Chapter 40

The next day was Sunday, and the one day a week which the hard-working colonists had agreed to set aside as a respite from their labors. Those who worked the fields, those who maintained the power and water supply, those who scavenged the city for underground vaults filled with books and computer records, as well as those who performed the experiments, translations, and radio communications (never answered) which were vital to the group’s morale and sense of purpose, all surrendered for this one day the businesslike security of endeavor, to think and contemplate like the first pious Jews, who had looked to the heavens and tried to understand their world.

In the hushed morning they gathered for the non-denominational service, Christian, Jew, Buddhist and atheist alike, spread about the candle-lit conference room. And it was here that Sylviana first felt the depth of loneliness and sorrow that this handful of survivors carried with them as inescapably as a damaged organ, or the memory of an amputated limb. And she realized that all their surface carelessness and ease, all the jokes about being bored with one another, were mere facade, the necessary illusions of commonplace existence. It was clear in this small chapel of honesty, that they not only loved and respected one another, but clung to each other, and held the value of each human life high above any other aspiration.

Commander Stenmark in particular she watched, and began to wonder at this grizzled pioneer whose age was so incongruous to all around him, most of whom were under forty. And during the moment of silent prayer she had to restrain with difficulty her own emotions, as she saw the same face that could be so still and dispassionate, draw close over the fervently folded hands with tears of age, and thanks, and tired responsibility flowing like the sudden, relentless Spring. And it was with warmth and a further shock that she realized this outpouring was for her: that something, someone dear to him had been spared. She had never felt so honored.

When the service ended they moved outside, and after a light meal, spread themselves more comfortably on the grassy earth of a clear space at one end of the compound, backed by a gentle rise and a single, lithe and undistorted maple. This in preparation for what remained to them the greatest pleasure (and diversion) in life. Learning.

Sylviana’s story was fascinating, what they had heard of it the night before, but it was Kalus whom they longed to interrogate. For here was an anthropologist’s dream: a young man who had lived among throwback Neanderthals, who had carved his existence, without medicine or steel, from the harsh realities of a world in which Man not only held no exalted place, but was on the contrary smallish and ill-equipped, as likely to be hunted as hunter. And the fact that he himself had emerged from the recessed traits of three hundred generations, to be born fully human ... They knew nothing yet of the Machine or the Visitors, only that for most of his life Kalus had possessed no spoken language, had been an outcast and object of suspicion because of his appearance and greater intelligence, had met and shared deepest communion with a young woman and fellow creature of the twenty-first century. And for now, this was more than enough.

Dr. David Rawlings, cell biologist, spoke first, a strongly built, intense black man in his mid thirties. Apparently the least abashed of the company, he assumed the role he had chosen for himself, and which the others now expected and took for granted.

‘Well,’ he said, moving to stand at the fore of the group. ‘I suppose first we should tell you something of ourselves.’ And without the wasted words of diplomacy, he did.

‘You see before you the surviving crew members of Virgo II, the manned exploration of Mars. Two years into the flight, and not yet two-thirds of the way there, we received a delayed signal from earth, and at an undesignated interval. The bloody butchers who called themselves our leaders had finally done it: missiles and satellite stations vomiting their nuclear death, and pounding the cities flat. The emotions of those conscious---most of us were in a suspended state, so as not to age unnecessarily during the voyage---I can’t imagine. But Stenmark, and the Doc, and poor dead Rene’ Christian, well, they had to do something.

‘So they turned the ship about, and upon returning to Earth engaged in a high orbit around it, and tried to make contact, with anybody. No one there. Even the orbiting agri-colonies and Moon bases hadn’t been spared. The latter might have been construed as some kind of military threat, to the sick and paranoid, but to kill innocent civilians, farmers for Christ’s sake, just to be sure all was ended ... The worst you can think of us isn’t bad enough, Kalus, if you look at what we did to each other in the end. Maybe we ‘common people’ of the superpowers didn’t take an active part in the destruction; but we sure as hell sat on our asses, and let the presidents and the generals make it inevitable.’ He subdued, or at least restrained, his rising passion.

‘But that’s neither here nor there. Or anywhere, now. That world is gone, and will never return.’ He sighed bitterly.

‘Back on the ship, Christian lost her mind when she saw the devastation, and knew that her husband and son were dead, like all the others. She couldn’t live without them, and so she killed herself. That left only Stenmark and Doc McIntyre to try and decide our fate. The best they could do, under the circumstances, was to re-rig the entire ship---computer, cryogenics, life-support, everything---for a vastly different purpose than what they’d been designed for. Their new function was, simply, to hold us all in suspension, retain the high orbit, and wake us all when, hopefully, it was safe to return to the surface.

‘It’s no coincidence that you, Sylviana, and William---you haven’t met him yet---came out of suspension at approximately the same time we did. A German scientist named Krause had been advocating a common de-suspension date, in the event such a travesty ever occurred. He was considered a black pessimist at the time, and partly insane. But your father, and Sten, and possibly others, took his advice, and set the ‘wake up call’ for exactly ten thousand years from the first day of Armageddon, hoping that would give the planet enough time to heal itself, and support recognizable life-forms once more.

‘So the rest of the crew, myself included, came back from our little nap to find our world ravaged, Christian dead, and the Commander aged twenty-five years. The poor compassionate bastard had kept himself conscious all that extra time, making sure the orbit wouldn’t decay, that the converted solar panels and other adjustments he’d made would hold up. Probably would have died for us if he thought it would help...

‘You’ve seen the worst in us, Kalus. But that damn Swede over there ... is the best. And a lot of others like him paid the same price as the political cowboys, and blind hedonists who elected them. Death.