On the terrace, and below on the beach, everyone was waiting for something to happen, heads craned forward expectantly. As the radios were turned down, so that any sounds from the distant tableau might be heard, a wave of silence passed along the beach like an immense darkening cloud shutting off the sunlight. The almost complete absence of noise and movement, after the long hours of festering motion, seemed strange and uncanny, focusing an intense atmosphere of self-awareness upon the thousands of watching figures.
The group by the water’s edge remained where they stood, even the small children staring placidly at whatever held the attention of their parents. For the first time a narrow section of the beach was visible, a clutter of radios and beach equipment half-buried in the sand like discarded metallic refuse. Gradually the new arrivals pressing down from the promenade occupied the empty places, a manoeuvre carried out without any reaction from the troupe by the tideline. To Pelham they seemed like a family of penitent pilgrims who had travelled some enormous distance and were now standing beside their sacred waters, waiting patiently for its revivifying powers to work their magic.
‘What is going on?’ Pelham asked, when after several minutes there was no indication of movement from the waterside group. He noticed that they formed a straight line, following the shore, rather than an arc. ‘They’re not watching anything at all.’
The off-shore haze was now only five hundred yards away, obscuring the contours of the huge swells. Completely opaque, the water looked like warm oil, a few wavelets now and then dissolving into greasy bubbles as they expired limply on the sand, intermingled with bits of refuse and old cigarette cartons. Nudging the shore like this, the sea resembled an enormous pelagic beast roused from its depths and blindly groping at the sand.
‘Mildred, I’m going down to the water for a moment.’ Pelham stood up. ‘There’s something curious—’ He broke off, pointing to the beach on the other side of the terrace. ‘Look! There’s another group. What on earth —?’
Again, as everyone watched, this second body of spectators formed by the water’s edge seventy-five yards from the terrace. Altogether some two hundred people were silently assembling along the shore-line, gazing out across the sea in front of them. Peiham found himself cracking his knuckles, then clasped the rail with both hands, as much to restrain himself from joining them. Only the congestion on the beach held him back.
This time the interest of the crowd passed in a few moments, and the murmur of background noise resumed.
‘Heaven knows what they’re doing.’ Mildred turned her back on the group. ‘There are more of them over there. They must be waiting for something.’
Sure enough, half a dozen similar groups were now forming by the water’s edge, at almost precise one hundred yard intervals. Pelham scanned the far ends of the bay for any signs of a motor boat. He glanced at his watch. It was nearly 3:30. ‘They can’t be waiting for anything,’ he said, trying to control his nervousness. Below the table his feet twitched a restless tattoo, gripping for purchase on the sandy cement. ‘The only thing expected is the satellite, and no one will see that anyway. There must be something in the water.’ At the mention of the satellite he remembered Sherrington again. ‘Mildred, don’t you feel—’ Before he could continue the man behind him stood up with a curious lurch, as if hoping to reach the rail, and tipped the sharp edge of his seat into Pelham’s back. For a moment, as he struggled to steady the man, Pelham was enveloped in a rancid smell of sweat and stale beer. He saw the glazed focus in the other’s eyes, his rough unshaved chin and open mouth like a muzzle, pointing with a sort of impulsive appetite towards the sea.
‘The satellite!’ Freeing himself Pelham craned upwards at the sky. A pale impassive blue, it was clear of both aircraft and birds — although they had seen gulls twenty miles inland that morning, as if a storm had been anticipated. As the glare stung his eyes, points of retinal light began to arc and swerve across the sky in epileptic orbits. One of these, however, apparently emerging from the western horizon, was moving steadily across the edge of his field of vision, boring dimly towards him.
Around them, people began to stand up, and chairs scraped and dragged across the floor. Several bottles toppled from one of the tables and smashed on the concrete.
‘Mildred!’
Below them, in a huge disorganized mle extending as far as the eye could see, people were climbing slowly to their feet. The diffused murmur of the beach had given way to a more urgent, harsher sound, echoing overhead from either end of the bay. The whole beach seemed to writhe and stir with activity, the only motionless figures those of the people standing by the water. These now formed a continuous palisade along the shore, shutting off the sea. More and more people joined their ranks, and in places the line was nearly ten deep.
Everyone on the terrace was now standing. The crowds already on the beach were being driven forward by the pressure of new arrivals from the promenade, and the party below their table had been swept a further twenty yards towards the sea.
‘Mildred, can you see Sherrington anywhere?’ Confirming from her wristwatch that it was exactly 3:30, Pelham pulled her shoulder, trying to hold her attention. Mildred returned what was almost a vacant stare, an expression of glazed incomprehension. ‘Mildred! We’ve got to get away from here!’ Hoarsely, he shouted: ‘Sherrington’s convinced we can see some of the infra-red light shining from the satellites, they may form a pattern setting off IRM’s laid down millions of years ago when other space vehicles were circling the earth. Mildred—!’
Helplessly, they were lifted from their seats and pressed against the rail. A huge concourse of people was moving down the beach, and soon the entire five-mile-long slope was packed with standing figures. No one was talking, and everywhere there was the same expression, self-immersed and preoccupied, like that on the faces of a crowd leaving a stadium. Behind them the great wheel of the fairground was rotating slowly, but the gondolas were empty, and Pelham looked back at the deserted funfair only a hundred yards from the multitude on the beach, its roundabouts revolving among the empty sideshows.
Quickly he helped Mildred over the edge of the rail, then jumped down on to the sand, hoping to work their way back to the promenade. As they stepped around the corner, however, the crowd advancing down the beach carried them back, tripping over the abandoned radios in the sand.
Still together, they found their footing when the pressure behind them ceased. Steadying himself, Pelham continued: ‘…Sherrington thinks Cro-Magnon Man was driven frantic by panic, like the Gadarene swine — most of the bone-beds have been found under lake shores. The reflex may be too strong—’ He broke off.
The noise had suddenly subsided, as the immense congregation, now packing every available square foot of the beach, stood silently facing the water. Pelham turned towards the sea, where the haze, only fifty yards away, edged in great clouds towards the beach. The forward line of the crowd, their heads bowed slightly, stared passively at the gathering billows. The surface of the water glowed with an intense luminous light, vibrant and spectral, and the air over the beach, grey by comparison, made the lines of motionless figures loom like tombstones.
Obliquely in front of Pelham, twenty yards away in the front rank, stood a tall man with a quiet, meditative expression, his beard and high temples identifying him without doubt.
‘Sherrington!’ Pelham started to shout. Involuntarily he looked upwards to the sky, and felt a blinding speck of light singe his retinas.
In the background the music of the funfair revolved in the empty air.
Then, with a galvanic surge, everyone on the beach began to walk forward into the water.
A Question of Re-Entry
All day they had moved steadily upstream, occasionally pausing to raise the propeller and cut away the knots of weed, and by 3 o’clock had covered some seventy-five miles. Fifty yards away, on either side of the patrol launch, the high walls of the jungle river rose over the water, the unbroken massif of the mato grosso which swept across the Amazonas from Campos Buros to the delta of the Orinoco. Despite their progress they had set off from the telegraph station at Tres Buritis at 7 o’clock that morning — the river showed no inclination to narrow or alter its volume. Sombre and unchanging, the forest followed its course, the aerial canopy shutting off the sunlight and
