Reconception: The Fall (17 page)

East USA Habitat: 2128

One of the habitat’s greatest strengths was its
medical technology, and replacing Morgan’s injured lung with one
grown from his own DNA template was simple. Within two weeks of
being stabbed, he was recovered enough to demand that a computer
terminal be brought to him.

As he established the uplink to the newly repaired
satellite dish, and sent out the codes that would release the
bombs, he whistled. The world was his now, and no one, least of all
some degenerate mountain people, could ever stand in his way.

The Mountain People didn’t see the missiles sail
overhead, but others did. And still others saw the blinding flash
of mushroom clouds blossoming in the distance, one after another,
as the bombs exploded the New Mexican desert, cracking the
underground granite like a rotten egg and spilling its poisons into
the wind.

The Mountain People did begin to worry that something
might be wrong when the fallout carried on that wind rained upon
their fields two days later.

Eagle’s and Teller’s bodies, covered in shrouds,
rested on two tables in their lab. Evie was speechless with grief
and guilt, thinking over and over that she should have found a way
to prevent what had happened. She couldn’t give voice to these
thoughts yet, but she could see that Garret was struggling with the
same feelings.

Her eyes were red from crying and hurt from staring
into the nothingness of their future. “Garret,” her voice was
barely a croak, “Garret, why is he still alive? I want to know why
these good, generous people are dead, why the whole world is
ruined, and that ... that madman is still alive?”

Garret just shook his head, as stunned as she at
what had happened. “I don’t know ... I just don’t know ... Oh Evie.
What do we do? Tell me what to do.”

Evie didn’t know either. All she could think of was
how much she’d come to love Teller. How brave she’d been, how
strong and beautiful—a warrior queen. And Eagle. How kind he was.
How wise. And their people—the children! People like these deserved
to live, not be cut down by such as Morgan. It defied reason and
taunted faith.

Her eyes lighted on the gene gun, a helium powered
high-tech instrument that had done irreparable harm in the bad old
days, but might do some real good now. And then it came to her.
“Their DNA, Garret. They’re ideal. They’ve already proved they can
survive.”

He didn’t smile. “What can we do with it, Evie? The
earth is dead. Morgan pushed his little buttons and destroyed
everything!”

She knew that. But there was something else.
Something Jersey had said ... Then it came to her. “Garret, he’s
got time travel! Jersey Lipton. He can send our spores into the
past.”

In an instant, he put it all together as she had and
came to the same conclusion. There was no other hope for them or
for the future of the earth.

East USA Habitat: 2128

While recombinant gene technology had once been a
painstaking procedure, the science of 2128 was sufficiently
advanced to make it a simple task to insert the DNA from one
organism into the reproductive nuclei of another. Once the decision
was made it was just a matter of aiming the gene gun at the seeds
they’d already developed and bombarding them with Teller’s and
Eagle’s DNA. They’d also done a little tinkering, eliminating the
possibility of disease, and turning on the genes that fostered
intelligence and cooperativeness and that lengthened cell life.

They hoped that homo superior would be a better kind
of human, and that if they could get their seeds back far enough
into the past, their superbabies would grow up to change the course
of history. They themselves might disappear, but that wouldn’t
matter. Not when the stakes were so high.

“Actually,” Jersey explained, “If my theories are
correct, and they must be since I have already sent something back
in time, then you will always exist within the Logos, even if you
cease to exist on this plane.”

“You’re over my head, Jersey,” Evie moaned. “Let’s
just do it, and hope for the best.”

“That’s exactly what the Logos is about,” Jersey
instructed as he finished making adjustments to the machine.
“Because the ideal always exists, it draws us, and we are capable
of hoping for it, even striving for it.”

“Are we ready?” Garret asked as he removed the pod
from its container.

Jersey looked up for a moment. “Just about.”

East USA Habitat: 2128

They were pounding on the door with their rifle
butts. “Open up in there!”

Evie picked up the pod and slipped it into the
chamber of Jersey’s time machine. “Hurry,” she urged. “Hurry,
Jersey!”

Slamming the door of the chamber, she stood back as
Garret pulled the handle down and Jersey moved his hand toward the
switch. Time seemed to have slowed down. Garret reached for her and
she for him. Their fingers touched, the switch was engaged, and the
door burst open.

Outside of Time and Space

As the pod bloomed into the Logos, it disappeared
from their time, and the machine gun bullets never reached them. At
that moment, the world they had lived in ceased to exist. Jersey
had been right about that. But he hadn’t been right about all of
it. If he’d looked a little more closely at the quartz crystal
embedded in his floor, he’d have seen that where it had left his
lab in 2128 as a cracked specimen with many flaws, it arrived in
the floor in perfect condition.

As the spores traveled through the Logos, they were
changed, made perfect by the very nature of this domain. Thus when
they landed on earth, they were no longer homo superior, but
something far greater—the seeds of a human race that has been
illuminated and perfected by the ultimate.

And while things might be imperfect on earth,
everything that has known the ideal even for a moment is forever
drawn to it. That’s why good must always triumph over evil.

EPILOGUE

Stratosphere: 1973

High above the clouds, in that luminous place where
the atmosphere is very thin, a golden glow limned the edge of the
world. There, where the last wisps of air touched the nothingness
of space, an event occurred which would deeply affect all life on
the planet below.

It burst into being, interrupting the silence with
sudden noise as it hit the air and began to burn. Flames exploded
all around it, momentarily outshining even the rising sun. It was
not a meteor. It was not a spaceship.

From earth, it looked like a shooting star. It had
its moment and was gone, leaving only tracers in the eyes. But if
the eyes that watched its descent were stronger, or if they were
closer, they would have seen the fire go out and the object that
remained crack open, releasing its cargo into the wind.

The heavy, dark casing fell away, swallowed up by the
clouds below. Left behind were a million tiny spores, each dancing
an individual dance as it drifted in concert with its fellows,
carried along by the air. Spores! Each a fuzzy little umbrella
slowly falling toward the earth with its burden of life.

The winds and currents above the earth could not be
predicted and those who had sent the spores had not even tried. The
probability was great that the seeds would find fertile ground upon
landing. It was against all odds that they would come to rest not
in the plains, mountains, or farmlands of the world, but smack dab
in the center of New York City. Had they made planetfall in the
middle of the ocean their chances of taking root would have been
greater.

As it was, they drifted useless down the concrete
corridors, lodging in the cracks, weighted down by dust and dirt
caught in the fine hairs of their umbrellas. Their numbers quickly
dwindled as they were blown through the city. They began a million
strong and were decimated thousands at a time as they sought to
find a stronghold in the stony surface. Most took root in an open
pit that would soon be buried under the massive weight of a
skyscraper. One, only one, caught on a vagrant tendril of the wind,
was lifted out of the city, over the concrete canyons and away.

It rode the wind, a tiny mote lost in the vastness of
the atmosphere, completely at the mercy of the air. It fell toward
the East River and was caught in a whirlpool over La Guardia
Airport. It was shunted up to cloud level over Great Neck and
dropped helplessly over Oyster Bay. It touched the water of the
Long Island Sound near Huntington, but a gust of wind lifted it up
to new heights and dropped it once more a little further east.

Over Stony Brook it began its final descent, twisting
around the walls of the university and dropping over the shingled
roofs of the suburban development below. An old elm tree almost
caught it in its branches, but it escaped and moved on. Down it
floated and down. After its long journey, seed finally touched
earth. The touch became a kiss, the kiss an embrace, and they were
one.

THE BEGINNING

DID YOU ENJOY

RECONCEPTION:

BOOK I

THE FALL
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