A fourth Tesslie dragged Ravi into the room, its ropy metal arm wrapped around Ravi’s neck. Released, Ravi stumbled forward as if pushed. He fell into Jenna, who also went down with a cry of pain. Jenna’s fragile bones—

Pete had no time to pull Ravi off Jenna, or to pick up the crying Alicia, or to clutch at McAllister. The sparks enveloped all of them in a shower of gold, and then there was nothing.

It wasn’t dark, and it wasn’t light. It wasn’t anything except cold. I’m dead, Pete thought, but of course he wasn’t.

He lay on something hard in places and soft in others. The air felt warm and thick. Something gray shifted above him, far above him. Some noise, faint and rhythmic, sounded over and over in his ears. Something stirred behind him.

The cold retreated abruptly and Pete returned fully to himself. He sprawled Outside, beside Ravi and McAllister, and underneath Ravi was Jenna. He lay Outside, partly on rock and partly on some plant low and green and alive. Gray clouds blew overhead. Warm wind ruffled his hair. Dazed, he got to his feet, just as the others began to move.

They were all there, stirring on the ground. The Tesslies were gone. The Shell was gone. Piles of stuff lay on the ground in places where, he vaguely realized, it had all been lying when the Shell enclosed it: toys, blankets, food, tents, piles and piles of buckets. Pete turned around.

This was the view he’d had when he’d gone Outside through the funeral slot and then had gone around to the far side of the Shell. He stood on a high ridge of black rock. Below him the land sloped down to the sea. The whole long slope was a mixture of bare rock, green plants, red flowery bushes. A brownish river gushed down the hillside. Beyond, along the shore, the land flattened and gold-and-green plants grew more thickly a long way out, until the water began.

It was quiet Eduardo who spoke first. “Regenerated from wind-blown seeds, maybe. From… wherever survived. And those lupines are nitrogen-fixers, enriching the soil.”

McAllister said shakily, “There must still be ash in the air, it’s so thick, but it’s breathable… fresh water….” She put her hands over her face, all at once reminding Pete of Julie, in the last-ever Grab.

He didn’t want to remember Julie, not now. He wanted to shout, he wanted to cry, he wanted to run down the slope, he wanted to turn around and hit Ravi. He did none of those things. Instead he said, before he was going to do it, a single word. “Gaia.”

McAllister jerked her hands away from her face and turned to him sharply. “What?”

“Gaia. It’s a word the woman in the Grab said to me. Julie. Alicia’s mother.” He pointed at Alicia, who was now screaming with the full force of her lungs. Several other children also began to cry. Pete said some of Julie’s other words: “‘Self-regulating mechanisms.’ ‘Planetary Darwinian self-preservation.’ ‘Cleansing.’”

Eduardo drew a sharp breath. Now the other children were shouting or screaming or whimpering. Fuzz Ball barked and raced around in circles. Darlene started to sing something about Earth abiding. Jenna began to cry. Into the din Pete said, “We did it. Not the Tesslies. Us. That’s what Julie said.”

McAllister didn’t answer. She stared out at the water, which wasn’t all that bright but still hurt Pete’s eyes to look at. He could tell McAllister was thinking, but he couldn’t tell what. All at once she turned to look at him, and in her dark eyes he saw something he couldn’t name, except that he knew she felt it deeply.

Eduardo said to her, “The Gaia theory… It posited a self-regulating planet to keep conditions optimum for life. A planet that corrects any conditions that might threaten...” He didn’t finish.

McAllister said to Pete, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“We’ll do better this time.”

“Better at what?” Why didn’t he ever understand her?

But McAllister turned her beseeching look on Eduardo. “Our chances—”

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Maybe we can. If the seeds take. If any of those grasses are domesticable grains. If enough marine life survived. If we’re in a tropical climate. I don’t know. Maybe we can.”

Can what? Before Pete could ask, McAllister’s face changed and she was herself again, issuing orders. “Ravi, you and Terrell and Caity and Pete start lugging all that stuff down to that flat, sheltered place by the river—do you see where I mean? Bring the tents first, it’s going to rain. And the food, all the food. Darlene, I’m sorry I slapped you. We can discuss it later. For now, try to get rations organized until Eduardo can determine which plants are edible. Eduardo, can you walk enough to find the best spot to put the soy into the ground? Paolo, you and Jenna are going to have to look after all the kids once we get them into tents—I’m sorry, but we can’t spare anyone else. Tommy, you help move the food to under cover, and after that I’m going to want you to bring Eduardo some different plants from farther down the slope. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes!” Tommy beamed at Pete. “You did make a big adventure!”

Pete clutched McAllister’s arm. “But I have to finish telling you what Julie—”

“Later,” McAllister said. “They’ll be time. There will be lots of time.”

Pete nodded. He raced with the others to where the Shell had been. The fertilizer machine was gone, the disinfectant and clean-water streams were gone, the Grab machinery was gone. Terrell and Pete each grabbed a rolled-up tent and staggered with it back down the slope. Darlene and Caity lugged buckets of soy stew from what had been the hot part of the farm. Over armfuls of canvas Pete spied Eduardo halfway down the incline to the sea, stooping to examine some low bushy plants.

“‘Abide with me,’” Darlene howled. “‘The darkness deepens’” until Caity told her to shut the fuck up.

For just a moment, Pete felt afraid. The Shell was all he’d ever known except for the Grabs, those terrifying jolts into places he didn’t belong. The Shell had been ugly and boring, but it had been home. Sort of. A cage-sort-of-home. And now—

Had the Tesslies really captured the Survivors, caged them, and twenty years later let them out because the Tesslies wanted to help? And what were they, anyway? Robots, aliens, Darlene’s angels, res-cuers—maybe not even McAllister would ever know.

The moment of fear passed. The Tesslies were gone. This was now. He was here.

A bird swooped overhead, and on the wind came the sweet smell of warm rain.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

No book is ever the work of one person. I’d like to thank those who helped make this one possible:

Editor and publisher Jacob Weisman, who made so many valuable suggestions for revision.

Marty Halpern, copyeditor extraordinaire, who not only has one of the sharpest eyes in the business but also understands the difference between copyediting and co-authoring.

Jill Roberts, for her cheerful and prompt emails keeping me in the publishing loop.

And, always, my husband Jack Skillingstead for his encouragement and support.

Praise for After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall

“An ecological apocalypse so real that it’s like a three-dimensional object that can be viewed from all sides.”

—Ted Kosmatka, author of The Helix Game and The Ascendant

“Nancy Kress displays all her usual strengths in After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall: strong plotting, fast-paced action, complex and interesting characters, thought-provoking speculation. But there’s something more here: a beautiful meditation on the fate of the earth, an elegy, a warning—and a glimpse of hope.”

—Lisa Goldstein, author of The Red Magician and The Uncertain Places