Reconception: The Fall (4 page)

When distress signals started coming from the
Southeast USA habitat, most of East USA was in an uproar. Their
compatriots in the Smoky Mountains had developed a major failure in
their life support systems and were urgently requesting help.
Though they had originally communicated over the internet,
exchanging information and keeping each other abreast of
developments in their own work, there had been little contact
between the six USA habitats for the last forty years. Something
Outside had damaged some of the hardware, and all that remained
were rudimentary satellite systems.

Paul Tipman was walking hurriedly
through 1
^st
Quad when he spotted Morgan sitting in the cafe section,
reading the Dailies on the computer console, and stopped to talk to
him. "Morgan," he said.

Morgan looked up and smiled an artful smile. "Hello,
Paul," he answered, taking in the look of mild distress on the
man's face. "Anything wrong?"

Tipman sat down heavily and pressed the buttons that
would dispense a drink into a glass and convey it to the table.
"You haven't heard? Southeast's had a life support failure."

Morgan, who had been lounging, suddenly sat up. "No!
But how?"

"No one knows yet. There's all kinds of speculation,
but from the data received, it's possible that their food plants
have mutated. Anyway, everyone's very ill, some have died."

"What's the prognosis?" Morgan was thinking
furiously. Here was an opportunity. He didn't know what the
possibilities were, or how he could use the chance to advantage,
but he would find out.

"Come on, Morgan, you know as well as I that it would
take at least two months for them to build a new food plant. First
they'd have to engineer new microbes, and then they'd need time to
grow enough to eat. Even then they'd be on short rations for at
least another month or two. If all their food reserves are
inedible, they're finished."

"Well, didn't they have backups? We have backups,
don't we?" Tipman was in charge of communications and as such he
usually had all kinds of information at his fingertips. He was also
an inveterate gossip and Morgan knew that whatever he needed to
know, he would find out, and whatever he wanted the rest of the
habitat to know, he could communicate, just once, to this man. An
idea began to take form.

"Yeah, we have backups and so did they. Apparently,
someone was overhasty in trying to repair the damage and they
allowed the backups to be overgrown with mutated material. I don't
know all the details, but it looks like their reserves have been
destroyed."

"Wait a minute, Paul. Why don't we try to help them
out? If we could transport the genetic material to them, we could
save their lives, couldn't we?"

Paul considered this suggestion and shrugged. "We
could if we had some form of transport. But we don't."

"We could build one. We could take one of those
motorized carts they use in the recycling plant and modify it,
close it in, add portable recycler, solar power ... It wouldn't
take more than three or four days. Don't you think it could be
done?"

"I guess it could," Paul said, warming to the idea.
"But then we have to find someone to man it."

"Oh, someone will volunteer. You'll see. Just put the
idea on the board."

When Tipman left, enthusiastically planning the
communiqué that would go out on the electronic bulletin board,
Morgan had to struggle to contain his excitement. This was it. This
was the opening. With a land vehicle and an unsealed exit from the
habitat, he would be able to implement his own plans.

CHAPTER 4

East USA Habitat 2128

Four frantic days later the jury-rigged motorcar was
ready. Resembling a van, its small motor had been replaced with a
much larger one, a bank of batteries lined the floor and were
connected to solar panels on the roof. The windows were small and
well protected, designed to let in as little ultraviolet radiation
as possible. Air and water would be recycled. Solid waste would be
evacuated to the outside. Top speed of the vehicle was thirty miles
per hour, and it was calculated that the 400-mile trip to Southeast
USA would probably not cause much damage to the travelers as long
as they stayed inside the machine.

There were only two volunteers, and they elected to
go together. When Evelyn Chandler saw the notice on the bulletin
board, she was ecstatic, and she immediately put both her name and
Garret's on the board as volunteers for the mission. To Evie, this
was the chance of a lifetime. They would see for themselves what
was going on in the world. Satellite photographs were singularly
unsatisfactory to one who'd been outside. She wanted to see what or
who, was still alive on the surface, and was elated at the
possibilities. Garret was as excited as she. The community at large
thought they were both insane.

Though smaller roads had probably been destroyed by
wind, rain, and the consequent erosion of the roadbeds, it was
assumed that the larger interstates were still more or less intact.
Maps were recovered from the archives, and routes laid out. Garret
spent two days studying old topographical and reconnaissance maps,
comparing them to satellite pictures and trying to get a feel for
the terrain they would have to cover.

Evie prepared for the trip by surreptitiously
gathering materials together that she would need for the forays
that she and Garret planned into the wild. They would collect
specimens of plants and fungi, and especially, water, in the hopes
that something, some new bit of flora or microscopic fauna, would
add to the picture they were creating of the world. Their current
research was nearing culmination. They’d created a plant that made
what they were calling superfood, and then they’d started work on
something that had once been utterly forbidden.

The idea came to them full blown the same day that
they’d harvested and tested their first crop of superfood. They had
made a plant that could thrive outside and produce a rich source of
nutrients for whoever lived there. But did anyone live outside?
From there it was a short step to imagining a world peopled by
strong, intelligent, and healthy human beings: homo superior.

They used sperm and ova from the gene bank,
modifying each zygote to create stronger, more adaptable, more
long-lived beings. Of course, they hadn’t encouraged any of these
cells to grow as yet because what would be the point of producing a
perfect human being and having him or her grow up in the habitat?
The method of getting their little superbabies into the outside
environment had been elegantly solved, but they weren’t yet ready
to take that step.

When their endless discussions first led them to the
idea, they had found it frightening, even to a New Scientist who
had been raised to play God. But after much deliberation, they
decided to go ahead with the development of the plant anyway. The
concept was too attractive to ignore, and even if they never used
it, it could spearhead a whole new line of research.

The eventful morning dawned as artificially as it
always did in East USA, and Evie and Garret, who had hardly slept,
got dressed with special care. Garret admired the way his girl
looked in her coveralls and thought that at thirty, she didn't look
much different than she'd looked at sixteen. "Did you pack the
vitamins?" he asked, thinking that the reason she'd stayed so young
had to do with the vitamins and nutrients they both ingested in
such great quantities.

"I've got 500 tablets with us. Do you think it's
enough?"

"Are you planning a two month vacation?" he
laughed.

"They're really going to worry when we don't get back
on time," Evie remarked.

"It can't be helped."

"I hope the food producers will be enough to get
Southeast started."

"They will be," Garret said. "Don't forget we're also
bringing food concentrates that will last them a week. They'll be
hungry, but they won't starve."

"Garret," she said, reaching for his hand, as he was
pulling the straps tight on the waistband of his coveralls, "I love
you." It wasn't exactly what she wanted to say, but it was as close
as she could get to describing the avalanche of feelings she was
experiencing—the excitement, the fear, the anticipation, the hope,
the joy.

He smiled as he pulled her close and held her, "I
know what you mean." She rested momentarily within his arms, and
then they were ready.

Many people turned out at the exit chamber to see
them off, although, of course, they wouldn't really see anything.
As soon as the vehicle passed the inner door it would close. There
would be no exchange of gases with the outside. Even so, the
atmosphere was filled with anticipation and good fellowship, as
friends and neighbors said goodbye to the pair of intrepid
explorers. Evie said later that her hand was shaken so many times
she thought it would fall off. Finally, the formalities were over,
and the door opened. Garret drove through, and the door closed
behind them.

Sitting in the silence of the tunnel leading to the
outside, they smiled at how reminiscent it was of that other
smaller tunnel, the secret one. "You know what the best part of all
this will be Garret?" Evie asked. "When we come back, we'll be able
to talk about it. We'll be able to tell them what it's like and how
it feels and ... ." He squeezed her hand and put the machine in
gear.

It was an odd looking vehicle that exited through
the airlock at the other end of the tunnel, covered with wires,
solar panels and curious looking tubes and valves. It was very big,
with room enough for both of them to stretch out and sleep, and a
cargo area in the back that held fifty-two cubic feet of dried food
concentrates.

It rolled ponderously along the gravel path and
slowly picked up speed. Evie's eyes were all but glued to the glass
as she watched the scenery go past. After a while she said, "Oh
stop for a minute Garret, this is almost as bad as being down
under. I want to go outside."

"So do I," he said, "and we will, but first we have
to get this food to Southeast."

"You're right, of course," she said, and sat back to
enjoy the uncommon experience of riding, letting her mind drift.
“Garret,” she wondered aloud, “do you think they’d survive if we
released them?”

“Our babies? I think most of them would. The plant
will support them for at least six months, and then they should be
strong enough to…”

“But what if there are predators?”

“Evie, didn’t we already say that it’s a numbers
game?”

“I know. But now, being out here, I’m beginning to
think we’re crazy. It’s too cruel.”

“Well, that’s why we tabled the project, isn’t it? Or
one of the reasons anyway.”

Evie nodded, and closed her eyes, grateful that
Garret could always be counted on to provide the right answer.

Twenty minutes later, Garret gently removed the map
from her sleep-numbed fingers and stopped the van to check his
directions. The road was not exactly where it was supposed to be.
To get to the interstate they knew they'd have to go a good fifty
miles over some pretty rough landscape. They'd only gone ten and it
was turning out to be a lot rougher than anyone had imagined.

The area where he parked was a rocky hillside, the
slope barren but for a few trees; the slabs of concrete that had
been the road were jutting up at odd angles. Ahead of him he saw
that the road ended, and began again, two feet higher up. Getting
through was not going to be easy. Not for the first time, he
wondered if it wouldn't have been better to take two men on this
job. But there was no stopping Evie. He just hoped she'd measure up
to helping him move a few boulders.

He reached over and shook her gently, answering her
questioning look with a turn of his head toward the windshield.

"Whew!" she said, "That's a tough one."

"We'll have to go around it."

"How?"

"Guess we'll have to get out and see," he said
roguishly.

Exiting through the airlock to the outside was as
awesome an experience as it had ever been. Garret always wanted to
pull in a deep breath in some kind of ancient ritual, but he
didn't. Instead, he swallowed the sudden lump that always came to
his throat and walked to the edge of the road. The ground fell away
at an alarming rate here, and he knew that that was not the way
around the obstacle. On the other side of the road was a steep
hill. They'd have to go further back. Evie, he noticed, was way
ahead of him, already backtracking the way they'd come. About fifty
feet back she called out to him. He ran to catch up and saw a way
down the hill.

"Let's explore it on foot first," he said, and she
nodded in agreement. Leading the way, Garret started down the path.
It was just barely wide enough for the van and not too steep. Now
if only it led back to the road.

"Look at this plant, Garret," Evie called from
behind him, "I've never seen one like this, have you?"

"Come on hon; we'll do that later, on the way
back."

"You really do have a one track mind, don't you?" she
said when she caught up to him. He took her hand and helped her
over some rocks in the path.

"Do you think we can get these out of the way?" he
wondered.

Evie held up her arm and pumped up her bicep.
"Anything is possible," she said, and was rewarded by his chuckle
and a flash of white teeth in his strong face. She was actually
quite strong and he knew it. They often worked out together, and,
while he could lift more weight, she had more endurance.

The landscape before them was bleak and
uncompromising, stark lines of rocky outcrops, long stretches of
near desert. The soil was so eroded that the bare bones of the
earth were clearly visible in every direction. But there were
trees, and other plants, growing in between the rocks where the
soil had been trapped, and to Evie and Garret, it was the most
beautiful sight they'd ever seen.