Covering the offshore waters of the world's oceans, to a distance of about a thousand miles from the coast, was a thin but resilient mono-molecular film formed from a complex of saturated long-chain polymers, generated within the sea from the vast quantities of industrial wastes discharged into the ocean basins during the previous fifty years. This tough, oxygen-permeable membrane lay on the air-water interface and prevented almost all evaporation of surface water into the air space above. Although the structure of these polymers was quickly identified, no means was found of removing them. The saturated linkages produced in the perfect organic bath of the sea were completely nonreactive, and formed an intact seal broken only when the water was violently disturbed. Fleets of trawlers and naval craft equipped with rotating flails began to ply up and down the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North America, and along the seaboards of Western Europe, but without any long-term effects. Likewise, the removal of the entire surface water provided only a temporary respite-the film quickly replaced itself by lateral extension from the surrounding surface, recharged by precipitation from the reservoir below.

The mechanism of formation of these polymers remained obscure, but millions of tons of highly reactive industrial wastes-unwanted petroleum fractions, contaminated catalysts and solvents-were still being vented into the sea, where they mingled with the wastes of atomic power stations and sewage schemes. Out of this brew the sea had constructed a skin no thicker than a few atoms, but sufficiently strong to devastate the lands it once irrigated.

This act of retribution by the sea had always impressed Ransom by its grim simple justice. Cetyl alcohol films had long been used as a means of preventing evaporation from water reservoirs, and nature had merely extended the principle, applying a fractional tilt, at first imperceptible, to the balance of the elements. As if further to tantalize mankind, the billowing cumulus clouds, burdened like madonnas with cool rain, which still formed over the central ocean surfaces, would sail steadily toward the blistered shorelines but always deposit their precious cargoes into the dry unsaturated air above the sealed offshore waters, never onto the crying land.

A police car approached along the avenue and stopped fifty yards away. After a discreet interval, stemming more from custom than any sense of propriety, Judith Ransom stepped out. She leaned through the window, talking to Captain Hendry. After checking her watch against his, she hurried up the drive. She failed to notice Ransom sitting in the dust-covered car, and went past into the house.

Ransom waited until she had disappeared upstairs. He stepped from the car and strolled down toward Hendry. Ransom had always liked the police captain, and during the two years he had known him their relationship had become the most stable side of the triangle, indeed, Ransom sometimes guessed, its main bond. How long Judith and Hendry would survive the rigors of the beach alone remained to be seen.

As Ransom reached the car, Hendry put down the map be was studying. He seemed preoccupied but greeted Ransom with a wave.

"Still here, Charles? Don't you feel like a few days at the beach?"

"I can't swim." Ransom pointed to the camping equipment in the back seat. "All that looks impressive. A side of Judith's character I never managed to explore."

"I haven't either-yet. Perhaps it's just wishful thinking. Do I have your blessing?"

"Of course. And Judith too, you know that."

Hendry gazed up at Ransom. "You sound completely detached, Charles. What are you planning to do-wait here until the place turns into a desert?"

Ransom flicked at the dust that had gathered behind the windscreen wiper. "It seems to be a desert already. Perhaps I'm more at home here. I want to stay on a few days and find out."

He talked to Hendry for a few minutes, and then said good-by to him and went indoors. He found Judith in the kitchen, rooting in the refrigerator. A small stack of cans stood in a carton on the table.

"Charles-" She straightened up, brushing her blonde hair off her angular face. "That beard-I thought you were down at the river."

"I was," Ransom said. "I came back to see if I could do anything for us. It's rather late in the day."

Judith watched him with a neutral expression. "Yes, it is," she said matter-of-factly. She bent down to the refrigerator again, flicking at the greasy salad with her well-tended nails. Again Ransom wondered how the survival course on the beaches would suit her. For a moment he felt a pang of gratitude toward Hendry.

"I've been dividing things up," she explained. "I've left you most of the stuff. And you can have all the water."

Ransom watched her seal the carton, then search for some string in the cupboard, sweeping the tail of her linen summer coat off the floor. Her departure, like his own from the house, involved no personal component whatsoever. Their relationship was now completely functional, like two technicians who had come to the house to install a complex domestic appliance, but found the wrong voltage.

"I'll get your suitcase," he said. She said nothing, but her gray eyes followed him to the stairs.

When he came down she was waiting in the hall. She picked up the carton. "Charles," she asked, "what are you going to do?"

Despite himself, Ransom smiled. In a sense the question had been prompted by his beachcomber-like appearance and dark beard, but the frequency with which he had been asked it by so many different people made him realize that his continued presence in the deserted town, his very acceptance of the silence and emptiness, in some way exposed the vacuum in their own lives. The mere act of driving to the coast was no answer. By asking him for his own plans they were all hoping for some policy or course of action for themselves.

He wondered whether to try to convey to Judith his involvement with the changing role of the town and river, their whole metamorphosis in time and memory. Catherine Austen would have understood his preoccupations, his quest for that paradigm of detachment that so far he had achieved only in his marriage, and accepted that for Ransom the only final rest from the persistence of memory would come from his absolution in time. But Judith, as he knew, hated all mention of the subject, and for good reason. Woman's role in time was always tenuous and uncertain.

Her pale face regarded his shadow on the wall, as if searching for some last clue in this reflected _persona_. Then he saw that she was watching herself in the mirror. He noticed again the marked lack of symmetry in her face, the dented left temple that she tried to disguise with a fold of hair. It was as if her face already carried the injuries of an appalling motorcar accident that would happen somewhere in the future. Sometimes Ransom felt that Judith was aware of this herself, and moved through life with this grim promise always before her.

She opened the door on to the dusty drive. "Good luck, Charles. Look after that Jordan boy."

"He'll be looking after me."

"I know. You need him, Charles."

As they went out into the drive, enormous black clouds were crossing the sky from the direction of Mount Royal.

"Good God!" Judith started to run down the drive, dropping her bag. "Is that rain?"

Ransom caught up with her. He peered at the great billows of smoke. "Don't worry." He handed her the bag. "It's the city. It's on fire."

After she and Hendry had gone, he went back to the house, the image of Judith's face still in his eyes. She had looked back at him with an expression of horror, as if frightened that she was about to lose everything she had gained.

For the next three days the fires continued to burn in Mount Royal. Under a sky stained by an immense pall of black smoke, like a curtain drawn over the concluding act of the city, the long plumes rose high into the air, drifting away like the fragments of enormous collapsing messages. Mingled with the fires of incinerators and abandoned garbage, they transformed the open plain beyond the city into an apocalyptic landscape.

From the roof of his house, Ransom watched the motorbridge across the river, waiting for the last inhabitants of the city to leave for the south. By now Larchniont was empty. With the exception of the Reverend Johnstone and his last parishioners, all of Ransom's neighbors had gone. He strolled among the deserted streets, watching the dust columns rising into the sky from a landscape that seemed to be on fire. The light ashy dust blown across the lakeside town from the hundreds of incinerators on the outskirts of the city covered the streets and gardens like the fallout from a volcano. The silent quays and boathouses were bleached white by the ash.

Much of the time Ransom spent by the river, or walking out across the bed of the lake. Inshore, the slopes of damp mud had already dried into a series of low dunes, their crests yellowing in the heat. Wandering among them, out of sight of the town, Ransom found the hulks of old yachts and barges, their blurred forms raised from the watery limbo to await the judgment of the sun. Ransom built a crude raft out of pieces of driftwood and punted himself across the small lagoons of brackish water, making his way in a wide circle back toward the river.

Although still narrowing, the channel was too deep to ford. As viscous and oily as black treacle, it leaked slowly between the white banks. Only the elusive figure of Philip Jordan, punting his arrowlike skiff in and out of the thermal pools, gave it any movement. Once or twice Ransom called to him, but the youth waved and vanished with a glimmer of his pole, intent on some private errand. A few craft sat on the surface, reflected in the dark sinking mirror. At intervals throughout the day a siren would give a mournful hoot, and the old steamer, still commanded by Captain Tulloch, would make its way up-river, miraculously navigating the shallow channel. Then, with another hoot, it would move off into the haze over the lake, disappearing among the narrow creeks.

It was during this time that Ransom again became aware of the significance of each day. Perhaps this was because he knew he would be able to stay on in Larchmont for a further two or three weeks at the most. After that, whatever happened, and even if he chose to stay behind, his existence would be determined by a new set of rules, probably those of chase and pursuit. But until then a finite period remained, the dreary sequence of day following day had given way to a sharply defined quantum of existence. Superficially the streets and houses resembled those of the normal world. The lines that once marked its boundaries -still formed a discrete but unreal image, like the false object seen in a convex mirror.