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in five years later, and she committed suicide. Others followed. The divaricates kept their political
scheme, and never did I sense a place for me in that scheme. For this, Shirla was grateful.
We left Tasman after it began its own fluxing. We adopted our second son, Henryk, in Calcutta.
As the years passed, more and more the change spread. So much of the beauty and variety of
Lamarckia was fleeing before Brion's gift of green. What replaced it was simple and direct, tiny ecoi,
covering only a few acres, and getting tinier. Some of the scions -- phytids, even mobile scions -- seemed
capable of independence, and perhaps even replicating on their own. Randall studied them closely and
wrote more papers. We visited often.
Shirla and I and our two sons had our happiest five years together in Jakarta. Petain's Zone resisted
the green longer than any but the island zones in the south, where most of the survivors clustered for
decades. In those five good years, however, Jakarta became a wonderfully feverish city, an island of
creative ferment and relative prosperity in the change.
We actually saw Salap again. Yes! -- he had survived, and was back at Wallace Station, but he
made a trip to Jakarta.
Many of us were dying from new immune challenges as Petain tried different defenses against Hsia
and the green. Salap had been charting the spread of new scion chemistries, and he arrived when Shirla
was very ill, making the trip especially to see us, I suppose, but also as part of the research effort.
Shirla and I met with him in her room. Henryk and Ricca, ages ten and fifteen then, came in and out,
carrying food, clean bedding, water. Shirla had become a real mother to them, and I had done my best,
in my distracted way, to be a real father.
Salap made his tests, took samples from her withered body, told us that there might be ways to turn
back such challenges in a few months. Idle hopes, as it turned out.
Salap finally related the story of his last few days with the female figure in the hemisphere. "She
struggled to become human," he said. "Having watched the Chung sisters and Brion, and finally paying
close attention to me, the only model left to her -- observing me while I observed her -- we taught each
other many things. But she could never think like us, much less understand our shapes. She was never
more than a meticulous and crafty observer, without the cycling knot of self-awareness that must always
separate us from the ecoi. At the last, though, she broke her second foot free and became independent
for a few days. She managed to walk. She did pretty well, under the circumstances."
"What did she want?" Shirla asked.
"The ecos had observed humans having sex. It was curious about the process. Thought it might
result in another 'name,' like Brion's gift of chlorophyll. She actually became seductive, at the end." He
stared at us, eyes flicking back and forth. For the first time, Salap seemed ill at ease.
"Did you?" Shirla asked.
Salap smiled and leaned his head to one side. "Three months after you left, the hemisphere
withered," he continued. "The last of the balloons had been manufactured and sent away with the winds."
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"What happened to _her?_ To the imitation of Caitla?" Shirla asked.
"She withered, too. She maintained her interest to the end, trying to speak, trying to extract
biological secrets, hoping for more gifts of 'names.' Finally, she could not move, and she made only shrill
whistles and rasping, barking sounds.
"When she died, I cut her open and studied her, but there was nothing particularly novel about her
anatomy. I buried her beside the body of Caitla Chung, in the new silva."
"She _was_ a queen," Shirla said, and she swallowed and stared up at the mat fiber ceiling, and then
looked at me. "You saw a true queen, Olmy. I wish I could have seen her. I don't think we'll ever have
that chance again."
Shirla died that winter. So many died that winter, as the weather itself changed, and Petain began its
final decline. The green arrived with its own disastrous spring, but by then I was a different man, without
Shirla. I flowed with the people, with Lenk's river of history.
--------
*34*
I go with Yanosh down the Way in a flawship to the gate on the geometry stack. Transport ships are
loading the last of the evacuees from Lamarckia. The situation there has become critical, and the
Hexamon has ordered that all be removed.
Because of the difficulties of a gate in the geometry stack, fifteen years have passed since I was
retrieved. Rebecca has died.
All but three hundred of the remaining nine thousand Lamarckians have been brought through the
gate. My two sons are not among them. They have chosen to remain, to ride out the worst of the
changes, though their chances of surviving are almost nil. Somehow, I feel that I have given them a part of
myself, made them like me, and done them no favor. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]