Nancy Kress - After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall

“Don’t hurt him, please. He doesn’t know. He thinks you destroyed everything.”

The Tesslie said and did nothing.

Pete blurted, “Did you?”

Nothing.

“Or was it really—” All of a sudden he couldn’t remember the weird name Julie had said. Gouda? Or was that the cheese Caity had once brought back from a Grab? Guide-a? Gaga? Gina?

“—us?”

The Tesslie rose a few inches into the air and moved past Pete, floating on nothing at all toward the corridor. A long ropelike metal arm shot out of its tin can, startling Pete. The arm flicked toward him, then pointed to the corridor. The Tesslie floated on, and Pete followed.

“I’m not going!” Ravi shouted. “I’m not!”

“Wimp,” Pete said.

In the corridor he picked up Alicia’s baby-bucket. She had started to fuss, working up to a full wail. The Tesslie floated on, toward the maze at the far end and then through its small rooms. Pete trailed behind because he needed McAllister and anyway he couldn’t think what else to do. What if they were all dead? What if he and this baby were going to their deaths?

That made no sense.

But, then, neither did anything else.

He heard Darlene first. She was singing at the top of her lungs, belting out a desperate stupid song in her scratchy voice: “‘Onward, Christian soldiers! Marching as to war…’”

McAllister had told Darlene not to sing that song because wars were all over. Darlene had never listened. Now Pete could hear a baby wailing. Then McAllister’s voice, sharp and uncharacteristically angry: “Darlene, stop that!”

Darlene didn’t. The Tesslie and Pete rounded a corner in the maze and faced an open door.

They were all crowded into one small room. McAllister and Darlene and Eduardo stood in the front. Behind them huddled Caity, Paolo, Jenna, Terrell. The Grab children were penned in the corner, the babies lying on the bare metal floor. Two more Tesslies guarded the doorway. Pete ran past them to McAllister. “Are you hurt? Is anybody hurt? What happened?”

Caity said, “They brought us here! Like… like gerbils!”

Where were the gerbils? Then Pete saw them, trying to get out of a large bucket. They couldn’t. Tommy held the squirming Fuzz Ball. Tommy’s eyes were big as bucket bottoms.

McAllister said, “You Grabbed another child? Where’s Ravi?”

“He—”

The edges of the room began to shimmer with golden sparks.

McAllister ran forward, her big belly swaying. “No, please, not without Ravi—please!”

No response from any of the three Tesslies.

“Please! Listen, we’re so grateful for all you’ve done but if you’re really helping us again, we need everyone! We need Ravi!”

“That angel ain’t going to listen to you!” Darlene said, with all the bitterness of her bitter self. “Them cherubim are flaming swords! Don’t you know nothing?”

“Please,” McAllister said to the Tesslie. And then, “Ravi is fertile!”

The golden sparks stopped.

“Ueeuuggthhhg,” Caity said, which might have meant anything.

“Flaming swords!” Darlene shouted, and several children began to cry. McAllister whirled around and slapped Darlene. Pete gaped at McAllister; Darlene put her hand to her red cheek; Caity looked scared in a way that Caity never did; more children screamed.

A fourth Tesslie dragged Ravi into the room, its ropy metal arm wrapped around Ravi’s neck. Released, Ravi stumbled forward as if pushed. He fell into Jenna, who also went down with a cry of pain. Jenna’s fragile bones—

Pete had no time to pull Ravi off Jenna, or to pick up the crying Alicia, or to clutch at McAllister. The sparks enveloped all of them in a shower of gold, and then there was nothing.

It wasn’t dark, and it wasn’t light. It wasn’t anything except cold. I’m dead, Pete thought, but of course he wasn’t.

He lay on something hard in places and soft in others. The air felt warm and thick. Something gray shifted above him, far above him. Some noise, faint and rhythmic, sounded over and over in his ears. Something stirred behind him.

The cold retreated abruptly and Pete returned fully to himself. He sprawled Outside, beside Ravi and McAllister, and underneath Ravi was Jenna. He lay Outside , partly on rock and partly on some plant low and green and alive. Gray clouds blew overhead. Warm wind ruffled his hair. Dazed, he got to his feet, just as the others began to move.

They were all there, stirring on the ground. The Tesslies were gone. The Shell was gone. Piles of stuff lay on the ground in places where, he vaguely realized, it had all been lying when the Shell enclosed it: toys, blankets, food, tents, piles and piles of buckets. Pete turned around.

This was the view he’d had when he’d gone Outside through the funeral slot and then had gone around to the far side of the Shell. He stood on a high ridge of black rock. Below him the land sloped down to the sea. The whole long slope was a mixture of bare rock, green plants, red flowery bushes. A brownish river gushed down the hillside. Beyond, along the shore, the land flattened and gold-and-green plants grew more thickly a long way out, until the water began.

It was quiet Eduardo who spoke first. “Regenerated from wind-blown seeds, maybe. From… wherever survived. And those lupines are nitrogen-fixers, enriching the soil.”

McAllister said shakily, “There must still be ash in the air, it’s so thick, but it’s breathable… fresh water….” She put her hands over her face, all at once reminding Pete of Julie, in the last-ever Grab.

He didn’t want to remember Julie, not now. He wanted to shout, he wanted to cry, he wanted to run down the slope, he wanted to turn around and hit Ravi. He did none of those things. Instead he said, before he was going to do it, a single word. “Gaia.”

McAllister jerked her hands away from her face and turned to him sharply. “What?”

“Gaia. It’s a word the woman in the Grab said to me. Julie. Alicia’s mother.” He pointed at Alicia, who was now screaming with the full force of her lungs. Several other children also began to cry. Pete said some of Julie’s other words: “‘Self-regulating mechanisms.’ ‘Planetary Darwinian self-preservation.’ ‘Cleansing.’”

Eduardo drew a sharp breath. Now the other children were shouting or screaming or whimpering. Fuzz Ball barked and raced around in circles. Darlene started to sing something about Earth abiding. Jenna began to cry. Into the din Pete said, “ We did it. Not the Tesslies. Us. That’s what Julie said.”

McAllister didn’t answer. She stared out at the water, which wasn’t all that bright but still hurt Pete’s eyes to look at. He could tell McAllister was thinking, but he couldn’t tell what. All at once she turned to look at him, and in her dark eyes he saw something he couldn’t name, except that he knew she felt it deeply.

Eduardo said to her, “The Gaia theory… It posited a self-regulating planet to keep conditions optimum for life. A planet that corrects any conditions that might threaten...” He didn’t finish.

McAllister said to Pete, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“We’ll do better this time.”

“Better at what?” Why didn’t he ever understand her?

But McAllister turned her beseeching look on Eduardo. “Our chances—”

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Maybe we can. If the seeds take. If any of those grasses are domesticable grains. If enough marine life survived. If we’re in a tropical climate. I don’t know. Maybe we can.”

Can what? Before Pete could ask, McAllister’s face changed and she was herself again, issuing orders. “Ravi, you and Terrell and Caity and Pete start lugging all that stuff down to that flat, sheltered place by the river—do you see where I mean? Bring the tents first, it’s going to rain. And the food, all the food. Darlene, I’m sorry I slapped you. We can discuss it later. For now, try to get rations organized until Eduardo can determine which plants are edible. Eduardo, can you walk enough to find the best spot to put the soy into the ground? Paolo, you and Jenna are going to have to look after all the kids once we get them into tents—I’m sorry, but we can’t spare anyone else. Tommy, you help move the food to under cover, and after that I’m going to want you to bring Eduardo some different plants from farther down the slope. Do you think you can do that?”