“What was it?” Alex just wanted the end of the story.
Bista did not cooperate. There was more he wanted to confess. “When we found out what had caused it, we were shocked, because this curse had begun with us.”
Alex shook his head. “That is not possible. You’ve been gone too long.”
“I told you that our ancestors thought they could still change the past. That was before Janus II had revealed that the nuclear holocaust was inevitable. Janus was still casting about for answers other than emigrating away from the planet. He thought it might be possible to send someone back and change things in the past and fix what was then the present. That was why he created the portals that you call doors. That was a failure, but it was, as it turned out, not our worst.”
Alex felt like he should know what Bista was referring to, but couldn’t make the connection.
“What?”
“The impending nuclear war was foremost in Janus’s mind, but it wasn’t the only problem he was dealing with, and trying to find solutions for. The Earth had warmed, and we were to the point where the polar caps were melting. It was obvious that there would be major catastrophes from that as well.”
“Since the Pacific Ocean is a hundred-and-fifty miles further inland than it was in the twenty-first century, I would assume that has happened.”
“Yes, but as it turned out, that was after we left. The coastlines as you knew them were still in place when we left the planet. There was a third problem facing the world, and it was one Janus thought he could solve. A new type of insect had been created in a laboratory. The people who created it intended to weaponize it and unleash it on their enemies. As it turned out, this hybrid insect had no natural enemies, and it reproduced in such numbers that its primary food source—honeybees—were rapidly approaching extinction. Janus knew that the loss of the honeybees would upset the eco balance of the planet forever. So, he also made some genetic alterations to an already-existing insect that would serve as a natural balance and allow the honeybees to thrive once again.”
Pandrick spoke up. “Like the portals, it was a failure, but we didn’t know how great a failure until Lanta-eh spoke to us.”
Alex’s eyes lit up.
“It was those goddamned spiders!”
For the first time, Alex saw true sorrow in Bista’s eyes. “It was the spiders. Janus created them in the lab to solve one problem and in the end inadvertently nearly caused the very thing he spent his entire life trying to avoid—the extermination of mankind.”
“So,” Alex said, “did Janus think that creating these monstrous parachuting spiders was a good thing?”
“They weren’t monstrous when he created them. They grew to that size over tens of thousands of generations. In the end, it was the genetic manipulation that caused the worst problems.”
“Was it their bites? Virtually everyone in their path got bit. Did it transfer some sort of slow-acting poison?”
Bista shook his head. “No. Did you ever notice what happened when the spiders were destroyed?”
Alex laughed. “That was hard to miss. We destroyed them by the tens of thousands. We built a firewall in our cave to burn them to death. Those that got through we clubbed, stomped on, and killed them any way we could.”
“And that was what did the damage. When you destroyed them, did you notice that they essentially went up like a puff of smoke?”
“Absolutely. It was weird at first, but even weird things become normal after you’ve seen it thousands of times.”
“That puff was the key. It was a spore they carried, spreading it on the wind wherever they were carried, wherever they were killed.”
“No,” Alex said. “That can’t be. Women in Kragdon-ah were dying in childbirth before the spiders ever came back, so that doesn’t make sense.”
“It was cumulative,” Limda explained. “But it reached a tipping point. Each time the spiders spread across a continent, they left more of these spores behind. At some point, these spores were widespread enough that they got into everything. Drinking water, soil, the air we breathe. Some areas, some villages, got more than others. This last infestation was the tipping point. There was enough of the residual spores built up that when this fresh dose was added to it, the process became one hundred percent fatal for women in childbirth.”
“Unfortunately, between the pregnancy and the demands of sending us what we needed, it overwhelmed Lanta-eh. She sacrificed herself and her child so the other children of the world could be born, and their mothers could survive.”
Alex’s eye caught the movement of what Emily was doing and it suddenly became clear.
“Lanta-eh! That’s Lanta-eh!” Sanda-eh said, pointing excitedly at the material Emily was manipulating.
Somehow, the rectangular material had been smoothed and massaged into a statue that did indeed look exactly like Lanta-eh in her classic, cross-legged pose, looking upward, as if at the stars.
Emily smiled warmly at Sanda-eh. “Yes, that’s right. We knew from Lanta-eh that the people of Winten-ah do not place markers on their graves, no matter who it is that has died. We thought that she deserved more than that, so I am making her this.”
Sanda-eh’s eyes were wide as she reached out and tentatively touched the statue. “It’s soft!”
“It is now, but as soon as I coat it with a special material, it will harden and be unbreakable.” Emily reached down and picked up several balls of the material she had sloughed off. She rolled them together, then handed them to Sanda-eh. “Here. You can have this.”
Sanda-eh turned toward Alex, a begging, pleading expression on her face.
“Go ahead, that’s fine,” Alex said.
Sanda-eh beamed and instantly began rolling and changing the material.
“I hope you’re right about all this. Let’s say you are. What’s the solution? What can stop women from dying?”
Limda dug through his backpack and came out with a clear container. He twisted a
