“And now you are as I, Doctor, for you have gazed upon Him. He has changed you, and you are no longer yourself as before, and He has taken a piece of your soul.”
“Listen, Ha’apu, I don’t want to offend you by attacking your religion, but that was just a fish, that’s all. A monstrous big fish, but no more. I’m the same sea-doctor, and you’re the same Matai, and we’re just lucky all I lost was a few toes and such. Understand?”
“Of course, Dr. Poplar.” Ha’apu turned, went up to the bridge.
Changed indeed! He crawled over to the low railing near the stern, looked down into the waters. Small fish swam down there, magnified and distorted by the sea. He shivered just a little.
He would have married Elaine anyway, of course. And if she’d been threatened by anything, he’d have stepped in to defend her, wouldn’t he? Ha’apu fired the engines and the Vatai started to move.
Well, wouldn’t he?
Maybe He knew.
163
Polonaise
This was written for a volume of alternate-history stories, the “What if the South had won the Civil War?” type. I went back a bit further than that, to a period of European history little studied in this country. It all came out of my liking for a writer named Henryk Sienkewicz —and I don’t mean his Quo Vadis? I’m talking about his other books, the good stuff.
Henryk who? Among other things, he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1905. And his obscurity is one reason I chose the alternate history I did. Another is the fact that it could have happened.
Then we wouldn’t have been stuck with all these American jokes.