Virginia Hamilton (11 page)

“There was anger,” toned Celester. “Half the world had no resources by then and could not afford expensive energies. Thus, they used forest lands for fuel. Many lands died.

“There was a flaw,” sang Celester. “Oh, it was not the poor with nothing. It was the enlightened rest who had too much. They were overwhelmed by the numbers of the poor. They could discover no profit in giving aid to so many, most of whom would starve and die anyway. ‘They’re too many,’ they said. ‘Let them stop being born.’ Such waste amid scientific advance is incomprehensible. Better that all have less than leave most to perish.

“But so be it. Anger. Hatred. Too many differences. In Africa a drought spread to the Congo basin, where there was no rain for two centuries. Over time, survivors had painstakingly trekked southward where there was green and plenty to support life. But not all life and not forever. When the weight of the living became too great on limited resources, the continent turned into a desert. No attempt was made to reform the desert—perhaps it was too late for that—nor to save the living in its homeland.

“Oceans turned into floating barges of people searching for food and shelter. Millions died in ordinary squalls because their rickety platforms could not withstand the sudden high seas.

“Yet in all lands there were some few who were seers, who realized that in their time, or within a few generations of their time, life might end.”

“Seers,” Justice whispered in the faintest voice. Celester’s story had struck deeply.

“You. Your kind,” he toned, gazing at her with his allseeing eyes. “You four are seers born in your time. Across earth, unknown to you, there are others like you.”

“You mean it?” Thomas said.

“There are some few others,” toned Celester. “From you and them descended Starters.”

“Starters will descend from us?” Justice asked.

“The greatest of all seers, Starters, some few of them descended from your line,” toned Celester. He turned off before she could ask him more about Starters. He became lifeless, a machine at rest, until the moment he turned back on and was again animated, telling his tale. Not more than a minute had elapsed.

“So much danger in the use of thermonuclear power,” he began. “With abundant use there came horrible accidents. There came catastrophic devastation from radioactivity. Genetic destruction in human cells caused generations of physical changes.

“Deserts advanced. Humans, animals—life— was caught in a continuous exodus to nowhere. All this occurred in advance of the First Origin.”

“What is that? How long is an Origin?” Thomas wanted to know.

“Shhh. Just let him tell it,” said Levi.

“But I want to figure how much time we’re talking about from our time,” Thomas said.

Toned Celester, “Origin means a deviation from the known time frame. It is a first time, a time beginning. There was pre-computation time, which I have been telling you about, and it was the time before machines. Then came the First Origin.”

“So the pre-computation time has to include
our
time,” Justice said, “the time of the twentieth century.”

“Just so,” toned Celester, “and many more of centuries.”

“But the twentieth century had all kinds of machines,” said Thomas. “There was IBM and all kinds of complicated computers. People were even getting them for their homes. But mostly only scientists knew how to use the big computers to give one another information.”

“Many of the professional class knew how to gather and transmit information by your computers,” Celester toned, “not only scientists. But your computers were merely stored-program-concept machines. Better than high-speed calculators. Their function was to follow instructions exactly as stored. They had to be programmed; they could not think for themselves.

“Those be mechanics,” he toned softly. “They served their purpose in the pre-computation time. But they are not the machines I refer to. I speak of
machines built by machines,
which caused the First Origin. I speak of Colossus machine. These are facts: By the end of First Origin, all Starters had disappeared. The Colossus machine was silent. No human knew that Starters ever existed or that they were gone; or that Colossus ever was or had been built by machines built by Starters.”

“What? Wait a minute, I’m not getting this at all,” Thomas said.

“It is not easy,” Celester toned. “But think of an expanse of time. At the beginning of the expanse is the Starter activity, the creation of astounding machines, useless to the ordinary humans who are now reduced to living in tribal ways. They are mutated, most with the simplest mentalities. Starters realize the possible end to life, and they have begun their preparations so that some may survive. Then, at the end of the same expanse of time, there are no Starters and no machines, as far as anyone knows.”

“You mean, nuclear accidents had reduced everything to the level of tribes?” asked Justice. She felt sick inside. It was hard to believe that any of this was possible; and yet she knew it was.

“Accidents, wars and natural phenomena, which I am coming to—that of the greatest devastation. But listen and I will tell it.

“Starters would have to leave behind all the suffering poor tribes,” he said, “and would take with them only those few with no gene mutation. Starters would take what else that was good to take, having thought and planned for the final hard time. These Starters, as I have said, were the hidden seeing ones like yourselves, ones of fine mentalities. And then the last catastrophe did occur.

“Believe you,” he toned in muted rhythms that were filled with sadness, “dust could end life the way you know life in your time?”

Dorian slowly nodded. So did Levi. “There was this volcano mountain eruption on the West Coast just before we came here,” Dorian said. “They say there was so much dust, it went hundreds of miles. You wouldn’t believe how much there was, covering whole acres and acres. Then we had this earthquake—can you believe it? In the Midwest, an earthquake! It was five-point-one on the scale. And people say it’s the beginning of some real changes in the earth, too.”

“And so it was, the pre-computation time,” toned Celester.

“You mean dust to end everything, Celester?” Justice asked him.

“I don’t know if I believe it,” Thomas said before Celester could respond. “It’s going to take a whole lot to end the world. More than some dust.”

“If dust is greater than all imagining of it?” toned Celester. His voice hummed, sounding tones which, simultaneously, they understood in word translations.

“There began the end of earth,” he toned. “This the Colossus machine suggests from its recovery of memory data from times past. There came a vast drought in the continent known as Nord Amer. There was dust from sand of continents already turned to desert. And a hundred years of poisonous dust-ash from a mountain chain active for that long. Wars, radiation. Whole cities and industrial states fallen to dust. Not one generator or engine could rid its parts of dust. Not one elevator would run; no moving stairs, no trains or buses, cars. There were tons upon tons of dust for every human, living and dead.”

They stared at him in disbelief. Even Duster listened, sensing the worst of times. Miacis waited patiently, at ease in companionship with those she comforted.

“There were generations of blowing in which night took over day,” Celester sang, “all being dust and brown and shadow.”

“But … wouldn’t such dust seed clouds and make rain?” Levi asked. “And then, wouldn’t dust be brought down by all the moisture? There’d be mud floods, maybe, but wouldn’t that help clear up the air?”

“It did rain,” toned Celester, “and that was the reason humans could exist for longer than might be expected. There came sudden, drenching downpours. But eventually dust did become suspended in the troposphere. Forming clouds were overseeded, when they could form at all. No water droplets were big enough to fall to earth as rain. Climate was disrupted. There came long cold times, and a few hot intervals of time. So many did not survive the hardships. Nothing, no technology to aid them. Dust in all things. Nothing much grew. Lonely souls scattered about, stumbling their way. Dying out.”

“I don’t want to hear any more,” Levi said, covering his face with his arms, knees beneath his chin.

“We might as well hear the end, we’ve heard it this far. Let him finish,” Justice said quietly.

And so, Celester continued.

“Some struggling few roamed the dustlands,” he toned. “It is suggested by Colossus that these lived to hunt mythical greenspans said to thrive beneath the dust—rumors handed down through shrouds of dust-time. Greenspans, like waterholes, were the dreams and myths of survivors.

“All was devastation when came the end of the First Origin. That which you call Dustland is simply the earth you know in your time.”

They were stunned, silent.

“And the only clean earth is in this domity,” whispered Levi.

“Domity involves ten large domes like this one,” toned Celester. “Reclaimen earth takes time. Meanwhile, domity supports life again. All this is precious. And we control it in domity. We must.”

“But I can’t believe our … our kind,” Justice said, “the seers, would save themselves and leave all the rest to die!”

“Seers saved some—it was not that,” toned Celester. “It was that seers left a dying earth.”

“What?” said Levi.

“It is not easy to explain, I am sorry to say,” gently Celester toned to them. “Perhaps we should rest a while. Have a look around. Take your mind off things. Yes! Let me now take you to Colossus.”

Thomas gaped at Celester. “The Colossus—now? It’s still working?”

“The Colossus is always,” sang Celester in his deepest baritone. “I will take you to it,” he toned, his eyes intensely bright as he gazed at Justice.

Celester stood. They got up. Justice helped Duster to stand beside her. He seemed to be in a hazy, tranquilized state. He knew who Justice and the others were, and contentedly he stayed close to her and Miacis.

“You control this domity and the people in it,” Justice said to Celester, looking him in the eye. “You drug people.”

“Yeah,” said Thomas, “and we don’t think it’s right.”

Celester’s alien eyes were upon them. “A mild synthetic drug,” he toned. “Less harmful than the extract you drink made from the bean of the coffee plant.”

“I don’t think so,” said Justice. “Coffee can make you nervous, but your tranquilizers make people do what you want them to do.”

“There is efficiency in control,” sang Celester. To Justice, the chords he made were not quite so pleasant.

Without another sound, he turned away, moving quickly off. They were forced to follow him, for they did not know their way back, nor how to work the transit tube.

T
HEY TRAVELED THE TRIWAY
system down to the Oneway level and beyond the hydrafields to the rim of the enormous geodesic dome that covered Sona. Celester pointed out the dome’s tubular structure that had all of its parts under tension but never stress. Then he led them inside a silitrex sphere which sat above an opening in the ground, like a stopper in a bottle. Once the sphere closed around them, it began descending with a pneumatic swishing sound of air under pressure. Soft light from Celester’s eyes illuminated the sphere, for the vivid sundown of Sona was left above as they plunged.

The gaseous light streaming from his eyes spread about them. Fascinated, Thomas thrust his hand into the stream. Light piled up on his palm like soft ice cream on a cone. Thomas gasped, jumping back, jerking his hand out of the stream. The piled light scattered and regrouped in the stream coming from Celester’s eyes.

“Wow! Magic!” said Dorian.

Celester hummed a comic toning, entertaining them with the light.

“Whatever it was, it got hot,” Thomas said. He eyed Celester suspiciously.

“A property of light is heat,” toned Celester. “He who puts hand in fire will singe his fingertips.”

“I get the message,” Thomas muttered.

“Celester, you have powerful gifts,” Justice said.

The sphere seemed to float momentarily; then it stopped with a soft jolt. A door slid open. Celester moved smoothly out ahead of them.

“Colossus is like no other machine,” he toned as they followed him. “There are tooling mills above and below this level built by Colossus. And there are functioning machines nearby that helped to build Colossus itself.”

They were in a place of vague light, vastly mysterious because of the dimness. They could make out steep, overhanging slopes and a wide, deep trench stretching away from them. In the entire emptiness of the trench there was but one object. It had to be Colossus.

What was there they saw, yet did not see.

The Colossus that Celester saw never varied. It was shaded mauve, deepening in pulsations to black. It greeted him, he thought, with the light emitting from its smooth surface. Celester lifted off the ground, moving to the trench. Higher and higher he went until he was halfway to the summit of Colossus. There he stood on space in conjunction with Colossus, as Colossus tuned Celester until Celester felt no desynchronization of any of his half-million separate components. His brain was not yet middle-aged. His mind was peaceful.

Justice saw an enormous coiling, a Colossus whose awesome spring-release of time-force could whirl them home again. It changed form before her eyes. It was solid; it was ethereal. It was there, a brilliant silver coil, and it was not there.

Each of them saw Colossus differently. There before Thomas was what he loved, which was a science fiction. A silver spaceship was ready for lift-off. Upright in the trench, it was twenty stories high. Steam rose from it. He asked: Can I go, too?

He understood that the ship knew his wish to be master of himself, to speak for himself without stuttering. Only the ship knew the violent feelings he had because of his stutter and because he wanted to be free of Justice. But here and now was not for him. His here and now would come. No, he could not go a-flying with the ship.

Duster could not have comprehended a Colossus. But he had no need to name what he saw. It looked like his land of dust. He walked in it and the ground was moist under his feet. The area of the water pool was hardly recognizable. He knew it was water, glinting, refreshing to his senses, even though he was still a quarter-mile from it. But now, surrounding the pool on its banks were
things
growing in the dust. Nothing like them had ever grown. The pretty red, yellow. In an instant he knew the colors, knew to call them flowers, with greenery. Such bright growing extended three feet around the pool. He scented the plantings as he moved; the scent made him laugh. The odor was the best he’d smelled in all of the endless dust. He ran. He was there, putting his face down in the flowers.