He touched the switch and spoke into the tiny microphone. “Will we be free to move as we choose when we reach the surface?”
“Of course.” The cheerful but impersonal voice answered at once. “There will be air and ground vehicles at your disposal, and personal information systems to go with you and answer any questions. Your account will automatically be charged for services.”
Elissa looked at Peron. To their knowledge, they had no credit account of any kind. They might have to fight that one with Jan de Vries when they returned from Earth.
“Do you have a site selected?” went on the service computer. “If so, we can schedule something to be available at once upon touchdown.”
“Wait a minute.” Peron turned away from the microphone. “Elissa? Let’s get away from everybody for a while. Maybe we’ll take a look at one typical Earth city, then let’s see some wild country.”
At her nod, Peron relayed their request to the machine. There was the longest silence so far.
“I am sorry,” said the voice at last. “We cannot grant your request.” “It is not permitted?” said Elissa.
“It would be permitted. But the environment you describe no longer exists.” Elissa said, “You mean there is no natural country left, anywhere on Earth?” “No,” said the voice. Peron imagined he could hear an element of surprise in the overall joviality of the machine’s tones. “There is natural country, plenty of it. But there are no towns or cities on Earth.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The steady march of the glaciers had been more effective in the northern hemisphere. In Africa, Australia, and South America, the great oceans had moderated temperatures and checked the spread from polar regions. Occasional snow-free pockets could be found as far as forty degrees south of the equator. But in the north, the glaciers ruled everywhere past latitude thirty-five. Even at Skydown the temperature was chilly. Peron and Elissa emerged from the cable car at the foot of the Beanstalk to bright sunshine and clear skies, but they stood in a blustery east wind that encouraged warm clothing. While most of the visitors headed for a briefing on the sights of Earth, the two took an aircar and flew north.
They spent the first evening on the lush southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea near the ancient site of Tripoli. The information service computer informed them that they had reached the border for true forest land. Farther north, in what had once been Europe, only stunted stands of spruce and juniper persisted, clinging to south-facing slopes.
Night came quickly, sweeping in with a scented darkness across the white sandy beach. The aircar contained two bunks, but they were on opposite sides of the cabin. Peron and Elissa chose to sleep outside, protected by automatic sensors and the car’s warning system. Holding each other close beneath a moonless sky, they watched the wheel of unfamiliar constellations. Against that slow-moving backdrop, the space stations swept constantly overhead, one or more of them always visible. Sleep would not come easily. They whispered for a long time, of Pentecost, Planetfest, and Whirlygig, and of the accident to Peron that had plunged them across light-years and centuries.
The night was full of unfamiliar sounds. There was wind rustling in tall trees, and the steady beat of waves on the seashore. Somewhere to the south a group of animals called to each other, their voices tantalizingly familiar, like humans sobbing and crying out in some foreign tongue. When Peron at last fell asleep, it was to unpleasant dreams. The voices called to him through the night; but now he imagined he could understand their lamenting message.
Your visit to Earth is a delusion. You are hiding from the truth, trying to put off unpleasant actions. But they cannot be put aside. You must return to S-space… and go farther yet.
The next morning they took to the air again and headed north and east into Asia. Two days’ travel convinced Peron and Elissa of two things. Apart from the general location of the land masses, Earth bore no resemblance to the fabled planet described in the old records of Pentecost and the library records on the ship. And there was no chance that they would choose to live on Earth, even if it were to be colonized again in the near future. Pentecost was more beautiful in every way.
They left the information service on all the time. It described a link between the old, fertile Earth of legend and the present wilderness.
The post-nuclear winter had been the first cause of the trouble. It was far more influential as an agent of change than the Ice Age that now held Earth in a frozen grasp. Immediately after the thermonuclear explosions, temperatures below the thick clouds of radioactive dust dropped drastically. Plants and animals that fought for survival in the sunless gloom of the surface did so in a poisoned environment that forced rapid mutation or extinction.
In the air, the birds could not find enough food over the land. A few remaining species skimmed the surface of the tropical seas, competing with sea mammals for the diminished supply of fish. Their high energy-need killed them. The last flying bird on Earth fell from the skies within two years of the thermonuclear blast that obliterated Washington. The penguins alone lived on, moving north from the Antarctic to inhabit the coastlines of South America and Africa. Small colonies of emperor penguins still clung to the shores of the Java Sea and Indonesia.
The larger surface animals — including all surviving members of homo sapiens — were early victims. Long life spans permitted the build-up of lethal doses of radiation in body tissues.
The small burrowers, driven farther underground to seek out deep-lying roots and tubers, fared much better. One circumstance had assisted their survival. The hour of Armageddon came close to the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, at a time when many animals were fat for the winter and preparing for hibernation. They had burrowed deeper and settled in for the hibernal sleep. The ones too far north had never wakened. Others, returning to consciousness in a cold, dark spring, foraged far and wide for food. The lucky ones moved steadily south, to the zone where a pale, sickly sunlight still permitted some plant growth. Of all Earth’s land mammals, only a few small rodents — mice, hamsters, ground squirrels, and woodchucks — lived on to inherit the earth.
Their competition had been formidable. The invertebrates were fighting for their own survival. Insect life dwindled at first, then adapted, mutated, grew, and multiplied. They had always dominated the tropical regions of Earth; now the larger ants and spiders, aided by their formidable mandibles and stings, strove to become the lords of creation.
The mammals took the only paths left to them. The invertebrates were limited in maximum size because of passive breathing mechanisms and their lack of an internal skeleton; and they were cold-blooded. The rodents grew in size to improve their heat retention, developed thick coats and hairy paws, and moved away from the equator to regions where there was no insect competition. Some of them were totally vegetarian, browsing on the sparse, chlorotic plant life that still grew in the dust-filtered twilight. They developed thick layers of blubber, for food storage and insulation. The other survivors became super-efficient predators, preying on their herbivorous relatives. As the nuclear winter slowly ended the insects moved north and south again, away from the tropics. But the mutated mice and woodchucks were ready for them. They had increased in size and ferocity, to become a match for any pre-civilization wolf; and now they wore thick coats of fur and protective fat that rendered impotent the fierce mandibles and poison stings. The insects were a new convenient source of protein. The carnivores followed them back into their tropic habitats, and on to the southern regions.
The changes to animal life on Earth were easiest to see; but the changes to the vegetation were in some ways more fundamental. The grasses were gone; in their place a dwarf form of eucalyptus covered millions of square kilometers with flat, bluish-green leaves. Waving fields of corn and wheat would never be seen again on Earth. Their nourishing seeds had been replaced by the red clusters of berries that hung from every euclypt stem. After being assured that it was safe to do so, Elissa sampled a couple. They were filled with a fatty syrup, and at their center sat an oval, impenetrable seed. The seeds, berries and roots of the euclypts sustained a thriving animal community beneath the foot-high canopy of their leaves, where in the blue-green gloom devolved mice fought finger-long giant ants for the best food and living space.
