(urth) Short Story 191*: Comber

[Marc Aramini]

COMBER

“Comber” was published in *Postscripts *Spring 2005 issue and has never
been collected.


 SUMMARY:

A nameless point of view character wakes up to the same news he heard the
previous night: the floating fragment of a continental plate upon which he
lives with his pregnant wife Mona has topped the crest of the wave upon
which it floats and is temporarily flat. He looks at his wife's peaceful
face and quietly prepares for work. Driving his car to the tall buildings
at city center, he passes through a tollway. He thinks that the last crest
had been before he was born, on a different wave, and thinks of the
possible damage falling from the top of the wave might wreck on the city
and its spumecathers. At work, probably at an architectural firm, he sees
that the inclinometer he once bought is exactly at zero and notes a memo
that the new angle will soon grow steep, the opposite of the accustomed
angle (since they have spent his lifetime moving up the wave, and are about
to crash down). Everything is to be reinforced with the new angle of
descent in mind.

He activates his work device, and instead of getting to work opens the
designs for his dream house for Mona, “waiting there to be tinkered with,
as it would not have been if anyone in authority had found it.” His friend
Phil interrupts him, asking to look at his inclinometer and commenting that
it is the first time in his life the plate has been flat. Phil asks if he
wants to go up to the roof and look, and our main character declines the
offer, wondering what would happen if the plate actually overturned during
its descent:

If the building did not break up when it hit the water, it would point down
and would be submerged. Water would short out the electrical equipment,
probably at once … rooms and corridors might (or might not) hold some air
for a few hours – most [of] it down on what were now the lower floors. He
might, perhaps, break a window and so escape;if he lived long enough to
rise to street level, the end of the plate, and air, would be what? Thirty
miles away? Forty?

 He thinks it would be better to die at home with his wife and their unborn
child. As the week passes, he sees that the inclinometer becomes much more
extreme in its reading, but on Friday his next door neighbor Edith Benson
calls to tell him that she has driven his wife to the hospital – her labor
has begun. By the time he returns to work after a brief vacation, the
inclinometer is but a pencil's breadth from the extreme end of its reading
– a reading which, according to the man who sold it to our protagonist,
need not go further, for there will be no one to read it if it does.

That night they discuss college and a career for their son Adrian, and,
looking in on him, kiss several times as they exchange endearments,
claiming that Adrian's future would be his own to choose (“But would not
their own attitudes, the training they gave him, and their very table-talk,
influence Adrian's choices?”).

The next day he combs his hair and thinks only of Adrian and the plate,
pondering that the taller buildings his firm was planning could only be
built if there was someone alive to build them. At work, a group of
coworkers are “marveling at the vastness of the tossing green waters that
stretched to the horizon in every direction”. The CEO's secretary remarks
that they will never be able to see so far again, and never be so high. An
executive vice president tells him to look on and let it inspire him to
“think big”. “Yet he found himself looking at the people who looked, and
not at the boundless ocean.”

An elderly man named Parsons lets him peer through his telescope, and he is
able to make out another floating city far away, for an instant even
catching a glimpse of a cross atop a spire amidst pigeons and gulls. In
alarm, our protagonist considers that certainly the city, which Parsons
speculates might be *Les Sables-D'Olonne *from research done on his
computer, must move before they crash into it. Parsons knows that it takes
a long time to climb a wave, but that falling down was an extremely rapid
process.

They discuss the possibility that a collision will break up their own
plate, and the certainty that even a small bump would flatten all of the
large buildings of their home city. The geologist Parsons consulted, Dr.
Lantz, instructed him to refrain from speaking of it. Parsons says that to
him it doesn't matter, as his life is over, but it will matter to our main
character, still young.

He phones a geologist who lives nearby named Martin Sutton to ask a few
questions about the threat of the city in their path. Sutton, after a
reluctance to speak, reveals that it has been kept off of the TV and news
venues, and that the chances of missing the city are only one in ten, but
that yesterday they were calling it one in five. Sutton also confides that
they are considering breaking up the other plate in advance, though he
implores the main character to keep quiet about it. The protagonist
realizes that the reinforcement crews have been acting at his office to
prepare for just such a collision.

Sutton reveals that the plan is to attack with a strike force of about a
thousand men and drill explosives a hundred feet into the other floating
city, though it will clearly take them years to get there with their
current level of working technology. Sutton also says that there won't be
any young geologists for the task, as the university has shut down the
geology program entirely.

Later the nameless main character confides to his wife Mona, indicating
that there will be ten or fifteen years for each side to prepare and
expressing a lack of confidence in the plan. Mona offers that the city in
their path could break up their own plate, but the main character indicates
that their own government could also break up the plate they live upon, and
Mona responds, “How horrible! No, of course they won't.”

Here he decides that someone must act to sunder their own plate and avoid
war and disaster, using the force of an explosion to move their piece out
of the path of the other city:

“Adrian would have a future. Don't you see, Mona? We wouldn't take just
this residential neighborhood, but a piece of the infrastructure big enough
to be economically viable. We could make things for ourselves then, make
things to trade, grow gardens, and fish. That town the city's going to hit
… people survive there. They even prosper. I've bounced this off of a man
over on the next street, a geologist. He agrees it might be possible, and
he's coming over to talk about it.”

Mona thinks bumpers or bags of air might work instead. He says that nothing
could stop the mass of the plate, and even if it could, the resulting wave
would drown everyone. Mona's voice is barely audible when he tells her that
Sutton is coming over at eight that night.

An hour later Mona tells him to stop combing his hair with his fingers and
pacing up and down. She begs him to go outside so he can see Sutton coming,
and he agrees not to come back in until he his friend arrives. He thinks of
the details of the plan, and whether or not they will need to employ a
chemist, sitting on the stoop of his house. Sutton arrives, claiming that
the new angle has disoriented him. The wind snatches his baseball cap, and
he asks the main character to help him find it. As they search, he believes
he hears sirens traveling from the east to the north.

“One by one, the sirens grew louder – and abruptly fell silent. For almost
the last time, he ran nervous fingers through his hair.” He sprints towards
his house to find that it is locked and dead-bolted against him. “Once
only, his shoulder struck the unyielding wood. By that time the first
police car had turned the corner on two screaming wheels, and it was too
late to hide.”


 COMMENTARY:

In the introductory material to the story, Wolfe claims, “This story grew
from the realization that the continents are islands of granite floating
upon a sea of molten basalt- they drift and tend to break up … that gave me
the image of a city on a floating chip of stone.” The title, “Comber”,
denotes a long sea wave which curls, generally considered to be synonymous
with a breaker. (The main character also keeps combing his hair, sometimes
with his hands, in his nervousness and in his thoughts for the future.
Clearly this character trait should serve as our mental designation for
this otherwise nameless character – one who is always considering the small
details of his dreams and goals.)

One of Wolfe's simpler tales, the gimmick of the floating cities and a
society based upon them with limited resources is perhaps the most
interesting concept on display here. There is definitely a libertarian
strain in some of Wolfe's later fiction, and while this may or may not
reflect his personal attitude, “Comber” shows a notable paranoia towards
both authority figures and even family members. Those in power do not have
the best interests of the people at heart, and would definitely destroy
others and start a war rather than think of creative solutions or try to
find a way to work with anyone else. While the situation they are in
certainly seems to be a catastrophic one, with radio news and other
artifacts of technology, certainly it seems that open communication might
be possible – yet instead, the government favors concealment and covert
hostility. Like many citizens of society, Mona thinks that it is the other
city which should necessarily be broken up, but reacts in horror at the
idea of breaking up their own plate.

The authoritarian presence looming in the background, while ostensibly
having the best interests of its island city at heart, is clearly set on a
course which discourages both inquiry and any innovative solutions besides
the obvious destructive one. This is not the first time that the university
has been the target of some satirical commentary from Wolfe – discontinuing
an entire branch of a practical science like geology, perhaps in fear,
certainly reeks of an agenda-driven education which is controlled by
external forces. It is clear from the second page of the story that our
main character already understands that those in authority are in the habit
of suppressing personal dreams and goals from the care he takes to conceal
his plans for a dream-house.

This dream house is associated with the most powerful imagery of the story
- the way the protagonist views his wife, Mona. All of his dreams are
geared towards their future happiness, and his pet project at work is
specifically for her and their children. One gets the impression that his
revolutionary actions are motivated primarily for her continued safety and
their child, and even when he leaves for work at the start, his thoughts
are on a way to get past her without waking her from her happy slumber.
Wolfe's love of irony is here on full display: motivated by love of his
wife, letting her in on his plans has cost him his freedom and probably his
life, judging from the authoritarian attitude of their city. (Also, the
statement that he is combing his hands through his hair for almost the last
time bodes particularly ill for his immediate future). Mona has both
betrayed him and locked him out, perhaps indirectly guaranteeing a long and
protracted struggle that might doom both their home and the city in their
path. Just as with the design of his dream house, he must surely realize
that his plans will not come to fruition and vanish if anyone in authority
learns of them - and almost as tragic as the realization that they are
headed for another city is no doubt his personal realization that the
person he loves most has destroyed his dreams of a better tomorrow for her
and their child. Certainly the observation our point of view character
about the vegetation applies to his own ignorance: “Those trees were
wrongly slanted now. Come morning, they would find themselves pointed away
from the sun. He chuckled softly. It could not be often that smug suburban
trees received such an unpleasant surprise.” His own compass and goal has
shifted, and no longer points in the same direction as that of his wife.
Much like the trees, he is in for an unpleasant surprise.

Mona is one of the female characters which gives some credence to the idea
that Wolfe's portrayal of women can be problematic, as clearly the dominant
and controlling motivation for her betrayal is fear. Given the
self-sacrificing motives of the protagonist, her betrayal is especially
unsympathetic.


 NAMES


 Interestingly, the main character, who decides on rebellion by breaking up
his own city and returning to a more simple manner of living, is never
given a name. He is referred to as “Honey”, “Darling”, or “young man” by
others.

His wife Mona's name has multiple possible meanings. Perhaps the most
apposite is that of the Greek word for monad, meaning “singular” or “one”.
Mona can also be a female derivative of Simon, which can mean “God has
heard.”

Adrian can imply “dark” or, in its Latin origin, “of the Adriatic” -
certainly appropriate given both the baby's fate and the watery setting.

The opposing city, *Les Sables-D'Olonne*, is a real seaside town in Western
France on the Atlantic, and its meaning is “the sands of Olonne”. This
clearly sets the world as “ours”. It does not seem possible to identify
which (probably coastal) town our point of view characters live upon, as it
seems the portions of the continent which have been broken apart and stayed
afloat have been doing so for generations.

A man named Parsons shows him the city in their path – and this
occupational surname indicates someone in a parson's household or a close
family member of a parson. The geologist he phoned, Dr. Lantz, has a name
which implies “land” or “territory”.

The friend of our narrator who also works as a geologist is identified as
Martin Sutton. Martin means “warring” or “warrior of Mars” and Sutton can
imply “southern town” or someone from that town.

The woman who drives his wife to the hospital, Edith Benson, has a first
name which is derived from an Old English name meaning “wealth” and “war”.
Her last name can imply the son of Ben (which in turns means “son of the
south” or “son of the right hand”). Thus we have two names meaning the same
thing: war and the south. Clearly this future is headed for a destructive
war even if the two land masses eventually collide.

 UNANSWERED QUESTIONS:

 Why have the continents been sundered, with small portions still adrift?
Are there any larger land masses? While it is clearly our future, has a
true catastrophe like nuclear war served to break apart the continents into
small, porous sections? Judging from the thematic undercurrent of the story
(that those in power would rather risk absolute destruction than
voluntarily give up an iota of control or allow a concession) a
technological weapon employed during war might be a viable reason for the
current state of the world.


 UNANSWERED QUESTIONS:


 Is there any way to determine which city our characters live upon? They
eat wieners and sauerkraut, but there is little reason to believe that it
is necessarily German or even European, though it was perhaps originally a
coastal city.


 CONNECTION WITH OTHER WORKS


 Certainly this bears a superficial resemblance to Wolfe's other “floating
city” story: “Civis Laputus Sum”. However, this has more in common with the
slightly more libertarian themes of his later fiction, such as “Viewpoint”
and even, more subtly, “Bloodsport”. The infinite vastness of the ocean is
on display in many of Wolfe's important works. His treatment of the abyss
of space seems inimically more “parasitic” and transformative to humans but
has the same feel of isolation. Looking at parallels such as “Silhouette”,
“Alien Stones”, or “Leif in the Wind” might be interesting.
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