are so despicable, one searches the unknown in the hope that…
WASUDA: Please, Traven, do not be embarrassed. The fly is lucky to retain its identity for so long. That son you mourn, not to mention my own two nieces and nephew, did they not die each day? Every parent in the world grieves for the lost sons and daughters of their earlier childhoods?
TRAVEN: You're very tolerant, Doctor. I wouldn't dare…
WASUDA: Not at all, Traven. I make no apologies for you. Each of us is little more than the meagre residue of the infinite unrealized possibilities of our lives. But your son, and my nephew, are fixed in our minds forever, their identities as certain as the stars.
TRAVEN: (Not entirely convinced) That may be so, Doctor, but it leads to a dangerous conclusion in the case of this island. For instance, the blocks -
WASUDA: They are precisely what I refer to, Traven. Here among the blocks you at last find an image of yourself free of the hazards of time and space. This island is an ontological Garden of Eden, why seek to expel yourself into a world of' quantal flux??
TRAVEN: Excuse me (The fly has flown back to the corpse's face and sits in one of the dried-up orbits, giving the good doctor an expression of quizzical beadness. Reaching forward, Traven entices it on to his palm. He examines it carefully). Well, yes, these bunkers may be ontological objects, but whether this is the ontological fly is doubtful. It's true that on this island it's the only fly, which is the next best thing…
WASUDA: You can't accept the plurality of the universe - ask yourself why, Traven. Why should this obsess you? It seems to me that you are hunting for the white leviathan, zero. The beach is a dangerous zone. Avoid it. Have a proper humility, pursue a philosophy of acceptance
TRAVEN.: Then may I ask why you came here, Doctor?
WASUDA: To feed this fly. 'What greater love -?'
TRAVEN: (Still puzzling) It doesn't really solve my problem. The blocks, you see…
WASUDA: Very well, if you must have it that way…
TRAVEN: But, Doctor-
WASUDA: (Peremptorily) Kill that fly!
TRAVEN: That's not an end, or a beginning. (Hopelessly, he kills the fly. Exhausted, he falls asleep beside the corpse.)
The Terminal Beach
Searching for a piece of rope in the refuse dump behind the dunes, Traven found a bale of rusty wire. After' unwinding it, he secured a harness around the corpse's chest and dragged it from the crevice. The lid of a wooden crate made a crude sledge. Traven fastened the corpse to it in a sitting position, and set off along the perimeter of the blocks.
Around him the island remained silent. The lines of palms hung in the sunlight, only his own motion varying the shifting ciphers of their criss-crossing trunks. The square turrets of the camera towers jutted from the dunes like forgotten obelisks.
An hour later, when Traven reached the awning by his bunker, he untied the wire cord he had fastened around his waist. He took the chair left for him by Dr Osborne and carried it to a point midway between the bunker and the blocks.
Then he tied the body of the Japanese to the chair, arranging the hands so that they rested on the wooden arms giving the moribund figure a posture of calm repose.
This done to his satisfaction, Traven returned to the bunker and squatted under the awning.
· As the next days passed into weeks, the dignified figure of the Japanese sat in his chair fifty yards from him, guarding Traven from the blocks. He now had sufficient strength to rouse himself at intervals and forage for food. In the hot sunlight the skin of the Japanese became more and more bleached, and Traven would wake at night and find the sepulchral figure sitting there, arms resting at its sides, in the shadows that crossed the concrete floor. At these moments he would often see his wife and son watching him from the dunes. As time passed they came$1oser, and he would sometimes find them only a few yards behind him.
Patiently Traven waited for them to speak to him, thinking of the great blocks whose entrance was guarded by the seated figure of the dead archangel, as the waves broke on the distant shore and the burning bombers fell through his dreams.
Deep End
They always slept during the day. By dawn the last of the townsfolk had gone indoors and the houses would be silent, heat curtains locked across the windows, as the sun rose over the deliquescing salt banks. Most of them were elderly and fell asleep quickly in their darkened chalets, but Granger, with his restless mind and his one lung, often lay awake through the afternoons, while the metal outer walls of the cabin creaked and hummed, trying pointlessly to read through the old log books Holliday had salvaged for him from the crashed space platforms.
By six o'clock the thermal fronts would begin to recede southwards across the kelp flats, and one by one the air-conditioners in the bedrooms switched themselves off. While the town slowly came to life, its windows opening to the cool dusk air, Granger strode down to breakfast at the Neptune Inn, gallantly doffing his sunglasses to left and right at the old couples settling themselves out on their porches, staring at each other across the shadow-filled streets.
Five miles to the north, in the empty hotel at Idle End, Holliday usually rested quietly for another hour, and listened to the coral towers, gleaming in the distance like white pagodas, sing and whistle as the temperature gradients cut through them. Twenty miles away he could see the symmetrical peak of Hamilton, nearest of the Bermuda Islands, rising off the dry ocean floor like a fiat-topped mountain, the narrow ring of white beach still visible in the sunset, a scurh-line left by the sinking ocean.
That evening he felt even more reluctant than usual to drive down into the town. Not only would Granger be in his private booth at the Neptune, dispensing the same mixture of humour and homily - he was virtually the only person Holliday could talk to, and inevitably he had come to resent his dependence on the older man - but Holliday would have his final interview with the migration officer 'and make the decision which would determine his entire future. In a sense the decision had already been made, as Bullen, the migration officer, realized on his trip a month earlier. He did not bother to press Holliday, who had no special skills to offer, no qualities of character or leadership which would be of use on the new worlds. However, Bullen pointed out one small but relevant fact, which Holliday duly noted and thought over in. the intervening month. 'Remember, Holliday,' he warned him at the end of the interview in the requisitioned office at the rear of the sheriff's cabin, 'the average age of the settlement is over sixty. in ten years' time you and Granger may well be the only two left here, and if that lung of his goes you'll be on your own.' He paused to let this prospect sink in, then added quietly: 'All the kids are leaving on the next trip- the Merryweathers' two boys, Torn Juranda (that lout, good riddance, Holliday thought to himself, look out Mars) - do you realize you'll literally be the only one here under the age of fifty?' 'Katy Summers is staying,' Holliday pointed out quickly, the sudden vision of a white organdy dress and long straw hair giving him courage.
The migration officer had glanced at his application list and nodded grudgingly. 'Yes, but she's just looking after her grandmother. As soon as the old girl dies Katy will be off like a flash. After all, there's nothing to keep her here, is there?', 'No,' Holliday had agreed automatically. There wasn't now. For a long while he mistakenly believed there was. Katy was his own age, twenty-two, the only person, apart from Granger, who seemed to understand his determination to stay behind and keep watch over a forgotten Earth. But the grandmother died three days after the migration officer left, and the next day Katy had begun to pack. In some insane way Holliday had assumed that she would stay behind, and what worried him was that all his assumptions about himself might be based on equally false premises.
Climbing off the hammock, he went on to the terrace and looked out at the phosphorescent glitter of the
