Many Waters Part 18

Dennys, picking up at least part of Sandy's thoughts, said, "Still-I wouldn't want Tiglah to be drowned. And I guess she's going to be."

Sandy felt a chill move over his skin, despite the sun, which was rising higher and hotter. "And Yalith?"

Dennys picked up his basket. "Oholibamah is j.a.pheth's wife- Ham, Shem, and j.a.pheth, with their wives, go on the ark. That's the story. Oholibamah loves Yalith. I mean, they're really friends. I don't think Oholibamah would let Yalith drown."

"If she doesn't have any say about who goes on the ark, can she prevent it?"

Dennys said, "Hey, we're talking as if that old ark story is true. But Noah doesn't seem to have any inkling of it, and he talks with this El of theirs."

"G.o.d." Sandy shifted his basket of onions from one shoulder to the other. "Isn't there some kind of flood story in all cultures?"

"I think so," Dennys replied. "I mean, even in our day the planet is still shifting its plates and causing earthquakes. We've had an awful lot of weird weather, volcanoes erupting all over the planet, and tornadoes and hurricanes."

"Well, about those flood stories," Sandy continued. "There must have been some kind of major weather cataclysm."

"Yeah, but there've been wild weather patterns all through history. Ice ages. Whatever it was that finished off the dinosaurs, a comet, or that Nemesis star. Or the earth shifting slightly on its axis and altering climate and seasons. So a big flood isn't all that impossible."

Sandy said in a flat voice, "Maybe we'll get drowned, too. Maybe it would be better than being nuked."

"More inevitable than nuking. Nothing that hasn't happened yet has to happen." Dennys pushed into the tent and wearily set his basket of onions down near Grandfather Lamech's cooking stones. Sandy followed suit. They looked over to where the old man lay napping on his pile of skins, eyes closed, breathing shallowly. Higgaion was curled at his feet, and little bubbling sounds came rhythmically from his trunk.

Sandy said, thoughtfully, "If we get nuked, it will be because of people. Power and greed and corruption. It wouldn't be a natural disaster. But a flood is a natural disaster."

Dennys nodded. "Nuking would be something completely different. Not natural."

"Yeah, but remember, Dad says it doesn't have to happen. People can restrain themselves. We've had the power for half a century, and we've refrained. But if the plates of the earth slide, that can't be stopped. If a comet should hit us, we couldn't stop it. And storms and blizzards. Those are inevitable."

"When we had the hurricane, and the big oak was ripped out by the roots, n.o.body could have stopped that. It is different-things that can be stopped, and things that can't, like tornadoes and earthquakes and-"

"And floods," Sandy said flatly.

Grandfather Lamech startled them with a loud snore.

"It doesn't do any good to talk about it," Dennys said. "Any of it. If there's going to be a flood, we can't do anything about it. But we can work in Grandfather Lamech's garden."

The old man snored again.

"Right now, we'd better nap, too," Sandy suggested.

Dennys dropped onto the clean sleeping skins which had been provided for him. "Hey, it's good to be back with you again."

But he missed Yalith's gentle fingers against his burned skin.

Every day, someone from Noah's tenthold came to Grandfather Lamech's tent with the main meal. When Yalith and Oholibamah came, they often stayed to eat with the old man and the twins. Yalith was equally gracious with each of them, but sometimes she sat looking at them in bemus.e.m.e.nt, letting Oholibamah do the work. The twins, in their turn, looked at Yalith and did not look at each other.

Occasionally, one of the men brought the meal. j.a.pheth, like his wife and Yalith, would stay to eat, to talk.

Shem, who was the hunter, was cordial, but not chatty.

He would stand, leaning on his spear, until he was certain that Grandfather Lamech had everything he needed. Then he would leave.

j.a.pheth had told the twins that when Shem went hunting, he would always stop to thank the animal he had killed, thank it for giving them the food necessary for life.

"Do all the hunters give thanks?" Sandy asked.

"Not anymore. I think they used to long ago. But now most of the hunters just kill, and often more than they need. Some kill just for the sake of killing."

Dennys said, "That is true in our time, too. At home, our land is posted against hunters and trappers, but that doesn't stop the jacklighters."

"The what?" j.a.pheth asked.

Dennys tried to explain. "Hunters who shine a bright light into the eyes of the deer. It blinds them and they freeze and can't move, and then the hunters shoot. Jacklighting is illegal, but that doesn't stop a lot of people."

"A lot?" j.a.pheth asked.

Dennys stated, "A few can seem like a lot." Sandy nodded. The twins liked what j.a.pheth had told them about Shem.

One morning Anah and Etisheba came with the food for the day. Anah, Ham's wife, was obviously Tiglah's sister, but her hair did not have the brilliance of Tiglah's, and her eyes were not as rich a green. She was becoming flabby, with dimples all over, in her cheeks, her chin, her elbows, her knees. She was softer than Tiglah.

Elisheba was like Shem, solid, muscled, kind. At home, in the twins' part of the world, she would have looked comfortable in a flowered housedress, and she would scrub her kitchen floor every day, and shift all the furniture to sweep under it. There was something more familiar about Elisheba than about many of the other women, who had an Oriental strangeness. Anah's and Tigtah's eyes were almond-shaped, their cheekbones high.

After the pot had been set on the stones, Anah put her hands on her rounded hips, looking in open admiration at Sandy and Dennys. "Another hundred years and you'll be the most handsome men on the desert."

Dennys looked at Grandfather Lamech's wrinkled face and trembling hands, thinking that the old man, at any rate, was not going to live for another hundred years. And even if the flood held off, he and Sandy did not have the life span of these tiny desert people. But he said nothing. He did not like Anah; Anah was Tiglah's sister.

Elisheba picked up the empty pot from the day before, which the twins had scoured clean with sand. "I wonder if they'll grow wings?" She tended to speak of Sandy and Dennys as though they could not hear.

"I think they're a new breed," Anah said. "not seraph or nephil, but a completely different kind of giant." Her gaze slid from one twin to the other, then back to Elisheba. "What," she suggested, "would you think of having two husbands?"

Elisheba laughed. "One is all I can manage."

"Thank you for the dinner." Sandy turned away from Anah's gaze, which was uncomfortably reminiscent of Tiglah's. "It smells good."

"And please thank Matred for us."

Anah put her fingers lightly against Sandy's wrist. "You're welcome to come eat in Noah's tent at any time, you know that."

Sandy was glad when she was gone.

The big tent was dark and quiet. Matred poked her elbow against Noah's ribs. "What about Mahlah?"

"Humph?" Noah mumbled sleepily.

"Husband. It cannot have escaped your notice that Mahlah is with child."

Noah rolled over. "I have been very busy."

"Noah."

"It is time Mahlah brought her young man to our tent," Noah said. "We will prepare a feast."

"It is not a young man," Matred said. "At least, it is not one of our young men, and I don't think they're young, I think they are old, far older than any of us, even Grandfather Methuselah."

"Woman, what-or who-are you talking about?"

"Mahlah," Matred said impatiently, "and her nephil."

Noah sat up. "What are you trying to tell me?"

"I am telling you"-Matred kept her voice low-"that Mahlah is with child by a nephil, and that she has had some kind of nephil wedding." Quickly she put her hand over Noah's mouth to stifle his roar of outrage.

"This is not how things are done." He pushed her hand away, but kept his voice under control. "There has been no wedding feast. No nephil has come to our tent."

"The nephilim do not do things the way we do. Their customs are not our customs."

"This is Mahlah's will? She loves this nephil?"

"So it would seem. She sends messages by Yalith. She does not want to tell us these things herself."

Noah growled. "It is the way of things to lose a daughter to another man's tent, but not without the proper formalities."

"When Mahlah does speak to me"-Matred's voice was heavy-"she keeps reminding me that times have changed."

Noah sighed. "It is not what we would have chosen for our daughter, but after all, Oholibamah-"

Macred leaned against her husband, and he put his arm around her. "I would rather have it one of our young giants. At least they are truly young, and I think they are good."

"They fit in with us," Noah agreed, "and the nephilim do not. It seems now as though our twins have been with us always."

"The moons have slipped by," Matred said. "Seven or eight of them, at least."

"They have worked wonders in my father's gardens and groves. It is hard work, and yet they never complain."

"Perhaps Yalith-" Matred started, then said, "It is time we asked them to take another evening off and come to our tent. I wish Mahlah had not been lured by the nephilim. They glitter, but I do not think they are loving."

"I will speak to Mahlah." Noah pulled Matred down onto the sleeping skins.

"If she will speak with you," Matred said.

The twins enjoyed their visits to the big tent, the noise and singing and laughter. Once, at the time of the full moon, Noah's married daughters were there with their husbands and children, and there was dancing and music and loud quarreling and reconciling.

"I wish Mahlah were here," Matred said.

Less than a moon later, Anah and Elisheba, bringing a big pot of vegetable stew to Grandfather Lamech's tent, again invited the twins to the big tent. "But you should feel free to come more often," Anah said. "You don't have to wait for an invitation."

Sandy felt her eyes inviting him. He turned away. "We don't like to leave Grandfather Lamech too often."

Higgaion, lying stretched out by the embers, swished his stringy little tail, raised his head, and put it back down with a thump.

Again Anah lavished her smile on Sandy. "You're getting nearly as brown as one of us, and you have freckles all across your nose."

"The Den, too." Elisheba's smile was friendly. "I never believed he'd make it. Matred thought he was going to die. But Oholibamah is a healer. And Yalith was marvelous with him."

Sandy felt a sharp twinge of jealousy. When Yalith came with the night-light or with the evening meal, she was careful, overcareful, he thought, to smile no more at one twin than at the other. "All that was a long time ago." He was surprised at how cross his voice sounded. "We've both been well for months now."

"For what?"

"Oh. Many moons." Moon and month did come from the same root, after all. but the people of the oasis thought of time in moons and crops and the movement of the stars.

"Yalith will be looking for a husband one of these years." Anah's voice was suggestive.

Elisheba was brusque. "Yalith will make a good wife. But not yet."

Anah's eyes strayed from twin to twin. "Hmm." She pursed her lips.

Elisheba jiggled Anah's arm. "We'd better be getting back, or Matred will be after us."

"She doesn't scare me," Anah said.

"Who said anything about being scared? There's a lot of work to do, and she's getting too old to do it all herself."

"Too fat," Anah muttered.

"Who's talking?"

Still bickering, the two women left, taking the empty pot with them.

The twins went out to the vegetable garden, putting on Matred's straw-woven hats. The sun was not yet high, the shadows still long. "We'll stay just a little while," Sandy said.

They worked hard. The weeds, it seemed, grew up as fast as they could clear them. Weeding was a never-ending Job. They did not mention Yalith. They had more than enough to do to keep them busy.

Grandfather Lamech no longer came out to the garden with them, but spent most of the day in the tent, drowsing.

After the long afternoon sleep he would sometimes accompany them to the well, where they drew water, filling large clay jars, one for use in the tent. The others were for the garden, which Higgaion helped them water, spraying with his trunk, which was almost as good as a hose.

"It's good to be working in a garden," Sandy said, "even if it's not the garden at home."

"Who do you suppose is tending to the garden at home?"

Dennys asked. "It's got to be at least harvest time by now. That is, if time there is pa.s.sing like time here."

"Everything is different here," Sandy said. "People living longer, for instance."

"So maybe time is different, too. At home we had alarm clocks and those electronic bells at school, and here time just slides by and I hardly even notice it."