Dark Ararat

How much easier would that have been if the panspermists or the extreme convergence theorists had been right, he wondered. How much difference did it make now that they had been proved wrong— doublywrong if you added the biochemical version of Gause’s axiom to the package? How much hope was left, when even Hopehad been riven by conflict and virtually torn in two, each part far less than the ruined whole? What comfort was there in having to hope that one of the seven humans at Base Three had killed their colleague, because the alternative was even more discomfiting?

“Matthew?” Solari said, again, although it was he who had let the silence fall.

“Still here,” Matthew said. “Still awake. A petty triumph, I suppose, but one I can still treasure.”

“I keep waiting for the bump,” Solari said. “Utterly pointless tensing my muscles, I know, but I can’t help it.”

Until Solari had mentioned it, Matthew hadn’t tensed his own muscles at all, but now that the subject had been raised he felt himself flinching in anticipation … then relaxing…. then flinching again …

“We’ll be down soon enough,” he muttered, trying to jerk himself out of the absurd pattern.

And soon enough, they were.

The impact was distinct, but not in the least dangerous. It felt like an elevator coming to rest after sliding down the core of a building.

“What happens now?” Solari asked.

The glorified dandelion seed provided his answer by splitting apart, as if it were indeed some kind of seed. The silvery mist before Matthew’s eyes was oddly illuminated, as if the threads of his cocoon were transmitting the sparkling light and reflecting it at the same time, dividing the rays of the new sun into a million glittering shards.

Then the cocoon began to split too, to deliver its precious cargo to the peak of Ararat, the broad sweep of Tyre … or whatever.

Matthew took firmer hold of the bag containing the essence of his former life, and began to struggle free of the disintegrating wrapping that had confined him. He hoped that there would be a crowd to greet him, even if circumstance dictated that it could not possibly be more than seven strong. He had always liked to look upon faces that were pleased to see him, and this was the kind of moment that demanded a veritable host of sympathetic witnesses.

PART TWO

Delving into the Past

SIXTEEN

Had the landing worked out exactly as pla

The hatchway from which Matthew had to make his escape was three meters above the ground and his egress was blocked by clustered “leaves,” which bore more resemblance to plastic plates and leathery fans than the leaves of Earthly trees. Some of these structures had shattered, leaving jagged shards hanging loosely from broken branches, but the majority were whole, their more elastic elements having grudgingly made way for the arrival of the capsule in their midst.

He could see through the tangle that there wasa crowd hurrying to greet him—seven strong, as he had hoped—but they were still some way off, descending a slope made treacherous by loose gravel. He knew that he must be almost completely hidden from them, and had not space to wave a greeting. The ma

“Can you get down?” Vince Solari asked, having divined that there were problems.

“It’s okay,” Matthew assured him, after further investigation. “Not many thorns, no vicious wildlife. It’s just a matter of treading carefully.”

Fortunately, the branches of the dendrite seemed strong enough and dense enough to facilitate a gradual descent. He hesitated slightly over the business of thrusting himself into their midst, because he was wary of the sudden intimate contact with any local life-form, no matter how i

The twisted “boughs” of the dendrite looked and felt more like a work of art than an active organism, the foundations in which the plates and fans were set having a texture more like vulcanized rubber than wood. He was glad that there would be no need to handle any of the bulbous structures that were suspended from the end of each branch, although he had no reason to think that they were dangerous.

Eventually, he arrived on the ground and scrambled out into the open.

By this time the people he had seen approaching were all gathered about the thicket, but they hung back and waited for him to emerge, having realized that pressing forward would only make things more difficult.

Ly

Matthew was slightly disappointed by the hesitancy of so many of their responses, and wondered for a moment whether they had mistaken him for the policeman sent to interrogate them, improbable as that might seem. It only took a few seconds, however, to realize that they were almost as awkward with one another as they were with him. It occurred to him that they might not have assembled into a single company for some time. They were, apparently, divided among themselves. Bernal Delgado’s death had presumably emphasized those divisions rather than bringing them together.

The ma

“What’s the hurry?” Matthew asked, when he had tried and failed to introduce the newly arrived Vince Solari to the company. “There’s nothing in there likely to rot.”