Creeping feelers of memory had been pushing at her
consciousness for weeks, since they came to the cove and she
caught her first glimpse of the Island in the distance. Now
their message hammered through.
The island that lay before them, broad and flat across the muddy waters
of the delta. . .was the ruin of once proud New York City. The river to
the north was the Hudson.
She gazed at it in a stupor of disbelief. Not a single scraper touched
the skies of Manhattan, only mangled upheavals of stone and steel. The
City had been stripped to a foundation of jagged, broken teeth, then
left to endure ten thousand years of weathering.
NEW YORK! All this time, feeling at the ends of the earth, she had been
less than twenty miles from the place of her birth. It was too
incredible to accept, too unlikely to be anything but the truth. Her
spirit swooned at the sight of it.
But whatever the Christian name of the river they now encountered, to
Kalus it might as well have been the Finger of Satan. The two currents
merged into an uneasy bay, lapping slowly but steadily south-eastward.
He redoubled his efforts with both sail and paddle, striking furiously
at the water till the veins of his forehead seemed ready to burst. But
he could not fight the devilish pull.
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