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discounting the Fringe States that
had held out in the Unification. And now, Cyrus was about to leave
his life behind for a new one. And it floored him.
    To Cyrus, Kalem had always looked older than
he was. And it seemed he had purposefully promoted that image. The
grey flecks in his hair made his skin look lighter. The pale light
that streamed in through the large windowed side of the conveyance
vehicle gave his light skin an odd glow and accented the lines of
his face that made him look serious even when he smiled.
    Cyrus imagined Dr. Kalem would have made an
excellent poker player if he had believed in gambling. But the man,
who had been his closest friend since his matriculation to the
physical sciences tract of the Arcology, was too interested in a
concrete sense of security to gamble on anything except his own
mental ability, which he had in droves.
    The lines in Kalem’s face seemed an odd
contrast to Feralynn’s. It was hard to read her expression, but
Cyrus had grown accustomed to seeing the lines that formed around
her jaw line whenever she was quietly upset with something he had
said, or something he had done, or something he had not done that
he should have. But today the lines were gone. She seemed torn, but
was not combative. She was not usually quiet about her emotions,
whether she understood clearly what she was feeling or not, but
today, her mixed feelings were solemn and unmanifest. Standing
there in the pale orange light of the smog tinted sun, Cyrus could
see the fire in her eyes that he had recognized the moment he met
her—the fire he had not seen in the eight years since his son had
been born.
    Cyrus looked up at the browning film that
limited visibility even out this far from the growing sprawl of Los
Angeles. Most of the desert had been consumed by urban renewal and
the need to accommodate more and more people. “People just don’t
die like they used to,” David Chamberlain, his father, had once
said. It wasn’t until now, looking at the dinge-filled sky, Cyrus
really understood what he meant. The Silverlake Terraforming
Processor had been cleaning the noxious city air now for more than
half a century. Ironically, this technology, made obsolete by the
discovery of a planet that could sustain humanity without
terraforming, now served to make Earth itself more inhabitable—all
the while, forcing the filth out here to the desert.
    People weren’t even born right any more.
Podcenters robbed the mothers who could afford it of the last
trimester of motherhood in order to eliminate birth defects and
disease. Human beings were surviving better than ever—and that
survival was killing them. No one had officially stated that this
mission was to ‘save humanity,’ but the shoulder pads in their
month-long briefing definitely acted as though this mission had
more riding on it than just human curiosity. Something was about to
break, and he and the nineteen other eggheads on this barge were
being lined up to put their fingers in the dam. No one said it. The
words probably didn’t exist to call out the problem by name. But
Cyrus could feel it. The thought alone was so ominous it seemed
like a promise. He could tell his son felt it too.
    Cyrus ran his fingers through the curly
strands of hair that always seemed to collect on the front of the
boy’s head. The curls made his head look too big for his body,
which was smaller than it should have been. Cyrus took his wife’s
hand in his other. Her hand was warmer than he expected given the
chill he felt in his own. Her long black hair concealed her face,
but he caught a glimpse of her eye as she turned her head toward
him, and he saw a glimmer there. She squeezed his hand and held her
grip, and then turned slowly to meet his eyes. The glimmer had been
a tear that had formed on her tear duct, yet refused to run down
her face. Her porcelain skin was a strong contrast to his own, but
he had always liked that. She didn’t bother to wipe at her eyes,
but the