Children of the Dust (19 page)

'A man destroyed it, and a man rebuilt it,' she said. 'Maybe you know of him? His name was Dwight Allison.' 

'Dwight Allison?' 

Simon stared at her. 

'Dwight Allison built
that?'

Laura nodded.

'He designed it,' she said proudly. 'He saw what it could be, dreamed the street plans and the houses, the stained glass patterns of the Abbey windows, its columns and arches, its roof vaults and gardens. He dreamed it and we constructed it. He dreamed our settlement building too. But that was long ago, before I was born. Lilith thought you might have heard of him.'

'My mother married his brother,' Simon said. 

'He died,' said Laura. 'Five years ago.' 

Dwight had died, but his city lived on. It was a legacy worth leaving.

'Back at the bunker no one speaks of him,' said Simon. 'My mother would never tell me what he did, some kind of sabotage, I think. My father said he was a traitor.'

'He was an artist,' said Laura. 'And we set him free. What will you do when you are set free, Simon? What will you make of your life with everything given? Dwight gave us Timperley, but what will you give? The great bridge back across the river Severn? Operating techniques for organ transplants? A ship that will take us to the stars?'

Simon stared at her.

But her gaze stayed fixed on the golden city.

'It needn't even be a concrete thing,' she mused. 'Ideas are enough. Ideas can become a philosophy and change the world. It wasn't only the nuclear holocaust that made us what we are. It was men like Johnson and women like blind Kate. They taught us to be better people. Taught us to give and share, care about everything and damage nothing. They wanted us to succeed where the human race had failed, and become what human beings had failed to become. It was your kind who envisioned us, just as Dwight envisioned that city down there. Great men of the past have always dreamed of a future world and we inherit those dreams. We have the potential to make them reality. Do you understand what I'm saying, Simon?'

'I understand,' said Simon. 'But I don't quite see what you're getting at. Where exactly do I come into it? What is it you want from me?'

'Men like Johnson,' said Laura, 'and women like blind Kate, founders of settlements . . . they gave us all they could but they didn't know everything. They didn't know what you know, Simon. In your government bunkers you have kept alive a knowledge that we need. It will take us generations to sift through all the information collected in books and learn to apply it. By that time we may have lost the ability to understand. Those portions of our brains which are capable of calculative workings out could have fallen into disuse. Psychic powers are very important. Intuitive understanding is very important. But conscious understanding and logical reasoning are equally important.

Without knowing how to reason things out we stand on the brink of a new dark age. That's why we need you, Simon. That's why we're willing to try so hard to keep you alive. We need what you know in the bunkers. We need your technological understanding before it's lost for ever. Now do you see?'

Simon nodded, and smiled.

He saw everything, as clear as day.

Whatever Laura gave him would not be for nothing.

Simon did not go on to Timperley. Riding high on Timms' back, with Laura walking beside him, he headed home across the moorland hills of west Gloucestershire. The world had not ended at the Devil's Pulpit. Instead it had begun. In that gold glittering city and in Laura's words he had seen a future for himself. All the darkness and destruction, all the suffering and stupidity of the human race was over. But all that was worthwhile in them was still going on . . . great thoughts, great works, great love. Nothing worthwhile was ever wasted. It only evolved, and mutated. The vision always survived.

Cool wind fluttered his caftan and dark glasses protected his eyes from the sun. He wore linen gloves and a face mask, which the mutants had fashioned for him during the previous afternoon, his skin cocooned from the vicious light. It was a necessary precaution, as necessary as a wheelchair to a man with no legs, and Simon accepted it now. Genetically vulnerable he would always need protection. But freedom was not necessarily a physical thing. It was not a mind chained to a body, dominated by physical and emotional desires and seeking to gratify them. Nor was it a mind obedient to set social concepts and dogmatic beliefs. Freedom was a mind released from worry and struggle, released from personal ambitions and the impositions of society, free to follow its own inclinations, its own thoughts. And Simon's mind soared, cloud high, escaped at last from the confines of the bunker into a world of unlimited possibilities.

What will you do? Laura had asked him. What will you do when you are set free and all things are given? Simon did not yet know, but he thought of it. With all his needs provided for, with food, and shelter, and clothing, with friendships and relationships, his life lay open ahead, vacant years waiting to be filled with whatever he wanted to do. In research or study, in technical or artistic or practical work, he would be able to realize his full potential. Whatever he learned he would be able to teach. Whatever he gained he could give. And of him too nothing worthwhile would ever be wasted. He could hardly wait to begin. 

'We'll need laboratories,' he said.

'There's at least one empty workroom in every settlement,' Laura informed him.

'We'll need specialized equipment too. Raw ingredients. Component parts. You can't harness solar energy without reflector shields, or build a suspension bridge without steel cables. You need copper wiring for electrical systems, silicon chips for computers.'

'We have artisans who can work to your specifications,' said Laura.

'It's not my department,' said Simon, 'but we've already designed a system of solar satellites. If we could build and fuel the launch rockets . . .'

'Fossil fuels are pollutants,' Laura objected.

'You need them to provide the necessary thrust.'

'Try talking to Tyler.'

'Psycho-kinetic impulse? Is that possible?'

'I don't know,' said Laura. 'That's why we need you. We need to know what's possible, and how it's possible.'

Simon pondered, jabbed his foot into Timms' flank. It was a staggering hypothesis, mind-blasting into space. If he could calculate the impulse and tonnage lift available for a one second burst of mental energy, and how long the mutant mind was able to sustain the output, and if one mind could work in unison with others . . . then they might reach the moon again in his lifetime. And if he could calculate the range and accuracy of telepathic thought transference, they might be able to re-establish an international communications network, and maybe minds alone could monitor space flight.

Again it was not his department, but he wondered to what extent mutant minds could be melded together to form a gestalt, if each could become directly aware of what the other knew, thus speeding up the learning process. He wondered if each mind possessed the full range of psychic abilities, to what extent they could be developed, and if their application was learned or inherent. And what about teleportation? Could they transfer matter through space? Transfer themselves as some advanced yogis had once claimed to do? Just how far could mutants transcend the limitations of their physical bodies? What was the principle behind paranormal functioning? How did it work? And why? There were so many questions he needed to ask. So much he needed to understand.

'These powers of yours . . . do they originate solely from inside your mind? I mean, are they internally generated? Do you feel energy flow out of you? Or do you become a channel for some external power? Is there some kind of well-spring, do you think? The source of creative spirit? The universal life force? God? Is that what we're dealing with?'

Simon glanced around when Laura did not answer. Stark on the horizon behind him was the tower of Rushfield church. He had passed it without even seeing, urged Timms to a trot, and left Laura behind. Now she came running across the heather trying to catch up. Simon heaved on the reins and waited impatiently. With only one life he needed to reach the settlement, begin work immediately, with nothing holding him back. He had to establish a basic theory before he could begin to apply it. Timms stamped restlessly, sensing his mood, a piebald horse, as rare and precious as the knowledge Simon possessed, and made for sharing. Panting for breath Laura drew level, grasped the bridle and hung on.

'You're going too fast!' she complained.

'We can both get there quicker if we ride together,' Simon said.

She looked up at him.

White eyes trying to read his mind.

'I'm a mutant,' she reminded him.

'What's wrong with that?' he asked.

'You didn't want me touching you.'

'I was stupid then.'

Simon held out his hand, inviting her, a mutant girl with white eyes and albino fur. It no longer mattered what she was, or how different. In the past the inability of people to reconcile themselves to each other's differences had led to confrontation, tyranny, subjugation and war. Not any more did Simon see the need for that. Diversity was necessary and natural, part of the evolutionary process. If the human race had accepted each others' differences instead of trying to oppose them, Christ might not have been crucified, and they might not have destroyed themselves. It was too late for them, but it was not too late for Simon. He could learn to live with Laura's differences, learn to respect them, understand them, even love. But now she stood there, staring up at him, as if she could not believe he had changed so much and needed to be convinced.

'We're cousins,' he told her.

'We're all cousins to the apes,' she said consolingly.

'I don't mean it in an evolutionary sense. This is for real. Blind Kate is my mother's sister.'

'Your mother is Amelia Harnden?'

'Ophelia,' Simon corrected. 'Ophelia Allison now.'

'You told blind Kate you'd never heard of her!'

'I lied,' said Simon.

She was angry.

He could sense how angry she was.

And her voice was bitter.

'Why?' she asked. 'Why lie to her? What harm would it have done to admit you knew her? Was even that too much for you to give? A little pleasure to an old blind woman? What kind of person are you, Simon?'

He bit his lip.

He knew what he had been . . . mean, selfish, lying out of pride, unable to accept that he was related, not caring about anyone but himself. He had thought himself the highest form of life, a man created in the image of God,
Homo sapiens,
the chosen species. It was not easy knowing he was not, harder still to confess the truth of himself.

'I'm human,' he said. 'I've already told you that. It's the excuse for everything vile our kind has ever done and it's my excuse too. Blind Kate said I would learn, and I have. I'm not exactly proud of myself, Laura. I'll tell her about my mother when we return to the settlement. I'll even apologize. Now will you ride with me?'

She hesitated, a beautiful girl in a white woollen gown, her hair hanging gold in the sunlight. She was as human as he was, sprung from the same stock, nearer to perfection but still unsure of herself. Maybe they had shared the same distaste of each other. Maybe she too was reluctant to grasp the gloved hand of friendship which Simon held out towards her.

'Please?' he said softly.

Laura made up her mind, smiled and accepted, and mounted behind him. Slim arms gripped his waist, tightened as Timms moved on. And two thousand years of strife-ridden history resolved itself in them, the wastage of centuries gone in a moment of time. Appearances did not matter. Creed or colour, race or religion or political affiliation, did not matter. They had raised themselves above all that. Spiritually, mentally and emotionally, they accepted each other. They were just two people on a piebald horse, voices in the wind being carried away across the flying land.

'Will I meet your mother?' 'She died when I was born.' 

'Grandfather Harnden died nine years ago.' 

'I wish I had known him.'

'It's a weird coincidence that we two should meet.' 

'Or maybe it's wonderful,' said Laura. 

Maybe
she
was wonderful, Simon thought. She saw veils of ultraviolet light shining over a rainbow-coloured earth, auras of light around all living things, and heard over distances mutants speaking in her mind. She made a nuclear holocaust meaningful. Those untold millions of people had died that Laura could be born, and bones and buildings of past civilizations lay buried for ever. Through her Simon could see backward into time, through men and apes and mammals, through fishes and slime, into space and stars and the slow world forming. Through her he could see forward into the future . . . evolution, mutation, mind over matter, space and stars. She maintained the continuity of creation. For her blind Kate had survived and Simon had come here, each of them part of an unbroken perfect pattern that bestowed a meaning upon everything, little fragments of the mind of God which nothing could destroy.

Dodos and dinosaurs and
Homo sapiens
had not been wasted. The human race no failed evolutionary experiment, their nuclear war no ultimate disaster. It had happened because it was meant to happen and nothing was lost. The ideas, the thoughts, the achievements, Timperley Abbey and the standing stones on the stark horizon, Boyle's law and Einstein's theory of relativity . . . she would inherit it all, Laura with her arms around him, warm and touching and covered with white fur. She and her kind would reap the whirlwind, the mind of man and life on earth. Simon stroked her hand. He did not begrudge her, did not begrudge any of them the knowledge he possessed. They were better than he was . . .
Homo superior,
the children of the dust.

A Red Fox Book

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