Tala Bar - Gaia
Tala Bar
P.O.Box 1020, Afula 18550, Israel talabar@zahav.net.il
89,160 words.
G A I A
By Tala Bar
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Tala Bar Rubin
Smash Edition, License Notes
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List of Chapters
Prologue
The Land
The Forest
The River
The Lake
The Island
The Volcano
The Range
The Valley
Epilogue
PROLOGUE
I
“Look, Dar, I’ve got this letter. What’d you think of it?” Rima handed her sister-in-law a short, official-looking missive. As Dar was perusing it Bard, Rima’s brother and Dar’s husband, asked, “What is it?” “ A sort of invitation,” answered Dar automatically, in a reflective mode. “Invitation to what?” “Have you ever heard of that kind of shelter people were building some hundred years ago?” Asked Rima. “What kind of shelter?” Asked Bard. “What is it all about?”
“Rima has been invited to take part in a sort of experiment,” explained Dar.” I did hear about those fortified shelters some rich people built against nuclear wars, before international peace was declared and World Government was founded.” “There has not been a thought of nuclear war for two hundred years – what are you talking about?” Protested Bard. “You can never be sure, even now, and you know that,” said Dar, quietly. Rima’s face contorted as she recalled the murder of her husband a few years back, right in front of their house.
Indeed, though there were no longer separate governments to make wars against each other, the number of active criminal groups, and terrorists working for their own cause, had become even greater. The fear of those using leftover ‘unconventional’ weapons was even stronger than before. Although World Government had been the aspired goal of many people, its realization had been far from being the best government possible. Money saved from wars and war products was directed toward the advancement of industry, agriculture and medicine, providing enough food and basic commodities to the ever-growing population. This had a disastrous effect over the Earth as a whole. With the elimination of war, famine and disease to decimate humanity, it thrived and multiplied, filling the Earth anywhere and everywhere possible, destroying in its path anything that was not human. Industrial, agricultural and personal waste filled every corner, polluting soil, air and water; even the most advanced medicine could not fight the widespread chemical poisoning. The complete destruction of most natural life and vegetation on earth had totally changed its face from anything humanity had ever known.
The world had become unbearably overcrowded, stress affecting most people in their everyday life. World Government itself had become polluted, corrupted by the money pouring into it from colossal companies, whose riches controlled all life on earth. An unbridgeable split had been formed between the very rich and the very poor; desperation of ever getting anywhere beyond basic subsistence had encouraged crime as a way of life. Intercultural conflicts had replaced international wars; gang skirmishes and individual psychotic murders had increased, forcing people to turn their homes into fortresses. The political authorities tried to run the world as a welfare state on not enough resources; the academic and scientific communities, however, catered mainly for the rich, who alone were able to pay their salaries, fulfilling their whims and answering their capricious curiosity.
“So, what is this experiment you are invited to take part in?” Asked Bard. “I don’t really know,” replied his sister, folding the letter. “It’s only hinting at it, inviting me to a preliminary screening meeting.” “Do you think you’ll take it if you’re chosen?” Asked Dar with a slight concern in her voice. Rima shrugged. Since her husband’s death, she had been on her own, never having children. She was a recognized artist, a good household name though she had never become fashionable enough to make big money. To supplement her income she taught art and art history at high schools, and to adults who aspired to be able to produce a reasonable creation in painting or sculpture. These students, and her brother’s family of Dar and their two children, were all the relations she had had. Dar realized that it would not be too difficult for Rima to elect to take part in that kind of enterprise.
***
Within a few months Rima met the organizers of the enterprise, was accepted and in the end went to meet the rest of the participants in order to be taken by air to the remote, isolated place where the Shelter was situated.
It was a vast underground edifice that had never been used, built to accommodate a few hundred people who should survive in it for a long stretch of time. The idea to use it now for the purpose of experimenting in the ability of people to stay secluded for five years had sprung one day into the mind of a newly rich young man. The idea was to gather a group of a few hundred scientists, who would try to survive in relative comfort in conditions of complete isolation from the outside world. The young man – who had made his money having invented artificial wood, which he sold to rich people to panel their houses, thus making them feel as if they were living in a nineteenth century house – had sold his Shelter idea to a conglomerate of some rich companies. The sole purpose of existence of this conglomerate was to make more money with no way of spending it, and that new idea gave them an opportunity, which they did not hesitate to take. They made, however, a small change in it: to the community of scientists they added artists of various kinds, to amuse them in their hours of leisure from any research they were supposed to do.
The Shelter was built like a fortress. Its walls were fortified with various metals and other materials in order to withstand earthquakes, magnetic shocks, or a meteoric hit. These walls were also impervious to water, gas, any kind of radiation, and biological or chemical pollution. Built on a remote site on earth, the Shelter was completely isolated from the world outside, its inhabitants depending for their lives on the continuous supply of recycled air, water and food. One line of communication connected it to the outside world; its sole purpose was to supply the Conglomerate's main office with computerized information from the Shelter. No human information from the outside was supplied to the people inside it. On the other hand, two lines allowed the inhabitants some incoming technical information. An astronomical dish antenna was posted on a high hill in the vicinity, directed at the stars; and seismographic data was collected by the geologists taking part in the experiment.
It took a whole day to fly the three hundred scientists, artists, engineers and technicians to the site of the Shelter, and another day for them to go down the stairs through the wide trapdoor and into the underground building. At the bottom of the stairs, in a vast lobby, a computer monitor checked the incomers according to their names and the number allotted to them for convenience; they then received directions how to reach their accommodation, and a map to help them familiarize with their new habitation. Colored lights spread along the corridors, corresponding to colors on the map, guided the inhabitants on their way. Rima went down a flight of stairs to the lower floor of accommodation. She discovered the corridors there were divided into one-person cubicles, each containing a bed and a wardrobe; bathrooms were scattered along the corridors, each assigned for four or five persons.
Having found the cubicle bearing her name, Rima found a wide screen with keys and buttons placed on one wall; by its side was a clock, presumably connected to the central computer, which denoted not only the hours but also the date. Only when she looked at that clock, she finally realized how cut off from the outside world she was going to be, not knowing these simple, basic items to guide her through life. Tired of the crowded day she had gone through, she stretched on the bed without opening her luggage, which contained one suitcase and one large bag. The participants in the experiment were told they should find everything necessary at the Shelter, and warned not to take more than the minimum they would need for the first couple of weeks…
A loudspeaker’s voice roused her from her sleep. “A meal will be served in the dining hall in half an hour. Afterwards, the first meeting will take place, in which everyone must take part for the purpose of getting initial information and making acquaintances with other people.”
Rima rose and stretched, opened her suitcase and bag and started arranging her clothes and other articles in the closet. She found it sufficient, though not very big, and wondered if anyone had brought more than they could put in it. She then went to the bathroom, which did not contain a bath but only a shower, a couple of sinks and a couple of toilets. It was clean and in good order, and she wondered whether there were cleaning people who were in charge of it. Having washed her face, she stared at the mirror, which spread all over one wall. In front of her there was a forty year old woman with dark hair reaching to her shoulders, which she gathered on the back of her neck; the hazel eyes were tired and sparkles, their color barely discernible from the tanned skin of her face. Her mouth was pinched, and she tried to release it with a forced smile. She had joined the experiment without knowing its purpose, and at this moment she was not sure why. It seemed she had done it only to escape her hopeless life but was not sure she had chosen the right way to do it. “Ah, well,” Rima shrugged and winked toward the sad figure in the mirror, “it can’t be changed now, so you’d better make the best of it.”
She left and followed the colored lights, correlating them with the map in her hand. Some notices on her way led her back to the stairs and the upper floor, where she turned into another corridor leading to the dining hall. It was half full, some people were walking around, some gathered in small groups, others were sitting in twos or threes, or even ones, at tables designated for six to eight people. There was no food on the tables, and Rima saw along two of the walls self-service sets of food containers. Some people had already served themselves with portions of food and were going to sit at the tables. Having looked around, Rima saw no one she knew in the Hall. She went up to the containers, chose hot stew and mixed salad for her meal, and came up to one of the tables. Three people were already sitting, eating, each by her or himself, obviously not knowing each other.
“My name is Rima and I am a painter,” she announced as she sat down, breaking the silence. Her years as a teacher taught her how to get acquainting with strangers. “Sable, historian,” said the man by her side.
“Caren, biologist,” said the woman opposite her. A conversation developed among the three of them, while the fourth man kept his silence. After the meal, which took about an hour to accommodate people who were late, they were told where to put the remnants of their food for recycling, and where to put the dishes for cleaning; again, Rima wondered who was going to do that cleaning. The people were then guided to the gathering hall, which was situated next to the dining hall. While walking around the Shelter, Rima had noticed that all the walls were virgin white, and she wondered about that as well; her fingers itching to pass a brush with pigments on it along them. She got answers to these wonders at the acquaintance lecture. She and four other painters had been selected for the experiment for the purpose of painting and decorating the walls with her best artistic talent; the Conglomerate itself had supplied all the materials necessary for that purpose. Five professional managers were in charge of managing life at the Shelter, doing their job as a team, and professional engineers and skilled technicians would take care of the maintenance of the machines and recycling facilities. Cooking would be done by professional cooks, but the inhabitants themselves were to do all the cleaning jobs by rote. There would be no punishment for relinquishing such jobs, or for anyone breaking the rules fixed for life in the Shelter, but these people had been chosen very carefully, not only according to their professional skills but also according to their social ones.
II
Life in the Shelter assumed its routine, though varied, course. The Shelter was equipped with laboratories of all kinds, varied research materials and a wide library of academic and entertaining books. A central computer determined the hours of day and night, supplying the inhabitants with information of all kinds. Many terminals stood for service in the labs and study rooms, which were situated on the floor below the accommodation floor. The fourth floor contained the generators and recycling machines that preserved life in the tightly closed shelter. On the upper floor, beside the two big halls, smaller rooms were appointed for entertainment of all kinds, from music and storytelling to self-entertainment in singing and dancing. When all twenty musicians gathered for making a concert on a larger scale, it was conducted in the gathering hall. There were no professional musicians amongst the inhabitants, only good amateurs who were either scholars, painters, engineers or technicians.
In the morning following their arrival, Rima presented herself for the job, meeting her four colleagues. Their task of painting the white walls of the Shelter was to be fulfilled in any way they liked. After some discussion, three of them – a man and two women, including Rima – decided to work together; the other two, one woman and one man, preferred to work on their own. They then looked at the map, fixed the order of rooms to be painted, and set out to work.
Breaking for the next meal, Rima found they were directed to different tables, where their places were fixed; it seemed the purpose was for people to get to know others, outside the company of their colleagues at work. In time, her circle of acquaint ants grew gradually, from whom she was able to choose two or three closer friends. One of them was a physicist called Kley, whose professional interest was the activity of light going through organic systems; in his leisure time he played the recorder, which he carried with him everywhere, and on which he created some marvelous trills. He and Rima organized music evenings, when Kley sometimes accompanied Rima’s singing; she had a low, warm, slightly hoarse voice, and when she carried her song, her audience would tend to forget her plain appearance, seeming to see her as if surrounded with a magic halo.
***
One evening, a few months after their settling in the Shelter, one astronomer arrived at the computer terminal attached to the antenna dish. When he switched it on, no picture appeared on the monitor, only “snow”. He punched the keys, turned the knobs, and nothing happened. He then called a computer technician whose function was to look after that particular branch of the computer. The technician checked here and there and pronounced there was nothing wrong with its working, it simply does not receive the message from outside. “Something must have happened to the antenna,” he shrugged.
The next morning the astronomer went to see the management, and while talking to two of the managers, one of them said, “Yesterday, I heard from one of the geologists that a strong tremor had appeared on the seismograph monitor.” “Where was its center?” Asked her colleague; “was it near here?” “I don’t think so. Don’t forget we felt nothing, it only appeared on the monitor. But since then the seismograph had gone silent…” “And now we also have no astronomical reception, as if something is going on outside… What do you think?”
“Car,” she turned to the astronomer,” we’ll take it from here. But I suggest you don’t talk about it too much in the mean time, at least until we find out what is going on.” The astronomer nodded and left. He was in some measure frustrated, since half of his occupation has been taken away from him. Still, he could do more research from books and videos, analyze his former findings or other astronomers, so he was not completely out of a job. He shook his head and went to his office.
In the meantime, the team of five managers was invited to a special meeting. The only two connections they had had with the outside world for incoming information had been severed, but they were still able to send messages to the main office of the Conglomerate, which they did. They were, of course, unable to receive any answer. The severance of these connections did not in any way change the course of life in the Shelter, and only few people were affected by it. The managers, who were in charge of the safety of the inhabitants, had yet no reason to worry about it, leaving that for future events.
Chapter 1 – The Land
I
By the time Dar came to herself, she could not tell how many days and nights she had been walking through the ruined city. Her legs were numb, heavy as the frozen lava rocks strewn around; her body felt worn and frayed like her clothes, and her mind was paralyzed, the moment of catastrophe etched on it as by fire.
When night fell on the devastated city, the flames had burned themselves out at last, and the new volcano at the center of the former lake was quenched as suddenly as it had erupted, darkness wrapped around her as a heavy blanket. Not one beacon was left to light the earth, and only a few remote stars blinked in the remote sky. Dar fell where she was, lay in a fetal position on the hard, sharp-edged debris, not feeling the lumps bruising her body. She might have been dead, to herself as she was to the world. But she was not dead. In her troubled sleep, which was the first real one in many days, her brain recreated the events, which had led her to that state, as live as when they had happened.
***
It was morning, and she had been working, as usual, at the Medic Center. The long years she had served as a family doctor had well prepared her, both to the sight in front of her, and to the feeling of deep sympathy and sense of outrage it had created in her heart and mind. She was examining a man of fifty, who stood and walked as if he were seventy. Dar glanced at the computer monitor, looking up his name again.
Moni was a new patient, just moved to the City from another part of the country. Actually, he had told her, he was relieved from his job on an early pension, because of the state of his health. As she examined him with the help of computer simulation, she found his bones frail, his breathing hard and rough, his innards blackened into what looked like a lump of coal. Even before getting all the particulars, she knew the overall cause of his condition. All the wonderful advancement of the most up to date medicine available to anyone could not fight the heavy pollution saturated in the air he inhaled, in the water he drank, in the food he ate, and even in the very soil he trod on. The smog and haze, which permanently filled the space between earth and sky, blocked the full force of sun rays from reaching human bodies, to enrich them with the necessary vitamins. Any breeze blowing was never refreshing, because it carried with it tiny particles of chemicals devastating healthy organs. Is that the fate waiting for her own sons as they were growing up? The thought flitted in her mind, making her shudder.
Dar’s two sons were not doing so badly – at least, for the time being. Shel was twenty, tall like his mother and darkly handsome like his father. On the point of choosing a profession, he was considering following in his aunt’s footsteps, taking up art in the way his father had never dared; Bard had preferred the security of being an engineer, to better support the family he had always wanted. Her other son, Gin, still at school at the age of fifteen, was a very serious emerging scientist, looking at the world through the spectacles of a researcher and a philosopher. At that moment, Dar thought that none of them had the practical mind to find a solution for the problem in front of her – how to help a man with an incurable physical condition.
Searching frantically through the computer files, which she had used as aid to diagnosis and prognosis, Dar was momentarily oblivious to what was happening around her. It was Moni, his frayed nerves too sensitive to ignore the alarming signs, who had drawn her attention to the first signs of what was to come. "Did you feel that, Doctor?" He asked, hesitatingly. He needed her reassurance even for what he had felt himself.
"What?" She asked, lifting her eyes from the monitor. Then she received a violent jolt, and nothing had ever been the same again. In a moment, the ceiling caved in on them, crushing the man in front of her. Moni no longer needed a cure, the cynical thought passed through her mind. She had never been cynical, the shock must have affected her in this strange way. A heavy beam was hanging threateningly over her head, and an instinct moved her to crouch under the computer stand. The clinic’s fortified window had shattered, and through the large hole that had been formed she could see the most awful confusion she had ever witnessed in her life. Flames and thick smoke, debris flying through the air, jets of steaming water, all accompanied by a mixture of screams, whistles and thundering booms she could not tell where they were coming from.
‘I must get out of here, before the building collapses on top of me,’ she thought instinctively, gingerly moving out of her relative safety to peer out of the window. "A cool customer", Bard had always called her, half mocking half envying. This time, however, her mind had the chilly quality of a stone. Insensible of the blood oozing out of the scratches covering her face and body from fragments of the fortified, permeable glass, Dar stood for a long while, dumbly watching, as the earth heaved and rocked, dancing the jig of death.
The window had looked over the lake, on whose shore the City had been built. The sight of that stretch of water had always drawn her eyes whenever she had a chance to look. She used to be fascinated by the changes the lake had assumed during the different hours of the day, and the different types of weather materializing above it. Its utter blueness at high noon on clear days; the rays of the inclining sun sparkling off the ripple and blinding her eyes of an evening; its deep gray-green shade under heavy clouds… You could never guess how polluted that water was from its appearance – it’s been a couple of centuries since it was taken from the lake for drinking...
The earth shivered under Dar’s feet. That varied, always beautiful sight would never be seen again, she knew, though what she saw now was no less fascinating. For a moment it looked as if a storm was forming over the lake. Frothy waves rolled toward the shore, flooding the little boats in the marina. These were rocking violently, some thrown off their anchors like toys. As Dar was looking, the water suddenly gushed, a column of fire erupted from its center, and a high coned hill burst out. The stormy water rose to new heights, poured over the heaving City that used to lie on the shore, flooding and half-covering the heaps of rubble, turning everything into a putrid bog.
She had seen earthquakes on the media, although she had never been involved in one; the City she had been born in and had never left to go anywhere was situated far from any known tremor center. But this was no passing tremor – it was total destruction. Tall buildings she had known from childhood had been uprooted from their foundations, smashed into masses of shattered glass, jumbles of iron bars and heaps of broken slabs of concert; these intermixed with broken roads and fallen pillars, which pierced the sky like looming monuments. Cavities opened in the ground where facilities for transport, energy and communication used to be; water mixed with debris burst out of them to flood the mess, turn it into an unbelievable mass of gooey junk. It was not enough, though, to quench the flares of fire lit by streams of gas jetting out of the earth, filling the scene with eerie, ever moving lights... The Earth itself, it seemed, had finally acted against the destructive deeds of humanity.
It was obvious there was no room left for traffic to move through, if any means of transport had been left viable. There was no chance of fire vehicles, ambulances, or any other help arriving. Watching, dumb, from her vantage point of the third floor, Dar saw no creature alive who would need help, anyway. All she could see of human beings were different parts of crushed, smashed, dissected, distorted body parts, barely recognizable, strewn among the debris, chunks of masonry, glass, plastic, wood and metal. Trying to do anything to help was out of the question. Dar closed her eyes and immediately sounds reached her ears – heavy thuds, sharp explosions, and screaming... screaming…
A violent tremor shook the floor underneath her feet. The building rocked, Dar was hit on the head and lost consciousness. When she opened her eyes again, it was evening. Through the haze in her mind she looked out. It was unbelievable. She was no longer on the third floor, looking at her ruined city from above. She was lying now on the same ground level as the rest of it. Shaking, she rose to her feet. It was true. Either the earth had heaved up, or the building had crashed down. All she needed now to get out was step out of the hole that had been the fortified window – into what? What should she do? She had no idea why and how she was still alive, among the universal death that had surrounded her. Why couldn’t she just lie down where she was and die, like the rest of the City dwellers?
At that moment she knew she could never do it. If she was alive, she must stay alive, do all she could to get herself, at least, out of this mess, if she could not get out anyone else. She closed her eyes, concentrating. Something moved around her, a breath of hot air; a heavy wind twirled and swept through her body, wrapping and lifting her up in the air, out and high above the earth. She did not dare open her eyes. Dar had never flown in her life, in any sort of craft; now she was flying without a craft, completely bare in the air that surrounded her, without any protection. From all sides she was hit by things that flew all round her through the air, on the wings of the same blast that had carried her. Heavy chunks of wasted material, mixed with a shamble of body parts, were played about by the willful wind, tearing at Dar’s body and her clothes. She was helpless, impotent, in a way she had never felt in her life. The flight lasted for an immeasurable time, until the wind was gradually restrained, slowed down, and she was dropped to earth. It was a long way away from the center of the City where Dar had worked. For a long time she lay where she fell, gasping for breath, her mind numb.
Heavy silence prevailed everywhere. The wind had died down, and the air filled with an acrid smell. It burned her nostrils, scalded her lungs, and stung every part of bare skin under her torn clothes. She felt the world had crashed on top of her. Every thing she had known and believed in was gone – even her rational mind was unable to work now, at the thought of the way she was saved.
After a long while she opened her eyes and tried to tell what was the place the wind had taken her to. She thought she knew it by the remains of buildings she had recognized. It was situated halfway between the center of the City and its suburbs. Perhaps, that was where she should go, where there were more empty spaces, possibly less heaps of ruins and debris that were no longer good for anything.
All of a sudden, she thought of her family. Bard, Shel and Gin – what had happened to them? The thought was gone as soon as it had arrived – what was the point of thinking about them? She might never know what they had been through, but she knew she would never see them again. There was nothing she could do for them now… Numbness gripped her heart. If there was any meaning to her life, seeing the senseless way she had been saved, she did not know where it lay. All she could do was to go on with the process of surviving, leave thinking, planning, mourning, to a later time.
She rose, at last, from where she was lying among the debris. The earth was still rocking, and she needed to be careful of her footfall. It seemed to be high noon -
she must have flown on the wind throughout the night and morning. No sunray had penetrated the thick layer of smoke, dust and fog covering the earth, but it felt very hot. A pile of ruins had attracted her eye and she climbed on top of it, both to try and get some breath of air, and to take a better look at the area around her. Before her eyes stretched a panorama of moonscape of a different kind. It was as lifeless as the moon, but full of manmade stuff one could never find on Earth’s satellite.
“Nothing is left alive,” Dar murmured, trying to grasp the idea. After a long while, she finally climbed down the pile and walked away. The hidden sun must have inclined in the west, coloring the sky behind the screen of haze that had made up the dense atmosphere over the City. Dusk was delayed, though. The long summer evening lingered through the lights of bright flames burning around the weird landscape. An eerie glow caused by a mixture of fires' smoke and water steam diffused in the air, turning it into a sight of magical nightmare.
The lighted night was heavy with the stench rising from the dead bodies strewn everywhere, instilling in Dar a strong urge for hurrying on her way. She broke into an attempt at running, jumped and skipped over obstacles; she stumbled, fell and rose again, resumed running through that unbelievably huge shambled mound that seemed to have fallen from out of space, where once used to stand the City of her birth and life. At one point she fell, staying half lying half sitting among the ruins, her eyes closing for a short spell of a disturbed sleep. She woke before dawn to continue on her flight, going on in this way for untold days and nights, as the City had stretched over many miles round.
All this time Dar had nothing to eat or drink. She walked and ran and stumbled, fell and rose again; she spent a short time, in the darkest of night, in fitful sleep, only to rise and continue on her way toward the suburbs. The repeated sameness of sight everywhere made her cease noticing it. She kept on walking, climbing up and down the heaps of fallen masonry, tripping and falling and rising, for the alternative was to lie down and die. Some blind instinct directed her, drove her away from that possibility, toward some unknown goal, unsought of target, pulled her toward a kind of freedom she had never known before. She was completely on her own; no signs of life appeared anywhere to make a change in her course of action. It seemed that nobody had survived the catastrophe except herself. With that feeling of utter lonesomeness, she finally reached the end of her physical and mental strength. In one spot she fell as she stood, falling into the abyss of the repeated dream which drew her back, again and again, into the heart of the catastrophe.
***
At last, the dream had dissolved, fading into a blessed darkness, which filled Dar’s mind and let her forget for a while. She woke just before dawn. It was raining, but she did not move at first. Stiff and hurt all over, she was happy to rest her bruised body a little while longer. Lying amongst the rubble, she noticed how the unevenness of the ground had caused the water to flow away from her. The air was summery, warm and stuffy, she was in no danger of catching a chill. As far as she could see, there was no shelter around, anyway, but she was not even sure she wanted one. As a physician, it was difficult for Dar to decide whether the rain was good or bad for her; but the water pouring down on her face stirred something in her mind. It cleared it, made it start working again. For the first time since the onset of the catastrophe she could understand its meaning. This upheaval, she thought, was not only natural – it was inevitable. As she looked back at what she had learned about the world in her forty-two years of life, she realized people should have seen it coming.
The planet itself, Dar reflected, had awakened, raging against the evil done to it and its creatures by Man; it was completing the destruction humanity had started, perhaps in order to give Life another chance.
There had been signs, she remembered. Weeks, even months before the local upheaval she had gone through – and now she was not sure how local it actually was – the media had been announcing strange events all round the globe. Earth tremors were felt in places where they had never occurred before; foul gasses and brands of fire flared out of the ground where no volcanoes had ever existed in human memory. Then, in one week, in different locations all over the planet, violent tremors shook the earth; mountain tops toppled right into large rivers and streams flowing below, causing a change in their courses, flooding cities and wide stretches of farming land. Dar recalled how these events had been gradually getting closer together and closer home to people, who had thought them too far away to touch them. She herself had felt quite safe in the Medic Center of her own City, never thinking disaster would reach her own life. It did happen, though, and nothing humans would do could prevent it. The sparks had turned into outbursts of burning lava, the tremors into massive quakes; lake bottoms rose to create new land, chasms opened in the midst of cities to swallow them up on their buildings and inhabitants. Finally, the ultimate cataclysm occurred. Dar was certain now that what had happened in her city was the fate of every place and person anywhere else on earth. That deep silence all round her was the silence of death, nothing was left anywhere, except vast piles of shapeless wreckage, an unrecognizable mixture of mineral, vegetable and animal material with its horrid stench filling the smoking air...
The rain had stopped. With great difficulty, Dar rose from her own particular heap of wreckage, drenched in rainwater. For the first time in many days, she was surprised to feel, besides the cramps in her back and legs, also cramps in her stomach. Suddenly, she was hungry.
For the first time in many days she looked around her purposefully, instead of avoiding the unbearable sight. Ruinous remains were spread everywhere like open wounds on a diseased body, before it finally crumbles to dust allowing new grass and weeds to cover it up. What could she find to eat? What water could she drink with no fear of it being contaminated? There had not been any natural, no polluted water on earth for centuries! She laughed silently to herself, then at herself. Was she afraid of getting sick? Was she afraid of dying? She was left all on her own in a world of ruins – what was she going to live for? Thoughtlessly, she cupped her palms and scooped some of the water collected in a small pool among the debris, disregarding its inevitable turbid state.
A sudden sound burst out in the quiet. A hoarse croak, coming from above. Dar was unused to the sound of bird calling, and this was not what traditionally counted for birds’ chirping. She looked up. A few black figures were hovering above, emitting that kind of unpleasant sound. They flew around, croak in their rasp voices, then they landed. Dar looked on curiously. The dark, large birds seemed to have found something to eat among the rubble. Her rumpling stomach echoed their call. Her eyes fell on what they were picking, and she saw they were parts of some dead bodies, half-buried in the masonry. These shapeless remains seemed partially burned, difficult to tell whether they were human or animal. But, she thought, if they were good enough for these birds, they were good enough for her also, at her state of starvation. Mechanically, Dar tore a slice of the burned flesh and put it in her mouth. It was hard to chew, and she took more water to help it go down, working her will against her upturn stomach. She managed to swallow some of it, softening the sharp edge of hunger.
Her instinct for survival drove her again, as it had driven her out of the ruined city, being too strong for any thoughts that might have crossed her mind. It helped her continue on her way toward some goal that seemed too vague to bother thinking about. It pushed her continually toward the outskirts of the city, in the direction that would lead her to a more countrified area. Only after she had gone some way, her thought went back to the crows that had led her to the edible meat. Where had they come from? She could not tell, and soon dismissed them from her mind.
The day was getting hot. Heavy haze filled the space between earth and sky, the stale air sustaining the stench in the atmosphere. Hazy weather had been a permanent condition on earth for generations; Dar, unused to life outside air-conditioned buildings or vehicles, began feeling the punishment of real weather. The remnants of her synthetic garments stuck to her skin, which sweated underneath, adding sting to the painful bruises she had acquired in her wanderings. The holes and tears in her clothing left areas of her body exposed to the air, but the air itself seemed to cause her itching and a sense of prickling. Her fair skin had poor resistance against the heat of the day, even with the sunrays diffused in the haze.
She walked on for untold days. Her tall, slim body turned skinny thin, her well-shaped face became gaunt and dark with mindless suffering. Her fair skin first turned red, then reddish brown; her short-cut blond hair, usually tightly arranged around her head, grew long and disheveled. Her clothes, having been first torn in her strange flight on the wind, had turned into tatters. Her shoes had worn out on the sharp edges of the wrecks, the skin of her bare soles broke and bled, then, gradually, healed and thickened. She had become physically hardy, mentally vacuous, living off of what was left of the land. She had become an adept in spying among the debris, sometimes a spray of nuts fallen from a half-burning bush, or a bird's egg well cooked in the cinders. These could supplant the rapidly rotting flesh, which had finally begun to repel her in its stench, even in her state of mindlessness.
It took Dar untold days to arrive at a neighborhood, which seemed very different from the City center. This area looked richer and more leisurely, and she was sure she had never visited it before. The fallen buildings had not been very tall, but large, villa-like houses that had obviously stood separated from each other. Each house had a tiny patch of land around it, used as a garden with one or two shrubs striving to grow in spite of the foul air and water. In her fuzzy mind, Dar recalled hearing that some plants had mutated in order to survive the polluted conditions on earth. At this moment, though, as all rainwater had dried out, she was more interested in collecting some likely looking leafy material to quench her advancing thirst, to sooth her burning throat.
It was obvious that the riches of people living in this neighborhood did not help them escape the general catastrophe that had overcome Earth. Not one whole house had been left standing, black soot and eerie silence covered the ruins. Only a few somber cypress trees, covered with a thick layer of dark dust, stood erect with slightly bent tops, as if in mourning, over the unburied dead.
While Dar was roaming around the area, the haze darkened as black clouds gathered in the sky. Blood-red hue, like spilt blood, began penetrating through the haze, spreading among the clouds as they announced the setting of the sun. A sense of unsettled feeling overcame Dar and, for the first time during her wanderings, she looked around for shelter. Finding a half-standing wall, she sat down underneath it, ignoring the bodies rotting beneath their fallen home.
Darkness fell, followed by a gripping chill. The heavy heat that had prevailed all these days had dropped at last, and rain started falling again. It began with large, separate drops, gradually turning into a torrent. Dar, shrunken under her skimpy shelter, sat with her knees pulled up to her chin, shivering. She could not tell when she had fallen asleep, but this time she had no dreams to trouble her.
II
“Please, don't fight!" Nim said half to herself, half to the arguing adults. She knew where her mother’s arguing with the man she was living with could inevitably lead. "Shut up, Nim,” Orn said as an aside to her daughter, not quite harshly. In her mind, Nim was, though fifteen and two months, still too young to understand.
Nim, indeed, did not understand what her mother and her mate of two or three years were arguing about; but she knew from long experience that such continuous arguments, once started to be a part of everyday life, were the beginning of the end of the relationship. Her heart filled with resentment, which was a mixture of anger and sadness, and she came out of the house and sat on the stairs leading up to it.
Being a passionate girl, the disturbed lifestyle Nim had been exposed to since early childhood, had opened for her enough scope for both loving and hating. She had always been happy when making new acquaint ants, but this happiness was inevitably followed by deep sadness at having to part from them, eventually. Because her mother, Orn – a pretty, vivacious woman – was both too independent and too needy of the variety of life, to maintain a stable relationship or be satisfied with a permanent place of employment. Orn loved the company of men, the thought of living alone with her daughter had never crossed her mind; but more than anything else she disliked constancy. Consequently, she wandered from one man to the other, not always bothering to get married or troubling with a divorce if she had.
It was never clear in Nim's own mind whether Orn had been married to her father or not. It did not matter much, because she hardly remembered him, being barely two years old when her mother had moved on to another man. Orn was always able to support herself by doing various secretarial jobs, at which she was highly skilled; she had never wanted to fall a burden on society, but was not averse to finding a man of means who could release her from any economical obligations. Jimo, her latest mate, had been that kind of man.
"What'd' you think of Jimo," Orn asked Nim when they had been living in his house for a month. Nim did not particularly care for the man, any more than for any other man they had been living with. She did not, however, actively dislike him. He was of early middle age, big and handsome in a rather rough way; he was kind to Nim, exercising on her a sort of manly charm which she did not really understand, being rather young for her age. Nim liked Jimo’s large, lovely house, situated in a splendid neighborhood; she found out that it was Jimo who had built those houses, for other well-off people like himself. But the best thing about him for Nim was his son Col. When Orn and Nim came to live with Jimo, Col was a little boy of six; Nim, a girl of twelve and on the verge of puberty, fell immediately in love with him.
"He’s so cute," she told her mother. "Without a mother of his own,” she added, pityingly, “he deserves a better father." Orn laughed that free, loud laughter which Nim did not always understand, and sometimes resented – especially when she herself was being quite serious. Col had never had a proper mother. His own had died when he was born, and his father had never thought of marrying another, too busy in his moneymaking business. There had been girl friends, but none had stayed more than a few months, because Jimo's temper had not allowed anyone to interfere with his life. He actually preferred putting Col in day care, looking after him in a casual way at night, treating him on the whole in the same remote way he regarded Nim when she came to live with him and Col.
Nim took over looking after Col as soon as she and her mother had settled down in Jimo's house. He was a sad little boy, small for his age, with dark curls and large dark eyes. She fell in love with his sadness, and then with his laughter, after she had taught him to laugh and be happy in her company. She took him to school in the morning and home in the afternoon; she spent most of the evenings with him until it was time for him to go to bed, when she put him to bed and told him bedside stories. Her days were filled with him, and so was her heart, and for the first time in her life she had stopped worrying about her mother's doings, and how they had affected her. She had now someone else to take care of, who was separate from them both.
Two and a half years of unconscious bliss had passed on Nim, when she noticed that Orn had grown tired of Jimo as she had done of all the men before him. The girl fell into a deep gloom, trying to hide her feelings from Col. She did not want to sadden the boy before anything had actually happened; but, having become so close together, the boy could not ignore his good friend's sadness.
"What is it, Nim? Have I done something I shouldn't?" Straightaway and characteristically, he was putting the blame on his own head. The girl immediately pulled him to herself, hugging and kissing him, telling him he was the best boy in the world; the blame, as usual, was put on the heads of the adults, who could not understand the feelings of children. But she would not tell him what was really going on. She was thinking, as a matter of fact, that being the man he was, and the way he had treated his son, Jimo just might let Col go with Nim and Orn. She never had any doubt that Orn would not mind taking Col with them. She had been good enough in looking after Nim, and Nim did not think another child would be too much of a burden. She had not gone, though, as far as talking to her mother about all that.
Jimo, surprisingly and unlike the other men before him, was not accustomed to let go of something he liked and thought he had had as his. He was happy to have Orn around the house and in his bed, and had got used to Nim looking after Col; it had relieved him of that responsibility with no effort on his part. He was not such an easy man to let them go so easily. The fights between him and Orn became much more serious than Nim had ever seen before, and it was very clear to Nim that if her mother left Jimo, there was no way he would let Col come with them. She felt a disaster pending, and there was nothing she could do to prevent it.
On the morning of the catastrophe, Orn told Jimo that she and Nim would be leaving as soon as they finished packing their things, and after she had made a final check of her car. Col, by now nine years old and in no need for Nim to take him to school, had already left the house. Nim, in revolted, left the house as was her way when upset, to sit on the stairs leading to the porch in front of it, wait for things to quieter down. She had refused to make a move to pack her things, was not sure and did not care if her mother was doing anything about it. The adult couple then came out of the house to look for her, still shouting at each other. They were standing at the door when the earth shook and the house fell on their heads...
It was ironic that the catastrophe had saved Nim from the heartrending separation from Col. Nim, however was still too innocent to understand the irony of the situation...
III
The sound of crows called Dar in her sleep. She opened her eyes and found herself drenched. A drop of water hit her face, and when she instinctively licked it, it was fresh and sweet like nothing she had ever tasted before. Amazed, Dar opened her eyes on a transformed world.
The rain, so different from her earlier experience, had driven the haze away, had cleaned and cleared the air in a way she had not known in her life. The haze, such a constant factor of everyday life before the catastrophe, was gone, and the sun shone from a clear sky. Dar could not remember ever having seen such blue sky, such cheerful yellow sunrays; she could not remember when the air had not been so hazy it obscured these natural phenomena. She rose and stretched her cramped limbs. For the first time since the upheaval she was both feeling her aching body and happy to have some feeling at all. She was happy to notice that the pain in her over-beaten body was becoming dull, barely discernible.
A flicker of light blinded her eyes for a moment, and Dar looked at the drops collected in a cranny on the leaning wall; they reflected the sunrays in myriad diamond-like colors. She stretched a lean, dirty hand to catch the clear drops; she licked the water thirstily off her palm, finding it not only refreshing but also as pure and sweet as honey. She had never drunk water that had not come from a bottle or a container.
She stepped away from her provisional shelter, looking around her in amazement. Was the planet recovering its clean atmosphere after centuries of accumulated pollution? She did not know the answer to that. Better enjoy the moment – that was what she had learned in her long, lonely, purposeless wanderings.
It seemed the purification of the world had also clarified Dar's mind. Something of her old curious nature had reawakened, and for the first time in many days she looked around, trying to find out some facts about the place she had landed at. She knew she had never been there before, never having any rich acquaintances to have a reason to come there. Surveying her surroundings, a slight movement was caught in the corner of her eye. She turned quickly. Could anything have survived that devastation? She had hoped so much for it at the beginning of her wanderings, wanting so much to have someone, anyone, as a companion in survival – perhaps someone she would be able to help in trouble, as had been her calling in life... She had given up that hope some time ago, had lost all expectations for a companion to her travail.
The crows called again. Dar looked up and saw the birds circling in one particular place. Casually, she counted them – seven, hovering leisurely, not moving away. As if marking the place for her. She held her breath. She did not fear danger as much as disappointment. She had been on her own now more than she had ever thought possible, having been used all her life to be surrounded by family, by patients, by crowds of unknown people… At last, she moved in the direction of the crows. As the birds lifted and vanished in the air, she saw there was somebody sitting below the point of their hovering. It was a teen-age girl, and she was sitting on what seemed to have been a step, leading up to the porch of what used to be a house. Its demolition had been complete, it was now nothing but a shapeless heap of rubbish. Something more frightening appeared before Dar’s eyes. Two bodies flanked the girl on both sides. They looked so dry the flies had long lost interest in them. The girl’s head was lying on her knees, drawn close to her body and encircled by her arms. It was those arms that had particularly attracted Dar’s attention, her heart filling with heart-rending compassion. They were almost as emaciated as the girl’s two gruesome companions.
She must have heard Dar's steps as the woman approached, for she raised her head and opened eyes so dimmed there was no telling their color. "They are dead," she murmured, a questioning complaint in her voice. "Yes," Dar agreed, "and they should be buried. Come, I'll help you," she said with a strange reasoning; the idea of burying all the million bodies she had encountered on her travels had not crossed her mind for a moment. Meeting a live human being seemed to have awakened a forgotten need for ritual.
A look of astonishment crept into the girl's eyes, making them more alive. She rose, only to totter and fall into Dar's arms. "You've been sitting here too long," the physician pronounced; "here, have some water." With cupped hands she scooped the precious liquid from a cavity in a fallen wall, virtually forcing the girl to lick it. Then she found a couple of nuts in one of her pockets, cracked them between her teeth and put the crumbs in the girl's mouth. Instinctively, the girl munched at them weakly, managing to swallow some of the crumbs. She then looked at her savior, with what seemed to Dar like the look of a thankful dog.