The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [165]
"That's what I said."
Too far to jump. Maybe. And maybe if she gave him what was in the case, and doomed Sacramento like Bhopal, like Chernobyl, like Las Vegas ... Maybe she'd be damning herself even if he gave it back to her. And even if she wasn't, she wasn't sure she and the Kawasaki could live with that answer.
If he wanted to keep her, he had to let her make the jump, and she could save Sacramento. If he was wiling to lose her, she might die on the way over, and Sacramento might die with her, but they would die free.
Either way, Nick lost. And that was good enough for her.
"Devil take the hindmost," she said under her breath, and touched the throttle one more time.
THE MEEK
Damien Broderick
Broderick is a highly respected science-fiction writer, futurist and currently the SF editor of the popular science magazine Cosmos. He has been writing science fiction since 1964, and is probably best known for The Judas Mandala, published in 1982 but written in 1975> in which he termed the phrase "virtual reality". His thoughts about the future and the relationship between humans and technology are explored in The Spike (1997) and The Last Mortal Generation (1999).
In the following story we are still amongst the remnants of a humanity struggling to survive that might grasp at any opportunity for recovery - but at what price?
* * *
And seeing the multitudes, Jesus went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
The Gospel of St. Matthew, 5: 1-5
IN THE CHILDHOOD of the garden there is much I remember, much I regret. And much has brought me pleasure. I see in memory the great spindles floating effortless as snow-flakes, bright against the sky's iron. The rust of time obscures these memories but when I see the cold clear moon I see also the ships of light.
They came once, in an angel's song, in silver fire, and they come again in the garden, the garden of my dreams.
Now bright birds swoop in a spray of tropical hues and the river whispers secrets to the lake. You could say I am happy, though the future is gone and the earth rolls lonely as a child's lost balloon. They are gone and I am glad and I am sad. The garden is a place of peace, but the flame has guttered out.
Once I was a man in my middle years and the world was a bowl of molten, reworked slag, a lethal place where the stuff of the soil humped up into delirious fractal corals that glowed blue and crimson in the night. Now fireflies flicker, and warmth rises where it is needed. But there is no warmth in the soul, no fire, just the moonglow of age and a forsaken dream.
I was young and the earth was a sphere of maddened terror, for we had unleashed a beast so small we could not see it, only its accumulating handiwork, so hungry that it ate up everything except flesh, some privileged flesh. And I was mortally afraid, for I saw my death, and my wife's death. There would be no children to grieve us, no mourning after.
All the earth was blind to the stars, the sky a cloud of dull steel, the nano dust of death in the air. Then we knew fear and remorse, for in the murder of our world we had killed ourselves.
Our choice had been blind and at second-hand. But death accepts no excuses.
The day the world ended was Wish Jerome's birthday, and at forty-one he was guileless as a child. He possessed that blithe detachment from any sense of danger, which is the menace and the joy of innocence. Professor Aloysius Jerome - "Wish" to his wife - was a man of philosophy, a creature of gentle habits and soft words, the wonder of the Faculty. He ate toast for breakfast, dunking it in black coffee.
One eye closed, the other surveying the crumbs on her plate, his wife said: "It certainly seems there'll be a war. They'll kill us all with their damned