Clouds flecked the land below, small ones, as round as dry cotton-balls. Few people still lived in the barren land under the cotton clouds. Half the population of Mexico had pressed into the slightly greener plains of North America, an unstoppable surge of desperate humanity that had been named the Desesperacion.
Mark watched the wasted land unfurl under the jet’s gleaming canard. “Why the hell are we going to look for a world across the stars to try to terraform it? We could restore this one more easily. There’s so much here to work with even now. We can clean up the pollution and rebuild degraded ecosystems. Why not?”
“Politics, religion, war, and overpopulation,” Ev said patiently. After all, the two of them had had this discussion before, with each other and with Miraly. “The mindless horsemen of environmental apocalypse. In my opinion, the worst of them is politics. Or, I should say, politicians to whom their own power and prestige is their first concern, all else be damned.”
Through gritted teeth, Mark said, “I hate politics.”
“I can hardly blame you,” Ev said, remembering the disaster of the prairie.
“Did you see the way the editorial concludes?”
“Yes.”
Mark read it aloud anyway, his tone shocked. “ ‘Mr. Kristeller, the Director of the Genesis Foundation, should return to Mars. There he can contribute to the expansion of Earth’s resource and economic base, rather than organizing the modern-day equivalent of the Children’s Crusade.’ ”
“That’s inflammatory;” said Ev.
“Do you really trust Kristeller?”
“Yes.”
“But he’s a Martian.”
Ev twitched the corner of his mouth disapprovingly. Evidently, Mark was upset enough not to remember—or not to care—that his present company was Titanian. “Actually, Kristeller is a biologist who got blacklisted in the industry here and took a job on Mars four decades ago. I guarantee you he knows how hard terraforming is—and that Mars isn’t the right place for it. He says it would go faster on an Earth-like world, and he ought to know. You’re right in a way, though. Kristeller is a naturalized outworlder. Living away from Earth makes a person develop a certain perspective.” Ev added, “And I’m a Titanian. Compressible tentacles concealed under the suit, remember?” Ev wiggled one eyebrow, a little trick that Ev had discovered when he was the small boy called Bern.
“Compressible wings, maybe,” suggested Mark, with a wan smile. “I’m sorry. I forgot.”
The Sun seemed to move up in the sky. Flying faster than nightfall, the Merlin was catching up with the day. The land below folded up into a mountain range, brown and deeply shadowed. Ragged peaks exceeded the altitude of the jet as it angled through a pass between the peaks. Ev could have flown higher, maybe should have, to conserve fuel; but he did not want to invite radar detection quite so blatantly.
On the other side of the mountains, the jet soared with a lift in altitude. “Updraft,” said Ev, “the wind from the sea hits this range and rises. The Gulf of California is in sight, and so is something else.” Squinting, Ev pointed to a thin dark line above the shining arc of water on the horizon. Perfectly straight and vertical, the line bisected an otherwise irregular, fractal panorama of hills and cloud-studded sky. It was Star Tower, and it went past the top of the sky, all the way to the starship. Ev’s heart beat faster.
“Oh, God, it’s tall.” Mark’s voice sounded strangled.
Ev gave a surreptitious glance toward where the used air-sickness bag had been stowed. “Think of it as a giant beanstalk ”
“No,” Mark objected. “Remember how the fairy tale ended?”
Ev laughed. “It won’t M down. Not yet.”
But as he flew on toward the Tower, Ev sobered. This wasn’t a fairy tale. It was less like a fairy tale than he had ever expected. The back seat of the Merlin was empty. No Miraly.
Ev scanned his instrument panel in a pilot’s crosscheck, an active pattern to avoid instrument fixation. He felt empty inside, like the Merlin s back seat, with an aching void behind the busyness of flying and planning. He could not ever remember feeling this way before. Was this how Mark had felt when they killed the prairie? No wonder Mark had been so distracted and unhappy since then. Emptiness where the heart should be was like a black hole, an ache that bent your fabric of thought and feeling around it.
Now, with his destination in sight, in the lull between the uncertainty of getting this far and the terra incognita that was the future, Ev’s mind returned to last night. His last night with Miraly, and he hadn’t known that was what it was until the end of it.
Miraly had been at work in her hospital all day yesterday, and well into the evening. In the private peace of the home he shared with her, Ev had put on his Virtuality visor and gloves and became a spider on the world’s computer web. He followed electronic links of his own making to visit what interested him most.
Lurking in the Netnews-casts, he saw protestors and their angry hand-lettered signs, listened to learned commentators discuss the impending Supreme Court decision on the law against removal of wild matter from natural areas. He checked the ship’s tome, and saw that the announced departure date was unchanged, two months away. He also found the clue that told him, and anyone else who knew what to look for, that was untrue.
The ship had been christened. Its name was Primordium.
The naming of it meant that it would leave tomorrow. Tonight would be Ev’s last on Earth.
Knowing that, Ev followed the web to his favorite places, Paris, Rio, and Ares City. He gorged himself on the sights of the Seine River and Carnival and the dour red walls of Valles Marineris, heard the woodwind music in the Brazilian streets and the thin Martian wind in the solar arrays of Mars One, and talked to people he knew and did not know, wishing them bon jour, buenos dias, and on Mars with its long year marked by the imperceptibly slow circuit of the Sun in the pale sky, “Bright Day!” Then he left the Web and signed off the Net-node.
Web-decompression always took a while: readjusting to sights and sounds that were given, not chosen, and basically static, not in the poly-sensory flux of the Web. He focused for a while on the subtle blue colors in Ladies of the Lake. Then he went to the kitchen to inhale the lingering aroma of coffee from this morning and chicken cacciatore from last night.
The technology they were taking to the stars was old, Ev reflected. Old and reliable. Space was a terrible place to have a sophisticated black box that might stop working. At the distant star in Sagittarius that was their destination, they’d have computers all right, but not universal, ubiquitous, polysensory access to the Web of so complicated a world as this. Mark would be right at home. Ev would miss the excitement.
Miraly came home from the hospital late due to an emergency. Ev presented her with chocolates—her favorite kind, Swiss confections with hard shells and creamy centers. He began kissing her while her lips still tasted of chocolate. They made love. As much or more than ever before, he thrilled to the feel of her warm breath and cool skin.
At last, she looked at the clock-four a.m. “It’s today, isn’t it?” Her voice was low and serious.
For the first time in his life, Ev was at a loss for something eloquent to say. He tried and finally Med to think of something better than, “It’s your last chance to leave.”
“No, not mine. Ours. To go or stay together.”
“You’re still staying?” he whispered.
“Yes. And you’re going.” It wasn’t a question.
Realization shot through Ev, and left a sudden shaft of hot emptiness in his soul, like the scalded air left behind by a bolt of lightning. “Why?!” he shouted.