CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The impression that had registered most forcibly with Keene was the frightening thoroughness with which practically all traces of a civilization that had taken such pride in its global extent and achievements appeared to have been wiped out. Without Kronia, by the time a new order rose again of its own accord, just about all memory of what had gone before would have been lost.

Europe was a wilderness of volcanic desolation and cooling lava sheets, with a two-hundred-mile-long canyon gouged across the center, carved during one of the titanic electrical exchanges that had occurred when Earth’s and Athena’s magnetospheres intersected. Everything that was once Southeast Asia had disappeared, subducted miles deep beneath crustal plates overthrusting from the south, and from what could be made of the acoustic patterns being sent back from seismic packs scattered about the surface, it was still sinking.

Currently, he was looking down from a height of about three thousand feet over a landscape of marshy valleys and mud flats winding among ridges of sand and gravel below a gray overcast. As far as could be judged, it was where New York City had been. Yet not a brick nor a girder was to be seen, not a sign of turnpike or a piece of dockside wall. Not even the lines of the Hudson or the East rivers, Long Island Sound, or the New Jersey shore could be found. The entire former seaboard from Maine to the Carolinas lay buried beneath a thousand feet of sediments deposited by immense walls of water surging up the continental slope, leaving the new coastline meandering a hundred to three hundred miles farther east.

Keene banked into a slow turn and began following an expanse of black, oily pools and yellow sulfur sludge extending away into a haze of sullen hydrocarbon vapors. A data set superposed itself on the view, showing the updated bearing, speed, and rate of climb. A zoom-in on one of the pools showed it to be bubbling torpidly. A forlorn tatter of reeds had somehow managed to appear along its edge.

“An anguished dawn,” Gallian had called it. The beginning of a new world. New life would be given, and a new story would unfold. Keene thought about the story only now being uncovered of a past far more rich and complex than the simple tale that had once been told of an orderly progression from uncomplicated beginnings leading undeviatingly through the historical ages neatly labeled in generations of textbooks to the civilization that had ended in the twenty-first century. But now a different story was emerging. How many other sagas of human existence had been written and lost in folds of time now vanished between convulsions that had rent and reshaped the Earth—of entire peoples who had lived, loved, died, raised their children and their cities, they and all their works as lost and forgotten as yesterday’s footprints on the beach before a storm? How close had even the latest technological-industrial culture, with all its illusions of superlativeness and permanence, come to being just another of them?

“Well, what do you think?” Heeland’s voice asked.

“Impressive,” Keene replied. “Who ever would have thought that flying could be so easy?” The complete aerodynamic repertoire was controlled by a few set motions of the gloves.

“Some people say they feel the signal delay when they’ve gotten tuned to it. We’re talking about almost ten thousand miles each way just at the moment. Do you notice it?”

“I can’t say I do. I guess I’m still too new.”

“Do you want to carry on for a while longer?”

“No, that’s fine. You can bring me back. I just wanted to get a taste of how it works.”

The image in Keene’s helmet vanished and was replaced by blackness. Moments later, he felt the helmet being loosened and raised his head to help Heeland lift it clear. He was back in the Varuna‘s Survey Control section, from where the probes sent down to view and map the surface were controlled, and the landing of instrumentation packages directed. The scene of northeast America that he had been viewing was still showing on a screen above the console, creeping by slowly as the probe continued flying on automatic program.

“Do the probes link directly to the satellites?” Keene asked curiously as he unfastened his seatbelt and nudged with his elbows to drift clear.

“We prefer not to, until we’ve established full synchsat cover,” Heeland answered. “It’s too easy to get stuck in a dead spot—especially when you’re putting a lander down. We keep a high-altitude airmobile circling as a relay over an area where we’re active—as we’re doing with the probe you were hooked into just now. The mobile that’s relaying from it is up at around sixty thousand feet. They can stay up for months if they have to. We also use them to ferry probes to remote operating areas.”

“Months?” Keene repeated.

“Plutonium-fueled, helium-cooled fission pack. Your kind of toy, Lan. Like to see one?”

“Sure.”

Heeland pushed off from a structural beam and navigated ahead from the instrumentation room, through a hatch into a side gallery. Keene followed him down to the Fitting Bay below, which was where the probes were equipped and maintained. It was a large space, with technicians working on various satellite packages as well as aerial pods and probes. Heeland indicated a peculiar-looking vehicle at the far end. It consisted of a large disk-shaped body maybe twenty feet in diameter, orange on top and white underneath, with three ducted fans in pivot housings around the periphery, and a pair of black fins above. Three semi-enclosed racks on the underside were obviously for carrying probes, although they were empty at present. They looked as if they hinged open to launch the probes downward, like bomb doors.

Heeland had started to head toward the airmobile, but checked himself and turned when he realized that Keene wasn’t following. Keene had stopped beside a sleek metallic gray shape eight feet or so long, secured in one of the berthing cradles. A technician in white coveralls was working on it, using tools arrayed on a magnetic rack at the end of a jointed arm clamped nearby. “Mind if I look? I think I was just flying one of these over New York,” Keene said.

“Be my guest,” the technician said, gesturing. Keene knew his face from seeing him around during the voyage out, but they had never had cause to talk. He was of heavy-set build, swarthy skinned with a ragged mustache, and had dark wavy hair held down by a cap.

“Is this one of the probes I was in?” Keene called to Heeland.

Heeland moved himself back. “Yes, exactly right. This is Owen Erskine, one of the bay crew here. Owen, Dr. Landen Keene. He’s in charge of the power system.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard the name. Homecoming for you too, eh?”

Keene peered more closely but didn’t recognize him as being from among the refugees brought back by the Osiris. “You weren’t one of the refugees, were you, Owen?”

“No. But I’d only just moved to Kronia when it happened. Used to be from Jersey. Did network stuff. How did things look there to you?”

“I don’t think you’d want to renew your lease,” Keene said.

“But we’ll start all over, eh? That’s why we’re here. That’s what it’s all about, eh?” Erskine’s eyes were bright, hopeful almost.

“Is that why you came back?” Keene asked.

“Maybe… Part of it anyhow. Couldn’t stand living in those tin cities anymore.”

Keene drifted slowly around the probe, touching a part of it here and there, taking in the details. “More elaborate than I realized,” he commented to Heeland. Its form reminded him of an old cruise missile, but instead of a warhead it carried a nose unit bristling with lenses and sensors. Panels were opened to give access for whatever work Erskine was doing on it. One of the exposed compartments contained boxes that looked like rations packs. There was also a medical kit, a stack of folded fabric items, and various tools. “What’s all this?” Keene asked, gesturing.

Heeland pulled himself closer. “One of those ideas that mission planners come up with,” he replied. “In this case, probably not a bad one.”

Erskine patted the probe’s engine cowling affectionately. “These babies go everywhere, and they can get down just about anywhere,” he explained. “There are going to be people all over that vacation heaven of a planet down there, and some of them are going to get hurt, get lost, or otherwise get into some kind of trouble.”

“Okay, I get it. Mobile survival units,” Keene completed.

“Exactly right,” Heeland said.

“A good idea,” Keene agreed. “I’m actually with the planners for once. So what have we got?” He leaned over the hatch and began poking around. “Food, medical stuff, uh-huh… And these here—a clothing store too?”

“Survival tent. A few keep-you-warm, keep-you-dry kinds of things. Some good stretchy boots,” Heeland answered.

“And this looks like a Boy Scout kit.”

“Mend it, fix it—everything but the tool that gets stones out of horses’ hooves. I guess they didn’t reckon on having any horses.”

“An automatic and ammo? Who are we starting a war with now?”

Heeland shrugged. “You never know what you might come up against, I guess.”

“It’s a phone booth too,” Erskine said. “That panel at the back—emergency band link via the airmobile, or direct to satellite.”

“We like to take care of our customers,” Heeland said. Typical Kronian. Appretiare. 

The compad in Keene’s tunic pocket beeped. “Excuse me,” he said, drawing it out. The caller was Shayle. She looked excited.

“Lan, we’ve just heard. The African site has been selected. The descent team is clearing the ground, and the backup crew is preparing to go down now. We’ll be following pretty soon!”

“That’s great!” Keene said.

The latest candidate site for a base was located in what had been the area east of the Great African Rift, and was now a four-thousand-mile-long peninsula extending south from the crumpled remains of Iran to a splayed tip formed out of Mozambique and Madagascar, between the reduced Indian Ocean and the new ocean forming to the west. The peninsula had been named Raphta, after a large East African trading center described in Roman times but never positively identified. As far as could be ascertained, the area surveyed for the base lay in what had previously been northern Tanzania. Once tropical parkland, it was now a wilderness of crustal upheaval, flood-scoured tablelands, and swamps, its climate cooling under the influence of the new polar region to the south.

“Does it mean the base has a name now?” Keene asked.

Shayle nodded. “Borrowed from the old days. Gallian has decided to call it Serengeti.”