Cold, dark, water murmurs secrets with each stroke of my hands.
During the day, it's difficult to know the power of a river. You can glimpse it at a weir, where the mildest of rivers will tumble in rabid foam. But to truly feel the power of a river you must hide it from sight.
On a moonless night, walking along the banks of the Great Ouse, you can feel the river's presence, as if accompanied by a silent friend. But, right now, I -- forteen year old daughter of the famous Dr Fleishmann -- right now I need more than that friendship. So, now I swim.
In the dim star-light, I can identify plants on the riverbank: the hooded flowers of Wolf's-bane burried amongst vast flocks of cow-parsley. Everywhere, June is scented with Elder-flower and bind-weed.
An ivied oak marks a bend in the river. I cannot detect the change in my stroke which lets me turn with the river. I head for the upstream lock. An eel brushes alongside my naked hip, and I pause in my strokes to hear a trout kissing the air for flies.
Again, the entire population of the world is in imminent mortal danger. It's all getting rather tedious. Important people run in and out of my father's house. He will save the world, again. Or else he won't, and we shall all die. I'm neither concerned nor impressed.
At times like this, the rest of us are awkward obstacles for the eminent to collide with. Pressed into corners by marching engineers with their rolls of blueprints, I would sit in his laboratory and mess with his apparatus. I would play with each of his forces, and energies, which are demonstrated in his lectures, his side-show experiments of bangs and flashes which keep the slumbering awake through pages of algebra. And I would wonder how these toys might relate to this particular day's armageddon. But the world has teetered once too often, and I'm leaving that house for my new home, for my river.
I tread water to watch an adolescent mallard as he sleeps on the bank; his iridescent blue-green cap only just emerging from beneath the down. The sides of his head shine barely aqua in the reflected star-light, while in a band along the top, like a latter-day punk, he bears the dark brown stripe of his youth. My noise has awoken him, and he rises up upon his feet, and proudly plumps his soft belly. Settling down, he rearranges his wings and, reveals, for a moment, lance-corporal stripes.
Often the crisis concerns focusing arrays. I cannot remember what the focusing arrays are for. Perhaps they provide all the world's energy? Or beam all of its television? Or produce cheap instant coffee? But whatever they do, a world without energy, or television, or instant coffee, is so horrific that it's unquesionably worth brilliant minds expending vast amounts of nervous energy to maintain them.
Father has so many awards that he keeps them in a room of their own. With the door open a little, a watery reflection of shimmering gold projects itself onto the hall floor. A number of times there has been a tumultuous crash from the trophy room as one of his shelves collapses under the sheer weight of adulation. Perhaps the focusing arrays would be more reliable if they had hired a space scientist who could master simple DIY?
However, as I'm constantly reminded by the whirlwind of visitors to our house, father is unique. In form, I believe, the focusing array is some scaffolding and bakofoil construction, and is stuffed full of Plutonium. But I can't remember why.
On the left bank there is a half-harvested field of potatoes. Two mobile toilet cubicles, one pink, one blue, and a bright red ToolVault, at the far end of the field, are the only evidence of a day's work. They have been left there for tomorrow's harvesting, if humanity survives that long.
When it is not the focusing arrays, it is usually the geostationary Xenon lasers. I believe they share a purpose with the arrays. It sometimes seems to me that space must be as cluttered and dilapidated as father's laboratory. And, even now, a keen author is probably noting the latest adventures of our gallant heroes, and the manner in which they are about to save the world, again.
The books will be all spaceships and spacesuits, and sex. So much civilisation and quantum physics, but sex still ripples underneath. Not that any intercourse actually occurs during these averted disasters. Our knights of thought and calculus pass out over their drawing boards, while their partners lie nervously in half-vacant beds. I am miles from that madhouse.
At night the surface of a river appears as black and as uniform as asphalt, but it feels, sounds and smells alive. I often wonder if I could just stop swimming, and so go under, and cause myself to die. I don't think that I could. To stay afloat, I must keep moving. But each stroke fails to lessen the need to stroke again.
If I return, my father will have earnt another trophy to test his fragile shelving. I wonder if the river is shallow enough that I can stand in it? I hope not, it's reassuring to imagine that there is some kind of infinity beneath me.
In a moment, a headache overcomes the sky. Shooting lights and bizarre synthetic sounds reveal the story in its unfolding. Sometimes I wonder why my father had me born. If the gold and glass of the trophy room is a true reflection of his eminence, then all of the earth's inhabitants already owe their existence to him, what more was there to prove? Perhaps he thought I would follow in his footsteps? But, I exist now, the cat out is of the bag, and now I swim.
On both banks, now, ox-eye daisies. Lit by the pyrotechnics above, a water-vole darts from its hole by the water's edge, up and into the cover of the daisies. Bats fly overhead now. They nest in the Ashen copse further downstream. I feel scaly skin tickle my midriff, and below me something kicks at the river bottom, and releases a plume of mud.
A light as bright as the sun, and arc lamp white, fills the sky for a moment, and fades into the darkness. That was probably a climax. Either my father is re-crowned king of the world, or else Plutonium baned dust rains to earth.
I reach the lock, and pull myself up onto one of the cross-beams of the gate. The sky is quite dark again now; the science fiction novel has been put down, and the bedside light extinguished.
Letting myself tumble backwards, I fall into the stream and let the river carry me back, like flotsom. On my return, then, I shall see nothing but the sky and of it nothing but stars -- stars and satellites. It's difficult to tell the true star from the human folly. If you look at their light for long enough, you can see satellites constantly falling. But you need to be still, on solid ground. To drift-wood, star and satellite are quite alike, each dancing chaotically in reply to the eddies beneath.
Space becomes clearer, now: fully dilated in black belladonna. An aeroplane flies tangentially to the stream: maybe a president, congratulating father on his fireworks. Or a ghost author departing with a notebook filled, eager to start another adventure.
I drift back, to the house.