The trail curled up to the top of the peak and stopped abruptly, overlooking a cliff which fell maybe fifty feet in a sheer drop to the water below. The view was stupendous. To the south, a long line of brooding mountains massed against the sky suffused with the tender Pacific light. To the west, a snow-covered volcanic cone rose high above a range of foothills. A thick layer of fog spilled out from the invisible coastline, funneling down valleys and spreading out across the water in a shallow layer.
Nearer at hand, the surrounding islands were tucked one behind the other so that no open water was visible, their tone fading from clear green to hazy blue with distance. The shoreline consisted of a band of bare rock chewed by the waves, after which the vegetation began. Huge tree trunks bleached to a silver gray lay piled like garbage at the tideline. Depending on its depth and exposure to the wind, the water itself varied in color from a bright reflective glitter through a cloudy green to cold, steely blue. Where the turbulent currents met, huge circular patches, eerily smooth, basked on the surface like monstrous jellyfish. Above my head, sea gulls hung like toys on a string in the stiff breeze scooping up and over the headland.
It felt wonderful to be all alone in the midst of such beauty. I was pleasantly rested after my sleep, and the doubts I’d had the previous night about coming had faded like a bad dream. This was exactly what I needed to help me forget what had happened and to give me the courage and the energy to start again. I sat there for a long time, beguiling myself with pebbles and twigs like a child, feeling the vast ambient peace of the place seeping into my pores, unkinking all my tension, stilling my jangled nerves.
Inevitably, the return to the compound was something of a downer. The peak experience I’d just had was an impossible act to follow, but the sight of the crudely logged clearing and its slumlike jumble of shacks and shanties, dominated by a rusted metal water tank, was enough to destroy my mood of elation entirely.
The clearing itself consisted of two areas. There was an inner zone, about fifty feet square, where the trees and other vegetation had been dug out and the ground leveled, leaving a more or less flat table of packed dirt flecked here and there with patches of grass and clumps of horsetail. Around this stretched a desolate wasteland of rocks and scrub extending about a hundred feet up the hillside. Most of the trees here had been felled, presumably for firewood, but no attempt had been made to remove the roots or level the soil. As a result, all the buildings were crammed into the first area.
I had not paid much attention to them when I left that morning, but returning with my eyes attuned to the beauties of the landscape, I was appalled to see what an eyesore they were. The hall itself, clearly the oldest structure, was also the least offensive, its weathered timbers blending into the natural environment. There were two smaller outbuildings in the same style, one of which housed the equipment for generating the electricity supply, the other collapsing under the assault of a mound of brambles.
The rest were all more recent. Judging by the way they were jammed in at all angles, some just a few feet apart, they had been put up as needed, with no attempt at advance planning. It looked as if Sam’s little commune must have expanded pretty rapidly, particularly in the last few years. The earliest ones were mere shacks, mostly of timber which looked as though it had been scavenged from previous structures dating back to the same era as the hall. They had corrugated iron roofs and incongruous modern doors, or in some cases just a length of gaudy plastic sheeting-one was clearly a shower curtain-nailed to the frame.
Finally there were six cabins of identical design and construction, probably built from kits. These were mounted on a poured concrete foundation and sported aluminum siding, double-glazed windows and felt roofs. Some of the men were at work on a half-built one. Among them was Andy, the ex-baseball coach I had met the previous night. He and another guy I didn’t know were throwing up the Sheetrock on an inside wall, and Andy waved in a friendly way as I passed.
I waved back with some relief. The blank stares and sullen faces which had greeted me when I appeared at breakfast had almost been enough to send me scurrying back to my room. I hadn’t recognized any of the people seated around the long dining table. They were younger than the group Sam had introduced me to the night before, mostly in their twenties, and their taciturn, guarded manner couldn’t have been more different from the exaggerated welcome I received then. Sam himself was nowhere to be seen, and I felt like an unwanted older intruder.
The food consisted of plastic-wrapped slices of spongy white bread, a huge jar of peanut butter and a selection of sugary cereals. There was also a percolator of industrial-strength coffee. Since Rick had forgotten to buy fresh milk the day before, the only kind available was a concoction resembling runny wallpaper paste which had been made up from powder.
I poured myself some coffee and a bowl of Cheerios, which I ate dry. There had been some desultory conversation in progress, but this ceased as soon as I sat down. My comments elicited only grunts or shrugs. After a while I gave up. We sat in silence, munching and crunching like animals at the trough. The fire was out and the air felt cold and dank.
An hour after breakfast, Sam still hadn’t appeared. I asked several people where he was, but they either didn’t know or wouldn’t say. I thought at first that they were resentful that I wasn’t pulling my weight, acting like the place was a hotel, but when I offered to lend a hand with the dishes or some other chore they just looked blank. I approached one man who was chopping wood beside a stack of timber at the edge of the clearing.
“Want me to take over for a while?” I asked.
He shook his head silently.
“I kind of enjoy outdoor chores,” I told him. “I’d be happy to help.”
The guy just walked off, taking the axe with him. I was about to try my luck with someone else when Mark suddenly appeared.
“You got a problem?” he demanded.
“I was just offering to help.”
“We don’t need help. Everything’s under control. Just let these people get on with their work.”
“You know where Sam is?” I retorted, to remind him that I had some official standing there.
Mark looked me up and down with undisguised hostility, then spat thoughtfully between my legs.
“I don’t know anyone by that name,” he said.
This was the point at which I decided to remove my unwelcome presence and explore the island. There was still no sign of Sam when I got back, so I went to hole up in my room until he appeared.
At one end of the hall, four men were gathered around the TV watching a fuzzy video featuring a woman who claimed, as far as I could make out, to be an alien who had been sent to earth to foster relationships between humans and other inhabitants of the universe and had taken over the body of a “terrestrial” who had died in an accident. It seemed to me that in her position I’d have chosen a classier body than the pudgy, zit-ridden, bad-hair one she’d opted for, but maybe aliens see these things differently.
At the dining table, three children were watching a woman hold up flashcards with the names and pictures of animals. As I passed by, I recognized her as the one who had caught my eye the night before. I made a detour and went up to them.