Warren lay halfway over the side of the raft and watched the regular puffs of steam billow up from the machine. Without thinking of the danger he slipped overboard and dove, swimming hard, pushing as deep as he could despite the tightness and burning in his chest. The Skimmers moved as they saw him and the machine became clearer. It was a pile of junk, pieces of a ship’s hull and deck collars and fittings of all sizes. Four batteries were mounted on one side and rust-caked cables led from them into the machine. There were other fragments and bits of worked metal and some of it he was sure was not made by men. Knobs of something yellow grew here and there, and in the wavering, rippling green light there was something about the form and shape of the thing that Warren recognized as right and yet he knew he had never seen anything like it before. There is a logic to a piece of equipment that comes out of the job it has to do and he felt that this machine was well shaped, as his lungs at last burned too much and he fought upward, all thought leaving him as he let the air burst from him and followed the silvery bubbles up toward the shifting, slanting blades of yellow-green sun.
Four
In the lagoon the water shaded from pale blue at the beach to emerald in the deep channel where the currents ran with the tides. Beyond the snarling reef the sea was a hard gray.
Warren worked for five days in the slow dark waters near the sandbar. He double-anchored the raft so the deck was steady. That way he could write well on it with the bark mash and then dry the sheets the Skimmers brought up to him.
Their first reply was not much better than the earlier messages, but he printed out in capital letters a simple answer and gradually they learned what he could not follow. Their next message had more English in it and less Japanese and German and fewer of the odd words made up out of parts of languages. There were longer stretches in it, too, more like sentences now than strings of nouns.
The Skimmers did not seem to think of things acting but instead of things just being, so they put down names of objects in long rows as though the things named would react on each other, each making the other clearer and more specific and what the things did would be in the relations between them. It was a hard way to learn to think and Warren was not sure he knew what the impacted knots of words meant most of the time. Sometimes the chains of words said nothing to him. The blue forms below would flick across the bone-white sand in elaborate looping arabesques, turning over and over with their ventral fins flared, in designs that escaped him. When the sun was low at morning or at dusk he could not tell the Skimmers from their shadows, and the gliding long forms merged with their dark echoes on the sand in a kind of slow elliptical dance.
He lay halfway off the raft and watched them, when he was tired from the messages; and peered through the mask, and something in their quick darting glide would come through to him. He would try then to ask a simple question. He wrote it out and dried it and threw it into the lagoon. Sometimes that was enough to cut through the jammed lines of endless nouns they had offered him and he would see a small thought that hung between the words in a space each word allowed but did not define. It was as if the words packed together still left a hole between them and the job was to see the hole instead of the blur around it. He watched the skimming grace they had down in the dusky emerald green but he could not sort it out.
He went ashore at dusk each day. The catch from the trailing lines was good in the morning and went away in the afternoon. Maybe it had something to do with the Skimmers. The easy morning catch left him most of the day to study the many sheets they brought up to him and to work on his own halting answers.
Gijan stood on the beach most of the day and watched. He did not show the pistol again when Warren went out. He kept the fire and the distiller going and they ate well. Warren brought the finished sheets ashore and kept them in Gijan’s box, but he could not tell the man much of what was in them, at first because lines in the sand and gestures were not enough and later because Warren did not know himself how to tell it.
Gijan did not seem to mind not knowing. He tended the fire and knocked down coconuts and split them and gutted the catch and after a while asked nothing more. At times he would leave the beach for hours and Warren guessed he was collecting wood or some of the pungent edible leaves they had at supper.
To Warren the knowing was all there was, and he was glad Gijan would do the work and not bother him. At noon beneath the high hard dazzle of the sky he ate little because he wanted to keep his head clear. At night, though, he filled himself with the hot moist fish and tin-flavored water. He woke to a biting early sun. The mosquitoes still stung but he did not mind it so much now.
On the third day like this, he began to write down for himself a kind of patchwork of what he thought they meant. He knew as soon as he read it over that it was not right. He had never been any good with words. When he was married he did not write letters to his wife when he shipped out even if he was gone half a year. But this writing was a way of getting it down and he liked the act of scratching out the blunt lines on the backs of the Skimmer sheets.
IN THE LONG TIMES BEFORE, THE EARLY FORMS WENT EASY IN THE WORLD, THEN ROSE UP LEAPING OUT OF THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD, TO THE LAND, MADE THE TOOLS WE KNEW, STRUCK THE FIRE, MADE THE FIRE-HARDENED SAND WE COULD SEE THROUGH SO THAT WE COULD CUP THE LIGHT. THE CLOUDS OPEN, WE CAN SEE LIGHTS, LEARN THE DOTS ABOVE, WE SEE LIGHTS WE CANNOT REACH, EVEN THE HIGHEST JUMPER OF US CANNOT TOUCH THE LIGHTS THAT MOVE. WE CUP THE LIGHT, SCOOP IT UP, AND FIND THE LIGHTS IN THE SKY ARE SMALL AND HOT, BUT THERE IS ONE LIGHT THAT WE CUP TO US AND FIND IT IS A STONE IN THE SKY. WE THINK OTHER LIGHTS ARE STONES IN SKY THOUGH FAR AWAY; WE SEE NO OTHER PLACE LIKE THE WORLD. WE SWIM AT THE BOTTOM OF EVERYTHING—IN THE WORLD, THE PLACE WHERE STONES WANT TO FALL—BUT THE FALLING FLOW TAKES THE STONES IN THE SKY, MAKES THEM CIRCLE US, CIRCLE FOREVER LIKE THE HUNTERS IN THE WORLD BEFORE THEY CLOSE FOR THE KILLING, SO THE STONES CANNOT STRIKE US IN THE NEST OF US, THE WORLD OF THE PEOPLE. WE THOUGHT THAT OURS WAS THE ONLY WORLD AND THAT ALL ELSE WAS COLD STONE OR BURNING STONE. AND AS WE CUPPED THE LIGHT NOT THINKING OF IT, WE SAW THE COLD STONE IN THE SKY GROW A LIGHT WHICH WENT ON, THEN OFF, THEN ON, AGAIN AND AGAIN, MOVING NOW STRANGELY IN THE SKY AND THEN GROWING MORE STONES, MOVING, STONES FALLING INTO THE WORLD, STONES SMALLER THAN THE BIG SKY STONE, HITTING KILLING BRINGING BIG ANIMALS THAT STINK, EATING EVERY PIECE OF THE WORLD THAT COMES BEFORE THEM, TAKING SOME OF US IN THEM, BIG STONES MAKING BIG ANIMALS THAT ARE NOT ALIVE BUT SWALLOW, KEEPING US IN THEM IN WATER, SOUR WATER THAT BRINGS PAIN, WE LIVE THERE, LIGHT COMING FROM LAND THAT IS NOT LAND, A WORLD THAT IS NOT THE WORLD, NO WAVES, NO LAND BUT THERE IS THE GLOWING STONE ON ALL SIDES THAT WE CANNOT CLIMB, NO LAND FOR THE YOUTH TO CRAWL TO, LONG TIME PASSING, WE SING OVER AND OVER THE SOON-BIRTHING BUT IT DOES NOT COME, THE SONG DOES NOT MAKE BIRTHING STIR IN THIS RED WORLD, THIS SMALL WORLD THAT ONE OF US CAN CROSS IN THE TIME OF A SINGLE SINGING. THE YOUTH CHANGE THEIR SONG SLOWLY, THEN MORE AND THEN MORE, THEIR SONG GOES AWAY FROM US, THEY SING STRANGELY BUT DO NOT CRAWL. HOT RED THINGS BUBBLE IN THE SMALL WORLD WHERE WE LIVE AND THE YOUTH DRINK IT. THE SMOOTH STONE ON ALL SIDES THAT MAKES THIS WORLD GLOWS WITH LIGHT THAT NEVER GROWS AND NEVER DIMS. WE KEEP SOME OF OUR TOOLS AND CAN FEEL THE TIME GOING, MANY SONGS PASS, WE DO NOT LET THE YOUTH SING OR CRAWL BUT THEN THEY DO NOT KNOW US AND SING THEIR OWN NOISE, DRINKING IN THE FOUL CURRENTS OF THE BIG ANIMAL WE INHABIT, THE SMOOTH STONE OOZING LIGHT, ALWAYS RUMBLING, THE CURRENTS NOT RIGHT. WE MOVE THICKLY, LOSE OUR TIDES, THE RED CURRENTS SUCK AND BRING FOOD SWEET AND BITTER, WRONG, THE YOUNG ONES WHO SHOULD CRAWL ON LAND NOW EAT THE FOOD AND CHANGE, LONG TIMES THE WALLS HUMMING AND NO WAVES FOR US TO FLY THROUGH AND SPLASH WHITE.