For a brief moment after its death throes began, it almost seemed that people had changed. Everyone in the habitats was dedicated to restoring the earth, and this dedication was like a prayer joining each to each. Money and power were put aside as unimportant. But it happened too late. Some people could not learn the necessary lessons. The answers were not in quick fixes, but in character, integrity, and honor. What hurts one, hurts all. It was so simple, but it was too late.
John Morgan, the desire for power in his genes, could not control his need to control. Rather than exert power over himself and overcome this defect, he chose to exert power over others. In choosing himself and his desires as more important than the common good, he condemned humanity to a life as sterile as the great mothering earth it had destroyed. Humankind would live and die imprisoned within the remains of that earth, never to be reborn.
But Morgan didn't know that, and, if he did, he wouldn't have cared. What mattered to him was that he (in what he considered to be great wisdom) would decide a new course for mankind and everyone would have a better life. It was a kind of madness within him, this desire to make it his way, fueled by each conquest he made on his way to the 'top."
For those who had dreamed of undoing the damage that had been done by industrialization, a massive influx of high-level radiation into the environment would be a devastating blow. There would be no way to eliminate a radioactive poison which would continue its lethal activity from organism to organism for half a million years. In despair, researchers would give up the idea of restoring the earth and devote their knowledge and resources to improving the lives of those who remained. Of this, Morgan was certain.
Communication, which was sporadic between underground habitats in the U.S. and other nations, would blossom. New knowledge and technology would be applied to creating radiation-proof transport vehicles between habitats. Morgan thought that it might be possible to create an above ground city protected from the pollution and radiation by a dome. Perhaps they’d resume the old space program.
Everyone was grist for Morgan's mill. He never held a conversation without wondering how he could use the person before him. Before the Fall, he would have encountered stiff competition during his rise to power, which might have slowed him down. Here he rose unopposed, and as his influence grew, so did his madness.
Once he had decided that he would end the earth project, he went after that goal with all the drive and power that had motivated his ancestors. He wasn't the hereditary chairman of Exxon for no reason, he thought. It had purpose and meaning, and he had discovered what that purpose was - a new world run by him. It was of course, easier considered than done, and it cost Morgan many sleepless nights trying to figure out the How to go with the What.
He knew that only finishing the earth project once and for all would work. He knew that only a major nuclear event would effectively finish the planet in a short enough time for it to matter to him. How to cause that event was what was keeping him awake. The nearest nuclear waste dump was nearly 1000 miles away buried in the New Mexican desert. 1000 miles away through terrain that was uninhabitable to humans. No transport vehicles existed any longer. In fact, the habitat had been sealed for so long, there was no way to go outside. But Morgan knew that he would have to find someone to go there for him, find a closer source of radioactive material, or give up his plans.
When distress signals started coming from the Southeast USA habitat, most of East USA was in an uproar. Their compatriots in the Smoky Mountains had developed a major failure in their life support systems and were urgently requesting help. Though they had originally communicated over the internet, exchanging information and keeping each other abreast of developments in their own work, there had been little contact between the six USA habitats for the last forty years. Something Outside had damaged some of the hardware, and all that remained were rudimentary satellite systems.
Paul Tipman was walking hurriedly through 1st Quad when he spotted Morgan sitting in the cafe section, reading the Dailies on the computer console, and stopped to talk to him. "Morgan," he said.
Morgan looked up and smiled an artful smile. "Hello, Paul," he answered, taking in the look of mild distress on the man's face. "Anything wrong?"
Tipman sat down heavily and pressed the buttons that would dispense a drink into a glass and convey it to the table. "You haven't heard? Southeast's had a life support failure."
Morgan, who had been lounging, suddenly sat up. "No! But how?"
"No one knows yet. There's all kinds of speculation, but from the data received, it's possible that their food plants have mutated. Anyway, everyone's very ill, some have died."
"What's the prognosis?" Morgan was thinking furiously. Here was an opportunity. He didn't know what the possibilities were, or how he could use the chance to advantage, but he would find out.
"Come on, Morgan, you know as well as I that it would take at least two months for them to build a new food plant. First they'd have to engineer new microbes, and then they'd need time to grow enough to eat. Even then they'd be on short rations for at least another month or two. If all their food reserves are inedible, they're finished."
"Well, didn't they have backups? We have backups, don't we?" Tipman was in charge of communications and as such he usually had all kinds of information at his fingertips. He was also an inveterate gossip and Morgan knew that whatever he needed to know, he would find out, and whatever he wanted the rest of the habitat to know, he could communicate, just once, to this man. An idea began to take form.
"Yeah, we have backups and so did they. Apparently, someone was overhasty in trying to repair the damage and they allowed the backups to be overgrown with mutated material. I don't know all the details, but it looks like their reserves have been destroyed."
"Wait a minute, Paul. Why don't we try to help them out? If we could transport the genetic material to them, we could save their lives, couldn't we?"
Paul considered this suggestion and shrugged. "We could if we had some form of transport. But we don't."
"We could build one. We could take one of those motorized carts they use in the recycling plant and modify it, close it in, add portable recycler, solar power ... It wouldn't take more than three or four days. Don't you think it could be done?"
"I guess it could," Paul said, warming to the idea. "But then we have to find someone to man it."
"Oh, someone will volunteer. You'll see. Just put the idea on the board."
When Tipman left, enthusiastically planning the communiqué that would go out on the electronic bulletin board, Morgan had to struggle to contain his excitement. This was it. This was the opening. With a land vehicle and an unsealed exit from the habitat, he would be able to implement his own plans.
CHAPTER 4
East USA Habitat 2128
Four frantic days later the jury-rigged motorcar was ready. Resembling a van, its small motor had been replaced with a much larger one, a bank of batteries lined the floor and were connected to solar panels on the roof. The windows were small and well protected, designed to let in as little ultraviolet radiation as possible. Air and water would be recycled. Solid waste would be evacuated to the outside. Top speed of the vehicle was thirty miles per hour, and it was calculated that the 400-mile trip to Southeast USA would probably not cause much damage to the travelers as long as they stayed inside the machine.
There were only two volunteers, and they elected to go together. When Evelyn Chandler saw the notice on the bulletin board, she was ecstatic, and she immediately put both her name and Garret's on the board as volunteers for the mission. To Evie, this was the chance of a lifetime. They would see for themselves what was going on in the world. Satellite photographs were singularly unsatisfactory to one who'd been outside. She wanted to see what or who, was still alive on the surface, and was elated at the possibilities. Garret was as excited as she. The community at large thought they were both insane.
Though smaller roads had probably been destroyed by win
d, rain, and the consequent erosion of the roadbeds, it was assumed that the larger interstates were still more or less intact. Maps were recovered from the archives, and routes laid out. Garret spent two days studying old topographical and reconnaissance maps, comparing them to satellite pictures and trying to get a feel for the terrain they would have to cover.
Evie prepared for the trip by surreptitiously gathering materials together that she would need for the forays that she and Garret planned into the wild. They would collect specimens of plants and fungi, and especially, water, in the hopes that something, some new bit of flora or microscopic fauna, would add to the picture they were creating of the world. Their current research was nearing culmination. They’d created a plant that made what they were calling superfood, and then they’d started work on something that had once been utterly forbidden.
The idea came to them full blown the same day that they’d harvested and tested their first crop of superfood. They had made a plant that could thrive outside and produce a rich source of nutrients for whoever lived there. But did anyone live outside? From there it was a short step to imagining a world peopled by strong, intelligent, and healthy human beings: homo superior.
They used sperm and ova from the gene bank, modifying each zygote to create stronger, more adaptable, more long-lived beings. Of course, they hadn’t encouraged any of these cells to grow as yet because what would be the point of producing a perfect human being and having him or her grow up in the habitat? The method of getting their little superbabies into the outside environment had been elegantly solved, but they weren’t yet ready to take that step.
When their endless discussions first led them to the idea, they had found it frightening, even to a New Scientist who had been raised to play God. But after much deliberation, they decided to go ahead with the development of the plant anyway. The concept was too attractive to ignore, and even if they never used it, it could spearhead a whole new line of research.
The eventful morning dawned as artificially as it always did in East USA, and Evie and Garret, who had hardly slept, got dressed with special care. Garret admired the way his girl looked in her coveralls and thought that at thirty, she didn't look much different than she'd looked at sixteen. "Did you pack the vitamins?" he asked, thinking that the reason she'd stayed so young had to do with the vitamins and nutrients they both ingested in such great quantities.
"I've got 500 tablets with us. Do you think it's enough?"
"Are you planning a two month vacation?" he laughed.
"They're really going to worry when we don't get back on time," Evie remarked.
"It can't be helped."
"I hope the food producers will be enough to get Southeast started."
"They will be," Garret said. "Don't forget we're also bringing food concentrates that will last them a week. They'll be hungry, but they won't starve."
"Garret," she said, reaching for his hand, as he was pulling the straps tight on the waistband of his coveralls, "I love you." It wasn't exactly what she wanted to say, but it was as close as she could get to describing the avalanche of feelings she was experiencing—the excitement, the fear, the anticipation, the hope, the joy.
He smiled as he pulled her close and held her, "I know what you mean." She rested momentarily within his arms, and then they were ready.
Many people turned out at the exit chamber to see them off, although, of course, they wouldn't really see anything. As soon as the vehicle passed the inner door it would close. There would be no exchange of gases with the outside. Even so, the atmosphere was filled with anticipation and good fellowship, as friends and neighbors said goodbye to the pair of intrepid explorers. Evie said later that her hand was shaken so many times she thought it would fall off. Finally, the formalities were over, and the door opened. Garret drove through, and the door closed behind them.
Sitting in the silence of the tunnel leading to the outside, they smiled at how reminiscent it was of that other smaller tunnel, the secret one. "You know what the best part of all this will be Garret?" Evie asked. "When we come back, we'll be able to talk about it. We'll be able to tell them what it's like and how it feels and ... ." He squeezed her hand and put the machine in gear.
It was an odd looking vehicle that exited through the airlock at the other end of the tunnel, covered with wires, solar panels and curious looking tubes and valves. It was very big, with room enough for both of them to stretch out and sleep, and a cargo area in the back that held fifty-two cubic feet of dried food concentrates.
It rolled ponderously along the gravel path and slowly picked up speed. Evie's eyes were all but glued to the glass as she watched the scenery go past. After a while she said, "Oh stop for a minute Garret, this is almost as bad as being down under. I want to go outside."
"So do I," he said, "and we will, but first we have to get this food to Southeast."
"You're right, of course," she said, and sat back to enjoy the uncommon experience of riding, letting her mind drift. “Garret,” she wondered aloud, “do you think they’d survive if we released them?”
“Our babies? I think most of them would. The plant will support them for at least six months, and then they should be strong enough to…”
“But what if there are predators?”
“Evie, didn’t we already say that it’s a numbers game?”
“I know. But now, being out here, I’m beginning to think we’re crazy. It’s too cruel.”
“Well, that’s why we tabled the project, isn’t it? Or one of the reasons anyway.”
Evie nodded, and closed her eyes, grateful that Garret could always be counted on to provide the right answer.
Twenty minutes later, Garret gently removed the map from her sleep-numbed fingers and stopped the van to check his directions. The road was not exactly where it was supposed to be. To get to the interstate they knew they'd have to go a good fifty miles over some pretty rough landscape. They'd only gone ten and it was turning out to be a lot rougher than anyone had imagined.
The area where he parked was a rocky hillside, the slope barren but for a few trees; the slabs of concrete that had been the road were jutting up at odd angles. Ahead of him he saw that the road ended, and began again, two feet higher up. Getting through was not going to be easy. Not for the first time, he wondered if it wouldn't have been better to take two men on this job. But there was no stopping Evie. He just hoped she'd measure up to helping him move a few boulders.
He reached over and shook her gently, answering her questioning look with a turn of his head toward the windshield.
"Whew!" she said, "That's a tough one."
"We'll have to go around it."
"How?"
"Guess we'll have to get out and see," he said roguishly.
Exiting through the airlock to the outside was as awesome an experience as it had ever been. Garret always wanted to pull in a deep breath in some kind of ancient ritual, but he didn't. Instead, he swallowed the sudden lump that always came to his throat and walked to the edge of the road. The ground fell away at an alarming rate here, and he knew that that was not the way around the obstacle. On the other side of the road was a steep hill. They'd have to go further back. Evie, he noticed, was way ahead of him, already backtracking the way they'd come. About fifty feet back she called out to him. He ran to catch up and saw a way down the hill.
"Let's explore it on foot first," he said, and she nodded in agreement. Leading the way, Garret started down the path. It was just barely wide enough for the van and not too steep. Now if only it led back to the road.
"Look at this plant, Garret," Evie called from behind him, "I've never seen one like this, have you?"
"Come on hon; we'll do that later, on the way back."
"You really do have a one track mind, don't you?" she said when she caught up to him. He took her hand and helped her over some rocks in the path.
"Do you think we can get these out of the way?" he wondered.
Evie held up her arm and
pumped up her bicep. "Anything is possible," she said, and was rewarded by his chuckle and a flash of white teeth in his strong face. She was actually quite strong and he knew it. They often worked out together, and, while he could lift more weight, she had more endurance.
The landscape before them was bleak and uncompromising, stark lines of rocky outcrops, long stretches of near desert. The soil was so eroded that the bare bones of the earth were clearly visible in every direction. But there were trees, and other plants, growing in between the rocks where the soil had been trapped, and to Evie and Garret, it was the most beautiful sight they'd ever seen.
They stood high above a valley, which stretched off into the distance, and below them, they could see a small forest of scrub pine and a sparkling river. Even though they knew that the water was probably poisoned, they longed to go closer, to hear it and see it and touch it.
"I know," Evie said, "on the way back ... "
They ascended the slope and got back onto the road. Knowing they'd have no real trouble circumventing the obstruction, they walked back toward their vehicle holding hands and enjoying themselves immensely.
The voices they heard from around the bend were as unexpected as a tidal wave or fish falling from the sky. Voices. Voices out here, where no one could live. People talking. Who? Maybe Southeast had sent someone to meet them. No, that didn't make any sense. Cautiously, they peered around the turn in the road, stopped in their tracks, and quietly stepped backward. Screened by the hill, they stood silently and considered their options, as unexpected quantities of adrenaline poured into their veins.
CHAPTER 5
East USA: 2128
Reconception: The Fall Page 3