Heirs of the New Earth (8 page)

Jenna Walker looked up, smiled and waved very briefly, then returned her attention to the meeting.

Eva Cooper stepped into the room, moved through, but lingered near the main door. As she did, she caught snippets of conversation about humanity moving into the future and cleaning up the Earth. No one seemed worried about the Doomsday Dead except for the logistics of dealing with the bodies. It was as though they suddenly knew the answers to Doomsday and were no longer concerned. Neither were they concerned about the Clusters and the fact that Earth was out of touch with the remainder of the Galaxy. Eva swallowed hard, knowing she had some research to do. She looked at her watch and saw that it was time for her dose of Proxom. With the emotion-stabilizing drug in her system, she'd be better able to deal with whatever she learned.

Swearing mildly, Samuel “Old Man” Coffin dug though his sea chest, in search of a tobacco pouch. While it was true that Coffin was addicted to nicotine, he smoked his pipe less from addiction than from a sense of history. His home was the island of Nantucket and legend said that Nantucket was created when God dumped out his gray pipe ash in the Atlantic Ocean. In the late 25th century, many people in old Nantucket families took up smoking as a way to set themselves apart from off islanders and to retain a sense of island history. The drug Dairtox, introduced to reduce toxins in the lungs from air-borne pollutants, made smoking a relatively safe pastime. After several minutes of searching, Coffin still could not find the tobacco. He sat down on the floor in front of the chest and stroked his snow-white beard—eyes searching a room that was at once familiar, yet not his own.

Old Man Coffin sat in a guest room of the Ellis house—one of the last homes on Nantucket that was still owned by one of the old families. While Suki and John Mark Ellis were searching for the Cluster, Coffin stayed at their home—a sentinel guarding the old house against off-islanders, tax collectors and vandals. Coffin stood, joints complaining, and hobbled out of the guest room. He pondered the Clusters. Watching the teleholo the night before, he'd learned that four had appeared in orbit above the Earth. After watching a short time, he shut off the teleholo and went to bed, spending a restless night huddled under the covers, wishing the Ellises were back from their sojourn in space. In the morning, Coffin awoke. Not used to owning a teleholo, he hadn't bothered to turn it on. Instead, he sought the comfort of his familiar pipe. Though he'd found the pipe, he couldn't find the tobacco.

Coffin descended the creaking, wooden staircase and searched the living room to see if John Mark Ellis or his late father had left any tobacco behind. He saw a familiar rack of pipes on the fireplace mantle—but ignored them. More promising was a wooden box—the lid carved with the image of a sailing ship—next to an old couch. Coffin opened the box and discovered that it was a small humidor containing a few cigars, but no pipe tobacco. For a few moments, Coffin was tempted to take a cigar, but decided that he really wanted the comfort of his old pipe. Sighing, he realized that he had no choice but to ride out to his shack in the nearby village of Madaket.

Coffin pulled himself upstairs and found a backpack and shoes. As he prepared for the short trip, he grew light-hearted. It had been too long since he had been out to his own home. While it was only a shack, it contained the last vestiges of his life: his own books as well as books left behind by his ancestors, memorabilia from old whaling days and from the days when the Coffins turned their attention to studying, rather than killing, whales. Coffin realized he'd been inside too much. He needed fresh air.

Samuel Coffin made his way back down the stairs and locked the front door of the Ellis house. Stepping into the backyard, he retrieved a bicycle from the shed and began peddling toward his home, five miles away. For his age, he was in good shape and refused to buy a hover car. While his joints groaned and complained, riding the bicycle kept them from seizing up entirely. “The day I have to buy one of those hovers is the day they'll bury me in the island's sand,” he'd said once. Hovers were loved by off-islanders who sped around the island looking for souvenirs or admiring the island's “quaint” charm. “The island's charm can't be seen at 200 kilometers per hour,” complained Coffin another time. “You have to drink it in slowly."

On his way through the village of Nantucket, Old Man Coffin rode past a red brick building with white columns—truly an impressive example of Greek revival architecture. It was the Coffin school, named for one of the old man's ancestors. Indeed, one of the island's original English settlers was Tristram Coffin and, by the middle of the nineteenth century it was claimed that most of the island's young people were descendants of Tristram Coffin. Now, in the late 30th century, Samuel Coffin was the last living descendant who bore Tristram's surname. As he rode through the village of Nantucket, Coffin did notice that the streets were strangely quiet. Again, he remembered the reports of the Clusters orbiting the Earth. “People must be inside, noses stuck in the holos,” said Coffin to himself, blissfully unaware of the Doomsday Dead.

Samuel Coffin sped past the school and out of town, then followed a plastic roadway most of the way to the village of Madaket. As with Nantucket, both the road and the village were unusually quiet. Twisting and turning his bike through the streets of the tiny village, Coffin was relieved to see a few old friends—like him, descendants of the old families. He waved at them as he sped by on his bike. He grumbled the word “off-islanders” at a few of the people whose families had moved to the island recently—within the last century or two.

Most of the village behind him, Coffin found himself riding along a trail of decayed asphalt out into the moors. Finally, even the ancient asphalt disappeared and Coffin dismounted and pushed his bicycle over the sandy road rather than try to peddle. At last, he arrived at a small, dilapidated shack sitting alone in the sand save for some scrubby green plants. He leaned the bike against a gray, wooden wall and licked his lips.

Old Man Coffin sighed as he stood in front of his shack and stared at a carving of a whale's spout that hung outside the door. The shack's electrical power generator had failed since his last visit, and the force field that protected the sign had also failed. Without protection, the sign would rot away in the island's wet weather.

Entering the shack to look for a step-stool, he recalled words from Herman Melville's novel,
Moby-Dick
: “Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of out-hanging light not far from the docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly representing a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words underneath—'The Spouter Inn:—Peter Coffin.’”

What most people didn't realize was that Peter Coffin of New Bedford really existed. Like Samuel, he was a descendent of Tristram Coffin. Melville likely stayed at Coffin's inn, and then wrote about it in the novel,
Moby-Dick.
Finding a stool, Coffin carefully pulled the sign of the famous Spouter-Inn off of its hooks and lovingly brought it inside.

Gaunt, white-haired and back-bent, the moniker “Old Man” fit Samuel Coffin very well. However, the fact of the matter was that he'd earned the nickname when he was in his thirties. The young Samuel Coffin, a marine biologist, bought a large ocean-going boat and took the young people of Nantucket—including John Mark Ellis, at one time—out on cruises to instruct them in ocean science and the history of Nantucket and the whaling industry. Coffin frequently told students how ship captains had been known as “the old man.” The students, who dearly loved their captain and teacher, teased him by calling him the old man of Nantucket. Soon, this was shortened to simply referring to Samuel as Old Man Coffin. Samuel Coffin's career as an ocean-going teacher was a natural choice given his love of family history. His ancestor, Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin purchased the first training ship in the old United States—the
Clio
—that took Nantucket students to far-off lands in the mid-nineteenth century.

Old Man Coffin made his way through the shack, pausing to look at a nineteenth century sextant. A few steps further on, he picked up a copy of the “Nautical Handbook” from the twentieth. Shaking his head, Coffin knew that he should take some of these things to Ellis’ house and thought about packing them into his backpack. Sadly, he realized that he didn't really have the room.

At last, he found the object of his quest—a pouch of Navy Flake pipe tobacco. Coffin crumbled some of the tobacco into the pipe he'd brought with him and smoked while he continued to contemplate his collection of antiques. Old Man Coffin's eyes fell on a polished round of whale baleen. On the bone was a black etching of a sperm whale. Coffin sucked in warm, soothing smoke—drinking it in like mother's milk—as he contemplated the scrimshaw. It was unethical to own a piece of a murdered whale. However, the scrimshaw had been in Coffin's family for centuries. Either way, he realized he should not leave it in the shack where anyone could get it. It would be safer in Ellis’ home.

Coffin packed his pouch of tobacco, the scrimshaw and a few other odds and ends into his backpack. He stepped out of the shack and locked the door. A futile gesture, he knew, looking at the ancient, rotted wood. Still, he didn't feel he could leave his shack open to just anyone. The tourists would never come out this far—Coffin's shack was too far from the plastic roadway.

Coffin looked out toward the sea and smoked his pipe a little while longer. Black-accented gray clouds met white-accented gray ocean at the horizon. The old man longed to be on a ship, sailing the waves. The ocean was the true domain of the Nantucketer. The pipe smoldered to a finish. Almost ceremonially, Coffin dumped the pipe, adding his ash to God's own. He climbed on the bike and rode back to Nantucket Village.

Night was falling as Coffin brought his bike to the storage shed behind the Ellis house. He stowed the bicycle, went inside and turned on the teleholo while he ordered a simple meal of quohog chowder and ale from the food preparation unit. As he noisily slurped the chowder, he watched a rerun of Gaean President Jenna Walker's speech at Arlington Planetary Cemetery. Turning up the volume, he heard about the deaths around the Earth. Coffin picked up the glass of ale and swallowed a large gulp. “Where's John Mark when we need him?” asked Coffin, taking a deep breath.

A newscaster interrupted President Walker's rerun speech—a literal talking head that floated over the dais of the teleholo—that stated the President was about to make a live announcement. Coffin grinned sourly at the notion of the President interrupting the President.

"People of Gaea—Mother Earth,” began the President as her miniature image faded into view: a doll standing on the teleholo dais in front of the Gaean flag, “for all of human history, we have been a people in crisis. We have fought wars with one another to determine which group would have the right to rape Gaea—our own mother. Many times, we have raped her to get at the milk of her breast: the fuel to run factories, the land to raise crops and animals. Other times, we have raped her for pleasure: energy to run our teleholos and games. We humans are like depraved sex addicts, who have stopped seeing the Earth as mother..."

Samuel Coffin shook his head as he listened to the speech. Hadn't the President just been talking about all of the dead around the Earth? Didn't she imply suspicion of the Cluster as the cause of all of the deaths? What was all of this talk about “rape of the Earth?” What did it have to do with the crisis at hand?

The President went on to say that she had been in contact with the Cluster and explained that each of the Clusters was a life form in itself. “Again, I come before you to mourn the Doomsday Dead. However, I also come before you to tell you that I know definitively that the Cluster did not kill them. The Cluster is ancient and vastly experienced. The Cluster is even older than Mother Gaea. Like Gaea, the Cluster has much to offer the people of the Earth. Earth has tornadoes, earthquakes, and floods that can kill. Still, Earth produces the bounty that allows humans to survive. In much the same way, the Cluster produces a flood of emotional energy. While that flood can be devastating, the experience of the Cluster can be profound."

Horrified, Coffin turned off the teleholo. Unable to finish his chowder and beer, he let the dishes sit and went upstairs to his room where he undressed and pushed back the covers of his bed, then opened his backpack and retrieved the scrimshaw.

Sitting down on the bed, Coffin held the scrimshaw and looked at the image of the whale. He thought about the deaths happening around the globe and the glib words of the President. In Coffin's mind, the Cluster was killing people just as his ancestors once hunted whales. Almost reverently, he placed the scrimshaw on the nightstand next to the bed, lay down and fell into a deep sleep.

He awoke the next morning to a swaying followed by a lurch. He found himself bathed in filtered twilight, but not the twilight of his room in the Ellis house. His nose was invaded by the smell of wet wood mingled with humanity. There was a pungent undertone. “Whale oil?” he half whispered. Wood creaked loudly and he lurched again. He looked at his hands. They looked like the hands of a man thirty years his junior.

Coffin climbed out of bed and looked around in the dim half-light. There were shutters over the bed. He threw the shutters open and was greeted by the sight of open ocean. He had to grab onto a beam in the wall to keep from stumbling during another lurch. He looked around the room. He was in the after cabin of an old wooden sailing vessel. Charts were laid out on a table. A black coat and pants hung over a chair. Almost involuntarily, he scratched himself and felt the surprising roughness of wool. There was a pounding at the door.

"Come in,” said Coffin, softly, almost reverently. The pounding came again. “Come in,” he growled loudly.

A young boy, barely into his teens opened the creaky wooden door. “The mate's compliments, sir,” said the boy. “He would like to know what course to make."