Chapter 1: Wilderness
Chief Kamo fell over.
In the dim remains of the undersea lab, flooded with the strange white fire of Nambu Hakase's device, he watched the Galactor's flee. Then he was on a level plain, with the scent of open air and new green grass. There was no jolt, no sudden shift in footing. Where he stood, he stood as if he always had. It was sheer shocked disbelief that dropped him onto the ground.
He wasn't the only one. He saw others waver, heard their cries. He scrambled to his feet again, staring at a stalk of grass that had tangled itself in his thick fingers. He turned around, and saw a pillar of white fire.
If that marked the site of Hakase's device . . . yes, there was Nambu, standing as calmly as if the world hadn't changed around him, watching the fountain of energy, with a toddler still laughing in his arms. Kamo charged toward him.
"Where are we? Hakase, what's going on?"
Nambu didn't turn around.
"Well. That was more successful than I had hoped."
"Did you know this would happen? Is it . . . is this real?"
"It was always a possibility. But the probabilities . . . . How could I mention so hopeful an outcome, without unfairly influencing everyone's consent?"
"Galactor is behind us. If my calculations are correct, we exist in a healthy and reasonably stable ecosphere with no equivalent intelligences."
He looked away from the manifestation long enough to meet Kamo's eyes, and handed him the child. The toddler patted Kamo's cheek.
"Anything that does jump out of the bushes will be looking for a meal. You might mention that, before too many people wander off. We'll need to consider the necessities; food and water and a defensible position."
He spoke without urgency. His attention returned to the fiery manifestation. It was smaller than it had been, ebbing slowly but visibly.
"Why do you keep staring at that?!"
"Hope. The most unjustified and desperate hope," Nambu said flatly.
Mentally Kamo threw up his hands. Hakase didn't play 'absent-minded professor' often, but when he did there was no shaking him. The burden of his thought was so often the welfare of the ISO, or the world, that disturbing him might not be wise. Kamo himself could do what needed to be done.
To start with, he had to find out who the baby belonged to. From the smell, attentions were required which Kamo didn't feel qualified to offer.
)+ #+#+#&((
"Hakase? Rodriguez and Chang found a good-sized waterway about two kilometers downhill. We're going to find a bluff we can make camp on, while the sun's still up."
"Yes. A good plan," Hakase acknowledged, staring at the white fire.
It had ebbed to barely more than a campfire's height and circumference, flickering even lower as Kamo watched. The ground it's dimishment uncovered wasn't harmed. Blades of grass and tiny bright flowers emerged from the milkwhite sheets of energy as if they were newly created. Kamo shifted his shoulders uneasily.
"What is that stuff? Is it going to burn itself out?"
"The gate is nearly shut . . . . I will be along in a while."
"I'm not leaving you here by yourself."
Nambu looked around. Kamo blinked at the change in his appearance. Months of little food and less hope had left the scientist as diminished as the rest of the refugees. Even halt a day before though, he hadn't looked so ancient.
Kamo folded his arms. He wasn't going to let Nambu shoo him away. The man had done enough. The last survivors of the ISO owed him their lives. (Though they might never understand how.) Others could tend well enough to their new necessities.
"Very well. I suppose there is some possibility of an energy release as the trans-universal linkage is severed."
"Energy release," Kamo asked suspiciously.
"Explosion."
"Why am I not surprised?"
He wasn't going to hurry Nambu. The man looked suddenly frail. But Kamo felt a prickle across his back as they walked away from the guttering pillar. Between Galactor and Jun the Swan, he wasn't unfamiliar with things that went 'boom'. A rope that stretched between universes though . . . . When that snapped, it might be a larger 'boom' than he cared to see.
The others were not so far ahead. Ill-fed, exhausted people moved slowly. Ill-fed and exhausted children were even slower. Kamo made a quick assessment as he and Nambu followed them across the brow of a swale.
Something over three-hundred survivors, with nothing but the clothes on their backs. A handful of the elderly. A few handfuls of men and women his age, or Hakase's. Some handfuls more of men old enough to fight, but too damaged to do so. At least twice their number of young women. The rest, nearly three-quarters, were children even younger than the Kagutai Ninja Tai. More than half were orphans, sent to the best safety available while their parents fought and died.
The new world - new universe, if he understood Hakase - was more survivable than Galactor. That was a relative distinction though. Considered as colonists on an alien shore, could the remnants of the ISO really hope to live in this wilderness?
"We can, and we will," Nambu said, and Kamo realized he must have spoken aloud. "I will not let their sacrifice be wasted!"
Finally Kamo realized what had aged and diminished Nambu Hakase, what must have been the last burden he could carry. He had sent out the Kagutai Ninja Tai to hold back the enemy, to make a path that took others to safety but which they themselves couldn't follow. Against his desire, he had outlived his children.
Kamo said what little he could.
"We will survive, Hakase," he promised.
[Spider Robinson (Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, et al) had a habit that irritated me, of taking an excellent but tragic short story and turning it into a less excellent novel with a - comparatively - happy ending. Now look what i've done!]