And transcontinental shipping is somewhat more difficult, with trucks and the freight-railroads obliged to take the sea ferries across the Nebraska Sea. We shall never know what the United States was like with its numerous coast-to-coast highways busy with trucks and private cars. Still, the ferry ride is certainly a welcome break after days of driving, and for those who wish a glimpse of what it must have been like, there is always the Cross-Canada Throughway and the magnificent U. S. Highway 73 looping north through Minnesota and passing through the giant port of Alexis, North Dakota, shipping center for the wheat of Manitoba and crossroad of a nation.
The political situation has long been a thorny problem. Only tattered remnants of the eight submerged states remained after the flood, but none of them wanted to surrender its autonomy. The tiny fringe of Kansas seemed, for a time, ready to merge with contiguous Missouri, but following the lead of the Arkansas Forever faction, the remaining population decided to retain political integrity. This has resulted in the continuing anomaly of the seven “fringe states” represented in Congress by the usual two senators each, though the largest of them is barely the size of Connecticut and all are economically indistinguishable from their neighboring states.
Fortunately it was decided some years ago that Oklahoma, only one of the eight to have completely disappeared, could not in any sense be considered to have a continuing political existence. So, though there are still families who proudly call themselves Oklahomans, and the Oklahoma Oil Company continues to pump oil from its submerged real estate, the state has in fact disappeared from the American political scene.
But this is by now no more than a petty annoyance, to raise a smile when the talk gets around to the question of States’ rights. Not even the tremendous price the country paid for its new sea—fourteen million dead, untold property destroyed—really offsets the asset we enjoy today. The heart of the continent, now open to the shipping of the world, was once dry and landlocked, cut off from the bustle of trade and the ferment of world culture.
It would indeed seem odd to an American of the ‘50s or ‘60s of the last century to imagine sailors from the merchant fleets of every nation walking the streets of Denver, fresh ashore at Newport, only fifteen miles away. Or to imagine Lincoln, Fargo, Kansas City and Dallas as world ports and great manufacturing centers. Utterly beyond their ken would be Roswell, New Mexico; Benton, Wyoming; Westport, Missouri; and the other new ports of over a million inhabitants each which have developed on the new harbors of the inland sea.
Unimaginable too would have been the general growth of population in the states surrounding the new sea. As the water tables rose and manufacturing and trade moved in to take advantage of the just-created axis of world communication, a population explosion was touched off of which we are only now seeing the diminution. This new westering is to be ranked with the first surge of pioneers which created the American west. But what a difference! Vacation paradises bloom, a new fishing industry thrives; her water road is America’s main artery of trade, and fleets of all the world sail . . . where once the prairie schooner made its laborious and dusty way west!
The Great Disaster may be natural or man-made; the new environment to which men must adjust may be created by the stilt untamed forces of gravity, of flood, fire, ice age, sunspots, or meteorites. It may be the by-product of thoughtless technology, or it may be a planned holocaust, the ultimate atomic war, bringing with it such chemical changes in atmosphere, soil, or genes as will change the face (and bowels) of the Earth itself.
But there might also be a new kind of disaster, a trouble truly alien in origin. . . .
THE FACES OUTSIDE
Bruce McAllister
I wanted to call her Soft Breast, because she is soft when I hold her to me. But the Voice told me to call her Diane. When I call her Diane, I have a pleasant feeling, and she seems closer to me. She likes the name “Diane.” The Voice knew what was best, of course, as it always does.
I must mate with her every day, when the water is brightest. The Voice says so. It also says that I am in a “tank,” and that the water is brightest when the “sun” is over the “tank.” I do not understand the meaning of “sun,” but the Voice says that “noon” is when the “sun” is over the “tank.” I must mate with Diane every “noon.”
I do know what the “tank” is. It is a very large thing filled with water, and having four “corners,” one of which is the Cave where Diane and I sleep when the water is black like the ink of the squid and cold like dead fish. But we stay warm. There is the “floor” of the “tank,” the “floor” being where all the rock and seaweed is, with all the crawling fish and crabs, where Diane and I walk and sleep. There are four “sides.” “Sides” are smooth and blue walls, and have “view-ports”—round, transparent areas—on them. The Voice says that the things in the “view-ports” are Faces. I have a face, as does Diane. But the cracked, flat things with small lights circling about them are not pretty like Diane’s face. The Voice says that the Faces have bodies, like myself, and Diane. No body could be like Diane’s. I think I should be quite sick if I saw the bodies of the Faces.
The Voice then says that the Faces are watching us, as we sometimes watch the porpoises. It took a very long time to grow used to having the Faces watch us, as Diane and I came together, but we learned to do it as simply as we swim and sleep.
But Diane does not have babies. I am very sad when I see the porpoises and whales with their young. Diane and I sleep together in the Cave; Diane is very warm and soft. We sleep in happiness, but when we are awake, we are lonely. I question the Voice about a baby for Diane, but the Voice is always silent.
I grow to hate the Faces in the “view-ports.” They are always watching, watching. The Voice says that they are enemies, and bad. The Faces have not tried to hurt me; but I must think of them as enemies because the Voice says so. I ask, bad, like the shark? The Voice says, no, worse than the sharks and eels. It says that the Faces are evil.
The “tank” must be high, because the water is high. I have gone once to the surface, and, although I could get used to it, the light was too much for my eyes. It took me two hundred and seventy kicks to the surface; it took me three thousand steps from our Cave to the opposite “side.” The “tank” is very large, otherwise the whales would not be happy.
The fish are many, but the dangers are few. I have seen the sharks kill. But the shark does not come near me if I see it and am afraid. Sometimes I have caught it sneaking up behind me, but when I turn it leaves quickly. I have questioned the Voice about why the sharks leave. It does not know. It has no one to ask.
Today the “sun” must be very large, or powerful, or bright, because the water is brighter than most days.
When I awoke Diane was not beside me. The rock of the Cave is jagged, so as I make my way from our bed of cool and slick seaweed, toward the entrance, I scrape my leg on the fifth kick. Not much blood comes from the cut. That is fortunate, because when there is blood the sharks come.