Steel Beach

That's what saved us: Callie's long-standing refusal to link into the planetary data net, a bull-headed stance for which everyone she knew had derided her. I had been one of them. I remember in my teens, presenting her with a cost-benefit analysis I'd carefully prepared that I felt sure would convince her to give in to "progress," knowing full well that a financial argument was most likely to carry weight with her. She'd studied it for about a minute, then tossed it aside. "We'll have no government spies in the Double-C Bar," she said, and that was the end of that. We stayed with our independent computer system, keeping interfaces with the CC to a minimum, and as a result I could venture out of my cave and gather my fruits and nuts without worrying about paternalistic eyes watching from the roof. The rest of Luna was in turmoil now. Callie's Ranch was unaffected; she simply pulled in her arms and her head like a turtle and sat down to wait it out with her own oxygen, power, and water, no doubt feeling very smug and eager to emerge and tell a lot of people how she'd told them so. And I waited it out in the most remote corner of her hermetic realm.

And while we waited, historic events happened. I don't have much of a feel for them even now. I had no television, no newspads, and I'm just like anyone else: if I didn't read it and see it on the pad, it doesn't seem quite real to me. News is now. Reading about it after the fact is history.

Perhaps this is the place to talk about some of those events, but I'm reluctant to do so. Oh, I can list a few statistics. Almost one million deaths. Three entire medium-sized towns wiped out to the last soul, and large casualties in many others. One of those warrens, Arkytown, has still not been reclaimed, and there's growing sentiment to leave it as it is, frozen in its moment of disaster, like Pompeii. I've been to Arkytown, seen the hundred thousand frozen corpses, and I can't decide. Most of them died peacefully, from anoxia, before being pickled for all eternity by the final blowout. I saw an entire theater of corpses still waiting for the curtain to rise. What's the point of disturbing them to give them a decent burial or cremation?

On the other hand, it's a better idea for posterity than for we the living. If you went to Pompeii, you wouldn't see people you knew. I saw Charity in Arkytown, in the newspaper office. I have no idea what she was doing there-probably trying to file a story-and now I'll never know. I saw many other people I had known, and then I left. So make it a monument, sure, but seal it off, don't conduct guided tours and sell souvenirs until the whole thing is a distant memory and the dead town is quaint and mysterious, like King Tut's Tomb.

There were great acts of craven cowardice, and many more feats of almost superhuman heroics. You probably didn't hear many of the former, because early on people like Walter decided those stories weren't playing well and told his reporters not to bring him no bad news. So tear up the front page about the stampede that killed ninety-five and replace it with the cop who died holding the oxygen mask to the baby's face. I can guarantee you saw a hundred stories like that. I'm not belittling them, though many were hyped to the point of nausea. If you're anything like me you eventually get tired of heroes saying Aw, shucks, it weren't nothing heroic. I'd give a lot for one guy who'd be willing to say God had nothing to do with it, it was yours truly. But we all know our lines when the press opens its hungry mouth in our faces. We've learned them over a lifetime.

For my money, there's one story of true heroism, and it's a big one, and it hasn't been told much. It's about the Volunteer Pressure Corps, that un-sung group that's always phoning you and asking for donations of time and/or money. The things the VPC did weren't splashy, for the most part didn't get on the pad because they happened out of sight, didn't get taped. But next time they call up here's one girl who's go

Oh, yes, there was much going on while I hid out in the boondocks, but why should I tell about it here? Everyone's life was affected, the effects are still being felt… but the important things were happening on a level far removed from all the ru

Don't you believe it. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So during my week in the cave I didn't think much about what was going on outside. What did I think about?

Mario. Did I mention I named him Mario, Junior? I must have tried out the taste of a hundred names before I settled on Mario, which had been my own original name, after my first Change. I think I was hoping to get it right this time.

I'd certainly done a great job in the gene-splitting department. Who cares if the process is random? Every time I looked at him I felt like patting myself on the back at how smartly I'd produced him. Kitten Parker, erstwhile daddy, who would never see Mario if I had anything to say about it, had contributed his best parts, which was the mouth and… come to think of it, just the mouth. Maybe that hint of curl in the brown hair came from him; I didn't recall it from any of my baby pictures. The rest was pure Hildy, which is to say, damn near flawless. Sorry, but that's how I was feeling about myself.

Maybe it sounds fu

I could spend an hour winding his soft hair around my finger. Then, for variety, not because I'd tired of the hair, I could spend the next hour playing piggy with his toes or making rude noises with my lips against his belly. He'd grin when I did that, and wave his arms around.

He hardly cried at all. That probably has to do with the fact that I gave him little opportunity to cry, since I hardly ever put him down. I grudged every second away from him. Remembering the papoose dolls in Texas, I fashioned a sling so I could do my foraging without leaving him behind. Other than that, and to take him out for bathing, we spent all our time sitting at the cave entrance, looking out. I was not totally oblivious; I knew someone would be coming one of these days, and it might not be someone I wanted to see.