|
             
| |
The Curse
Arthur C. Clarke
For three hundred years, while its fame
spread across the world, the little town had
stood here at the river's bend. Time and
change had touched it lightly; it had heard
from afar both the coming of the Armada
and the fall of the Third Reich, and all
Man's wars had passed it by.
Now it was gone, as though it had never
been. In a moment of time the toil and
treasure of centuries had been swept
away. The vanished streets could still be
traced as faint marks in the vitrified ground,
but of the houses, nothing remained. Steel
and concrete, plaster and ancient oak - it
had mattered little at the end. In the
moment of death they had stood together,
transfixed by the glare of the detonating
bomb. Then, even before they could flash
into fire, the blast waves had reached them
and they had ceased to be. Mile upon mile 20
the ravening hemisphere of flame had
expanded over the level farmlands, and
from its heart had risen the twisting
totempole that had haunted the minds of
men for so long, and to such little purpose.
The rocket had been astray, one of the
last ever to be fired. It was hard to say for
what target it had been intended. Certainly
not London, for London was no longer a
military objective. London, indeed, was no
longer anything at all. Long ago the men
whose duty it was had calculated that three
of the hydrogen bombs would be sufficient
for that rather small target. In sending
twenty, they had been perhaps a little overzealous.
This was not one of the twenty that had
done their work so well. Both its
destination and its origin were unknown:
whether it had come across the lonely 40
Arctic wastes or far above the waters of
the Atlantic, no one could tell and there
were few now who cared. Once there had
been men who had known such things,
who had watched from afar the flight of the
great projectiles and had sent their own
missiles to meet them. Often that
appointment had been kept, high above
the Earth where the sky was black and
sun and stars shared the heavens
together. Then there had bloomed for a
moment that indescribable flame, sending
out into space a message that in centuries
to come other eyes than Man's would
see and understand.
But that had been days ago, at the
beginning of the War. The defenders had
long since been brushed aside, as they
had known they must be. They had held
on to life long enough to discharge their 60
duty; too late, the enemy had learned his
mistake. He would launch no further
rockets; those still falling he had
dispatched hours ago on secret
trajectories that had taken them far out
into space. They were returning now
unguided and inert, waiting in vain for the
signals that should lead them to their
destinies. One by one they were falling at
random upon a world which they could
harm no more.
The river had already overflowed its
banks; somewhere down its course the
land had twisted beneath that colossal
hammer-blow and the way to the sea was
no longer open. Dust was still falling in a
fine rain, as it would do for days as Man's
cities and treasures returned to the world
that had given them birth. But the sky was
no longer wholly darkened, and in the 80
west the sun was settling through banks
of angry cloud.
A church had stood here by the river's
edge, and though no trace of the building
remained, the gravestones that the years
had gathered round it still marked its
place. Now the stone slabs lay in parallel
rows, snapped off at their bases and
pointing mutely along the line of the blast.
Some were half flattened into the ground,
others had been cracked and blistered by
terrific heat, but many still bore the
messages they had carried down the
centuries in vain.
The light died in the west and the
unnatural crimson faded from the sky. Yet
still the graven words could be clearly
read, lit by a steady, unwavering radiance,
too faint to be seen by day but strong
enough to banish night. The land was 100
burning: for miles the glow of its
radioactivity was reflected from the clouds.
Through the glimmering landscape wound
the dark ribbon of the steadily widening
river, and as the waters submerged the
land that deadly glow continued
unchanging in the depths. In a generation,
perhaps, it would have faded from sight,
but a hundred years might pass before life
would safely come this way again.
Timidly the waters touched the worn
gravestone that for more than three
hundred years had laid before the
vanished altar. The church that had
sheltered it so long had given it some
protection at the last, and only a slight
discolouration of the rock told of the fires
that had passed this way. In the corpselight
of the dying land, the archaic words
could still be traced as the water rose 120
around them, breaking at last in tiny
ripples across the stone. Line by line the
epitaph upon which so many millions had
gazed slipped beneath the conquering
waters. For a little while the letters could
still be faintly seen; then they were gone
forever.
Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,
To digg the dvst encloased heare
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones,
And cvrst be he yt moves my bones.
Undisturbed through all eternity the
poet could sleep in safety now: in the
silence and darkness above his head, the
Avon was seeking its new outlet to the
sea.
© Arthur C. Clarke
from British Short Stories of Today published by 140
Penguin Books Ltd
|
