Boldly Seeker walked into the breeze. Grasper, chattering, knuckle-walked after her.
Seeker reached the edge of the forest. On a plain already bright with morning, nothing stirred. Seeker peered around, a faint spark of puzzlement lodging in her mind. Her forest-adapted mind was poor at analyzing landscapes, but it seemed to her that the land was different. Surely there had been more green yesterday; surely there had been forest scraps in the lee of those worn hills, and surely water had run along that arid gully. But it was difficult to be sure. Her memories, always incoherent, were already fading.
But there was an object in the sky.
It was not a bird, for it did not move or fly, and not a cloud, for it was hard and definite and round. And it shone, almost as bright as the sun itself.
Drawn, she walked out of the forest’s shadows and into the open.
She walked back and forth, underneath the thing, inspecting it. It was about the size of her head, and it swam with light—or rather the light of the sun rippled from it, as it would flash from the surface of a stream. It had no smell. It was like a piece of fruit, hanging from a branch, and yet there was no tree. Four billion years of adaptation to Earth’s unvarying gravity field had instilled in her the instinct that nothing so small and hard could hover unsupported in the air: this was something new, and therefore to be feared. But it did not fall on her or attack her in any way.
She craned up on tiptoes, peering at the sphere. She saw two eyes gazing back at her.
She grunted and dropped to the ground. But the floating sphere did not react, and when she looked up again she understood. The sphere was returning her reflection, though twisted and distorted; the eyes had been her own, just as she had seen them before in the smooth surface of still water. Of all Earth’s animals only her kind could have recognized herself in such a reflection, for only her kind had any true sense of self. But it seemed to her, dimly, that by holding such an image the floating sphere was looking at her just as she looked at it, as if it was a vast Eye itself.
She reached up, but even on tiptoe, with her long tree-climbers’ arms extended, she could not reach it. With more time, it might have occurred to her to find something to stand on to reach the sphere, a rock or a heap of branches.
But Grasper screamed.
Seeker fell to all fours and was knuckle-running before she had even realized it. When she saw what was happening to her child she was terrified.
Two creatures stood over Grasper. They were like apes, but they were upright and tall. They had bright red torsos, as if their bodies were soaked in blood, and their faces were flat and hairless. And they had Grasper. They had dropped something, like lianas or vines, over the infant. Grasper struggled, yelled and bit, but the two tall creatures easily held down the lianas to trap her.
Seeker leapt, screaming, her teeth bared.
One of the red-breasted creatures saw her. His eyes widened with shock. He brought around a stick, and whirled it through the air. Something impossibly hard slammed against the side of her head. Seeker was heavy and fast enough that her momentum brought her crashing into the creature, knocking him to the ground. But her head was full of stars, her mouth full of the taste of blood.
To the east a blanket of black, boiling cloud erupted out of the horizon. There was a remote rumble of thunder, and lightning flared.
2. Little Bird
At the moment of Discontinuity, Bisesa Dutt was in the air.
From her position in the back of the helicopter cockpit, Bisesa’s visibility was limited—which was ironic, since the whole point of the mission was her observation of the ground. But as the Little Bird rose, and her view opened up, she could see the base’s neat rows of prefabricated hangars, all lined up with the spurious regularity of the military mind. This UN base had been here for three decades already, and these “temporary” structures had acquired a certain shabby grandeur, and the dirt roads that led away across the plain were hard-packed.
As the Bird swooped higher, the base blurred to a smear of whitewash and camouflage canvas, lost in the huge palm of the land. The ground was desolate, with here and there a splash of gray-green where a stand of trees or scrubby grass struggled for life. But in the distance mountains shouldered over the horizon, white-topped, magnificent.
The Bird lurched sideways, and Bisesa was thrown against the curving wall.
Casey Othic, the prime pilot, hauled on his stick, and soon the flight leveled out again, with the Bird swooping a little lower over the rock-strewn ground. He turned and grinned at Bisesa. “Sorry about that. Gusts like that sure weren’t in the forecasts. But what do those double domes know? You okay back there?”
His voice was overloud in Bisesa’s headset. “I feel like I’m on the back shelf of a Corvette.”
His grin widened, showing perfect teeth. “No need to shout. I can hear you on the radio.” He tapped his helmet. “Ra-di-o. You have those in the Brit army yet?”
In the seat beside Casey, Abdikadir Omar, the backup pilot, glanced at the American, shaking his head disapprovingly.
The Little Bird was a bubble-front observation chopper. It was derived from an attack helicopter that had been flying since the end of the twentieth century. In this calmer year of 2037, this Bird was dedicated to more peaceful tasks: observation, search and rescue. Its bubble cockpit had been expanded to take a crew of three, the two pilots up front and Bisesa crammed on her bench in the back.
Casey flew his veteran machine casually, one-handed. Casey Othic’s rank was chief warrant officer, and he had been seconded from the US Air and Space Force to this UN detachment. He was a squat, bulky man. His helmet was UN sky blue, but he had adorned it with a strictly nonregulation Stars and Stripes, an animated flag rippling in a simulated breeze. His HUD, head-up display, was a thick visor that covered most of his face above the nose, black to Bisesa’s view, so that she could only see his broad, chomping jaw.
“I can tell you’re checking me out, despite that stupid visor,” Bisesa said laconically.
Abdikadir, a handsome Pashtun, glanced back and grinned. “Spend enough time around apes like Casey and you’ll get used to it.”
Casey said, “I’m the perfect gentleman.” He leaned a bit so he could see her name tag. “Bisesa Dutt. What’s that, a Pakistani name?”
“Indian.”
“So you’re from India? But your accent is—what, Australian?”
She suppressed a sigh; Americans never recognized regional accents. “I’m a Mancunian. From Manchester, England. I’m British—third generation.”
Casey started to talk like Cary Grant. “Welcome aboard, Lady Dutt.”
Abdikadir punched Casey’s arm. “Man, you’re such a cliché, you just go from one stereotype to another. Bisesa, this is your first mission?”
“Second,” said Bisesa.
“I’ve flown with this asshole a dozen times and he’s always the same, whoever’s in the back. Don’t let him bug you.”
“He doesn’t,” she said equably. “He’s just bored.”
Casey laughed coarsely. “It is kind of dull here at Clavius Base. But you ought to be at home, Lady Dutt, out here on the North—West Frontier. We’ll have to see if we can find you some fuzzy-wuzzies to pick off with your elephant gun.”
Abdikadir grinned at Bisesa. “What can you expect from a jock Christian?”
“And you’re a beak-nosed mujahideen,” Casey growled back.
Abdikadir seemed to sense alarm in Bisesa’s expression. “Oh, don’t worry. I really am a mujahideen, or was, and he really is a jock. We’re the best of friends, really. We’re both Oikumens. But don’t tell anybody—”