Coming back from my Wilderness Week I sat by an odd sort of man in the bus. For a long time we didn't talk; I was mending stockings, and he was reading. Then the bus broke down a few miles outside Gresham. Boiler trouble, the way it generally is when the driver insists on trying to go over thirty. It was a Supersonic Superscenic Deluxe Long Distance coalburner, with Home Comfort, that means a toilet, and the seats were pretty comfortable, at least those that hadn't yet worked loose on their bolts, so everybody waited inside the bus; besides, it was raining. We began talking, the way people do when there's a breakdown and a wait. He held up his pamphlet and tapped it--he was a dry-looking man with a schoolteacherish way of using his hands--and said, "This is interesting. I've been reading that a new continent is rising from the depths of the sea."
The blue stockings were hopeless. You have to have something besides holes to darn onto. "Which sea?"
"They're not sure yet. Most specialists think the Atlantic. But there's evidence it may be happening in the Pacific too."
"Won't the oceans get a little crowded?" I said, not taking it seriously. I was a bit snappish, because of the breakdown, and because those blue stockings had been good warm ones.
He tapped the pamphlet again and shook his head, quite serious. "No," he said. "The old continents are sinking, to make room for the new. You can see that that is happening."
You certainly can. Manhattan Island is now under eleven feet of water at low tide, and there are oyster beds in Ghirardelli Square.
"I thought that was because the oceans are rising from polar melt."
He shook his head again. "That is a factor. Due to the greenhouse effect of pollution, indeed Antarctica may become inhabitable. But climatic factors will not explain the emergence of the new--or, possibly, very old--continents in the Atlantic and Pacific." He went on explaining about continental drift, but I liked the idea of inhabiting Antarctica, and daydreamed about it for a while. I thought of it as very empty, very quiet, all white and blue, with a faint golden glow northward from the unrising sun behind the long peak of Mount Erebus. There were a few people there; they were very quiet, too, and wore white tie and tails. Some of them carried oboes and violas. Southward the white land went up in a long silence towards the pole.
)
