it had been in the smokefilled interior. Bob took Julio in one arm and wrapped the other around Linda's slender waist. Linda, with one arm around Lambie and the other holding Milagro stopped singing for just a moment to say, 'Close your eyes, babies,' and to kiss each of the little girls atop their heads.
She resumed singing and began to walk forward, others following. At the very edge she hesitated, but only for the tiniest fraction of a second. She and Bob took the last step forward, the hymn echoing in their ears: 'Help of the helpless, O abide with me…'
It was a long way down. Linda felt her speed build. Her stomach seemed to want to come out of her mouth. She heard the babies she clutched so tightly scream as if from a great distance. She reached terminal velocity and the falling sensation in her stomach disappeared.
There was a brief sense of shock and then… nothing.
Cochea, 1028 hours
'Don't look, Patricio,' implored Jimenez, voice strained with despair for his friend.
'No… don't,' whispered Parilla, shaking his head slowly.
Hennessey ignored them, his eyes fixed on the television image. Down went the Center Tower, slowly, majestically. With it went his wife, his three children, possibly a fourth, too. Linda had hinted before she left for the Federated States that she might be expecting. He gave off a soft, wordless cry.
In the background Lucinda bit her hand to stifle wracking sobs. 'The babies, the babies, the babies… my Linda… I changed her diapers as a baby… my little ones…'
Overwhelmed with grief, Hennessey just let his head hang, tears running down his face to gather and drip from the end of his nose and chin. He made no sound, yet his shoulders shuddered spasmodically.
Not knowing what else to do, Jimenez walked to the liquor cabinet, extracted two glasses and a bottle, then poured a light drink for himself and a much larger one for Hennessey.
'Here, Patricio, drink this. For a while, it will help.'
Eyes of the Prophet, Zion-occupied Filistia,
Terra Nova, 11/7/459 AC
As Hennessey wept, even as thousands and millions in the Federated States and some few other places wept their grief and shrieked their anger, a series of rather differently spirited and impromptu- but, one cannot doubt, wholehearted and completely sincere-demonstrations erupted around the globe. From one end of the Salafi and Moslem quarter to the other cheering people took to the streets, automobile horns blasting, people dancing, women warbling the Arabic call to battle and victory.
Hennessey, thousands of miles from Shechem watched one such woman, her face transformed with radiant joy.
Parilla whispered, 'Bastards. Fucking bastards! They should be destroyed.'
Jimenez watched the image carefully, engraving every line of the harridan's face onto his mind. ''What though the field be lost?'' he quoted, whispering. ''All is not lost; Unconquerable will and study of revenge, immortal hate and courage never to submit or yield.''
University of Ninewa, Sumer, Terra Nova
In contrast to the smoke and flames of tall buildings crashing down, the university was white and placid. Students and professors, some of them white coated, gathered in small groups to converse worriedly and even frantically.
From a third-story window overlooking the central green square of the campus, a Sumeri brigadier general watched out. His name was Sada and he, and the brigade he commanded, were here to guard. What they guarded only Sada knew and he wasn't telling.
Turning away from the campus scene Sada looked back at the television screen that showed, over and over, the destruction in First Landing. He sat, heavily, and put his head in his hands. They're going to crush us for this, he thought.
Interlude
One of the questions the data from the Cristobal Colon could not answer was, 'Why?' Another was, 'How?' The last was 'Who?'
None of these questions was ever to be entirely satisfactorily answered, though theories abounded. Answering the last by calling the 'Who' of the matter the 'Noahs' was hardly a satisfactory explanation. Some other questions could be answered, though. Most of these were about Earth.
It was learned, for example, from a video recording made and transmitted by Parachute Lander Number Two, that Smilodon, the saber-toothed tiger, was an ambush hunter and did use its long canine teeth to rip open the bellies of its prey, wherever that was possible.
Because this is what the Cristobal Colon had found: an Earthlike world, teeming with life from well before the last ice age but after the age of dinosaurs. The trees were there, the flowers and plants, the mammals, the reptiles. Everything was there except for man, though there were small groups of pithecines scurrying about. These, apparently, had been seeded before the mutation or mutations that led to homo sapiens.
Moreover, several low passes by the glider drones had indicated the presence of huge numbers of whales, of shoals of fish, and of birds. Number One Drone had almost come to an early end as a result of failing to note, until it was almost too late, an enormous flock-though flock hardly did the thing justice-of passenger pigeons over the southern part of one of the lesser continents.
There were dodos and there were great auks, though that news awaited further exploration as neither drone nor lander had seen any. There were cave bear, giant ground sloth and great Irish deer, though the rediscovery of these, too, took time. Phororhacos, the eight-foottall carnivorous bird of South America was there, as was the giant moa.
There were no dinosaurs, though there were a number of fairly large reptilian species. There were also no horses, though eohippus was found in some numbers.
There was no trace of who had done this, no archeological remains, no cities, no settlements, no landing sites. Yet it was clear that at some time between the end of the dinosaurs and the arrival, or at least flourishing, of man, some people or some things had made an effort to preserve life as it was found on Earth at that time. Close estimates, based on the flora and fauna to be found in the new world, suggested a timeline of between three million and five million years, BC. Yet not all the animals and plants found fell into that range. Some seemed newer, still others older. Some were completely alien to both New Earth and Old.
It was then suggested that evolution on the planet itself had continued, creating new species through the same mechanism as on Earth. This, however, failed to solve the riddle of the older animals, thought extinct on Earth well before the presumptive date of the transplanting. Some believed that the fossil record on Earth was by no means complete; scientists and explorers could have missed or misdated any number of species. Moreover, since coelacanth had hung on for some fifty million years longer than scientists had thought before it was rediscovered, why should not have archaeopteryx?
The fossil record of the new world was quite limited. There were no missing links and most of the animals found seem to have suddenly appeared.
It was not-and is not-known if the Noahs who had seeded the planet had also created the rift that allowed instantaneous transport between Earth's solar system and the other or if they had merely used something that was already there. As to whether man could make use of the rift, reliably, that awaited events.
In the event, man being man, extinct species on the old world tended to become extinct species, extinct out of zoos anyway, on the new.
Chapter Five In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children. -Herodotus
Cochea, 12/7/459 AC
Hennessey had first laid eyes upon his future wife at a national festival. She had been seventeen then, one of the dancers garbed in the national costume the Balboans had brought with them from Earth, the pollera. Linda's hair had been done up in an intricate array of gold and silver. There was no word adequate to describe her. Perhaps 'stunning' came close.
As he had first laid eyes on her, so had she-without at the time knowing-laid hands upon his heart. In a phrase, he had fallen, abjectly and completely. And he didn't even know her name.
In his dream, Hennessey again watched the dance, again pushed his way through the crowd, again steeled himself for a very informal selfintroduction.
