Диана Дуэйн - Lifeboats

Nita leaned back against her own rock and sighed. “It is still out,” she said. “But more on the yes-to-rings side than the other way. Seems there are density anomalies that may make the shredding easier.”

“Assuming there are any human beings left on Earth at that point,” Ronan said. “And not just gone because we’ve destroyed our environment, or evolved into something different, or simply left.”

Carl nodded. “Half a million years is a good while yet,” he said. “Anything can happen…”

Everyone got quiet. But Kit was for the moment lost in another vision. “Imagine what that would look like, though,” he said. Gradually he became aware of the others looking at him strangely. “But seriously. When we look up at that moon from home, it’s nearly a quarter million miles away. Imagine how it would look at twenty thousand miles away. It would fill half the sky.”

A lot of eyes went up to the darkly burning, lowering presence that was easily taking up a third of the sky here. “And then,” he said, “rings…”

Kit realized that Nita’s gaze was fixed on him, and when their eyes met, the look he saw there said something he’d occasionally seen there before: you see this vision, too. And you see what it would be like. I thought I was the only one…

“But it still leaves us with a problem,” Tom says. “Or rather, it leaves somebody with a problem. Not me, not any of you; this won’t happen on any of our watches. But when that inward spiral starts, assuming there are people left, and you’re Earth’s Planetary… what do you do? Do you allow nature to take its course? Do you start the process of stabilizing the Moon’s orbit so that doesn’t descend any further? Granted, the choice becomes a bit simpler if there’s nobody left but the Planetary, or the small group of wizards who’ve been left behind as caretakers. Oh yes,” Tom said, putting his hands behind his head and leaning against them, “there are worlds where that’s exactly what’s happened. The dominant species has moved away, or changed beyond their need to keep that world any longer—yet they feel sentimental about it, and so they keep it exactly as it was before they left.”

“Kind of like keeping somebody’s room just like it was when they died,” Ronan said. “Little bit creepy, if you ask me.”

“I wouldn’t argue,” Tom said. “Nonetheless, it happens. Attachment’s a strange thing. Sometimes a being, or a species, will get very attached indeed. And the urge towards inertia, towards preservation as opposed to the urge towards change, is very common.” He looked out across the plain toward the gating complex. “So is the urge towards nostalgia.” He looked at their campfire. “But is allowing entropy to have its way with physical matter always necessarily an evil choice? Might there not be examples of entropically-grounded change that aren’t negatively connoted—that don’t necessarily mean the Lone Power is standing somewhere in the background going ‘Nya-ah-ah’ at us like Dishonest John?”

This produced some confused looks among the audience. Carl, who’d settled himself crosslegged across the fire from Tom with his back to another rock, raised his eyebrows and said, “You’re dating yourself again.”

“Hardly,” Tom said, smiling slightly and taking a drink of his Guinness. “It’s widely known my personal history reaches back to at least the Pleistocene. No one’s going to care if I reference the Saturday morning cartoons we had back then.”

He gave absolutely no sign of noticing Nita’s sudden red-hot blush. “I’ll grant you, at this end of time and causality it’s hard to imagine what the form of change and growth that the Powers that Be originally intended would have looked like in operation. Impossible for us to tell, of course; before the other Powers got their version of change fully up and running, the Lone Power installed its own more toxic version over the top, and that’s what we’re stuck with. But the rest of the Powers seem to have accepted some of Its forms of change, at this end of time, as part of nature. Must we keep entire ecosystems running past the time at which they’d have relatively gracefully expired, merely out of the urge to stick it to the Lone One? If everything must die, can’t we allow some of it to die with dignity?”

Kit saw that some of the group around the campfire were looking at Tom rather strangely. “I know,” Tom said. “You’re young in your practices yet… used to fighting the Lone One tooth and nail, and even winning. Which is as it should be. That’s why wizardry was given into your hands, into all our hands, when young. Yet even when you’re young, you have to learn to pick your fights. Then you start learning to leverage your experience against your power levels.” His glance rested on Dairine for a moment. “Some of us learn that earlier than others. There are people who waste time feeling sorry for wizards whose power levels took a dive after they come off their Ordeals, never suspecting how much smarter and more effective those wizards are now they’ve realized how to make the most of what they’ve got.”

“That was a compliment,” Dairine said. “Accepted with thanks.”

“And on that note,” Carl said, “especially speaking of power levels taking a dive, even the ones we’re working with here… Someone has a few other stops to make before he heads off for his own shift pretty soon.” He neatly deprived Tom of the Guinness bottle and drained it.

Tom laughed and shook his head. “Hate to admit it, but he has a point…”

The Supervisories got up and wandered around making their goodnights to everyone, and finally waved and vanished into the dark in the direction of the short-transport pad. Everybody else made themselves comfortable around the Stone Throne for a while, enjoying the fire, snacking casually on what food remained of the buffet that had been laid out, and just generally relaxing and ignoring Thesba, now standing fairly high overhead and occasionally obscured by drifting cloud. Ronan had renewed his discussion of the “first” of the Star Wars films with Cheleb and Djam and Mr. Frilly; he’d started that one running on the streaming video with the purpose of freezing it on every scene he didn’t like, one after another, and mocking them all mercilessly. Dairine was sitting in the grass with her back against one of the standing stones and Spot in her lap, smiling slightly and watching this performance unfold.

Kit strolled over to the remains of the buffet to get himself some beef jerky—Ronan had brought that, and it was surprisingly good—and glanced around him. Just about then Nita wandered up by him, watching the video-screening action with an expression of dry amusement that suggested she had absolutely no intention of getting involved. “You know,” she said, “that Creamsicle juice has been really nice but I would kill for some fizzy water just about now.”

“I’ve got some,” Kit said. “Come on back.”

He led her around to the standing stone where his puptent was anchored, opened the portal, and stepped through, waving the lights up. Glancing around at the place, he got annoyed with himself: his supplies were a lot more disorganized than he thought he’d left them. I guess I didn’t really do that good a job tidying yesterday, he thought. Too much on my mind… “Sorry,” he said, “it’s kind of messy in here.” He went over to the far side of the puptent where he had a few six packs of bottled water stacked up, and started pulling the plastic off one of them.

“Don’t worry about it,” Nita said. “You should see mine.” She sighed and leaned against the curved puptent wall.

Kit fought with the plastic until he could find the right place to get it to rip. “I meant to ask,” he said. “When I couldn’t reach you for hours and hours the other day—what was that about?”