Swan it’s Zasha from inside the house I’ve got a thing here a chess player it seems kind of confused
black birds banner back to town land in a tree on the horizon black dots flopping lazily getting settled at end of day
birdcalls talking to each other maybe fifty birds of various kinds making a sonic sphere it’s all together that make it music the continuo is the hum of the cars trucks generators engines motors a jet so big it looks nearby its sound far behind it in the sky bird chorus at sunset surcharge and overlap civilization in the open air avian wisdom conserved in archaic parts of brain not apparently programmable a leap of the imagination
near midnight a third human arrives tall graceful Hi Zasha what’s up
introductions hail the reality of the other namasté I salute the spirit within you
I’m Swan tell me about yourself
summarize events since coming to consciousness shoved out the door into the street departure from Venus transport by humans in a private system land on Earth all began as part of an attempt to end the eclipse on Venus not immediately but as a project to be enacted safely hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul ignorant of details of plan helpers somehow actually against the larger project helpers arrested or
kidnapped forced departure mention of being put down escape
Swan looks at Zasha those fuckers are treating them like qubes
Well? Zasha says What do you call them? Qubanoids? Qubans?
Qubans is good I say they’re like Pauline remember it was a qube that drove the A-Tay-Ha right into that pebble mob killed itself for us did its duty I mean I like the inspector as much as anyone which is quite a lot despite all but I feel no need to agree on every issue this is just crazy
Jean just thinks we need to hit the reset button a little
You never get to do that! life doesn’t work that way I’m going to take this one with me
Swan
Don’t you try to stop me! standing quickly fist pulled back to strike
Zasha both hands up Stop stop I don’t disagree for once just maybe you might have it right that’s why I called you up till now I was helping to track these things down so when I heard this one got away I went out and hauled it back in it was easy they’re credulous but then I called you I called you
That’s my Z we’ll leave at dawn
Zasha shaking head You and your strays here you are doing it again fuck every time you come out here
Hey you’re the one who asked me here you wanted my help you wanted me to do this
Yeah yeah gowan wicha getoutahere
The breaking of the day addedth to my degree if any ask me how artist who drew me so must tell
Hope is a bird the birds quieter at break of day sleepier cheerful at what the light portends a breeze throws waves through the parlor of the dawn
Follow Swan to a car off to a dock where a public ferry awaits all the faces dense with life eyes looking inward to other times past or future or watching the day like you
Across the broad river in spate water surface closely scalloped by the wind creased by wakes bubbly cross chop the round bow of the ferry skidding on the tide crashes gulps the broken water slides ahead Manhattan left to right before them a cliff made by people sunrise has not yet topped it long shadows over the river slowly grumble into the slip a giant vise that grips the ferry and rocks it still
Out with the people onto a platform out between tall buildings canals below long thin boats 52 boats visible 423 people in morning shadow busy day already
What do you think? Swan asks Can you pass? Will you be all right?
41 boats visible 364 people we are the birds that stay
I’ll be all right
Good off with you then
the human kisses you on the mouth click of eyeteeth jolts you both suddenly awake to the reality of the other look in the eye maple irises left eye marked with a bottom arc of blue Do good go
P
eople hunger for time both ways. Certain things we want to come faster: the terraforming of a new world we have come to love, the arrival of universal justice in human affairs, a good project. Other things we want to go slower: our own lives, the lives of those we love. Either way it’s a hunger for time—more time to do things, to experience things.
Getting married at age 113 is the triumph of experience over hope. So many lives have already been lived. One’s hopes long since have been reduced to a focus on the things of the day. Experience has taught all it is going to teach; more experience will be a reiteration.
But never
quite
reiteration. Life is always at most a pseudoiterative. Each day has its particulars. Performing the same actions day after day, in a ritual to ward off time, to hold the moment, does not remove these particulars, but rather burnishes them. The animals, our horizontal brothers and sisters, remind us; each day lived is a kind of adventure, a success. Nothing ever repeats. Each breath is a new suck at the atmosphere, a gasp for life. A hope for experience. Feel that and go on.
Fitz Wahram sat in the meeting room of the Titan Planetary Relations council, thinking these thoughts. When it was his turn, he made his case to his colleagues.
“One would hope that after all this time the Terran nation-states would have learned from experience and made their
reconciliations with each other, such that their various ties with the off-planet settlements were consistent and coherent, and all the confusion and discord that their current actions create been dispensed with. But no. They have not managed that. It may take them decades more, or even centuries. No one can say how Earth will go. Meanwhile, we have to restore some kind of relationship with our old patron Mars. The work around Saturn began as a Martian nitrogen hunt, as you know, and that was a big part of settling the Saturn system in the first place. So the complete break from Mars, while necessary in its time, does not have to stay permanent, nor should it. We’re strong enough now that we can deal with Mars without being overwhelmed by them. Indeed, to engage them would be a sign of strength for us. So I propose that we go there and arrange to renew nitrogen exports from Titan to them, almost at the levels that existed before, but in a new arrangement that we control, in essence a fair trade. It would benefit both planets. The Titanic atmosphere still holds about twice as much nitrogen as we want it to have in the preferred state. That suggests a specific transfer quantity that we can set the conditions for. In return we can provide our part of a triangular trade: nitrogen from Titan to Mars, reconstruction and development assistance from Mars to Mercury, and heavy metals and rare earths from Mercury to Saturn. Also their help in assuring the Vulcan light imports.”
Questions and such from his interlocutors. Discussion. Then Wahram again:
“The reinforcement of ties in all three directions would be helpful in the effort to band together in the face of Earth’s recidivist imperialism, and their internal conflicts and rivalries, which threaten to spill outward and overrun all of us. We might even help to heal some of these old problems. It would be a way of following up on the reanimation, which has produced such remarkable effects already.”
“Like what?” He was challenged.
“The Arctic League has become one of the most progressive and cooperative political organizations on Earth. The middle of North America is being repopulated as a buffalo grasslands to tremendous acclaim. The Amazonian rain forest is being expanded back into its full historical basin, now tended as parkland, somewhat as it was in the pre-Columbian period. Southeast Asia, South Asia have achieved population balance and the biggest rewilding of all, which has helped their forests, water, and climate situation. These are all measurably improved situations since the reanimation occurred.”
“There hasn’t been anywhere near enough time to make those conclusions. The animal invasion is often described as a horrid botch that created a host of nightmare problems.”
“Wrongly so.”
They wrangled about the situation on Earth for a while. Finally the senior advisor from the Saturn Administrative Group reminded them that the issue on the table was the creation of a three-way trade with Mars and Mercury. Wahram pointed out that Mars had been considerably influenced and one might say infected by the qube humanoids that had infiltrated their system and only recently been ferreted out and sent into exile; the Martians were so pleased to be rid of them that they were revoking Jean Genette’s exile status and welcoming the now-celebrated inspector back home to be thanked for good service. Presumably the new dispensation there on Mars would include a more cooperative spirit. Many council members nodded at this good news, and they got down to details of quantities of nitrogen transport, schedules, and compensation. The ultimate millibar pressure of the Titanic atmosphere was debated.
Wahram waited until most of the people in the room were feeling impatient about the matter, then called for a return to the question at hand. The principle of the proposal was approved by consensus and they closed the meeting.
The last question had to do with how they would proceed to convey their agreement to their partners, and Wahram said, “I am going to Mercury to propose marriage to Swan Er Hong. I hope we will take vows at the epithalamion on Olympus Mons. So we will be able to speak to the right people on Mars at that time.”
Ah, good, they all said. Congratulations. Some looked surprised; others nodded knowingly. That will make it all easier. You’ll make something like a Saturn-Mercury standing committee.
Yes, Wahram said.
S
wan left Earth feeling considerably pleased with herself for helping the qubical person light out for the territory, and pleased with Zasha too, which mattered to her much more than she had realized it would. She took the space elevator up from Quito and lived through the performance of
Satyagraha
yet again, and this time it was the peace of the final movement that struck her most, the scale rising in its simple octave over and over, like a meditation chant to lift you right off your feet; and dancing in the ever-lightening g near the end made it a very physical feeling, a kind of euphoria as they were lifted on wings of song.
S
he returned to Mercury in a terrarium called the
Henry David
. It was a classic New Englander, with a few small clapboard villages and some pasturage breaking up a hardwood and conifer mixed forest. It was October there, and the maples had gone red, so that there were trees violently yellow, orange, red, and green, all mixed and scattered together over the inside of the cylinder, such that when you looked up at it overhead, it appeared to be a speechless speech in some kind of round color language, trembling on the edge of meaning. Swan wandered through the forest on paths, went from one cleared hilltop to another. One day she took up leaves that had fallen and arranged them across a clearing so that they went from red to orange to yellow to yellow-green to green, in a smooth progression. This colored line on the land pleased her
greatly, as did the wind that blew it away. Another day she spent hours following a black bear and her cub. In the afternoon they came to an abandoned apple orchard, where one ancient crippled tree had nevertheless produced a lot of apples, so many that some branches drooped to the ground. The bears ate a ton of them. There was an upright half barrel next to the tree that had filled with rainwater, and the cub climbed into it and took a bath, its glossy fur going black and pointing in wet tips.
B
ack on Mercury she settled into her life in Terminator. She woke out on her balcony, breakfasted in the morning cool, did her stretches to the sun, bowing uneasily to Sol Invictus. Looked over the city, registering all the familiar landmarks that had been rebuilt, and the new trees and shrubs, looking a little bigger every day, a little more in place. She had taken a postcard that Alex had had couriered to her long before, and tacked it to the wall over her kitchen sink, where Alex’s handwriting proclaimed daily:
O joy of my spirit—it is uncaged—it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,
I will have thousands of globes and all time.
It was autumn now in Terminator too, and the row of Japanese fire maples on the terrace two down from her balcony had gone an incandescent red. Dust had settled on the royal-blue roof tiles she could see below. The new weather program seemed to include more windy days than the old one had, and sometimes there were winds stronger than any she could remember. She liked that. Certain cold gusty winds would pull her loose from whatever she was doing and take her on long walks around the city. It was feeling very much bigger up front than before, the platform extended to provide more park and farm. There were new canals in the flat part of the city and the park. Bridges over canals, bike paths,
broad boulevards and esplanades. Her town. Same but different. It occurred to her that the city could be expanded forward even farther into the night; in theory, as the decades and centuries passed they could cover the tracks westward all the way around the nightside of Mercury.
She spent most of her days out in the farm, working on the pond and wetlands. The new estuary was not thriving and there were questions about salinity levels, and a little hydraulic tide they had going. Arguments, really. And she was still trying to understand why the Gibraltar apes didn’t like the caves they had provided in a little hill with a west-facing cliff face. The apes were gorgeous, and usually they didn’t have problems the way people had problems. But there they were, hanging out on the flats under the caves, unwilling to go into them. At some point she might have to climb up there to take a look herself.
W
hile she was out there watching the apes, she thought about her life. Here she was, 137 years old. Body much abused the whole time; it would not last forever, or even necessarily go on much longer. On the other hand, the treatments were doing new things even compared to a few years before, and people were still working at improving them. Mqaret was almost two hundred. So it had to be thought about.