If the children had known how sad their parents would be, they would never have done it. At this point they are beginning to understand, but still do not learn how deep sadness can be. Not yet. Perhaps no one reaches the end of it, and, to survive, must simply choose another path, one with more useful stories. But, as you may know, that is another part of this story.
Worse than all that, the children finally realized that they had stolen something that their parents had worked hard for, Moku. The ship, and all of space and time, wasn’t meant just for the children. It was meant for everyone in The Future, and for all the people in the world to benefit from. The people of Earth didn’t realize this when they were building it. They thought they were making something they could let go of.
It didn’t turn out that way.
It was all heartrendingly sad.
Finally, they had to let go.
The parents, the children. The children, Earth.
The people on Earth take a long time to decide how to say goodbye. They form committees, consider proposals, argue violently or with subtle skill, make deals, publish editorials, write learned papers.
It is taking longer and longer for Earth and Moku to communicate.
Finally, one day when it is almost too late, at a signal no one recalls initiating, they gather in cathedrals and squares and sing. They sing from flotillas of boats tethered together while they drink rum beneath fiery, poignant sunsets. They sing from observatories to the deep night sky, and as night flips swiftly to day in Bogota.
They sing from self-driving vehicles. Old people stop their tennis games to sing. Children sing in schools; there are still schools, only much better ones. Tech advisors, stock manipulators, and people who still do not have clean water but who do have a device sing. They sing from bars, from the Moon, and from every point in space where humans live.
When the song arrives at the ship, as they are passing Neptune’s orbit, they piece it together and gather, standing, and listen, looking back from whence they came, those tiny dots of life holding all they have ever known. Seas, mountains, the three remaining tigers. The deep time and lucky chance that caused life. Winds that flatten vast fields of wheat with great, caressing hands, like the hands that once caressed them with such love and care.
This is what they hear:
Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee,
All through the night
Guardian angels God will send thee,
All through the night
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping
Hill and vale in slumber steeping
I my loving vigil keeping
All through the night.
The children, and Pele, hold hands and cry, knowing what they have lost.
Pele knows that, for the children, it is the first step. It changes their brains.
She does not know how she will get past it.
Perhaps, she thinks later, alone and staring at the place she thought she always wanted to be, she never will.
And now within the old gray tower
We’ve climbed the winding stair,
And look out over all the earth
From topmost window there.
Far stretches all the world away,
And naught shuts out the sky,
As knights and maids and all of life
Go marching, marching by.
—Olive Beaupré Miller, From the Tower Window
Finally, as they pass out of the solar system, it is time. They must get moving. They must set forth. They must transform.
And they do need her; they did bring her for a reason. She has lived this project, this drive, for decades, every detail of it. Bean’s work has brought it to life, but there is no way to know how it will manifest, if they will survive, and, if they do, how it will change them. That part of it is greater than that which one can imagine.
All is in readiness. She is awake. The fulcrum is here. She has the lever to move it.
The minds, the dreams, of the children are the weight. They offer her thoughts, ideas, visions, insights, like flowers, which she gathers, and they all spark together, pointing toward fruition, the shift that will carry life forward.
This is humanity’s main chance. She knows, but cannot think about, how important that is.
She prepares to play a vast chord, the way her piano teacher taught her, knowing it all first, in the instant before her spread fingers descend to the cool, hard, certain keys, back straight, elbows wide, with all she is contained within that force.
Pele plays.
This is the chord that sounds.
They are a creature of the deep sea, of interstellar space.
They are a thought, and thought is matter.
The ship, the matter, is like a film above, a fluid, a lens on the surface of their sky, the division between fluid and gas.
They coalesce: they rise.
Arrayed around Pele at that moment is a human orchestra, potential symphonies, jazz rhapsodies, new musics for which new brains to hear must be invented. On new planets, they may whirl and dance, skipping through the universe like stones, breaking through the surface tension of the strange fugue of time in which they are embedded, and sink back into life.
“Oh,” she says, “oh.” She bends over, weeping.
First comes Bean, whose willowy arms surround but barely touch her. Then Ta’a’aeva’s rough embrace, her strong, gasping voice. Javail’s tall blond head bending down to touch hers, and then they are all in a huddle, embracing tightly, crying, swaying, and, finally, laughing as they break.
“We will find the place we need,” says Javail, his ever-adolescent voice breaking as he speaks, yet, as always, he sounds eminently reasonable. “As you can see, we have all the time in the world.”
“We may need more,” observes Pele, her voice harsh, and they break into applause that sounds, to Pele, like surf sounding at Kaena Point.
That is the last they see of her for a very long time.
There is music and frolic in the
