Alex stared at Manella. The man talked, but somehow nothing he said seemed to make any sense.
“I know you don’t want to hear more, metaphors,” Pedro went on. “But I’ve given some thought lately to all the different roles humanity has to play in the new planetary being that’s been born. Humans — and man-made machines — contribute by far the largest share of her ‘brain’ matter. They’ll be her eyes, her hands, as she learns to shape and spread life to other worlds in this solar system.
“But the best analogy may be to a body’s white blood cells! After all, what if the universe is a dangerous place as well as a beautiful one? It will be your job, and your children’s and their children’s, to protect what’s been born here. To serve Her and sacrifice yourselves for Her if need be.
“And then, of course, there is the matter of propagation…”
The vistas Manella presented — even hypothetically — were too vast. He kept talking, but suddenly his words seemed barely relevant anymore.
By the same token, Alex suddenly didn’t care any longer whether his suspicions about the man were valid or just more tantalizing similes, drawn against the universe’s infinite account of coincidence and correlation. Rather, Manella’s latest comparison suddenly provoked in Alex thoughts about Teresa, how he felt about her in his blood, in his skin, and in the busy flexings of his heart. He found himself smiling
“… I’d like to think it’s that way,” Pedro went on in the background, as if garrulously lecturing an audience. “That there might exist others out there, scattered among the stars, who foresaw some of what was fated here. And maybe arranged for a little help to arrive in time.
“Perhaps those others feel gladness at this rare victory, and wish us well…”
An interesting notion, indeed. But Alex’s thoughts had already moved well ahead of that, to implications Manella probably could not imagine, whatever his true nature. His gaze pressed ahead, past the bustling construction yards, along the film of air and moisture enveloping the planet’s soft skin. Skirting the hot, steady glow of the sun, Alex’s eyes took in the dusty scatter of the galactic wheel. And as his perplexed musings cast outward, he felt a familiar presence pass momentarily nearby, a propinquity invisible and yet as real as anything in the universe.
“YES, IT GOES ON,” his grandmother’s spirit seemed to whisper in his ear. “IT GOES ON AND ON AND ON…”
Fluttering ribbon banners proclaim condemned, and warning lights strobe keep away. But even tales of radioactive mutants cannot keep some people from eventually coming home. Even to the Glarus Alps, where gaping, glass-rimmed caves still glow at night, where angry fire once melted glaciers and cracked fortress mountains to their very roots.
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!”