The Harvest

“Really?”

“My treat.” He added, “If it’s open.”

“I think it is,” Rachel said… and he wondered how she knew.

Dos Aguilas was a Mexican restaurant at the bayshore. Matt recalled that Celeste had once classified it as a “linen-tablecloth” restaurant, as opposed to the plastic-booth kind at the malls. It had a cook, not a controlled-portion dispensing machine.

Arturo, the manager, had inherited the business from his father. The restaurant itself had been here since 1963. A landmark. It was still open for business. Empty, but open.

Arturo welcomed them in, and Matt nodded to him, but he understood by the glance that passed between Arturo and Rachel that they were of the same tribe now; Matt was the outsider here.

He chose a table by the window where they could watch the sunlit water lap the pier.

“It means Two Eagles,’” Matt said.

Rachel opened a menu over her cutlery. “What?”

“Dos Aguilas. It means Two Eagles.’ The story is that a pair of harbor eagles have a nest near here. You can have di

“Really?” She gazed out across the water. “Did you ever see them?”

“Nope. Don’t know anybody who ever did. The story’s almost half a century old. But people still look.”

Rachel nodded, smiling at the thought.

Arturo came to the table. He took their order and headed for the kitchen, disappearing into a foliage of decor: sombreros, pistol belts, pottery. Matt said to his daughter, “You knew the restaurant would be open.” She nodded.

“You know things. Not just you. Other people, too.” He told her about the figure Tom Kindle had been quoting, one in ten thousand. “Rachel, how would anyone know that?”

She looked thoughtful. “It’s approximately the right number.”

“Okay. But how do you know?”

“Oh, I just… shift gears.” Tm sorry?”

“Well, that’s what I call it. It has to do with making co

“Yes.”

“Because it’s strange.”

“I kind of took that for granted, Rache.”

She gave him a look: Well, okay… if you insist.

“It has to do with the neocytes,” she said. “One of the things they are is a kind of co

“Like telepathy?”

“In a way. But I think that gives the wrong impression. The lines they’re drawing are knowledge lines. The Travellers think there should be as few barriers to knowledge as possible. People’s lives are private, if they want them to be, but knowledge—knowledge is infinitely sharable.”

“What kind of knowledge?”

“More or less any kind.”

“Give me an example.”

“Well… suppose I want to know how to get from here to Chicago. Used to be I’d have to look at a map. Now I can just remember it.”

“Rachel, you’ve never been there.”

“No, but I’m not remembering it from myself, I’m remembering it from somebody else. Anyone who’s ever looked at a road map. It isn’t my knowledge, but I can get to it if I need it.”

“That’s all there is to it? Remembering?”

“That’s hardly all there is to it, but that’s what it feels like. I suppose it’s more like data sharing or something computery like that. But it feels like remembering. You have to actually do it, I mean there’s a mental effort involved—like thinking really hard. Shifting gears. But then you just… remember.”

“What if it’s something complicated? Quantum theory, say. Neurosurgery.”

She frowned, and Matt wondered if she was shifting gears right now, as they spoke.

“You can do that,” she said, “but it has to be orderly. In the Traveller world, knowledge is infinitely available but functionally hierarchic. You have to take the logical steps. What’s the good of knowing, for instance, that you can derive classical probability from the squared modulus of the quantum complex amplitude, if you don’t know what a modulus is, in physical terms, or an amplitude? The knowledge is available, but if you want to understand it you still have to eat it one bite at a time. Like this salad. Thank you, Arturo.”

“My pleasure. Get you something to drink?”

“A Coke,” Rachel said.

“For you, sir?”

“Anything.” His mouth was dry.

Rachel said, “I didn’t mean to be scary.”

“No. You took me by surprise, that’s all.”

“I surprise myself sometimes.”

The meal passed in awkward silence. Matt noticed Rachel glancing off across the water—checking for eagles. Once you started, it was hard to stop. “You still look sad,” she said when Arturo had brought his coffee. “Do I?”

“You were happy for a little while. Because we talked. But only for a while. Because of what’s happening.”

“Because it’s stealing you, Rachel. You’re right, I’m happy we talked. But it doesn’t change anything, does it? You’re going somewhere I can’t follow.”

“Doesn’t that happen anyway? If I’d gone off to college, or—”

“It’s hardly the same. I know you’re not a teenager forever. You go to college, maybe you get married, you have a career, things are different. Of course. But, my God, this is something else entirely. You go to college, I can phone you on weekends. Next year—can you guarantee we’ll even be able to talk to each other?” She looked away.

“So what do we have?” Matt asked. “A few months?” She pondered the question. Her eyes strayed to the harbor, the calm water there. “Maybe a few months. Maybe less.”

“You are going away.”

“Yes.”

“All of you?”

“Yes.”

“Where? When?”

“It’s not—it isn’t altogether clear.” He balled his napkin and threw it on his plate. She said, “Daddy, it works both ways. You made a choice, too. I’m entitled to a little resentment.”

“Oh?”

“Because you’re going to die. And I’m not. And it didn’t have to be that way.”

He followed the bay road toward home.

“You know I mean to save this town,” Matt told his daughter.

“I’ve heard you say so.”

“You don’t think it’s possible?”

“I’m… not sure.”

“Rachel, listen to me. If you know anything about the future, anything at all about what might happen to this town—to the planet—I need you to tell me. Because we can’t plan for what we can’t imagine.”

She was silent for a long time in the passenger seat. Then she said: “Things will go on as they are now. At least for a little while. Maybe into the winter. After that… people will start to disappear.”

“Disappear?”

“Give up the physical body. Oh, Daddy, I know how horrible that must sound! But it isn’t. It really isn’t.”

“If you say so, Rachel. What happens to these people?”

“They move to the Artifact, at least temporarily.”

“Why temporarily?”

“Because we’ll have a place of our own before long.”

“What are you saying—a human Artifact?”

“That kind of environment, yes.”

“For what purpose—to leave the planet?”

“Maybe. Daddy, these decisions haven’t been taken yet. But the planet is a serious consideration. We’ve left a terrible mark on it. The Travellers have already started cleaning it up. Erasing some of the changes we made. Taking some of the C02 out of the air.…”

“They can do that?”

“Yes.”

“So people disappear,” Matt said. “So Buchanan is empty.”

“We don’t all disappear. Or at least, not all at once. In the short run… What would you call a day like today? Indian summer? Last nice day of the year. Last chance to get in a ballgame, maybe, or go to the park. Well, I think the next four or five months are going to be Indian summer for a lot of us. Our last chance to wear skin and walk around on the earth.”