"Bailey-Exodus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bailey Dale)

DALE BAILEY

EXODUS

Ruth hadn't been sleeping the night through for decades, and on this morning--
this special morning which she had been looking forward to for days and weeks
and endless dragging months -- she woke up even earlier than usual: in the cool
silence of a May morning at precisely 3:57 according to the clock in her retinal
implant. She lay still, inhaling the fresh lilac smell that drifted through the
window from the commons while she decided whether she was still tired. She had
noticed that as you got older, you craved sleep more but needed it less. Her
practical solution to this paradox was to ignore the craving. Her body urged her
to remain in her pleasant nest of sheets for another hour or two, but her good
sense won out. Nothing could be more depressing than two sleepless hours in bed
-especially on your 145th birthday.

So she stood and belted on the new robe Martha had sent her yesterday. Martha,
her great-granddaughter, had mailed the robe from some eastern nation --
Vietnam? Laos? Ruth had noticed the postmark and had carefully cut it out and
put it on the refrigerator. A horrid colorful design like a vital culture
infected the robe itself, but Ruth wore it anyway. She had not seen Martha in
six years, had not spoken to her in three, had no idea what she was doing in
Thailand. But it was nice to be remembered, wasn't it?

In the kitchen, she made coffee the old-fashioned way, ignoring the house's
quiet offers of help. She had tried to convince maintenance to disable the
whispery little voice, but she hadn't had any luck.

"We can't disconnect the house brain," the maintenance man had told her. "It's
against regulations."

"I don't want you to disconnect the brain," Ruth had replied. "Just the voice."

The maintenance man shook his head. No doubt he nursed a grudge against seniors
like herself. That would change when he came into his pensions -- but it didn't
solve her immediate problem.

He shook his head again. "The house brain has to be active in case there's an
emergency," he told her. "What if you were to fall?"

Would that be so bad? Ruth thought.

She didn't say it aloud. Instead she submitted -- and did her best to ignore the
house's attempts to minister to her every whim. She knew some seniors who had
fallen into that trap. She would do for herself, or she wouldn't do at all.

She turned on the wall as she sipped her coffee. The nets were all leading with
the same stories: another bomb attack by the true agers, this one in Houston;
continued orbital prep for the upcoming launch of the Exodus. Nothing she wanted
to watch. She put on the rainforest scene instead and finished her coffee to
images of bright extinct birds and foliage.

Ruth turned off the wall. She went back to the bedroom to make the bed, but she
had forgotten to disable the housekeeping routine again; the house had already
taken care of it. The tears started suddenly, the way they did sometimes, and
Ruth didn't fight them. She let herself have a good cry there on the narrow bed;
when the first gleam of gray light appeared at five, she said, "Stop being so
foolish, you old woman." She forced a smile as she gazed in the mirror and
started to get ready for her big day. Her 145th.

Celia was coming. At last, at last, Celia was coming. The thought cheered her.

Celia arrived just after eleven. Ruth watched from the window as the car pulled
up, a red-and-yellow one-day pass stuck under the windshield wiper, and then she
turned for one last quick inspection of the house. She had left her coffee cup
on an end table and she hurried it away into the kitchen, but otherwise
everything looked spic and span. The chintz covers lay freshly ironed over the
chairs, and the house had vacuumed itself. Tantalizing smells perfumed the air.
The doorbell rang and rang and rang, but Ruth just stood in the living room and
listened to it. It had been so long since she had seen Celia; she wanted to
savor it a little.

"The doorbell is ringing," the house whispered, as if she couldn't hear it for
herself.

"Well, open it." Ruth stepped forward, half-wanting to open the door herself--
to be there waiting -- but a sudden fit of shyness possessed her. What should
she say? she wondered, but before she could decide, the house opened the door on
its noiseless hinges, and there she was. Celia.

"Meemy!" Celia said, and Ruth said, "Celia! Honey, it's been too long!" Celia
swept into the room in a gale of sound and motion. Packages and shopping bags
fountained out of her arms -- how could she carry so much? -- and then they
embraced, a long fierce embrace, simultaneously laughing and chattering like
birds, without pause to listen. A thin bearded man came in behind her and closed
the door gently.

"Gosh, it smells so good," Celia said.

"I've got home-made cobbler cooling in the kitchen. And Florence--next door? --
she let me pick some flowers from her garden, so it would be nice for you.
Wasn't that generous?"

Ruth took a deep breath and smiled. There was a brief, uncomfortable silence as
they all looked at one another and smiled. The man, whoever he was -- Celia
hadn't asked to bring someone -- stooped to gather the fallen shopping bags.

"Well," said Ruth, and she held Celia at arm's length. "Let me get a look at
you."

"Let me get a look at you!" Celia laughed and turned to grin at the young man.
"This is Ben," she said. "And this is Meemy -- Ruth."

Ben said something but Ruth didn't hear him. Celia riveted her attention. Celia!
she thought, and tears started up in her eyes again. She blinked them away so
she could see Celia, who looked fine, better than fine. Celia looked terrific:
tall and slim and draped in some shimmering black garb that seemed almost to
float around her, defying gravity; her long face flush with excitement and her
dark, angular eyes ashine. Celia, her great-great-granddaughter! Her dark hair,
black as her clothes or blacker, and just shot through with a streak of gray,
fell in a mass about her shoulders. And that smile. That hadn't changed if
everything else had, if Celia had at last, at last, grown up. How old was Celia
exactly? Thirty-five? Forty?

She said, "Oh, Celia, you look wonderful."

"Meemy! I'm trying to introduce you to someone!"

"Ben. Of course, Ben." Ruth smiled.

Ben took her hand. "It's a pleasure, Mrs. --"

"Ruth," Ruth said.

"It's a pleasure, Ruth. I've heard so much about you."

"Well, I haven't heard a thing about you."

"Oh, Meemy," Celia said.

"Sit down," Ruth told them. "I want to hear all about everything. Gosh, it's
been so long hasn't it? Seven years! You know," she said to Ben, "I practically
raised Celia myself. Her mother --"

"Do we have to talk about Mother?" Celia said. She sat down beside her young man
-- her Ben -- in the loveseat by the window. Ruth stood at the door into the
kitchen and gazed back at them, this slim bearded young man with the intense
eyes and her great-great-granddaughter, more like a daughter, like her very own
child. Celia had draped her hand casually over Ben's shoulder, and she was
staring at Ruth with an expectant expression on her face. But Ruth didn't know
what to say. She could hardly think. Spring sunlight, bright against the grassy
commons, dazzled her. Maybe the implants had malfunctioned, she thought, and
then she blinked and felt tears. My, but she cried easily today. She turned her
head before Celia noticed, vowing not to cry. How absurd.

She said, "Let me get you something to drink. I have coffee and soda and I think
there may be some tea --"

"Sit down, Meemy. We're not thirsty."

"No, let me," Ruth said. "Coffee, Ben?"

"That would be fine," he said. "Sugar if you have it."

"Meemy --"

Ruth disappeared into the kitchen. She paused, looking out through the kitchen
window into Florence's garden as she blinked away the last of the tears. The
flowers had erupted into riotous bloom, and it was nice just to stand there and
inhale the heady scent of them through the open window while she calmed herself.

"Meemy, what's wrong?"

Ruth switched on the water and made as though she were washing the mug in the
sink. "Nothing, dear. I just needed a clean cup."

"Nonsense." Celia lit a cigarette and moved past Ruth to peer out the window.
"Someone sure has a way with flowers," she said. "I'm going to miss them."

"It's a nasty habit, smoking."

"It's just a style, Meemy. It doesn't hurt you."

"Cigarettes make your clothes stink."

"Maybe I'll quit."

"Who's talking nonsense? You've smoked since you were sixteen. What's that --
twenty-five years now?"

"Twenty-two." Celia ran water over her cigarette. The sunlight loved her. It
made her skin almost translucent. It made her hair darker and turned the gray
streak blonde.

"You shouldn't leave your friend out there," Ruth said. "It's not polite."

"Who's not being polite?" She watched Ruth fumble with the coffee pot. "Let the
house make the coffee," she said. "We don't get to see each other often. Let's
take advantage of it."

"I'm done." Ruth placed sugar, mugs, and the warming pot on a silver serving
tray, hastily arranged a box of cakes in a semi-circle around one edge, and
walked into the living room. Celia followed.

"You have to tell me all about yourself," Ruth said to Ben. "I want to know
everything." She saw a quick glance pass between them.

Ben stirred sugar into his coffee. A breeze billowed the filmy curtains and
brought the smell of the coffee to her nostrils. "Celia and I met at CelTech,"
Ben said.

"CelTech," Ruth said. "Such a big company. I wish I could understand what you
do, Celia." She said to Ben, "It's so technical, you know."

"We worked together on a project there," Ben said. "I'm a mechanical engineer."

"You don't say! Perhaps you could help me. I've been trying to get maintenance
to turn off the house voice, and they refuse to do it. Could you do something
like that?"

"Meemy, please."

"It wouldn't be a good idea to disable the house brain," Ben said. "What if you
fell?"

"Not the brain. Only the voice."

"Please, Meemy. This is a visit. It's your birthday. Don't you want to see your
presents? We have lots of them."

Ben placed his hand on Celia's thigh. "I could do that," he said. "Maybe that's
a good idea. It would give you two some time to talk."

"Yes," said Ruth, "Let's go for a walk, Celia."

They walked, sunlight warm against their shoulders. A robin twittered in the big
oak, and the scents of fecund, growing things hung resonant in the air. It was
possible, if you didn't look hard enough, to imagine that you had stepped out of
this day and year into the simple bucolic world Ruth had known as a girl. But
then something always happened to shatter the illusion. You saw a needle plane
slide silently across the skyline, or you noticed that the park was full of
seniors-- seniors digging in the little gardens that bordered the commons,
seniors walking arm in arm across the grass, seniors chatting on the porches of
the whitewashed cottages under the trees.

Ruth took Celia's arm proudly. She guided her on a circuitous route among the
cottages and introduced her to everyone she knew, which was everyone.

Celia smoked and didn't talk. After a while, she said, "Let's take a look at the
wall."

Ruth sighed. "Tell me about your young man. Ben."

"He's nice, isn't he? I like him."

"Well, he's handsome I suppose. How long have you known each other?"

"Oh, I don't know. Six months? Seven?"

"I would know that if you called once in a while. You haven't called in almost a
year, Celia."

"I'm sorry," Celia said. "I -- I don't know, Meemy. Just busy, you know."

"Too busy to return my calls?"

"Busy." Celia knelt to grind out her cigarette against a stone. She slid the
butt into a pocket of the black wrap. "It wasn't intentional, you know."

Ruth didn't say anything. They had gone past the last of the cottages and the
shopping center that bordered one edge of the commons. They walked down a narrow
paved lane overhung with trees.

"I'm glad I wrote and asked you to come today," Ruth said. "I'm glad you decided
to come. I've missed you. I was afraid you were going to abandon me, like
Martha."

"Mother hasn't turned out so bad. You don't really know her, Meemy."

"And you do?"

"Yes, I do," said Celia icily.

They had reached the wall, thirteen feet of granite so overgrown with ivy that
it was virtually invisible. "We'd like to look out," Ruth told the guard at the
gate, and he waved them on. They mounted a stone staircase with a black iron
railing, and stood atop the wall, looking out over the gray city.

"Did she remember your birthday this year?" Celia asked.

"She sent me a robe. From Laos. What's she doing there?"

"Thailand," Celia said. "She's in Thailand, working on land reclamation. It's
good work. Important work."

"Does it pay well?"

"Nothing pays well, Meemy. Not these days."

They were silent for a moment. The breeze started up and came over the wall in a
soft pleasant wave. It lifted Celia's hair. Ruth wanted to touch her again. Ruth
wanted to embrace her, but Celia stood aloof, her hands tucked in the folds of
her wrap, locked inside herself.

"Mother didn't abandon you," Celia said.

"Well, I don't know what else you would call it."

"She doesn't approve of you."

"Approve of me?"

"This life," Celia said. "The way you live here."

"Well, I've earned it. I've worked hard all my life. I deserve this. Your
mother's pensions will come, too."

Celia turned away, mumbling.

"What did you say?" Ruth asked. "I didn't hear you."

"Nothing."

They were quiet for a time.

"I'm glad you got to know your mother," Ruth said at last. It was hard for her
to say.

Celia smiled. "Me too."

They turned and went down the stairs, and started back along the road to the
commons. The guard nodded at them, but didn't speak. The sky looked clear blue
and faraway with warmth, and the trees whispered among themselves in foreign
voices. Ruth hardly noticed. It wasn't supposed to be this way, she thought,
this reunion with Celia. She longed for that special bond they had shared when
Celia was a girl, before Ruth came into her pensions and moved to the compound.
It wasn't supposed to be this way.

"I'm sorry I'm being such a bitch," Celia said.

Ruth didn't answer. What could she say?

During supper Celia acted like her old self, chattering about nothing and
everything, her angular features animated with delight. She drew Ben into the
conversation and the awkwardness among them seemed to evaporate. Ruth thought he
seemed like a nice young man; she didn't mind that Celia had brought him. It was
pleasant to have young people in the house, to have Celia home at last after she
had been gone so many years. What happened to the years?

After they finished the cobbler, Celia brought out the presents. The bags seemed
bottomless. Celia plucked out box after colorfully wrapped box, and Ruth opened
them with nervous fingers, saying, "You shouldn't have, honey. How are you going
to pay for all this?"

"Don't worry," Celia said.

So Ruth didn't. Just once, she thought, I will allow myself to enjoy. And she
did. It was her best birthday in years -- in decades -- and by the time they
finished with the packages and took their coffee to the porch, it had begun to
turn dark.

They sat quiet for a time. Ruth found it a comfortable kind of silence; she was
glad they had come.

"Beautiful night," Ben said.

"Mmmm," said Celia. "Miss this." She tilted her head against Ben's shoulder. The
porch swing drifted with her movement, the springs whining softly, and Ruth,
sitting in the rocker, felt a touch of envy. Just children, really.

A sprinkle of stars glimmered above them. The crickets started up. The sound of
them soothed her, and her girlhood in Kentucky came flying back to her: she
remembered sitting on the porch of her father's house, her head tilted against
some boy's shoulder just like Celia's was, wishing on a star. There had been
such places, then. Front porches and lots of open country.

Ben said, "See that red star?" He pointed through the net of lilac branches at
the sky.

"I see it," Celia said.

Ruth gazed up. Her vision blurred for a moment as the retinal implant drew its
focus, and then she saw it: a red star in the sky a million years away.

"That's not a star," Ben said.

"Mars?" Ruth said.

"That's the jumpship," he said. "The Exodus."

Silence, then, the three of them rocking.

"People going a long, long way from here," Ruth said. "I don't know that I
approve."

"People have to have room to live," Ben said. "People have to live for
themselves. They can't always be working to pay some senior's way."

"That kind of talk sounds like true ager nonsense to me," Ruth said. "That kind
of talk leads to these bombings you hear about. I saw one just this morning.
Some crazy folks bombed a senior compound in Houston. People need to be patient,
their pensions will come."

"Yes," said Ben, "and who will pay for them?"

Ruth glared up at the red light as if she could wipe it from the heavens by
sheer force of will. "There are always more young folks," she said.

"Not as many as there are seniors. Fewer young people all the time, and more and
more seniors every day."

"Well, what should we do? Just die?"

Ben started to speak, but Celia said, "Ben," and he fell silent. Ruth could just
see the shape of him in the dark, but she didn't have to see more. She knew what
kind of man he was; she had heard such arguments before, and she resented them.
She had worked hard all her life without complaint and this was her reward. This
place, with its flowers and its trees like you could find nowhere else in the
world anymore. She had earned this. She deserved it. She would not listen to
someone who wanted to take it away from her.

Then a chill little wave of anxiety crested within her. She thought of how she
had been looking forward to this day. This is Celia's friend, she told herself.
This is the man Celia loves. And partly to make amends, but mostly because she
liked the sound of them, their presence here in her home, she said, "Why don't
you stay the night? I could call the gate and have them issue you a night pass."

"You haven't told her, have you?" said Ben.

Ruth stopped rocking. She sat very still. "Told me what?" she said. "What
haven't you told me, Celia? I want to know."

"We can't stay, Meemy," she said. "We have to be at the suborbital in Denver in
the morning."

"The suborbital? I don't understand."

"We're going away," Celia said.

"Going away?"

Celia started to speak and fell silent. Ben shifted in the swing, ill at ease.
After a moment, Ruth said, "You mean a vacation, right?"

"No," said Celia. "It's --"

"The jumpship," Ben said. "We made the final cut for the Exodus. We check in
tomorrow at the LaGrange Station for some final tests, but ..." He shrugged.

"But why?" Ruth asked, and she could hear the note of desperation in her voice.
She didn't want it to be there, but she couldn't help it. She could feel it
bubbling up inside her, the loneliness and the desperation. She could not stop
it, she could not keep it from her voice. It kept her up at night.

"Don't be upset, Meemy --"

"Don't be upset! When you just show up here to tell me that you're leaving
forever? How could I not be upset?"

"You have to understand," Celia said. "There's no room for us here. You slave
all your life to make pensions, just so you can have a few decades of pleasure
at the end. We won't be able to afford pensions forever, Meemy, not at this
rate. We have to get away, build a new life."

"It's no way to live, the way we have to live," Ben said.

"I didn't want to have to tell you," Celia said. "But I couldn't do that, Meemy.
I had to say good-bye."

"But that ship -- it won't arrive for a hundred years or more. They don't even
know where they're going. They're just...going. What kind of life is that?"

"A better life," Ben said. "A better life for our children if we're lucky."

"It's a grand adventure," Celia said.

"And you came here to tell me this? On my birthday?"

Now it all made sense to her. The way Celia had been behaving all day, the
little things she had said. I'm going to miss them, she had said of the flowers
that blazed in Florence's garden. She had said it again just now, hadn't she?
And the presents.

"So you're leaving me? Like your mother, is that it?"

"No, Meemy-"

"And you think you can buy my forgiveness with all your presents? Like I'm too
dumb or too old to even understand?"

"No--"

"Well, it won't work," Ruth said, standing. "You've ruined everything, go you
hear? Everything. And I won't forgive you that."

She turned and went inside and closed the door behind her. "Lock the door, she
said to the house, and she heard the mechanism slide into place behind her.

She was crying. She hadn't meant to cry.

"Meemy?" Celia said through the door. "Please don't let it end this way. Please
let us say good-bye."

"Open up, Ruth," Ben said. "Be reasonable."

"Go away, I don't care if I ever speak to you again."

"Meemy, please--"

But she wouldn't answer. They could call all night and she wouldn't answer. All
of them, all of them had abandoned her. First her sons. And then Martha. And
Celia last of all. It wasn't her fault. She wouldn't answer. She would not
answer.

"Meemy, please, you have to listen."

But she didn't. She sat in the dark house and wept. They called for a long time
before she heard the car start. She went to the window and watched the red
taillights dwindle through the trees, like the red light in the sky which Ben
had pointed out. Like the jumpship, the Exodus. Then she went back to the sofa
and sat down. No one said a word, not even the house.

The call came through after midnight, coded emergency, but Ruth had silenced the
wall and didn't hear it. She woke at 3:07, the bedroom wall pulsing with the
pink hue of the emergency beacon. The house brain was programmed to override the
silence order in an emergency, but it had failed.

"Why didn't you wake me?" she said to the house.

The house didn't answer, and then Ruth remembered: she had asked Ben to disable
the voice.

She felt sluggish, entombed in silence.

"Play the message," she said. The wall dissolved into static. When it cleared,
Celia became visible, her face pale and drawn and abnormally elongated by the
transmission. "You have a connection," a neutral machine voice said, and Celia
looked up.

"Meemy?" she said. She waited a moment and Ruth studied the image. Crowds
drifted along a concourse behind Celia. "Meemy, if you're there, please pick
up."

She waited a moment longer, her expression hopeful, and then she said, "I don't
know what to say to you, but I can't leave it like this. I love you, Meemy, and
I understand that you're upset. But you have to understand as well."

Celia paused, and fumbled in her wrap for a cigarette. She exhaled and listened
to someone off-screen.

"That's Ben," she said. "We have to hurry. He really liked you, you know. I
wanted you to know that. Listen, you have to understand, it's important that you
do." She smoked for a moment, and then she said, "We're hungry for something
Earth can't give us, Ben and me, lots of people. We're tired of working all the
time and seeing everything we've worked for drained away for other people. I
suppose it's hard to understand for you -- you have everything there in your
little world --but people are suffering and starving. There are too many of us,
and too many of us are old. But that doesn't mean I don't love you. That doesn't
mean I won't be thinking of you. Because I will be."

She glanced offscreen again. "We've got to go," she said. "Remember me, Meemy."
She reached out to the screen and the image dissolved into static once again.

"Save message," Ruth said to the house.

The wall went dark.

Ruth could not get back to sleep. After a while, she got up and wrapped herself
in Martha's robe and went into the kitchen for coffee. When the horizon began to
turn gray, she found herself gazing at Florence's garden. I'm going to miss
them, Celia had said, speaking of flowers. Ruth tried to imagine a world so
devoid of hope that you could willingly leave flowers behind. That was the world
Celia lived in, she thought. The world most people lived in.

It was the world she lived in, too, but she had been too blind to see it.

Now she did. Fifteen years she had lived here -- fifteen years of chatting with
Florence over the flowers, fifteen years of evening walks through the commons,
fifteen years of bridge and checkers and Thursday night dances. Fifteen years of
sudden tears for no reason she could understand. Fifteen endless years.

She might have two decades more.

She turned on the wall and watched the news nets for a while. Still another
attack by the true-agers; grim footage of slums in Bangladesh; more currency
troubles in Brazil.

People are suffering, Celia had said. And it was true.

But not the seniors; they had the best of everything.

We paid for it, she thought. We worked long and hard without complaint, and this
is our reward.

But now such reasoning sounded hollow even to her. This is our reward: puttering
amongst flowers, bridge, sudden inexplicable fits of tears. Fifteen years of
selfish, ugly bliss while our children and children's children suffered.

She asked the wall to find Martha's number. Martha hadn't called in three years,
she thought. But neither had she called Martha.

Three nights later she tried to get through to Celia at the LaGrange Station.
After almost an hour, she found a station receptionist who could spare her a
moment.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," he said, when she had explained what she wanted to do. He
was very young. "The last of the group boarded this morning."

"Can I reach them on the Exodus?"

"No, ma'am, that's impossible. I'm sorry." He reached out to cut the connection.

"Just a minute, please," she said.

He blinked at her.

"Can you get them a message?"

"I don't think so, ma'am. There are nearly a thousand people on that ship.
Things are pretty hectic over there. The departure window opens in twelve hours
--"

"Please," she said.

He paused, and gazed at her quizzically for a moment.

"It's important," she said. "I didn't get a chance to say good-bye."

"Fine, then." He reached for a keypad. "Names?"

"Celia, Celia Fisher. And Ben. Ben someone."

"And your message?"

"Tell them-- tell them, I'm sorry. I understand now. Tell them I wish them the
best."

"Fine."

"It's important," she said.

"I'll do what I can."

The wall went dark. Ruth ordered up the rainforest, but after a moment she
switched it off. You couldn't tell the bright extinct birds and trees from the
real thing, the animation was so accomplished, but you knew anyway. That was bad
enough.

One last time she walked through the house. Most of her possessions had been
boxed up for auction. She went out to the porch where her single suitcase
waited. She searched the skies for the red glimmer, and when she found it, she
gazed up at it and thought: That's one solution. There must be others.

The cab pulled up outside. Ruth had imagined that the car would be automated,
but to her surprise the door opened and a human driver stepped out. Then it came
to her. There are too many of us, she thought. People have to work. People have
to have something to do.

The driver loaded her suitcase in the trunk and opened the back door for her.

"I think I'll sit in the front with you," she said.

"Whatever you say. The suborbital in Denver?"

"That's right."

They drove down the wooded lane to the gate. Outside, beneath the street lights,
the city sprawled barren and ugly. Here and there a blade of grass poked through
a crack in the pavement. A few young people moved along the sidewalks, but
mostly it was deserted.

"Not often one of you folks leaves the compound," he said.

Ruth smiled.

"Where are you going?"

"Thailand, of all places. Isn't that absurd?" She laughed. "I have work to do
there."

"Work ?"

"That's right."

The driver shook his head. "Not me. When I come into my pensions, I'm going to
sit back and enjoy them, you know?"

"I suppose," said Ruth. She leaned forward and gazed for a long moment at the
red beacon of the Exodus, glimmering there among all the thousand stars.
Good-bye, Celia, she thought. Good-bye, Ben. Good luck. And then she turned to
her driver. She said, "But you never know, do you?"




DALE BAILEY

EXODUS

Ruth hadn't been sleeping the night through for decades, and on this morning--
this special morning which she had been looking forward to for days and weeks
and endless dragging months -- she woke up even earlier than usual: in the cool
silence of a May morning at precisely 3:57 according to the clock in her retinal
implant. She lay still, inhaling the fresh lilac smell that drifted through the
window from the commons while she decided whether she was still tired. She had
noticed that as you got older, you craved sleep more but needed it less. Her
practical solution to this paradox was to ignore the craving. Her body urged her
to remain in her pleasant nest of sheets for another hour or two, but her good
sense won out. Nothing could be more depressing than two sleepless hours in bed
-especially on your 145th birthday.

So she stood and belted on the new robe Martha had sent her yesterday. Martha,
her great-granddaughter, had mailed the robe from some eastern nation --
Vietnam? Laos? Ruth had noticed the postmark and had carefully cut it out and
put it on the refrigerator. A horrid colorful design like a vital culture
infected the robe itself, but Ruth wore it anyway. She had not seen Martha in
six years, had not spoken to her in three, had no idea what she was doing in
Thailand. But it was nice to be remembered, wasn't it?

In the kitchen, she made coffee the old-fashioned way, ignoring the house's
quiet offers of help. She had tried to convince maintenance to disable the
whispery little voice, but she hadn't had any luck.

"We can't disconnect the house brain," the maintenance man had told her. "It's
against regulations."

"I don't want you to disconnect the brain," Ruth had replied. "Just the voice."

The maintenance man shook his head. No doubt he nursed a grudge against seniors
like herself. That would change when he came into his pensions -- but it didn't
solve her immediate problem.

He shook his head again. "The house brain has to be active in case there's an
emergency," he told her. "What if you were to fall?"

Would that be so bad? Ruth thought.

She didn't say it aloud. Instead she submitted -- and did her best to ignore the
house's attempts to minister to her every whim. She knew some seniors who had
fallen into that trap. She would do for herself, or she wouldn't do at all.

She turned on the wall as she sipped her coffee. The nets were all leading with
the same stories: another bomb attack by the true agers, this one in Houston;
continued orbital prep for the upcoming launch of the Exodus. Nothing she wanted
to watch. She put on the rainforest scene instead and finished her coffee to
images of bright extinct birds and foliage.

Ruth turned off the wall. She went back to the bedroom to make the bed, but she
had forgotten to disable the housekeeping routine again; the house had already
taken care of it. The tears started suddenly, the way they did sometimes, and
Ruth didn't fight them. She let herself have a good cry there on the narrow bed;
when the first gleam of gray light appeared at five, she said, "Stop being so
foolish, you old woman." She forced a smile as she gazed in the mirror and
started to get ready for her big day. Her 145th.

Celia was coming. At last, at last, Celia was coming. The thought cheered her.

Celia arrived just after eleven. Ruth watched from the window as the car pulled
up, a red-and-yellow one-day pass stuck under the windshield wiper, and then she
turned for one last quick inspection of the house. She had left her coffee cup
on an end table and she hurried it away into the kitchen, but otherwise
everything looked spic and span. The chintz covers lay freshly ironed over the
chairs, and the house had vacuumed itself. Tantalizing smells perfumed the air.
The doorbell rang and rang and rang, but Ruth just stood in the living room and
listened to it. It had been so long since she had seen Celia; she wanted to
savor it a little.

"The doorbell is ringing," the house whispered, as if she couldn't hear it for
herself.

"Well, open it." Ruth stepped forward, half-wanting to open the door herself--
to be there waiting -- but a sudden fit of shyness possessed her. What should
she say? she wondered, but before she could decide, the house opened the door on
its noiseless hinges, and there she was. Celia.

"Meemy!" Celia said, and Ruth said, "Celia! Honey, it's been too long!" Celia
swept into the room in a gale of sound and motion. Packages and shopping bags
fountained out of her arms -- how could she carry so much? -- and then they
embraced, a long fierce embrace, simultaneously laughing and chattering like
birds, without pause to listen. A thin bearded man came in behind her and closed
the door gently.

"Gosh, it smells so good," Celia said.

"I've got home-made cobbler cooling in the kitchen. And Florence--next door? --
she let me pick some flowers from her garden, so it would be nice for you.
Wasn't that generous?"

Ruth took a deep breath and smiled. There was a brief, uncomfortable silence as
they all looked at one another and smiled. The man, whoever he was -- Celia
hadn't asked to bring someone -- stooped to gather the fallen shopping bags.

"Well," said Ruth, and she held Celia at arm's length. "Let me get a look at
you."

"Let me get a look at you!" Celia laughed and turned to grin at the young man.
"This is Ben," she said. "And this is Meemy -- Ruth."

Ben said something but Ruth didn't hear him. Celia riveted her attention. Celia!
she thought, and tears started up in her eyes again. She blinked them away so
she could see Celia, who looked fine, better than fine. Celia looked terrific:
tall and slim and draped in some shimmering black garb that seemed almost to
float around her, defying gravity; her long face flush with excitement and her
dark, angular eyes ashine. Celia, her great-great-granddaughter! Her dark hair,
black as her clothes or blacker, and just shot through with a streak of gray,
fell in a mass about her shoulders. And that smile. That hadn't changed if
everything else had, if Celia had at last, at last, grown up. How old was Celia
exactly? Thirty-five? Forty?

She said, "Oh, Celia, you look wonderful."

"Meemy! I'm trying to introduce you to someone!"

"Ben. Of course, Ben." Ruth smiled.

Ben took her hand. "It's a pleasure, Mrs. --"

"Ruth," Ruth said.

"It's a pleasure, Ruth. I've heard so much about you."

"Well, I haven't heard a thing about you."

"Oh, Meemy," Celia said.

"Sit down," Ruth told them. "I want to hear all about everything. Gosh, it's
been so long hasn't it? Seven years! You know," she said to Ben, "I practically
raised Celia myself. Her mother --"

"Do we have to talk about Mother?" Celia said. She sat down beside her young man
-- her Ben -- in the loveseat by the window. Ruth stood at the door into the
kitchen and gazed back at them, this slim bearded young man with the intense
eyes and her great-great-granddaughter, more like a daughter, like her very own
child. Celia had draped her hand casually over Ben's shoulder, and she was
staring at Ruth with an expectant expression on her face. But Ruth didn't know
what to say. She could hardly think. Spring sunlight, bright against the grassy
commons, dazzled her. Maybe the implants had malfunctioned, she thought, and
then she blinked and felt tears. My, but she cried easily today. She turned her
head before Celia noticed, vowing not to cry. How absurd.

She said, "Let me get you something to drink. I have coffee and soda and I think
there may be some tea --"

"Sit down, Meemy. We're not thirsty."

"No, let me," Ruth said. "Coffee, Ben?"

"That would be fine," he said. "Sugar if you have it."

"Meemy --"

Ruth disappeared into the kitchen. She paused, looking out through the kitchen
window into Florence's garden as she blinked away the last of the tears. The
flowers had erupted into riotous bloom, and it was nice just to stand there and
inhale the heady scent of them through the open window while she calmed herself.

"Meemy, what's wrong?"

Ruth switched on the water and made as though she were washing the mug in the
sink. "Nothing, dear. I just needed a clean cup."

"Nonsense." Celia lit a cigarette and moved past Ruth to peer out the window.
"Someone sure has a way with flowers," she said. "I'm going to miss them."

"It's a nasty habit, smoking."

"It's just a style, Meemy. It doesn't hurt you."

"Cigarettes make your clothes stink."

"Maybe I'll quit."

"Who's talking nonsense? You've smoked since you were sixteen. What's that --
twenty-five years now?"

"Twenty-two." Celia ran water over her cigarette. The sunlight loved her. It
made her skin almost translucent. It made her hair darker and turned the gray
streak blonde.

"You shouldn't leave your friend out there," Ruth said. "It's not polite."

"Who's not being polite?" She watched Ruth fumble with the coffee pot. "Let the
house make the coffee," she said. "We don't get to see each other often. Let's
take advantage of it."

"I'm done." Ruth placed sugar, mugs, and the warming pot on a silver serving
tray, hastily arranged a box of cakes in a semi-circle around one edge, and
walked into the living room. Celia followed.

"You have to tell me all about yourself," Ruth said to Ben. "I want to know
everything." She saw a quick glance pass between them.

Ben stirred sugar into his coffee. A breeze billowed the filmy curtains and
brought the smell of the coffee to her nostrils. "Celia and I met at CelTech,"
Ben said.

"CelTech," Ruth said. "Such a big company. I wish I could understand what you
do, Celia." She said to Ben, "It's so technical, you know."

"We worked together on a project there," Ben said. "I'm a mechanical engineer."

"You don't say! Perhaps you could help me. I've been trying to get maintenance
to turn off the house voice, and they refuse to do it. Could you do something
like that?"

"Meemy, please."

"It wouldn't be a good idea to disable the house brain," Ben said. "What if you
fell?"

"Not the brain. Only the voice."

"Please, Meemy. This is a visit. It's your birthday. Don't you want to see your
presents? We have lots of them."

Ben placed his hand on Celia's thigh. "I could do that," he said. "Maybe that's
a good idea. It would give you two some time to talk."

"Yes," said Ruth, "Let's go for a walk, Celia."

They walked, sunlight warm against their shoulders. A robin twittered in the big
oak, and the scents of fecund, growing things hung resonant in the air. It was
possible, if you didn't look hard enough, to imagine that you had stepped out of
this day and year into the simple bucolic world Ruth had known as a girl. But
then something always happened to shatter the illusion. You saw a needle plane
slide silently across the skyline, or you noticed that the park was full of
seniors-- seniors digging in the little gardens that bordered the commons,
seniors walking arm in arm across the grass, seniors chatting on the porches of
the whitewashed cottages under the trees.

Ruth took Celia's arm proudly. She guided her on a circuitous route among the
cottages and introduced her to everyone she knew, which was everyone.

Celia smoked and didn't talk. After a while, she said, "Let's take a look at the
wall."

Ruth sighed. "Tell me about your young man. Ben."

"He's nice, isn't he? I like him."

"Well, he's handsome I suppose. How long have you known each other?"

"Oh, I don't know. Six months? Seven?"

"I would know that if you called once in a while. You haven't called in almost a
year, Celia."

"I'm sorry," Celia said. "I -- I don't know, Meemy. Just busy, you know."

"Too busy to return my calls?"

"Busy." Celia knelt to grind out her cigarette against a stone. She slid the
butt into a pocket of the black wrap. "It wasn't intentional, you know."

Ruth didn't say anything. They had gone past the last of the cottages and the
shopping center that bordered one edge of the commons. They walked down a narrow
paved lane overhung with trees.

"I'm glad I wrote and asked you to come today," Ruth said. "I'm glad you decided
to come. I've missed you. I was afraid you were going to abandon me, like
Martha."

"Mother hasn't turned out so bad. You don't really know her, Meemy."

"And you do?"

"Yes, I do," said Celia icily.

They had reached the wall, thirteen feet of granite so overgrown with ivy that
it was virtually invisible. "We'd like to look out," Ruth told the guard at the
gate, and he waved them on. They mounted a stone staircase with a black iron
railing, and stood atop the wall, looking out over the gray city.

"Did she remember your birthday this year?" Celia asked.

"She sent me a robe. From Laos. What's she doing there?"

"Thailand," Celia said. "She's in Thailand, working on land reclamation. It's
good work. Important work."

"Does it pay well?"

"Nothing pays well, Meemy. Not these days."

They were silent for a moment. The breeze started up and came over the wall in a
soft pleasant wave. It lifted Celia's hair. Ruth wanted to touch her again. Ruth
wanted to embrace her, but Celia stood aloof, her hands tucked in the folds of
her wrap, locked inside herself.

"Mother didn't abandon you," Celia said.

"Well, I don't know what else you would call it."

"She doesn't approve of you."

"Approve of me?"

"This life," Celia said. "The way you live here."

"Well, I've earned it. I've worked hard all my life. I deserve this. Your
mother's pensions will come, too."

Celia turned away, mumbling.

"What did you say?" Ruth asked. "I didn't hear you."

"Nothing."

They were quiet for a time.

"I'm glad you got to know your mother," Ruth said at last. It was hard for her
to say.

Celia smiled. "Me too."

They turned and went down the stairs, and started back along the road to the
commons. The guard nodded at them, but didn't speak. The sky looked clear blue
and faraway with warmth, and the trees whispered among themselves in foreign
voices. Ruth hardly noticed. It wasn't supposed to be this way, she thought,
this reunion with Celia. She longed for that special bond they had shared when
Celia was a girl, before Ruth came into her pensions and moved to the compound.
It wasn't supposed to be this way.

"I'm sorry I'm being such a bitch," Celia said.

Ruth didn't answer. What could she say?

During supper Celia acted like her old self, chattering about nothing and
everything, her angular features animated with delight. She drew Ben into the
conversation and the awkwardness among them seemed to evaporate. Ruth thought he
seemed like a nice young man; she didn't mind that Celia had brought him. It was
pleasant to have young people in the house, to have Celia home at last after she
had been gone so many years. What happened to the years?

After they finished the cobbler, Celia brought out the presents. The bags seemed
bottomless. Celia plucked out box after colorfully wrapped box, and Ruth opened
them with nervous fingers, saying, "You shouldn't have, honey. How are you going
to pay for all this?"

"Don't worry," Celia said.

So Ruth didn't. Just once, she thought, I will allow myself to enjoy. And she
did. It was her best birthday in years -- in decades -- and by the time they
finished with the packages and took their coffee to the porch, it had begun to
turn dark.

They sat quiet for a time. Ruth found it a comfortable kind of silence; she was
glad they had come.

"Beautiful night," Ben said.

"Mmmm," said Celia. "Miss this." She tilted her head against Ben's shoulder. The
porch swing drifted with her movement, the springs whining softly, and Ruth,
sitting in the rocker, felt a touch of envy. Just children, really.

A sprinkle of stars glimmered above them. The crickets started up. The sound of
them soothed her, and her girlhood in Kentucky came flying back to her: she
remembered sitting on the porch of her father's house, her head tilted against
some boy's shoulder just like Celia's was, wishing on a star. There had been
such places, then. Front porches and lots of open country.

Ben said, "See that red star?" He pointed through the net of lilac branches at
the sky.

"I see it," Celia said.

Ruth gazed up. Her vision blurred for a moment as the retinal implant drew its
focus, and then she saw it: a red star in the sky a million years away.

"That's not a star," Ben said.

"Mars?" Ruth said.

"That's the jumpship," he said. "The Exodus."

Silence, then, the three of them rocking.

"People going a long, long way from here," Ruth said. "I don't know that I
approve."

"People have to have room to live," Ben said. "People have to live for
themselves. They can't always be working to pay some senior's way."

"That kind of talk sounds like true ager nonsense to me," Ruth said. "That kind
of talk leads to these bombings you hear about. I saw one just this morning.
Some crazy folks bombed a senior compound in Houston. People need to be patient,
their pensions will come."

"Yes," said Ben, "and who will pay for them?"

Ruth glared up at the red light as if she could wipe it from the heavens by
sheer force of will. "There are always more young folks," she said.

"Not as many as there are seniors. Fewer young people all the time, and more and
more seniors every day."

"Well, what should we do? Just die?"

Ben started to speak, but Celia said, "Ben," and he fell silent. Ruth could just
see the shape of him in the dark, but she didn't have to see more. She knew what
kind of man he was; she had heard such arguments before, and she resented them.
She had worked hard all her life without complaint and this was her reward. This
place, with its flowers and its trees like you could find nowhere else in the
world anymore. She had earned this. She deserved it. She would not listen to
someone who wanted to take it away from her.

Then a chill little wave of anxiety crested within her. She thought of how she
had been looking forward to this day. This is Celia's friend, she told herself.
This is the man Celia loves. And partly to make amends, but mostly because she
liked the sound of them, their presence here in her home, she said, "Why don't
you stay the night? I could call the gate and have them issue you a night pass."

"You haven't told her, have you?" said Ben.

Ruth stopped rocking. She sat very still. "Told me what?" she said. "What
haven't you told me, Celia? I want to know."

"We can't stay, Meemy," she said. "We have to be at the suborbital in Denver in
the morning."

"The suborbital? I don't understand."

"We're going away," Celia said.

"Going away?"

Celia started to speak and fell silent. Ben shifted in the swing, ill at ease.
After a moment, Ruth said, "You mean a vacation, right?"

"No," said Celia. "It's --"

"The jumpship," Ben said. "We made the final cut for the Exodus. We check in
tomorrow at the LaGrange Station for some final tests, but ..." He shrugged.

"But why?" Ruth asked, and she could hear the note of desperation in her voice.
She didn't want it to be there, but she couldn't help it. She could feel it
bubbling up inside her, the loneliness and the desperation. She could not stop
it, she could not keep it from her voice. It kept her up at night.

"Don't be upset, Meemy --"

"Don't be upset! When you just show up here to tell me that you're leaving
forever? How could I not be upset?"

"You have to understand," Celia said. "There's no room for us here. You slave
all your life to make pensions, just so you can have a few decades of pleasure
at the end. We won't be able to afford pensions forever, Meemy, not at this
rate. We have to get away, build a new life."

"It's no way to live, the way we have to live," Ben said.

"I didn't want to have to tell you," Celia said. "But I couldn't do that, Meemy.
I had to say good-bye."

"But that ship -- it won't arrive for a hundred years or more. They don't even
know where they're going. They're just...going. What kind of life is that?"

"A better life," Ben said. "A better life for our children if we're lucky."

"It's a grand adventure," Celia said.

"And you came here to tell me this? On my birthday?"

Now it all made sense to her. The way Celia had been behaving all day, the
little things she had said. I'm going to miss them, she had said of the flowers
that blazed in Florence's garden. She had said it again just now, hadn't she?
And the presents.

"So you're leaving me? Like your mother, is that it?"

"No, Meemy-"

"And you think you can buy my forgiveness with all your presents? Like I'm too
dumb or too old to even understand?"

"No--"

"Well, it won't work," Ruth said, standing. "You've ruined everything, go you
hear? Everything. And I won't forgive you that."

She turned and went inside and closed the door behind her. "Lock the door, she
said to the house, and she heard the mechanism slide into place behind her.

She was crying. She hadn't meant to cry.

"Meemy?" Celia said through the door. "Please don't let it end this way. Please
let us say good-bye."

"Open up, Ruth," Ben said. "Be reasonable."

"Go away, I don't care if I ever speak to you again."

"Meemy, please--"

But she wouldn't answer. They could call all night and she wouldn't answer. All
of them, all of them had abandoned her. First her sons. And then Martha. And
Celia last of all. It wasn't her fault. She wouldn't answer. She would not
answer.

"Meemy, please, you have to listen."

But she didn't. She sat in the dark house and wept. They called for a long time
before she heard the car start. She went to the window and watched the red
taillights dwindle through the trees, like the red light in the sky which Ben
had pointed out. Like the jumpship, the Exodus. Then she went back to the sofa
and sat down. No one said a word, not even the house.

The call came through after midnight, coded emergency, but Ruth had silenced the
wall and didn't hear it. She woke at 3:07, the bedroom wall pulsing with the
pink hue of the emergency beacon. The house brain was programmed to override the
silence order in an emergency, but it had failed.

"Why didn't you wake me?" she said to the house.

The house didn't answer, and then Ruth remembered: she had asked Ben to disable
the voice.

She felt sluggish, entombed in silence.

"Play the message," she said. The wall dissolved into static. When it cleared,
Celia became visible, her face pale and drawn and abnormally elongated by the
transmission. "You have a connection," a neutral machine voice said, and Celia
looked up.

"Meemy?" she said. She waited a moment and Ruth studied the image. Crowds
drifted along a concourse behind Celia. "Meemy, if you're there, please pick
up."

She waited a moment longer, her expression hopeful, and then she said, "I don't
know what to say to you, but I can't leave it like this. I love you, Meemy, and
I understand that you're upset. But you have to understand as well."

Celia paused, and fumbled in her wrap for a cigarette. She exhaled and listened
to someone off-screen.

"That's Ben," she said. "We have to hurry. He really liked you, you know. I
wanted you to know that. Listen, you have to understand, it's important that you
do." She smoked for a moment, and then she said, "We're hungry for something
Earth can't give us, Ben and me, lots of people. We're tired of working all the
time and seeing everything we've worked for drained away for other people. I
suppose it's hard to understand for you -- you have everything there in your
little world --but people are suffering and starving. There are too many of us,
and too many of us are old. But that doesn't mean I don't love you. That doesn't
mean I won't be thinking of you. Because I will be."

She glanced offscreen again. "We've got to go," she said. "Remember me, Meemy."
She reached out to the screen and the image dissolved into static once again.

"Save message," Ruth said to the house.

The wall went dark.

Ruth could not get back to sleep. After a while, she got up and wrapped herself
in Martha's robe and went into the kitchen for coffee. When the horizon began to
turn gray, she found herself gazing at Florence's garden. I'm going to miss
them, Celia had said, speaking of flowers. Ruth tried to imagine a world so
devoid of hope that you could willingly leave flowers behind. That was the world
Celia lived in, she thought. The world most people lived in.

It was the world she lived in, too, but she had been too blind to see it.

Now she did. Fifteen years she had lived here -- fifteen years of chatting with
Florence over the flowers, fifteen years of evening walks through the commons,
fifteen years of bridge and checkers and Thursday night dances. Fifteen years of
sudden tears for no reason she could understand. Fifteen endless years.

She might have two decades more.

She turned on the wall and watched the news nets for a while. Still another
attack by the true-agers; grim footage of slums in Bangladesh; more currency
troubles in Brazil.

People are suffering, Celia had said. And it was true.

But not the seniors; they had the best of everything.

We paid for it, she thought. We worked long and hard without complaint, and this
is our reward.

But now such reasoning sounded hollow even to her. This is our reward: puttering
amongst flowers, bridge, sudden inexplicable fits of tears. Fifteen years of
selfish, ugly bliss while our children and children's children suffered.

She asked the wall to find Martha's number. Martha hadn't called in three years,
she thought. But neither had she called Martha.

Three nights later she tried to get through to Celia at the LaGrange Station.
After almost an hour, she found a station receptionist who could spare her a
moment.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," he said, when she had explained what she wanted to do. He
was very young. "The last of the group boarded this morning."

"Can I reach them on the Exodus?"

"No, ma'am, that's impossible. I'm sorry." He reached out to cut the connection.

"Just a minute, please," she said.

He blinked at her.

"Can you get them a message?"

"I don't think so, ma'am. There are nearly a thousand people on that ship.
Things are pretty hectic over there. The departure window opens in twelve hours
--"

"Please," she said.

He paused, and gazed at her quizzically for a moment.

"It's important," she said. "I didn't get a chance to say good-bye."

"Fine, then." He reached for a keypad. "Names?"

"Celia, Celia Fisher. And Ben. Ben someone."

"And your message?"

"Tell them-- tell them, I'm sorry. I understand now. Tell them I wish them the
best."

"Fine."

"It's important," she said.

"I'll do what I can."

The wall went dark. Ruth ordered up the rainforest, but after a moment she
switched it off. You couldn't tell the bright extinct birds and trees from the
real thing, the animation was so accomplished, but you knew anyway. That was bad
enough.

One last time she walked through the house. Most of her possessions had been
boxed up for auction. She went out to the porch where her single suitcase
waited. She searched the skies for the red glimmer, and when she found it, she
gazed up at it and thought: That's one solution. There must be others.

The cab pulled up outside. Ruth had imagined that the car would be automated,
but to her surprise the door opened and a human driver stepped out. Then it came
to her. There are too many of us, she thought. People have to work. People have
to have something to do.

The driver loaded her suitcase in the trunk and opened the back door for her.

"I think I'll sit in the front with you," she said.

"Whatever you say. The suborbital in Denver?"

"That's right."

They drove down the wooded lane to the gate. Outside, beneath the street lights,
the city sprawled barren and ugly. Here and there a blade of grass poked through
a crack in the pavement. A few young people moved along the sidewalks, but
mostly it was deserted.

"Not often one of you folks leaves the compound," he said.

Ruth smiled.

"Where are you going?"

"Thailand, of all places. Isn't that absurd?" She laughed. "I have work to do
there."

"Work ?"

"That's right."

The driver shook his head. "Not me. When I come into my pensions, I'm going to
sit back and enjoy them, you know?"

"I suppose," said Ruth. She leaned forward and gazed for a long moment at the
red beacon of the Exodus, glimmering there among all the thousand stars.
Good-bye, Celia, she thought. Good-bye, Ben. Good luck. And then she turned to
her driver. She said, "But you never know, do you?"