by Greg Bear
He stood beside Clara Fogarty at the middle hatch on the side opposite where they had entered. The hatch — little more than an outline in the wall’s surface — slid open and they passed through quickly, before they had a clear impression of what was on the other side.
A brightly illuminated broad hallway, curving down, stretched before them. The hatch closed and they regarded each other nervously. More hatches lined both sides of the hallway.
“Artificial gravity?” Clara Fogarty asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said.
At a silent request, they stepped forward. They remained upright in relation to the floor, with no odd sensations other than the visual. At the end of the hallway, another open hatchway awaited them; beyond was a warm half darkness. They entered a chamber similar to the waiting room.
In the center of this chamber rose a pedestal about a foot high and a yard wide. On the pedestal rested something that at first examination Arthur took to be a sculpture. It stood about half as tall as he, shaped like a hefty square human torso and head — rather, in fact, like a squared-off and slightly flattened kachina doll. Other than an abstracted and undivided bosom, it lacked any surface features. In color it was similar to heat-treated copper, with oily swirls of rainbow iridescence. Its skin was glossy but not reflective.
Without warning, it lifted smoothly a few inches above the pedestal and addressed them both out loud:
“I am afraid your people will soon no longer be wild and free.”
Arthur had heard this same voice in his head just a few minutes ago, beckoning them through the hatches.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I am not your keeper, but I am your guide.”
“Are you alive?” He did not know what else to ask.
“I am not biologically alive. I am part of this vessel, which will in turn soon become part of a much larger vessel. You are here to prepare your companions for me, that I may instruct them and carry out my own instructions.”
“Are you a robot?” Clara asked.
“I am a symbol, designed to be acceptable without conveying wrong impressions. In a manner of speaking, I am a machine, but I am not a servile laborer. Do you understand me?”
The object’s voice was deep, authoritative, yet not masculine.
“Yes,” Arthur said.
“Some among your group might panic if exposed to me without preparation. Yet it is essential that they come to know and trust me, and come to trust the information and instructions I give them. Is this understood?”
“Yes.” They answered in unison.
“The future of your people, and of all the information we have retrieved from your planet, depends on how your kind and my kind interact. Your kind must become disciplined, and I must educate you about larger realities than most of you have been used to facing.”
Arthur nodded, his mouth dry. “We’re inside one of the arks?”
“You are. These vessels will join together once we are all in space. There are now thirty-one of these vessels, and aboard twenty-one of them, five hundred humans apiece. The vessels also contain large numbers of botanical, zoological, and other specimens — not in most cases whole, but in recoverable form. Is this clear?”
“Yes,” Arthur said. Clara nodded.
“Most of my early communications with you will not be through speech, but through what you might call telepathy, as you have already been directed by the network. Later, when there is more time, this intrusive method will be largely abandoned. For now, when you go among your companions, I will speak through you, but you will have the discretion of phrasing and timing. We have very little time.”
“Has it begun?” Clara asked.
“It has begun,” the object said.
“And we’re leaving soon?”
“The last passengers and specimens for this vessel are being loaded now.”
Arthur received impressions of crates of chromium spiders being loaded from small boats through the surface entrance of the ark. The spiders contained the fruits of weeks of searching and sampling: genetic material from thousands of plants and animals along the West Coast.
“What can we call you?” Arthur asked.
“You will make up your own names for me. Now you must return to your group and introduce them to their quarters, which are spaced along this hallway. You must also ask for at least four volunteers to witness the crime that is now being committed.”
“We’re to witness the destruction of the Earth?” Clara asked.
“Yes. It is the Law. If you will excuse me, I have other introductions to make.”
They backed out of the shadowy room and watched as the hatchway slid shut.
“Very efficient,” Arthur said.
“The Law.’” Clara smiled thinly. “Right now, I’m more scared than I ever was on the boat. I don’t even know all the people’s names yet.”
“Let’s get started,” Arthur said. They traversed the curved hallway. The hatch at the opposite end opened and they saw a cluster of anxious faces. The smell of fear drifted out.
70
Irwin Schwartz stepped into the White House situation room and nearly bumped into the First Lady. She backed away with a nervous nod, her hands trembling, and he entered. Everyone’s nerves had been frazzled since the evacuation the night before and the rapid return of the President to the Capital. No one had slept for more than an hour or two since.
The President stood with Otto Lehrman before the high-resolution data screens mounted on the wood paneling covering the concrete walls. The screens were on and showed maps of different portions of the Northern Hemisphere, Mercator projection, with red spots marking vanished cities. “Come on in, Irwin,” Crockerman said. “We have some new material from the Puzzle Palace.” He seemed almost cheerful.
Irwin turned to the First Lady. “Are you here to stay?” he asked bluntly. He respected the woman, but did not like her much.
“The President specially requested my presence,” she said. “He feels we should be united.”
“Obviously, you agree with him.”
“I agree with him,” she said.
Never in United States history had a First Lady deserted her husband when he was under fire; Mrs. Crockerman knew this, and it must have taken some courage to return. Still, Schwartz had himself given long hours of thought to resigning from the administration; he could not judge her too harshly.
He held out his hand. She accepted and they shook firmly. “Welcome back aboard,” he said.
“We have photos about twenty minutes old from a Diamond Apple,” Lehrman said. “Technicians are putting them on the screens any minute.” Diamond Apples were reconnaissance satellites launched in the early 1990s. The National Reconnaissance Office was very zealous with Diamond Apple pictures. Usually, they would have been reserved for the eyes of the President and Secretary of Defense only; that Schwartz was seeing them indicated something extraordinary was in store.
“Here they are,” Lehrman said as the screens blanked.
Crockerman apparently had been told what to expect. Lines of glowing white rimmed in red and blue-green laced across a midnight-black background. “You know,” Crockerman said softly, standing back from the screens, “I was right after all. Goddammit, Irwin, I was right, and I was wrong at the same time. How do you figure that?”
Schwartz stared at the glowing lines, not making any sense of them until a grid and labels came up with the display. This was the North Atlantic; the lines were trenches, midocean ridges and faults.
“The white,” Lehrman said, “is heat residue from thermonuclear explosions. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, maybe tens of thousands — all along the Earth’s deep-ocean seams and wrinkles.”
The First Lady half sobbed, half caught her breath. Crockerman stared at the displays with a sad grin.
“Now the western Pacific,” Lehrman said. More white lines. “By the way, Hawaii has been heavily assaulted by tsunamis. The West Coast of North America is
about twenty, thirty minutes away from major waves; I’d guess it’s already been hit by waves from these areas.” He pointed to stacks of white lines near Alaska and California. “The damage could be extensive. The energy released by all the explosions is enormous; weather patterns around the world will change. The Earth’s heat budget…” He shook his head. “But I doubt we’ll be given much time to worry about it.”
“It’s a softening up?” Schwartz asked.
Lehrman shrugged. “Who can understand the design, or what this means? We’re not dead yet, so it’s a preliminary; that’s all anybody knows. Seismic stations all over are reporting heavy anomalistic fault behavior.”
“I don’t think the bullets have collided yet,” Crockerman said. “Irwin’s hit the nail on the head. It’s a softening up.”
Lehrman sat down at the large diamond-shaped table and held out his hands: your guess is as good as mine.
“I think we have maybe an hour, maybe less,” the President said. “There’s nothing we can do. Nothing we could have ever done.”
Schwartz studied the Diamond Apple displays with a slight squint. They still conveyed no convincing reality. They were attractive abstractions. What did Hawaii look like now? What would San Francisco look like in a few minutes? Or New York?
“I’m sorry not everybody is here,” Crockerman said. “I’d like to thank them.”
“We’re not evacuating…again?” Schwartz asked automatically.
Lehrman gave him a sharp, ironic look. “We don’t have a lunar settlement, Irwin. The President, when he was a senator, was instrumental in getting those funds cut in 1990.”
“My mistake,” Crockerman said, his tone almost bantering. At that moment, had Schwartz had a pistol, he would have killed the man; his anger was a helpless, undirected passion that could just as easily leave him in tears as draw him into violence. The displays conveyed no reality; Crockerman, however, conveyed it all.
“We really are children,” Schwartz said after the flush had gone out of his face and his hands had stopped trembling. “We never had a chance.”
Crockerman looked around as the floor shook beneath their feet. “I’m almost anxious for the end,” he said. “I hurt so bad inside.”
The shaking became more violent.
The First Lady held the doorframe and then leaned on the table. Schwartz reached out to help her to a chair. Secret Service agents entered the room, struggling to stay on their feet, catching hold of the table edge. After Schwartz had seated the First Lady, he sat down again himself and gripped the wooden arms of the chair. The shaking was not dying away; it was getting worse.
“How long will it take, do you think?” Crockerman asked nobody in particular.
“Mr. President, we should get you out of the building and onto the grounds,” said the agent who had made the most progress into the situation room; His voice quavered. He was terrified. “Everybody else, too.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Crockerman said. “If the roof fell on me now, it would be a goddamn blessing. Right, Irwin?” His smile was bright, but there were tears in his eyes.
The display on the screen went out, and the lights in the room dimmed shortly after, to return with less conviction.
Schwartz stood. Time once again to be an example. “I think we should let these men do their job, Mr. President.” He had a sudden heavy sensation in his stomach, as if he were in a fast-rising elevator. Crockerman stumbled and an agent caught him. The rising sensation continued, seemingly forever, and then stopped with a suddenness that lifted the White House a fraction of an inch from its foundations. The framework of steel beams that had been built into the White House shell in the late forties and early fifties squealed and groaned, but held. Plaster fell in clouds and patches from the ceiling and a rich wood panel split with a loud report.
Schwartz heard the President calling his name. From where he lay on the floor — somehow he had rolled under the table — he tried to answer, but all the breath had been knocked out of him. Gasping, blinking, wiping plaster dust from his eyes, he listened to a hideous creaking and splitting noise overhead. He heard enormous thuds outside — stone facing coming loose, he guessed, or columns toppling. He was forcibly reminded of so many movies about the demise of ancient cities by earthquake or volcano, huge blocks of marble tumbling onto crowds of hapless citizens.
Not the White House…Surely not that.
“Irwin, Otto…” The President again. A pair of legs walking with short jerks near the table.
“Under here, sir,” Schwartz said. He saw a brief portrait of his wife in his mind, her features indistinct, as if he looked at an old, badly focused picture. She smiled. Then he saw their daughter, married and living in South Carolina…if the ocean had spared her.
Again the rising. He was pressed to the floor. It was brief, only a second or two, but he knew it was enough. When it stopped, he waited for the collapse of the upper floors, eyes scrunched tight. Jesus, is the entire eastern seaboard going up? The wait and the silence seemed interminable. Schwartz could not decide whether to open his eyes again…or to wait out the long seconds, feeling the sway of the building above.
He turned his head to one side and opened his eyes.
The President had fallen and lay faceup beside the table, ghost-white with dust. His eyes were open but not aware.
The White House regained its voice and screamed like a thing alive.
The massive legs of the table buckled and exploded in splinters. They could not withstand the weight of tons of cement and steel and stone.
71
Quaint, Edward thought; quaint and touching and he wished he could muster up the emotion to join them; a group of twenty or more had gathered by now in a circle a hundred yards behind the Granite Point, singing hymns and more folk songs. Betsy clung to him on the asphalt path. Fresh tremors had subsided, but the air itself seemed to be grumbling, complaining.
Ironically, having climbed the trail to have a good vantage, they now stood well back from the rim. A foot-wide crack had appeared in the terrace stonework. From where they stood, they could see only the upper third of the opposite wall of the valley.
“You’re a geologist,” Betsy said, massaging his neck with one hand, something he had not asked her to do, but which felt good. “Do you know what’s going on?”
“No,” he said.
“It’s not just an earthquake, though?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So it’s beginning now. We just got up here.”
He nodded and swallowed back a lump of fear. Now that it had come, he was near panic. He felt trapped, claustrophobic, with only all of the Earth and sky to move in — not even that, lacking wings. He felt squeezed between steel plates of gravity and his own puny weakness. His body was forcibly reminding him that fear was difficult to control, and presence of mind in the face of death was rare.
“God,” Betsy said, placing her cheek against his, looking toward the Point. She was shaking, too. “I thought at least we’d have time to talk about it, sit around a campfire…”
Edward held her more tightly. He imagined her as a wife, and then thought of Stella, marveling at the fickleness of his fantasies; he was grasping for many lives, now that his own seemed so short. Over his fear he thought of long years together with both of them.
The tremors had almost passed.
The hymn singers continued searching for a common key, hopelessly lost. Minelli and Inez came from the trees and climbed the hill between the close switchbacks of the asphalt path. Minelli whooped out loud and ran his hand through his hair. “Jesus, isn’t adrenaline great?”
“He’s crazy,” Inez said, breathing hard, her face pale. “Maybe not the craziest I’ve met, but close.”
“Does it feel warmer to you?” Betsy asked.
Edward considered that possibility. Would heat transmit itself before a shock wave? No. If the bullets were colliding, or had collided only a short time ago, deep in the center of the Earth, the
expanding and irresistible plasma of their mutual destruction would crack the Earth wide before heat could ever reach the surface.
“I don’t think it’s warmer because of…the end,” Edward said. He had never felt his mind racing so rapidly over so many subjects. He wanted to see what was happening in the valley.
“Shall we?” he asked, pointing to the terraces and the still-intact rim.
“What else did we come here for?” Minelli asked, laughing and shaking his head like a wet dog. Sweat flew from his hair. He whooped again and took Inez’s plump hand, dragging her across the gravel to the terraces.
“Minelli,” she protested, looking back at them for help. Edward glanced at Betsy, and she nodded once, face flushed.
“I am so terrified” she whispered. “It’s like being high.” They walked together toward the edge. “I pity all those folks who stayed home. I really do.”
The two couples stood alone on the terrace, looking down into the valley. Not much had changed; there was no visible damage, not at first glance, anyway. Then Minelli pointed to a thick column of smoke. “Look.”
The Ahwanee was on fire. Nearly the entire hotel was ablaze.
“I love that old place,” Betsy said. Inez moaned and wrung her hands.
“How much longer, do you think?” Inez asked, her expression that of someone about to sneeze, or shriek. She did neither.
“It seems real close,” he said. Betsy raised her arms with a moan and he hugged her tightly, almost squeezing the breath out of her.
“Hold me, dammit,” Inez demanded. Minelli blinked at her, then followed Edward’s example.
Ten minutes after the meeting, Arthur and Clara had assigned the members of their group to the new quarters along the curved hallway. Two of the younger children were crying inconsolably and all were emotionally exhausted; Arthur stood in the confines of the cabin he and Francine and Marty would share, pondering the common sanitation facilities accessible through the first doorway on the right of the sealed hatch where they had met with the robot. A few had already used the lavatory; some had gone in there to be sick. Clara was one of the latter. She came to the Gordons’ cabin and leaned against the edge of the hatch, rubbing her eyes with one hand. “All settled, I think,” she said. “What’s next?”