Water covered the valley floor—a stagnant gray lake already growing warm in the brilliant sunlight. The forested slopes had either drowned or been bleached by the suffocating gases. From his vantage point, Jopale couldn’t see his house. But the land beneath the sea was still alive—still a vibrant blackish-green. Pumps would have to be set up, and osmotic filters, and then everything else could be saved. But if the work happened too slowly, too much salt would seep through the cuticle, causing the land to sicken and die. Then the valley would become a single enormous sore, attacked by fungi and giant worms. If nature was allowed its freedom, this tiny portion of the Continent would rot through, and the sea would come up again, spreading along the ancient fault lines, untold volumes of gas bubbling up into the rapidly sickening air.
People had to save the valley.
Why shouldn’t they? A rational part of Jopale knew what was at stake—what almost every long-term prediction said was inevitable. But he couldn’t shake his selfish need to enjoy the next cycle and the rest of his life. This ground had always been a part of him. Why wouldn’t he want it saved? Let other people lose their little places. Let the Continent die everywhere but here. That’s what he told himself as he walked down the path, the perfumed rag pressed against his nose and mouth, a self-possessed optimism flourishing for those next few steps.
Where the gases hadn’t reached, epiphytes still flourished. Each tree stood apart from its neighbors, like the hair on the head of an elderly mockman. That made for a tall open forest, which in turn allowed the land to receive its share of sunlight. A flock of day-yabbers watched him from the high branches, leathery wings folded close, bright blue eyes alarmed by nothing except his presence. Giant forest roaches danced from crevice to crevice. Wild scramblers hid in nests of hair and woven branches, calling out at him with soft mournful voices. Then the path bent and dropped, and everything changed. More yabbers lay dead beneath their perches, and countless silverfish and juvenile worms had crawled up out of their holes before dying. A giant golden gyretree—one of Jopale’s favorite specimens—was already turning black at its base. But the air was breathable again, the wind having blown away the highest poisons. Jopale wished he had his breathing mask, but he had left it inside his house, floating in a cupboard somewhere close to his dead lover. That woman had always been good company. But in death, she had grown unreal, abstract and distant. Walking around a next turn in the trail, Jopale found himself imagining her funeral and what delicate role he might play. And that was when he saw the wild scramblers that had fled the rising gas, but not fast enough. They belonged to one of the ground-dwelling species; he wasn’t sure which. They had short hairy bodies and long limbs and little hands that reached out for nothing. Crests of bright blue fur topped the otherwise naked faces. The gases had stolen away their oxygen, then their lives. Already they were beginning to swell and turn black, lending them a strange, unfamiliar appearance; and when Jopale looked into their miserable little faces, he felt a sharp, unbearable fear.
In death more than life, those scramblers resembled human beings.
Here was the moment when everything changed for this scholarly gentleman—this creature of tradition and habit, of optimism and indifference. Gazing into those smoky green eyes and the wide mouths choked by their fat purple tongues, he saw his own future. That he didn’t love the dead woman was important: If they were married and had children, and if his family had died today, Jopale would have felt an unrelenting attachment to this tiny corner of the world. In their honor, he would have ignored the urge to run away, remaining even as the land splintered and bled poisons and turned to dust and dead water.
But escape was what he wanted. The urge was sudden and irresistible. And later, when he examined what was possible, Jopale discovered only one solution that gave him any confidence.
If he sold his parent’s land to his surviving neighbors and relatives, and if he bled his savings blue… then he could abandon the only home he had ever known, and forsake the sun, as well as abandoning all of those foolish little scramblers who couldn’t see past their next little while…
The great worm had come to a stop, but its muscles continued to shiver, long ripples traveling the length of the body, its misery made all the more obvious by a deep low moan that Jopale didn’t hear so much as he felt it in his bones.
World’s Edge: In some past eon, the city stood on the Continent’s shoreline, nothing beyond but darkening skies and bottomless water. For generations, this great port had served as a home for fishermen, and more importantly, for the brave souls who journeyed onto the trackless sea hunting giant rust-fins and the copper eels and vicious many-mouths. Fortunes were made from every carcass brought home—great masses of inedible meat and iron-rich bone pushed into furnaces and burned away, leaving nothing behind but a few dozen kilos of precious metal. But new islands were always being born, oftentimes half a world away, and they grew as they wandered, eventually slamming into this coastline and sticking fast. Removed from its livelihood, the once great city fell into hard times. Most of the neighboring towns vanished completely. But World’s Edge managed to survive, clinging to its outmoded name, and when times and the world’s growing population demanded it, the city blossomed again, new industries and a relentless sense of commerce producing a metropolis where two million people could live out their busy, unexceptional lives.
Birth and growth, followed by death and rebirth—no story told by Man was as important as this.
Then the Continent suddenly drifted west, and again, World’s Edge wore the perfect name.
Jopale considered the ironies as he carried his bags to the front of the intestine, then out through an artificial sphincter fitted into the worm’s side. From there, it was a short climb to the station’s high wooden platform. A bright sign flashed from the top of the greeting arch, displaying the present atmospheric readings, following by the cheery promise, “No hazards, none foreseen.” The sun hovered just above the eastern horizon, stratospheric clouds and low pollution obscuring only a portion of its fierce glare. Squinting, Jopale faced the sun. At least two large balloons were visible in the sky, suspended on long ropes, spotters busily watching the land for geysers or more subtle ruptures. Behind him, long shadows stretched toward lands rendered unfit for normal life. Not that nothing and no one could live out there… but still, Jopale felt as if he was standing on the brink of a profound desolation, and that image struck him in some innate, profoundly emotional fashion…
The caretakers walked on top of their friend and along the concave, heavily greased trail, examining the worm’s gray skin and poking its long tired muscles, sometimes using electric wands but mostly employing nothing but their bare hands. The worm’s reflexes were slow. The old caretaker said as much to the younger workers. “She’s gone too far with too many in her empty bellies,” Master Brace complained, gesturing at the milling passengers. “She needs half a cycle at least, and all she can eat.”
Jopale realized their delay would be longer than he had anticipated. Pulling two tickets from his traveler’s belt, he carefully read the deeply legal language. If he didn’t reach Port of Krauss within another fifteen cycles, the worm’s owners would refund half of the value of the first ticket. But that was an inconsequential gesture, all things considered. Because the second ticket promised him a small cabin onboard a methane-fueled ship that would leave for the New Isles two cycles later. Punctuality was his responsibility. If he was late, the ticket was worthless. And Jopale would be trapped in the Port with every other refugee, shepherding the last of his money while absorbing news from around the world, hoping that the coming nightmare would take its time and he could eventually purchase a new berth on some later, unpromised vessel.