A storage site was chosen nearby, directly above a fault line that had produced a violent earthquake half a century earlier. Here 140 steel-and-concrete tanks were constructed just below the surface of the ground and some 240 feet above the water table of the Columbia River, from which a densely populated region derived its water supply.
Into these tanks the boiling radioactive wastes were poured: a magnificent gift to future generations. Within a few years the true subtlety of the jest became apparent when the first small leaks were detected in the tanks.
Some observers predicted that no more than ten to twenty years would pass before the great heat caused the seams of the tanks to burst, releasing radioactive gases into the atmosphere or permitting radioactive fluids to escape into the river. The designers of the tanks maintained, though, that they were sturdy enough to last at least a century. It will be noted that this was something less than one percent of the known half-life of the materials placed in the tanks.
Because of discontinuities in the records, we are unable to determine which estimate was more nearly correct. It should be possible for our decontamination squads to enter the affected regions in eight hundred to thirteen hundred years. This episode arouses tremendous admiration in me. How much gusto, how much robust wit, those old ones must have had!
#
We are granted a holiday so we may go to the mountains of Uruguay to visit the site of one of the last human settlements, perhaps the very last. It was discovered by a reclamation team several hundred years ago and has been set aside, in its original state, as a museum for the tourists who one day will wish to view the mother-world.
One enters through a lengthy tunnel of glossy pink brick. A series of airlocks prevents the outside air from penetrating. The village itself, nestling between two craggy spires, is shielded by a clear shining dome. Automatic controls maintain its temperature at a constant mild level. There were a thousand inhabitants. We can view them in the spacious plazas, in the taverns, and in places of recreation.
Family groups remain together, often with their pets. A few carry umbrellas. Everyone is in an unusually fine state of preservation. Many of them are smiling.
It is not yet known why these people perished. Some died in the act of speaking, and scholars have devoted much effort, so far without success, to the task of determining and translating the last words still frozen on their lips.
We are not allowed to touch anyone, but we may enter their homes and inspect their possessions and toilet furnishings. I am moved almost to tears, as are several of the others.
“Perhaps these are our very ancestors,” Ronald exclaims.
But Bruce declares scornfully, “You say ridiculous things. Our ancestors must have escaped from here long before the time these people lived.”
Just outside the settlement I find a tiny glistening bone, possibly the shinbone of a child, possibly part of a dog’s tail. “May I keep it?” I ask our leader. But he compels me to donate it to the museum.
#
The archives yield much that is fascinating. For example, this fine example of ironic distance in ecological management. In the ocean off a place named California were tremendous forests of a giant seaweed called kelp, housing a vast and intricate community of maritime creatures. Sea urchins lived on the ocean floor, one hundred feet down, amid the holdfasts that anchored the kelp. Furry aquatic mammals known as sea otters fed on the urchins.
The Earth people removed the otters because they had some use for their fur. Later, the kelp began to die. Forests many square miles in diameter vanished. This had serious commercial consequences, for the kelp was valuable and so were many of the animal forms that lived in it.
Investigation of the ocean floor showed a great increase in sea urchins. Not only had their natural enemies, the otters, been removed, but the urchins were taking nourishment from the immense quantities of organic matter in the sewage discharges dumped into the ocean by the Earth people. Millions of urchins were nibbling at the holdfasts of the kelp, uprooting the huge plants and killing them.
When an oil tanker accidentally released its cargo into the sea, many urchins were killed and the kelp began to reestablish itself. But this proved to be an impractical means of controlling the urchins. Encouraging the otters to return was suggested, but there was not a sufficient supply of living otters.
The kelp foresters of California solved their problem by dumping quicklime into the sea from barges. This was fatal to the urchins; once they were dead, healthy kelp plants were brought from other parts of the sea and embedded to become the nucleus of a new forest. After a while the urchins returned and began to eat the kelp again. More quicklime was dumped. The urchins died and new kelp was planted.
Later, it was discovered that the quicklime was having harmful effects on the ocean floor itself, and other chemicals were dumped to counteract those effects.
All of this required great ingenuity and a considerable outlay of energy and resources. Edward thinks there was something very Japanese about these maneuvers. Ethel points out that the kelp trouble would never have happened if the Earth people had not originally removed the otters. How naive Ethel is! She has no understanding of the principles of irony. Poetry bewilders her also. Edward refuses to sleep with Ethel now.
#
In the final centuries of their era the people of Earth succeeded in paving the surface of their planet almost entirely with a skin of concrete and metal. We must pry much of this up so that the planet may start to breathe again.
It would be easy and efficient to use explosives or acids, but we are not overly concerned with ease and efficiency; besides, there is great concern that explosives or acids may do further ecological harm here. Therefore, we employ large machines that inset prongs in the great cracks that have developed in the concrete. Once we have lifted the paved slabs they usually crumble quickly. Clouds of concrete dust blow freely through the streets of these cities, covering the stumps of the buildings with a fine, pure coating of grayish-white powder.
The effect is delicate and refreshing.
Paul suggested yesterday that we may be doing ecological harm by setting free this dust. I became frightened at the idea and reported him to the leader of our team. Paul will be transferred to another group.
#
Toward the end here they all wore breathing suits, similar to ours but even more comprehensive. We find these suits lying around everywhere like the discarded shells of giant insects. The most advanced models were complete individual housing units.
Apparently, it was not necessary to leave one’s suit except to perform such vital functions as sexual intercourse and childbirth. We understand that the reluctance of the Earth people to leave their suits even for those functions, near the close, immensely hastened the decrease in population.
#
Our philosophical discussions. God created this planet. We all agree on that, in a manner of speaking, ignoring for the moment definitions of such concepts as “God” and “created”.
Why did He go to so much trouble to bring Earth into being, if it was His intention merely to have it rendered uninhabitable? Did He create mankind especially for this purpose, or did they exercise free will in doing what they did here? Was mankind God’s way of taking vengeance against His own creation? Why would He want to take vengeance against His own creation?
Perhaps it is a mistake to approach the destruction of Earth from the moral or ethical standpoint. I think we must see it in purely aesthetic terms, i.e., a self-contained artistic achievement, like a fouetté en tournant or an entrechat-dix, performed for its own sake and requiring no explanations. Only in this way can we understand how the Earth people were able to collaborate so joyfully in their own asphyxiation.
#
My tour of duty is almost over. It has been an overwhelming experience; I will never be the same. I must express my gratitude for this opportunity to have seen Earth almost as its people knew it. Its rusted streams, its corroded meadows, its pu
rpled skies, its bluish puddles. The debris, the barren hillsides, the blazing rivers.
Soon, thanks to the dedicated work of reclamation teams such as ours, these superficial but beautiful emblems of death will have disappeared. This will be just another world for tourists, of sentimental curiosity but no unique value to the sensibility. How dull that will be: a green and pleasant Earth once more, why, why? The universe has enough habitable planets; at present it has only one Earth.
Has all our labor here been an error, then? I sometimes do think it was misguided of us to have undertaken this project. But on the other hand, I remind myself of our fundamental irrelevance. The healing process is a natural and inevitable one. With us or without us, the planet cleanses itself. The wind, the rain, the tides. We merely help things along.
#
A rumor reaches us that a colony of live Earthmen has been found on the Tibetan plateau. We travel there to see if this is true. Hovering above a vast, red, empty plain, we see large figures moving slowly about. Are these Earthmen, inside breathing suits of a strange design?
We descend. Members of other reclamation teams are already on hand. They have surrounded one of the large creatures. It travels in a wobbly circle, uttering indistinct cries and grunts. Then it comes to a halt, confronting us blankly as if defying us to embrace it. We tip it over; it moves its massive limbs dumbly but is unable to arise.
After a brief conference we decide to dissect it. The outer plates lift easily. Inside we find nothing but gears and coils of gleaming wire. The limbs no longer move, although things click and hum within it for quite some time. We are favorably impressed by the durability and resilience of these machines. Perhaps in the distant future such entities will wholly replace the softer and more fragile life forms on all worlds, as they seem to have done on Earth.
The wind. The rain. The tides. All sadnesses flow to the sea.
Thaw
A Red Sister Story
By Mark Lawrence
“Nona!”
Nona looked up. Ruli ran across the quayside towards her, careless of her skirts and the master’s hat left tumbling in her wake. Ruli caught Nona in her arms and Nona, despite her grim mood, surrendered to the moment, sweeping up her old friend. Her mind had never let go of the idea that they were the same height, Ruli perhaps an inch or two taller, so the fact that she now dwarfed the woman always took Nona by surprise.
Nona lifted her clear off the ground. Bearing three sons had thickened Ruli somewhat but the additional weight proved no challenge to arms used to constant swordplay.
“Hey!” Ruli laughed.
“What? Henton doesn’t do this?” Ruli’s husband was eight foot tall and twice as broad in the shoulders as Nona.
When Nona and Arabella had arrived at the dock, the sight of two nuns had drawn little attention. Though both of them were Red Sisters, they had opted for the anonymity of the black habit. Heads turned now though at the sight of Trademaster Ruli Vinesong being hoisted into the air like a child, squealing with laughter all the while.
“Ara!” As soon as Nona let Ruli’s feet touch the flagstones she was off again, throwing herself at Arabella. They embraced and Ara manufactured the expected smiles, managing a more convincing job of it than Nona had. Ara had always been better at stepping clear of an argument and, even though she’d started this one, Ara seemed, at least outwardly, less affected by it than Nona.
“Is the boat ready?” Ara asked.
“It’s a ship!” Ruli rolled her eyes, showing another flash of the girl she’d been when they were all novices back at the convent. “Boats are for bobbing about by the shore. My ships cross the sea!” Ruli had inherited her father’s fleet and made her money exporting wine to the Durns then bringing back coal. War and invasions made surprisingly brief interruptions to the necessary business of trading across the waters. “And yes, it’s ready. Clera arrived this morning. She’s waiting aboard.”
Nona glanced at Ara who kept her steely gaze on the ship in question. The argument had been about half a dozen things, anything either of them could lay hands on to hurt the other in the heat of the moment, but Clera had been the heart of it.
“She delivered you to your enemies!” Ara had shouted that morning, her face shadowed by more than dawn’s grey light. “She tried to skewer me with a spear!” She’d rolled from their bed to haul up her nightgown and show the scar on her back. As if Nona had forgotten. As if she hadn’t traced the site with her fingertips a thousand times and didn’t know it better than any wound of her own.
Nona shook her head. “She knew the shipskin wouldn’t give.” The armor that Red Sisters wore was thin but of legendary toughness. “And she helped us as often as she hurt us.”
“You say that like it’s a good thing, rather than just enough to let her live!” Ara had thrown up her hands and stalked out of Nona’s cell without even stopping to pick up her habit to keep the cold from her flesh.
Nona shook off the morning’s memory. She followed Ruli and Ara to where the ship lay tied to the dock bollards. Sailors paused their tasks to watch the nuns approach, the devout making the sign of the Tree while others tapped a hand to their chest, acknowledging Ruli.
Clera came to the rail. Like Ruli, she wore her hair uncovered, black locks flowing over her shoulders. When she’d been a novice it had always been a wild tangle, but as a merchant, her wealth had tamed it. She wore face paints too. Just a touch here and there, dark around the eyes, red on the lips. Even through her disapproval, Nona had to admit she looked good.
“Does she think we’re going to a ball?” Ara hissed.
Nona wanted to tell Ara to put her envy aside. The paints Clera’s silver paid for still didn’t make her as beautiful as Ara after a hard training session with her face flushed and sweat plastering her golden locks to her skull. Mud and blood couldn’t tarnish Ara’s Ancestor-given splendor, even with her hair hidden beneath a nun’s headdress. The only thing that had ever looked ugly on her was jealousy.
It was just a kiss. Nona wanted to say the words. It was just a kiss. But they were fuel to the fire that was burning Ara up.
“Why is she even here?” Ara aimed the question at Ruli as they followed her up the gangplank. “She’s at the convent two days in seven. And now she’s here, too!”
“You know Clera.” Ruli shrugged. “Maybe she smells gold to be made. She must have spent enough of it to get the emperor to send her along. You know what they say: the emperor can’t be bought, but he can certainly be rented.”
Once aboard, Ruli went to speak with the captain while Nona and Ara slowly made their way to the prow, passing Clera without comment. Ara stalked past. Head high. Nona, burdened by shame, looked everywhere but at her, finding sudden fascination in the sailors’ tasks of knotting ropes and shifting nets.
Nona turned her gaze from decks to the flat gray expanse of the Marn Sea. The ice walls that corralled the sea were a white fringe on both horizons, over thirty miles distant to the north, nearly twenty to the south. Further than that—Nona reminded herself—she and the others were here because the Corridor had been widened. She opened her mouth to say something to Ara, then closed it. The ice may have thawed but something between Ara and Nona had frozen.
Nona wanted to say that she’d never seen the sea before. She wanted to share her wonder at the way the wooden floor beneath her feet rose and fell. The taste of salt on the wind, the cry of the gulls, all of these things trembled on her tongue, needing to be shared, but Ara’s eyes were ice blue and fixed on the distance.
“An island full of monsters!” Clera came up behind them, bold and unrepentant. “Sounds exciting. And unlikely.”
Nona turned. Ara didn’t.
“If it’s unlikely, why are you here?” Ara asked in a cold voice.
“I like a challenge.” Clera shot Nona a wicked look. “And unlikely bets can be where the money is. With the war over, this could be the next big thing.”
The war had delivered into the emperor’s hands th
e means to unlock a frozen world. Or at least parts of it. With the power to focus the rays of their dying sun, he could broaden the horizons of nations that had been locked for millennia in the shrinking Corridor that encircled Abeth’s equator: a zone carved through the miles-thick ice sheets in which the whole planet was clad.
But while thawing land ice would cause disastrous flooding, only vast seas extended beneath the ice-bound edges of the Sea of Marn. There, the creatures of the ocean emerged from darkness and could be hunted by a starving population. Recent battlefields yielded poor harvests. So, the emperor had ordered the Sea of Marn to be widened.
When the melting ice cliffs had revealed an island, the shock was not that it was there but that it seemed to have existed within its own bubble under the sheet. Rather than the scraped-clean rock one might expect, gnawed by glacial teeth, the place, according to the tales of passing sailors, boasted monsters larger than houses. The emperor had requested Nona’s participation in the investigation. The abbess had sent her alone, her tender heart not willing to risk others to these reported monsters and her faith in Nona’s invincibility unshakeable.
Ara had come because, kiss or no kiss, she’d told the abbess: “What? No! I’m not letting her go alone. Are you stupid?”
#
“We’re making good time.” Nona found Ruli beside the ship’s wheel.
“The Corridor wind is either with you or against you when navigating the Marn. When it’s with you, your ship fairly skips across the waves.”
“What’s that man doing?” Nona pointed to a sailor struggling with a complex set of ropes and pulleys beneath the main sail.
“Nautical stuff.” Ruli dismissed the question. “What’s up with you and Ara?” Ruli lived for gossip but genuine concern colored her voice.
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