I feel older than anyone. I know more than they'll ever know. The whole world seems childish and ignorant. I feel I've stepped back a thousand years; as if they haven't invented clockwork yet, or engines, radio or flight, and can't even imagine such things.

  I have seen greater things! I've seen the future, and it's wonderful. The world is wonderful, and the universe. The idea behind it is wonderful.

  What do they know of these things? How can I begin telling them? I feel lost, and out of my time. But I won't stay this way. I know what to do.

  It's strange that I knew more after I died than before. I knew almost everything.

  I'll rest today. I'll write tomorrow what I knew.

  22. What I Knew

  Under trees. Under trees, and on the ground. I knew it was me on the ground. I didn't know I'd died. I couldn't feel anything. The body on the ground seemed disconnected from me. It wasn't alone. Two people were with it. One was Dido. He said, “Is he dead?” Either they were talking English or I understood everything now.

  The other said, “He's suspended.” Dido said, “Did he have pain?”

  “Feel.”

  I understood all this. Dido's hand went to the body on the ground, and suddenly it was my body, and it was my head he was touching, and I felt all the body and pain in it. But still I felt disconnected. I realized I was disconnected. I was in somebody's hand. My brain was in the other person's hand. The pain moaned in the body's shoulder and neck. I realized a part of me was doing the moaning. I saw that Dido was,
too. His face was screwed up in a great grimace. The pain lasted only a few seconds; and then he had taken his hand away and the pain went; but the grimace stayed on his face. He was still feeling my pain.

  “That's what you did to him,” the other person said, and everything went away again. I went away. I went back in the hand. Then I went to a hammock.

  “Barry,” Dido said. He was standing beside the hammock, watching me.

  I didn't say anything.

  “Forgive me,” Dido said.

  I still didn't say anything. I was waiting for the pain. There was no pain.

  “You're all right. You're resting,” Dido said. “You have to rest another hour.”

  I saw the sky was lighter. I was in the hotel garden. I seemed to hear what he said before he said it. (It was why my mind needed resting. A part of the brain heard what he said and passed it to another part. I was only understanding the second part of the brain, like getting an echo before the original. But by the time it was in my mind it had already become familiar. My mind was confused because its brain had been taken out and handled after death.)

  I'd died on the kite. I was dead when they got to me. I'd broken my neck and my shoulder. The doctor had seen it happen and had treated me immediately. The heart had stopped, but he'd found oxygen still in the brain, so he had kept it there and restarted the heart. He had kept me “suspended” between life and death while he looked to see if it was worth giving me my life back. He had treated the shoulder first to see if there were difficulties, and there weren't. He'd healed the break instantly. Then he'd repaired the broken connections between the spine and the brain before mending the neck itself.