14
Tahiti:
There wasn't much time. Gordon gauged the amount of daylight remaining as Virgil had taught him, by extending a hand out atarm's length, fingers together, laid flat between sun and horizon. Each finger represented fifteen minutes... and all he could fit was three. Well, forty-five minutes on the water was still a microcosm of Heaven. He'd take whatever he could get.
After waxing their boards and attaching the leashes, he and Alan strode out into the nearly homicidal surf, leaving TinTin stretched out on a towel with her book. She'd kissed them both with equal affection, still chuckling softly over the brand-new tattoos and photo booth pictures they'd got on the way over, then delved back into 'The Elegant Universe'. String theory; John would have liked it, though the term made Gordon think rather of kitchen junk drawers. But the ocean... huge, glassy tubes laid out like corduroy, tipped with blowing spray... that he understood.
Gordon fought his way out beyond the shore break, a little behind Alan, then slid on and paddled hard to where the waves began, the board pressing tight against his chest. He let two surge past unridden, lifting and dropping beneath him like a roller coaster. Alan hopped the first thing that came along, as usual, hooting like a gibbon all the way to shore. Wiped out at the end, too, but vaulted to his feet anyway, laughing and punching the sky.
The one he wanted (it would crest and break just right, he could feel it) gathered itself at last in a great, roaring mass, sucking him in and hurling him forward. As the board lifted, he gained his feet, letting everything wash away. He crouched low, arms spread, feeling the board jump and skitter then settle down to the serious business of flying on water.
The wave heaped itself up like a mountain, sparkling, foam-flecked, blue-green and immense. He hovered there for a time, floating like a gull, then shifted his stance, and guided the board within. The wave curled above and around him like a stained-glass window, light greenish-pale through its translucent surface, the vibrating air filled with misty droplets and a sonorous, hissing rumble. Almost upright, now, hair whipping back, he descended the slick wall, at one point reaching a hand out to brush his fingertips across the warm water, like caressing the face of a lover.
At the bottom, another shift; automatic, unthinking. He cut back, rising again, lifted up along the wide, gusty tunnel like a hawk riding thermals. A long, exhilarating ride, with everything else forgotten till the wave slew itself against the shore, tunnel collapsing around him in crash and roar and dazzle, and strong, wet surge.
He struggled upright, spitting sand and salt water, reeled back the cart-wheeling board, and slapped hands with Alan. Then they leapt in again, sprint-paddling out to do it all over. Got only three more rides, but they were good ones. Water, in whatever form, was the cure for everything.