Chapter 29 Chapter Twenty Eight

Turk was sleeping when the earthquake struck.He and Liz and Dr. Duvaly slept, or tried to sleep, on a mattress on the concrete floor.At some point in the dark, Liz came up next to him, both of them still wearing the smelly clothes they had been wearing for days, but that didn't matter.She curled up against his back, bending her knees into the sockets of his knees.Her breath warmed his neck and blew the hair there.Then, the ground shook up and down, as if alive, the air was filled with noisy roars, the only thing that could be heard was Liz screaming close to her ears.He managed to roll over and hug her, and they hugged each other.The uproar grew louder and louder than it could have been imagined.The carefully sealed window of the room flew over the edge and shattered on the ground.Then the ground tilted and jumped violently, like sitting in a car out of gear, and they had to hold on as long as they could.

They hugged each other until the earthquake finally stopped.Turk couldn't tell how long the shock lasted.It's a medium eternity.The earthquake left ringing in his ears and bruises all over his body.He took a deep breath and asked how Liz was doing, and she also took a long breath and replied: It should be fine.So Turk called Dr. Duvaly, who answered belatedly: My leg hurts, but other than that I'm fine. The tinnitus and dizziness persisted long after the quake, but Turk began to regain his composure.He thought of aftershocks.Maybe we should go outside.But Duvaly said no, not in the dust storm, he said.

Turk left Liz's side and rummaged through the garbage on the ground, finally finding the flashlight he had placed next to the mattress before, and it turned out to have rolled all the way to the wall next to the window.Turn on the flashlight and shoot a beam of dust and debris.The room was okay, but only okay.Liz sat curled up on the mattress, pale as a ghost.Duvali was also pale, sitting propped against a corner of the wall.The sharp object fell and hit his left leg. The wound was bleeding, but it didn't look serious. What are we going to do now?Liz asked. Duvali said: Wait until dawn and pray that the earthquake does not happen again.

If only it would be daylight, Turk thought.If anything like sunlight can still visit this god-forgotten wasteland. Liz said: I hate to be practical at this point, but I have to go to the bathroom.Really urgent. Turk flicked the flashlight into the adjoining bathroom.The toilet didn't look broken, but I wouldn't have flushed it.And the door fell off. Then you look elsewhere.Liz said, wrapping the blanket around her, and Turk thought how easy it would have been if he hadn't loved her so much. ☆ There is light coming in from the window.An hour or so later, she said.Turk walked carefully over the broken glass.

Apparently the falling dust had stopped.Because if the falling dust was as thick as yesterday, they would have suffocated long ago.Only a few bits of dust drifted in now, and Turk thought the air smelled much cleaner, less sulfurous, unless he was used to it. The light that Liz had brought to his attention was real, and when he turned off the flashlight it was obvious.But now it is not yet dawn, and the light is not shining from the sky, but from below. The light came from the streets of this remote commercial town, from the roofs of damaged buildings, from the desert, from wherever the dust fell.He called Lise and Duvale over to look.

Some nights when Turk was at sea, he would see the stern of the boat glow as the passing boats disturbed the bioluminescent algae.It's always been weird, but now this scene reminds him of that situation, but what's happening now is even weirder.The desert, or rather the interstellar dust that fell on it, was now phosphorescent in every color: ruby ​​red, glass yellow, sparkling blue.These colors are not static, but constantly changing, like the northern lights. What do you think that is?Liz asked. Dr. Duvaly's face reflected color.He said a little breathlessly: "I think we're the closest we've ever gotten to what hypothetical intelligent beings really are.

Turk said: So what are they doing out there? But not even Dr. Duvaly can answer that question. ☆ When they got downstairs, they found that they were lucky. Most of the north wing of the building has collapsed.The passage through the corridor is either piles of tiles or the roof has been lifted.If we had turned left instead of right, Turk thought, we would be buried here. As soon as there was enough light to proceed, they went downstairs.The structures here couldn't hold up to another shock.And we have to find Isaac.Duvally said. But Duvale wasn't sure where to start, because one more obvious thing had happened: Things had changed on the ground.

What was once a desert is now a forest. Or like a forest. ☆ By the time they came down the stairs to the door on the undamaged end, Duvale was limping along, but he would not stop to rest.Isaac and the others must be found, he said.The others are just footnotes in Duvaly's mind, Lise thought.To Duvali, there's just Isaac alone, just Isaac and deified hypothetical intelligent beings, whatever that means. Go, open it.Duvally said, waving toward the door. Liz and Turk also agree that the only thing they can do is find a way to the local mall.That's where they broke up with Isaac and those fourth-year women.How to get there?Any answer is possible.When Lise looked out in the dawn light, she saw a completely altered scene: a canopy of trees, if the trees were made of smooth pipes and colorful beach balls.

So she couldn't resist asking the old stupid question: Why?What is this for?Why now, why here? We still have to find out.Dr. Duvali said. ☆ Turk figured that if past experience was any guide, the outgrowth of these hypothetical intelligent beings would ignore humans (with the notable exception of Isaac, who is only partially human).But is it still the case this time? He pushed the door open a few centimeters and saw that nothing was pouring in, so he ventured to look outside. Cold air touched his face.The sulfur smell is gone.The falling dust is gone, and it all becomes a colorful forest.In comparison, the growths in Bastee looked like daffodils withered in the cold wind.It's midsummer here.It seems to be the Garden of Eden of hypothetical intelligent creatures.

He opened the door fully, but hesitated.Lise and Dr. Duvaly pushed their way up from behind. Fallout has become a forest, made of stems bearing bulbous fruit but no leaves.These stems come in many colors, but they are mainly purple-blue. They stand tall, about six to nine meters high, and are closely spaced.The orbs that make up the tree canopy range in size from goldfish bowls to beach balls, and others are big enough to slip into a person and stand up straight without hitting their head.These balls pushed against each other, and the places where they touched were slightly concave, forming a large group that was almost dense but translucent.The sunlight that shone through these things was dimmed, and it took on an ever-changing rainbow of colours.

Turk took a hesitant step forward.From here he could follow the walls of the workers' dormitory to where the dormitory had collapsed. The three-story building in the north wing had now collapsed to less than one floor high.It would be bad if we were there, he thought.God bless Isaac and the ladies wherever they find cover. The trunks of these strange trees (and lampposts, as a matter of fact) were (he began to think so) standing in the ground where the pavement had been, and which had been propped through them.Turk couldn't see far in any direction, so he couldn't get his bearings.Thirty or forty meters away, everything was a blur, fading to a brilliant blue.Finding where the ladies and Isaac were last seen was a compass and clues underfoot. What do they live on?Liz asked in a low voice.Here again there is no water. There might be more water here than where they've been growing.Turk said. Or by some kind of catalytic process that doesn't require water, a completely different kind of metabolism, Duvali said.They must have evolved for a billion years in a harsher environment than here. A billion years of evolution.If that's true, Turk thought, then these things, as a species (if that makes sense), are much older than humans. ☆ They walked quietly in the forest of imaginary intelligent creatures.It's not exactly a quiet place here.There was no wind blowing where they were walking, but there must have been, Turk guessed, because the multicolored balls hanging from the tops of the tubular trees bumped into each other from time to time, making a crisp knocking sound reminiscent of rubber mallets. Sounds on the xylophone.There was also movement on the ground.Small blue tubes like roots zigzag through the trees, running like twitching whips.If one of these tubes happens to come across by chance, it can be fast and powerful enough to break a leg.Twice Turk saw paper-like things flapping overhead, occasionally bumping into or merging into orbs, variants of what had attacked Isaac in Bastee.They probably mistook Isaac for the same kind, Turk thought, maybe not. Liz followed closely behind him.He could hear her gasp every time something clicked or vibrated in the shifting dim light.He felt sorry for the fear she was going through now, for all she had to go through before these things ended.So he turned around and said: I'm sorry I dragged you down here. She wouldn't let him finish.Do you really think you are responsible for what happened? Responsible for taking you on this lousy trip west, maybe. This is my choice. This is true.Just Turk thought.She is here because of me.His life came before him in chorus, as if summoned by an untrustworthy light: lovers lost or stolen, friends who turned against each other, friends wounded or killed in bar fights or boat accidents.See my bridge burn, he thought.Look at my tear stains along the way.He didn't want Liz like this.He didn't want to drag her across the line, over the line of a life in which she could still call the shots, a life in which goodwill wasn't fleeting and there were possibilities for other, more meaningful things to happen.Instead of spending nights cooped up in the cockpit of an airplane; months sleeping in a stinking berth below the deck of some freighter; The more disappointed, eventually full of resentment. He'll help her escape this jungle, he thought.Afterwards, if he could muster up the necessary courage, or be tough enough, he'd find a way to leave her. ☆ It's a communication.Avran.Duval thought. This cannot be denied.All around him were hypothetical intelligent beings, a small but important part of their vast web of incomprehensible intelligence.These are processes, the dogmatic Martian woman once argued, meaning no more than the flowering of the stone pine or the periwinkle; call it what you will, but it is only evolution, as unconscious as the sea.But she was wrong.He can feel it.He didn't understand, couldn't understand, how these organisms grew, or what nutrients they could get from the dry land, but there was a communication program between them, he was sure of that.They don't grow randomly, but are driven by a urging signal. He has been observing the canopy of the forest.The clusters of spheres were constantly changing colors, and it seemed to him that the color of each sphere was influenced by the color of the next sphere, perhaps according to some rule or rules, which caused those colorful patterns to move in the forest, like A flock of invisible birds.This is the communication connection, just like the cells of the human brain communicate with each other and coordinate to produce the mind.Perhaps he was walking in the middle of the physical fabric of some vast mind which he would never be able to comprehend But maybe Isaac could understand.If Isaac is still alive, and can finally understand Avran.What is the nature of the gift Duvali gave him.