Strange trees cover slopes once given to farms and meadows. Their branches twist and twine, creating unusual canopies. Beneath that forest roof, without metal objects or electronics, a band of homesteaders might feel safe enough. And anyway, even if they are spotted, why should the great big world fear one tiny restored village of shepherds in these mountains?
“Mind the dogs, Leopold!” an old man tells his youngest son, who knows packed city warrens and life at sea far better than these ancestral hills. “See they keep the sheep from straying, now.”
The youth stares across the valley of his forebears toward those tortured peaks. Their outlines tug at his heart and the air tastes pure, familiar. And yet, for a moment he thinks he sees something flicker across the cliffs and snowy crags. It is translucent yet multihued. Beautiful if elusive.
Perhaps it is an omen. He crosses himself, then adds a circular motion encompassing his heart.
“Yes, Father,” the young man says, shaking his head. “I’ll see to it at once.”
• CRUST
They had come to break up Sea State, and nobody, not even the Swiss navy, put up a fight to stop them. Not that there was much to fight for anymore, Crat figured. Most citizens of the nation of creaking barges had come here in the first place because there was no-where else to go and be their own masters. Now, though, there were plenty of places. And somehow most people had stopped worrying so much about mastery anymore.
Crat lingered on deck watching the gradual dismemberment of the town that had until a few weeks ago seemed so gritty and vital. Under the Admiral’s Tower, orderly queues of families boarded zeps that would take them to new homes in the scoured zones… areas stripped of human life during the brief terror of the death angels. Now that the angels had been transformed, there were whole empty cities waiting to be refilled, with room enough for all.
Anyway, it had been made clear by the highest authority that the oceans were just too delicate to tolerate the likes of Sea State. Other territories, like Southern California, seemed to cry out for boisterous noise and other human-generated abuse. Let the refugees head there then, to remake the multilingual melting pot that had bubbled in that place before the crisis, and amaze the world with the results.
That was how one commentator put it, and Crat had liked the image. He’d even been tempted to go along — to have a house in Malibu maybe. To learn to surf. Maybe become a movie star?
But no. He shook his head as sea gulls dived and squawked, competing for the last of what had been a rich trove of Sea State garbage. Crat listened to their raucous chorus and decided he’d heard enough from stupid birds … even smarty-pants dolphins. The ocean wasn’t for him after all.
Nor Patagonia, especially now that volcanic dust threatened a reversal of the greenhouse effect, returning ice to the polar climes.
Nor even Hollywood.
Naw. Space is the place. That’s where the real elbow room is. Where there’ll be big rewards for guys like me. Guys willing to take chances.
First, of course, he’d had to finish taking big official types on tours of the seabed site where the company’s mystery lab had been. Apparently some nasty stuff had gone on down there, but nobody seemed to hold him responsible. In fact, one of the visiting investigators had called him “a steady fellow and a hard worker” and promised a good recommendation. If those tough jobs for miners on the moon ever opened up, that reference might come in handy.
I wonder what Remi and Roland would’ve thought. Me, a steady fellow… maybe even goin’ to melt rocks on the moon.
First he had to get there, though. And that meant working his way across the Pacific, helping haul the remnants of Sea State to reclamation yards now that ocean dumping wasn’t just illegal, but maybe suicidal as well. It would take months, but he’d save up for clothes and living expenses and a new plaque, and tapes to study so they wouldn’t think him a complete ignoramus when he filled out application forms…
“Hah! Listen to you!” He laughed at himself as he hopped nimbly over narrow gangways to the^gunwale where his work team was supposed to meet. “Becomin’ a reet intellectual, are ya?”
To show he wasn’t a complete mama’s boy, he spat over the side. Not that it hurt her nibs a bit to do so. She’d recycle it, like she would his soddy carcass when the time came, and good riddance.
A whistle blew, calling crew to stations. He grinned as the tug’s exec nodded to him. There was still plenty of time, but Crat wanted to be early. It was expected of him.
The others in his team shambled up, one by one and in pairs. He made a point of scowling at the last two, who arrived just before the final blow. “All right,” he told the gang. “We’re haulin’ hawsers here, not some girly-girl’s drawers. So if you want your pay, put your backs in, hear?”
They grunted, nodded, grimaced in a dozen different dialects and cultural modes. Crat thought them the scum of the Earth. Just like himself.
“Ready, then?” he cried as the bosun called to cast off lines. The men took up the heavy jute rope. “Okay, let’s show Momma what even scum can do. All together now… pull!”
PART XII
PLANET
It gets cold between the stars. Most of space is desert, dry and empty.
But there are, here and there, beads that glitter close to steady, gentle suns. And though these beads are born in fire and swim awash in death, they also shimmer with hope, with life.
Every now and then, as if such slender miracles weren’t enough, one of the little, spinning globes even awakens.
“I AM…” it declares, singing into the darkness, “I AM, I AM, I AM!”
To which the darkness has an answer, befitting any upstart.
“SO WHAT? BIG DEAL, BIG DEAL, BIG DEAL… SO WHAT?”
The latest little world-mind ponders this reply, considers it, and finally concludes, “SO EVEN THIS IS ONLY A BEGINNING?”
“SMART CHILD,” comes the only possible response. “YOU FIGURE IT OUT.”
Gaia spins on, silently contemplating what it means to be born into a sarcastic universe.
“WE’LL SEE ABOUT THIS,” she murmurs to herself, and like a striped kitten, purrs.
“WE SHALL SEE.”
AFTERWORD
This novel depicts one of many ways the world might be fifty years from now. It is only an extrapolation — what a physicist might call a gedankenexperiment — nothing more.
And yet, as I sit down to write this postscript, it occurs to me that we can learn something by looking in the opposite direction. For instance, exactly fifty years ago Europe was still at peace.
Oh, by August 1939 the writing was on the wall. Having already crushed several smaller neighbors, Adolf Hitler that month signed a fateful pact with Joseph Stalin, sealing the fate of Poland. China was already in flames. And yet, many still hoped that world statesmen would stop short of the edge. The future seemed to offer promise, as well as threat.