She could see the forest under the blue sun. It was at least a hundred years in her future, but Diana was there with her.
"I wonder what sun it is?" Diana asked, and they both laughed. "Won't it be fun to find out?"
26
The sun was hard to find in the sky now, and in any case, Lilo was on the wrong side of Poseidon. They had accomplished turnover a few weeks ago, and were now decelerating. Alpha Centauri was directly under them.
It had taken Lilo a while to get used to her sunflower garden. To tend it, she had to move along catwalks hanging upside down from the ground. It was like moving beneath some vast overhang of rock. Through the grid of the catwalk she could see stars beneath her feet.
The garden was three concentric rings of plants centered around the huge silver bowl of the nullfield which contained the hole. She could see it in the distance, supported on three invisible pillars evidenced only by the massive installations which generated them. A white radiance exploded downward from the open end of the bowl, pointing toward Alpha; silently, constantly putting out its one-twentieth-gee deceleration.
She moved along the catwalk, her safety line securely tethered to a cable that ran just above her head. The gravity was very small, but if she fell, that first step down was two light-years.
The sunflower was not a new invention; the germ of the idea went back to pre-Invasion times. They were three-meter parabolic dishes, each with a white-hot nodule at the center. The dish focused energy on the nodule. Photosynthesis took place, and the roots of the sunflower plants produced tubers with tough skins. Inside, they were sweet and soft like pineapples.
Each sunflower spent its life hanging down, its roots embedded in the ground overhead, its flower suspended by a thick stalk. To harvest the crop, Lilo hung a big metal pan from hooks on the catwalk and dug in the ground. Rock, newly converted soil, and tubers fell down into the pan. It was exactly the opposite of stoop labor, she reflected. It got you in your arms and shoulders, not your back.
She sat down to take a rest, and while she was dangling her legs over infinity a strange thing happened to her. Her life flashed before her eyes, and it was an intricate and various thing, not a simple journey from birth to death, but tortuous, full of pain and many deaths. And yet...
"Are you all right, Lilo?"
"What?" She looked up. "How long have you been here?"
"A few minutes," Cass said. He was a young adult now, looking like his parent in many ways. "You didn't answer when I said hello. Are you okay?"
"Yes. I'm fine." It was fading already. She tried to hold it, to contain that fantastic tapestry as she had grasped it for one glorious instant. But it was too much for her mind. She felt her two living sisters drop away from her, but knew it would not be forever.
Cass was sitting beside her now. He looked down between his feet.
"What do you think we'll find when we get out there?" he asked.
"What?" It was gone now. She was only herself. Had it actually happened? But she remembered, she had seen the future.
"What will we find when we get out there? To Alpha?"
"People," Lilo said. "Some people we know."