'Look down there,' Mark said.
A view of the North African coast bordering the vivid Mediterranean was spread for them. At such a height, no movement was visible. Land and sea were laid out in the sunlight, looking oddly artificial; like a vast, brilliantly coloured relief map beneath a huge arc light. The blue was cut off sharply by the green of the coast, which gave way gradually to the darker hues of the mountains to the south. To Margaret's unaccustomed eyes the plane was suspended almost stationary above an untrue world.
'Are we moving at all?' she asked.
For answer, Mark pointed to the speed indicator. The needle was hovering around the two-hundred mark, and she could see that it was slowly making its way higher.
'It's the height,' he explained. 'If there were any clouds about, you'd realise our speed. As it is, you can't, but you should be getting your first glimpse of the New Sea within the hour.'
The tall peaks of the Tell Atlas rose before them and Mark sent the Sun Bird soaring higher still. The speed increased as the resistance of the thin atmosphere outside grew less. He glanced at another instrument for assurance that the air supply was maintaining correct pressure within.
The mighty range of mountains now looked like a badly crumpled cloth far below. Before long the broad Plateau of the Shotts slid into view, the lakes upon it glittering like pieces of broken mirror casually dropped among the mountains. Beyond, on the starboard bow, sprawled the final spurs of the great Atlas range, the Saharan Atlas, the walls of the desert, where they ended stood the ancient town of Biskra, still guarding, as it had for untold centuries, the pass to the north. Mark changed his course a few points east. And then, as they cleared a range of lesser mountains, came their first view of the latest wonder of the world, the New Sea.
The idea of the New Sea was not in itself new. Back in the nineteenth century the great De Lesseps—previous to his entanglements over the projected Suez Canal—had started his countrymen toying with the New Sea scheme much in the same way as the English played with the idea of a Channel Tunnel. Then, after being for almost a century a matter of merely academic interest it had, in 1955, suddenly become practical politics. The French, in fact, decided to Hood a part of the Sahara Desert.
That the undertaking was within the range of possibility had long been admitted by many experts, but until France had discovered Italy's willingness to enter into partnership, the financial obstacles had proved insurmountable. Through mutual assistance and for their mutual benefit the two nations had gone to work upon the most ambitious engineering scheme yet projected.
Nature has chosen to frown upon many parts of the world, but in few places has she glowered more fiercely than in North Africa, and it would seem likely that the centre of her disapproval in that region was Tripolitania. There would be difficulty in finding an equal-sized piece of land with a better claim to the title of world's worst colony. There was little more than a strip of fertile coast closely backed by the most hopeless of deserts, but for all that the Italians, for reasons of pride and prestige, had clung to it with a magnificent obstinacy. And now the French scheme offered them the opportunity of turning a liability into an asset.
France could foresee in the creation of this inland sea several advantages for herself First, she hoped that southern Tunis and a part of Algeria would benefit. The New Sea was to be begun by merging the Tunisian lakes—or 'Shotts—which were already below sea level. It was argued that the land about it would rapidly become fertile. Trees would grow, clouds would follow, bringing rain; the rain would induce still more vegetation, and so on until the erstwhile desert sands should bloom. Moreover, Tripolitania, lying on one shore of the sea, would also benefit, thus she would be enabled to support colonists from Italy and so lessen the dangerous condition of overpopulation on the other side of the Alps. Italy, once satisfied that there was no catch in the plan, became equally enthusiastic. If her barren property should become fertile, at least in part, colonial expansion would give her a chance to build up a yet larger population. The great day when the might of the Roman Empire should be revived would be brought a step nearer.
The conferences between the two nations were remarkable both for their rapidity in making decisions and for their lack of discord. Early in 1956 the work was put in hand, and the enterprise was pushed forward with such determination and success that in March 1962, water began to gush from the first of the great pipes into the sandy waste.
Now, in September 1964, the lakes, large and small, were already merged. Seen from the air, one great shining sheet of water stretched out of view to the east and to the south. Here, in the north-west corner, the sea would not extend a great deal farther. Already it was lapping at the lower slopes of the foothills, and though its level would rise, its advance would be small. The new coast was dotted with patches of high ground still above the flood level; temporary islands soon to be submerged. Over the lower parts the water had already risen until only bunches of green palm heads broke the surface, looking like beds of reeds.
Mark put the Sun Bird into a dive and they crossed the water's edge close to an Arab village of white, flat-roofed houses. It had stood upon a slight knoll, but already the water was creeping in through the doors of the highest dwellings, while the lower could be seen, still standing, beneath the surface. They would not last long, he reflected. Built as they were, for the most part, of baked mud, they would soon revert, crumbling and sliming away to leave no sign save a few stones. There was something desolate and unhappy about this village, condemned after centuries of sunny existence to a watery dissolution. A faint sense of depression touched the two in the plane.
'It makes everything seem so impermanent,' Margaret thought aloud. 'It's like destroying a piece of history. I know it's silly and sentimental to feel like that, but I do. For hundreds of years people have lived and fought here—camel caravans have plodded across these sands; and now they'll never do it again.' She paused, and then added: 'It's the irrevocability of it, I suppose. There's always something sad—and rather frightening—when one thinks of things as irrevocable.'
Mark caught her mood and agreed with it.
'Yes. There will be new towns of flat, white houses by the new shores. They'll look the same, perhaps, but they won't be the same. The air of changelessness will have gone for good—you can't inject history. It's a funny thing that we always see the past through rose-coloured glasses, unless we really set out to get at the truth.... I mean, that village was undoubtedly squalid, life was hard in it and probably cruel, yet one regrets its passing. A queer streak of conservatism we've all got.'
He drove the plane still lower, passing over a grove of palms which bore their dates though the trunks were now awash. Children had climbed the trees to gather the last harvest they would yield, dropping the fruit down into crude boats moored below. They looked up and waved to the plane as it passed.
The two flew on for some minutes without speaking. The New Sea stretched beneath them to the horizon now in every direction, save the north. Mark pointed to the mountains which held it back.
'One day they'll build a pleasure city on those slopes, and all Europe will come here to bask in the sun and swim in the sea. I shall be there. And you?'
She considered, smiling slightly.
'It may be a long time to wait. Suppose I get old and ugly before they've built their city?'
'My dear, don't be blasphemous. There are still some impossibilities even in this world. Older you must certainly get, but ugly ... Margaret, if you should live to be a hundred, it couldn't happen ...'