CHAPTER THREE
DESPERATE STRAITS
The Strait of Guesclin is narrow enough for much of its length to be perhaps better called a river, especially since, year round, a powerful current sweeps the cold waters of the Mostaza Sea into the warmer waters of the ocean to the south. It is in form a vast, precipitous canyon, a rift between the continent of Londeac and the island of Guesclin, as though the single landmass had been torn apart, like a ripped map or a shared cookie. In actual fact, this is precisely what had happened, or, more accurately, what was in the process of happening. Vast forces deep within the planet were graduaily and inexorably tearing the single continental mass asunder and, as the geologists of Londeac were just becoming aware, the great canyon of the Strait continued underwater for, perhaps, hundreds of miles to the north and south. By the slightest fraction of an inch every century, Guesclin was receding from the rest of the world. This was an appealing fact whose actuality and symbolism would have not only been appreciated but even applauded by the xenophobic people of Tamlaght—the country occupying the major part of Guesclin—had they been aware of it. Unfortunately, since science in general and foreign science in particular were anathema to the Tamlaghtans, they were not.
The Strait runs almost exactly north and south, its vertical cliffs broken only by two wildly inaccessible embayments halfway along its course. These are the sites of fearsome seasonal whirlpools. At places, especially within the northern fifty miles or so, the Strait narrows to less than ten miles in width; it is quite easy to see the opposite shore from either side of the abyss. At their greatest height the brinks of the chasm are half a mile above the surging flood. More than one ambitious Londeacan engineer had dreamed of bridging that gap and thereby assure a reputation that would be little less than immortal. However, the idea of a physical link to the continent, a veritable pipeline for foreign ideas, let alone foreigners, was so appalling to Tamlaght that thinly disguised threats of war, in the event that such a scheme should ever even begin to be implemented, effectively squelched the periodically recurring grandiose project.
For most of the year the Strait was merely treacherous, yet nevertheless navigable, if just barely. A few experienced mariners make the trip every season, some even on a more or less regular basis. The waters of the Strait were for the most part deep (a cross section of its profile would reveal a V-shaped cleft whose bottom, at certain points, lay under more than five hundred feet of water) and as long as a captain was careful to avoid the jagged rocks that lined the steeply sloping sides the journey could be made with some assurance of safety. Which of course did not prevent a dozen more foolhardy or inexperienced ships from coming to grief every year, shredded against the rugged walls of the canyon like cheese in a grater.
However, during one particular season even the most courageous and experienced old salt would laugh derisively at the suggestion that the Strait be traversed. At that time of the year, currents shift and the icy waters of the Mostaza Sea come thundering through the Strait with a velocity and power that can only be adequately compared to the impression a child’s copper poenig must have, if any, as it lies on the rail in the path of an oncoming express freight train.
For nearly two months the flood thunders through the narrow channel with a sound that can be heard hours before an overland tourist reaches the cliffs, and felt a full day before that. The low permanent clouds, spanning a quarter of the horizon’s azimuth marking the width of the Strait, can be seen a hundred miles away. The visitor who, with great trepidation, approaches the rusty, slippery iron railing that has been installed for his safety and which suddenly looks pitifully inadequate, feeling the solid granite beneath his feet quivering and bouncing like gelatine and with the sound palpably overflowing the rim of the canyon making speech impossible, were there anything conceivably appropriate and nontrivial to say, finds himself gripping the wet, rusting bars with a white-knuckled grasp as he peers with grim fascination over the yawning, inviting brink. A damp, icy updraft raises his hair upon end—or so he explains physically the physiological phenomenon to his overobservant and mocking companions.
At first little is seen other than swirling white mists that rise toward the visitor in cumuloid columns. But these break, leaving ragged holes through which the Torrent is revealed…some three thousand vertiginous feet below. Violence incarnate—if incarnate is a word that can properly be used in describing water—looking like nothing else so much as some sort of vast, albino snake, a bleached anaconda, writhing and twisting in unpredictable and tortuous knots and coils, as though it were not just angry or anxious to escape the confines of the rocky walls, but twisting with disturbing, sudden spasms that made it seem as though it were afflicted with some kind of terrible neurological disease. As its endless lengths unfurl between the granite walls, it shatters the grey stone and slabs the size of apartment buildings crash into its liquid spine.
The Strait of Guesclin during full spring flood is rightly considered not only one of the seven wonders of the world, but at the very least among the top three, or so the visitor and his friends would agree as they share lukewarm drinks in the shabby little concessionaire’s stand that vibrates like a trackside tenement not far from the Brink of Hell.
Such were Bronwyn’s recollections when she saw, at dawn the following morning, grey ramparts approaching altogether too rapidly. The gaping entrance to the Strait was marked by a rising banner of mist that bisected the ragged-cliffed shoreline. The enormous pinnacles of wave-eroded rock that barricaded the Strait made it look for all the world like a crooked-fanged mouth, the thick, misty froth boiling at its lower lip like the foaming slaver of a mad dog.
“Magnificent!” said a voice beside her; Wittenoom, as though she couldn’t have guessed.
“Only you would think so.”
“Oh, no,” he replied, her sarcasm missing him completely and evaporating, unappreciated, among the chilly breezes. “You’re wrong, your Highness; a great many people think that the Strait at full flood is one of the great wonders of our world—that is, among the natural wonders, of course. The only debate I’ve ever encountered has pertained to its actual place in the hierarchy of astonishments. It depends a little upon what sort of criteria one bases one’s judgment, I suppose. Are we talking about a kind of spiritual rapture felt when gazing upon a sight so overwhelming from a human standpoint? or the simple, yet for that reason profound, excitement one feels when confronted with such primal energy and power? or should we be swayed by the convincing arguments put forth by the aestheticists, who make a case on purely Romantic grounds? or, on the other hand, what about those who would rank the various wonders solely according to their scientific interest or importance? or, perhaps even more prosaically, on their physical size? I, for one, think that the Strait at full flood ranks among the top two or three, at the very least; in fact, I, personally, would not limit it in such a way and would consider the Strait to be a natural wonder of the first order at any time of the year. My reasoning for this is based upon just these same various arguments I’ve just been mentioning. There are so many valid reasons for considering the Strait to be a great and grand thing that there’s always sufficient cause available.”
“Are you finished?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“I’m very happy that the Strait impresses you so much; I never realized what a thrill this was going to be for us.”
“Yes, indeed. This is a wholly unexpected pleasure. I’m seeing the Strait from an entirely novel perspective. Of course, like many others, I’ve visited the Strait purely as a tourist and found myself immensely moved, naturally, as who could not be? And as a scientist—though geology is a little out of my field—I had the additional pleasure of being able to appreciate what was undoubtedly invisible to the awestruck sightseers around me: the appreciation of the vast and irresistible forces at work within our planet. You’re aware, I’m sure, that the Strait is ever-widening? That fifteen or twenty million years from now, what is now a narrow channel will be a vast gulf…virtually a new ocean? Of course, the visual and emotional splendor of the Strait as it is now will no longer exist. There’ll be only a gentle current in a broad, flat sea.”
“About fifteen million years too late for us, I’m afraid.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hasn’t it occurred to you yet that we’re going through the Strait?”
“Of course it has.”
“Basseliniden, you’ve just been sitting there smirking. Say something.”
“Like what?”
“Explain to the professor what’s going to happen!”
“What is going to happen?”
“Are both of you trying to make me angry or just drive me mad? Both of you know perfectly well that no one’s ever survived passage of the Strait, certainly not at this time of the year! And certainly not ever in a raft!”
“Well,” said the captain, “exactly what do you propose to do about it?”
“I don’t propose to just sit here like you and wait to die!”
“I’m glad to hear that. I’ll watch you, and whatever it is that you’re going to do, I’ll do it too.”
“There’s no point in being sarcastic!”
“Sure there is: there’s hardly anything at all to do that’s interesting except make you angry.”
She produced her most high-voltage glare. When copper is heated to incandescence and its light allowed to pass through a razor-thin slit before being shattered into its component colors by a prism, the resulting spectrum is distinguished by the metal’s telltale sliver of phthalocyanine green light. Bronwyn’s eyes looked like a pair of these slivers.
“Tell me, princess,” asked the captain equably, “have you ever had a thought pass through your mind that did not have ‘me’ in it?”
“That’s a stupid question—although I met you a year or two ago I’ve only been actually with you altogether a month or so . . .”
“No, no…not ‘me’I ‘me’ you.”
She stared at the man as though he had gone insane. Why was he making these nonsensical sound effects? Just to aggravate her? Well, he’d see what aggravation was.
“If the princess will forgive me for disagreeing with her,” interjected Wittenoom, several paragraphs behind in the conversation, “I believe that she’s somewhat mistaken about the chances of surviving a transit of the Strait. It has been done.”
“What?” said the Princess. “When?”
“Twelve nineteen, twenty-one twenty-one, and I don’t seem to recall the precise date for the third instance.”
“Three times? That’s all?”
“I didn’t say that it’d been done often.”
“You have me all aquiver with hope. Why, I’m practically looking forward to it now.”
“That’s wonderful. I’m so pleased that you’ve changed your mind and have decided to take a greater interest in the geological sciences.”
Bronwyn shot Wittenoom a look that would have killed a small bird at thirty paces, but the scientist was as impervious to it as a jellyfish to a knitting needle, and the murderous rays didn’t even warm him.
“Since we have little choice in the matter,” put in the captain, “perhaps we ought to assess our chances realistically. I for one think that we stand a better than average chance of getting through. The raft is solid, but nevertheless far more flexible than any boat. Short of overturning or smashing to bits against a rock, there’s little else that could cause us any grief.”
“What more would we need?” asked the princess.
By this time the shattered cliffs were looming like a monstrous pile of broken crockery. The current was already as swift as any torrent, and in its hurry to squeeze through the relatively narrow entrance to the Strait was creating a wild and confused surf for miles to either side. Waves dozens of feet high were boiling and churning against the jagged coastline and as the princess watched she could see them tear huge chunks of granite loose, which fell into the wild sea, disappearing almost instantly even though some were as large as small houses. The entrance itself seemed almost serene by comparison: a glassy, black, slightly domed expanse of water that belied the fact that it was rushing into the gap between the cliffs with the velocity of an express locomotive. The Strait itself was lost within a heavy mist that rose far into the sky above, finally merging with the grey overcast.
Bronwyn found herself accepting her oncoming fate with a surprising equanimity. In the past, she had been in more than one terrifying situation, yet however great her terror had been, it had never been disabling. She remembered when she had faced the great bear in the Toth Molnar mountains; she had been almost congealed by fear, yet had nevertheless fought back, however ineffective the effort might have been Yet here there was almost no fear, no real apprehension or regret. The scale did not allow for it. She had never before confronted a Force of Nature and against that there could be nothing but resignation.
Guesclin Bay is funnel-shaped, with its apex at the entrance to the Strait. As the southward-draining water is compressed into an ever-narrowing space, its speed increases as its volume remains the same, until at that four-mile gap it is moving with the inexorable speed of a kind of horizontal waterfall. The simile with her life as of late was not lost upon the retrospective princess, nor the irony that all of the threads of her life had conspired to come together in this single, cosmic ropewalk.
Bronwyn saw that although the cliffs to either side were each two miles away, they were nevertheless so high that the upper half of their ramparts was visible to her. She wondered if any curious tourists might be braving the crumbling brink and, if so, if any one of them might be at that moment catching a glimpse of an odd, rectangular fleck of flotsam and were asking themselves what it might be. Were she and her companions even visible at that distance? Was there, perhaps, some curious sightseer turning a two-poenig telescope toward the sleek, flying current? She thought not; it was far more entertaining to try to pick out one’s opposite number on the Londeacan shore (or vice versa). What the hell, Bronwyn thought. What the hell.
The raft was swept into the gaping mouth like a leaf into a storm drain, or a lone krill or plankton into the baleen of a hungry, indifferent whale.