“I like the apricot-colored one.” Mildred stooped to rub her fingers through a bush of flowering lavender, cupping her hands and breathing in deeply. “Lovely.”
The still water of the large, rectangular pond was covered with waxen lilies, pink and ivory, and they could see gigantic carp moving slowly through the mysterious deeps, with smaller goldfish darting between the stems of the plants.
“There’s path,” said Jak, who had taken the lead, showing no interest in the array of shrubs, trees and flowers, eager to get on to the viewing spot so that he could see the river.
They passed along the side of a hill, richly planted, that dropped away into a steep valley, with gigantic pines at its bottom, and a narrow stream winding through under an ornamental wooden bridge.
“I believe that I can hear the river,” Doc said, pausing to gather breath and sitting on a bench that overlooked the lovely valley.
There was a whispering sound, like surf on a distant beach, from somewhere ahead of them.
Jak was a long way in front, his flaring snow white hair leading them like a beacon along the twisting path. The ground leveled out, and the rich vegetation faded away until they were walking over bare rock.
“Noise is louder,” Mildred said. “I thought that Old Miss was the only river running through Memphis.”
“Probably was.” Ryan paused and looked back, seeing the fortified mansion, standing on a promontory, perfectly placed for defense against any attackers. “But Tennessee was one of the states hardest hit by the earth shifts after the nuking. We’ve seen that already. Volcanoes and swamps. So a new river isn’t much of a surprise.”
“There’s the viewing point that the guard mentioned,” J.B. said.
It was a reinforced platform of concrete tied in with steel girders to the bedrock at the top of the cliffs. Ryan noticed that much of the stone all around the ville seemed oddly raw, as if it had been buried for eons of time and had only been pushed out into daylight a hundred or so years earlier. The sides of the gorge down to the foaming ribbon of the river, several hundred feet below, were also fresh looking, with streaks of light stone among the darker gray.
Jak was hanging on to a wire fence that had been built around the edge of the platform, staring down into the deeps. “Can’t dive straight into the river. Slopes away steep, then drops sheer for last hundred feet or so.”
They all joined him, and Doc whistled softly between his excellent teeth. “Upon my soul, but that is a fine spectacle. To view it gives an odd tightening of the scrotum, if you will pardon my language, ladies.”
Mildred tutted. “Keep your tight scrotum to yourself, will you, Doc?”
“But you know that feeling of part thrill and part primitive, atavistic terror of heights, madam. To go over there is to die, without a doubt.”
Jak was swinging back and forth on the flimsy fence, oblivious to the fact that some of its base fastenings had come loose and it was only hanging in place by a few rusting pins. “If dived clean down be all right. Straight into river. Long as no shallows or rocks.”
The Armorer was fanning himself with his hat, wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “Quite wrong, Jak.”
“How?”
J.B. sniffed. “I saw a mag article once about high divers. Seems there’s an optimum height, no matter how skillful you are, where your momentum gathers and you accelerate until hitting water’s like hitting a sheet of marble.”
“Thirty-two feet per second, per second,” Mildred said. “One of the few facts I recall from high school physics. Rate of acceleration. Means in the first second you fall thirty-two feet. Sixty-four feet the next second. Ninety-six in the third second. And so on and on, faster and faster, until you reach maximum speed, whatever that is.”
Krysty threw back her head, letting the strong breeze blow through her flaming hair. “I read that high divers also got punchy after a bit, because of the repeated damage to their brain. So keep away from the edge, Jak.”