Jenna Kemp, mayor of Sun Forge, folded her thinkrag in half and pushed it away. She sat back in her chair, staring down the length of the conference table. It was morning and she was alone in the council chamber, which was probably a blessing. Had anyone else been present, she couldn't have hidden her uneasiness, and uneasiness made her surly and fractious.
The latest harvest figures were in, and C-ration numbers were down over the previous year. Heavy snows in winter always meant slower regrowth in the spring, but even taking that into account, Jenna foresaw trouble. There was still enough wheat, milk, and eggs to supplement the rations, but there might not be the next year, or the year after.
That was if the harvesters stayed within a kilometer of the moat, of course. They could venture farther out into the barrens, but that required progressively more water. It might be all right this year since the snow pack in the mountains was so high, but what would happen after the next dry winter? The choice might come down to gathering food or maintaining the moat, and that was no choice at all.
Jenna sighed. The root problem was simple: Sun Forge was exceeding its ideal population. They took more raw materials out of the barrens in the form of food, clothing, and other supplies than they put back in waste and dead bodies. But when things were going well people didn't want to hear about birth control, and those first-aid kits with the condoms in them didn't show up very often anyway. They had no equipment for safe abortions, but that hardly mattered. Religiously the town had gone so far overboard in the past twenty years that mention of the word might get her thrown out of office, if not over the moat.
Maybe it was time to start encouraging exploration again. Early on, it seemed every young person in town had wanted to face the barrens one on one, and half of those who left never came back. Jenna had gone out twice herself when she was still full of juice. But as the years slipped by, as the satellite news worsened and it became increasingly clear that no rescue was coming, as the U.N. quarantine of North America took effect, these missions had slowly tapered off. There didn't seem to be any point. No one but Carl McFarland and his little buddy Orrin Pritchard had traveled more than a kilometer into the barrens in over a decade.
Elbows on the table, Jenna ran her hands through her curly, graying hair. She'd been sixteen when the tide came in; fifty-six was an age she had never expected to see. There'd been times when the town was so close to collapse that another year seemed too much to hope for, let alone another month. Every day was a battle, but at least rescue had seemed possible. Now Jenna was tired and stability her fondest wish. Her dreams of escape from Sun Forge were long dead.
She pushed her chair back roughly from the conference table. She didn't want to deal with problems like this anymore, but if she didn't then who would? The majority of the town's twenty-three hundred residents were under forty. They had no idea what life was like before the tide. C-rations and army fatigues were all they'd ever known for food and clothing, and since few of them paid attention to the news, their world was no larger than the harvest zone outside the moat. Who could do this job if she didn't? Who would do it when she was gone? The council was worthless, including her husband Ray, and no one younger seemed interested in taking over for them.
Cold morning sunlight streamed in through the picture windows, picking out a century's nicks and scars on the surface of the conference table. Tree branches speckled with tiny new buds threw their stark shadows into the room. Jenna pushed the folded computer into a patch of sunlight to recharge, then reached into the breast pocket of her camouflaged shirt. She took out a tattered holo of her father, Harold Thomas.
Jenna smoothed out the dog-eared, foil-backed picture in another slanting sunbeam. Her father's head and shoulders appeared, solid and in full color, only faintly blurry, seeming to extend far deeper than the thickness of the foil. Jenna had inherited her mother's nose, mouth, and hair, but her gray eyes and stocky build came straight from her father. "What would you tell me if you were here, Dad?" Jenna asked. "What would you tell me to do?"
Probably not much of anything. Her father would be in his nineties if he were still alive—but then again, they might not be here if her father were still alive. The day the tide came in, Harold Thomas had been all for hightailing it out of town. It was McFarland, the so-called expert, who convinced him to dig in and fight. Her father died that same afternoon when an airborne puff of silver hit him full in the face. It swarmed over his head and down his throat, smothering him to death before anyone could douse him with water.
Jenna had watched it happen. She still woke up soaked some nights, her father's head bright in her mind's eye, gleaming like some fearsome liquid robot's, slowly shrinking, dissolving, as its gaping mouth opened wide in a silent cry. Mostly the head was her father's, but sometimes it was her own.
If only McFarland hadn't interfered, the whole family might have gotten safely to Lake Tahoe, or even to the coast. Jenna had never forgiven him for that, and she knew she never would.
Her father's holo flickered in and out of solidity as a fluttering of dark shadows eclipsed the sunlight. Something tapped at the window—a bird, apparently attracted by its own reflection. At first the sun swallowed its color and shape, but when it settled down on the ledge and furled its wings, Jenna saw that it was a white dove.
Chills raced up her spine. She tucked the holo into her pocket and pushed her chair back slowly, never taking her eyes from the window. Her legs trembled as she crossed the room and cracked the door. "Jim! Silvia!" she called softly. "Come here a minute! Quick!"
As Jenna sat down again, she heard the thumping of Jim Ivie's crutch. The door swung open.
"Shh, shh, shh," Jenna said, waving her hands. "No sudden moves. Don't scare it away."
Jim, who ran the resource pool, moved carefully into the room. He was about thirty-five, but the freckles scattered across his nose and cheeks made him look younger. His square, handsome face seemed creased in a perpetual smile. He leaned on a single homemade wooden crutch. The left leg of his khaki fatigues hung pinned shut and empty. "Don't scare what away?" he asked.
"The bird, the bird," Jenna said excitedly.
"Oh, wow." Jim leaned his crutch against the table and eased himself into one of the council chairs. The dove preened itself on the ledge. "That's really pretty, Mayor. What kind of bird is it?"
"You don't recognize it?"
Jim shook his head. "Looks kind of like a pigeon, but not quite. Wasn't it Glenda Jones used to keep some pigeons on Lovelock Street?"
Jenna nodded, barely keeping herself in her chair. "Filthy birds," she said. "But not this one. Not this one."
"What is it? Where did it come from?"
Lord, what a dull man, Jenna thought. Strong, brave, dependable, but dull as a cat's scratching post. The dove strutted on the ledge, its chest puffed out as if it were courting its own reflection. Jenna pointed at it, trying to still the shaking in her hand. "You don't know anyone in town who has a bird like that, do you?"
"I didn't think anyone had birds anymore," Jim said. "'Less you mean chickens or turkeys. This sure is a pretty one, though. What kind did you say it was?"
Silvia Gonsalves entered the room. She was a thick, matronly woman near fifty, with dark hair pulled back in a severe bun. She ran the supply room across the lobby. "I'm sorry I took so long, Mayor," she said. "I was in the middle of—" Three steps into the council chamber, Silvia blanched and dropped to one knee. "El Espiritu Santo," she breathed, crossing herself.
"So you know what it is, too." Jenna rose from her chair to approach the window. Bright coins of sunlight, reflections from the silvery sea beyond the moat, flashed between the houses and trees lining the next street. Jenna had to squint to study the bird. She glanced over her shoulder. "You recognize it."
Silvia nodded, an overstuffed olive in her green fatigues. "I know it from the stained glass window at St. Mark's, the scene where John baptizes Jesus. It is the sign of the Holy Spirit—the dove."
"A dove?" Ivie asked, reaching for his crutch. "You've got to be kidding. Where in the world would a dove have come from?" He stood up, trying to peer past Jenna at the miraculous bird. "My gosh, I've never seen one before. That's something."
"Yes, it's really something," murmured Jenna. The bird was cleanly, brilliantly white, brighter far than the whitewashed walls of the council chamber. As a girl Jenna had dreamed of astronautics—seeing Earth from orbit, living on the Moon or in the Mars colony, or cataloguing the asteroids. Now she felt much the same excitement. "There's another dove in the Bible, you know," she said. "It's the one Noah sent out from the ark to find dry land."
Jenna and the others watched the dove in reverent silence, until, startled by who knew what, it flapped away in a white flurry.
Father Luis Ramirez climbed the stairs toward light and life, away from the darkness of the basement, and the dead woman. He might have been dragging Bob up the stairs behind him, so heavy was his heart with sorrow.
"I'll take care of everything," said Luis. "I don't want you worrying about anything but your little boy. He needs you strong now."
"I know it, Luis," said Bob Stillman. He still sounded stunned. Luis had expected him to linger in the basement, to say a private farewell to Holly, but instead Bob dogged him like a child afraid of the dark. "Father, I mean. Sorry."
"That's all right," said Luis. They were both the same age, born eight years into the tide. They'd grown up together, more or less. "I haven't gotten used to it myself."
They emerged into the Burlingames' kitchen. Despite the stained and warped linoleum, the blistered and cracked Formica countertops, the room was neat and tidy and welcoming. June Burlingame was neat and tidy as well, but anything but welcoming. She stood in the tiny breakfast nook, rocking and shushing Bob's newborn son. Her lip curled with evident distaste as Luis appeared. "Your mother's gone already," she said. "Left here like a bat out of you-know-where."
Luis's mother Madeira was a midwife. She'd delivered the Stillmans' son early in the morning, after supervising Holly's difficult labor all night. From what Luis could piece together, his mother was performing an episiotomy when eclampsia struck, and she'd worked feverishly to get the baby out while trying to stave off toxic shock. The first part she accomplished. The second part—well, she'd sent Bob running to drag Luis out of bed so he could administer last rites while Holly was still breathing.
"Yes, I know, Mrs. Burlingame," said Luis, constructing a calm face. "She probably told you she needed baby supplies from Town Hall." He didn't mention that Madeira's intent had been to send June. He wondered how that conversation had gone. "Listen, Mrs. Burlingame, I wanted to thank you myself for all you've done here. I know it's been a long night, but I'm sure things would have gone even worse without you there, and I know my mother appreciated the help."
"The baby's safe, that's what's important," said June. Prim and thin-lipped, she made even a khaki T-shirt and combat pants look as proper as a nun's habit. She cradled the fussing newborn protectively in her arms. "Though once you both turn him to wickedness and idolatry, it will have been better if he'd died in innocence."
Bob, hovering in Luis's shadow, stiffened. "What did you say?"
The baby wailed, and Luis held a restraining arm in front of Bob. "Soft," he said. Straightening his black woolen cassock, he addressed June, who sniffed and slid her eyes away. "We'll be baptizing him nine days from now, Mrs. Burlingame. Knowing your concern, we'd be delighted to have you attend. Nine a.m., a week from Sunday. You know where St. Mark's is, I assume? We'll look forward to it. Bob, maybe you should take your son back now."
Bob nodded and crossed the room to take the baby from June's arms. She was obviously reluctant to part with him, and under her breath she muttered, "Heathens."
Bob's face darkened, but he let Luis lead him through the living room and out the front door. The baby quieted in its father's arms.
On the front stoop Luis breathed in the fresh morning air. He faced west, where above the houses and the woods the distant mountains rose, silver and painfully bright with reflected sunlight. Children's voices fell from the air like dew; up and down Winnemucca Street, they played on the threadbare lawns of well-tended yards, before houses that were run-down, decaying. Such carefree joy in the shadow of such power and peril. Luis sensed for a moment how precarious their worlds here were, implacable forces poised on every side to choke out life and faith . . . even the faith of a priest.
Bob joined Luis and shut the torn screen door behind him. "Luis, I can't take this," he said in a fierce whisper. "I can't live in a house with people who hate me, a house where . . . where . . ." His mouth quivered and he bit his lip.
Shivering in the cool air, Luis gave Bob's arm a squeeze and sat down on the stoop. Bob sat beside him, holding the infant as if it might explode. The shadow of the house stretched almost to the street before them. "I know, Bob," Luis said. "The Burlingames are difficult people to get along with—unless, of course, you happen to be a bigoted white fundamentalist."
A desperate laugh burst out of Bob. "Well, I'm bigoted and white," he said. "That's two out of . . . two out of . . ." His face crumpled up and fat tears rolled down his cheeks. As his body shook, he cradled his tiny son to his chest, rubbing his cheek against the top of the child's downy head.
Luis fingered his dark mustache in distress. "Bob," he said, "I hardly know what to tell you. I can only imagine what you're going through. I don't know what I can say to help."
Bob squeezed his eyes shut and rocked with his son. A high, keening sound escaped his throat.
Luis stared at the cracked cement of the front walk. "She's in a better place now," he said, but the words sounded empty of comfort even to him. He let out a heavy breath. He couldn't look at Bob. "I'll get you help. I'll organize something, make sure there's someone from the parish here to help you every day."
"I can't stay here," Bob said, shaking his head violently. "I just can't. I can't even go back inside. That dark, ugly basement . . . that's no place for a woman to . . . to . . ." He pawed tears from his face. "No place to raise a baby, I mean."
"All right," said Luis, chastened. "I'll go talk to someone on the council, see if I can't get you moved somewhere else. I can't promise there'll be anything above ground, but I'll push hard."
Bob nodded, sniffling. "Thank you," he said.
Luis stood, his restless hands balling into ineffectual fists. He wanted to strike someone, but he couldn't say whom. "I'll make the report at Town Hall," he said. "The team will be here to . . . well, they'll be here within the hour. You sit tight." He traced a perfunctory cross in Bob's direction, then hurried down the walk toward the street, the sunlight.
But with a quick clatter of footsteps, Bob caught up and grabbed the sleeve of Luis's cassock. "No, wait, Luis!" His son slept soundly, tucked in the crook of his arm, almost as if he too were dead. "You can't let them take her! We can bury her somewhere! Behind the church! They used to do that, didn't they? Bury people in the ground? That's what my pa says. He says there ought to be a place you can go visit, where you can take your son to visit, some kind of marker or something! He always says that's what they should have done with ma, not taken her out into the barrens and—"
"Bob," said Luis, a little harshly, "it's the law. Three days of mourning, then outside the moat for recycling. We can't afford to do it any other way. You know that. We need to eat."
Bob's mouth twisted like he might throw up. Then the feverish light slowly ebbed from his eyes, and his hand dropped from Luis's sleeve. He gave a barely perceptible nod and wandered back up the walk, like a lost soul drifting through limbo.
Luis turned and walked swiftly north, his cassock billowing in a black cloud behind him. The sun didn't warm him where it touched; the voices of children at play didn't cheer him. He looked up at the sky, angry at himself and at God. Father Leone lay dying of pneumonia, leaving a weak and foolish man like him in charge of his sheep. Was that wisdom? Was that right?
Was God really up there? Was he listening? Or was he like the silent satellites above, seeing all, beaming down words of comfort to the cursed land below, but turning a deaf ear to the pleas that rose in return?
A flash of movement in the sky to the west caught Luis's eye, and for a moment he saw a white bird soaring through the air—a dove, like the one in the stained-glass window of his little church. It sailed effortlessly on the morning thermals, barely flapping its wings.
The dove crossed overhead, and Luis lost it in the sun. He blinked and shaded his eyes, but when he could see again it was nowhere in sight.
He turned in a circle, hands on his hips, more confused than before. Was this a sign? Reproof against his doubt? Or was he just going molten?
Luis barked a self-deprecating laugh. But as he hurried up the street, as much as he tried to keep them on the ground, his eyes kept straying to the sky.
Orrin Pritchard finished the last bit of his dry chocolate cookie, careful to catch the crumbs in the flimsy cardboard box. He tucked the packets of instant coffee and powdered milk into his shirt pocket, crumpled the box, and flung it as far as he could into the silver sea that surrounded them. The box turned metallic in an instant, then melted and merged with the tide, broken down into its constituent molecules. "Th-th-that hit the spot," he said.
Carl made a face. "How can you eat the same damn meal every day and not get sick of it?"
Orrin shrugged. "I l-l-like it. Meal B's the b-best."
"That's right, you're a teenager. You'll eat anything." Carl held up the apple chip he had just extracted from a bag in his C-ration box. "Me, I'd give a thousand of these for just one nice, thick steak, really rare, and some grilled mushrooms. Or peanut butter and jelly instead. I'd give anything for a nice PB and J."
"M-M-Meal D has peanut butter."
"I mean real peanut butter, not that Army-issue crap. It's worse than the crackers that come with it."
"It's g-good."
"Yeah, but you think tinned spaghetti in watery ketchup is haute cuisine. I'd sure like to take you for a real meal someday, kid. In a restaurant. You don't know what you're missing."
Orrin drew his knees up to his chest. He would like that too, but he didn't trust himself to say so coherently.
They sat on a wet patch of ground at the end of the wide gray path they had forged across the plain, looking suave (or so Orrin imagined) in their aviator-style sunglasses. The quicksilver sea, blinding in the late-morning sun, stretched away before them as far as they could see, dotted with C-ration packages, bundles of military clothing, oiled guns of every type, and boxes of ammo. At their backs, Sun Forge huddled like a frightened giant behind its protective moat, and far to their right the thin remnant of the Walker River trailed off into a swampy gray morass. The seat of Orrin's pants was beginning to chafe him, but he didn't mind. He lived for these moments alone in the barrens with Carl. Orrin had only just turned nineteen, but he considered Carl McFarland his best friend in the world, not just his teacher. No one was chrome like Carl.
Carl had not yet eaten the apple chip. He turned it to and fro before his face, white mustache puckered. "The thing I can never get used to," he said, "is the way all these dried apples are so much alike." He peered into the olive-green cellophane bag in the box in his lap and fished out another slice with skeletal fingers. He held them both up for Orrin's inspection. "See? Exact same wrinkles, same pattern of spots on the peel, same little cracks, same discoloration. It's the same damn apple slice, over and over again, every time you pick Meal E. Can you beat that?" He popped one of the apple chips into his mouth. "You'd think we'd have programmed these for a little more variety."
Orrin cleared his throat. "I-I-I didn't realize that they were even su-su-supposed to be different."
"Well, in the real world they would be," Carl said, squinting again into the box in his lap. "It's like the bread Wilkes makes down at the bakery. No two loaves come out exactly the same."
"But that m-m-makes sense," Orrin said. He pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his gangly legs, taking a breath in preparation for a long speech. "He d-d-d-does it with his hands. He can't g-get each one exactly the same. Fruit's d-d-different, though. It g-g-grows from a genetic p-pattern."
Carl frowned the same way he did at the chalkboard in class, lips pursed, white mustache bristling like a woolly centipede. At eighty he was still tall and spry, but so gaunt he reminded Orrin of the illustrations from Don Quixote in the town library. The old man's close-cropped hair was past white and turning yellow, but his eyes, now hidden by the mirror-lensed sunglasses, were still alert and alive. Orrin liked to pretend he was really Carl's grandson; they looked enough alike that a stranger might have believed it. They certainly had more in common than Orrin did with his father.
"That's true," Carl said, rummaging in his ration box for the packet of coffee. He dumped the contents into an old plastic thermocup, then added water from the nozzle of the tank which stood on end beside him. He set the cup on a sunny patch of ground to let it heat up. "But a genetic pattern is more like a recipe than a blueprint. It tells you pretty much how something is supposed to be built, but not down to every last detail. Can you tell me how that's different from the patterns the assemblers use?"
Orrin squirmed a bit under the flat gaze of Carl's mirrorshades. A trickle of sweat ran down his forehead. Because of the imperfect reflectivity of the tide and the energy released by the breaking of chemical bonds, it was almost always warmer in the barrens than in town, but now Orrin felt the heat of a spotlight on his face. "The p-p-pattern specifies exactly how much of any g-g-given atom or molecule is needed," Orrin said, trying to think far enough ahead that he could spit out what he wanted to say. "Not only that, it s-s-s-says exactly where each one is s-s-supposed to go."
"Very good," Carl said. His khaki fatigues were damp with perspiration. "Any other differences? Think about the sequence of growth."
Orrin took a deep breath. "I've s-s-seen the way the cherries g-grow in the orchards in town. It's sort of from the ins-s-s-side out. They start like little v-v-versions of themselves, and they g-g-grow bigger as time goes b-by."
"Cells divide and grow as the organism develops. As opposed to these apple slices, which . . ."
"Which are b-b-built up a layer at a time from individual m-m-m-molecules, laid in p-place like bricks."
"Exactly so. We'll make a scientist out of you yet, boy."
Orrin grinned. "I sure wish I could have worked on all this with you at M.I.T."
"Orrin, that's the last thing I wish," said Carl softly.
Stung, Orrin looked down at his knees.
The thermocup beeped. Carl picked it up and blew on the hot coffee. He tasted it, grimaced, and set the cup aside. "I don't know why I'm drinking this noxious stuff on a hot day anyway," he said. "Listen, I don't mean to make you feel bad. I'd just hate for you to have to know that your work led directly to this." He gestured around them at the tide, sparsely dotted with the specks that were military supplies. "I mean, it was supposed to be something useful and good. Thinkrags, programmable paper, that was all just superficial, the tip of the iceberg. We were on the verge not just of a manufacturing revolution but of a medical one too. Then—all this."
Orrin's pulse quickened. Carl didn't talk about his M.I.T. days very often. When he did, the trick was to keep him talking. "B-b-but this w-w-wasn't your work," he said. "These were the m-m-m-military projects. Quartermaster and—and Scorched Earth."
Carl nodded slowly, eyes unfocused. "My project was military, too," he said, "at least there at the end."
A shiver ran up Orrin's spine. This was too chrome. "What was your project's codename again?" he asked slyly. Carl had never mentioned it before, or Orrin would have remembered.
Carl picked up his cup and frowned down at it. "A big joke," he said. "A big, stupid joke." He flung the remainder of the coffee out into the silvery sea, then levered himself carefully to his feet. "We'd better get back to work here, don't you think? Earn our keep." He hefted his water tank and slipped his arms through its webbed harness.
Discouraged, Orrin heaved himself to his feet. Carl had probably said more than he intended already, and he'd be sullen about it the rest of the day. Orrin looked back toward town, along the meter-wide gray trail he and Carl had sprayed into existence that morning. Contact with water inactivated the tide for twenty-four hours. The trail would provide safe passage back to town until sometime the next morning. Much closer to the moat, Orrin could see dozens of tiny figures, each armed with his or her own water tank, gathering up the most urgently needed supplies and leaving the rest to disintegrate and be recycled, as it would three days after generation. Manna from the desert, as Reverend Kemp was fond of saying. Miraculous food in the midst of the great barrens. Proof of God's love.
"C-C-Carl," Orrin said, without consciously having framed a question, "are we ever g-g-going to beat this stuff? Honestly."
Carl had bent to pick up a jury-rigged piece of equipment, the guts of an old microwave oven wired to a couple of thinkrags. It was an invention he had been fiddling with off and on for nearly a decade, a way to beam commands to the tide—if only he could crack the authorization code. So far he'd had no luck. Straightening up, he sighed, and the sound was like wind passing through dead leaves at the onset of winter.
"I wish I could tell you," he said, "I really wish I could. We can't count on the rest of the world for help—they've demonstrated that pretty conclusively—so all we really have to work with is our brains and whatever equipment we can scavenge from town. And I'm not sure that's enough. I think the only equipment that could really ever control this stuff must have been lost during the outbreak."
"Which d-d-doesn't speak very h-highly for it in the first place, I guess," said Orrin.
Carl's wry smile looked somehow tired. "We may make a cynic out of you yet."
A motion in the sky caught Orrin's eye—a white bird of some sort, flying from the direction of Sun Forge. The few wild birds in town, sparrows mostly, never flew this far into the barrens. They had learned better. "Wh-wh-what in the world?" he said, half to himself.
"Hmm?" Carl asked. "What?"
"That. This." Orrin pointed. The bird drew near, then circled their patch of wet ground just out of reach.
The bird feinted toward Carl, whose hands flew up to his face. "Jesus!"
Orrin's water tank was standing on the ground beside him, two dirty plastic cylinders strapped together, about a meter high. The bird perched on the tank. It lifted one snowy wing and began to preen. "H-h-holy smokes, Carl!" said Orrin, crouching for a better look. "What sort of b-b-bird is this? I've never seen one like it!"
Carl, bent under the weight of his tank, looked ashen. "I can't believe it," he murmured. "My God."
"What? Can't believe what?"
"It's a dove." Carl shook his head. "It's the goddamn symbol of peace. It's a genuine white dove."
The dove burst suddenly into flight, soaring southeast. They turned to watch it melt into the sky. "Where the hell is it going?" Carl asked. "There's nothing out that way."
But Orrin, straining his eyes, made out a series of specks on the southeastern horizon, where heat waves from the desert floor bled into the sky. A jolt of electricity seemed to go through him. His mouth moved, but he couldn't get his lips and tongue around the words he wanted to say.
"What? What is it?" Carl shook Orrin by the shoulder. "You see something out there?"
Orrin took off his sunglasses. Sweat prickled his scalp. "I-I-I-I'm not quite sure," he said, short of breath. "But it l-l-looks like a mess of—c-c-covered wagons? P-p-pulled by horses! And they're h-h-h-headed this way."
