Firstborn

Vendors drifted slowly among them, selling food, water, and some kind of trinkets, holy tokens.

They were pilgrims, Abdi said, who had come from as far as Alexandria and Judea.

“And are they here for the Eye of Marduk?”

Abdi grinned. “Some come for the Eye. Some for Marduk himself, if they remember him. Some for Bisesa. Some even for the man-ape that’s in there with her.”

“Remarkable,” Grove said. “Pilgrims from Judea, come here to see a woman of the twenty-first century!”

Eumenes said, “I sometimes wonder if a whole new religion is being born here. A worship of the Firstborn, with Bisesa Dutt as their prophet.”

“I doubt that would be healthy,” Grove said.

“Man has worshipped destroying gods before. Come. Let us speak to Bisesa Dutt.”

Abdi escorted them through the crowd and into the temple’s convoluted interior, all the way up to the chamber of the Eye.

The small room with its scorched brick walls was utterly dominated by the Eye, which floated in the air. By the light of the oil lamps Grove saw his own reflection, absurdly distorted, as if by a fairground trick mirror. But the Eye itself was monstrous, ominous; he seemed to sense its gravity.

Bisesa had made a kind of nest in one corner of the chamber, of blankets and paper and clothes and bits of food. When Grove and the others walked in, she smiled and clambered to her feet.

And there was the man-ape. A lanky, powerful mature female, she sat squat in her cage, as still and watchful as the Eye itself. She had clear blue eyes. Grove was forced to turn away from her gaze.

“My word,” Batson said, holding his nose. “Ilicius Bloom wasn’t lying when he said the stink wasn’t him but the ape!”

“You get used to it,” Bisesa said. She greeted Batson with a warm handshake, and an embrace for Grove that rather embarrassed him. “Anyhow Grasper is company.”

“ ‘Grasper’?”

“Don’t you remember her, Grove? Your Tommies captured a man-ape and her baby on the very day of the Discontinuity. The Tommies called her ‘Grasper’ for the way she uses those hands of hers, tying knots out of bits of straw, for fun. On the last night before we tried sending me back to Earth through the Eye, I asked for them to be released. Well, I think this is that baby, grown tall. If these australopithecines live as long as chimps, say, it’s perfectly possible. I’ll swear she is more dexterous than I am.”

Grove asked, “How on earth does she come to be here?”

Eumenes said, “She rather made her own way. She was one of a pack that troubled the western rail links. This one followed the line all the way back to Babylon, and made a nuisance of herself in the farms outside the city. Kept trying to get to the city walls.

Wouldn’t be driven off. In the end they netted her and brought her into the city as a curiosity for the court. We kept her in Bloom’s cage, but the creature went wild. She wanted to go somewhere, that was clear.”

“It was my idea,” Abdi said. “We leashed her, and allowed her to lead us where she would.”

“And she came here,” Bisesa said. “Drawn here just as I was.

She seems peaceful enough here, as if she’s found what she wanted.”

Grove pondered. “I do remember how we once kept this man-ape and her mother in a tent we propped up under a floating Eye—

do you remember, Bisesa? Rather disrespectful to the Eye, I thought. Perhaps this wretched creature formed some sort of bond with the Eyes then. But how the devil would she know there was an Eye here?”

“There’s a lot we don’t understand,” Bisesa said. “To put it mildly.”

Grove inspected Bisesa’s den with forced interest. “Well, you seem cheerful enough in here.”

“All mod cons,” she said, a term that baffled Grove. “I have my phone. It’s a shame Suit Five is out of power or that might have provided a bit more company too. And here’s my chemical toilet, scavenged from the Little Bird. Abdi keeps me fed and cleaned out.

You’re my interface to the outside world, aren’t you, Abdi?”

“Yes,” Grove said, “but why are you here?”

Eumenes said gravely, “You should know that Alexander thinks she is trying to find a way to use the Eye for his benefit. If not for the fact that the King believes Bisesa is serving his purposes, she would not be here at all. You must remember that when you meet him, Captain.”

“Fair enough. But what’s the truth, Bisesa?”

“I want to go home,” she said simply. “Just as I did before. I want to get back to my daughter, and granddaughter. And this is the only possible way. With respect, there’s nothing on Mir that matters to me as much as that.”

Grove looked at this woman, this bereft mother, alone with all this strangeness. “I had a daughter, you know,” he said, and he was dismayed how gruff his voice was. “Back home. You know. She’d be about your age now, I should think. I do understand why you are here, Bisesa.”

She smiled, and embraced him again.

There was little more to be said.

“Well,” Grove said. “I will visit again. We will be here for several more days in Babylon, I should think. I feel I really ought to try to do something for this wretched fellow Bloom. We moderns must stick together, I suppose.”

“You’re a good man, Captain. But don’t put yourself in any danger.”

“I’m a wily old bird, don’t you worry…”

They left soon after that.

Grove looked back once at Bisesa. Alone save for the watchful man-ape, she was walking around the hovering sphere and pressed her bare hand against the Eye’s surface. The hand seemed to slide sideways, pushed by some unseen force. Grove was awed at her casual familiarity with this utterly monstrous, alien thing.

He turned away. He was glad he could hide the wetness of his foolish old eyes in the dark of the temple’s corridors.

60: House

March 30, 2072

Paula called, using the optic-fiber link. Since the secession of the sun, the big AIs at New Lowell had been refining their predictions of when the Rip would finally hit Mars.

“May 12,” Paula said. “Around fourteen hundred.”

Six weeks. “Well, now we know,” Myra said.

“I’m told that in the end they will get the prediction down to the attosecond.”

“That will be useful,” Yuri said dryly.

Paula said, “Also we’ve been running predictions of the state of your nuclear power plant. You’re aware you’re running out of fuel.”

“Of course,” Yuri said stiffly. “Resupply has been somewhat problematic.”

“We predict you’ll make it through to the Rip. Just. It might not be too comfortable in the last few days.”

“We can economize. There are only two of us here.”

“Okay. But there’s always room for you here at Lowell.”

Yuri glanced at Myra, who grinned back. She said, “And leave home? No. Thanks, Paula. Let’s finish it here.”

“I thought you’d say that. All right. If you change your mind the rovers are healthy enough to pick you