The World at the End of Time (58 page)

“Oh?” he said—not wanting to say yes, sure, he’d noticed her frequent abstraction, supposing it to be the shock of coming to this new, unexpected and highly confusing new life.

But then she said, “I talked to Nrina while we were on Moon Mary.”

“Oh,” he said, in quite a different tone. He was at once wide awake. “Reesa, darling,” he said, guilty, placating, “I hope you understand—I mean, I thought you were
dead.”

But her finger was over his lips, and she was laughing at him. “You’re always talking when you should be listening, Viktor dear,” she told him. “I’m not interested in what you did while I was dead. Only I’m not dead anymore, you see, and Nrina—Nrina took me aside to tell me something. She said she had cell samples from both of us. She said it didn’t matter, of course, if I couldn’t bear a child myself anymore, because I wouldn’t have to. Not as long as she had the samples from both of us. She wondered if you and I wanted—”

She stopped there. Viktor squirmed around on the bed to face her in the gloom. Then, looking him in the eye, she finished, “A baby.”

“Oh, my God,” Viktor whispered softly. He was silent for a long moment. A baby! A baby would not replace lost Shan and Yan and Tanya and little Quinn, but still . . .”
   
What did you tell Nrina?” he asked.

He was not surprised to see her cheeks were damp. “I told her we’d think about it, Vik. And I’m thinking about it very hard right now.”

When Forta performed his new dance the whole community took time off to watch.

It wasn’t Forta in the flesh, of course. Forta in the flesh was still millions of miles away, on the moon of ruddy Nergal. But Forta in the live broadcast from his own stage on Moon Mary was still wonderful, brilliant Forta, and he danced beautifully. Viktor saw with pleasure that there were traces in Forta’s dance of the Yemeni step and the dip and curtsy Viktor had taught him. But there was more to it—so much more!—that was all Forta’s own genius: grace and passion, yes, and courage and hope, too.

When it was over Forta returned to the cameras to say, breathless and happy, “I’ve dedicated this new dance, ‘The Greening of Newmanhome,’ to my son, Balit, and his bride, Kiffena, and most of all to our dear friends Viktor and Reesa and all those who join them in the real greening that is going on on Newmanhome now. All of us wish them well!”

Of course, there was a party to follow the performance, a happy one that lasted a long time. When it was over Viktor could not sleep. He got up from the bed where Reesa was peacefully smiling in her slumber and walked out into the dark streets, gazing up at the five lonely stars in the black sky.

Lonely . . .

What had
happened
to everything? Viktor scowled at the unanswering sky. He walked past the communications shack, one of the few lighted structures in the little settlement, down toward the water. Behind him he heard a door close, but he didn’t turn. He stopped a few yards from the edge of the bay. There was nothing to be seen out over Great Ocean, not even a line of horizon, only darkness. Near his feet the little waves peacefully ran up the gravel and retreated, with a sighing sound.

Behind him Balit’s voice said, “Viktor? I thought that was you. I called Forta to congratulate him on his performance, and I’ve just got his answer. He’s been so busy, Viktor! He said he’s been getting calls from all over the habitats—not just fan calls, calls from people wanting to know how they could help us here!”

Viktor turned and peered at the gangling young man. “That’s nice,” he growled.

Balit blinked at him but went on enthusiastically. “Yes, and do you know what they’ve done? Three of the other schools got together, and they’ve launched a new observatory! A really big one this time. Big mirrors and radio webs—it’ll be looking for infrared and radio and gamma radiation and all those things you’ve been talking about. And Forta says they’re even talking about moving one of the habitats, or building a new one, in orbit around Newmanhome!”

He broke off, aware that Viktor was not matching his pleasure. “Is something the matter, Viktor?” he asked worriedly.

Viktor flung his arm up toward the black sky. “Look,” he said. “It’s all gone! The whole universe, it’s simply grown old and died on me!”

Balit was silent for a moment. “That might be,” he admitted. “But really, Viktor—don’t you remember all the things you’ve told me? That’s
there.
This is
here.
Our own sun isn’t old. It’s got billions of years left—much longer than all the time life’s existed in this system.”

“I know that,” Viktor said wearily.

 
“But, Viktor—what does it matter what happened to the rest of the universe?”

“It matters that I don’t
know
what happened,” Viktor said tightly. “And I never will! Oh, it’s wonderful that Kiffena’s trying to patch up some of the old records, and people are starting to look for new answers again, and—it’s all wonderful, I admit it! But it’s all taking so
long.
And even if sometime people do find out what was going on on Nebo, and what caused our stars to do what they did—I won’t live long enough to find it out!”

“But Viktor,” Balit said lovingly, “I will.”

CHAPTER 31

What Wan-To was doing was pruning himself—as surgically as any horticulturist trying to save a winter-struck shrub.

Wan-To didn’t call it that, of course. He had no experience of horticulture. He had never seen a flower garden in the dying fall of a year, when the plants prepare themselves for the death of winter; roots are allowed to die, stalks wither, flowers turn brown and fall to the ground—everything is sacrificed to the growth of the healthy seeds that will bring the new plant to life again when the soil warms.

But what he was doing in that moribund universe was the same thing. Everything had to be allowed to die except that one little kernel of self that was the essence of Wan-To. Eyes were allowed to go blind. Thought processes were rigorously pruned. Memories were abandoned—oh, so many memories! Memories of the eternity of Wan-To’s life, the eons of joyous frolicking in his thousand giant young stars, the pride of creating his own stars, his own galaxies, his own copies. Everything had to go. All the memories of Wan-Wan-Wan and Kind and all his other copies—gone. The taste of a G-class star turning red giant, forgotten. The delights and terrors of warring against his competitors, abandoned. There was simply no room for any of these things in the little tachyon seed that would be Wan-To, speeding across the dead emptiness toward his rebirth. Even the tiny trickle of energy that was spent in hoarding them could be squandered that way no longer but had to go toward creating the tachyon pattern itself.

There were some memories that he couldn’t bring himself to throw away. He could not force himself to discard the memory of that tiny group of stars itself—could a dying man make himself forget the promise of Heaven?

So when almost everything else was gone . . . when the task of turning himself into a seed was almost complete . . . Wan-To allowed himself the luxury of retrieving all that he knew about that wonderfully preserved cluster.

Yes, yes, it contained three medium-sized stars, just the size he liked! (A fourth, unfortunately, in some disrepair because it had been zapped in that long-ago war—but no doubt more or less healed again, in all this time.) Several other stars, not as pleasing as habitats, but still so very welcome. And even solid-matter planets, yes. Even those were precious to Wan-To now, in his final poverty.

And on those planets—

A thrill of memory shook Wan-To. He had not remembered the strange thing Matter Copy Number Five had told him, but there was the datum, long neglected, now recalled at last. Yes. It was so. The planets were known to possess that strange and unhealthy phenomenon, living matter.

Some parts of them were
inhabited.

Wan-To stopped what he was doing for a moment to think that over. Could that forgotten fact be in any way important?

Then common sense took over. Of course not, he chided
 
himself. How could it? They were so tiny and helpless. Why, it was even possible that they might be quite amusing—even a kind of company for him, more or less as Kind and Sweet had been long, long ago. In any case, they could not possibly be a
threat.
With a healthy star behind him, he could easily enough annihilate them, if that proved necessary—as he had with creatures like them, so many times before.

It had never occurred to Wan-To to think about what those silly, short-lived little creatures might become . . . in some tens of thousands of years.