An Evening at the Carnival with Mister Christian

And now it was a contest of wills...

Then he saw a man come up from below, binoculars in hand and moving to the aft rail of his boat. Soon they were looking at one another -- through their binoculars -- sizing up whatever threat might exist -- but among Springer owners? There was a kind of universal bond between such people, wasn't there? No, the man put his glasses down and moved off to the seawall, presumably to help him secure dock-lines, but well before Gemini pulled into the harbor he saw more dolphins circling in the water behind the other man's boat. Five, no -- six of them -- and when 'his' dolphin saw the new pod it rocketed off into the harbor for a reunion of infinite joy.

And the man on the stone quay stared at this new dolphin, then back at him -- and Collins could see things beginning to fall into place -- for them both -- and when he saw the man visibly relax he did too. Collins swung the bow around and coasted to a stop in the middle of the harbor, then used the thruster to line up with the quay as he backed-down, dropping an anchor on the way in. He brought Gemini to a stop about a meter off the stone wall, then hopped back to toss his lines over to the man on the quay. After checking the lines and setting the anchor he cut the engine, then looked around the harbor for other people, but apparently the man standing quayside was the only soul remaining.

"Sumner Collins," he said when he hopped over to the quay and he held out his hand.

"Tom Goodwin," the man said, taking his hand.

"Is this place as empty as it looks? We haven't seen another vessel since we left Marseilles."

"Not many people left," Goodwin said, shaking his head slowly. "About half the people in town passed within a week of the arrival, like someone flipped a switch. People stopped eating and drinking, and it didn't take long after that."

"Same thing in southern France. Folks just stopped caring."

"Not up north; not last night," Goodwin said.

"Oh," Collins said, "what's happened?"

"The Russians and Chinese started lobbing nukes last night night, at America and Germany for the most part. Nobody up there stopped them this time. The US counterstrike is still underway."

"What?!"

"Shortwave broadcasts this morning said most of the world's major cities are toast, missile silos too. Bombers should be reaching their targets over the next few hours; that's the word on the nets, anyway."

"Damn. It's not enough we have some sort of galactic plague bearing down on us. We had to go and do their work for them?"

Goodwin shrugged. "That dolphin with you?" he asked as he turned to the commotion behind their boats.

"Yup. She's been with me for a few years."

Goodwin nodded his head. "These guys have been with me a while, my father before me. I think they've been waiting for your's to get here." Collins looked at Goodwin as his eyes followed Hyperion into the turning basin, and as he recognized Hope Sherman in her wheelchair by the aft rail he seemed to stand a little straighter, grow a little more self-conscious. "Is that who I think it is?"

"Probably."

Goodwin looked from Sherman to the dolphins in the water: they were all silent now, staring at the old woman on the aft swim platform as she talked to them. Sumner watched as she talked to one of the dolphins -- like it was an old friend -- and he grew cool inside, and light-headed, as he considered the implications...then he looked up at the sky.

Though it was not quite noon the sky was rapidly turning dark, a misty shade of purple-gray, and everywhere he turned he saw a world turned inward on itself, a ruined landscape bathed in splotchy shadows by the unsettled, purple light. The inrushing red streaks were more prominent now too, and while they'd not yet reached earth, for the first time he thought he could hear something of their coming in the air. Almost like static, like someone up in the sky was ripping apart an infinitely long cardboard box -- and this sound was something new -- like it had just started. Hope Sherman sat and looked at the sky, the dolphins off Hyperion's stern leaned back too, and they looked up into the unknown, then at one another.

Collins looked at the dolphins now too, at his companion and her -- what? -- friend? floating in these odd, otherworldly colors, and he wondered why they hadn't left with the others. He looked at them anew, and wondered what role they'd come to play in this looming death, then he helped Ted tie Hyperion to the quay.

Soon everyone was on the stone dock, and Goodwin looked at Hope Sherman like he knew her, like maybe they'd met somewhere before.

"I think we're running out of time," Hope said from her wheelchair -- as she looked at Tom Goodwin. "Are you ready?"

He nodded his head, now feeling -- almost -- a sense of déjà vu. "Follow me," he said, but he heard music just then...random words sailing through his mind's eye...cellophane flowers and newspaper taxis...and he felt the sun on his face. Not the sun now, not that purple, washed out orb... No, memory far away was calling him. A memory not his own...

Collins felt lost when he heard that last exchange, when he realized Goodwin and Hopie knew one another, and he hung back and watched as their little group took off to the east, walking along tree-lined paths away from the harbor. He looked at Goodwin as he pushed Hopie's wheelchair along the hilly, cobbled lane, and he only grew more confused. Soon they were walking along the spine of the ridge that led out to the point, and to the open sea.

Collins saw rocks down below, small tidal pools nestled crater-lakes among them, then he saw the gathering -- the dolphins, all of them -- as they rounded the point and came to one of the rock-lined pools. They looked up expectantly as Goodwin lifted Hopie from her chair, and Collins helped steady them as the group inched through the rocky outcroppings down to the closest pool. Gathered by the water after a few minutes, their audience watched as, one by one, the humans took off their clothes...

...then Collins saw two other people were already in the water, waiting for them...

...seven humans, and seven dolphins...

The sky was black now, though it was just mid-afternoon, and vivid red clots began to take shape in the milky sky, drifting slowly through clouds, coming for the waiting remnants of humanity. The tearing sound grew louder now, and was growing more so by the moment; when Collins looked up the red-streaks seems somehow alive, and clouds seemed to run from the heat. Soon everywhere Collins looked he saw a world on fire...mountains, forests, towns across the bay...all lost under torrents of lava-like flame, and for a moment he had the impression the earth was being purified, like a cosmic reset button had just been punched...

And then they were together, in the sea, and the dolphins began moving among them.

Circling. Very. Fast.

Sumner Collins was aware of a sudden growing light, and with his passing the earth grew very still.

AN EVENING AT THE CARNIVAL WITH MISTER CHRISTIAN

the fourth -- and last part of the tale

Jennifer Clemens was walking from the seashore to her family's farm on a gorgeous autumn afternoon, and the cool-minded girl could not have been happier. The October sky was as clear and crisp as an icy stream, like a glass of cold water from the deepest well, and there was not a cloud in the sky. The air was so different here, the very breeze she took in her lungs seemed free of the discord she'd known in England. The very air seemed alive with promise, and she felt limitless opportunity beckoning down each new path she came upon. Everything she happened upon was so different from the land she had known before, so much so that on some days she felt as if she'd been reborn.

Fresh breezes sailed through blazing leaves on the trees that lined the path she walked, and to her mind this day, it seemed as if all the myriad leaves were turning into the wind to meet the tides of another season, leaving a flurry of red and gold in their passage to winter. On her way home now, walking along the carefree path she knew so well, Jennifer walked past farms and houses that had taken hold with shallow roots in this new land -- yet despite their presence a sense of newness remained.

Most of the farms here along Massachusetts Bay and the Charles River were well kept in the manicured form of a God fearing, hardworking people, yet so new was the colony that the presence of these farms still felt tentative, transient. This was indeed a new world -- in every way conceivable way, and yet, while she felt promise deep within the rolling, tree-lined hills and soft, undulating meadows, there was as yet little certainty in this life, in her sense of the future. Famine, disease, the truly foul winter weather that was just weeks away, all served to underscore just how fragile was the colony's existence. And she could never get it out of her mind that day, that afternoon just a few weeks ago it was, when gathering firewood along the beach she had come upon the catamount, the whale, and that strange singer who passed away on the grass -- and how he had simply disappeared. And she had felt judged that afternoon, like she'd been judged and found wanting in some inscrutable way, and she'd been on verge of a great despair ever since.

Yet Jennifer Clemens was smiling at Time, parsing through her memory of place, reconciling this impossible new landscape with her former home, the rolling valleys near Exeter; she was tallying the improbable and the immutable, what possible futures might unfold for her along this so-called Massachusetts Bay. Red barns and freshly timbered homes trimmed in blues and grays; she walked across her landscapes in silence, her sun-streaked hair lifting on currents of wind -- fresh from their dance across fields of oats and corn -- everything around her bursting with the promise of another autumn's harvest. The stalks and blades seemed to whirl about with careless abandon on gentle breezes born to nourish the people of this fertile land, and it was an easy leap to conclude that all this land had come into being solely as the private garden for the people of the colony. Still, while Jennifer Clemens was aware she was regarded as a trespasser on this shore, she nevertheless regarded all she beheld as Her World. Boston was Her city on a hill, and she knew she'd never leave.

So you see, Jennifer Clemens had not a care in the world, really, as she made her way towards home, towards the Clemens' farmstead, on this breezy October afternoon. She was as free as a bird, as carefree as sun-drenched leaves on strawberry fields, forever free to dance in the wind with the sun warming her face, and her dreams.

There was a sun-borne, amber hued life within the long brown hair that bloomed in the air as she walked, and with long, slender arms behind her back, she skipped and danced as a lark taking wing, singing the simple song she'd heard not so long ago, in that grassy field by the seashore. His had been a song of pure enchantment, and as her spirit was unfettered, and her gay heart skipped to the beat of the infinite happiness born his music, she sang his song to the sky -- his words so fresh and sweet they tasted of tomorrow.

Still, though the path she walked upon this afternoon was well traveled, she remained wary of the shadows. Dangers lurked unseen and unheard, but they were -- by and large -- as absent from her thoughts as this world allowed.

As she skipped along in the crisp air, feeling the infinite promise of tomorrow, she saw a shimmering broadsheet tacked to a solitary tree beside the path just ahead, and she wondered what magic portents waited for her there -- waiting to be discovered. Was it a traveling fair, a late summer carnival? She'd not been to one since leaving Exeter, and the memory thrilled her. What mysteries life held! Who could it be?

She ran up to the broadsheet and her eyes looked at the words floating there, for she saw moving forms within the paper, words she at first thought were recognizable, but the spelling she saw was all wrong in strange, though weirdly compelling ways. She studied the paper, worked to decipher the words as each revealed itself in it's own way, in it's own time. It was a puzzle, she saw, and she wished she had a quill and ink and a sheet of parchment to work out the fantastic mysteries she found inside the broadsheet.

This was too fun!

Clues seemed to be hidden within traceries of vines that coiled on the sheet, and bound up within the intricate contours were subtle forms that quietly resolved into a message and as soon faded away into something new. She saw fantastic structures that might have been castles on cloud tops, but that might just as easily been the tortured fragments of some very unhappy dream, yet each new vista seemed to spiral out of mists within the broadsheet and then pause for just a fractured moment -- before dissolving back into swirling clouds. She thought once she saw impossible flying machines floating on strangely colored airs, and men made of metal fighting wars on impossible new worlds, but none of these images made sense to her. She stepped back from the broadsheet in shock when these disturbing images dissolved in the fragile mist and resolved into new images, images of ladies and gentlemen dancing within a world lit by wondrous candlelight, and, could it be? Did she hear music? Strange music, to be sure, but music nevertheless?

Then new words resolved and appeared from within the mists:

'One night only'

Jennifer Clemens could just barely make out these hidden letters among the spiraling textures of leaves that wound up a tree -- or was it a building? -- that was even now turning into something that looked like a man?

'You are invited to come with me and visit the future.'

Jennifer looked at the script and felt great hope embedded within the words, and yet there was as well an infinite sorrow floating within the shifting imagery. She was curious, but she grew more hesitant and worried as each new word began to seamlessly reveal itself, almost hurriedly, as if each word was in a desperate race to capture her interest before she changed her mind and stole away into the light of day.

She came to the bottom of the broadsheet and leaned forward to rub away a preternatural haziness that seemed to have settled outside the paper, then she saw the mist was not simply on the paper -- it was inside the very essence of the paper. The mist was like a moving, living cloud deep within the broadsheet; it danced inside a light of it's own creation, teasing her, tempting her, willing her to come closer still, to move deeper, and deeper --

'You Are Invited to An Evening at The Carnival With Mr Christian'

And again she felt these new words were dancing above the paper, because the words could not possibly have been printed on any material she knew of. Yet even so, how could these words move within mist and fog, on a printed sheet tacked to a tree? How could such unnatural forms reside within such an ordinary material, each moment waiting to reveal fantastic new shapes and words? And the music! The fantastic harmonies that came from within the paper? How...how could this be? What was this she beheld if not the carnival of some impossibly deranged and complicated mind?

She watched more traceries evolve in vine-like, serpentine scrolls -- and now she understood that somehow the morphing structures kept time to the music! Whatever she saw, these images were not simply in the paper, they too were somehow of the paper. She understood -- without quite knowing how or why -- that this Carnival was an idea beyond mortal description, and that it was much more powerful and compelling than the simple carnivals she had been to in Devonshire and the Nether-lands. Impossible, yes, yet at the same time she felt that this Carnival posed mysteries not without risk; indeed, unimaginable hazards seemed to lurk within each lingering shadow she beheld. She stood under the tree in silence, watching each new image come alive, seeing in each shattering new dreamscapes a promise, within each new mystery not only risk, but an uneasy promise of revelation, of a destiny -- to be revealed.

Before her eyes an old man's face resolved within the fantastic mists, and Jennifer leaned closer still, moved close to visit the warmth she felt inside the man's eyes, and immediately felt comfort roaming throughout her body, almost a sense of resolution, as if the miracle of life held purpose beyond suffering, and that purpose resided within the humanity contained within the misty eyes she beheld.

Jennifer Clemens trembled like a storm-tossed leaf, then jumped back in shock as an autumn gust whipped through the forest. The wind tore the broadsheet from the tree, and before her eyes the paper was carried away on the wind -- and yet it seemed to dissolve into grains of sand as it drifted away, on it's way to memory, perhaps, and before her eyes the dreamlike images contained within were scattered on the wind, and then everything she had seen -- was simply...gone. She stood and watched in utter dismay, yet even in the unbearable silence that followed she could still hear the quiet refrains of music that had only moments before come from within the broadsheet. The music was all around her now; the scattered notes enticed her, carried her along within the frenzied promise of so much joy to be had if only she...if only she could see...

"What?" she said aloud. "See what?"

She shook herself from the dream, and from the discordant notes, looked around her world as if waking from a dream, then continued on her way home -- if a little more slowly now. Still, she walked with curious purpose in her heart, purpose born of the evolving imagery she'd seen within the broadsheet. Lost within these impossible images, purpose bound to the strange new worlds she had seen inside, images that swirled out of the mist, that swayed to the impossible music playing inside her mind, the discordant sonata that made impossible promises about the future. A sudden melody built in her mind's eye and sought release -- but each new note seemed to lose it's way, each new chord faded on the wind, only to begin again -- anew -- in a new key.

Then she saw someone, a man perhaps, though he was still quite far away -- a man walking on the path, walking towards her. She couldn't see him very well from this distance, but she couldn't recognize his clothing. A stranger? Here? She'd not heard of a new ship arriving...?

As he drew near she saw something that made her stop -- out of fear -- and she fought to control her breathing. She stood transfixed in time as she looked at the man -- because he was the old man from within the broadsheet! Impossible! He lived! So, she hadn't imagined this man! He was real, and now -- he was here!

She looked into the man's eyes as he approached, and though she knew it was rude to stare she could not help herself, indeed, she felt compelled to look at his eyes. Yet she felt the same comfort in his eyes once again, and though he looked old -- ancient, as a matter of fact -- she saw something in the man's eyes possessed by a timeless serenity. His was not a simple calm etched on silent features; no, this was something else entirely. Something at once mighty, trembling with latent knowledge, and yet more at peace with this power than mere serenity might otherwise reveal.

As he approached, Jennifer Clemens watched his face, his eyes, and he smiled at her, said 'Hello' as he tipped his brimmed hat when he passed. She stood ever so still in his growing presence -- she remembered being careful not to even breathe as he walked by -- for the music had grown more insistent as the man approached, and now, with his passing the music drew away, passed on the wind again, drifting away with his passing. She turned and watched him disappear in the forest, listened until the music was gone, then turned to look at her world.