Wave Without A Shore

XVI

He dropped the cutter, finally—saw his hand was wobbling and jerked it away from the stone before disaster could happen. It fell, and he sank down where he was, dropped head into arms and arms onto knees and sat there, aware finally that he was getting wet, that rain was splashing onto his shoulders and beginning to slick all the exposed stonework. He was not cold yet, but he was going to be. His joints felt as if the tendons had all been cut and there was fire in his shoulders and his arms and his legs.

A plastic wrap fell about his shoulders. Leona Pace was there, her plump freckled face leaning down to look at him sideways. "All right, sir?"

He drew a breath, massaged his hands, nodded, looked up past Pace to the Shape which had begun in recent days to emerge from the stone, which had begun, with the beam-cutter's swift incisions, to be Waden Jenks. He sat there, with the rain slicking down his forehead and into his eyes, and stared at what he had done, numb already in the backside and with a grateful numbness creeping into his exposed hands.

Leona Pace followed his stare, looked down again. "It's amazing, sir."

"I should have rested." He tried for his feet, wrapping the plastic about him, and Pace made a timid effort to steady him; it gave him equilibrium. Other workers and apprentices had sheltered in the curve of an arch. The lights had come on as the clouds darkened. He turned full about, saw a dry spot under a curve and went to it, thinking Pace was following. But when he looked back she was walking away, her brown hair straggling as usual, her bearing matter-of-fact and lonely-looking.

He was spent, as from a round of sex. He felt the same melancholia as encounters with Keye tended to give him; he looked reflexively toward the window where Keye might be, and saw nothing because of the curve. The new reality was closing in. Permanent. Strangely he felt no more desire for Keye, for anyone, for anything.

And as after sex, it would return. He leaned against the stone, watching the sheen of water flow this way and that. It was the first time the work had stopped, the only circumstance which could delay it. He looked up at the sky, which was already showing signs of breaking sunlight. Such storms came and left again with suddenness in this season. The stone would dry within a short time when the rain had stopped.

The hot-drink cart made the rounds; an hour's rest became holiday. Laborers tucked up in plastics, drinking the steaming cups which splashed with raindrops, came from their shelters to stand and stare at the central sculpture, and Herrin, his own hands clasped about warm ceramic and his belly warmed by the drink, watched with vast satisfaction.

Laborers asked questions; apprentices swelled with importance and answered, pointing to the imaginary vault of the roof, the future placement of curtain-columns, and laborers explained to other laborers . . . Herrin watched the whole interchange and drank in the excitement which suffused the whole crew.

Pride. They were proud of what they were doing. They had come here diverse, and something strange had begun to happen to all of them in this shell, contained in this sculpture of his devising.

And then the Others came.

They filed in through the gateways and stood about, four at first and then more, midnight-robed. Ten, twelve, fifteen.

The workers saw them. The excitement which had been palpable before their coming tried to maintain itself, but there was an erosion, a silence, an unease. Men and women tried to maintain equilibrium, realities, choice. Herrin leaned against the stone and looked elsewhere, trying to ignore all of it, but they came from the other side as well.

"Out!" Leona Pace cried, shocking the almost-silence. Shocking every reality into focus.

She had seen. Admitted seeing. Her reality had slipped, and Herrin stood transfixed and helpless.

The same look was on Leona Pace—rigidity, panic. Suddenly she cast off the plastic mantle and left, running.

He kept staring at the hole where Pace had been when she passed the gateway; and the cold from the rain crept inward. He recovered after a breath, walked out casually among the workers and the invisibles, ignored what they should not see, and quietly dismissed them.

"The rain may continue," he said. "Things will have to dry. Secure the area and go home. Come back at your next regular shift."

Tools were put away against invisible pilferage; the cranes were shut down and locked; and one by one and several at a time, the workers and the apprentices drifted away.

"Andrew Phelps." He hailed the senior apprentice. "You have a responsibility next shift, to be here early, to keep accounts, to direct."

"Sir," the man said, youngish, dark and thin, his eyes still showing distress, which rapidly yielded to surprise. "Yes, sir."

So he replaced Leona Pace.

He had no illusions that she would return. It happened, he reasoned, because of the sculpture; for that moment, humans and Others had had a common focus, had gathered within the same Reality, and Leona Pace had been thrust into the center of it, responsible.

Had broken under the weight of it. Would not be back, either on the site or at the University or indeed, among sane citizens. No one would see her, just as they did not see other invisibles. Survival was for the strong-minded, and she had not been strong enough.

He drank himself numb after a moderate dinner at Fellows' Hall, walked through the slackening rain to the Residency, just barely able to steer himself to his room without faltering.

He slept and woke at the first light of another day, still lying where he had lain when he fell into bed; he bathed, assumed sober Student's Black and walked the distance to the Square; he set matter of factly to work and so did everyone else, wounds healed.

Leona Pace did not, of course, return. The cheerfulness of the crew did. Andrew Phelps was an energetic and intelligent supervisor, and that was sufficient. He did not care for the past day, revised time and his Reality and recommenced his carving with full attention to the moment.

The Shape emerged further under his hands. It was slow now, very slow. Above him, the cranes labored, and he worked in the shadow of scaffolding and stone which had sealed off the sky once and for all.