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among the heavy black sand; washed from the same deposits, it made its way downstream along with the
dense black grains. They found no gold, but they might have, Lyle thought happily. She spied a blue ball
and retrieved it. It was a Japanese fishing float, Werther said, examining it and handing it back. He talked
about the fishing fleets, their lights like will-o'-the-wisps at sea. They had not used glass floats for thirty
years, he said; the one she had found could have been floating all that time, finally making it to shore.
At one point Carmen produced sandwiches and a bottle of wine from his backpack, along with three
plastic glasses. They sat on rocks, protected from a freshening breeze, and gazed at the blue waters of
the Pacific. A flock of sea gulls drifted past and vanished around the outcropping of granite boulders.
 It's a beautiful world, Werther said quietly.  Such a beautiful world.
Carmen stood up abruptly and stalked away. He picked up something white and brought it back, flung it
down at Werther's feet. It was half a Styrofoam cup.
 For how long? he said in a hard furious voice. He picked up the wine bottle and glasses and replaced
them in his backpack, then turned and left.
 You could bury it, but the next high tide will just uncover it again, Werther said, nudging the Styrofoam
with his foot. He picked it up and put it in his pocket.  Speaking of high tides, we have to start back. The
tide's turning now, I think.
They watched the sunset from the edge of the beach, near the car. The water covered their footprints,
cleaning up the beach again of traces of human usage. It was dark by the time they got back to Werther's
house.
 You must have dinner with us, he insisted.  You're too tired to go cook. You'll settle for a peanut
butter sandwich and a glass of milk. I feel guilty just thinking about dinner while you snack. Sit by the fire
and nurse your images of the perfect day and presently we'll eat.
Lyle looked at Carmen who nodded, smiling at her. It was he who knew what she would eat if she went
home now. She thought of what he had said about understanding and accepting Werther, and she had the
feeling that he understood and accepted her also, exactly as she was, nearing middle age, red-faced,
frizzy hair going gray. None of that mattered a damn bit to him, not the way it mattered to Lasater whose
eyes held scorn and contempt no matter how he tried to disguise it. She nodded, and Carmen reached
out to take her coat; Werther said something about checking the wine supply, and needing more wood.
She sank into the chair that she thought of as hers and sighed.
Perhaps she could say to Werther, please just give me a set of good fingerprints and let's be done with
that. She could explain why she needed them, tell him about the hook Lasater had baited for her and her
eagerness to snatch it. He would understand, even be sympathetic with her reasons. And if he was the
man Lasater was after, he would forgive her. She snapped her eyes open as a shudder passed over her.
Lasater was sure, and she was too. She felt only certainty that Werther lived under a fearsome shadow.
She felt that he was a gentle man, whose gentleness arose from a terrible understanding of pain and fear;
that underlying his open love of the ocean, the beach, the gulls, everything he had seen that day, there
was a sadness with a depth she could not comprehend. She believed that his compassion, humanity, love,
warmth, all observable qualities, overlay a core as rigid and unweathered and unassailable as the rocky
skeletons of the mountains that endured over the eons while everything about them was worn away. He
was a man whose convictions would lead him to action, had already led him to act, she thought, and
admitted to herself that she believed he was wanted for something very important, not what Lasater said,
because he was a congenital liar, but something that justified the manhunt that evidently was in progress.
And she knew with the same certainty that she had been caught up in the middle of it, that already it was
too late for her to exclude herself from whatever happened here on the coast. Unless she left
immediately, she thought then.
 You're cold, Carmen said, as if he had been standing behind her for some time. He was carrying wood.
 These places really get cold as soon as the sun goes down. He added a log to the fire, tossed in a
handful of chips, and in a moment it was blazing.  You're in for a treat. He's going to make a famous old
recipe for you. Fish soup, I call it. He says bouillabaisse. He stood up, dusting his hands together.  Be
back instantly with wine. Do you want a blanket or something?
She shook her head. The shiver had not been from any external chill. Presently, with Carmen on the floor
before the fire, and her in her chair, they sipped the pale sherry in a companionable silence.
Carmen broke it:  Let's play a game. Pretend you're suddenly supreme dictator with unlimited power and
wealth, what would you do?
 Dictator of what?
 Everything, the entire earth.
 You mean God.
 Okay. You're God. What now?
She laughed. Freshmen games out of Philosophy 101.  Oh, I'd give everyone enough money to live on
comfortably, and I'd put a whammy on all weapons, make them inoperative, and I'd cure the sick, heal
the wounded. Little things like that.
He shook his head.  Specifically. And seriously. He looked up at her without a trace of a smile.  I mean
if everyone had X dollars, then it would take XY dollars to buy limited things, and it would simply be a
regression of the value of money, wouldn't it?
 Okay, I'd redistribute the money and the goods so that everyone had an equal amount, and if that wasn't
enough, I'd add to both until it was enough.
 How long before a handful of people would have enormous amounts again, and many people would be
hungry again simply because human nature seems to drive some people to power through wealth?
She regarded him sourly. He was at an age when his idealism should make it seem quite simple to adjust
the world equitably. She said,  God, with any sense at all, would wash her hands of the whole thing and
go somewhere else.
 But you, as God, would not be that sensible?
 No, I'd try. I would think for a very long time about the real problems too many people, for
instance and I'd try to find a way to help. But without any real hope of success.
He nodded, and a curious intensity seemed to leave him. She had not realized how tense he had become
until he now relaxed again.
Very deliberately she said,  Of course, solving the population problems doesn't mean it would be a
peaceful world. Sometimes I think history was invented simply to record war, and before records, there
were oral traditions. Even when the world was uninhabited except for a few fertile valleys, they fought
over those valleys. There will always be people who want what others have, who have a need to control
others, who have a need for power. Population control won't change that.
 As God you could pick your population, Carmen said carelessly.  Select for nonaggressiveness.
 How? With what test? But, as God, I would know, wouldn't I?
 There would be problems, he said, looking into the fire now.  That's why I started this game saying
dictator; you said God. Where does assertiveness end off and aggressiveness start? There are real
problems.
She was tiring of the adolescent game that he wanted to treat too seriously. She finished her wine and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]