He didn’t have to give detailed instructions. Anyway, Claire was a better mountaineer than he’d ever been. She swung one leg over the gutter and clambered up their makeshift human ladder, passing first over her boyfriend, then her father. From the peak she turned and grabbed Logan’s leg. Then it was Tony’s turn to writhe about and climb.
The last staple holding the cable popped just as the boy reached the flat part of the roof. Staring at the loose end, whipping in his hand like an electrified snake, Logan felt himself start to slide… and was stopped at the last second as the kids grabbed him. Soon they were all leaning on one of the dish antennas, panting.
“What the hell was that?” Tony asked. Clearly he meant the quake. But his use of the past tense was premature. Again, without warning, the shaking returned — with a shuddering, infrasonic intensity that made them cover their ears in pain. This time at least, they managed to stay on the pitching roof.
When it finally ended, Claire looked at her father, sharing his thought. This had been no ordinary temblor. “We’ve got to get to Mother, fast!”
They recklessly took the obstacle course of electronic gear and solar panels. At one point Logan glanced northward toward the line of backup levees which the Corps of Engineers had erected long ago, to reassure a trusting public that all eventualities were predictable and controllable, and would be forever, amen. In the distance, a new sound could be heard, not as deep or grating as the quakes, but just as frightening. It felt like vast herds of wild beasts on the rampage.
That was when Logan knew with utter certainty the corps had been wrong… that all things must come to an end. The concrete prison, forged by man to control a mighty river, had finally cracked. And a crack was all the prisoner needed.
The father of waters was free at last.
Long delayed, the Mississippi was coming to Atchafalaya.
At a critical instant, several of her channels go suddenly dead, spoiling her aim. Daisy curses as her overpowering counterattack misses Southern Africa, vaporizing instead a corner chunk of Madagascar.
This is taking too long, distracting her from the important work of culling and from consolidating her programs in the vast new network below. These inconveniences are irritating, but there are fallbacks, and she retains far greater powers than her foe. She prepares these even as the house rides out another swaying tremor.
•
Claire cursed, straining on the attic hatch. “I can’t budge it!” Tony and Logan helped, heaving with all their might. Daisy had used good contractors to build her citadel. Logan ought to know, having referred her to the best. If only he’d known…
They pounded on the latch. He yanked a heavy chunk of antenna from its mooring to use as a pry bar. Between heaves, blinking away sweat as his heart pounded from the effort, he glanced up to see suddenly that there was no more time left at all. A muddy brown wall hurtled across the cane fields with awesome, complacent power, tossing trees and buildings aside like kindling.
Logan grabbed the kids and threw them down. Wrapping loops of cabling around them, he cried, “Hold on for your lives!”
$
Telltale alarms blare of phone lines disrupted and microwave towers toppled — all the local infrastructure she depends on to control her far-flung resonators collapsing in a shambles. And as the data-links snuff out in succession, her dragon staggers like a beast suddenly hamstrung, bellowing in agony. Daisy stares as the other software metaphor — the tiger — leaps atop the crumpling fire lizard to deliver a decisive blow. The cat rears back in triumph as its opponent begins evaporating in smoke.
“You win, bitch,” Daisy mutters. “But you better take care of the place or I’ll come back from hell to haunt you.”
One wall caves inward as a liquid locomotive shatters every barrier to interruption. Water shorts out the expensive electronics in crackling explosions of sparks and spray. But in that final instant, what Daisy realizes with surprising calm is that, perhaps, she never really had been qualified for the job she’d sought.
I never really wanted to be a mothe—
•
Meanwhile, a quarter of the way around the Earth’s quivering arc, a small party of refugees finished crossing a final stretch of lichen-covered tundra to reach the sea’s edge. There they stopped, clutching each others’ hands in fear at what they saw.
In the distance, smoke rose from a burning town and horrible, twisted forms showed that this was one of the places they had heard about — where so-called death angels had emerged from the ground to wreak terrible judgment on humanity. So their exodus from volcanic disaster had only brought them to face something even worse.
It had been an eerie journey, fleeing upwind on foot across the ancient moraine of Greenland, with magma heat at their backs, bereft of every crutch or comfort of civilized society save one — the portable receiver that let them listen to the world’s agony in stereophonic sound and real time. So it was that Stan Goldman and the others recognized what confronted them as they slumped together in sooty exhaustion, watching a shimmering fold in space migrate toward them, apparently sensing new victims to reap.
Strangely, Stan felt calm as the thing moved placidly their way. Instead of staring at it like some transfixed bird hypnotized by a snake, he purposely turned away to take one last look out across the bay, where fleet white forms could be seen nearby, streaking underwater then rising briefly to exhale jets of spray.
Beluga whales, he thought, recognizing the sleek shapes. They were cetaceans with smiles even more winning than their dolphin cousins’. To him they suddenly seemed symbols of primordial innocence, untainted by all the crimes committed by Adam and Adam’s get since man’s fall from grace.
It was good to know the creatures were immune to the approaching horror. That much was clear from the muddled jabber coming over the Net. Except for chimpanzees and a few other species, most animals were left untouched.
Good, Stan thought. Someone else deserved a second chance.
But humankind had already used up number two. After all, hadn’t God already let us off once before with a warning? Remember Noah? Stan smiled as he saw the perfect irony. For there, stretching across the western horizon, was a rainbow — the Almighty’s sign to humankind after the Flood. His promise never again to end the world by drowning.
We might go by fire of course, or famine, or by our own stupidity. Not much of a promise, actually, when you get right down to it. But when dealing with wrathful deities I suppose you take what you can get.
And as promises go, it is an awfully pretty one.
One of the women squeezed his hand fiercely, and Stan knew it was time to face the terrible, vengeful spirit he’d unwittingly helped create. So he turned. It was near, approaching too quickly to flee.
Oh, they could scatter. Delay it a bit. But somehow it seemed better to confront the deadly thing here, now, together. They all gathered close, holding each other. Hakol havel, Stan thought. All is vanity. At the end of all struggles, there comes a time to let go and accept.
And so, with a certain serenity, he faced death’s angel.
Though Stan knew it had to be an illusion, the lethal space-folding actually seemed to slow as it neared. Was it capable of savoring cornered prey, then? He wondered about the strange sensation he was feeling while watching it waver and then come to a stop. It was an odd sort of empathic communion that conveyed… confusion? uncertainty?
The deadly thing hovered only meters from the humans. They already felt the draw of its ferocious, devouring tides.