I was scared. If anyone else in the world had told me what Henry had just told me, I would have laughed. But this was Henry spouting this doomsday scenario. As far as I knew, or anyone knew, he had never been wrong about anything having to do with the behavior of nature.
I said, “You really believe this?”
“Yes.”
“Henry, you’re talking about the end of the world.”
“No,” he said. “I’m talking about an interruption of civilization.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The end of the world is irreversible. A civilization in ruins is nothing new. Man would put Humpty Dumpty together again.”
I said, “How?”
“That’s exactly what I want to talk to you about,” Henry said.
~ * ~
2
HENRY SUGGESTED A SAIL TO
a reef in his sloop. This took about an hour, so it was midafternoon by the time we arrived at the reef. The gleaming, gadgety boat was yar, to say the least. Henry was an expert sailor, and I knew enough about it to help with the sails and avoid being knocked on the head by the boom. The sloop, being Henry’s boat, had no name. After dropping anchor we ate the very light, late lunch he produced from a picnic cooler. I chewed and swallowed to be polite. Apparently Henry couldn’t have a conversation without offering a eucharist, but this meant that we had to wait half an hour before entering the water. We passed the time by talking about the Yankees. Not surprisingly, he was a walking encyclopedia of baseball statistics.
At last I went over the side into the blue-green water. Snorkeling had its usual otherworldly effect—the magnified images seen through the mask, the blood-temperature water, the creatures of the reef swimming around as if attending an evolutionary reunion, the sense of return to a lost existence, the escape from time. Would this reef in the Grenadines survive Henry’s apocalypse? Of course it wouldn’t. It would be obliterated like everything else. I commanded myself to stop thinking about that.
Quite soon I was doing less thinking than the fishes. The current carried me a long way. Much later, another part of my brain woke me to the realization that I was not a creature of the reef but a mammal that required air and fresh water. I turned over and pushed off my mask. The sun was sinking. I looked at my watch. It was almost five o’clock, and there was nothing in sight except water and the sun. No sloop, no Henry. I was alone in one of the most remote places in the world. I felt the stab of panic. Treading water, I made a 360-degree examination of the horizon—or thought I did. There were no points of reference. I knew that dozens of small islands lay all around me, but none was visible. I had no idea in which direction to swim. I was thirsty. My back stung and I realized that I had gotten a sunburn. After resisting the temptation for what seemed a long time, I looked at my watch again. Four minutes had passed. Panic revived. How would I attract the attention of a boat? Even if one came by at this time of day—a most unlikely prospect—the chances that it would see me lying flat on my back in the water were very slight. It would be dark in a couple of hours. What then? I kept looking at my watch. It was waterproof, so at least I’d know what time it was when everything stopped except the Rolex.
At 5:16 p.m., the tip of a sail appeared. In the moments that followed, the mainsail and jib of Henry’s sloop rose out of the curve of the earth. I treaded water and waved. After a very long moment, Henry saw me and waved back. He swept by me, and then turned into the wind, and the boat luffed and came to a stop within ten feet of me. I swam two strokes and climbed aboard.
I wasn’t feeling good about myself. I had committed a serious breach of etiquette, letting myself drift away on the current. Henry uttered no reproach.
As the sails filled with wind, I toweled off and flinched. Wordlessly, Henry rummaged in a bag and sprayed something from an aerosol can onto my back. We sailed home against the wind, which was brisk, Henry tacking the sloop expertly.
That evening we had another splendid dinner, this time with a bottle of Bâtard-Montrachet, chilled to what I was sure must be precisely ten degrees Celsius. Henry drank about an ounce of this nectar. I consumed the rest. He asked how my sunburn was. I told him it was fine. He looked unconvinced.
“You shouldn’t take this lightly,” he said. “There’s a thermometer in your bathroom and a bottle of aspirin. Take some aspirin. It relieves inflammation.”
I thanked him for everything and pushed back my chair.
Henry said, “Wait. I’m wondering if you feel up to staying another day.”
As a matter of reflex I started to reply that I had a book to write, things to do, appointments in the big city.
Before I could speak, he said, “It’s important. We should finish our discussion.”
I said, “OK, if I can fly back to New York tomorrow evening.”
“Fine,” Henry said.
Before going to bed I made the mistake of taking off my clothes in front of a mirror and looking over my shoulder at myself. How right Henry was. From nape to heels I was bright vermilion except for the white buttocks. I stuck the thermometer in my mouth. As Henry had predicted, I had a fever. I did not sleep well. In the morning I was sore, sick, feverish, dizzy, barely able to function. I had a medium case of the shakes. I crept to the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee. When I tried to lift the cup to my lips, I dropped it. Although it was only five thirty, Henry was up. He heard the clatter of his fine china on the marble floor and came to see what had happened. I was barefoot, surrounded by the shards of the broken cup. Henry told me not to move. I obeyed, and without protest let him clean up the mess. The aroma of the spilled coffee turned my stomach. Silent and scrupulously neutral, Henry advised me again to drink a lot of water. Dehydration was the enemy. I went back to my room and lay down on the bed. I was shivering worse than before. Quite soon, though, I fell asleep.
When I woke around noon, my stomach was more settled and my embarrassment less disabling. I dosed myself with Solarcaine, took more aspirin, and got dressed.
I found Henry in the kitchen. He was standing at the counter, eating a lunch of crackers and cheese and a truly beautiful pear.
“Ah,” he said. “You look better. How do you feel?”
“Not so bad.”
Henry said, “Do you still want to fly back to New York tonight?”
“If that’s possible.”
“It’s perfectly possible.”
For Henry, everything was perfectly possible and instantaneously available. He was studying me, with something resembling a gleam in his eyes.
I said, “Then I’d like to go. I’m not much use to anybody at the moment.”
Henry said, “Fine. You should see a doctor. I’ll call the pilot. If you don’t mind, I’ll ride back with you.”
I said, “Lovely.”
In his light, pleasant voice, Henry began talking—lecturing, really—as soon as we were aloft.
“The Event,” as he called the hyperquake to come, was a matter of planetary mechanics, part of Earth’s design. It could be understood as the planet’s way of renewing itself. Probably versions of the Event had happened before, maybe many times. There had been at least six mass extinctions in the past. Two hundred-fifty million years ago, ninety percent of species were destroyed by a cataclysmic event. Later, the dinosaurs and about half of all other species then extant were extinguished, over time, in another catastrophe.
“Elements of humanity will almost certainly survive this Event, though without help they may not survive for very long.”
“What do you mean, ‘without help’?”
“If humanity is going to survive the Event, it will have to be rescued.”
I said, “Are we talking about rescuing all seven billion of us?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Henry said.
“But that’s impossible.”
“Not really. In the first stages in their development, human beings and most other animals are so small as to be invisible to the naked eye. Embryos—millions of them, if necessary or desired—can be frozen for very long periods of time.”
Not only would human beings be rescued. A skeleton ecosystem that could be transplanted when the ship reached its destination would also go along. Most of our fellow mammals would accompany us, of course. So would as much of the rest of the fauna and flora and bacteria as possible.
“And human knowledge, of course,” he added.
“All of it?”
“Essentially, yes. Most of it is already computerized and the remainder soon will be. The whole of it can be contained in a package about the size of the Antarctic sphere.”
It all made sense to him. It was not quite so clear to me. I had not felt my sunburn since the plane took off. Now I did, and squirmed. I asked no more questions. Henry’s tale of the future seemed all too plausible, and I had stopped resisting the picture he painted.
In a way my mind had been prepared for something like this. I had seen this movie many times. So had everyone else. In films and books about the end of the world, there was always hope. Two people always survived, and they were always beautiful, and you knew that Adam and Eve were going to discover the secret all over again.
Not this time, said common sense.
Next morning at five sharp, Henry phoned. He said he was sending me something and asked me to name a convenient hour for delivery.
“It’s fairly bulky, so give yourself time to clear off a tabletop for it,” he said.
I said, “Actually, Henry, I don’t want anything bulky. I have no room for anything. This is a one-bedroom flat.”
My sunburn hurt. My throat was dry. My voice was a squeak. Rising from sleep I had imagined myself swimming through a cloud of reef fishes. Did they nibble at my peeling skin or had I made that up after I woke up?
“It’s essential equipment,” Henry said. “The guys who deliver it will hook it up for you.”
He hung up. I slammed down the phone. This was an annoying man. It was still dark. It was raining. I was too annoyed to go back to sleep and too agitated to work. A shower would be agony. I made coffee and toasted an English muffin and smeared it with apricot jam. I put on a thin, silk Chinese bathrobe I had bought from a catalog but had never worn. It lay lightly on my raw skin, but was intolerable just the same. I took off the bathrobe and sat down at the computer.
Usually it’s a mistake to attempt to write while both naked and angry. Nevertheless I typed a few words. An hour passed before I wrote a sentence good enough to keep. Another sentence followed and soon others joined up. Doors opened in the brain. Time went away. I forgot the sunburn.
Then, at ten o’clock precisely, the door buzzer sounded.
“We’ve got your ten o’clock delivery down here,” a male voice said from downstairs. I buzzed him in.
Henry’s gift turned out to be a very sleek computer with an oversize screen. The delivery people set it up and turned it on for me. They were gone, taking the packing with them, in ten minutes or less. Seconds later, the computer sounded two musical notes, the monitor lighted up, and Henry’s face appeared on the screen.
He said, “Can you see me and hear me?”
“Everything seems to be working.”
He said, “Good. This computer is secure. It can’t be hacked. Please use it exclusively to talk to me. I ask you never use it to talk to anyone else.”
He sounded like he really intended to keep in touch. We gazed at each other’s images for a long moment. His face was expressionless. I hoped that mine was, too.
At last Henry said, “So what’s your answer? Will you work with me on this?”