Kate Wilhelm in Orbit - Volume Two by Kate Wilhelm Page A

up.” His face was gray, cold and moist. His eyes were glazed.
    Damn Lee! Where was Bonner? “Take it easy, Pit. Soon now. Just take it easy.” He yanked his shirt off and covered the old man with it. He mopped his face again.
    “I didn’t do it, Eliot. I didn’t want to fall.” He looked past Eliot and groaned. His eyes closed. Beads of sweat came together and a trickle ran across one eye, another down his temple. Eliot wiped his face again and the man shuddered. “She’s up there,” he mumbled. “Watching us.”
    Eliot looked over his shoulder, across the tumbled rocks. She was standing on the wall of the fort, not moving, a dark shape against the paling sky. “Don’t worry about her, Pit,” he said. “I’ll take care of her.” He caught a motion and turned to see Lee and Bonner picking their way among the blocks with a door. Beatrice darted before them, burdened with blankets and a beach mat.
    “How bad?”
    “I don’t know. Shock.” He glanced quickly toward the fort. She was gone.
    “For God’s sake, be careful!” he said moments later as they started to move Pitcock to the door, padded now with the beach mat. They covered him and fastened him down securely with the blankets, and then Lee and Eliot carried him to the motor launch. Mrs. Bonner met them at the dock.
    “There’ll be an ambulance waiting.” She looked at Pitcock and turned white. “My God! Oh, my God!”
    “Go with them,” Eliot said to her. “You, too,” he told Beatrice. “Get out of here.”
    “No. I couldn’t help him.”
    They got him on board and Lee worked with the mooring line. Eliot turned again to Beatrice. “Please go on. Stay with him. He might want you.”
    “Don’t send me away, Eliot. Please don’t send me away.”
    He nodded and the three of them stood on the dock and watched until the launch started to pick up speed in the smooth water of the bay. As the roar diminished, the silence of the island settled preternaturally. “Where’s Mary?”
    “In our house.”
    “Let’s get her. We have to stay together tonight.” They started across the island. Under the trees the light was a somber yellow, the air hot and still, thick and oppressive. Through the branches overhead the sky was dirty yellow, the color of Donna’s hair. No bird stirred, no tree frogs sang, the palm fronds stood stiff and unmoving. Eliot set a fast pace and they hurried a bit more. When they came to the ruins, twilight had descended, and rounding the aborted building they involuntarily stopped. Before them was a concrete ocean, gray on gray, the sea and horizon an encapsulat­ing solid that was closing the distance to them rapidly.
    “Get Mary, fast. We’ll go to the office building.” Eliot’s hand closed hard on Beatrice’s arm. She was gazing about in wonder. She reached out to touch the granite block, then her hand swept through the air, her fingers spread apart, as if trying to feel for something not there. “It’s an illusion, a trick of the light. A storm’s coming fast.”
    She looked at him, touched his cheek as she had touched the rock. “But I can’t tell the difference. This afternoon, I dreamed, I thought, or hallucinated, something. Everything was like a flat illustration from a book. I…” She shook herself and laughed self-consciously. “I found your watch. Here.” She pulled it from her pocket and handed it to him. Eliot stared at it for a long time. Then Lee and Mary were with them and they turned to go to the office building.
    Halfway there, the wind came. It came with a shriek that was too high-pitched, and it carried sand and dust that brought night. The island shook, and the trees ground their branches together. Eliot grasped Beatrice’s hand and pulled her, blinded by flying matter and the driving wind that was tearing up rotted and rotting leaves and twigs and stripping leaves from the oaks and needles from the pines. It was a hot wind. When the noises ebbed they could hear the sea pounding. A