Inherit the Earth

Diana had no reply to that but curses—and the curses rapidly turned to violent action. For a moment, Madoc thought she might actually try to take it out on him, but she turned and hurled herself upon the bed instead, tearing at the quilt with her bloody hands, lacerating its surface as easily as she had lacerated her own flesh. The filling came out in flocculent lumps which rose into the air as she beat the bed in frustration.

Madoc wondered, as he always did, whether he ought to slap her about the face the way people sometimes did in antique movies, but he had never believed that it would work. It might conceivably have worked then, but it wouldn’t now. The world was different now, and so was the quality of Diana’s hysteria. Madoc couldn’t believe that the hysteria was authentically destructive, let alone self-destructive. He couldn’t believe that it was anything more than a performance, whose safety was guaranteed by courtesy of her IT—but it wasn’t a performance he wanted to get involved in.

Damon had had something of the same fierce reactivity in him once, but Damon’s had drained away. Damon had made a kind of peace with the world, and Diana’s inability to make a similar peace had driven them apart.

“It’s pointless, Di,” Madoc said, going forward as if to take her arm when her fury had abated a little.

She lashed out at him from a prone position, but it was a halfhearted blow. He caught her arm easily enough, turned her over, and then caught the other so that he could look into her face without fear for his eyes.

She was weeping, but she wasn’t sobbing.

“Give it up, Di,” he said as softly as he could. “It’s not worth it. Nothing’sworth that kind of heartache, that much frustration.”

Diana shook away his constraining hands, then shoved him aside and walked past him to the balcony. She barely glanced at the boy with the flamingo wings, or at the approaching figures of Le

“I’d have gone with him, if he asked,” she said in a tortured voice. “To the ends of the earth, if necessary. A new start might be exactly what we need. I wish he could understand that. I wish . . ..”

“He isn’t going to ask you, Di,” Madoc said. “He isn’t even going to ask me. Damon’s always been restless. He has to keep moving on.”

“He shouldn’t be in such a hurry,” Diana said, still shivering with resentment. “The one thing nobody needs to do in today’s world is hurry. There’s time enough for everything. He really ought to slow down. I think he’s ru

“Maybe he is ru

Madoc knew that he wasn’t getting through to her, but Le

“Why do theyget the big bedroom?” she demanded, fixing her angry gaze on their fellow guests but holding her bloody hands behind her back, where only Madoc could see what she’d done.

“Because that’s what Damon wanted,” Madoc muttered. “He thinks he owes Le

There was a slight pause before she said: “I can’t.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, but it was no less bitter for that—and she was only keeping her voice down because Le

“Time heals,” he said, “and as you say, we have plenty of it.”

“Sure,” she said, continuing in the same conspicuously weak but bitter tone. “We have a hundred years, or maybe two. We have legions of little robocops patrolling our veins and our nervous systems, ready to take care of any pain that might happen to catch us by surprise. We’re superhuman. Except that there are some pains that all the nanotech in the world can’t soothe, some sicknesses that all the antiviruses in the world can’t cure. At the end of the day, it’s what you feel in your heartthat counts, not what you feel in your hands and feet—and there, we’re as frail and feeble as we ever were. What use is eternity, if you can’t have what you want?”

“What use would eternity be if we could?” Madoc countered, knowing that it was exactly what Damon would have said. “If there were nothing we needed so badly it made us sick, and nothing we wanted so avidly that it made us wretched, what would draw us through today into tomorrow . . . and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow?”

“That’s good,” said Le

“I taught him everything he knows,” Madoc said, offhandedly. “He got it all from me. He may think he doesn’t need me anymore, but I’ll always be with him. In his mind and in his heart, there’ll always be something of me. And you too, of course, Di. We mustn’t forget your contribution to the making of the man.”

Diana had already turned away, unwilling to expose the soreness of her distress to two mere children who couldn’t possibly understand. She didn’t look back to acknowledge Madoc’s sarcasm.

“One day,” said Cathy, looking up at the glider, “I’m going to get a pair of wings like that. Not in pink, though. I want to be a falcon, or a bird of paradise, or a golden oriole . . . or all three, and then some. I want to fly as high as I possibly can, and as faras I possibly can.”

Diana made a sound like a kitten in pain, but she was still determined to keep the full extent of her anguish from the boy and the girl.

“You will,” Madoc said, looking down at the silken crown of Cathy’s head and wondering whether Le