Nation

by Terry Pratchett

  “Come on!” said Daphne, dragging him into the light.

  The Women’s Place was full. There were people in the fields. The beach was busy. There were even children playing in the lagoon.

  “We’ve got so much to do,” said Mau, shaking his head.

  “They are already doing it,” said Daphne.

  They watched in silence. Soon people would spot them and they would be back in the world again, but right now they were part of the scenery.

  After a while the girl said: “I remember when it was…just nothing, and there was a boy who didn’t even see me.”

  And the boy said: “I remember a ghost girl.”

  After a longer silence, the girl asked: “Would you go back? If you could?”

  “You mean, without the wave?”

  “Yes. Without the wave.”

  “Then I’d have gone home, and everyone would have been alive, and I would be a man.”

  “Would you rather be that man? Would you change places with him?” asked the ghost girl.

  “And not be me? Not know about the globe? Not have met you?”

  “Yes!”

  Mau opened his mouth to reply and found it choked with words. He had to wait until he could see a path through them.

  “How can I answer you? There is no language. There was a boy called Mau. I see him in my memory, so proud of himself because he was going to be a man. He cried for his family and turned the tears into rage. And if he could, he would say ‘Did not happen!’ and the wave would roll backward and never have been. But there is another boy, and he is called Mau, too, and his head is on fire with new things. What does he say? He was born in the wave, and he knows that the world is round, and he met a ghost girl who is sorry she shot at him. He called himself the little blue hermit crab, scuttling across the sand in search of a new shell, but now he looks at the sky and knows that no shell will ever be big enough, ever. Will you ask him not to be? Any answer will be the wrong one. All I can be is who I am. But sometimes I hear the boy inside crying for his family.”

  “Does he cry now?” asked Daphne, looking down at the ground.

  “Every day. But very softly. You won’t hear him. Listen, I must tell you this. Locaha spoke to me. He spread his great wings over me on the beach and drove the Raiders away. Didn’t you see that?”

  “No. The Raiders ran as soon as Cox went down,” said Daphne. “You mean you met Death? Again?”

  “He told me that there were more worlds than there are numbers. There is no such thing as ‘does not happen.’ But there is always ‘happened somewhere else’—” He tried to explain, while she tried to understand.

  When he’d run out of words, she said: “You mean that there is a world where the wave didn’t happen? Out…there somewhere?”

  “I think so…. I think I’ve almost seen it. Sometimes, at night, when I’m watching the shore, I almost see it. I nearly hear it! And there is a Mau there, a man who is me, and I pity him, because there is no ghost girl in his world….”

  She put her arms around his neck and gently pulled him toward her. “I wouldn’t change anything,” she said. “Here I’m not some sort of doll. I have a purpose. People listen to me. I’ve done amazing things. How could I go back to my life before?”

  “Is that what you’ll tell your father?” His voice was suddenly sad.

  “Something like that, I think, yes.”

  Mau gently turned her around, so that she was looking at the sea.

  “There’s a ship coming,” he said.

  The schooner had anchored outside the reef by the time they had got down to the lagoon. Daphne waded out as far as she could, regardless of her dress floating up around her, while a boat was lowered.

  On the shore, Mau watched as the man in the prow of the boat jumped off as soon as it was near her and, laughing and crying together, they helped each other up the slope of the sand. The crowd moved back to give them room as they embraced—but Mau was watching the two men climbing out of the boat. They had red jackets on and held complicated sticks, and looked at Mau as if he was, at best, a nuisance.

  “Let me look at you,” said His Excellency, standing back. “Why, you look—What happened to you? There’s blood on your shoulder! We have a doctor on board, and I’ll get him to—”

  Daphne glanced down. “It’s just a splash,” she said, waving a hand. “Besides, it’s not mine. I had to saw a man’s leg off, and I haven’t had time to wash.”

  Behind them a third soldier got out of the boat carrying a thick tube, which he began to unroll. He looked nervously at Mau.

  “What is happening here?” snapped Mau. “Why do they have guns? What is this man doing?” He stepped forward, and two bayonets barred his way.

  Daphne turned her head and pulled away from her father. “What’s this?” she demanded. “You can’t stop him from walking around in his own country! What’s in that tube? It’s a flag, isn’t it? You brought a flag! And guns!”

  “We didn’t know what we were going to find, dear,” said her father, taken aback. “After all, there are cannon up there.”

  “Well, all right, yes,” muttered Daphne, stumbling over her own anger. “They’re just for show.” The rage flamed up again. “But those guns aren’t! Put them down!”

  His Excellency nodded at the men, who put their muskets, very carefully but also very quickly, down on the sand. Milo had just walked onto the beach to see what the fuss was about, and he tended to loom.

  “And the flag!” said Daphne.

  “Just hold on to it, Evans, if you would be so kind,” said His Excellency. “Look, dear, we mean no harm to these, er”—he glanced up at Milo—“nice people, but we must back up our claim to the Mothering Sunday Islands. We hold that they are just an extension of the Bank Holiday Monday Islands—”

  “Who’s we? You?”

  “Well, ultimately the king—”

  “He can’t have this one!” Daphne screamed. “He doesn’t need it! He can’t have it! He hasn’t finished with Canada yet!”

  “Dear, I think the privations of your time on this island may have affected you in some way—” His Excellency began.

  Daphne took a step backward. “Privations? There is nowhere I would rather have been than here! I’ve helped babies to be born! I killed a man—”

  “The one whose leg you sawed off?” asked her father, mystified.

  “What? Him? No, he’s doing very well,” said Daphne, waving a hand dismissively. “The one I killed was a murderer. And I’ve made beer. Really good beer! Father, you must listen right now. It’s very important that you understand right now. This is the other end of the world, Father, it really is. This is the beginning. This…is the place where you might grant God absolution.”

  She hadn’t meant it to come out. He stood there, stunned.

  She added: “I’m sorry. You and Grandmother were shouting so loud that night and I couldn’t help overhearing,” and, since there was no point in being deceitful at a time like this, she also added, “Especially since I was trying hard to.”

  He looked up at her, his face gray. “What is so special about this place?” he asked.

  “There’s a cave. It’s got wonderful carvings in it. It’s ancient. It may be more than a hundred thousand years old.”

  “Cavemen,” said His Excellency calmly.

  “I think there are star maps on the ceiling. They invented…well—practically everything. They sailed all over the world when we huddled around our fires. I can prove it, I think.” Daphne took her father’s hand. “There’s still some oil in the lamps,” she said. “Let me show you. Not you!” she added as the guards sprang to attention. “You will stay here. And no one is to take over anyone’s country while we’re gone, is that understood?”

  The men looked at His Excellency, who shrugged vaguely, a man who had been thoroughly daughtered.

  “Whatever she says, of course,” he said.

  His daughter took his hand and said, “Come and see.”


  They started off up the path but were not out of earshot when Pilu walked up to the soldiers and said, “Would you like some beer?”

  “Don’t let them drink it until they have spat in it and sung ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’ sixteen times” was the order from on high, followed by, “and tell them we need lamp oil.”

  The first thing her father said when he saw the gods was “My goodness!” Then, after staring at things with his mouth open, he managed to say, “Incredible! All this belongs in a museum!”

  She couldn’t let him get away with that one, and she said, “Yes, I know. That’s why it is, in fact, in one.”

  “And who will look at it down here?”

  “Anyone who wants to come and see, Papa. And that will mean every scientist in the world.”

  “It’s a long way from anywhere important, though,” His Excellency observed, running his fingers over the stone globe.

  “No, Papa. This is the important place. It’s everywhere else that is a long way away. Anyway, that wouldn’t matter to the Royal Society. They would swim up here in lead boots!”

  “Down here, dear, I think,” said her father.

  Daphne pushed the globe. It rolled a little way and the continents danced. But now the world was turned upside down. “It’s a planet, Papa. Up and down are just ways of looking at it. I’m sure people here won’t object to copies being made for all the big museums. But don’t take this place away from them. It’s theirs.”

  “I think people will say it belongs to the world.”

  “And they will be thinking like thieves. We have no right to it at all. But if we don’t act like stupid bullies, I’m sure they will be gracious.”

  “Gracious,” said her father, turning over the word in his mouth as if it was an unfamiliar biscuit.

  Daphne’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t go suggesting that grace is something you find only at the other end of the world, will you, Papa?”

  “No, you’re quite right. I will do what I can, of course. This is a very important place, I can see that.”

  She kissed him.

  When he spoke again, he sounded nervous and unsure of how to put things. “So you’ve been…all right here? Eating well? Finding things to do…um…apart from sawing legs off?”

  “It was only one leg, honestly. Oh, and a foot. I helped deliver two babies—well, to be honest I really only watched and sang a song the first time, and I’ve been learning about medicines from Mrs. Gurgle in exchange for chewing her pork for her—”

  “You…chew…her…pork for her…,” her father repeated, as if hypnotized.

  “Well, she hasn’t got any teeth, you see?”

  “Ah, yes, of course.” His Excellency shifted uneasily. “And did you have any other…adventures?”

  “Let me think…. I was saved from drowning by Mau, who is the chief now, and, oh yes, I met a cannibal chief who looked just like the prime minister!”

  “Really?” said her father. “Although, come to think of it, that’s not hard to imagine. And…er…and was anyone…did anyone…try to be…beastly to you?”

  It was said so carefully that she nearly laughed. Fathers! But she couldn’t tell him about the giggling maids and the kitchen gossip, let alone Cahle’s jokes. She had spent a lot of time at the Women’s Place. Surely he didn’t imagine she walked around with her eyes shut and her fingers in her ears?

  “There was a murderer. He was one of the crew of the Judy, I’m sorry to say,” she said. “He shot someone and then pointed a pistol at me.”

  “Great heavens!”

  “So I poisoned him. Well, sort of. But the Nation called it something like…what do you call it when a hangman hangs somebody?”

  “Er…a judicial execution?” said His Excellency, a man trying hard to keep up.

  “That’s right. And I broke another man’s nose with a clay bowl because he was going to shoot me.”

  “Really? Well, I suppose poison would have taken too long,” said His Excellency, attempting to make the best of it. His face was ghastly in the lamplight, and it looked to Daphne as if it was made of wax and was about to melt.

  “Now that I come to talk about it, it does all seem a bit…um…” She trailed off.

  “Busy?” her father suggested.

  And then she told him everything else—about the way the moon shone over the lagoon, and how bright the stars were, and the mutiny, and poor Captain Roberts, and the parrot, and the red crabs, and the pantaloon birds, and the tree-climbing octopi and First Mate Cox, while the gods looked down. She towed him past the hundreds of white slabs around the walls, talking all the time.

  “Look, that’s a giraffe. They knew about Africa! There’s an elephant farther on, but it may be Indian. This is clearly a lion. One of the stones that ended up on the beach has got a carving of a horse on it, and who would bring one here? But the carvings on these other panels don’t seem to show anything I can recognize, so I’m wondering if this section is some kind of alphabet—A is for apple and so on—but a lot of panels have these lines and dots around the edges, so I could be completely wrong. And see how often there is a hand somewhere in the carving! I’m positive it’s there as a guide to size. And over here…” And so on, until at last she finished with: “And I’m sure they had a telescope.”

  “Oh, surely not! Is there a carving of one?”

  “Well, no. But a lot of slabs are missing.” Then she told him about the sons of Jupiter and the snake around Saturn.

  He didn’t seem too impressed, but he patted her on the hand. “Or the skies were clearer once,” he said. “Or there was a man with extremely good eyesight.”

  “But I’ve come up with a good scientific explanation!”

  Her father shook his head. “Much as I love you, it’s a guess. And, may I say, a hope. You must work harder than that, my girl.”

  Ah, those arguments we used to have coming back from the society, Daphne thought. I’m going to have to fight. Good!

  She pointed to the gods. “They shine because they are covered with little plates of glass,” she said. “Those are held on with lead nails. One of the boys swam over and had a look for me. The people here knew how to make fine glass!”

  Her father, sitting with his back to the cool stone, gave a nod. “That is quite likely. Many cultures make glass. We have the beginnings of a hypothesis, but you need to find your lens maker.”

  “Papa, it stands to reason that sooner or later a glassmaker would notice a bubble in the glass and see how the light—”

  But her father had held up a hand. “Science is not interested in what ‘stands to reason,’” he said. “It ‘stands to reason’ that the Earth is flat. What we know is that the Romans took some interest in crude lenses, and that eyeglasses were not invented until the thirteenth century. The Italian Salvino D’Armate is generally credited with—”

  “Why is it always so, so…northern hemisphere?” said Daphne. “Turn the world upside down!” She pulled her father over to the wall near the globe and pointed to a panel. “You remember I told you they were very keen on showing hands holding things, too?” she said, and held up the lamp. “There! Doesn’t that look like a pair of spectacles to you?”

  He looked at the panel critically, like a man trying to decide between cake and pie.

  “It could be,” he said, “but it could be a mask, or scales, or have some mysterious religious significance. It doesn’t help you much, I’m sorry to say.”

  Daphne sighed. “Look, if I found some evidence that they knew about lenses, would you accept they may have known how to build a telescope?”

  “Yes, that would be reasonable. I won’t accept that they did, mind you, only that they may have done so.”

  “Come and see.”

  This time she led him to the other side of the gods, to a niche in the wall where the white panel had fallen out.

  “One of the boys found them in silt at the bottom of the god pool. The glass is broken on one side and the other is cracked, bu
t you can see they were lenses. Be careful.” She laid them carefully in his hand.

  He blinked. “Gold-rimmed spectacles…” But he breathed the words rather than said them.

  “Have I proved my telescope theory, Papa?” she said gleefully. “We know that eyeglasses lead on to telescopes.”

  “Once before, at least. Or since, I’m sure you would say. Why didn’t you show me these straightaway?”

  “I just wanted to make you admit I was doing proper science!”

  “Well done,” said His Excellency. “You have built a very strong hypothesis indeed, but I’m sorry to say that you have not proved the full theory. You’d need to find the telescope for that.”

  “That’s unfair!” said Daphne.

  “No, it’s science,” said her father. “‘Could have’ isn’t good enough. Nor is ‘might have’! ‘Did’ is the trick. But when you announce this, a lot of people will try to prove you wrong. The more they fail, the more right you will become. And they will probably try to suggest that some European traveler came here and lost his eyeglasses.”

  “And his false teeth made of gold?” snapped Daphne. She told him about Mrs. Gurgle’s proudest possession.

  “I would very much like to see them. Some people will find them easier to accept. Don’t be discouraged about the telescope. What is clear is that this place was the home of a hitherto unknown seafaring culture that was very adept in the technical arts. Good heavens, my girl, most people would be ecstatic to have discovered all this!”

  “I didn’t,” said Daphne. “Mau did. I just had to look over his shoulder. He had to walk past a hundred thousand ancestors. This is their place, Papa. Their ancestors built it. And put on the globe there the symbol of a wave breaking in front of the setting sun, which every man of the islands has worn as a tattoo for thousands of years. I saw it! And you know what? I can prove that no European has been into this cave before me.” Daphne looked around, chest heaving with passion. “See the gold on the gods and the globe and the big door?”

  “Yes. Of course, dear. I could hardly fail to notice.”