"you would, would you?" grunted calvin. but the question was rhetorical. already his mind was busy searching for some other way out. for the first time in his life, he felt the touch of cold about his heart. could this be fear, he wondered. but he had never been afraid of death.
crouching down again to be out of the wind and rain, he told himself that knowledge still remained a tool he could use. the plant must know something that was, perhaps, useless to it, but that could be twisted to a human's advantage.
"what made you come to a place like this to seed?" he asked.
"twenty nights and days ago, when i first took root here," said the plant, "this land was safe. the signs were good for fair weather. and this place was easy of access from the water. i am not built to travel far on land."
"how would you manage in a storm like this, if you were not rooted down?"
"i would go with the wind until i found shelter," said the plant. "the wind and waves would not harm me then. they hurt only whatever stands firm and opposes them."
"you can't communicate with others of your people from here, can you?" asked calvin.
"there are none close," said the plant. "anyway, what could they do?"
"they could get a message to the fisheries station, to get help out here for us."
"what help could help me?" said the plant. "and in any case they could not go against the wind. they would have to be upwind of the station, even to help you."
"we could try it."
"we could try it," agreed the plant. "but first one of my kind must come into speaking range. we still hunt our great improbable chance."
there was a moment's silence between them in the wind and rain. the river was noisy, working against the rock of the island.
"there must be something that would give us a better chance than just sitting here," said calvin.
the plant did not answer.
"what are you thinking about?" demanded calvin.
"i am thinking of the irony of our situation," said the plant. "you are free to wander the water, but cannot. i can wander the water, but i am not free to do so. this is death, and it is a strange thing."
"i don't get you."
"i only mean that it makes no difference—that i am what i am, or that you are what you are. we could be any things that would die when the waves finally cover the island."
"right enough," said calvin impatiently. "what about it?"
"nothing about it, man," said the plant. "i was only thinking."
"don't waste your time on philosophy," said calvin harshly. "use some of that brain power on a way to get loose and get off."
"perhaps that and philosophy are one and the same."
"you're not going to convince me of that," said calvin, getting up. "i'm going to take another look around the island."
the island, as he walked around its short margin, showed itself to be definitely smaller. he paused again by the black rock. the moss was lost now, under the water, and the crack was all but under as well. he stood shielding his eyes against the wind-driven rain, peering across at the still visible shore. the waves, he noted, were not extreme—some four or five feet in height—which meant that the storm proper was probably paralleling the land some distance out in the gulf.
he clenched his fists in sudden frustration. if only he had hung on to the sailplane—or any decent-sized chunk of it! at least going into the water then would have been a gamble with some faint chance of success.
he had nowhere else to go, after rounding the island. he went back to the plant.
"man," said the plant, "one of my people has been blown to shelter a little downstream."
calvin straightened up eagerly, turning to stare into the wind.
"you cannot see him," said the plant. "he is caught below the river bend and cannot break loose against the force of the wind. but he is close enough to talk. and he sends you good news."
"me?" calvin hunkered down beside the plant. "good news?"
"there is a large tree torn loose from the bank and floating this way. it should strike the little bit of land where we are here."
"strike it? are you positive?"
"there are the wind and the water and the tree. they can move only to one destination—this island. go quickly to the windward point of the island. the tree will be coming shortly."
calvin jerked erect and turned, wild triumph bursting in him.
"good-by, man," said the plant.
but he was already plunging toward the downstream end of the island. he reached it and, shielding his eyes with a hand, peered desperately out over the water. the waves hammered upon his boots as he stood there, and then he saw it, a mass of branches upon which the wind was blowing as on a sail, green against black, coming toward him.
he crouched, wrung with impatience, as the tree drifted swiftly through the water toward him, too ponderous to rise and fall more than a little with the waves and presenting a galleonlike appearance of mass and invincibility. as it came closer, a fear that it would, in spite of the plant's assurances, miss the island, crept into his heart and chilled it.
it seemed to calvin that it was veering—that it would pass to windward of the island, between him and the dimly seen shore. the thought of losing it was more than he could bear to consider; and with a sudden burst of panic, he threw himself into the waves, beating clumsily and frantically for it.
the river took him into its massive fury. he had forgotten the strength of it. his first dive took him under an incoming wave, and he emerged, gasping, into the trough behind, with water exploding in his face. he kicked and threw his arms about, but the slow and futile-seeming beatings of his limbs appeared helpless as the fluttering of a butterfly in a collector's net. he choked for air, and, rising on the crest of one wave, found himself turned backward to face the island, and being swept past it.
fear came home to him then. he lashed out, fighting only for the solid ground of the island and his life. his world became a place of foam and fury. he strained for air. he dug for the island. and then, suddenly, he felt himself flung upon hard rock and gasping, crawling, he emerged onto safety.
he hung there on hands and knees, battered and panting. then the remembrance of the tree cut like a knife to the core of his fear-soaked being. he staggered up, and, looking about, saw that he was almost to the far end of the island. he turned. above him, at the windward point, the tree itself was just now grounding, branches first, and swinging about as the long trunk, caught by the waves, pulled it around and onward.
with an inarticulate cry, he ran toward it. but the mass of water against the heavy tree trunk was already pulling the branches from their tanglings with the rock. it floated free. taking the wind once more in its sail of leaves, it moved slowly—and then more swiftly on past the far side of the island.
he scrambled up his side of the island's crest. but when he reached its top and could see the tree again, it was already moving past and out from the island, too swiftly for him to catch it, even if he had been the swimmer he had just proved himself not to be.
he dropped on his knees, there on the island's rocky spine, and watched it fade in the grayness of the rain, until the green of its branches was lost in a grayish blob, and this in the general welter of storm and waves. and suddenly a dark horror of death closed over him, blotting out all the scene.
a voice roused him. "that is too bad," said the plant.
he turned his head numbly. he was kneeling less than half a dozen feet from the little hollow where the plant still sheltered. he looked at it now, dazed, as if he could not remember what it was, nor how it came to talk to him. then his eyes cleared a little of their shock and he crept over to it on hands and knees and crouched in the shelter of the hollow.
"the water is rising more swiftly," said the plant. "it will be not long now."
"no!" said calvin. the word was lost in the sound of the waves and wind, as though it had never been. nor, the minute it was spoken, could he remember what he had meant to deny by it. it had been only a response without thought, an instinctive negation.
"you make me wonder," said the plant, after a little, "why it hurts you so—this thought of dying. since you first became alive, you have faced ultimate death. and you have not faced it alone. all things die. this storm must die. this rock on which we lie will not exist forever. even worlds and suns come at last to their ends, and galaxies, perhaps even the universe."
calvin shook his head. he did not answer.
"you are a fighting people," said the plant, almost as if to itself. "well and good. perhaps a life like mine, yielding, giving to the forces of nature, traveling before the wind, sees less than you see, of a reason for clawing hold on existence. but still it seems to me that even a fighter would be glad at last to quit the struggle, when there is no other choice."
"not here," said calvin thickly. "not now."
"why not here, why not now," said the plant, "when it has to be somewhere and sometime?"
calvin did not answer.
"i feel sorry for you," said the plant. "i do not like to see things suffer."
raising his head a little and looking around him, calvin could see the water, risen high around them, so that waves were splashing on all sides, less than the length of his own body away.
"it wouldn't make sense to you," said calvin then, raising his rain-wet face toward the plant. "you're old by your standards. i'm young. i've got things to do. you don't understand."
"no," the plant agreed. "i do not understand."
calvin crawled a little closer to the plant, into the hollow, until he could see the vibrating air-sac that produced the voice of the plant. "don't you see? i've got to do something—i've got to feel i've accomplished something—before i quit."
"what something?" asked the plant.
"i don't know!" cried calvin. "i just know i haven't! i feel thrown away!"
"what is living? it is feeling and thinking. it is seeding and trying to understand. it is companionship of your own people. what more is there?"
"you have to do something."
"do what?"
"something important. something to feel satisfied about." a wave, higher than the rest, slapped the rock a bare couple of feet below them and sent spray stinging in against them. "you have to say, 'look, maybe it wasn't much, but i did this.'"
"what kind of this?"
"how do i know?" shouted calvin. "something—maybe something nobody else did—maybe something that hasn't been done before!"
"for yourself?" said the plant. a higher wave slapped at the very rim of their hollow, and a little water ran over and down to pool around them. calvin felt it cold around his knees and wrists. "or for the doing?"
"for the doing! for the doing!"
"if it is for the doing, can you take no comfort from the fact there are others of your own kind to do it?"
another wave came in on them. calvin moved spasmodically right up against the plant and put his arms around it, holding on.
"i have seeded ten times and done much thinking," said the plant—rather muffledly, for calvin's body was pressing against its air-sac. "i have not thought of anything really new, or startling, or great, but i am satisfied." it paused a moment as a new wave drenched them and receded. they were half awash in the hollow now, and the waves came regularly. "i do not see how this is so different from what you have done. but i am content." another and stronger wave rocked them. the plant made a sound that might have been of pain at its roots tearing. "have you seeded?"
"no," said calvin, and all at once, like light breaking at last into the dark cave of his being, in this twelfth hour, it came to him—all of what he had robbed himself in his search for a victory. choking on a wave, he clung to the plant with frenzied strength. "nothing!" the word came torn from him as if by some ruthless hand. "i've got nothing!"
"then i understand at last," said the plant. "for of all things, the most terrible is to die unfruitful. it is no good to say we will not be beaten, because there is always waiting, somewhere, that which can beat us. and then a life that is seedless goes down to defeat finally and forever. but when one has seeded, there is no ending of the battle, and life mounts on life until the light is reached by those far generations in which we have had our own small but necessary part. then our personal defeat has been nothing, for though we died, we are still living, and though we fell, we conquered."
but calvin, clinging to the plant with both arms, saw only the water closing over him.
"too late—" he choked. "too late—too late—"
"no," bubbled the plant. "not too late yet. this changes things. for i have seeded ten times and passed on my life. but you—i did not understand. i did not realize your need."
the flood, cresting, ran clear and strong, the waves breaking heavily on the drowned shore by the river mouth. the rescue spinner, two hours out of base and descending once again through the fleeting murk, checked at the sight of a begrimed human figure, staggering along the slick margin of the shore, carrying something large and limp under one arm, and with the other arm poking at the ground with a stick.
the spinner came down almost on top of him, and the two men in it reached to catch calvin. he could hardly stand, let alone stumble forward, but stumble he did.
"cal!" said the pilot. "hold up! it's us."
"let go," said calvin thickly. he pulled loose, dug with his stick, dropped something from the limp thing into the hole he had made, and moved on.
"you out of your head, cal?" cried the co-pilot. "come on, we've got to get you back to the hospital."
"no," said calvin, pulling away again.
"what're you doing?" demanded the pilot. "what've you got there?"
"think-plant. dead," said calvin, continuing his work. "let go!" he fought weakly, but so fiercely that they did turn him loose again. "you don't understand. saved my life."
"saved your life?" the pilot followed him. "how?"
"i was on an island. in the river. flood coming up." calvin dug a fresh hole in the ground. "it could have lived a little longer. it let me pull it ahead of time—so i'd have something to float to shore on." he turned exhaustion-bleared eyes on them. "saved my life."
the pilot and the co-pilot looked at each other as two men look at each other over the head of a child, or a madman.
"all right, cal," said the pilot. "so it saved your life. but how come you've got to do this? and what are you doing, anyhow?"
"what am i doing?" calvin paused entirely and turned to face them. "what am i doing?" he repeated on a rising note of wonder. "why, you damn fools, i'm doing the first real thing i ever did in my life! i'm saving the lives of these seeds!"
the end
