With a jerk of surprise, he saw that it was already out of the water, and that it had a flat bottom. He had an impression of something shaped like a flatiron, or like the body of a horseshoe crab, four or five hundred feet in length. It rose above the span of the bridge, lifting on a brilliant cone of blinding green. Across the bay came a teeth-aching high-pitched hissing, roaring sound. The object accelerated rapidly upward and dwindled against the late morning sky. In a few seconds, it was gone. How many others had seen it? he wondered.
Could the government really have had something in the works — something spectacular?
He bit his lip and shook his head, crying now, not knowing why. He felt a peculiar relief. Somehow, a few people were getting away. That was a kind of victory, as important as his parents surviving the death camps.
And for those still condemned…
Grant wiped the tears from his eyes and hurried back along the pier, bumping into an iron pole as he passed through the gate. He ran to his car, hoping he would be in time. He wanted to be home with his family.
The bridge was practically deserted as he crossed. He could not see the spot in the bay where the water had been white.
He did not know how he would explain this to Danielle. Her concerns would be more immediate, less abstract; she would ask why he did not try to find a way to save them all.
Perhaps he would say nothing, just tell her that he had followed the Gordons as far south as Redwood City…and stopped, waited a few hours, and turned back.
She wouldn’t believe him.
72
The ship, Arthur learned, contained 412 passengers, all boarded in secrecy during the morning and the previous night. The passengers had been divided into groups of twenty, and for the most part would not mingle until several days had passed, and they had grown used to their situation. The only exception would be the witnessing.
Out of their group of twenty, nine had volunteered, two children, three women, and four men, including Arthur, Francine, and Marty. The nine followed the stocky copper robot through the chamber at the end of the curved hall.
They walked along a narrow black strip in a cylindrical corridor. Arthur tried to make a map in his head, not entirely succeeding. The ship apparently had compartments that moved in relation to each other.
Passing through a hatch ahead of them, the robot rolled abruptly to take up a new vertical. They found themselves doing likewise, with a few moans of complaint and surprise. In a cabin about a hundred feet long and forty or fifty feet deep, they faced a broad transparent panel that gave a view of bright steady stars. Marty kept close to Arthur, holding his arm tightly with one hand, the other clenched into a fist. The boy had sucked his lips inward over his teeth and was making small smacking sounds. Francine followed, tense and reluctant.
Arthur looked down at his son and smiled. “Your choice, fellah,” he said. Marty nodded. This was no longer a youngster playing patsy to a pretty blond cousin; this was a boy feeling his way to manhood.
More people entered through a hatch in the opposite side of the cabin in groups of four or five or six, children among them, until a small crowd faced the darkness and stars; Arthur estimated seventy or eighty. He seemed to recognize some from his time on the network, though that was hardly likely; all he had heard were their inner voices, which almost never matched physical appearance. He thought of Hicks’s inner voice, robust and young and sharp, and of his white-haired, grandfatherly presence. I’m going to miss him. He could have helped us a lot here.
Arthur flashed on Harry, desiccated, decaying, buried deep in a coffin in the Earth; or had Ithaca had him cremated? That seemed to suit both of them better.
A tall young black man stood behind Arthur and Francine. Arthur nodded a greeting and the man returned the nod, cordial, dignified, terrified, his neck muscles taut as cords. Arthur examined the other faces, trying to learn something from the mix, how they had been chosen. Age? There were few older than fifty; but then, these were just the ones who had chosen to witness. Race? All types found on North America were represented. Intelligence? There was no way to tell that…
“We’re in space, aren’t we?” the tall young man asked. “That’s what they said, I just didn’t believe them. We’re in space, and we’re going to join with other arks soon. My name’s Reuben,” he said, offering his hand to Arthur. They shook. Reuben’s hand was damp, but so was Arthur’s. “This your son?”
“This is Martin,” Arthur said. Reuben reached down and shook Marty’s hand. Marty looked up at him solemnly, still sucking his lips. “And my wife, Francine.”
“I don’t know how to feel,” Reuben said. “I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t anymore.”
Arthur agreed. He did not feel like talking.
Something flashed against the stars, turning in the sunlight, and then steadied and approached them. Francine pointed, awed. It was shaped like a huge, rounded arrowhead, flat on one side, contoured to a central ridge on the opposite side.
“That’s Singapore,” said a woman behind them. Not all of the network received information at once, Arthur decided; that made sense. It would have flooded them.
“Singapore,” Reuben said, shaking his head. “I’ve never even been there.”
“We have Istanbul and Cleveland,” said a young man at one end of the cabin, hardly more than a boy.
The gray ship passed out of view above them. There was still no sensation of motion, nor any sound except for the murmurs and shuffling of the cabin’s occupants. They might have been standing in an exhibit hall waiting for some spectacular new form of entertainment to begin.
The stars began to move all in one direction; the ark was rotating. Arthur searched for constellations he knew, and for a moment saw none; then he spotted the Southern Cross, and as the rotation continued, Orion.
The white and blue limb of the Earth rose into view and the occupants of the cabin gave a collective gasp.
Still there. Still looks the same.
“Jesus,” Reuben said. “Poppa, Momma, Jesus.”
Danielle, Grant, Becky. Angkor Wat, Taj Mahal, Library of Congress. Grand Canyon. The house and the river. Steppes of central Asia. Cockroaches, elephants, Olduvai Gorge, New York City, Dublin, Beijing. The first woman I ever dated, Kate — Katherine. The bones of the dog who helped me come to grips with the world and become a man.
“That’s the Earth, isn’t it, Dad?” Marty asked quietly.
“That’s it.”
“It’s still there. Maybe we can go back and nothing will happen.”
Arthur found himself nodding. Maybe so.
The woman who had known about Singapore said, “They’re still in the Earth. They’re the last of the planet-eaters. They can’t leave because we’ll get them.” Arthur glanced nervously at her, as if she were a dangerous sibyl; her face was pale and convulsed.
73
“Rock of a-a-a-ges…”
The singing had taken a slightly frantic tone, sharper, higher, more disturbing. The column of smoke from the Ahwanee had risen above the Royal Arches; the hotel was almost consumed, and sparks from the blaze threatened to ignite the surrounding woods. From their vantage, they watched park fire trucks spraying water on the flaming ruins.
Spend your last few minutes trying to save something, Edward thought. Not a bad way to go. He envied the fire fighters and park rangers. The fire took their minds away from the inevitable. Up on Glacier Point, people had nothing to do but think about what would happen — and sing very badly.