Arthur C Clarke - Transience

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Transience

By: Arthur C. Clarke

The forest, which came almost to the edge of the beach, climbed away into the distance up the

flanks of the low, misty hills. Underfoot, the sand was course and mixed with myriads of broken

shells. Here and there the retreating tide had left long streamers of weed trailed across the beach.

The rain, which seldom ceased, had for the moment passed inland, but ever and again large, angry

drops would beat tiny craters into the sand. It was hot and sultry, for the war between sun and rain

was never-ending. Sometimes the mists would lift for a while and the hills would stand out clearly

above the land they guarded. The hills arced in a semicircle along the bay, following the line of the

beach, and beyond them could sometimes be seen, at an immense distance, a wall of mountains

lying beneath perpetual clouds. The trees grew everywhere, softening the contours of the land so

that the hills blended smoothly into each other. Only in one place could the bare, uncovered rock be

seen, where long ago some fault had weakened the foundations of the hills, so that for a mile or

more the sky line fell sharply away, drooping down to the sea like a broken wing. Moving with the

cautious alertness of a wild animal, the child came through the stunted trees at the forest’s edge.

For a moment he hesitated; then, since there seemed to be no danger, walked slowly out onto the

beach. He was naked, heavily built, and had course black hair tangled over his shoulders. His face,

brutish though it was, might almost have passed in human society, but the eyes would have

betrayed him. They were not the eyes of an animal, for there was something in their depths that no

animal had ever known. But it was no more than a promise. For this child, as for all his race, the

light of reason had yet to dawn. Only a hairsbreadth still separated him from the beasts among

whom he dwelt. The tribe had not long since come into this tribe, and he was the first ever to set

foot upon the lonely beach. What had lured him from the known dangers of the forest into the

unknown and therefore more terrible dangers of this new element. he could not have told even had

he possessed the power of speech. Slowly he walked out to the water’s edge, always with backward

glances at the forest behind him; as he did so, for the first time in all history, the level sand bore

upon its face the footprints it would one day know so well. He had met water before, but it had

always been bounded and confined by land. Now it stretched endlessly before him, and the sound

of its labouring beat ceaselessly upon his ears.

With the timeless patience of the savage, he stood on the moist sand that the water had just

relinquished, and as the tide line moved out he followed it slowly, pace by pace. When the waves

reached towards his feet with a sudden access of energy, he would retreat a little way toward the

land. But something held him here at the water’s edge, while his shadow lengthened along the

sands and the cold evening wind began to rise around him. Perhaps into his mind had come

something of the wonder of the sea, and a hint of all that it would one day mean to man. Though

the first gods of his people stay lay far into the future, he felt a dim sense of worship stir within

him. He knew that he was now in the presence of something greater than all the powers and forces

he had ever met. The tide was turning. Far away in the forest, a wolf howled once and was

suddenly silent. The noises of the night were rising around him, and it was time to go.

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Arthur C Clarke - Transience

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