"Avoiding old wives' tales, then, and sticking strictly to the facts: I have read the works of al- Qaswini, the celebrated Arabian writer, in the original. In his narrative of the travels of Salim, envoy of the Caliph Vathek of the Abassids, he mentions a fishing party on the Caspian Sea, where a mergirl was rescued whole from the belly of a monstrous fish. She was not half-fish and half-woman, as popular error has it, but a woman entire. On being parted from the water, she sobbed and tore her hair, but could not speak any human words. This was in the year of the Hegira 288, or the year 842 of our era. "In the year 1430, after a great flood in the Zuider Zee, a mergirl was captured from the mud behind the dikes. The good women of Edam taught her to dress herself, to spin, and to make the sign of the cross, which, one must suppose, was the entirety of the accomplishments of the women of that rather dull country.... In later life she attempted to return to the water on a number of occasions, but her lungs had accustomed themselves to the breathing of air, and she was not able to do it. Such was no doubt the case with our remotest ancestors, who, emerging from the sea onto the first uncovered islands, found after a certain time that they could not return. I imagine that this process happens even today. I have read accounts of savage men, the orangoutans of the Dutch East Indies, who are covered with hair and cannot speak human language. Obviously they are not far removed from their merhood.
"From time to time tailed men are found among the European races. A courtesan I knew in Pisa told me of a lover of hers whose body hair was black and thick, whose strength was that of several men, and who had a tail. Doubtless a race of tailed mermen exists somewhere in the sea's unplumbed depths. New species of all kinds must creep from the sea at one time or another; how else are we to account for the flora and fauna of remote islands? No one has ever seen such an emergence. But how many have watched the shoreline patiently, for years on end, knowing for what to look?"
"I suppose that no one but Your Excellency could be so qualified," Martine said. "Is this, then, the reason for your vigil? You expect some prodigy to emerge from the sea?"
De Maillet smiled sadly. "No, of course not. The chances are infinitesimal that I could actually witness such a thing. But what else am I to do? My legs are too weak and gouty for me to leap about in cliffs and quarries, as I did in my youth. All I have now are my eyes and my brain. Even if a merman were to emerge at this moment, I would not be able to capture or subdue him. But if I saw him, I would be sure of my System -- surer even than I am now, after amassing evidence for years. I could die knowing that History is sure to vindicate me."
He looked out wistfully across the waters. "Suppose that, at this moment, one were to see a strange movement among those waves that roll and pitch so oddly in this wind. Suppose one were to see that patch of sea-foam begin to eddy and twist-yes, just as it is doing now, only faster. Faster, becoming unmistakable!" De Maillet heaved himself to his feet and pointed with his cane. "My God, look!"
The young man stared out to sea. "I see nothing...."
"Use your eyes, fool! Do you not see where that whirlpool gyres and spreads? Its rim glitters with foam like diamonds, and its waters are the green of... of ancient bronze, or Chinese jade, or the sheen of an insect in amber, or... or...." The words ground to a mumble in the sudden torrent of images. De Maillet pointed dumbly with his cane. The young man looked at de Maillet, then back at the sea, then at de Maillet again. Suddenly he turned and ran off headlong down the beach.
De Maillet ignored the fleeing youth and took two tottering steps closer to the apparition. About the whirlpool's foamy edges, half-translucent phantoms were chasing one another in the wind, streaking around and around the whirlpool's center in a riot of films and veils. Some of the phantoms embraced one another; other, darker spirits moved sluggishly, as if poisoned by earthly biles; yet others, with streaming hair and rolling eyes, blew curling gasps of wind from their mouths. Their looks and movements proclaimed them senseless things, mere servants and harbingers of the prodigy that was to come.
More and more of the aerial spirits were cast off from the frantic whirling of the jade-green maelstrom; mere blobs of foam at first, they took on form in their flight and spiraled upward, forming before de Maillet's amazed eyes a slowly whirling tower of unearthly presences. Above them, a surf of clouds boiled out across the empty, crawling sky.
A shaft of muddy green light sprang upward from the maelstrom's depth, and another presence, a greater one by far, began to emerge from the whirlpool's core. She rose with slow majesty from the bottom of the sea, whirling like a dervish entranced: a Dark Girl, whose skin was the color of slate and whose black, slimy hair had the damp, clinging look of kelp or sea moss. She was nude, her secret parts concealed by her hand across her breast and the curling of a mass of hair across her hip. As her knees and ankles rose above the water's rim, the whirlpool slowed and vanished, showing her bare feet perched within the mother-of-pearl bowl of an enormous clamshell.
Awed by the majesty of this dark giantess, de Maillet fell painfully to one knee. The Dark Girl's eyes opened; they were the color of the whirlpool's waters, a dark archaic green.
Two of the wind-spirits offered the Dark Girl a long cloak or veil, made of their own intangible essence. As it touched her dark shoulders, it at once assumed weight and substance, and became a miraculous cloak, arcanely worked with embroidered symbols of manticores, rocs, krakens, one-eyed giants, and other monstrous beasts and prodigies.
The Dark Girl's curving lips opened slightly. "Greetings, philosopher."
Hearing that she knew of him, de Maillet's amazement was quelled, and his old stubborn courage at once filled his ancient heart. He heaved himself to his feet with the help of his cane and bent forward in a stiff and courtly bow. "A very good day to Your Ladyship," he said.
The Dark Girl smiled the strange hieratic smile seen on the oldest statues of Greece and Egypt. "You know my name?"
"I know that you are the Dark Girl from the Sea; surely that should be title enough, since there could never be two such entities."
"Ah," she said, "old philosopher, you have lost none of your cleverness. It is well that you flatter me now, after having done me so many grievous injuries during your long career. We are old enemies, you and I. You have faced me many times, and stolen your knowledge from my dark realm. You built your System to do me hurt. But now you face me incarnate." The Dark Girl's great eyelids closed and opened, and she fixed him with her gaze of serpent green.
"Listen, philosopher!" she cried. "This is a Day of days, when a Great Tide of Change sweeps across the World, and the Spirit of the Age -- which is to say, the minds of men -- is transformed forever. During this awe-filled Moment, the iron laws of necessity and fate that govern this world are held in abeyance, and the dark essences and spirits that ruled this plane of being may walk abroad for the last time."
De Maillet said, "I have read that in a man's last days he may glimpse hidden truths and have prophetic visions. Am I dying, then?"
"O mortal, the whole world is dying, and a new world is being born: a world that you yourself, and the others of your kind, have brought into being. It will be a barer, sharper world, where a harsh and pitiless Enlightenment burns from men's minds the old, warm clutter of legends and dogmas and romances."
"But my System," de Maillet cried. "In this new world of clarity and light, will my System be triumphant? Will my name live on? Will the evidence support me?"