The Fountains of Youth - Brian Stableford [24]
We also talked about the Type-2 crusaders who wanted to start transporting mass from the outer system to Earth’s orbit as preliminary steps on the way to making use of the sun’s entire energy output, although I don’t recall either of us taking a particular interest in that topic.
“When I grow up,” Emily said, “I want to go into space.”
“Me too,” I said. “There are wonderful sights to see once you get outside the atmosphere—and virtual reproductions can’t do them justice any more than they could do justice to Wilde’s Creation.” I felt a pang of regret as I said it for the loss of Wilde’s orgiastic Creation.
“I don’t just want to see things,” Emily assured me. “I want to make things. New worlds.” She didn’t mention Wilde’s island specifically, or any of its neighbors, but I think she had a better sense than I had of their irrelevance to a world in which one could really think in terms of making new worlds.
“I don’t know about going into space permanently,” I said. “No matter how clever our suitskins and IT become, we were shaped by evolution to live at the surface of the earth. It’s the only place we’ll ever really be at home, unless and until the Type-2 brigade can build and terraform Earth 2 on the far side of the sun. I left my old hometree readily enough, but I’m not sure I could leave a world as easily. It’ll be a long time before the Exodus really picks up pace, especially now….” I cut myself off before adding that if the disaster in which we had been caught up really had killed millions, the UN’s propaganda in favor of using extraterrestrial emigration as a population safety-valve was bound to be laid to rest, at least for a while.
“Perhaps you’re right,” Emily said, politely. I can’t remember whether it was the last time she ever spoke those words to me, even with the benefit of a tentative perhaps, but it might well have been. It speaks volumes for the quality of our friendship that it never needed reinforcement by agreement. No difference in the world could have separated us after what we went through together on Genesis and the life raft.
FOURTEEN
Emily and I took all the subjects we discussed aboard the raft very seriously, but we always knew that we were filling in time, trying to make the long wait bearable. When the time came for us to sleep again we were both relieved that the necessity of talking had been temporarily relaxed.
We had been afloat for three storm-tossed days when we finally heard a human voice. There are no words to express the relief that we felt as we realized that the ordeal was over.
“Calling Genesis life raft,” the voice said, sounding almost laconic through the raft’s elementary parrot mike. “This is Steve Willowitch, Air Rescue Mombasa, temporarily reassigned to Canberra. Can you confirm two passengers, alive and uninjured.”
The raft’s sloth had told him that much. I stabbed the icon controlling the voice transmitter with indecent haste and force. “Yes!” I said. “Mortimer Gray and Emily Marchant. Alive and uninjured.”
“Good. I’ll be with you in twenty minutes, Mister Gray.”
“What the hell happened?” I demanded, fearing that he might cut the connection and leave us in suspense for twenty more minutes. “The onboard sloth is too stupid even to pick up broadcasts.” I was only then absorbing the import of what he’d said. Air Rescue Mombasa? I thought. Reassigned to Canberra?
“Sorry for the delay, Mister Gray, Miss Marchant,” said Steve Willowitch. “Very bad business—major crust fracture. Seabed came open like a zipper south of Guadalcanal, extended for more than a hundred klicks. Seismologists got no warning from tectonic movements—the primary event must have been way down in the mantle, although the plates started