Green Grow The Rashes And Other Stories

by William Meikle

  ~-o0O0o-~

  I had music turned up loud for most of the next few hours. It seemed to help, to stop the oppressive sky from beating me down into the ice that lay everywhere below me. I almost didn’t hear the beep as the probe announced a finding.

  I checked the co-ordinates and my heart sank. It was a four-hour flight away. I wasn’t sure my mind could take so much open space, so much desolation. Then I remembered.

  Ten short years. And twelve points short of my breeding merit.

  I set my eyes on the brightest star, and told the probe to go.

  I tried to let my mind wander, to think of happier times in the warren, of solid walls and enough light to keep the dark at bay permanently. But my eye kept drawing me back to that star, a bright pinpoint. At first I thought it might be one of the planets, before I remembered that, without a star to light them, they too had gone mostly dark. I realised that I was looking at Sol itself… or what was left of her after the dimming.

  You’ve all seen the history vids, you all know of the great golden ball that some days seemed to fill the sky. And I know that some of you harbour thoughts that it’s still up there, hanging above, and that we will walk underneath its heat again.

  I wish I could show you that sad little point of light that is all that remains; I wish I could make you see just how far the dark has encroached since we went under. I flew over the desolation for hours. We know from our lessons that we went to ground where we hoped to be hottest. Iceland they used to call it, a place of hot springs and abundant thermal energy. Or so we thought. The dimming changed all of that; not quickly, but three hundred years without heat is a long time. And Iceland now lives up to its name.

  There is no sea.

  I’ll repeat that, for it is something we have forgotten. We see the pictures, of waves crashing on sandy shores, and smiling people walking hand in hand under open sky. Never again. There is ice, pack ice, and rock. Nothing else.

  I headed south and west. Again the history tells of cities, tall mighty monuments to our past. They are all gone. The ice has eaten everything. The history of mankind has gone cold. More than halfway into my journey I crossed what had been the Equator, what had been lush greenery. All gone. The whole planet has gone cold.

  That was my thought and I saw nothing to make me change my mind.

  Until I reached my destination.