"Oh," said Calvin, and he himself was silent in turn. "I thought you'd given up."
"I cannot give up," said the plant. "I am still alive. But I know there is no way to safety."
"You make a lot of sense." Calvin straightened up to squint through the rain at the dark and distant line of the shore. "How much more time would you say we had before the water covers this rock?"
"The eighth part of a daylight period, perhaps more, perhaps less. The water can rise either faster or more slowly."
"Any chance of it cresting and going down?"
"That would be a great improbable chance such as that of which I spoke," said the plant.
Calvin rotated slowly, surveying the water around them. Bits and pieces of flotsam were streaming by them on their way before the wind, now angling toward the near bank. But none were close enough or large enough to do Calvin any good.
"Look," said Calvin abruptly, "there's a fisheries survey station upriver here, not too far. Now, I could dig up the soil holding your roots. If I did that, would you get to the survey station as fast as you could and tell them I'm stranded here?"
"I would be glad to," said the plant. "But you cannot dig me up. My roots have penetrated into the rock. If you tried to dig me up, they would break off—and I would die that much sooner."
"You would, would you?" grunted Calvin. But the question was rhetorical. Already his mind was busy searching for some other way out. For the first time in his life, he felt the touch of cold about his heart. Could this be fear, he wondered. But he had never been afraid of death.