Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [140]
There was a slight pause before she said: “I can’t.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, but it was no less bitter for that—and she was only keeping her voice down because Lenny and Catherine were almost within earshot. Madoc suppressed his annoyance and put a protective arm around her bare shoulders.
“Time heals,” he said, “and as you say, we have plenty of it.”
“Sure,” she said, continuing in the same conspicuously weak but bitter tone. “We have a hundred years, or maybe two. We have legions of little robocops patrolling our veins and our nervous systems, ready to take care of any pain that might happen to catch us by surprise. We’re superhuman. Except that there are some pains that all the nanotech in the world can’t soothe, some sicknesses that all the antiviruses in the world can’t cure. At the end of the day, it’s what you feel in your heart that counts, not what you feel in your hands and feet—and there, we’re as frail and feeble as we ever were. What use is eternity, if you can’t have what you want?”
“What use would eternity be if we could?” Madoc countered, knowing that it was exactly what Damon would have said. “If there were nothing we needed so badly it made us sick, and nothing we wanted so avidly that it made us wretched, what would draw us through today into tomorrow . . . and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow?”
“That’s good,” said Lenny, standing below the balcony and waving up at them. “That’s really good. You sound exactly like Damon.”
“I taught him everything he knows,” Madoc said, offhandedly. “He got it all from me. He may think he doesn’t need me anymore, but I’ll always be with him. In his mind and in his heart, there’ll always be something of me. And you too, of course, Di. We mustn’t forget your contribution to the making of the man.”
Diana had already turned away, unwilling to expose the soreness of her distress to two mere children who couldn’t possibly understand. She didn’t look back to acknowledge Madoc’s sarcasm.
“One day,” said Cathy, looking up at the glider, “I’m going to get a pair of wings like that. Not in pink, though. I want to be a falcon, or a bird of paradise, or a golden oriole . . . or all three, and then some. I want to fly as high as I possibly can, and as far as I possibly can.”
Diana made a sound like a kitten in pain, but she was still determined to keep the full extent of her anguish from the boy and the girl.
“You will,” Madoc said, looking down at the silken crown of Cathy’s head and wondering whether Lenny could possibly be persuaded that an older and more passionate woman might be far more useful to his sentimental education than a girl his own age. “Once you’ve learned to fly, even the sky won’t be the limit.”
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