59

 

 

There was a wildly canted floor, smoke coming up through the boards and tile, a gout of steam and rock, and the walls falling away. He felt himself lifted and screamed.

Sitting upright in the bed, Arthur blinked at the unfamiliar room. Marty was on his hands and knees crying hysterically in the next bed.

Francine put her arms around Arthur.

"There's nothing," she said. "There's nothing." She let him go and crawled out from under the covers to embrace Marty. "Dad was having a nightmare," she said. "He's all right."

"It was here" Arthur said. "I felt it. Ahh, God" 

Marty was quiet now. Francine came back to their bed and lay next to him. "You'd think they'd help you with your dreams or something," she said, somewhat bitterly. 

"I wish they'd blocked that one," he said. "I could—"

"Shhh," Francine said, wrapping her arms around him now. She was shivering. "Bad enough if we have to live through it. Why do we have to dream about it, too?"

"Have you dreamed about it?"

She shook her head. "I will, though. I know I will. Everybody will, the closer it gets." Her shivers turned into something more. Her teeth clicked together as she held him. Arthur stroked her face with his fingers and tightened his grip on her, but she was not to be consoled. Without tears, she shook violently, silently, her neck muscles locked with the effort of not making a sound, not scaring Marty.

"We-we-we wou-would die," she whispered harshly.

"Shh," he said. "Shh. I'm the one who had the nightmare."

"We would d-die," she repeated. "I w-want to scream. I n-n-need to scream, Art." She glanced at Marty, still awake, listening, watching from where he lay.

"Is Mommy all right?" Marty asked.

Arthur didn't answer.

"Mommy!" Marty barked.

"I-I'm fine, honey." Her shaking hadn't diminished.

"Your mother's scared," Arthur said.

"Stop it," Francine demanded, glaring at him.

"We're all very scared," Arthur said.

"Is it happening now?" Marty asked.

"No, but we're worried about it, and that gives me nightmares, and makes your mommy shiver."

Francine closed her eyes in an agony of maternal empathy.

"Everybody's ascared," Marty declared. "Not just me. Everybody."

"That's right," Arthur said. He rocked Francine gently. She relaxed her wrinkled brows but kept her eyes closed. Her shaking had slowed to an occasional shudder. Marty came from his bed to theirs and wrapped his arms around Francine, placing his cheek against her shoulder. 

"It's all right, Mom," he said.

"It's all right to be afraid," Arthur said to nobody in particular, staring at the flowered wallpaper illuminated by a small night-light pointing the way to the bathroom.

They were in a bed-and-breakfast inn a few miles south of Portland.

The network was not active.

He had been set on his course, given his instructions. 

I could use a little sympathy, too. 

But none was offered.

 

 

PERSPECTIVE

 

Excerpt from New Scientist,

March 25, 1997:

The emergence of a new and radically altered Venus from behind the sun has given planetary geologists many things to ponder. It was supposed that the impact of a block of ice two hundred kilometers in diameter would cause enormous seismic disruption, but there is no sign of that. Some, in fact—connecting the impact with events on Earth—have theorized that the block was artificially "calved" into many smaller chunks, distributing the impact more evenly around the solar system's second planet.

What we now see is a naked Venus, her atmosphere transformed into a cloak of transparent, superheated steam. Surface features thus revealed are little different from what we had expected from the evidence of past planetary probe radar scans.

Planetologist Ure Heisinck of Gòttingen University believes that the atmosphere may now have a built-in heat-transfer mechanism that will allow it to cool; that eventually the steam will condense and the resulting opaque white clouds will reflect more of the sun's heat into space than they will absorb. More cooling will occur, and eventually rain will fall, which will turn again into steam on the planet's surface. The steam will condense in the upper atmosphere, conveying heat back into space. In a few centuries, Earthlike conditions may prevail . . .