“As the seas rise,” he said, “they open graves and unlock doors. Unlike many large-mammal species, the vampire seals prosper. Here in New England there are only the dead. The glaciers are still hundreds of miles north, but no one can live here.”
“Y ustedes?” Lee ventured. His Spanish was a little better than his English.
“We live in Miami, but we were sent to meet you, since we are both experts in late English. We have tapes, movies. The way people talk as well as the spelling is preserved.”
“Envian por quienes?” Lee asked a second time, in Spanish. “Who sent you?”
“Los Viejos,” Elizam answered. “From the future.”
And who are these Old Ones? Lee asked, still in Spanish.
“No lo sabemos.” No one knew who the Old Ones were, or what they wanted. Elizam and his scowling companion had simply been told to meet Lee and Cole here, and send them on.
“Send us on where?” Cole asked, but no one answered him. They pretended not to hear and jabbered on in Spanish. Cole could follow the sense of it. A message had appeared on some kind of academic E-mail server. “Nos da sus nombres,” the woman said. “Dr Lee. Cole.”
“It’s Doctor Cole,” Cole said, interrupting. “Doctor William Wellington Cole.”
“Lo siento.”
“Yeah, right.” Cole was getting pissed. Who were these people? Why were they speaking Spanish, which he barely understood? The woman was hunkered down by the fire, across from him. He touched his cheek and pointed at her. “What’s with the fucking masks anyway?”
“They express our sorrow,” said Elizam, in English.
“And hide our rage,” said the woman.
“Rage? Rage at what?”
“At you.” She took off her mask. Her eyes were gray and dead, like Elizam’s. She was about twenty-five. Though pale, she had tight hair and a broad face, with what Cole’s grandmother (who was half white) used to call “a brush of Africa.”
“The rage is for what you did. And did not do.” Her words were flat and emotionless: what you did and did not do. She stood up.
“May I say it?” she asked nobody in particular.
Lee nodded. Cole shrugged. Whatever. She walked in a circle around the fire as she talked. In English. It had obviously been rehearsed. It was as ceremonial as a dance, and what she said was as measured and as unemotional as a legal deposition, in spite of its content:
“You murdered your own children. You destroyed their home, you pulled the world down around them. You left them crying in the ruins. They were lost and they were our parents. Their lives were all sorrow and their sorrow is all ours.”
“Their sorrow is ours,” repeated Elizam.
“They died weeping, though they knew not what for, and they knew there would be no one, but us, their children, to hear their cries. If they survived. It is their sorrow we pass on.”
“It is their sorrow we pass on,” repeated Elizam.
“Whoa,” Cole said. This was getting like a church service. “You’ve got the wrong guys! Don’t you even know why we are here?” He started to explain that Lee and himself were Green, were activists (each in his own way), opposed to what was happening, sent here to . . .
But after a word or two, in English, he shut up. It didn’t matter, did it? They had obviously failed miserably, hadn’t they? From here, from the perspective of a few hundred years, there was no difference. They were like the good Germans, or the honest Quaker merchants who had declined to take part in the slave trade, or had even (politely) spoken out against it, while allowing it to prosper.
If Cole had ever had any doubts about Dear Abbey (and he had, though he had never expressed them, even to himself), they were gone. Gone with the wind, now that he saw the world he and his generation had left to their children. Wouldn’t any effort to change that, to reverse that, be justified?
“Please continue,” said Lee.
Ruth (for that was her name) walked in circles carrying her mask in her hand, as Cole and Lee stared into the fire, along with Elizam, who was masked again. “We watched the animals die,” she intoned. “One by one, and then in herds, then one by one again. Even the ones in the zoos. The great mammals are only a memory now: the elephant, the great whale, the rhino, the walrus.”
“Only memories,” said Elizam.
“Only memories,” said Lee, who had apparently decided to join them. He still wore the hideous safari jacket, though he had laid their heating vest across his knees like a lap robe.
“The natural world was trashed, devastated,” said Ruth, “and so was the historical, the cultural, the human world. Cities were burned, museums looted. Libraries were flooded and lost under the seas, for global warming wiped out not only cities, but memories, heritages: the Dutch, Singapore, the Polynesian archipelago, entire languages, lost without a trace.”
She was giving the speech Cole had always wanted to give, the message he had wanted to convey to his students, and yet he didn’t want to hear it. Not from her.
She sat down. Elizam placed another stick on the fire, very carefully.
“What about global warming?” Cole asked, hoping to change the subject. “It is cold as hell!”
“The Gulf Stream is gone,” said Elizam, muffled behind his mask. “Europe and New England are uninhabitable. The Midwest is hot. Texas is burning. The only temperate zones are in Asia, the Pacific Rim, and along the north of South America, and some on the California Coast.”
“What of Africa?”
“Africa?” Ruth raised her mask and turned her blank eyes on Cole. “Africa is gone, sunk, dust. The forests are cinders, the people are dead. The fourth holocaust. First there was slavery, which looted the continent of youth; then colonialism, which despoiled it of riches. Then AIDS which orphaned a generation . . .”
“Two,” said Elizam.
“Ironically, it was the diaspora that saved Africa, at least the people. More than half were gone already. Taking their culture and heritage with them.”
“Now can you see why we are surprised to see that you are African?” said Elizam. “It was our understanding that African people in your century had no education, no rights, no social access . . .”
“Not strictly true,” said Lee.
“Not that far off,” Cole corrected. “But you said four. There was a fourth holocaust?”
“The fires,” said Elizam. “The drought and then the fires.”
“What about China?” Lee asked.
“China leads,” she said. “They rebuild. We all rebuild. We do what we can to replace what you destroyed but it takes time, and some of it is not possible. You killed all the big animals, or most of them.”
“Not all,” said Elizam, getting up to get more wood from a small pile under the wall. “Not completely. There are persistent reports of an elephant seen in West Africa.”
“Unreliable,” said Ruth. “Like the Loch Ness monster, or flying saucers.”
Reports of elephants, like flying saucers. For the first time Cole understood the cliché, “his heart sank,” as he actually felt his heart sink. Was it possible that even more than our fellow men we could miss our fellow creatures? He began to feel the same sadness that appeared to depress Elizam and Ruth. He had never seen people so devoid of feeling, of life, of mirth and laughter. And now he was becoming one of them.
“So you still have telephones, computers?” Lee asked, in Spanish.
“Oh, yes,” Elizam answered. “That’s why we are here. Knowledge isn’t lost that easily. It’s harder to make things, like computers, but the old ones can be repaired, and we are developing the capacity to make them like before.”
“Not as cheaply,” said Ruth. “Not as thoughtlessly. Not as carelessly. For everything that is made is something unmade, or left unmade. That is what you, our parents, never understood. That is the root of the devastation you bequeathed to us.”
Cole looked away; he was tired of her self-righteous bullshit. He discovered to his horror that he identifie
d more with the exuberant, destructive thoughtlessness she attacked than with her. And wasn’t it true? When all was said and done (and looking around, it seemed, indeed, that all had been said and all had been done) wasn’t he in fact one of the destroyers?
The talk died down and they sat, staring into the dying fire. There was nothing more to say. Something besides the world seemed destroyed: innocence and enthusiasm and hope seemed gone as well. Cole wondered what the rest of their world was like. Were he and Lee going to see it?
He hoped not . . .
He dozed off, and when he awoke, the fire was out. Elizam and Ruth were gone. Lee was down the hill, sitting on the glider with his PalmPC on his lap. Cole hurried down, afraid the Chinaman might leave without him.
He needn’t have worried. Lee was shaking his head. “All fuck figures. No home. You get pictures?”
“Yes, yes,” Cole said patting the pocket of his vest, where he had put the camera. “Pictures of what? Masks? Fires? It’s cold here. Just get us the hell out of here!”
“The hell,” said Lee; now he was shaking his PalmPC as well as his head.
Cole looked up the hill and saw Elizam and Ruth approaching, carrying their masks in their hands. “What is this shit?” he demanded. “Did you mess up our time machine?”
“Infrared,” said Elizam in English. He held up a small device, like a flashlight. “I entered the figures Los Viejos gave us.”
Cole turned to Lee. “Who? What? Do you understand any of this?”
“Hold horses,” Lee muttered, in English, punching in numbers.
It was almost dark. Cole didn’t know whether to be pissed off or scared. He had to pee again but he had no desire to see what the seals were dining on. Let alone photograph it. He walked back up to the ruin and pissed on the fire.
Ruth and Elizam followed and watched from behind the wall, unreproachfully. It was as if they expected it of him.
“You can both go to hell,” Cole said, as he zipped up his pants. “Okay? Capiche? Comprende?”
They followed him back down the hill. “Gracias para venir,” Elizam said to Lee. “We are honored to meet you.”
“Fuck you and the world you spun in on,” Cole said. Then he stopped, hearing a small insistent sound:
beep beep
Lee’s PalmPC.
“Hold horses,” Lee said. “Have cursor. All aboard.” He patted the seat beside him.
Cole didn’t need to be told twice. He sat down, and Lee covered his big hand with his own small one.
Elizam and Ruth stood silently with their masks on, their hands raised in farewell, or so it seemed. Then Cole realized what it was they wanted – their vests back. Lee’s was across his knees; Cole took his off and tossed them both to Ruth.
Lee hit RETURN, and there they were, the army of mice. Cole kicked to even up the swing.
“Damn!” said Lee, as the mists of light closed around them. Cole felt it too. Something was different, different in the same way as before.
They weren’t heading home. They were falling. Falling farther and farther, into the future . . .
+1000
Spinning.
Cole was about to throw up. He wondered if it was the whiskey, which he could still feel, when, suddenly, the spinning stopped. Blue striations flickered through the air, and he found himself on a seashore – again.
But this time it was warmer and the sky was bright blue. And he didn’t like it. Not at all.
Lee let go of Cole’s hand; Cole grabbed Lee’s back. “Long Island?” he asked. Even though he knew it wasn’t.
In the near distance, there was a cone-shaped, steeply pointed island, with what appeared to be trees growing toward the top in a spiral. The whole thing looked artificial.
“Pitcher?” said Lee.
Cole let go of Lee’s hand and reached into his pocket for the camera. But there was no pocket; no camera.
“Shit,” he said. “It was in the vest.”
Lee shrugged. “Only for formula, just in case.”
“Still, stupid,” Cole said. “My fault.” Photos of the future, and he had lost them. “Can we go back and get them?”
“Don’t think so,” Lee said. “Just pitchers.”
“True, but sorry,” Cole said. He was beginning to talk like Lee. It was time to change the subject. He leaned back in the glider and looked around. “Where are we? I mean, I wonder where we are.”
“Figuring,” said Lee, bending over his PalmPC.
“Capps Island,” said a voice from behind them. Cole sat up and looked around, alarmed. A man was standing behind the glider. Had he been there all along? It was as if the world were being drawn in, slowly; it was like visiting a website in the old days on a slow line.
He was a tall white man, unmasked (Cole noticed that right away), in a soft-brushed velveteen suit. At least it looked to Cole like velveteen. There was something about it that was proudly, flamboyantly artificial.
“Welcome, Dr. Lee,” he said. “So pleased, Dr. Cole. As you can see, we have a crossing to make. That is, if you want to see the island. There is not much time. Do you need to rest?”
“See island? No problem,” Lee said. He stood up, and Cole stood up with him.
“I am Hallam,” the man said in his odd, unaccented English. He pronounced every word carefully, as if he were trying it for the first time. He stuck out his hand and Lee took it. “I am pleased to meet you on your journey.”
He dropped Lee’s hand and took Cole’s. “I am Hallam,” he said again. “I am pleased to . . .”
“What journey?!” Cole asked. “Lee, where are we? Do you even know?”
Lee didn’t answer, but the man, Hallam, did. He pointed toward the peaky island. “Capps Island,” he said again.
A plane, or some sort of craft, was taking off near the top of the island. It was too far away to tell what it was, or how big.
“There are one hundred and twelve of these EarthWatch stations around the world,” Hallam said. “They are all connected on a network of . . .”
“Whoa! Slow down,” Cole said. “What year is this? Please.”
“Year? Oh, yes, of course,” said Hallam. “Well, 724. Your year, the Jesus time, is . . .” He pulled up his sleeve and checked a wristwatch. “I am sorry . . . is 3124. I should have thought. Of course you would want to know.”
“Jesus!” Cole said, sitting back down.
“We don’t use the Jesus calendar,” Hallam said, tapping his wristwatch. “But I have it here.”
The glider didn’t move; it had that strange inertia Cole had felt before, as if it had the mass of a car.
Lee was tapping at his PalmPC, looking worried. Cole was beyond worry. A thousand years. What could happen to him? He was already dead, he could feel it in his bones. His bones which were already rotting somewhere under the earth on which he stood. If they had not been exhumed by seals.
The glider felt creepy. Cole stood up again. The ground felt solid under his feet; too solid. Was this real, then, this future now?
It was. Real. He shivered in the bright sunlight.
“We have the Hong Kong calendar,” Hallam was explaining. “We measure from Hong Kong Colloquium, 724 years ago. That’s for politics. For spirit, we measure from the Crossing. That makes this year 114,844. But come.” He started down a path toward the water.
Lee and Cole followed, both of them. What else were they to do? “The Crossing?” Cole asked. “What Crossing?”
“Long ago there was a war,” Hallam said, “with much fire, for fire was a weapon of war in those early days, and then a plague of some kind. For the first time, but not the only time, our kind had all but murdered themselves. There were only thousands then, but thousands died. A few women gathered what was left of the First People, all three bands that had warred, mostly children, and led them North, out of the Valley of Bones, and across the Great Basin that would become the Mediterranean, though it was dry then, from the Ice.”
“A hundred thousand years
ago? How do you know?” Cole asked.
“One hundred fourteen,” said Hallam. “The eight forty four is an agreed-on approximation. We dated it with DNA and carbon tests; we reconstructed it from legends and rock paintings; we knew it all along in our bones, it was our beginning.”
A small airplane was landing on the water below. Cole hadn’t heard it approach. He wondered if it was the same one he had seen taking off from the island.
Meanwhile Lee had his own questions. “Hong Kong?”
“The coming together,” said Hallam. “The meeting where we began to develop the systems that led to EarthWatch. That ended the Sixth, finally.”
“The Sixth?” Cole asked. “The Sixth Extinction? You call it that?”
Hallam shrugged. “We call it what it was. It was the sixth for the planet. Thousands of species died, wiped out, forever, without even a farewell. It lasted for over five hundred years, and it was in many ways worse than the wars that led to the Crossing, for we killed so many others. It led to the Mourning and the Restoration. Even though it was not nearly so close as the Crossing, for us. There we were reduced to less than two hundred souls. In the Sixth Extinction to just over two hundred million.”
“Now how many?” Lee asked.
“That, you are about to see,” Hallam answered. They were at the water’s edge. The little plane was taxiing toward them across the water.
It had short, thick wings like a cartoon plane, with deep leading edge slots that apparently added to their lift. There was a big propeller powered, they were told, by a remote magnetic field. There was no engine, and no noise.
There was no one in the pilot’s seat. There was no pilot’s seat.
They clambered in and took off with a whistling noise that diminished as they gained speed and altitude. There were no seat belts. For some reason, Cole thought of Helen. The last time he had looked at the clock it had been 9:11, and that seemed days ago. She would be halfway to London by now. And dead a thousand years as well.
Lee’s inscrutable little smile was back. Cole smiled too. There was something very peaceful and reassuring about this little plane, the sunlight, the blue water below and the island ahead, rapidly getting closer – the steep coast receding behind.
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