I’ll tell you what I do know: the tide is out, and the waves roll up the rivermouth. At first it looks like each wave is pushing the whole flow of the river inland, because all the visible movement is in that direction. Little trailers of the wave roll up the bank, break over the hard sand and add their bit to the flat’s stippled crosshatching. For a time it looks like the wave will push upriver all the way around the first bend. But underneath its white jumble the river has been flowing out to sea all the while, and finally the wave stalls on top of this surge, breaks into a confused chop, and suddenly the entire disturbance is being borne out to sea—until it’s swept under the next incoming wave, and the movement turns upriver again. Each wave is a different size, and meets a different resistance, and as a result there is an infinite variety of rippling, breaking, chopping, gliding… The pattern is never once the same. Do you see what I mean? Do you understand me, Steve Nicolin? You rather be holding on to what can be made to last than out hunting the new. But good luck to you, brother. Do some good for us out there.
As for me: the moon lays a mirrorflake road to the horizon. The snow on the beach melted yesterday, but it might as well be a beach of snow the way it looks in this light, against the edge of the black sea. Above the cliffs stand the dark hillsides of the valley, cupped, tilted to pour into the ocean. Onofre. This damp last page is nearly full. And my hand is getting cold—it’s getting so stiff I can’t make the letters, these words are all big and scrawling, taking up the last of the space, thank God. Oh be done with it. There’s an owl, flitting over the river. I’ll stay right here and fill another book.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
THE WILD SHORE
Copyright © 1984 by Kim Stanley Robinson
All rights reserved.
This book was originally published in 1984 by Ace Science Fiction Books, a division of The Berkley Publishing Group, New York.
Maps by Mark Stein
An Orb Edition
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10010
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Robinson, Kim Stanley.
The wild shore / Kim Stanley Robinson.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-312-89036-2 (paperback)
1. Orange County (Calif.)—Fiction. I. Title. II. Series: Robinson, Kim Stanley. Three Californias.
PS3568.O2893W55 1995
813'.54—dc20
95-4273
CIP
eISBN 9781466861329
First eBook edition: December 2013