He bent as Parsons had and made a slight adjustment to the focus.

  It was a city, or a town at least, nestled now in the trough. Narrow streets, roofs that seemed to be largely of red tiles. A white spire rose above its houses and shops, and for an instant—only an instant, it seemed to him that he had caught the gleam of the gold cross atop the spire.

  He straightened up, swallowed as though his throat and stomach had some part in absorbing what he had just seen, and bent to look again.

  Something white fluttered and vanished above one red roof. A pigeon, he felt certain. There were pigeons as well as gulls there, circling above the houses and shops; pigeons that no doubt nested in the eaves and scavenged the town’s streets for whatever food might be found in them.

  “Been lookin’ on my old computer at home,” Parsons said. “There’s views of various places on there, if you know where to look. My guess is Les Sables-d’Olonne. Mind now, I’m not sayin’ I’m right. Just my guess, I said. You got one?”

  He shook his head. “If—It’ll be out of the way, won’t it? By the time we get there? The next wave will pick it up first, won’t it?” As he spoke, he discovered that he did not believe a word of it.

  “Can’t say.” Parsons scratched his bristling jaw. “Pretty slow, generally, goin’ up. Slidin’ down’s faster ’n blazes, and you go a long way.” Turning his head, he spat. “We’re heading right at it.”

  “If it wasn’t, if it was still in the way… And we hit—”

  “Might bust our plate. I dunno. I phoned up one of them geologists. They’re s’posed to know all about all that. He said he didn’t know neither. Depend on how fast each was goin’. Only you ought to think ’bout this, young feller—ain’t a buildin’ on ours that could stand it if we bump with much speed a-tall. Knock ’em flat, ever’ last one of ’em.”

  Reluctantly he nodded. “You’re right, it will. May I ask who you called, sir?”

  “Doctor Lantz, his name was. Said don’t talk about it, only he don’t have any right to give me orders.” Old Parsons appeared to hesitate. “Won’t matter to me. I’ll be gone long before. You might still be around, though, a healthy young feller like you.”

  “Yes,” he said. Images of the baby, of Adrian, filled his mind; he continued to talk almost by reflex. “I asked about the geologist because I know a geologist. Slightly. I’ve gotten to know him slightly. His name isn’t Lantz, though. It’s Sutton. Martin Sutton. He lives one street over from us.”

  He had debated the matter with himself for more than an hour before telephoning Sutton. “You know some things I need to know, Marty,” he said when the preliminaries were complete, “and I’m going to pick your brain, if you’ll let me. This city or town or whatever it is in the trough—are we going to hit it?”

  There was a lengthy silence before Sutton said, “You know about it, too.”

  “Correct.”

  “They’ve kept it off TV. They’ll keep it out of the papers, if they can. I wonder how many people know.”

  “I have no idea. Are we, Marty?”

  “That’s not my field. I’m a geologist, okay? I study the plate.”

  “But you know. Are we?”

  Sutton sighed. “Probably. How’d you find out?”

  “I looked though a telescope, that’s all. There’s a town down there. Or a small city—take your pick. It’s got fields and gardens around it. What are the odds?”

  Sutton’s shrug was almost audible. “One in ten, maybe.”

  “One in ten of hitting?”

  “No. One in ten of missing. They were calling it one in five yesterday. You mustn’t tell anybody I’ve told you, okay?”

  “I won’t. But they told you. So you could tell them whether our plate would break?”

  Another silence, this one nearly as long as the first. Then: “Yeah.”

  “They did, but that wasn’t the main reason. What’s the other thing? It might help if you’d tell me.”

  “For God’s sake keep it under your hat.” Even over the phone, Sutton sounded desperate.

  “I will, I swear. What is it?”

  “They wanted to talk about the feasibility of breaking up the other plate in advance. You know—the one we’re going to hit.”

  “I understand. Go on.”

  “Suppose we could do it. Suppose we could break it into three pieces. They’d drift apart, and we might not hit all three.”

  He nodded slowly to himself. “And even if we did, three small shocks wouldn’t be as damaging as one big one.”

  “Right.” Sutton seemed a little less nervous now.

  “They’ll try to prepare for them too, of course. We’ve got a crew going through our offices double-bolting everything. Steel boots to hold the legs of the desks, and they’re screwing our file cabinets to the walls as well as the floor. I was watching it a few minutes ago.”

  “I suppose we’ll get that here too,” Sutton said, “but it hasn’t started yet.”

  “Your superiors don’t know.”

  “I guess not.”

  “I see. I suppose mine have been asked whether it would practical to reinforce certain buildings. One more question, please, Marty, and it may be the last one. Would what they asked you about be feasible? Breaking up the plate we’re going to hit like that?”

  “I think so. Probably… Listen, I’m not supposed to talk about this, but I’d like to get it off my chest. First, I’ve had to assume that their plate’s pretty much like ours. Ours is the only one we’re familiar with.”

  “Sure.”

  “Assuming that it is, we’d have to drill into it and plant charges about a hundred feet down. I said the people there aren’t going stand still for that, and they said they’d take them by surprise. It’s not very big, okay? A thousand men, well trained and heavily armed. Hydrofoils that will launch when we’re close. I’ll probably be one of the men on the boats. Everyone else here is older, they’ll be old men by the time it happens. I’m not much older than you are. I’ll still be active.”

  “What about somebody younger? Somebody who hasn’t graduated yet?”

  “There won’t be anybody like that.” Sutton’s voice went flat, stripped of all emotion. “I might as well tell you this, too—it’s the kind of thing that can’t be kept secret. The university’s dropped geology. They’ve closed the whole department, effective immediately.”

  · · · ·

  That night, over wieners and sauerkraut, he told Mona. “I promised a person who trusted me that I wouldn’t talk about this, but you’re going to have to know.”

  When he had finished outlining the situation, she said, “But won’t it work? This man you talked to said it would.”

  “Probably not.” He paused, listening to the trees murmur in the wind that would soon become a years-long gale: the wind of the city’s swift descent. “They must surely see us coming at them, just as we see them in our path. They’ll start preparing, and both sides have ten or fifteen years to prepare in. They can arm everyone who’s willing to fight, and put up obstacles to keep our people from landing. I think we can count on both those.”

  “They could break up their plate for us.”

  He nodded. “Yes, they could. We could break up ours, too. Do you think the government will?”

  For a long moment Mona stared at him. At last she said, “How horrible! No. Of course they won’t.”

  “But we could do it ourselves.” The idea had come to full flower during his long call to Sutton; he had seized it eagerly, and hoped now to inspire her to an equal acceptance. “We could plant charges that would exploit known weaknesses in our plate. The force of the explosions would start our piece moving away from the city, and out of the collision path the city’s on now.”

  “But, darling—”

  “Adrian would have a future. Don’t you see, Mona? We wouldn’t take just this residential neighborhood, but a piece of the infrastructure big enough to be economically viable. We could make things for ourselves then, make things to trade, grow gardens, and fish. That town the city’s going to hit—French or Belgian or whatever it is—people survive there. They even prosper. I’ve bounced this off of a man over on the next street, a geologist. He agrees it might be possible, and he’s coming over to talk about it.”

  “Bumpers! We could build bumpers, things with springs in them. Or—or big sacks full of air.”

  He shook his head. “Nothing we could build would have much effect on a mass as great as the plate’s, and if we succeeded in slowing it down much—we wouldn’t—the wave would break over us and drown everybody.”

  “But…” Mona looked desperate. “But, Honey—”

  He glanced at his watch. “Sutton’s coming at eight. You won’t have to feed him, but coffee and cookies might be nice. Or cake. Something like that.”

  “Okay.” Mona’s voice was scarcely audible.

  · · · ·

  An hour later she said, “Won’t you please stop combing your hair with your fingers like that? And pacing up and down and up and down?”

  For the twentieth time he looked at his watch. “Sutton could be here right now.”

  “He could,” Mona conceded, “if he’d come at least ten minutes early. Honestly, I’m going to get hysterical. Sit down and relax. Or—or go outside where you can see his headlights as soon as he turns onto the street. Please? If I start screaming I’ll wake Adrian. Won’t you, pretty please, Honey, for me?”

  He nodded, suddenly grateful, and discovered that he had been on the point of running his fingers through his hair again. “Okay. I’ll do that. I won’t come back in until he gets here.”

  The wind had turned the night cold. He walked out to the street. How many charges would they need, and how big would each have to be? Would they have to enlist a chemist to make the explosives? Dynamite, or whatever? To his right, looming white above the treetops though far more distant, he could only just glimpse the boiling crest of the wave. Those trees were wrongly slanted now. Come morning, they would find themselves pointed away from the sun. He chuckled softly. It could not be often that smug suburban trees received such an unpleasant surprise.

  When he returned to the house to sit on the stoop, Mona had drawn the blinds. She was being overly cautious, he decided, but he could not find it in his heart to blame her.

  Out at the curb again and still nervous, he held his breath as headlights turned off Miller Road. They crept up the sloping street as though the driver were checking house numbers, and then—incredibly, miraculously—swung into the driveway.

  Sutton climbed out, and they shook hands. “I hadn’t forgotten where you live,” Sutton said, “but this new angle has me a little disoriented.”

  He nodded. “All of us are. I think that may work in our favor.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” The wind snatched away Sutton’s baseball cap. Sutton grabbed for it, missing by a foot or more. “Help me find that, will you? I’d hate to lose it.”

  They had searched the bushes for a minute or more when Sutton straightened up and said, “Something wrong? What’s the matter with you?”

  He had straightened up already. “Sirens.” He pointed east, northeast, and after a momentary hesitation, north. “Don’t you hear them?”

  Sutton shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

  “Well, I do. Three or four cars, and they’re getting closer.”

  One by one, the sirens grew louder—and abruptly fell silent. For almost the last time, he ran nervous fingers through his hair.

  “What’s up?” Sutton began. “If you—”

  Before the third word, he had turned and sprinted for the door. It was locked. His key turned the lock and the bolt clicked back, but the night bolt was engaged. Once only, his shoulder struck the unyielding wood.

  By that time the first police car had turned the corner on two screaming wheels, and it was too late to hide.

  How Beautiful with Spring

  How beautiful with springs it lay,

  And pirate galleons in the bay,

  And footprints graven on the beach

  … and nearly, nearly within reach.

  Now I am old enough to buy

  Tickets that let explorers fly,

  And it recedes among the lost

  Storm wrack that the years have tossed.

  I fear no grave—it is such boats

  That bear us where the island floats;

  And funeral blooms for me shall be

  Its palm heads lifting from the sea.

  The Giant

  The little shop with petrol pumps in front had no Players, so the writer of children’s books purchased Pall Malls. He rarely smoked these days, but it seemed prudent to purchase something before quizzing the shopkeeper.

  “New around here?” the shopkeeper asked.

  It was all the opening the writer of children’s books needed. “Just visiting,” he said. “The old fieldstone place up on the hill. They’re putting us up for a few days. Perhaps you know them?” It was always best to end with a question.

  “Joe an’ Martha? Sure I do. Known ’em all my life. Nice folks.” The shopkeeper sighed. “Never had no sons, them two. I know Joe wanted ’em, an’ not knowin’ for sure I’d still say Martha did, too. Wasn’t never no boys, though. Five girls. I remember one time Martha told me they was goin’ to stop at four. She was carryin’ at the time an’ didn’t want to do it no more. Only they was born early, three, mebbe four months after, an’ they was twins. Mighty pretty, all them girls was. Gone now, though. Scattered all over hell, those girls is.”

  The children’s book writer nodded. “I know some are. You say they’re all gone?”

  “Ada’s teaching school down south, I heard. Barbra’s doin’ somethin’ in Philly. Dress designin’ is what they say. Cathy’s married to some doctor in Boston. Cathy was always my favorite. Jest a ray of sunshine, that girl was. Then the twins is split up ’bout as far as they could go. Dale’s in California doin’ somethin’ in TV, an’ Dottie’s way the hell over in England. London’s what I’ve heard, only I’ve heard different, too.”

  “They certainly do sound scattered,” the writer of children’s books agreed.

  “Don’t just sound that way, they are. That Dottie, well, she’s a real nice girl an’ all that, but a mite touched. Or that’s how it seems like. Oughtn’t to let her drive a car is how most of us felt, only they did. She’s gone now. Lives where the queen does.” The shopkeeper chuckled. “’Cept I reckon Dottie’s house ain’t as big.”

  The writer of children’s books smiled. “You’re right, of course.”

  “Always goin’ off in the woods by herself, Dottie was. That’s what they said. Smokin’ corn silk. Grass, too, when she got older. I never knowed you could. Why—”

  “I’d like to go into the woods, too, today—I need to stretch my legs. I was wondering whether there were nature trails or something of the sort. Beautiful, eh? Very, now that the trees are robed for autumn. Could you direct me?”

  “I wondered s’bout the camera. Walkin’ you mean?”

  “Exactly.” Taking a step backward, the writer of children’s books indicated his hiking boots.

  “Got to think a minute.” The shopkeeper paused. “You like a Coke or somethin’?”

  “I would, and I’ll buy you one, too.”

  “Oh, that ain’t needful. Just pay for your own.”

  The writer of children’s books laid money on the counter.

  “Want me to open yours for you?”

  He nodded. “Please.”

  “Screw off, you know, only sometimes they’re pretty tight.” The shopkeeper opened both bottles and set one on the counter. “You want a nice walk?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Four miles. That too far?”

  “Not at all.” The writer of children’s books sipped his Coke.

  “All right, I’ll tell you what you do. You head out of town on County H. Go ’bout a mile, and there’s a little bit of a side road on your left. You take that, oh, might be half a mile. Go slow, and you’ll come to a real big old tree. First real big tree you’ll see, and a maple. Should be mighty pretty just now. Off to one side is a path.”

  The writer of children’s books nodded thoughtfully.

  “You goin’ to go there?”

  “Certainly.”

  “All right, then. You follow that path ’til you come to a big black rock higher ’n a man. The path you want goes off to the left. West that is. It’s easy to see and easy to follow, too. Don’t go up or down much. There’s a footbridge over Medicine River, but don’t you worry ‘’bout it. I’ve seen four, five men on it at once. Ain’t goin’ to break with one. Wouldn’t be much of a drop if it did.”

  “It sounds charming,” the writer of children’s books said.

  “See some nice scenery there, without no cars or phone wires or anythin’ like that. Only by an’ by you’ll come to a road. A dirt road it’ll be, only it’s the same one you parked on by the big tree. You turn left again and follow that road across the bridge and over the hill. Right about there you oughta be able to see the big tree. Mebbe your car, too.”

  “Thank you.” The writer of children’s books took another token swallow from his Coke. “I’d better be going now. I’d like to get back in time for supper.”

  He turned to leave, and the shopkeeper cleared his throat. “Mebbe I ought not to say this. Only I’d best. You remember ’bout the black rock?”

  “Certainly. A clear path off to the left.”

  The shopkeeper nodded. “That’s it. You go like that. Might be another ’un off to the right. There is sometimes, is what I hear, and sometimes there ain’t. Used to be a village up that way, they say, only everybody’s gone now.”

  “A ghost town, eh?”

  “Somethin’ like that. Don’t nobody go there. Don’t you go there neither. That Dottie—you recollect what I told you ’bout her?”

  “Yes, vividly.”

  “She went up there one time is what they say. After that, well now, she was always lookin’ out for angels or somethin’. Little people is what one lady said. Jest a mite touched. Know what I mean?”