The sea kept rising!
The smoke soon returned to its prior circuits and covered Antarctica with its former “dome.” But the “Polar Cities,” where the huge power-generating stations were located and their personnel lived, began to suffer from violent quakes, from lava flows of unprecedented volume, avalanches of ice and floods that came with no warning. Satellite observation was again difficult, owing to the dense smoke “shield,” and to the temperature variations indicated on the land, that is, on the ice, largely. These thermal readings were deemed “errors” because they could not be shown as logical in cause. The earth convulsions increased and it was reluctantly found that enough ice had been melted from the central mass by the soot-absorbed sun rays and the lesser heat sources to reduce that continental load sufficiently so that the mile-down rock surface of the continent was, in lay terms, “springing back,” that is, heaving upward, or rebounding.
Not only was that process, more accurately recorded when special monitoring instruments were designed and orbited for the purpose, titanic in scale, but also the upheaving rocks often split deep into the strata beneath, and through those cracks magma, hot matter from deep in the crust, welled up into ice crevasses made as the rocks split. In places where the ice-load thickness of five thousand feet was still near that—and in others, where the summer melt had removed hundreds of feet of ice—magma often rose to the ice rims and spread out its blackened surface for scores of miles. The spring-up and cracking were accelerated as this lava melted more ice. The increments of water ran off toward the seas and caused more loss of overburden, which triggered more rebounding of granitic, basaltic and sedimentary rocks that had been ice-buried for eons and to a depth of a mile.
By 2010 the seas had risen more than two hundred feet, causing the submersion of all port cities and all inland areas of altitudes less than two hundred feet. Meanwhile, the atmosphere, staggering under a cloak of coal-mine-fire pollutants, began to deposit a rising volume of toxic compounds produced by volcanic activity. The rare mineral riches of Antarctica were never exploited for profit. Instead, the veins and lodes were netted, vaporized, pulverized and blasted into the planet’s air. At that point Miles decided to abandon Manhattan, the offices of the Foundation and his apartment, which for some time had been reached only by motorboats.
The Faraway installations were by then complete.
By then, too, the population of the world was perishing rapidly, owing to the terrible fact that the darkling daylight was now often swept by storms in which toxins were concentrated at deadly levels. Complete body cover and independent breathing tanks were essential for all outdoor movement. These “suits” had warning monitors that rang bells when the air was likely to become unbreathable.
So we made our way to Faraway—those who were assigned there, and their families. Some, of course, failed to arrive. At Faraway we had a small, short-term fusion plant and, so, ample power for a time. The settlement was domed with a new plastic and the air beneath kept clear, clean and safe by chemical means that removed CO2 and many other compounds, and by an oxygen-replacement system that extracted the vital gas from the rock of the Adirondacks. Contact with other habitats gradually diminished, and for two years, 2013–15, we assumed we might be the only living human beings left on the planet. But once the Antarctic vulcanism began to die down and the atmosphere to recover, we found the small but glorious degree of our mistake—as radios began furtive operation. Soon our joy at having company was marred. We turned to bloody ways, as some other survivors found and attacked our settlement.
Our canopy was repeatedly destroyed in those battles.
Finally the day came when we found we need not erect a new “bubble” over our community. And the day also came when we began to get radio messages of constructive sorts from many regions.
Epilogue
To Dr. Miles S. Smythe
Director, District Two, Area Six
Member Congress
New Plaza Athenee
Important! Rush! Read instantly, please:
The last part of a massive amount of material began coming in at Ax Station, Paris, at 2:00 A.M. as arranged.
A much longer last chapter was expected and time for it was open. With the page (transcript) herewith, the Center City transponder, your District Two, Area Six, stopped abruptly.
The standing on air beam quit.
The secondarges did not take up work or respond to queries or emfgt restart effort from here.
An hour passed, time allowed to get secondary plant in operation. No secondary power on. We then queried, as per standard procedures, three stations within a 300-km. radius. All responded. None aware of Center City cutoff. Awaiting orders to dispatch party (overland, trucks only, those points) if desired.
This is a situation without any recent analogue. Any of seven generating plants or diesels should be able to power tower and come in here clearly. No signals yet.
Should fast planes be dispatched or should we wait another 85 minutes (now 1300 hrs) when satellite photo can be shot, results beamed here for TV scrutiny?
Await orders.
MAJOR PAUL COULEL, NIGHT CHIEF
CENTRAL OPERATIONS CONTROL
PARIS, DISTRICT ONE, AREA TWO
Miles was wakened and read the dispatch. He then turned to Will’s last-sent part page. Will was by no means finished with the last chapter if he had said a long one was due. And Will hadn’t stopped sending when he had allotted time, hard to get.
Miles phoned Major Coulel and suggested planes be readied but held for the satellite shot.
He was not, usually, upset even by very dire realities. The present one seemed some power and technical foul-up but the French expert thought that was hardly possible. What, then?
He ordered coffee, paced, tried to read the top inch of stuff that bellied his brief case, realized he’d gone over four reports and not assimilated anything about even one.
The time dragged. Five minutes after satellite transit the major rang. His report was alarming as his ultracalm instantly revealed. “The satellite shot was made in clear weather at an excellent angle. The whole Adirondack area is dark for twenty miles around Center City—your gorgeous Faraway. Not a light there. Nothing. No fires. No haze. No more detail possible with on-board equipment. The place is pitch-dark. Whether the people are there or not, who knows?”
Miles said, “Send the ships. Armec, of course. Have them start reporting when an hour from target area.”
That wait couldn’t be worn out by striding.
Miles had coffee, skipped breakfast, attended a meeting, and took his place at the half-circle table on the dais with the other district directors who were also the equivalent to the World Government’s “Senate.”
The Nemo-Caedmons should be talking in another hour, Miles believed. He got wrist-watch fever. Neighbors noted that and grinned a little. What could get Smythe that riled—a date with a woman?
A red-uniformed guard stepped to the podium, bowed, asked and was given the Director General’s permission to speak to Miles. Miles saw from the man’s face that the plane news was bad and stepped down, into a small room behind the draperies shielding the half-round podium.
There was a Communications man there.
“Jules Reveneau,” he said. “Communications commandant. An honor.”
Miles exchanged handclasps, bowed at the “honor” attached to meeting him, and waited.
The hour message was fine. Weather fair. On course. No problems. Half an hour later, as ordered, the lead ship reported from a former Albany area. Of course, sunny, nothing wrong.
“As my three fighter-bombers moved to some ten thousand meters from the lake—Enigma—at your Faraway—Center City of Two, Area Six, the pilot started to say some French words of astonishment. Nothing more. We flashed back. Called the other ships. They are silent, lost, clearly, sir.
“A strange thing, yes?”
Miles nodded. Faraway—out. Dark in night hours. Will got nothing through.
Three of the fastest and toughest warplanes—wiped out while a stupefied pilot said two or three astonished words before he reported, which, then, he couldn’t. All ships must have been crashed, somehow.
The man at his side was tense. “There has to be an explanation!”
Miles nodded. “Not one that occurs to me. If Faraway’s gone, what’s next? We must interrupt the regular meeting. Gather the experts and set them to thinking, data-collecting, what they will do, once they get the mystery.
“My God. Faraway! And—” Miles collapsed in a chair which almost broke under that heavy load and covered his eyes with his mighty hands.
“It could be the last one. The one too many. The one we brewed but never tracked to the brewery. It wouldn’t take much, now, to whisk away the hangers-on, would it?”
The French war hero, Communications commandant, his chest medal-heavy, sighed. “No, my brave and admired American, not much.”
Miles shrugged. “Well, get your people locating the ones who answer. Maybe a chart of that would show, not what must be it—but which way it’s coming. We could be next, last, or escape. Or something different and unguessable could have occurred.”
“As it often has. We still live.” The commandant bowed and then saluted and turned. “While there’s life, hope exists?”
“A man can run out of hope and not be dead yet,” Miles replied.
Alone. Briefly, he wept.
He’d forgotten even the feeling.
IN THE BEYOND ARMAGEDDON SERIES
The Breaking of Northwall: The Pelbar Cycle, Book One
Paul O. Williams
With an introduction by the author
The Ends of the Circle: The Pelbar Cycle, Book Two
Paul O. Williams
The Dome in the Forest: The Pelbar Cycle, Book Three
Paul O. Williams
The Fall of the Shell: The Pelbar Cycle, Book Four
Paul O. Williams
An Ambush of Shadows: The Pelbar Cycle, Book Five
Paul O. Williams
The Song of the Axe: The Pelbar Cycle, Book Six
Paul O. Williams
The Sword of Forbearance: The Pelbar Cycle, Book Seven
Paul O. Williams
At Winter’s End: The New Springtime, Volume 1
Robert Silverberg
With an introduction by the author
The Queen of Springtime: The New Springtime, Volume 2
Robert Silverberg
With an introduction by the author
Beyond Armageddon
Edited by Walter M. Miller Jr. and Martin H. Greenberg Postscript to the introduction by Martin H. Greenberg
The Last Man
Mary Shelley
Introduction by Judith Tarr
Triumph
Philip Wylie
Tomorrow!
Philip Wylie
The End of the Dream
Philip Wylie
To order or obtain more information on these or other University of Nebraska Press titles, visit www.nebraskapress.unl.edu.
End of the Dream Page 24
