James Blish - Cities in Flight

“All right,” Amalfi said. “Then what Retma is saying is that the most probable denouement, if dead-center is empty when June second comes, is that we will all be reduced to a sea of neutrons?”

“That’s right,” Dr. Schloss said.

“Not much of a choice,” Gifford Bonner said reflectively.

“No,” Miramon said, speaking for the first time. “It is not much of a choice. But it is all the choice we will have. And we will not have even that, if we fail to reach the metagalactic center in time.”

Nevertheless, it was only in the last year that Web Hazleton began to grasp, and then only dimly, the true nature of the coming end. Even then, the knowledge did not come home to him by way of the men who were directing the preparations; what they were preparing for, though it was not kept secret, remained mostly incomprehensible, and so could not shake his confidence that what was being aimed at was a way to prevent the Ginnangu-Gap from happening at all. He ceased to believe that, finally and dismally, only when Estelle refused to bear him a child.

“But why?” Web said, seizing her hand with one of his, and with the other gesturing desperately at the walls of the apartment the Hevians had given them. “We’re permanent now—it isn’t only that we know we are, everybody agrees we are. It isn’t a tabu line for us any longer!”

“I know,” Estelle said gently. “It isn’t that. I wish you hadn’t asked; it would have been simpler that way.”

“It would have occurred to me sooner or later. Ordinarily I would have gone off the pills right away, but there was so much confusion about moving to He—anyhow I only just realized you were still on them. I wish you’d tell me why.”

“Web, my dear, you’d know why if you thought a little more about it. The end is the end, that’s all. What would be the sense of having a child that would live only a year or two?”

“It may not be that certain,” Web said darkly.

“Of course it’s certain. Actually I think I’ve known it was coming ever since I was born—perhaps even before I was born. I could feel it coming.”

“Honestly, Estelle, don’t you know that’s nonsense?”

“I can see why it would sound that way,” Estelle admitted. “But I can’t help that. And since the end is on the way, I can’t call it nonsense, can I? I had the premonition, and it was right.”

“I think what this all means is that you don’t want children.”

“That’s true,” Estelle said, surprisingly. “I never have had any drive toward children—not even much drive toward my own survival, really. But that’s all part of the same thing. In a way, I was lucky; a lot of people are not at home in their own times. I was born in the time that was right for me—the time of the end of the world. That’s why I’m not oriented toward child-bearing—because I know that there won’t be another generation after yours and mine. For all I know, I might even actually be sterile; it certainly wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Estelle, don’t. I can’t listen to you talk like that.”

“I’m sorry, love. I don’t mean to distress you. It doesn’t distress me, but I know the reason for that. I’m pointed toward the end—in a way it’s the ultimate, natural outcome of my life, the event that gives it all meaning; but you’re only being overtaken by it, like most people.”

“I don’t know,” Web muttered. “It all sounds awfully like a rationalization to me. Estelle, you’re so beautiful … doesn’t that mean anything? Aren’t you beautiful to attract a man, so you can have a child? That’s the way I’ve always understood it.”

“It might have been for that once,” Estelle said gravely. “It sounds like it ought to be an axiom, anyway. Well … I wouldn’t say so to anybody but you, Web, but I do know I’m beautiful. Most women would tell you the same thing about themselves, if it were permissible—it’s a state of mind, one that’s essential to a woman, she’s only half a woman if she doesn’t think she’s beautiful … and she isn’t beautiful if she doesn’t think she is, no matter what she looks like. I’m not ashamed of being beautiful and I’m not embarrassed by it, but I don’t pay it much attention any more, either. It’s a means to an end, just as you say—and the end has outlived its usefulness. In my mind, it’s obvious that a woman who would commit a year-old child to the flames would have to be a fiend, if she knew that that’s what she’d be doing just by giving birth. I know; and I can’t do it.”

“Women have taken chances like that before, and knowingly, too,” Web said stubbornly. “Peasants who knew their children would starve, because the parents were starving already. Or women in the age just before spaceflight; Dr. Bonner says that for five years there the race stood within twenty minutes of extinction. But they went ahead and had the children anyhow—otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”

“It’s an urge,” Estelle said quietly, “that I don’t have, Web. And this time, there’s no escape.”

“You keep saying that, but I’m not even sure you’re right. Amalfi says that there’s a chance.”

“I know,” Estelle said. “I did some of the calculations. But it’s not that kind of a chance, my dear. It’s something you might be able to do, or I, because we’re old enough to absorb instructions, and do just the right thing at the right time. A baby couldn’t do that. It would be like setting him adrift in a spaceship, with plenty of power and plenty of food—he’d die anyhow, and you couldn’t tell him how to prevent it. It’s so complex that some of us surely will make fatal mistakes.”

He was silent.

“Besides,” Estelle added gently, “even for us it won’t be for long. Well die too. It’s only that well have a chance to influence the moment of creation that’s implicit in the moment of destruction. That, if I make it at all, will be my child, Web—the only one worth having now.”

“But it won’t be mine.”

“No, love. You’ll have your own.”

“No, no, Estelle! What good is that? I want mine to be yours too!.”

She put her arms around his shoulders and leaned her cheek against his.

“I know,” she whispered. “I know. But the time for that is over. That’s the fate we were formed for, Web. The gift of children was taken away from us. Instead of babies, we were given universes.”

“It’s not enough,” Web said. He embraced her fiercely. “Not by half. Nobody consulted me when that contract was being drawn.”

“Did you ask to be born, love?”

“Well … no. But I don’t mind. … Oh. That’s how it is.”

“Yes, that’s how it is. He can’t consult with us either. So it’s up to us. No child of mine born to go into the flames, Web; no child of mine and yours.”

“No,” Web said hollowly. “You’re right, it wouldn’t be fair. All right, Estelle. I’ll settle for another year of you. I don’t think I want a universe.”

Deceleration began late in January of 4004. From here on out, the flight of He would be tentative, despite the increasing urgency; for the metagalactic center was as featureless as the rest of intergalactic space, and only extreme care and the most complex instrumentation would tell the voyagers when they had arrived. For the purpose, the Hevians had much elaborated their control bridge, which was located on a 300-foot steel basketwork tower atop the highest mountain the planet afforded—called, to Amalfi’s embarrassment, Mt. Amalfi. Here the Survivors—as they had begun to call themselves with a kind of desperate jocularity—met in almost continuous session.

The Survivors consisted simply of everyone on the planet whom Schloss and Retma jointly agreed capable of following the instructions for the ultimate instant with even the slightest chance of success. Schloss and Retma had been hard-headed; it was not a large group. It included all of the New Earthmen, though Schloss had been dubious about both Dee and Web, and a group of ten Hevians including Miramon and Retma himself. Oddly, as the time grew closer, the Hevians began to drop out, apparently each as soon as he had fully understood what was being attempted and what the outcome might be.