Chapter 6 chapter Five

The dust fell sparsely for hours, dissolving into the gray light of the sky, and did not stop completely until dark. Apart from the intermittent roar of bulldozers, the city remained eerily silent.Turk can see where the bulldozers are working from the billows of dust rising around and above them.I saw those gray dust pillars flying high over the wooden roads of shops, huts, office buildings, and signboards, and the water pipes connected from the port to the mountains, bringing in seawater to wash the streets, and the air was filled with the smell of dust mixed with seawater.It's a wasteland here, but even at this hour there are people on the street, wearing masks or drapes over their faces, kicking up piles of debris to go somewhere; A small role in a disaster movie.A man in a dirty burqa stood for half an hour in front of the closed Arab grocery store across the street, smoking a cigarette and staring at the sky.

do you think it's over?Liz asked. It was obviously a question he couldn't answer, but he guessed she didn't want an actual answer, just some reassurance.Anyway, it's stopped now. They were both restless and unable to sleep.Turk turned on the TV and sat on the couch looking for news.A newscaster announced that the dust cloud had moved inland and no further fallout was expected.Every community from Ayr Point to Hexey on the coast has reported sporadic fallout, but Port Magellan appears to have been hit harder than most.In a way, this is a good thing.Turk argues that this particulate matter, while a nuisance to cities, is more likely to wreak havoc on local ecosystems, smothering forests, killing crops, and perhaps poisoning soil, although the newscaster said, according to According to the latest analysis results, there is nothing highly toxic in it.The fossilized or machine-like structures in the fallout attracted attention, of course.Microphotographs of the dust reveal even more underlying structures: degenerate cogs and wheels, scalloped cones like tiny conch shells, inorganic molecules linked in complex and unnatural ways.It looked as if some gigantic machine had worn away in orbit, and only its finer components survived the plunge through the atmosphere.

They spent the day in the apartment, with Turk sitting by the window most of the time, and Lise calling and texting family members, making kitchen food lists in case of a prolonged lockdown in the city.Now they had re-established an intimacy they had shared in the mountains camping in a thunderstorm and now brought it back to the city.Turk reached up to stroke her hair as she leaned her head against his shoulder, but he hesitated when he remembered the situation they were in. it does not matter.she says. Her hair smelled fresh and a little golden, and it felt like silk in his hands. Turk, she said, sorry

Nothing to apologize for. I'm sorry I think I need an excuse to see you. I miss you as well.He said. It's just that the situation is confusing. I know. are you going to sleepShe took his hand and rubbed her face.I mean He knew what she meant. ☆ He spent that night, and another night, with her.Not because he had to, but because he could.At this time, most of the coastal roads have been cleared. But he can't live forever.He spent another morning at leisure, picking out his breakfast, and Liz made more phone calls.It is astonishing how many friends and relatives she has.It made him feel a little unpopular.All his calls this morning were to customers who had to reschedule or cancel flights, and he couldn't afford to cancel all of them right now.Also called a few brothers, they were mechanics at the airport, and they might wonder why he didn't go to drink with them.He had no social life, not even a dog.

She recorded a long speech for her mother in America.On this planet, you can't make a phone call directly across the arch, because the only thing hypothetical intelligent beings are allowed to go between this world and the world next door are manned sea-vessels.But at sea there is a whole fleet of merchant ships equipped with telecommunications equipment, sailing back and forth, relaying the recorded information.You can watch video news from your hometown, only a few hours late; you can also send a voice or message to the other party.He overheard Liz's message. She carefully reassured that the falling dust did not cause continuous damage, and it seemed that it would be cleaned up soon, but why it happened was still a mystery, which was very puzzling.Yes, Turk thought.

Turk's family is in Austin, Texas, but they haven't heard from him recently and don't expect to hear from him. On the bookcase next to Lise's desk was a three-volume, hardcover set of The Martian Archives, also known as the Martian Encyclopedia, summaries of the history and science of Mars that Van Novin had brought to Earth thirty years earlier.The back of the blue book jacket was torn at both ends.He took down the first book and flipped through it, and when she finally put down the phone, he said: Do you believe this? This is not religion.Not something you have to believe.

During those eerie time spins, the technologically advanced nations of Earth gathered all the resources necessary to terraform the planet and colonize Mars.The most useful resource has already been set by hypothetical intelligent beings, and that is time.Every year the earth under the time gyration membrane passes, hundreds of millions of years pass in the entire universe.The biotransformation of Mars (what scientists call planetary terraforming) was also easier to accomplish during that generous time interval.Human migration to Mars is, on the whole, a more risky thing. Isolated from Earth for tens of millions of years, the Martian settlers created a technology to adapt to their water- and nitrogen-poor environment.They are skilled at biological manipulation, but wary of large-scale mechanical engineering.When hypothetical intelligent beings seem to encircle Mars with a time gyration membrane, sending a human expedition is the last and last resort strategy.

The Vanovan, known as the Ambassador of Mars, came during the last years of the time spin.Flipping through the index of the book, Turk found a photograph of him, a small, wrinkled, dark man.He was entertained by the governments of Earth until it became apparent that he could not come up with a solution to their problems.But Vanovan advocated and helped push for the launch into the outer solar system of bioprobes, Martian-designed, self-replicating robotic devices that could return information that might help understand the nature of hypothetical intelligent life.In a way, they succeeded.This network of detectors is incorporated into an ecology of self-replicating bodies that already existed in the depths of space, but no one had imagined it before.These self-replicants are the actual bodies of hypothetical intelligent beings, at least some people believe so.But Turk had no problem with that.

The Mars file in Lise's hands is an authorized revision published in the United States, reviewed, edited by a team of scientists and government officials, and known to be incomplete.Before his death, Vanovan had managed to circulate the unedited text privately, along with something even more precious, the Martian potion.These included drugs that would add thirty or forty years to the average human lifespan, so-called fourth-year therapy, for which Lise's father might have been obsessed. There should be many fourth-year Earthlings on Earth today, but these Earthlings have not yet developed a set of norms, lacking the complex social structures that Martians developed to restrain fourth-years.Almost all member states of the United Nations have signed an agreement making it illegal to receive the treatment.Most of what the U.S. Department of Genetic Safety has done is to clamp down on fourth-year cults and sweep up the growing industry of genetic modification of humans and animals.Lise's ex-husband worked for the Department of Genetic Safety.

☆ You know, she said, we rarely talk about these things. It seems to me that we don't talk enough about anything. Her smile was short but pleasant. She said: "Do you know anyone who's in fourth year? Even if I saw it, I wouldn't recognize it.Even if it was prevarication, she didn't seem to pay attention. Because it is different in Port Magellan, she said, the laws are not enforced to the same degree in this new world as they are on Earth. I hear things are changing. So I'm going to see what interests my dad before it all gets wiped out.I heard that there is a fourth-year underground organization in the city.Maybe more than one.

Yes, I've heard that too.I've heard a lot of things, not all of them are true. I could of course do all kinds of secondary research, but what I really needed was to talk to someone who had been in direct contact with the 4th year group. right.Maybe Brian can arrange it for you, the next time Genetic Security catches someone. As soon as the words came out of his mouth, he immediately regretted it. He really shouldn't have spoken so recklessly!She immediately tensed up.Brian and I are divorced, and I am not responsible for what Genetic Safety does. But he's looking for the same person you're looking for. The reasons are different. Have you ever wondered about this?Will he use you as a tool?Taking advantage of your research? I will not show my work to Brian, nor to anyone else. Even if he used the woman who might take your father as bait, wouldn't he? i'm not sure you have the right never mind.I'm just you know, just worried. She was obviously going to fight back immediately, but she looked up and thought first.Turk soon noticed that she had a habit of stepping out of the moment and passing judgment later. She said: "Don't speculate about me and Brian.We still have contacts, it doesn't mean that I will help him. I just want to know where we are now. ☆ It was dark again before noon, but the clouds were rain clouds, nothing weird, and they brought an untimely downpour.Turk thought the rain might be a blessing instead, washing some of the falling dust into the soil or out to sea, perhaps saving the season's crops, if possible.However, when he got back to the car in the parking lot of Harley's restaurant, the rain did not make the road south from Port City smooth.Pools of shiny gray dusty water make sidewalks dangerous.The streams were all the color of mud, and the churning waters ran on their beds.As the road crossed the ridges, Turk could see masses of silt flowing from a dozen sediment deltas and snaking into the sea. He turned off the road at an unmarked exit to what most English-speakers call a bungalow area of ​​New Delhi.It was a cluster of humble houses on a plateau between two streams, at the foot of a cliff that collapsed sporadically every rainy season.There is no pavement between the rows of cheap Chinese-made prefabs, sun-drenched shacks improved by tarpaulin and insulation paper hauled in from cheap factories on the North Shore.There is no police in Pingfang District, and there is no real public power except for churches, temples, and mosques.The bulldozers don't come in here at all, and the narrow alleys are full of collapsing wet sand dunes.However, a passage was shoveled out of the main road, and it took Turk only a few minutes to reach Thomas.Kim Eun's nondescript home.It was a grey-green rough house squeezed between two identical houses. He parked the car and walked across a shallow puddle of dusty wet mud to Thomas's house.He knocked on the door.No one answered.He tapped again.A wrinkled face flashed behind a small, curtained window on the left, and the door swung open. Turk!Thomas.Jin En's voice was old, as if it came out of the underground rock formation.But it was more honest than Bitek when he first met him.Didn't expect to see you.Especially when these troubles happen.come on in.It's a mess in here, but I can still get you a drink. Turk walked into the house.Thomas' home was a single room with thin walls, a battered sofa and table at one end, and a small kitchen at the other, all dimly lit.The Port Magellan Power Authority has not connected any cables in this area.The only electricity comes from the Cigna Technology solar panel on the roof, and its power generation efficiency is greatly affected by falling dust.There was a lingering smell of sulfur and talc in the room, from the dust that Turk had brought in with his footsteps.Thomas is a neat family man in his own style.By mess, he meant a few empty beer bottles that hadn't been thrown away on a narrow countertop. sit down.As Thomas said, he sat down too, the seat of the chair was already dented by his thin buttocks.Turk sat down on the least worn cushion on the old sofa.Can you believe this shit fell from the sky?I mean, who wants this stuff?Yesterday I just went out to buy some sundries, and I had to dig a road with a shovel! It was unbelievable, Turk admitted. What wind brought you here?It must not be just good neighbors, right?I guess.In this weather condition, if this can be called weather. I have a question to ask.Turk said. Question or help? Well, let's start with a question anyway. Is it serious? possible. Would you like a beer?Flush the dust out of your throat? Not a bad idea.Turk said. ☆ Turk knew Thomas from an old single-hulled tanker on its final voyage to the breaking bay. This ship called the Kestrel is Turk's ticket to the New World.Turk applied for the ship as a first-class sailor with a meager salary.All crew members are, as this is a one-way trip.On the other side of the arch, on Equatorial Island, the scrap market is booming.On Earth, a behemoth like the Kestrel was a liability, obsolete by international standards, usable only by the worst coastal trades, and prohibitively expensive to scrap.But in the New World, the same rusty hulk is a precious source of raw material, dismantled and shredded with acetylene by labor armies in Thailand and India. shipbreaker.Shipbreaking Beach is located a few hundred kilometers north of Port Magellan. Turk and Thomas ate together on that voyage and got to know each other a bit.Thomas claimed to have been born in Bolivia, but grew up in Belarusi, working on the docks there as a teenager and young adult, and later at the docks in New Orleans.During the turbulent years of the time circle, he lived intermittently at sea for decades.At that time, the U.S. government revitalized shipping to show its importance to national security. Later, the trade on both sides of the arch created new demand for new shipping. Thomas boarded the Kestrel for the same reason Turk did: it was a one-way ticket to Promise, or so they thought.Thomas is not an ignorant person. He has passed through the arch five times before and stayed in Port Magellan for several months. He has experienced the crimes of this city and seen how cruel this city treats newcomers.But this city is freer, more open, and has a more relaxed multilingual environment than any other city on earth.This is a city of sailors, and most of the city was built by wandering sailors.This is where he wants to spend the rest of his life, and he wants to see that view, where the human hand has only recently come in. Hoping to go as far away from Texas as possible, for reasons he doesn't want to think about at all). The problem with the Kestrel was that, since it had no future, it was so poorly maintained that it was barely sailable.Everyone on board knew this fact, from the Filipino captain to the illiterate Syrian boy who served the crew's meals.This is a dangerous trip across borders.The harsh weather has wrecked many ships heading to the shipbreaking bay, and more than one rusting ship has rested under the arches of supposedly intelligent beings. However, the weather in the Indian Ocean is reassuringly good.Since this was Turk's first time passing the arch, he risked being laughed at by his fellow shipmates by allowing himself to stand on deck as he passed.Through the arch is at night.He fenced off the wind aft of the forecastle deck aft and, using a pile of rags hardened by dried paint as a pillow, stared at the stars with all fours sprawled.The stars are scattered due to the four billion years of galactic evolution, and when these times are going on, the earth is covered in the time gyration membrane.Thirty years later, the stars still had no names, but they were the only ones Turk knew.He was less than five years old when the time round ended.His generation had grown up in a post-time spiral world, and had grown accustomed to the notion that one could travel from planet to planet in an oil tanker.Unlike some, though, Turk never took the matter for granted.To him, it's still a spectacle. The arch of hypothetical intelligent beings is a structure far larger than anything human engineering has produced.On the scale of stars and planets (the scale on which hypothetical intelligent beings should operate), it was relatively small, but it was the largest man-made thing Turk imagined he might have ever encountered.He often sees it in photographs, videos, and schematic diagrams in textbooks, but none of these compare to the real thing. The first time he saw it with his own eyes was what he saw on board the Kestrel in the port of Sumatra.On a clear day, and especially at sunset, the eastern pillar of the arch would be revealed, and the last rays of the setting sun would climb up the pale thread and illuminate it into a thin golden thread.But now that he was almost directly below the highest point of the arch, the landscape he saw was completely different.The arch was once compared to a wedding ring with a diameter of more than 1,600 kilometers falling into the Indian Ocean. Half of it was buried deep in the earth's strata, and the other half protruded into the atmosphere and reached space.From the deck of the Kestrel, he couldn't see the two pillars protruding into the sea, but he could see the top of the arch reflected in the setting sun, a silver-blue oil paint gradually turning dark red to the east and west ends.In the heat of the night air, the silvery blue trembled slightly. I heard that when you drive close to these two pillars, you can see that the pillars are as plain as concrete pillars rising from the sea, and the thick pillars rise up until they disappear.However static the Arch may seem, it's not a dull thing, though.It's a machine that communicates with a replica (or half, so to speak) of itself, set many light-years away, in the compatible ocean of the New World.Maybe it circled one of the stars Turk had seen from the deck of the Kestrel.Here's a chilling thought: The arch may appear immobile, but it's actually monitoring the nearby sea in two worlds, directing traffic in both directions.Because that's what it does, that's what it does.If a bird, a weather-beaten branch, or an ocean current passes through the arch, it will pass through unimpeded.The sea water of the Earth and the sea water of the New World will never mix.But if a sea vessel with a crew passed through the arch, it would be intercepted and moved an unimaginable distance.All sources point to a disappointingly easy transfer.But Turk wanted to experience it outside, not in the sailor's quarters in the cabin, where he wouldn't even know he was past the arch until the ship's customary whistle sounded. He looked at his watch.The time is almost up.He waited silently when Thomas stepped out of the shadows and grinned at him in the deck lights. It's my first time, yes.Turk said.He pre-empted, trying to fend off the inevitable comment. Hold.Thomas said you don't need to explain.I also come up every time I pass.Be it day or night.Like a tribute. To whom?Hypothetical intelligent beings?But Turk didn't ask. And, wow!Thomas said, turning his old face to the sky.I'm coming! So Turk took the courage to get ready (it didn't have to), and he watched the stars dim and swirl near the top of the arch, like the reflection of a ship's bow thrown into the water.After that, the Kestrel was suddenly surrounded by fog, maybe it was a mist that reminded him of fog.There is neither smell nor taste of water vapor, and there is also a kind of dizziness during the transition, and there is a faint pressure in the ears.Then the stars came back, but they were different stars, denser and brighter, in what seemed to be a darker sky.The air did smell and taste slightly different now, and a gust of wind swirled around the hard steel corners of the upper deck as if introducing itself.The air here is warm, salty, and refreshing.On the high bridge of the Kestrel the needle of the compass must have turned too, as it did every time the arch was passed.There was one long blast from the ship's whistle, unbearably loud, but hesitant in a sea that until recently had known man. new world.Turk said, but thought to himself: That's it?Is it that simple? equatorial continent.Thomas said.Like most people, he confused the continent with the planet.What's it like to be an astronaut, Turk? But Turk couldn't answer, because at this moment two sailors sneaked up to the upper deck, splashed a bucket of sea water on Turk, and laughed.This is another rite of passage through the arch, baptizing sailors passing by for the first time.Finally he passed the strangest highest point in the world.He didn't intend to turn back, and there was no real home for him to turn back. ☆ Thomas was old and frail when he boarded the Kestrel, and was wounded when the ship had a rough approach to the beach. Shipbreaking Beach has no docks or docks.Turk saw the beach from behind the deck rail, his first real glimpse of the Equatorial coast.The continent looms on the horizon like a mirage, pink in the morning light, yet it has been touched by human hands.Thirty years after the time round, the west side of Equatoria has been transformed from a barren land into a mess, with fishing villages, logging camps, simple industries, burned farmland, hastily built roads, a dozen prosperous towns, and more. There is a city from which most of the rich resources of the interior come and go.The shipbreaking beach, about 200 kilometers north of Port Magellan, is probably the ugliest human settlement on the coast.Turk didn't dare to say, but the captain of the Filipino cargo ship insisted that this statement seemed to be true.The wide white beach, protected from the surf by a stony headland, is strewn with wrecks of ships and fouled with smoke from a thousand fires.Turk saw a double-hulled tanker resembling the Kestrel, two dozen shore tankers, and even a warship stripped of all recognizable flags and emblems.The ships had arrived so recently that the work of dismembering them had not yet begun.There are still more than ten kilometers long area on the beach, which is full of steel frames and empty hulls from which the iron plates have been removed from the hull. The sparks from the acetylene torches of the dismantling workers flickered. Beyond these were scrap sheds, blacksmiths, shipbreakers' tool houses and machine shops, mostly Indian and Malaysian workers, who were contractually required to work here in exchange for passing through the arch.A little further away, vaguely visible in the morning air, are hills and forests extending continuously towards the mountains, stretching into a gray-blue foothills. He couldn't stay on deck when beached.The standard practice for taking a large ship to a breaking bay is to drive straight to shore and let it run aground there.The shipbreakers do the rest, and when the sailors withdraw, they huddle on board the ship.The ship's steel will eventually be transported to the re-rolling factory on the south bank, and kilometers of wires and lead pipes on the ship will be dismantled and sold in bulk.Turk heard that even the ship's bells were sold to local Buddhist temples.This being Equatoria, anything man-made can come in handy.The beaching of a ship as large as the Kestrel might have been rough and destructive, but that didn't matter here.None of these boats were ever able to float again. The signal sounded, and he stepped down to find Thomas waiting in the sailor's mess, grinning.Turk had grown fond of Thomas' thin smile, goofy but genuine.The Kestrel has come to the end of the road, said Thomas, and it is the end of my road.I think every chicken has to go back to its nest. We're about to head into the coast for a bit.Turk said.Soon the captain will start the engine and send the boat straight to shore.Engines are shut down at the last moment, and the bow cuts into the sand as the tide rises.Then the sailors would lower the rope ladder and quickly climb down the hull, and the luggage would also be lowered.Turk was about to make his first steps in the sand and water of the shipbreaking beach.In less than a month, the Kestrel will be a memory, along with thousands of tons of recycled iron, recycled steel and recycled lead. Every death is a birth.Thomas said he was old enough to be comfortable with such announcements. do not know. No, I think you as a person know more than you let on.The Kestrel is over, but it's your first time in a new world.Now there is death and birth. If you're going to say it, so be it, Thomas. Turk felt the ship's old engine throbbing.The beaching will be violent, it is unavoidable.All loose machinery on board was stowed or dismantled and sent ashore along with the lifeboats.Half of the crew has gone ashore.Wow!As the vibrations of the ship came through the deck and the legs of the chair, Thomas exclaimed: "I dare say it's faster now." The bow would cut through the water, Turk thought, and the boat would vibrate like this every time it started, and every time it pushed.It's just that they never sail on open water again.They are a dead end on the beach, with whole continents rising below.The captain radios the pilot on shore, who radios minor course corrections and tells when to cut the engine. Come on, Turk prays.He liked being at sea and didn't mind being on the lower decks, but he found that he very much disliked being in a windowless room just before a man-made disaster was about to happen.Have you done this before? Well, no, said Thomas, not on this side.But a few years ago I was at a shipbreaking beach near Goa and saw an old container ship run aground.That ship was not much smaller than this one.In fact, the scene was a bit poetic.It sails up the tide line like a sea turtle trying to come ashore to lay its eggs.I mean, you might want to be on fire, but it's not that violent.After a few minutes, Thomas looked at the watch that hung like a bracelet on his thin wrist and said: It's time to turn off the engine. Are you on time? I have eyes and ears.I knew where we anchored, and I could hear how fast I was going. To Turk it sounded like Thomas was bragging, but maybe it was true.Turk wiped his hands carefully on the knees of his jeans.He was nervous, but how could it go wrong?In this moment, everything is so easy. What went wrong was in a pinch, and he figured it out afterwards.The Kestrel's bridge was out of power, because of a short circuit in the old wiring or a malfunctioning part, so that the captain could neither hear the instructions of the pilot ashore nor communicate his orders to the engine room.The Kestrel was supposed to slide ashore on its own, but instead it rushed up under power.Turk was thrown from his chair as the boat hit the shore and list heavily to starboard.Still alert, he saw the foggy cutlery come loose from the wall and tumble toward him.It was about the size of a coffin and about the same weight, and he tried to climb out of it, but he didn't have time to get out.Luckily Thomas was there, standing upright, grabbing the squeaky metal cabinet, and finding a way to hold it back as it slid by, giving Turk enough time to roll over.He stopped in front of a chair as the Kestrel stopped moving and the ship's engines finally mercifully died.The hull of the old oil tanker groaned with old gears, and finally fell silent.docked.no one was injured Except for Thomas, who took the full weight of the cabinet in an instant, his left arm was cut below the elbow, and the bone was visible deep. Thomas put his injured hand on his blood-stained thigh and looked terrified.Using a handkerchief as a tourniquet, Turk told Thomas to stop swearing and hold still so he could call for help.It took him ten minutes to find an officer to listen to him. The doctor on board had already disembarked, and there were no medicines in the infirmary, so Thomas could only take a few aspirin to relieve the pain, and then he was taken off the ship from the deck on a stretcher made of makeshift ropes and baskets.In the end, the captain of the Kestrel refused to take responsibility. He received his payment from the ship breaking boss, and took a bus to Magellan Port before sunset.So Turk stayed on to tend to Thomas until a Malay welder on shift was persuaded by him to get a real doctor.In other words, find someone who can act as a doctor in this area of ​​the New World.The thin Malay said in broken English that there was a woman who was a good doctor, a Western doctor who was very good to the shipbreakers.She is white and has lived for several years in a Minangkabau fishing village not far from the northern coast. Her name, he said, was Diane.