He slowly unwrapped a sandwich, bit, and chewed. The nun said nothing. She took off her bandanna head scarf and used it to wipe the sweat from her wide brow.
“No matter how fast or how far those poor animals ran, they couldn’t escape. They were buried in the layers of ash. And then the volcanism stopped. Rain washed away the poisons and the plants came back. After a while, the animals returned, too, and repopulated the land. But the good life didn’t last. The volcanoes erupted again, and there were more showers of ashes. It happened over and over again throughout the next fifteen million years or so. The killing and the repopulating, the shower of death and the return of life. Layer after layer of fossils and ashes were laid down out there. The John Day formation is more than half a klom thick, and there are similar formations above and below it.”
As the old man spoke, the nun sat staring at the tableland to the east. A pair of giant condors circled slowly in a thermal. Below them, a tight formation of nine egg-shaped flying craft wafted slowly along the course of an invisible canyon.
“The ash beds were capped with thick lava. Then, after more millions of years, rivers cut down through the rock and into the ash layers below. Gen and I found fossils along the watercourses, not just bones and teeth, but even leaf-prints and whole flowers pressed into the finer layers of ash. The records of a whole series of vanished worlds. Very poignant. At night, she and I would make love under the desert stars and look at the Milky Way in Sagittarius. We’d wonder how the constellations had looked to all those extinct animals. And how much longer poor old mankind could hang on before it was buried in its own ash bed, waiting for paleontologists from Sagittarius to come dig us up after another thirty million years.”
He chuckled. “Melodrama. One of the hazards of digging fossils in a romantic setting.” He ate the rest of his sandwich and drank from the canteen. Then he said, “Genevieve,” and was quiet for a long time.
“Were you shocked by the Intervention?” Sister Roccaro asked at last. “Some of the older people I’ve counseled seemed almost disappointed that humanity was spared its just ecological deserts.”
“It was tough on the Schadenfreude crowd,” Majewski agreed, grinning. “The ones who viewed humankind as a sort of plague organism spoiling what might otherwise have been a pretty good planet. But paleontologists tend to take a long view of life. Some creatures survive, some become extinct. But no matter how great the ecological disaster, the paradox called life keeps on defying entropy and trying to perfect itself. Hard times just seem to help evolution. The Pleistocene Ice Age and phivials could have killed off all the plant-eating hominids. But instead, the rough climate and the vegetation changes seem to have encouraged some of our ancestors to become meat eaters. And if you eat meat, you don’t have to spend so much time hunting food. You can sit down and learn to think.”
“Once upon a time, hunter-killer was better?”
“Hunter doesn’t equate with murderer. I don’t buy the totally depraved ape-man picture that some ethnologists postulate for human ancestry. There was goodness and altruism in our hominid forebears just as there’s good in most people today.”
“But evil is real,” said the nun. “Call it egocentrism or malignant aggression or original sin or whatever. It’s there. Eden’s gone.”
“Isn’t biblical Eden an ambivalent symbol? It seems to me that the myth simply shows us that self-awareness and intelligence are perilous. And they can be deadly. But consider the alternative to the Tree of Knowledge. Would anyone want innocence at such a price? Not me, Amerie. We really wouldn’t want to give back that bite of apple. Even our aggressive instincts and stubborn pride helped make us rulers of the Earth.”
“And one day maybe of the galaxy?”
Claude gave a short laugh. “God knows we used to argue long enough about the notion when the Gi and the Poltroyans cooperated with us on salvage digs. The consensus seems to be that despite our hubris and pushiness, we humans have incredible potential, which justified the Intervention before we got ourselves too screwed up. On the other hand, the trouble we caused during the metapsychic flap back in the ’Eighties makes you wonder whether we haven’t simply transferred our talent for spoiling to a cosmic stage instead of just a planetary one.”
They ate some oranges and after a time Claude said “Whatever happens, I’m glad that I lived to reach the stars, and I’m glad that Gen and I met and worked with other thinking beings of goodwill. It’s over now, but it was a wonderful adventure.”
“How did Genevieve feel about your travels?”
“She was more strongly tied to Earth, even though she enjoyed the outworld journeyings. She insisted on keeping a home here in the Pacific Northwest, where we had been raised. If we had been able to have children, she might never have agreed to leave. But she was a sickle-cell carrier, and the technique for modifying the genetic codon was developed after Gen had passed optimal child-bearing age. Later on, when we were ready for rejuvenation, our parenting instincts were pretty well atrophied, and there was so much work to do. So we just kept on doing it together. For ninety-four years…”
“Claude.” Sister Roccaro reached out her hand to him. A light breeze stirred her short curly hair. “Do you realize that you’re healed?”
“I knew it would happen. After Gen was dead. It was only her going that was so bad. You see, we’d talked it all out months ago, when she was still in control of her faculties, and did a lot of commiserating and accepting and emotional purging. But she still had to go, and I had to watch and wait while the person I loved more than my own life slipped farther and farther away but was never quite gone. Now that she’s dead, I’m functional again. I just ask myself what in the world I’m going to do?”
“I had to answer the same question,” the nun said carefully.
Majewski gave a start, then studied her face as though he had never seen it before. “Amerie, child. You’ve spent your life consoling needy people, serving the dying and their mourners. And you still have to ask a question like that?”
“I’m not a child, Claude. I’m a thirty-seven-year-old woman and I’ve worked at the Hospice for fifteen of those years. The job… has not been easy I’m burnt out. I had decided that you and Genevieve would be my last clients. My superiors have concurred with my decision to leave the order.”
Shocked beyond words, the old man stared at her. She continued, “I found myself becoming isolated, consumed by the emotions of the people I was trying to help. There’s been a shriveling of faith, too, Claude.” She gave a small shrug “The kind of thing that people in the religious life are all too likely to suffer. A sensible scientific type like you would probably laugh…”
“I’d never laugh at you, Amerie. And if you really think I’m sensible, maybe I can help you.”
She rose up and slapped gritty rock dust off her jeans. “It’s time for us to get off this mountain. It’ll take at least two hours to walk back down to the egg.”
“And on the way,” he insisted, “you’re going to tell me about your problem and your plans for the future.”
Annamaria Roccaro regarded the very old man with amused exasperation. “Doctor Majewslti, you’re a retired bone digger, not a spiritual counselor.”
“You’re going to tell me anyhow. In case you don’t know it, there’s nothing more stubborn in the Galactic Milieu than a Polack who’s set his mind to something. And I’m a lot more stubborn than a lot of other Polacks because I’ve had more time to practice. And besides that,” he added slyly, “you would never have mentioned your problem at all if you hadn’t wanted to talk it over with me. Come on. Let’s get walking.”