Weissenbaum's Eye - Stetten

Weissenbaum's Eye - Stetten - Chapter 30

CHAPTER THIRTY

Windborne, small as the first rugged meteor whose cracks were sticky with the seeds of life, a single speck of dust was blown into the corner of Earth's sleeping eye, and up behind the clouds' closed lids to scratch the empty iris of the stratosphere.

And then it sank into the dawn, besieged at once by flying ice, which clung to it, till frilled with a lace of crystals, it joined the silent pilgrimage to the earth below. An ordinary speck of dust, no ancient ancestor of all biology was this one center of a snowflake.

The oncoming storm was ever present, slow and gentle, with the earth so huge below. From the steeple, Bellringer surveyed the campus asleep and wrapped in its wet blanket. The thumpers were immobile, unattended. The little spiders spun their fibers where they pleased under the red brick walls.

The campus was empty now, finally completely empty. In our little boat, within sight of shore, Mara and I discussed our plans. The message probe had just been launched, in the hope that Don Andrews and the others were still alive to receive it and come for Mara. But without any relay beacons, there was no way of knowing. All that was left now, as far as I was concerned, was to get Mara safely to the plantation. But she had other plans.

First of all, she had a special circuit to deliver into an empty slot in Peter's couch. His simultron was an early model she had built herself, and the added circuit would create a moment of disruption in the medium a few weeks after she was gone. The final kick would black out a large area of the medium, forcing millions off their couches.

"Why else did we preserve Synapse?" she argued. "Why did we keep making couches all those years, if not to maintain some power we could use some day?"

I remember thinking that now was not the time, and we were not the people. But even if the risk of such a plan was great, I knew better than to try to change her mind, especially when she had another reason.

"Families aren't important anymore," she said. "Everywhere the whole thing has become so far removed, without a nation, or community, or family. But mine still means something to me. I have to see my Peter one more time."

That night I dropped her at the coast just north of the campus. We maintained a small dock there, with a car fueled and ready. I told her I would wait a week and then move up the coast to some abandoned houses that we knew, where I had planned to hide. I urged Mara to hurry. Her rescuers would not stay long at the plantation, if they came at all. Her only chance was to get there soon.

Standing on the dock, she turned to me with sadness in her eyes. "Won't you reconsider, and come with me to Backdoor?" she asked. "What will you do here, all alone?"

"I'll manage," I replied. Mara's decision to join her son in Backdoor made sense for her, but not for me. She smiled and squeezed my hand.

The last time I saw Mara she was standing on the dock, a small woman of great importance, at least to me. She gave a solemn wave and watched me pull away into the darkness.

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