"Come on," I said, nodding towards the cottage. "There"s a bottle or two up there that I"ve been keeping in case of something special. This seems to be it."
Phyllis linked her arm in mine, and we went up the hill together.
"We want to know more about it," I said, putting down my half-empty gla.s.s.
"There"s not much yet," he repeated. "But what there is sounds like the turn all right, at last. Remember that fellow Bocker? They had him on talking a night or two ago-and a bit more cheerful than he used to be, too. Giving what he called a general survey of the position, he was."
"Tell us," said Phyllis, beside me. "Dear A. B. being cheerful ought to have been worth hearing."
"Well, the main things are that the water"s finished rising-could"ve told him that ourselves, near six months ago, but I suppose there"ll be people some places that haven"t heard of it yet. A big lot of the best land"s gone under, but all the same he reckons that if we get organised we ought to be able to grow enough, because they think the population"s down to between a fifth and an eighth of what it was-could be even less."
"All that?" said Phyllis, staring at him incredulously. "Surely-?"
"Sounded as if we"ve been pretty lucky round here compared with most parts," the man told her. "Pneumonia, mostly, he said, it was. Not much food, you see; no resistance, no medical services, no drugs, and three h.e.l.lish winters it"s taken "em off like flies."
He paused. We were silent, trying to grasp the scale of it, and what it would mean. I got little beyond telling myself the obvious-that it was going to be a very different world from the old one. Phyllis saw a little further: "But shall we even get a fair chance to try?" she said. "I mean, the Bathies are still there. Suppose they have something else that they"ve not used yet?"
The man shook his head. He gave a twisted grin of satisfaction.
"Oh, he talked about them, too, Bocker did. Reckons that this time they"ve really had it."
"How?" I asked.
"According to him, they"ve got hold of some kind of thing that"ll go down in the Deeps. It puts out ultra-something-not ultraviolet; a sort of noise, only you can"t hear it."
"Ultra-sonics?" I suggested.
"That"s it. Sounds queer to me, but he says the waves it puts out"ll kill under water."
"It"s right enough," I told him. "There were a whole lot of people working on that four or five years ago. The trouble was to get a transmitter that"d go down there."
"Well, he says they"ve done it now and who do you think? the j.a.ps. They reckon they"ve cleared a couple of small Deeps already. Anyway, the Americans seem to think it works all right, "cause they"re making some, too, to use round the West Indies way."
"But they have discovered what Bathies are... What they look like?" Phyllis wanted to know.
He shook his head. "Not so far as I know. All Bocker said was that a lot of jelly stuff came up, and went bad quickly in the sunlight. No shape to it. Not the pressure to hold the things together, see? So what a Bathy looks like when it"s at home is still anybody"s guess-and likely to stay that way."
"What they look like when they"re dead is good enough for me," I said, filling up the gla.s.ses once more. I raised mine. "Here"s to empty Deeps, and free seas again."
After the man had left, we went out and sat side by side in the arbour, looking out at the view that had changed so greatly. For a little time neither of us spoke. I took a covert glance at Phyllis; she was looking as if she had just had a beauty treatment.
"I"m coming to life again, Mike," she said.
"Me, too, "I agreed. "Though it isn"t going to be a picnic life," I added.
"I don"t care. I don"t mind working hard when there"s hope. It was having no more hope that was too much for me."
"It"s going to be a very strange sort of world, with only a fifth or an eighth of us left," I said, meditatively.
"There were only five million or so of us in the first Elizabeth"s time but we counted-" she said.
We sat on. There was planning, as well as the reorientation, to be done.
"As soon as we can get the Midge ready?" I asked. "I think we"ve still more than enough fuel to take us that far."
"Yes. As soon as we can," she told me.
She went on sitting, with her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands, looking far away. It was getting chilly again as the sun sank. I moved closer and put my arm round her.
"What is it?" I asked.
"I was just thinking... Nothing is really new, is it, Mike? Once upon a time there was a great plain, covered with forests and full of wild animals. I expect our ancestors hunted there. Then one day the water came in and drowned it-and there was the North Sea... I think we"ve been here before, Mike. And we got through last time..."
The End