Reconception: The Fall (5 page)

They stood high above a valley, which stretched off
into the distance, and below them, they could see a small forest of
scrub pine and a sparkling river. Even though they knew that the
water was probably poisoned, they longed to go closer, to hear it
and see it and touch it.

"I know," Evie said, "on the way back ... "

They ascended the slope and got back onto the road.
Knowing they'd have no real trouble circumventing the obstruction,
they walked back toward their vehicle holding hands and enjoying
themselves immensely.

The voices they heard from around the bend were as
unexpected as a tidal wave or fish falling from the sky. Voices.
Voices out here, where no one could live. People talking. Who?
Maybe Southeast had sent someone to meet them. No, that didn't make
any sense. Cautiously, they peered around the turn in the road,
stopped in their tracks, and quietly stepped backward. Screened by
the hill, they stood silently and considered their options, as
unexpected quantities of adrenaline poured into their veins.

CHAPTER 5

East USA: 2128

The man was like a huge upright lion, sporting a mane
of shaggy hair that started at his head and continued on down his
back. He was pulling at the door of the van, all the while talking
with his two companions. The smallest of the men, dark and slender,
climbed onto the roof of the vehicle, while the third, as drab in
appearance as the other two were interesting, went around to the
back.

Evie, aghast, clutched at Garret, whose own
trepidation seemed to freeze his blood. She knew he had reviewed
their options in the same split second that she had, and she knew
that they had arrived at the same conclusion. While her heart raced
with fear at these wholly unexpected events, her mind was
satisfied, and elated, to find that the supposition on which they’d
based the last year's work, had been correct.

There were people who had been able to survive the
plagues and pollution. Even in terror for her life, she couldn't
quiet her scientific curiosity. How had they survived? What was
different about them? How would this affect their research?

"Should we face them now, or wait until they're more
vulnerable?" Garret whispered.

She smiled. "We'll have to just walk over there and
see what happens."

"I knew you'd say that," he smiled, hoping his feeble
attempt at humor would bolster her. Actually, Evie was okay. If
anyone was having trouble with the circumstances, it was Garret.
Evie was able to suspend her fear in intellectual wonder, but
Garret was not.

Reaching for each other's hands, the two scientists
stepped forward and into the visual field of the lion man, who was
just about to thrust a small boulder through the glass viewing port
of their land vehicle.

"No!" Evie cried as Garret hurled himself forward to
prevent the action that might mean their death.

The man stopped, the rock poised to strike, and
turned his head toward the sound of Evie's voice. Garret, trying to
prevent the destruction of their vehicle, almost had his head
crushed by that same rock as he lunged into the man. But the man
took the body blow as Garret slammed into him, stepped back, and
dropped the rock to the side. Garret fell forward and landed on his
knees.

For a moment there was complete silence. Then
everyone started yelling. A sound akin to a roar from the lion man
brought the commotion to a halt. When all eyes were upon him, he
spoke. "Who are you?"

His words were English, but with an odd inflection.
Looking at him more closely, Evie saw that the man's 'mane' was
actually his clothes, which were made of twisted rope, shiny beads,
and long lengths of homespun, woven together so that the ends of
the cloth and the rope trailed down his back like coarse hair.
"We're scientists from East USA. We're on a rescue mission to the
Southeast habitat," she said, while Garret got to his feet and
brushed the sand off himself. "My name is Evelyn Chandler and this
is Garret Walker."

The three men were silent, waiting for more. Garret,
surprised, noted that the small, dark one was not a man, but a
woman. He stood straighter, and continued where Evie had left off.
"This is our vehicle. We need it to survive out here."

The woman, brushing black hair from her face, moved
closer and fingered the material of Evie's jumpsuit. "Plastic," she
spat, and brushed her hand against her side as if it had touched
something dirty.

It wasn't technically plastic, Evie thought, but a
complex organic molecule engineered from petroleum, that was
similar to rayon but longer wearing. All their clothes were made
from it. She was about to say this when she realized that, as a
generic term, 'plastic' was as good as any.

The lion man observed this interplay and made no
comment. Studying the two strange ones and listening to them, he
felt oddly moved. He felt no evil from them, yet their clothes and
their vehicle indicated that they were involved with great
wickedness. Intrigued and mystified, he motioned for them all to
sit down.

"I am Eye of Eagle of the Mountain people and this,"
he said, pointing to the woman, "is Teller. The man is Cries at the
Moon. You are not ... of the Earth?"

Teller looked up sharply. What a question. Did he
think they were from another planet? She knew who they were.
Obviously, they were survivors of the Evildoers, those who had
disappeared when the works of their hands had caused the Great
Disasters of the last century and their own present misery.

Garret tried to make sense of the question. "Not of
the Earth? What do you mean?"

"I mean," answered Eye of Eagle, "are you of Earth
or are you other? Your clothes and vehicle indicate 'other,' yet I
feel no harm in you."

"We are of the Earth," Evie said. "We are scientists
and our work ... "

Teller interrupted, "Scientists are pawns of the
Evildoers."

"But we are New Scientists," Garret said, thinking
quickly, "Our purpose is to restore the Earth and repair the damage
done by the Evildoers."

Eye of Eagle mulled this over as he chewed on a
blade of grass. "You are descendants of these people." It was not a
question.

Neither Evie nor Garret knew what to say. Cries at
the Moon, dull though he was in appearance, suddenly uttered a
sound of such intensity and dimension that it momentarily darkened
the sky (at least that was Evie's impression). "Why do you need
that wheeled thing?" he asked when the last echoes of his cry had
rebounded off the rocks.

The man has an incredible voice, Garret thought—like
warm faux-chocolate sauce. "We can't survive out here. We carry
food, water, and clean air. We'd never get back home without
it.

Teller laughed bitterly, "What's wrong with this
air?"

Evelyn looked her in the eye,
"We're used to breathing purified air, with more oxygen, less
CO
_2
,
and no pollutants. Besides that there's the
ultraviolet ... and it doesn't look like there's much food to be
had ... "

Teller narrowed her eyes and almost hissed, "Where do
you come from?"

"Underground," Evie said.

Eye of Eagle, watching intently, whistled softly, "So
that's where they went. We thought so."

"We mean you no harm," Garret said.
"After our people went underground, they changed. They realized
what they'd done, and began the search and study of methods to undo
the damage. Unlike the scientists you spoke of who
were
pawns of the
Evildoers, New Scientists are trained in holistic thinking. Our
purpose is benevolent."

Eye of Eagle, his blue eyes thoughtful, sighed,
"Sometimes, our finest dreams generate our worst nightmares." He
shrugged, "Where were you going in your fine vehicle?"

"Southeast sector has lost their food supply. We're
bringing emergency rations and replacement producers." At the
puzzled look on their faces, Garret added, "Producers are microbes
that turn organic material into edible protein."

"Organic material?" Eye of Eagle questioned.

"Yes, organic waste, petroleum and so forth."

At this, first Eye of Eagle, and then the other two
Mountain people began to laugh uproariously. Garret and Evelyn
looked at each other in wonder and waited for the outburst to
subside. Eye of Eagle tried to explain, "We find it very funny that
you say on one hand that you are so different from your ancestors
while at the same time you use petroleum to make your food. This is
a contradiction."

When Evie thought to argue this point, he added,
"There is waste from your food production, isn't there? Some kind
of, I'm sure, completely innocuous, chemical by-product?" From the
look on her face he saw that he was right, "You contain it of
course," he added, his face a study in seriousness with a hint of
merriment behind it.

"We do," Evie answered.

As suddenly as the laughter had begun, all signs of
mirth disappeared from Eye of Eagle's face. "You are not of Earth,"
he said, getting up. "You are other."

Teller and Cries at the Moon also got up and Evie and
Garret jumped to their feet. "Wait," Evie cried, "Wait."

Eye of Eagle looked at her and waited.

She reached out and took his big, rough hand in her
small, soft ones. They both studied the contrast as she spoke.
"Perhaps we are 'other' as you say, but it is not by choice. Garret
and I cannot help it if we came from underground. When we were only
eight we discovered an exit and stepped upon the surface of this
beautiful Earth. Since then we've worked every moment of our lives
to try and find our way back, to heal this world of the sickness
our fathers wrought on it. We cannot change who we came from,
anymore than you can change your history. Please, help us. We don't
want to be separate. We want to be of Earth."

Eye of Eagle heard the passion in her voice and
nodded. "We are dying," he said, "every day another man discovers a
cancer, another woman miscarries an obscenity, which, thank the
Mother, does not live, or it becomes apparent that another child is
retarded or otherwise mentally deficient."

"You created this world!" Teller cried.

Tears coursed down Evie's cheeks, and Garret stepped
in to support her. "Not us," he said, "we didn't create it. We were
born into it just as you were."

"It's so," Eye of Eagle said. "They're not
responsible. They are as much victims as we are. Perhaps more so."
He took Teller's arm, wiry and taut with anger, and spoke directly
to her. "They're not tough enough to survive here. When they die,
they won't return to the Mother, for they don't know her. They're
alone, cut off. We should pity them." To Evie he said, "Forgive
Teller, she's lost many children."

Evie spoke softly, directly to the despairing woman,
"I'm not permitted to have children."

Despite herself, Teller felt sorry for the
woman—living underground, locked away in the dark. She is a pretty
woman, Teller thought, more than pretty, with golden hair and soft
brown eyes, but so disconnected somehow. Evie did not know life,
the woman realized, but wanted to know it. Understanding liberated
Teller as she let go the unreasoning anger she'd felt since
spotting the van an hour ago. Her dark eyes glowed with maternal
compassion, and she stepped over to Evie and took her hand.

"None of us is to blame for what our ancestors did.
Eye of Eagle is right, and perhaps, we should not judge you so
harshly."

Evie studied Teller's dark eyes. She was not a
pretty woman, not in any sense that Evie had been trained to
appreciate, but she had a presence. Her features were strong,
angled, sharp. She did not look soft or vulnerable in any way but
savage and beautiful, as if she could wield a knife as readily as
she could suckle a babe. She was primal, a mother-goddess,
definitely of Earth, and everything that Evelyn knew she was not.
Evie moved toward her; reaching out, she took Teller’s hands.
Teller started to withdraw, but then, looking into Evie’s eyes, let
go the last of her fear, and they hugged each other, woman to woman
across the gulf between worlds.

East USA Habitat: 2128

John Morgan had made a startling discovery. His
research in atmospherics had virtually come to a halt, and when
questioned, his answer was that he was hoping to reach a
breakthrough at any time. Scientists require a lot of time for
thinking and no one could know that the thoughts on Morgan's mind
were of destruction, not creation, or that his data bank research
was not in biology but in politics and nuclear proliferation
treaties.

He was looking for warheads, nuclear weapons,
missiles with directional capability, and, it had taken some time,
but he'd found several. A bomb, strategically placed would begin
the job he had decided to do. The next one would finish it. A
couple bombs aimed one after another at the New Mexican desert
would open up one unholy can of worms.

Stretching his arms over his head, Morgan punched a
few more buttons on his computer and got the exact coordinates of
the missile base. Although these warheads had supposedly been
disarmed in the early 21st century, Morgan's dedicated research and
careful manipulations of certain people had broken into classified
material. It was within this databank that he'd made his discovery.
Ripley, the computer whiz, had been right.

Ripley was not a new scientist. He was just
interested in computers, nothing else, and no amount of persuasion
could get him to study anything else. He could get into any
databank, break any code, sidestep any firewall. He liked to do it;
he liked the challenge. Ripley essentially got off on only one
thing: solving puzzles. He had only two emotions, confusion and
completion, and he bounced back and forth between these two
parameters like a ball in a rubber room, never suspecting that
there might be anything outside.