“How long will you live?” Fane asked.
“I don’t know — past a century at least, I suppose. My wife died in a flying accident recently.”
“Flying?” Fane asked.
“Gliding — for sport.”
“I don’t understand,” Fane said.
The woman shook her head but did not speak.
“That is why you are traveling?” Fane asked.
Kurbi nodded. “May I stay here for a day or two? I’ve been doing chores for my food and a place to sleep. Can you use the help?”
“Yes, I can,” Fane said. Kurbi sensed that the mention of Grazia’s death had affected Fane, perhaps reminding him of the certainty of his wife’s death, as well as of his own.
“You may stay until the next train, young man,” Fane’s wife said. “You may call me Slifa while you are with us.”
“And your daughters’ names?”
Slifa looked to her husband. Fane shrugged.
“They are Azura and Apona,” she said.
“Twins?”
“Yes — they were made by God so that they might better see their faults in each other.”
The two girls nodded solemnly at Kurbi, but he was still unable to see their full faces. He wondered if they were shy, or if they were supposed to wear their hair like a veil.
“I’m glad to know you, Azura and Apona.”
“You must not speak of knowing them,” Fane said.
“I see.”
“You must not look at them long,” Slifa added. “They must not become accustomed to the gaze of any other except the ones who have spoken for them.”
“Very well.”
Fane got up and went to the fireplace, where he added two chunks of peat to the flames. “You will sleep by the fire,” he said without turning around.
Silently, the women got up. Azura and Apona went to a door at the end of the room, opened it and disappeared into a dark room, closing the wooden door firmly behind them. Slifa went to the door at the opposite end of the room at Kurbi’s right, opened it and went inside, leaving it slightly ajar.
Fane prodded the fire a few times with a stick.
“Why are you really here, offworlder?” he asked as he sat down again.
“You’re certainly curious about how people live elsewhere. I’m here for the same reason.”
Fane shrugged and his dark eyebrows went up. “What is there to know — we know, and we know our way is right.” There seemed to be a suppressed anger in the man’s manner, as if the existence of other worlds were an insult to him. “I do not believe there are as many worlds as some say — certainly there are not as many as grains of sand.”
Kurbi did not answer, but searched for something else to say. “I’d like to watch your sunset before I sleep,” he said finally.
Fane looked at him and smiled, obviously relieved that Kurbi had not contradicted him about something he was unsure about. “Yes — but the wind gets cold,” he said as he stood up. “I will leave you now.”
“Sleep well,” Kurbi said as the man went into his bedroom and closed the door. Kurbi heard him putting something against the door inside.
There was a muffled giggle from the bedroom at his left as he stood up to go outside. He opened the door and stepped out.
The storm was completely gone. At his right the sky was clear and blue, darkening into jet black. The twin suns were balls of molten metal, joined with a white-hot streamer of plasma. The wind from the east was cold, but there was less dust on its breath after the rain.
The suns touched the horizon and sank into the flat earth, until only an upward wash of red light was left. Abandoned, the planet seemed to shudder as the wind quickened and became cooler. Kurbi turned and went back inside, closing the wooden door quickly behind him.
He unrolled his sleeping bag by the fire, put his package of provisions aside and lay down by the warming flames. For a time he wandered in the suburbs of sleep, circling the center of rest while images of his travels came to him like actors paying curtain calls.
“If you don’t return in some months,” Nicolai had said, “I’ll take the flyer we have and come out along the rail line looking for you — so don’t wander too far from the tracks.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“I will come anyway.”
“Suit yourself, Nico — you just want an excuse to travel. Or is it because you’ll miss our talks?”
“Both.”
“I’ll get back, don’t worry. If you feel so constricted, why don’t you leave New Mars, start a new life elsewhere?”
“My family is here — I haven’t faced the idea of leaving my parents permanently to go worlds away.”
“You don’t have a wife or children.”
“No — there is a brother I haven’t seen for years. It’s not the same for me, Raf, as it is for you.”
“I think I understand. It would be as if the Earth were not there anymore, as if something had destroyed it.” He had thought of the Herculean at that moment, of Julian and his offer, and it all seemed to mean more.
A bit of moist peat crackled in the fire, jarring him into wakefulness. He felt that eyes were watching him. The floorboards creaked under him as if someone were walking across the room toward him. The planet trembled under his back slightly and he sat up, wide-awake.
The house shook a little, and the window facing east brightened. Kurbi stood up just as Fane came out of his bedroom. “Do you have quakes?” Kurbi asked.
Fane shook his head and went out the door. Kurbi followed him outside. Together they watched the eastern sky glow brighter, burning with a blue-white light that rose higher and higher, as if the planet had disgorged a bolt of light to strike the sky. The horizon flashed once, twice; the ground shook again.
“What can it be?” Kurbi asked.
“I have never seen anything like this,” Fane said.
|Go to Contents |
XIII. Ocean Strike
“I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.”
— W. B. Yeats
THE ROCK became a point and disappeared into the atmosphere of New Mars. A glow appeared against the blue ocean as the asteroid hurtled in at nearly one hundred kilometers per second, a forty-billion-ton missile that would strike the ocean just off New Marsport in less than a minute. The air glowed blue from the passage a few moments before impact.
Gorgias realized that he would not be able to see the full magnitude of the ocean strike from this distance.
“Describe what is happening,” he told the ship.
A violet flare appeared in the ocean below; it flashed once, twice.
SUB-NUCLEAR REACTION FROM HEAT OF IMPACT.
The screen telescoped the distance until the area of ocean took up the whole screen.
OCEAN VAPORIZED AT IMPACT POINT. CRUST PENETRATION THROUGH MANTLE. MAGMA EXPOSED.
Steam clouds covered the impact area, but the infrared glow of the wound in the ocean floor showed up clearly on the screen. The ocean was rushing in to cool that glow, creating the steam cloud that would soon veil the whole planet.
EFFECTS:
QUAKES,
OSCILLATION OF ALL PLANETARY WATER
RESULTING
IN TIDAL WAVES,
HIGH WINDS,
RAINSTORMS.
DURATION INDEFINITE.
On the edge of the continent, the city of New Marsport glowed in the infrared sensors. It disappeared as the tidal wave covered it. The sensors continued to pick up the city’s fading heat as the waves cooled it. And so it would be with every coastal settlement on the planet, as the angered ocean broke upon the shores, rolling in to reclaim its ancient places.
CLIMATIC FORECAST:
INDEFINITE WINTER RESULTING FROM CLOUD COVER.
RAIN AND WINDSTORMS INCREASING IN SEVERITY.
R
ECURRING TIDAL WAVES, TYPHOONS,
TORNADOES, WATERSPOUTS.
All this, he thought, from the energy released by the ocean’s quenching of the strike heat. A ringed waterfall as high as a mountain range was rushing in to fill the hellhole of the impact, water and steam distributing the heat energy necessary to threaten the biosphere of a world. An economical weapon, he thought, wondering if he would use it again. If he announced his responsibility for the strike, it would be difficult to repeat this form of attack; yet he wanted them to know that he had done it, rather than some mindless natural process.
“Send a message,” he said to the ship, “tell them we were here.”
In a few moments the communication would reach the exit beacon’s warp transmitter-repeater; within minutes the Federation would know. He got up from his station and went aft to find his father.
All through the next day wind and rain swept across the plain. Kurbi and the Weblen family huddled in the small cellar of the house. The roof of the house had been ripped off. Kurbi feared that the cellar would flood, forcing them out into the open.
The twin girls and their mother huddled together in one comer of the wood-lined basement. Kurbi and Fane each sat in a different comer, facing the women.
“What is happening, offworlder?” Fane asked in the gloom, sounding as if he thought that Kurbi might be responsible for the disaster.
“I don’t know — a volcanic eruption somewhere on the planet, maybe a large meteor strike. There’s no way I can find out.” He wondered if Nicolai was safe.
“My spring crop is dying,” Fane said. “Nothing will grow. We are being judged.”
“Death is near,” Slifa said. “We must compose ourselves.” Apona and Azura whimpered at her words.
“I — I can’t accept this to be the will of God,” Fane said.
“Do not blaspheme,” Slifa said.
Thunder cracked as she spoke the words. She wailed and her daughters joined in.
“Be still,” Fane shouted over the wind and thunder, “be still!”
“They can’t help it,” Kurbi said, “I’m fearful also.”
“You — afraid?”
“Yes.”
“Then we are lost.”
Suddenly more water began to flow into the cellar. In a minute they were in water up to their thighs.
“Up into the house,” Kurbi shouted over the rushing sound.
One by one they climbed the ladder into the roofless house. Here the fireplace was a mass of wet stones; chairs, pots and pans were scattered over the floor. Overhead, the sky drove with an unbroken obscurity of rain and dirt scooped up from the land.
“Over there,” Kurbi said, “There’s still some cover left in that corner. Help me with the overturned table — the women can get under it if we put it against the wall.”
They shoved the table into the corner and the three women crawled under it. Kurbi and Fane crouched on either side. “If the walls blow away,” Fane shouted to him across the tabletop, “we’ll be done.”
“As long as there’s a bit of wall,” Kurbi answered, “there’s hope.”
“What if the rain doesn’t stop?”
“It will,” Kurbi said, “it will.” It must, he thought, or the plain will flood and sweep us away. The land could only absorb so much.
“What time do you think it is?” Fane shouted.
There was no way to tell. The cloud cover had wiped out all distinction between day and night, morning and afternoon. Kurbi peered around the dark, debris-strewn floor, looking for his bedroll and rucksack.
Miraculously, the rucksack lay in the ruined fireplace, pinned down by a few stones that had fallen in from the chimney. Slowly he crawled over to the rucksack and dragged it backward.
Pulling out a few pieces of dried food, he handed them to the women under the table.
“Eat it — it’s wet but we don’t have much else.” The stores in the basement were under water now; this was all the food that was left. Hands reached out and took what he offered.
“Pass some to Fane,” he shouted.
He bit into the last piece himself, savoring the texture of synthetic protein and fruit flavor.
The light grew darker, until he could no longer see his own hands in front of his face.
I am a soldier, he thought,my son is a terrorist .
Everything was perfectly clear now.If this is what it takes to survive and regain power ,then I want no part of it . A planet was dying nearby, and he had done nothing to prevent it. He would not be able to live with that knowledge.
He remembered Gorgias and Myraa playing as small children, with Oriona and himself looking on. The General would have been happy to know that his daughter, Myraa, had survived.…
The old Herculean closed his eyes and lay still, overcome by the past. It was a sweet breeze of memory, enveloping him with longing and regret; he did not have the strength to struggle against it.…
Gorgias, his brother Herkon and Myraa ran through the tall grass, shouting and laughing. Oriona was smiling.…
He should never have brought his son to the base, or taken him on sorties; he should never have let him use the ship’s library, or taught him the roll of destroyed worlds; he should never have believed the stories of a Herculean army still at large somewhere, regardless of the evidence that such an army had escaped through the ruined gate on Myraa’s World. He had failed; his whole civilization had failed. If it were to grow back, it would have to do so slowly, peacefully, out of sight of its enemies who now lived inside it in the form of hatred and the thirst for revenge. Perhaps there were irreversible things, and the Herculean Empire would never return, except maybe as something else.…
Myraa, Gorgias and Herkon ran naked into his open arms, shapes out of time.…
“Herkon is dead,” Oriona said one day, “the others have taken him.”
“How?” he heard himself ask very long ago.
His father was not in the aft cabin.
Gorgias turned and went forward again to the control room.
“Am I alone?” he asked the ship.
YES.
“When was the lock opened?”
ONE HALF HOUR AGO.
“Scan nearby space.”
SCANNING. LIFEFORM AT SIX KILOMETERS.
“Overtake,” Gorgias said.
The disfigured face of New Mars disappeared, to be replaced by the sight of his father and scooter directly ahead. Gorgias went aft, put on his suit and stepped into the lock. It cycled and opened just as the ship came alongside the scooter.
Gorgias reached out and pulled the scooter inside.
As the lock closed and cycled, the figure toppled from the seat, pulled down by the ship’s artificial gravity. The inner door opened, and Gorgias pulled his father inside.
When he took off the helmet, he saw that the face was disfigured by lack of air pressure, eyes bulging wide open. Gorgias looked into the eyes as if he were looking across light-years, hoping that far away, at a greater distance than he had ever known, something of his father might still be alive to be recalled by a sheer act of will.
Slowly, mechanically, he stood up and took off his own suit, then his father’s, and hung them up in their places on the bulkhead.
Turning back to the body, he stared at it for a long time.
“You were waiting to do this,” he said, “to take what remained of the past from me.” He knelt down and punched the discolored face with his fist. “Coward!” For a moment the mouth seemed to turn up into the semblance of a smile, but the flesh would not stay and it turned into a sneer. “You’re nothing now — you’ve always been nothing. Why else would you have come to this, old man?”
A wild thought came into his mind. Myraa could drag his father back, make him face what he had done, if what she said was true. He picked up the body, carried it into the aft cabin, and turned the temperature down to its lowest setting, insuring that the body would not begin to decompose for a while.
He rushed forwar
d into the control cabin, sat down at the station and screamed an order.
“Switchover — evasive route to Myraa’s World — we’re being pursued by Federation cruisers.”
YOU ARE MISTAKEN,
NOTHING IS VISIBLE.
He would tell Myraa that the patrol ships had appeared just after he and his father had finished attaching the gravitic units to the rock. His father had been hit by laser fire, but he had managed to get him back into the ship before he died.
“Follow orders — Myraa’s World,” he repeated.
When the ship was in jumpspace, Gorgias went aft and looked at his father’s corpse floating in the zero-g field.
“I’ll lose them,” he said. “I’ll get us home.”
He went forward again and sat down at the screen station.
The gray continuum was clear; he was safe.
Closing his eyes, he tried to push away the nagging fear that came into him. His father was dead … honorably, he told himself, rehearsing the lie that would have to be told.
Myraa will know the truth, another part of him said.
Myraa will know what to do, his hopes whispered.
On the third day the rain slowed to a drizzle and some light came into the sky, a pitiably feeble glow that was put to shame by the more distant lightning flashes. Kurbi opened his eyes and found himself staring at the lighter sky for a long time.
“Slifa is dead,” Fane said, his voice seeming loud now in contrast to the steady rush of the endless rain. “The cold was too much for her.” Azura and Apona were crying softly.
As Kurbi watched the sky, he saw a black shape appear on the horizon. He stood up, pulling the wet blanket around him, and peered through the large hole in the east wall of the house.
“There,” he said pointing, but Fane and the twins paid him no attention.
The flyer came closer. “Nico,” Kurbi whispered, and started toward the open doorway. He could not remember when the door had been blown away.
Kurbi leaned against the doorjamb and watched as the flyer came in low over the rails, casting a strong beam of light onto the track bed below it. In a moment it veered from the railroad and approached the house, floating to a gentle landing a hundred meters away on the rainswept prairie.
George Zebrowski Page 9