Weissenbaum's Eye - Stetten - Chapter 29
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    CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

    The starlight saw it happen. On Earth it would have been a shooting star, but without atmosphere the Moon could offer no such glory. The message probe sped past the silent wreckage of the relay beacons, plunging toward the surface of the Moon. It could not stop itself. It had no rockets and no landing gear. Only a message sent from Mara, which the probe transmitted just before its path passed on into solid rock.
    We had fled the campus, Mara and I. She was ready now to join Don Andrews, and her son, in Backdoor. I would take her to the plantation, where she would wait for Tarni to pick her up.
    They were sleeping in Backdoor, all but Judy, who was sitting awake at her station high up above the cathedral floor, picturing how to inflate, and then evacuate, a large bubble of substrate in outer space. The message reached her there, that Mara was ready.
    Judy went to Tarni's room and woke the young woman.
    Tarni was confused. "What is it?" she asked, eyes bleary.
    "They're ready for you to make the run," Judy said quietly. Remembering the night before the Pinta, Judy added, "Everything's all right." She had come to her room that night as well. "Mara is ready. Get your things and go to the ferry port. I'll go wake Sand."
    The message had come at a good time. While they were away, she could develop her plans to construct a Culminate, and make it ready to present. And the more time Sand and Tarni had alone, the better.
    Next, Judy went to Sand's room. "Your mother has fled the campus and will be waiting for you at the plantation," she spoke quietly. "Go to the ferry port. Tarni will be there. You might as well leave now."
    "Does Don Andrews know?" asked Sand, searching Judy's face for the conspiracy he hoped was there.
    "I'll tell him when he wakes up," she answered with just the hint of a smile. Sand quickly gathered some belongings and headed up the tunnel to meet Tarni.
    In his sleep, Don Andrews had a dream about a dinosaur. All this bone, muscle and blood, pounding, exerting against gravity to keep the animal alive, to keep that tiny brain alive.
    And as the dinosaur stretched up, it swayed and tilted its sensual massiveness, and saw, scurrying across the ground, furry mammalian things. They flew in a blur, and as he swung his great dinosaur body around to follow their darting motions, one tiny mammal stopped, and its face was all the dinosaur could see. Its spherical eyes shone and its mouth slipped open to expose two rows of razors. The great dinosaur stood paralyzed, as the little mammal jumped up through the air, straight for his throat.
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