Insistence of Vision (15 page)

And then, straightening her back.

“Proof that they survived.”

And finally, barely whispered.

“That he survives.”

ᚖ

So.

My suspicion was confirmed. Her added reason for all this – the one that had gone unspoken.

No single justification was sufficient for dragging us into the wilderness. Not the full release promised by Coss Law. Not the strength that Yelena and I would attain – if we survived. Nor practical experience, dealing with a new-harsh world. Not all of those, combined.

Only... might this new one, added to the others, tip the scale?

It did. Just barely. Enough for me to nod. To understand. To accept.

And to know.

The Yankees would never learn. Fooled by their brief, naive time of childishly unlimited dreams, they believed deep-down in happy endings and the triumph of good. They would keep rebelling till the Coss left no Americans alive.

We Russians are different. Our expertise? We persist. Resist! But with measured, cynical care. And each defeat is simply preparation.

That truth, I had already known. Only now it filled my soul.

We are the people who know how. To outlast the Coss.

And so I took my mother by the hand, leading her to the place that I had found, where Cyrillic letters lay deep-incised along the bared trunk of a crystal tree. And I watched her face bloom with sudden hope, with sunlit joy. And I knew, at last, what lesson this place taught.

To endure.

Story Notes

The preceding tale leads off our section on “endurance.” A theme that I go back to often, belying the canard that “David Brin is an optimist.” What malarkey!

Indeed, I do publicly disdain the wave of obsessively repetitive and unimaginative dystopias and apocalypses that offer so many directors and authors a cheating-lazy way to plot. Their relentless campaign against the can-do spirit is toxic for all of us. I despise reflex cynicism and pessimism that simply repeats a mantra that “nothing works.”

Still, things might go horribly wrong, as I portrayed in
The Postman
. Dire warnings serve a great purpose, if they pose a failure mode that’s a bit original! If they get people talking, thinking, pondering ways to avoid the pitfalls and quicksand pits that lie ahead. We may owe our lives and freedom to
Nineteen Eighty-Four, Soylent Green,
and
Dr. Strangelove
, legends that weren’t lazy cheats, but gave us fresh ideas about tomorrows to avoid.

In “The Logs” I explore the dark possibility that our narrow enlightenment civilization – the font of science fiction – might have been a fluke. It’s a terrifying possibility. Though hope will always find places to settle and seed and grow, even in the darkest moments and places.

This story is part of a fictional cosmos that I’ve been poking at for a while – the Epic of the Coss Invasion – based on a few paragraphs scribbled by our daughter, Ari, when she was five or six years old. I owe her the “elepents” and those daunting new lords, the Coss.

Our next story – “The Tumbledowns of Cleopatra Abyss” – only mentions the Coss briefly, as a far-off threat. It was chosen for Neil Clarke’s
Best Science Fiction of the Year
volume for 2015.

The Tumbledowns of Cleopatra Abyss

ᚖ

Today’s thump was overdue. Jonah wondered if it might not come at all.

Just like last Thorday when – at the Old Clock’s mid-morning chime – farmers all across the bubble-habitat clambered up pinyon vines or crouched low in expectation of the regular, daily throb – a pulse and quake that hammered up your foot-soles and made all the bubble boundaries shake. Only Thorday’s thump never came. The chime was followed by silence and a creepy let-down feeling. And Jonah’s mother lit a candle, hoping to avert bad luck.

Early last spring, there had been almost a
whole week
without any thumps. Five days in a row, with no rain of detritus, shaken loose from the Upper World, tumbling down here to the ocean bottom. And two, smaller gaps the previous year.

Apparently, today would be yet another hiatus…

Whomp!

Delayed, the thump came
hard
, shaking the moist ground beneath Jonah’s feet. He glanced with concern toward the bubble boundary, more than two hundred meters away – a membrane of ancient, translucent volcanic stone, separating the paddies and pinyon forest from black, crushing waters just outside. The barrier vibrated, an unpleasant, scraping sound.

This time, especially, it caused Jonah’s teeth to grind.

“They used to sing, you know,” commented the complacent old woman who worked at a nearby freeboard loom, nodding as gnarled fingers sent her shuttle flying among the strands, weaving ropy cloth. Her hands did not shake, though the nearby grove of thick vines did, quivering much worse than after any normal thump.

“I’m sorry grandmother.” Jonah reached out to a nearby bole of twisted cables that dangled from the bubble-habitat’s high-arching roof, where shining glowleaves provided the settlement’s light.

“Who
used to sing?”

“The walls, silly boy. The bubble walls. Thumps used to come exactly on time, according to the Old Clock. Though every year we would shorten the main wheel by the same amount, taking thirteen seconds off the length of a day. After-shakes always arrived from the same direction, you could depend on it! And the bubble sang to us.”

“It sang… you mean like that awful groan?” Jonah poked a finger in one ear, as if to pry out the fading reverberation. He peered into the nearby forest of thick trunks and vines, listening for signs of breakage. Of disaster.

“Not at all! It was
musical
. Comforting. Especially after a miscarriage. Back then, a woman would lose over half of her quickenings. Not like today, when more babies are born alive than warped or misshapen or dead. Your generation has it lucky! And it’s said things were even worse in olden days. The Founders were fortunate to get any living replacements at all! Several times, our population dropped dangerously.” She shook her head, then smiled. “Oh… but the music! After every mid-morning thump you could face the bubble walls and relish it. That music helped us women bear our heavy burden.”

‘“Yes, grandmother, I’m sure it was lovely,” Jonah replied, keeping a respectful voice as he tugged on the nearest pinyon to test its strength, then clambered upward, hooking long, unwebbed toes into the braided vines, rising high enough to look around. None of the other men or boys could climb as well.

Several nearby boles appeared to have torn loose their mooring suckers from the domelike roof. Five… no six of them… teetered, lost their final grip-holds, then tumbled, their luminous tops crashing into the rice lagoon, setting off eruptions of sparks… or else onto the work sheds where Panalina and her mechanics could be heard, shouting in dismay.
It’s a bad one,
Jonah thought. Already the hab-bubble seemed dimmer. If many more pinyons fell, the clan might dwell in semi-darkness, or even go hungry.

“Oh, it was beautiful, all right,” the old woman continued, blithely ignoring any ruckus. “Of course in
my
grandmother’s day, the thumps weren’t just regular and perfectly timed. They came in
pairs
! And it is said that long before – in
her
grandmother’s grandmother’s time, when a day lasted so long that it spanned several sleep periods – thumps used to arrive in clusters of four or five! How things must’ve shook, back then! But always from the same direction, and exactly at the mid-morning chime.”

She sighed, implying that Jonah and all the younger folk were making too much fuss. You call
this
a thump shock?

“Of course,” she admitted, “the bubbles were
younger
then. More flexible, I suppose. Eventually, some misplaced thump is gonna end us all.”

Jonah took a chance – he was in enough trouble already without offending the Oldest Female, who had undergone thirty-four pregnancies and still had
six
living womb-fruit – four of them precious females.

But grandmother seemed in a good mood, distracted by memories….

Jonah took off, clambering higher till he could reach with his left hand for one of the independent dangle vines that sometimes laced the gaps between pinyons. With his right hand he flicked with his belt knife, severing the dangler a meter or so below his knees. Sheathing the blade and taking a deep breath – he launched off, swinging across an open space in the forest… and finally alighting along a second giant bole. It shook from his impact and Jonah worried.
If this one was weakened, and I’m the reason that it falls, I could be in for real punishment. Not just grandma-tending duty!

A “rascal’s” reputation might have been harmless, when Jonah was younger. But now, the mothers were pondering what amount Tairee Dome might have to pay, in dowry, for some other bubble colony to take him. A boy known to be unruly might not get any offers, at any marriage price… and a man without a wife-sponsor led a marginal existence.

But honestly, this last time wasn’t my fault! How am I supposed to make an improved pump without filling something with high pressure water? All right, the kitchen rice cooker was a poor choice. But it has a gauge and everything… or, it used to.

After quivering far too long, the great vine held. With a brief sense of relief, he scrambled around to the other side. There was no convenient dangler this time, but another pinyon towered fairly close. Jonah flexed his legs, prepared, and launched himself across the gap, hurtling with open arms, alighting with shock and painful clumsiness. He didn’t wait though, scurrying to the other side – where there
was
another dangle vine, well-positioned for a wide-spanning swing.

This time he couldn’t help himself while hurtling across open space, giving vent to a yell of exhilaration.

Two swings and four leaps later, he was right next to the bubble’s edge, reaching out to stroke the nearest patch of ancient, vitrified stone in a place where no one would see him break taboo. Pushing at the transparent barrier, Jonah felt deep ocean pressure shoving back. The texture felt rough-ribbed, uneven. Sliver-flakes rubbed off, dusting his hand.

“Of course, bubbles were younger then,”
the old woman said
. “More flexible.”

Jonah had to wrap a length of dangle vine around his left wrist and clutch the pinyon with his toes, in order to lean far out and bring his face right up against the bubble – it sucked heat into bottomless cold – using his right hand and arm to cup around his face and peer into the blackness outside. Adapting vision gradually revealed the stony walls of Cleopatra Crevice, the narrow-deep canyon where humanity had come to take shelter so very long ago. Fleeing the Coss invaders. Before many lifespans of grandmothers.

Several strings of globe-like habitats lay parallel along the canyon bottom, like pearls on a necklace, each of them surrounded by a froth of smaller bubbles… though fewer of the little ones than there were in olden times, and none anymore in the most useful sizes. It was said that, way back at the time of the Founding, there used to be faint illumination overhead, filtering downward from the surface and demarking night from day: light that came from the mythological god-thing that old books called the
sun,
so fierce that it could penetrate both dense, poisonous clouds and the ever-growing ocean.

But that was way back in a long-ago past, when the sea had not yet burgeoned so, filling canyons, becoming a dark and mighty deep. Now, the only gifts that fell from above were clots of detritus that men gathered to feed algae ponds. Debris that got stranger, every year.

These days, the canyon walls could only be seen by light from the bubbles themselves, by their pinyon glow within. Jonah turned slowly left to right, counting and naming those farm-enclaves he could see.
Amtor… Leininger… Chown… Kuttner… Okumo…
each one a clan with traditions and styles all their own. Each one possibly the place where Tairee tribe might sell him in a marriage pact. A mere boy and good riddance. Good at numbers and letters. A bit skilled with his hands, but notoriously absent-minded, prone to staring at nothing, and occasionally putting action to rascally thoughts.

He kept tallying:
Brakutt… Lewis… Atari… Napeer… Aldrin… what?

Jonah blinked. What was happening to Aldrin? And the bubble just beyond it. Both Aldrin and Bezo were still quivering. He could make out few details at this range, through the milky, pitted membrane. But one of the two was rippling and convulsing, the glimmer of its pinyon forest shaking back and forth as the giant boles swayed… then collapsed!

The other distant habitat seemed to be
inflating.
Or so Jonah thought at first. Rubbing his eyes and pressing even closer, as Bezo habitat grew bigger…

…or else it was rising! Jonah could not believe what he saw. Torn loose, somehow, from the ocean floor, the entire bubble was moving. Upward. And as Bezo ascended, its flattened bottom now re-shaped itself as farms and homes and lagoons tumbled together into the base of the accelerating globe. With its pinyons still mostly in place, Bezo colony continued glowing as it climbed upward.

Aghast, and yet compelled to look, Jonah watched until the glimmer that had been Bezo finally vanished in blackness, accelerating toward the poison surface of Venus.

Then, without warning or mercy, habitat Aldrin imploded.

2.

“I was born in Bezo, you know.”

Jonah turned to see Enoch leaning on his rake, staring south along the canyon wall, toward a gaping crater where that ill-fated settlement bubble used to squat. Distant glimmers of glow-lamps flickered over there as crews prowled along the Aldrin debris field, sifting for salvage. But that was a job for mechanics and senior workers. Meanwhile, the algae ponds and pinyons must be fed, so Jonah also found himself outside, in coveralls that stank and fogged from his own breath and many generations of previous wearers, helping to gather the week’s harvest of organic detritus.

Jonah responded in the same dialect Enoch had used. Click-Talk. The only way to converse, when both of you are deep underwater.

“Come on,” he urged his older friend, a recent, marriage-price immigrant to Tairee Bubble. “All of that is behind you. A male should never look back. We do as we are told.”

Enoch shrugged – broad shoulders making his stiff coveralls scrunch around the helmet, fashioned from an old foam bubble of a size no longer found in these parts. Enoch’s phlegmatic resignation was an adaptive skill that served him well, as he was married to Jonah’s cousin, Jezzy, an especially strong-willed young woman, bent on exerting authority and not above threatening her new husband with casting-out.

I can hope for someone gentle, when I’m sent to live beside a stranger in a strange dome.

Jonah resumed raking up newly fallen organic stuff – mostly ropy bits of vegetation that lay limp and pressure-crushed after their long tumble to the bottom. In recent decades, there had also been detritus of another kind.
Shells
that had holes in them for legs and heads. And skeleton fragments from slinky creatures that must have – when living – stretched as long as Jonah was tall! Much more complicated than the mud worms that kept burrowing closer to the domes, of late. More like the fabled
snakes
or
fish
that featured in tales from Old Earth.

Panalina’s dad – old Scholar Wu – kept a collection of skyfalls in the little museum by Tairee’s eastern arc, neatly labeled specimens dating back at least ten grandmother cycles, to the era when
light
and
heat
still came down along with debris from above – a claim that Jonah still deemed mystical. Perhaps just a legend, like Old Earth.

“These samples… do you see how they are getting more complicated, Jonah?”
So explained old man Wu as he traced patterns of veins in a recently gathered sea weed.
“And do you make out what’s embedded here? Bits of creatures living on or within the plant. And there! Does that resemble a bite mark? The outlines of where teeth tore into this vegetation? Could that act of devouring be what sent it tumbling down to us?”

Jonah pondered what it all might mean while raking up dross and piling it onto the sledge, still imagining the size of a jaw that could have torn such a path through tough, fibrous weed. And everything was pressure-shrunk down here!

“How can anything live up at the surface?”
He recalled asking Wu, who was said to have read every book that existed in the Cleopatra Canyon colonies, most of them two or three times.
“Did not the founders say the sky was thick with poison?”

“With carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid, yes. I have shown you how we use pinyon leaves to separate out those two substances, both of which have uses in the workshop. One we exhale –”

“And the other burns! Yet, in small amounts it smells sweet.”

“That is because the Founders, in their wisdom, put sym-bi-ants in our blood. Creatures that help us deal with pressure and gases that would kill folks who still live on enslaved Earth.”

Jonah didn’t like to envision tiny animals coursing through his body, even if they did him good. Each year, a dozen kids throughout the bubble colonies were chosen to study such useful things – biological things. A smaller number chose the field that interested Jonah, where even fewer were allowed to specialize.