Antediluvian

by Wil McCarthy

  The river had filled up now, and the low hills and banks separating it from the harbor had either been wiped away or drowned. The lashed-together boats were still rising, yes, and now he could see The City again, or rather, he could see the last of the houses disappearing beneath churning brown water. He could see the walls of the palace crumbling like those of a sand castle, and he could see the Tower of the Hill of Stars—now immersed to fully a third of its height—falling over. He would have thought it would fall toward the land, but as its base was swept by the moving ocean, it basically lost its footing and fell toward its attacker, breaking in half as it fell and then simply vanishing.

  And with that, beneath a sky of fiery crimson and streaks of bright yellow, The City was gone. And the churning water was somehow quieter.

  Up ahead of them, there was land visible, perhaps two or three kos away. Even though it seemed, yes, that the entire ocean was moving inland, Manuah didn’t think the water could have swept that far ahead of them that quickly. No, there was still a rolling mound of water up ahead, perhaps half a kos away, and it was obscuring the ground in front of it. The tavitarka was still riding the giant wave, albeit on the back end, and the wave was still tall enough that the olive trees it scythed down were mostly blocked from view—just heads of broccoli snipped and rolled and drowned up there in the distance. And here was a strange thing, because this wave was long—impossibly long, much longer than it was tall—and it seemed to have quite a bit of run left in it. Was it the last wave the world would ever see?

  As the sailors bailed furiously, he became aware of the squawking of chickens and the bleating of goats and children. And then the weeping of women, and the groaning of injured and heartbroken men.

  “Secure the cargo!” he called out, when enough water had been bailed that they were no longer in immediate danger of sinking. Because that was their next biggest problem: panicked animals trying to run around on the very limited space of the tavitarka’s seven decks, and getting tangled up in ropes and baskets and people.

  And when that was taken care of, he commanded, “Passengers, see to each other! Secure the injured!” Some of the more alert women had already started doing this, but the thirty-odd passengers were mostly shocked into passivity, and needed now to be shocked into something else.

  * * *

  And here, as men and women started seeing to one another’s numerous injuries, Harv was shocked to observe a kind of systematic first-aid process at work. He supposed injuries must be commonplace in a world like this—even without catastrophe—and dealing with them promptly must be a matter of mutual survival. Is this wrist broken? Can you open that eye for me? Let me see, let me feel. You! Help me lift him onto the bench. Still, three of the children were incoherent and inconsolable, and three of the adults could not be roused to action of any sort, and by a kind of triage these were ignored for the time being, while attention was focused on those who could describe their own symptoms. The whole process seemed familiar and calming, and not at all what Harv would have expected. Could the people of his own time respond so well? He doubted it.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Sharama called out to Manuah: “Should we keep the boats lashed together?”

  Manuah thought about this, and didn’t have a clear answer. The tavitarka was spinning slowly and drifting aimlessly, and that rankled his sailor’s sensibilities. A boat of any sort must be under control at all times, or bad things tended to happen. And yet, the water around them was increasingly…well, not calm, but less like river rapids and more like an ordinary, fast-moving river. And there was nothing for them to crash into or run aground on, and even with everyone at full attention this awkward assemblage of boats would be exhausting to control for any length of time, so perhaps they could just let it be for now. If the seven boats were separated, then paddling to keep them close to one another—but not too close!—was a headache they didn’t need.

  “For the moment,” he answered. “Let’s see how it goes.”

  The sky gradually got brighter, but the sun never really did come out. There was blue sky above them, but to the northeast was an ugly wall of charcoal gray clouds that spilled across the heavens like a stain. Could something like that be considered a bad omen, when so much actual badness had already occurred? No one discussed it, but everyone kept looking up, occasionally making the sign of the half-closed eye in hopes of warding off any further evil.

  “What are we going to do, Captain?” Letoni wanted to know.

  “Stay at your station,” Manuah told him. “I don’t like the look of these clouds.”

  That answer was both obvious and unsatisfying, so Letoni turned instead to Adrah and asked, “Hey, Your Theity. Is this the end of the world? Is there any point doing anything at all?”

  To which Adrah replied, “Jump overboard if you like.” And then, perhaps feeling that wasn’t a priestly enough response, he added: “The fact that we’re still here is significant. I don’t really know what to make of it. Why should we be saved? Aside from the obvious, that we happened to be in a boat when the flood arrived.”

  As for why the flood arrived, he didn’t seem inclined to venture an opinion. How could he? Who knew the minds of the gods, to whom human beings were just so many goats and chickens, or perhaps even ants.

  About half an hurta after the flood began, Manuah finally felt it stop and, very tentatively, reverse direction. There were no reference points against which to judge this motion, but he could feel it in his belly. They were dropping slightly, as well. Was that a good thing?

  “It’s stopping!” Hamurma called out excitedly. It seemed a strange thing to be excited about, since it in no way guaranteed their safety, nor even implied it.

  The sense of movement increased, until Manuah could actually feel a breeze on his face. This worried him, because when he dipped his hand into the water and tasted it, it was bitter with salt and dirt. There seemed to be no boundaries now between land and river and ocean, and if the water had reversed direction, it could mean they were about to be swept out to sea. Did they even have seven working sails? Or fresh water for thirty passengers and twenty crew, or any fishing gear at all, or any of the dozen other things a proper ocean voyage required? Would they be able to get their bearings? Did The City’s harbor even exist anymore? Was the concept of safe harbors even relevant?

  He began to see material protruding above the water’s surface again. Things that might have been rooftops, things that might have been trees. Something that might have been the top of the Hill of Stars, and the base of its shattered tower, with water swirling treacherously inside the stone ring that remained.

  It was all much farther away than he would have guessed, nearly a kos to the south, and they were now racing back toward it with alarming speed. The river still had no banks; there wasn’t anything immediately around them to run into, but the sensation nevertheless filled him with helpless dread. These forces continued to be vastly out of scale with anything he’d ever experienced, or heard of in old sailor’s stories. The anthill had been kicked over and drowned.

  “How long will this continue?” someone demanded of Adrah.

  “Until it ceases,” Adrah answered, now testy again. And why not?

  “Or until we cease,” Yaphethti said, loudly enough for everyone on the tavitarka to hear.

  And with that, Manuah had had enough. What did ants do, when their home was destroyed? They got right back to work, without pause or complaint. Either these four-twelves-and-two people would survive, or they wouldn’t. Right now he couldn’t really imagine what that survival might look like, but he could at least admit the possibility. And this was his boat, and he was responsible for everyone’s welfare, and all this talking was not going to help.

  “Stow the chatter!” he snapped. “Right front, draw. Left front, pry. Everyone else: if you don’t have a steering oar in your hands, sit down and shut up. We’re headed back toward The City, and we may have to dodge buildings all over again.”<
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  But things were still changing; below the water, even though it was an opaque brown that admitted no light, he fancied he could somehow sense the banks of the river. The tavitarka was out of its channel again, and its speed was dropping. They were dropping. The water was draining away beneath them, and for the briefest of moments Manuah thought they might just be gently deposited on the floor of an orchard or a farm or a pasture. For a moment, yes, but then he heard the distant roar of the ocean, and saw another evil churning out there.

  “Paddlers!” he screamed. “All ahead, full strength! Dig! Dig! Sterns left left left left! Pull, you motherless bastards! Get us back in the river! Now, now!”

  And although being hit with a second giant wave was not all that different than being hit by the first, it seemed this time that his sailors understood what to do. The wobbly tavitarka was grunted and hauled to the waterfall of the river’s bank, and over and down without swamping, and thence into position, a two-sixties’ feet or so into the channel, all lined up to catch the wave beneath its stern, and ride it upriver as far as necessary.

  The men accomplished this in less than a vimadi, which was good, because that was all the time they had before the second wave scooped and lifted them into the air. Higher than before, louder than before, more vertical than before, and this was amazing to Manuah, because the wave had already traveled a kos inland before reaching them. If it still had this much energy, then it must be a lot larger than the first one.

  * * *

  We’re surfing, Harv thought for a moment, and although he was safe and sound in his regression chair, many thousands of years in the future, he felt a tremendous fear wash over him. Or perhaps it was Manuah’s fear. And yet…And yet, if Manuah was in Harv Leonel’s Y-chromosome lineage, he must somehow have survived this disaster. Which meant things could not be quite as bad as they appeared.

  * * *

  Be brave, said a voice in Manuah’s head. Or something like a voice, a thought, a feeling from outside of himself. All is not lost.

  And a part of him thought: well, all right, perhaps the gods can be kind amidst their cruelty. Or perhaps one god is kind amid another’s cruelty, or perhaps it was more complicated than that. But another, larger part of him was fixated on the steering oar in his hands, and the flat water below and in front of the tavitarka, and the battering sense of speed and falling, and the impossible task of somehow keeping this makeshift craft from rolling and sinking in the wave.

  As the moments slithered by, the stern of the rearmost boat lifted higher and higher, until Manuah was literally dangling from his steering oar, with a heel hooked on his bench to keep him from falling into oblivion. But then the stern began to lower again, and the tavitarka was bending, each of the seven boats rigidly straining against its lashings, finding its own awkward path up the boiling face of the wave.

  And it happened that the highest part of the wave was rolling forward along the deepest part of the Great River’s channel, and indeed the tavitarka was sucked in that direction as it gradually slipped behind the wave’s crest, and this time there was nothing for them to crash into or maneuver around. So even amid the terrible churning of the water, even though they lost control at the crest and began a slow spin, Manuah was not swallowed by his fear.

  All was not lost.

  Time moved slowly—the vimadi as ponderous as hurta—while the wave gradually slipped out in front of them, and they were left in calmer and calmer water.

  Except for occasional (and halfhearted) steering commands from Manuah, no one spoke. What was there to say? Would there be a third wave? A fifth? An eighth? Would there be any land for them to steer toward? As the water quieted, as the wave sloshed out farther and farther ahead of them, the fact that they were all still alive began to seem more and more miraculous.

  “Were there any other boats on the water when it hit?” Sharama finally asked, breaking the silence.

  “I don’t think so,” Adrah answered. “I didn’t see anyone.”

  “I don’t see anyone now,” Manuah said. And this was telling, because the water around them, while not exactly flat, stretched out for many kos in all directions, giving way to barely-visible hills in the distant east and west, and the blue expanse of ocean far to the south. To the north things were harder to make out in the roiling of black rapids, but nevertheless, if there were another boat out here it couldn’t stay hidden from them for long.

  “Keep your eyes open,” he said then. “Someone might need our help.”

  And so, with little else to do while they bailed water and lashed down cargo and set broken bones, the people on the tavitarka scanned the waters around them. And found nothing. Even the corpses and debris were far behind, now.

  “Keep looking,” he encouraged occasionally, because it seemed to be keeping people calm.

  And finally, it was Hamurma who spotted something. “Look!” he called out, pointing excitedly.

  Manuah looked up from what he was doing, and saw nothing at first.

  “What do you see?” he asked his son.

  “A spout. It’s gone now, but something spouted. About half a kos that way. I think it must be our greatfish.”

  “There’s more than one greatfish in the ocean,” Kop said dismissively.

  “But only one in the harbor,” Letoni answered. Then, to Adrah, “Your Theity, can a fish be an omen?”

  “Anything can be an omen,” one of the women said. It was Emzananti, Manuah’s wife. She was big on omens and signs, following them closely where they presented themselves.

  Then everyone paused, until the water broke once again into a fountain. Closer than Hamurma had indicated, and also farther north.

  “It is a greatfish,” Manuah said.

  “It’s swimming upriver,” said Emzananti.

  “We should follow it,” said Letoni.

  “We appear to have little choice,” said Adrah.

  And with that, several people broke out into laughter, and that was the moment when Manuah first really began to believe in a future that was more than five vimadi away.

  1.8

  Manuah figured it was around noon when the rains began. Just a few sprinkles at first, as if the sky were weeping for the lost Earth. But then it was sheets of storm water, and within just a few vimadi, a frigid torrent. Those ugly gray clouds had swept from horizon to horizon with an unnatural speed, surely faster than any wind could carry them, and they were heavy with an unnatural burden of rain.

  “Bail!” he called out, again over a racket that hid his voice, and again unnecessarily, because at this point there was little else for the sailors to do except stand by as the tavitarka drifted upriver. There had been a third wave, smaller than the other two, and a fourth one after that, but they were low enough that they didn’t present any real threat to the boats. Low and long, unspeakably long, like a gentle hand pushing and pushing and pushing them northward. The river had become a moving sea, dotted here and there with branches and dead animals and even the occasional tree, uprooted and floating freely. Once they’d encountered a pair of rainbow-gray pigeons clinging to what looked like the middle third of an olive tree, and these leapt eagerly to the tavitarka, finding it to be a better resting place for their tired wings. Someone stuffed them into one of the chicken cages to keep them out of the way.

  But mostly there was nothing happening, and when water began pouring down on them—like a sixth endless wave, from an unexpected direction—the idea that the sailors wouldn’t bail it out of the boats was absurd. Similarly, the passengers (mostly listless and weeping up until this point) sprang to life, chilly and awake and “rain-day naked” in their linen robes that clung wetly to their bodies. Under normal circumstances this might provoke shame among the women and playful laughter among the men, but not today. Almost as soon as the sky began dripping, they were up and working furiously, forming makeshift tents out of woolen blankets and unused sails, bales of linen, and even a few bolts of precious, precious byssa cloth. It was amazing ho
w well and how quickly they saw to their own survival, when there was something specific they could do.

  As for Manuah and his sons and sailors, their hose and hooded jackets were wax-rubbed woolens, warm enough for rough winter seas, and warm enough to keep them from chilling dangerously even in a rain like this. They just tied down their chin straps and made do. Adrah, however, was rain-nude in sky-blue linens that plastered at once to his body. His white cap seemed to have fallen off somewhere along the way, and his long black hair was in his face no matter how many times he flipped it back. Fortunately, without Manuah having to say anything, he abandoned his post, helped the passengers on his boat erect a crude shelter, and then crowded underneath it alongside them.

  And so the day passed, with sailors on their benches periodically dumping out buckets of water, and otherwise not very much going on. Nobody went thirsty, and while a few of the sailors ducked under a tent roof every now and then (perhaps to dry off a little, perhaps to check on the passengers, and perhaps to grab a bite to eat before the stores became waterlogged and rotten), Manuah stayed grimly at his post, watching through the rain for any sign of anything helpful or dangerous or noteworthy.

  Sometime in the afternoon, another wave rolled by, lifting and bending the tavitarka and then racing out ahead into the gloom. Manuah felt vaguely as though they had slowed down, and that this wave sped them up again, hastening their pace upriver, but without any reference points to measure against, he couldn’t be sure.

  His mind began to wander. So: these four-twelves-and-two people had survived a calamity that must surely have killed tens of thousands. So: Manuah was responsible for them, because he owned the boats. Except for Sharama’s, but since Manuah owned Sharama it made little difference. He had gotten them into this (apparently for the better, not the worse), and it was his job to get them out. But how could he accomplish this? Should they row, in the pouring rain, toward distant hills that were no longer visible? Should they raise a sail or three, and see where the wind might carry them? Should they drop a rope-wrapped anchor stone, wait for it to snag on something beneath the water, and then wait even longer for the water to subside?