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236 pages

English

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The Ninth Wave, published in 1956, follows a political campaign complete with then cutting-edge innovations of opinion polling, computers and the use of campaign consultants. Though we now know – even in a world of Facebook and Obama – that data and numbers can't quite predict and control political outcomes in the way the book lays out, the world has turned out close enough to Burdick's picture of the future to make The Ninth Wave a prescient and still relevant story, and one that should be loved by people who are into the mechanics of politics. (Mark Pack)

Sujets

Fiction

Thrillers

Political

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Publié par	eBookIt.com
Date de parution	04 février 2021
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781456636654
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0050€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The Ninth Wave
by Eugene Burdick
Subjects: Fiction -- Political

First published in 1956
This edition published by Reading Essentials
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
For.ullstein@gmail.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

THE NINTH WAVE

EUGENE BURDICK

For Carol
and Marie
“Those who have only empty space above them are almostinevitably lost in it, if no force restrains them.”
Emile Durkheim , Suicide

CHAPTER 1
The Ninth Ninth Wave
A Buick drove up behind the circle of Model-A’s that wereparked at the top of the cliff. One or two of the cars had neat chrome-platedengines, powerful squat carburetors, wire wheels and twin exhausts.The others were dilapidated and broken down. All of them,however, had braces on the tops where the long surfboards were slung.
Mike opened the door of the Buick and at once passed from thesmell of the woman, the odor of perfume and deodorant, into thehot odorless sunlight. He turned and looked at Miss Bell throughthe open window.
“I’ll see you again, Mike . . . very soon,” she said expectantly, halfwhispering.
“If I can get away,” Mike said, hedging. “Busy this week. I haveto . . .”
“If you have time for surfing you have time to see me,” Miss Bellsaid sweetly, but there was the corroded edge of a whine in her voice.Mike smiled at the way the flesh around her mouth worked in tinyflat jerks. “Please now, Mike.”
“O.K. I’ll try. I’ve got some work in chemistry to catch up.Maybe by Friday.”
They talked for a few more minutes. Mike could feel the sunstarting to open pores on his back, through the thin cotton of hisT-shirt . . . the tight blue jeans over his legs turned warm. He wasbored, but it was pleasant to talk to her. Some angle of the car caughtthe sun and reflected chrome brilliance in his eyes so that all he couldsee of Miss Bell was a black faraway figure. She receded and as herfigure grew more doll-like and remote it took on a reprimanding,hostile look. Mike squinted his eyes to keep the blue refracted lightfrom the Pacific from blinding him entirely.
Her voice took on its piping schoolteacher’s authority. “You justmust be more considerate of me, Mike. You must.”
“Why?” he asked idly. “Why, Miss Bell?”
At once the remote doll-like figure collapsed into a posture ofapprehension. Miss Bell’s voice lost its crisp quality and quavered.
“Well, don’t you care, Mike? Doesn’t it mean anything to you?”
It is so easy, he thought, so easy to make her drop that cool noteof authority in her voice. He reached out and touched her shoulderand at once she leapt back into proper proportion, was neat and full-sizedin her flowered silk dress.
“Sure I care,” Mike said. “I’ll call you later in the week.”
“For sure?” she asked.
“For sure,” he replied.
He turned away from the car and started toward the edge of thecliff. He heard the Buick start and then turn slowly. Mike smiledout at the blue Pacific, noticed a tanker, hull-down and far at sea,smoke from her stack smearing the blue-white sky.
When he got to the path that led down the cliff he stood for amoment while his eyes cleared of the glare. At the bottom of thecliff there were two umbrellas, shabby and stringy. Anonymous legsstuck out of them. A few surfboards were scattered around. The sandwas white and washed looking, picking up all the sun in the cove.
I know, Mike said to himself, that you look clean from here, butwhen I get down there you will be jumping with sandfleas, a regularlayer of them, just off the sand . . . hopping, jumping, screwing around.Jumping into the air and rubbing their legs. But I like it. Sandfleasdon’t bite, they just tickle.
As he started down the narrow curving path he could see that mostof the boys were far out in the cove. Very far out, as if they werewaiting for the occasional big hump. Their boards rose and fell, theysat with their feet up, some of them wearing straw hats to shieldtheir faces from the sun . . . tiny, lazy, Mexican-looking figures.
One of the boys was eating from a paper bag and Mike was surethat it was Hank Moore. It was just like Hank to take his lunchout on the board. That was what was confusing about Hank, Mikethought. He was like an old lady before he got in the water. Cleaningoff his board, testing the water with his toe, edging slowly intothe water and not diving sharply in like the rest of the boys. Hankwould go out slowly on his board, not yelling like the other surfers,but picking his way out cautiously, watching the waves, protectingthe brown paper bag which held his lunch. But once he had eatenhis lunch out of the brown bag, wadded it up and thrown it outon the water, Hank changed. He sat stubbornly, endlessly waitingfor the ninth ninth wave. Some of the other boys would get excited,mistake a big hump for the ninth ninth, but never Hank. He alwaysknew when it would come; he never took a smaller wave; he alwayswaited for the big one. They all believed that every ninth wave wasbigger than the preceding eight, and every subsequent ninth wavewas bigger than the one before it, until the biggest wave of all wasthe ninth ninth.
Mike wasn’t sure if the system was accurate, but he did know thatthere was always one wave a day that was bigger than the rest. Theother waves might be big and sometimes they were really huge andyou might get excited and think that one of them was the ninth ninth.But not Hank. He always knew when to wait. He always got thebiggest wave of the day.
Some days he would sit quietly, glancing over his shoulder at thehumps, watching them come working up out of the ocean, not movingfor three hours. Then finally, he would turn around, start to paddle,and it would be the biggest wave of the day. If he picked his boardup and got out of the water that was a signal there would be no otherbig ones that day. Hank read the weather reports in the papers becausea storm far out at sea would often mean big waves and everyday, winter or summer, that a storm was reported Hank was downat the cove, looking out to sea, waiting.
As Mike came down the steep cliff he watched to see how the waveswere shaping up. The coast was flat and even except for this covewhich had been carved by waves into a huge U-shaped indentation.The swells rose quietly and smoothly from the flat ocean, beginningat the very edge of the horizon. In even lines each wave movedtoward the shore, increasing in speed as it approached shallow waterand beginning to steepen. Then as the waves reached a certain pointof shoal water they turned a concave face toward the beach, reachedhigher and higher and began to feather with foam at the top. Alongthe rest of the coast they pressed powerfully against the rocks and sandwithout breaking, but as they came into the cove the feathering tipsbroke forward and the entire wave crashed over and rolled like along, noisy, incredibly powerful cylinder toward the shore.
Mike could see that the waves were big, but no one was takingthem. They were waiting for a ninth wave. When it came, swellingup big and green, sucking up all of the water in front of it, slantingsharply into the sky, the lines of surfers kicked their boards around,lay on their stomachs and began to paddle slowly, looking back overtheir shoulders. Only one person did not move in the line and thatwas Hank Moore. Monkeylike he reached down a hand, touched thewater and moved his board away from the nearest person. Then helooked out toward the sea. Mike began to trot down the path, suddenlyanxious to be in the water.
When the wave reached the line of surfers several of them backedwater, afraid to try it. Several more skewed their boards sidewayswhen the wave began to feather and prepared to smash forward. Inthe end only two or three boys actually rode the wave through itscrash and only one of them was able to control his board and finallyget to his feet.
As Mike rounded a boulder his view of the cove was cut off. Whenthe ocean came in sight again Mike was much lower, walking steadilydownward into the hot reflected sun, the densing odor of seaweed andiodine, the sudden streaked smell of long-burned charcoal. This descentinto the odor, the heat, the smell of sand, was as pleasant as thefirst second when he dove into the water. He walked slowly, controllinghis urge to get quickly to the beach. He felt the muscles ofhis legs strain with the slight effort of holding back as he descended.
When he got to the sand he took his shoes off, slid his blue jeansoff and stood up with only his swimming shorts on. He walked towardthe nearest umbrella.
“Hi, Mary Jane,” he called to one of the girls.
The girl rolled over, shaded her eyes against the glare. Here atthe bottom of the cove, cut off from the wind and picking up allthe dull reflection from the sand and water, it was hot with a deadpleasant heat that pulsed rhythmically as the waves shifted the airand made it heave and swell. Mary Jane’s nose had sweat on it and theedge of her bathing suit was rimmed with moisture. She stared fora moment, expectant, a smile on her lips but unable to see him. Mikestood still and waited. He knew what she was seeing. When youlifted your head suddenly and looked into this dull, glaring sun peoplelooked like black solid shadows, faceless, formless, only the edges oftheir bodies glowing with an astral brightness.
Then Mary Jane recognized Mike.
“Hello, Mike,” she said. The other two girls under the umbrellalooked up, their faces surprised; suddenly unfocused and confused.They did not smile and the smile faded from Mary Jane’s face. Theirfaces were bruised somehow with a hard memory; a curiosity thatchanged to irritation.
“Where have you been, Mike?” Mary Jane said. “Waves have beengood all day. Some really big on