The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [4]
Mike said, "A fresh shipment of Cuernavaca Lightning is in. Here, have a toke."
"How long ago did you do it?" Eddie said to Nick.
"Sunday afternoon. I guess we were about the first."
"Great trip, isn't it?" Eddie said. "A little somber, though. When the last hill crumbles into the sea."
"That's not what we saw," said Jane. "And you didn't see the crab? Maybe we were on different trips."
Mike said, "What was it like for you, Eddie?"
Eddie put his arms around Cynthia from behind. He said, "They put us into this little capsule, with a porthole, you know, and a lot of instruments and—"
"We heard that part," said Paula. "What did you see?"
"The end of the world," Eddie said. "When water covers everything. The sun and the moon were in the sky at the same time—"
"We didn't see the moon at all," Jane remarked. "It just wasn't there."
"It was on one side and the sun was on the other," Eddie went on. "The moon was closer than it should have been. And a funny color, almost like bronze. And the ocean creeping up. We went halfway around the world and all we saw was ocean. Except in one place, there was this chunk of land sticking up, this hill, and the guide told us it was the top of Mount Everest." He waved to Fran. "That was groovy, huh, floating in our tin boat next to the top of Mount Everest. Maybe ten feet of it sticking up. And the water rising all the time. Up, up, up. Up and over the top. Glub. No land left. I have to admit it was a little disappointing, except of course the idea of the thing. That human ingenuity can design a machine that can send people billions of years forward in time and bring them back, wow! But there was just this ocean."
"How strange," said Jane. "We saw the ocean too, but there was a beach, a kind of nasty beach, and the crab-thing walking along it, and the sun - it was all red, was the sun red when you saw it?"
"A kind of pale green," Fran said.
"Are you people talking about the end of the world?" Tom asked. He and Harriet were standing by the door taking off their coats. Mike's son must have let them in. Tom gave his coat to Ruby and said, "Man, what a spectacle!"
"So you did it, too?" Jane asked, a little hollowly.
"Two weeks ago," said Tom. "The travel agent called and said, Guess what we're offering now, the end of the goddamned world! With all the extras it didn't really cost so much. So we went right down there to the office, Saturday, I think - was it a Friday? - the day of the big riot, anyway, when they burned St Louis-"
"That was a Saturday," Cynthia said. "I remember I was coming back from the shopping center when the radio said they were using nuclears—"
"Saturday, yes," Tom said. "And we told them we were ready to go, and off they sent us."
"Did you see a beach with crabs," Stan demanded, "or was it a world full of water?"
"Neither one. It was like a big ice age. Glaciers covered everything. No oceans showing, no mountains. We flew clear around the world and it was all a huge snowball. They had floodlights on the vehicle because the sun had gone out."
"I was sure I could see the sun still hanging up there," Harriet put in. "Like a ball of cinders in the sky. But the guide said no, nobody could see it."
"How come everybody gets to visit a different kind of end of the world?" Henry asked. "You'd think there'd be only one kind of end of the world. I mean, it ends, and this is how it ends, and there can't be more than one way."
"Could it be fake?" Stan asked.
Everybody turned around and looked at him. Nick's face got very red. Fran looked so mean that Eddie let go of Cynthia and started to rub Fran's shoulders. Stan shrugged. "I'm not suggesting it is," he said defensively. "I was just wondering."
"Seemed pretty real to me," said Tom. "The sun burned out. A big ball of ice. The atmosphere, you know, frozen. The end of the goddamned world."
The telephone rang. Ruby went to answer it. Nick asked Paula about lunch on Tuesday. She said yes. "Let's meet at the motel," he said, and she grinned. Eddie was making out with Cynthia again. Henry