My Diary

2002-12-01

Slept in. Woke up in the late morning with a headache. I guess I was getting too used to being woken up by Green and Black at dawn.

I had a slow breakfast and another bath. The invisible chefs gave me a tall glass of something fizzy that tasted odd ---- I was half way down it when I realised it was aspirin. I suppose if they can manage long-chain carbohydrates they can make aspirin, and if they know what I feel like eating they should certainly be able to fix my headache... only a little unnerving.

It worked, though. It's half an hour later and I feel fine.

So. Today's the big day. I get to find out how seaworthy the raft is.

I feel much happier knowing that the two sealin are around. If the thing comes apart out at the barrier, I'm pretty sure they'll help me back to shore (and then laugh at me). Luckily the fake sun is warm and the sea hasn't cooled down from the original climate, so I shouldn't be at any risk other than loss of dignity. I have no doubt that the most dangerous ocean predators in our little fragment of ocean are Green and Black, and I'm reasonably sure they won't eat me. I won't take the dictaphone with me; it doesn't look waterproof.

So. I may as well head on down and get on with it.

Yup. No reason at all why I shouldn't leave right now.

I am a decent swimmer, after all.

Although I'd feel much happier if I had a life jacket.

Ah, hell.

[break]

Phew. I'm exhausted.

You'll be pleased to know that I made it through safely and didn't drown, even once. The paddle works fine. The raft works works less well. Possibly I should have gone for something a little more elaborate with oars; making joints shouldn't be hard with Green's magic pocket knife.

Anyway.

I went down to the beach. The sealin weren't there, but they must have been waiting nearby because they showed up soon after I arrived. The raft was in fine shape; the previous evening I'd pushed it into the sea to check that it actually floated, and got the blanket strips wet. During the night they shrunk, and the whole thing is rock solid. If anything, the strips are too tight.

I undressed, grabbed the paddle, pushed it out so it floated and climbed on.

First problem: it's not as stable as it could have been. It is only five logs wide, and they weren't very thick logs. Moving about on it is risky at best, and liable to dump you in the water if you change your position too suddenly. I eventually found that sitting cross-legged in the exact middle was reasonably safe.

Second problem: paddling is interesting.

You see, while it's not quite wide enough to be stable, it's just too wide to reach the water easily with the paddle. You have to lean over. And, of course, it's not particularly stable, so you tend to wobble. And every time you make a stroke the raft starts turning...

After a while, though, I got the knack and managed to trace a wobbly S-curve across the bay. Green and Black followed along, swimming quietly with heads high above water, staring at me with a kind of bewildered fascination. They didn't say a word.

Okay, it was only about a kilometre, maybe two or three, from the shore to the edge of the barrier. The water was glassy, with only faint ripples from the morning sea wind. I was almost certainly making a far bigger deal out of the whole business than it really warranted.

There are, however, two mitigating factors in my defence:

(a) it was a very small raft, and the smaller the boat the larger distances seem;

and (b) I was bored.

I headed out to sea.

I aimed for one of the spines, as being a handy landmark. I paddled, and the shore dropped away behind, and I kept paddling, and the spine didn't really get any closer, and the shore wasn't getting any further away, and my arms started getting tired...

The raft was astonishingly unhydrodynamic and making it move was pretty hard work. It wouldn't coast. There was only one paddle and it wasn't very well made. I kept having to stop to rest, and the spine crept closer at a veritable snail's pace, and I thought I was going to get blisters...

Green and Black trailed patiently along behind. I thought I detected a certain air of them humouring me, but that was probably just my imagination. I did briefly think about asking them for help; given their size and how strong they were, I was sure that they'd have no trouble pushing the raft right round the island had I asked. But that felt, somehow, like giving up. I had spent so long on this damned island and hadn't really done anything constructive or significant the whole time. I wanted to achieve something, even if it was paddling from a spot near the edge of the ship to the edge of the ship in a badly-made stone-age raft.

Eventually I got there.

The raft drifted up to the spine and stopped with a faint bump. I turned it round, carefully leant over and put my hand against it.

Close up, the surface of the spine was a slightly mottled, matte black. It wasn't smooth but was a little lumpy, like solidified tar, and was cool against my hand. It was surprisingly wide, maybe a hundred metres, and rose in a sheerly vertiginous wall out of the water and disappeared into the blackness above my head.

I paddled around the spine and towards the force barrier itself.

It was big. It was black. I couldn't see any stars, they were all drowned out by the fake sun. Up close, that black wall filled half the world. It sucked out the light. It was dark, out here on the edge. I thought of the island, clutched in the claws of the Big Ship, a tiny blue and green bubble surrounded by the darkness of space; any light that didn't land on the land or sea would just disappear off into the void.

I gingerly approached the edge. I would have been able to see over it, had there been anything to see, but it was just black. I came closer, and the raft hit it. There was a faintly anticlimactic bump.

It felt strange. It was obviously just a barrier, nothing more; it was as smooth as wet ice, and so neutral in temperature that if I rested my hand gently against it I could barely tell I was touching it. I hit it with the handle of the paddle and there was a muted thump.

"There is too much light," Green said suddenly from behind me. "Under the water there is the dark and I can see the stars."

I tried getting up close to it so I could cup my hands against the wall and see if I could see through, but the raft kept drifting away. I briefly contemplated getting off the raft. Briefly.

"What's it like where the barrier meets the sea floor?" I asked.

"Near the spine there is much rock," Green replied. "Far the spine the sea floor is the end. There is the sea floor and then there is the barrier. No rock."

When the Big Ship set up the barrier, it must have cut through the sea floor like a white-hot wire through butter, like... ah. Green's magic pocket knife. Now I knew how it worked. I bet the violet glow was just a tint so you could see the field.

Interestingly, I could see the other side of the spine on the other side of the barrier. The barrier met the spine at the exact middle, of course, so the other side was in perpetual shadow, but there was just enough light scattered from the ocean to make it faintly visible. It had that same unreal look that the side of your car has in your wing mirrors when you're cruising down the motorway, or a jet liner's wings have while it's in flight. I ran my hand along the barrier until it met the spine and thought that just a few millimetres away, probably just a tiny fraction of a millimetre, was the hardest vacuum I'd ever encountered in my entire life.

I imagined myself on the other side of the wall, wearing a space suit, looking into this warm, wet space, seeing myself sitting half-naked on a raft with one hand pressed up against the barrier...

I headed back.

The paddle back was ghastly. I was tired to begin with, and I was absolutely wiped out by the time I reached the shore. I gave the raft a half-hearted shove up the beach, and then lay down on the sand. I'd fallen off as I approached the bay; the sea tasted foul, salty with a nasty acidic overtone. I couldn't wait to get back to the Hotel so I could have a nice, long drink and another bath, but first I had to have a rest...

Green asked me if I was all right. I said I was, but I was a bit tired.

"I have not see a raft," she said. "It is interesting. It looks it you tired."

I laughed. "Yes, it's exhausting."

"Why do you not swim?"

Gah.

[break]

Much better now.

I dictated that last while in the bath, and then I fell asleep. That jellying-water trick is a good one.

It's late afternoon, now. I don't want to sleep any more or I won't sleep properly tonight. I think I'll grab something to eat (I didn't get any lunch) and go back down to the beach to talk to Green.

Apart from anything else, I need to explain how bad humans are at swimming!

[break]

Good grief.

Why didn't I think of that before... no. Hmm.

I need to talk to Green.

[break]

There's air here, right? But out there, there's no air? Vacuum?

Yes.

In order for me to survive, um, stay not dead, in a vacuum, I need special equipment, right?

Yes.

Like these, a sort of special clothes. And a helmet, that goes over the head like this, that keeps the air in.

Yes.

We call this a space suit. You know of these things?

Yes.

The ship I came in on had one.

Yes.

You know, I wish you'd stop saying yes to everything.

I am sorry. I do not understand the idea you say.

Might a space suit be useful to us now?

[untranscribable conversation]

Yes. Do you have a space suit?

No. But my ship had one, and that wrecked ship up in the hills seems to be the same sort of ship. It might have one.

[untranscribable conversation]

Can you get the space suit?

I'm not sure. The ship's mostly underwater. And it looks very dead.

You will get the space suit.

What would it be useful for? How would we get it through the barrier?

It does not go through the barrier.

What does it do, then?

A space suit has an engine. It fly. It fly up there to the Big Ship.

Oh. Wow.

Tomorrow you will get the space suit.

If the ship has one. If I can get it out of the ship. Will the hatches open without power?

Yes.

Ah. Right.

[break]

A flying space suit. Well, that's a step up from a raft.

I wonder if the ship has one? I wonder if I can get it out. I wonder if it works.

Looks like I'll be finding out tomorrow.

I'll tell you something; Green looked pretty pissed off. I wonder what I said?

[transmit]