Chapter 24: The Battered Earth — Part 1

Susan woke up, a pain in her stomach telling her that something had happened, and it wasn’t something somehow related to her pregnancy. She rose from her bed, the pit in her stomach cramping, and she sensed fear: Not the kind of fear only within herself, but a deep, instinctive fear building in such a way that every creature on the planet seemed to feel it. The twilight hour gave a dull green glow to the mist. Hovering over her sheets, her mind drifting deep into space, only the contact of a friendly mind with unfriendly news brought her back to her senses. Something had died, Susan was certain, but she could not ascertain what.

C’rona wishes an interview. Much has happened in twenty-four hours. A’joshi sent the thought from his home, a sure sign of urgency.

Susan grabbed her verdo staff and stepped out of her house. She launched herself through a personal gravity well set up by the Antansi Natives for emergency transit. Thrown like a mortar in slow motion from its shaft, Susan guided her transit and descent, landing gently on C’rona’s doorstep. The Antansi had created this well because she was pregnant, in order to minimize stress on her body while allowing Susan to travel at a speed to which her mind could tolerate. Staring up at the sparkling, iridescent orb, she tried to fathom what emotions played across the webbing, what feelings the different colors of light were trying to portray. She stepped into the orb. Part of her needed to know what the nagging pain in her belly warned her about. Part of her wanted nothing to do with it. She stepped quietly into C’rona’s home. Inside, the colors were even more overwhelming, though they were better blended, giving the room a bright, hardened lightening and very little in the way of shadows.

“Has something bad came to pass?” Susan asked, not knowing whether to sit or stand.

“It’s very bad indeed, Susan. The members of your home world have attacked themselves with unrestrained vigor, using all of their nuclear detonation devices. All humanity has created is gone. Only a few shreds of anything remotely similar to society remain, and they won’t survive long on a world crippled as badly as yours is. Our data suggests that Earth technology has been set back tens of thousands of years. No spaceports, high tech weaponry or defenses, and no global computer systems remain on line. The population, by indication of the damage reaped of the holocaust, has been knocked down to clusters whose population totals less than a hundred thousand. All are living in isolated pockets of razed and struggling forests the world over. That population will decline steadily to maybe ten thousand from drought and famine, disease and radioactive and chemical toxins in the environment. What are we going to do about this?”

Susan considered C’rona’s question. The Antansi Native, apparently, sought a means of repair. She felt shielded, enveloped by C’rona from the deeper fury the nuclear war had caused. The entire planet, it seemed, wanted to shield her from the pain. Susan considered how the world must have screamed at the realization that Earth was on fire, and how she, being in her condition, must have been enveloped by the minds of those closest to her, and probably by the minds of many she did not know. C’rona, she knew, was being patient with her, even now, as the words what are we going to do about this? slowly filtered back up to her conscious.

“We can fix Earth?” Susan asked quietly, mostly because she sensed hope in C’rona’s thoughts.

“Yes, it should be possible, given enough time.” C’rona answered.

Susan ran a hand over her belly; the skin had tightened as she swelled from pregnancy, a new tightness competing with the old. She considered a plain and painful truth, and decided. “I can’t go this time. I’ll need to send volunteers.”

“I and mine will help prepare a ship.” C’rona said, touching Susan’s belly gingerly with her palpi.

The touch was as close to a hug as C’rona’s species was capable of giving. In spite of herself, Susan felt as if she might cry. C’rona’s touch moved to Susan’s head, the older creature’s thoughts deeply calming to Susan, and Susan felt the need to cry stripped away. Not suppressed directly, but exchanged for the state after crying, without the strain of emotional release. Part of her mind knew that C’rona had taken the stress of that part of the experience so that Susan would not have to. With a careful tough, Susan polished the dust from C’rona’s eyes and left her, and then headed back to find her volunteers.