Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm Read Free Book Online

explosives in the dam eight miles up the river. Others formed a scouting party.
           David and Celia left the meeting early. He had volunteered for everything, and each time had been turned down. He was not one of the expendable ones. The rains had become "hot" again, and the people were all sleeping in the cave. David and Celia, Walt, Vlasic, the others who worked in the various labs, all slept there on cots. In one of the small offices David held Celia's hand and they whispered before they fell asleep. Their talk was of their childhood.
           Long after Celia fell asleep he stared into the blackness, still holding her hand. She had grown even thinner, and earlier that week when he had tried to get her to leave the lab to rest, Walt had said, "Leave her be." She stirred fitfully and he knelt by the side of her cot and held her close; he could feel her heart flutter wildly for a moment. Then she was still again, and slowly he released her and sat on the stone floor with his eyes closed. Later he heard Walt moving about, and the creaking of his cot in the next office. David was getting stiff, and finally he returned to his own bed and fell asleep.
           The next day the people worked to get everything up to high ground. They would lose three houses when the dam was blown up, the barn near the road, and the road itself. Nothing could be spared, and board by board they carried a barn up the hillside and stacked the pieces. Two days later the signal was given and the dam was destroyed.
           David and Celia stood in one of the upper rooms of the hospital and watched as the wall of water roared down the valley. It was like a jet takeoff; a crowd furious with an umpire's decision; an express train out of control; a roar like nothing he had ever heard, or like everything he had ever heard, recombined to make this noise that shook the building, that vibrated in his bones. A wall of water, fifteen feet high, twenty feet high, raced down the valley, accelerating as it came, smashing, destroying everything in its path.
           When the roar was gone and the water stood high on the land, swirling, thick with debris, Celia said in a faint voice, "Is it worth this, David?"
           He tightened his arm about her shoulders. "We had to do it," he said.
           "I know. But it seems so futile sometimes. We're all dead, fighting right down the line, but dead. As dead as those men must be by now."
           "We're making it work, honey. You know that. You've been working right there. Thirty new lives!"
           She shook her head. "Thirty more dead people. Do you remember Sunday school, David? They took me every week. Did you go?"
           He nodded.
           "And Wednesdaynight Bible school? I keep thinking of it now. And I wonder if this isn't God's doing after all. I can't help it. I keep wondering. And I had become an atheist." She laughed and suddenly spun around. "Let's go to bed, now. Here in the hospital. Let's pick a fancy room, a suite. . . ."
           He reached for her, but suddenly a violent gust of wind drove a hard blast of rain against the window. It came like that, without preliminary, just a sudden deluge. Celia shuddered. "God's will," she said dully. "We have to get back to the cave, don't we?"
           They walked through the empty hospital, through the long, dimly lighted passage, through the large chamber where the people were trying to find comfortable positions on the cots and benches, through the smaller passages and finally into the lab office.
           "How many people did we kill?" Celia asked, stepping out of her jeans. She turned her back to put her clothes on the foot of her cot. Her buttocks were nearly as flat as an adolescent boy's. When she faced him again, her ribs seemed to be straining against her skin. She looked at him for a moment, and then came to him and held his head tight against her chest as he sat on