Phoenix Without Ashes (13 page)

“Please be seated, sir,” said the sphere projector from across the chamber. “Moderate comfort aids the process of information input.”

Devon heard a brief fanfare of trumpets, though he did not know what the instruments should be called. He sat down and watched as the golden mist coalesced into the body of a woman. She too was golden. She was one meter in height, and she floated a hand’s width above the playback machine.

SIXTEEN

At first Devon thought she was a girl, but revised his estimate when he realized the true proportions of her body. The woman wore a skin-tight body garment several shades lighter than her skin. Her hands, face, and feet were copper-colored—not gold as Devon had first thought. The miniature woman stood looking at him, legs slightly apart, hands resting on her hips.

“Who are you?” he said.

“It’s not a matter of ‘who,’” she said. “You should ask ‘what.’” Her voice was louder and deeper than Devon would have expected from a being her size.

“Very well,” he said. “What are you?”

“I am the computer-actuated narrator of this holo cube.”

“Computer?” he said.

“Have you communicated with the sphere projector?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ve experienced a computer.”

“What’s a holo cube?” said Devon.

“Contraction for hologram cube—a projected, three dimensional, moving image.”

“Oh.”

The narrator shifted her position casually. “This is ‘Basic Historical Information’ cube forty-three. May I proceed?”

Devon said, “Well, uh, yes, of course.”

“Very well. This is a continuation of the history of the planet Earth from cube number forty-two.” She paused. “When it became clear that the impending death of the Earth would leave no trace of the human race, it was decided in the year A.D. 2265, to build a giant vessel that could be sent out to deep space, carrying within it a large enough segment of Earth’s population to settle presumed other worlds, in star systems beyond our own—”

Devon interrupted. “There are unfamiliar words... ‘planet’... ‘Earth’... What is ‘deep space’?”

The holo narrator looked slightly impatient. “Geophysical and astronomical data on the home world may be obtained through use of ‘Cartography’ cubes one through six. Do you wish to familiarize yourself with this data before I continue?”

Devon said, “Yes, please.”

“I will wait.” A chair scaled to her size materialized behind the narrator. She sat and crossed her legs as Devon turned to the cube racks. While he searched out the cartography cubes, she leaned forward and clasped her hands around her left knee. She started to swing her leg back and forth as Devon returned.

“Should I remove the history cube?” he said.

“There’s no need. Insert the first cartography cube adjacent to cube forty-three.”

He did so. The seated woman vanished. The golden mist glittered and reformed into a sphere the size of Devon’s head. But this was no head in the manner of the sphere projector’s image. Rather it was an almost perfectly round blue ball, partially obscured by blurred patches and streaks of white.

“This,” said a neutral contralto voice, “is the Earth.”

Devon successfully resisted the temptation to ask five immediate questions.

The voice continued: “There are seven major theories as to the formation of the universe, the star-sun Sol, and the planetary system it serves...”

As the narrator spoke, the tableau above the playback machine dissolved and reformed. “Please feel free to ask questions at any time.” A suspended sphere of utter blackness pooled above the device. The voice began, “The concept of the oscillating universe...”

At first Devon stared, awed and fascinated. Then he began to ask questions, requiring definitions, inquiring after less complex meanings, and searching for usable touchstones. The lectures took a long while; Devon lost all track of time as he watched the multiplex creation of the universe, the coalescence of galaxies, the formation of stars and planets.

Hours later his fingers shook but his mind soared as Devon extracted the last cartography cube from the playback device. The mist shimmered and once more reformed into the female narrator from the basic historical information cube. She rose from her chair and looked down at Devon.

“Are you now sufficiently informed on such terms as ‘planet Earth’ and ‘deep space’?”

Devon said wonderingly, “We’re all on some kind of ship; we’re moving through ‘space.’ We all come from a giant world, a planet, a place called the Earth.”

“Should I call a medical section?” said the narrator. “Are you well?”

Slowly, delightedly, Devon began to laugh aloud. The narrator coughed disapprovingly. Devon laughed until his cheeks were wet with tears. Finally he said: “I’m fine! I’m just very, very fine! Please go on; tell me more. I want to know it all. I want to know
everything!”

The narrator considered him dubiously. Then she went on. “As I said earlier, when the cataclysm that was to destroy the Earth was seen to be an inevitability—” Devon said, “What
was
the catastrophe?”

“Vastator.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“You will find that,” said the narrator with some small annoyance, “on the preceding cube, number forty-two. Please obtain it for review.”

Devon went to the rack; but the slot for cube forty-two was empty. He returned to the playback unit. The holo narrator was in her chair again, this time tapping her foot against nothingness with ill-concealed impatience. “The cube’s gone,” Devon said.

“The library shows no record of that cube being checked out.”

“Well, it’s missing anyway. What is Vastator?”

“I am hot programmed to synopsize previous cubes. Do you wish me to continue?”

He felt browbeaten and in no condition to squabble, even if the fight were with a one-meter illusory woman. “Yes, ma’am, thank you.”

The narrator continued: “Reactions to the impending disaster polarized the world’s emotions.” She became a more ghostly presence as a scene solidified in front of her.

Devon watched a montage of rioting mobs, fires, pillaging, street battles. People behaving madly, weeping, committing suicide, killing others, raping, looting.

“Most went mad or refused to accept the inevitable,” said the narrator. “But a sizable minority, comprised of scientists, artists, philosophers, technicians, and humanitarians in the greater sense, decided to save a viable segment of the Earth’s population for a seeding program on other worlds.”

The scene before Devon showed a council of apparently kindly and concerned men and women; they sat in conference, talking, planning, drawing up diagrams, staring at each other with weary and compassionate eyes.

“They must have been like gods,” he said.

“This is a somewhat simplified version,” said the narrator mechanically. “It has been approved by the Committee for Educational Goals for dissemination to all groups of whatever age.” She cleared her throat. “I had mentioned the extraterrestrial seeding program. To this end, they began to build the Ark. Humanity had had space travel for three hundred years—”

“Years?” said Devon.

“Solar cycles.”

“Oh. Cycles.”

“—since the first moon landings in AD 1969,” she continued. “But settlement was sparse on Mars and Venus, the only two nearer worlds remotely capable of sustaining life as humankind knew it.”

Devon watched spiderlike vehicles dropping slowly down onto a bleak, cratered landscape. He saw even more alien vistas relieved only by artificial domes. Some of the scenes he had seen in the cartography cubes: different planets floating in space, worlds of eternal cold, others perpetually boiling; one world with a dozen small moons, yet another with none.

“Humankind as a whole wanted no part of the difficult and hostile worlds of the Solar System; further, Vastator would destroy Mars and Venus as well as the Earth. The Solar System clearly could no longer sustain humanity.” The narrator paused. “So the concerned few began the most monumental construction project ever undertaken by humans.”

“The Ark...” said Devon.

“Indeed. Between Earth and the Moon, they began to build the Ark.”

The ungainly assemblage of components took place there in front of Devon. Tiny ships bearing construction materials flew up from the miniature Earth. The Ark slowly took form.

“One thousand, six hundred kilometers plus in length—an organic unit, a clustering of separate globular environmental domes called biospheres; each one at least one hundred kilometers in diameter; all linked by tubular corridors that carried life support, power, communications, and other systems.”

Devon said, “The bounce tubes?”

The narrator nodded. “That was the name quickly acquired by the tubular corridors.” The Ark neared completion between them. “The Ark resembled nothing so much as a cluster of grapes. Into the four hundred and fifty biosphere domes were put entire ecologies, whole segments of the Earth’s population, each in its natural ethnic and cultural state. Samples were drawn from areas as culturally diverse as the Neotechnocratic Republic of Central Africa, and the technologically recidivist settlement of Cypress Corners from North America.”

“Cypress Corners,” said Devon. “I’m from there.”

The narrator looked at him coolly. “More precisely, your ancestors were from there.”

Devon watched an incredibly diverse array of migrations as the narrator called out the catalog:

Groups of colonists from sophisticated nations such as England and Pacifica, Maracott Dome and Japan.

An entire primitive tribe, complete with rain forest, from the interior of something called the Matto Grosso.

The population of Greenland.

Delegations from Malawi, Denmark, Sri Lanka, Libya, Quebec, Lower Kunda, Ireland, Catalan, and all the other remaining nations of the Earth.

So-called special interest affinity groups: totalicrats, Catholics, neo-biologians, back-to-the-soilites, Jews.

An entire city called San Francisco.

Devon saw an exodus of every variety of humanity: brown, black, red, white, yellow, tall, short, poor, rich. Ship after ship ferried them up to the Ark as each new biosphere was fitted for habitation.

“As nearly as possible, each group took up with them their old lives. However successful or unsuccessful the experiment, the builders of the Ark attempted to transplant fragile cultural roots.”

And my world,
Devon thought. He watched the Elders of the original Cypress Corners lead their congregations into the shuttle ship.
World?
He smiled wryly.

“Once stocked with a supercargo of three million humans and all they would need to sustain them on a centuries-long journey to the nearest bright star, Alpha Centauri, and its planetary system,” said the narrator, “the Ark was launched.”

A closeup of the Ark as it almost imperceptibly began to move. The perspective shot back. Devon saw a glittering midge sail with stately slowness past the Moon and toward the outer planets.

The narrator said, “In this shot, the time and space scale has, of course, been necessarily compressed.”

Devon marveled. “How can such an enormous thing be driven?”

“Power is generated from a set of controlled thermonuclear reactors, CTRs for short. The CTRs recreate in small scale the conditions in the heart of a star. For a fuller explanation, I must refer you to physics cube twenty-two.”

The Ark crossed the orbit of Pluto and entered the void between the stars.

The narrator continued: “Supercargo was kept isolated from crew in hopes that each world would develop its own way, preserving the best of its heritage without undue influence from any hierarchy that might arise from crew members and technicians. The crew was housed in domes around the outer perimeter of the cluster, with ethnic biospheres in the center.”

The scene of the Ark crossing a starry backdrop abruptly disappeared. The image of the copper-skinned narrator solidified. “The Ark traveled for one hundred Earth years and then there was indication of a difficulty... there was an accident... this accident...” The woman paused and frowned. “Pardon me.” Her face became blank. “There was... the accident destroyed...”

“What’s wrong?” said Devon.

“... accident... apparent black... was...”

Devon almost shouted, “I can’t understand you.”

“...dead... there...”

Both the voice and the image of the holo narrator began to fade. She pointed one arm toward Devon. He saw her mouth open and close silently. Then her image pulsed in and out and was gone. The golden mist was left, sparkling with scintillas of light. After a moment, it too vanished.

Devon stood up excitedly. “An accident...
what
accident? Tell me! Come back, please come back!”

He approached the playback device and jiggled basic historical information cube number forty-three in its socket; nothing happened. He tapped it with an index finger, then smartly rapped it with his knuckles. Still nothing; the cube was dead.

Devon rushed back to the racks and fumbled along the row of basic historical information cubes. He thought he had miscounted and retraced a step; finally he turned away from the rack.

There was no cube numbered forty-four.

SEVENTEEN

The sphere projector smiled at him. “Yes, sir, may I help you?”

Devon said, “The cube stopped.”

“Its message was probably complete, sir. Have you consulted subsequent cubes?”

“There aren’t any. That was the last one.”

The projection raised its eyebrows. “Then that’s all there is, sir.”

“But the woman said the Ark traveled in space for a hundred cycles and then something happened that caused all this damage...”

The sphere projector prompted Devon, as though expecting him to continue. “Yes, sir?”

Devon said, “What was it?”

“What, sir?”

“The accident.”

“I have no idea of the specifics,” the projection said apologetically. “That isn’t my function.”

Devon stared beyond the sphere projector. He said slowly, as if to himself, “Whatever it was, it must have killed the crew and everyone who was outside the biospheres...”