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We left Tasman after it began its own fluxing. We adopted our second son,
Henryk, in
Calcutta.
As the years passed, more and more the change spread. So much of the beauty
and variety of
Lamarckia was fleeing before Brion's gift of green. What replaced it was
simple and direct, tiny ecoi, covering only a few acres, and getting tinier.
Some of the scions -- phytids, even mobile scions -- seemed capable of
independence, and perhaps even replicating on their own. Randall studied them
closely and wrote more papers. We visited often.
Shirla and I and our two sons had our happiest five years together in Jakarta.
Petain's
Zone resisted the green longer than any but the island zones in the south,
where most of the survivors clustered for decades. In those five good years,
however, Jakarta became a wonderfully feverish city, an island of creative
ferment and relative prosperity in the change.
We actually saw Salap again. Yes! -- he had survived, and was back at Wallace
Station, but he made a trip to Jakarta.
Many of us were dying from new immune challenges as Petain tried different
defenses against
Hsia and the green. Salap had been charting the spread of new scion
chemistries, and he arrived when Shirla was very ill, making the trip
especially to see us, I suppose, but also as part of the research effort.
Shirla and I met with him in her room. Henryk and Ricca, ages ten and fifteen
then, came in and out, carrying food, clean bedding, water. Shirla had become
a real mother to them, and I had done my best, in my distracted way, to be a
real father.
Salap made his tests, took samples from her withered body, told us that there
might be ways to turn back such challenges in a few months. Idle hopes, as it
turned out.
Salap finally related the story of his last few days with the female figure in
the hemisphere. "She struggled to become human," he said. "Having watched the
Chung sisters and Brion, and finally paying close attention to me, the only
model left to her -- observing me while I
observed her -- we taught each other many things. But she could never think
like us, much less understand our shapes. She was never more than a meticulous
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and crafty observer, without the cycling knot of self-awareness that must
always separate us from the ecoi. At the last, though, she broke her second
foot free and became independent for a few days. She managed to walk. She did
pretty well, under the circumstances."
"What did she want?" Shirla asked.
"The ecos had observed humans having sex. It was curious about the process.
Thought it might result in another 'name,' like Brion's gift of chlorophyll.
She actually became seductive, at the end." He stared at us, eyes flicking
back and forth. For the first time, Salap seemed ill at ease.
"Did you?" Shirla asked.
Salap smiled and leaned his head to one side. "Three months after you left,
the hemisphere withered," he continued. "The last of the balloons had been
manufactured and sent away with the winds."
"What happened to _her?_ To the imitation of Caitla?" Shirla asked.
"She withered, too. She maintained her interest to the end, trying to speak,
trying to extract biological secrets, hoping for more gifts of 'names.'
Finally, she could not move, and she made only shrill whistles and rasping,
barking sounds.
"When she died, I cut her open and studied her, but there was nothing
particularly novel about her anatomy. I buried her beside the body of Caitla
Chung, in the new silva."
"She _was_ a queen," Shirla said, and she swallowed and stared up at the mat
fiber ceiling, and then looked at me. "You saw a true queen, Olmy. I wish I
could have seen her. I don't think
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chance again."
Shirla died that winter. So many died that winter, as the weather itself
changed, and
Petain began its final decline. The green arrived with its own disastrous
spring, but by then I
was a different man, without Shirla. I flowed with the people, with Lenk's
river of history.
--------
*34*
I go with Yanosh down the Way in a flawship to the gate on the geometry stack.
Transport ships are loading the last of the evacuees from Lamarckia. The
situation there has become critical, and the Hexamon has ordered that all be
removed.
Because of the difficulties of a gate in the geometry stack, fifteen years
have passed since I was retrieved. Rebecca has died.
All but three hundred of the remaining nine thousand Lamarckians have been
brought through the gate. My two sons are not among them. They have chosen to
remain, to ride out the worst of the changes, though their chances of
surviving are almost nil. Somehow, I feel that I have given them a part of
myself, made them like me, and done them no favor.
I watch from a deltoid craft as the last of the Hexamon agents evacuate the
gate.
The gate is closing by itself, the stacks becoming unstable despite the best
efforts of the best gate openers.
The wall of the Way glows brilliant violet, then flashes rich, vibrant green.
The dimple fills and smooths over, and the surface assumes the color of
fresh-cast bronze.
The green flash lingers in my eye.
I become who I am now.
-----------------------
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