An Evening at the Carnival with Mister Christian

And yet they looked down on these Americans with understanding. They'd been like that too, once, and they knew from their own troubled experience all the outcomes that might have been -- had these Americans been allowed to move off into the stars. But they were too much a threat, their unique fusion of the rational and the mystical -- their fatalism far too dangerous to cast loose among the stars. In the end, the Masters decided only a relative few would be taken aboard the colony ships.

Because most of all, the 'Vulcans' remembered a time when the Phage had very nearly found them. When they'd first achieved a level of technological expertise that permitted spaceflight, before the time when population pressure and resource depletion had very nearly caused a complete collapse of their homeworld.

And yet, these 'Vulcans' thought, the people of this planet had absolutely no idea what was coming their way. Or why. Now the 'Vulcans' wondered what they might have done, once upon a time, if they had been so ignorant of the reality closing in around them. If they'd looked with wonder and awe upon the vast fields of stars around their homeworld -- until it was too late to act on the realities they were so blissfully unaware of.

And then, after weeks of silence, after endless days and nights while millions of people stared unknowingly at huge, silent starships, each of the eight ships moved away silently -- in the light of day -- and hours later settled over spots seemingly in the middle of nowhere, far, far away from land. In the middle of the seven seas, or so it was reported. The ships settled into the waters of the earth's oceans -- and disappeared. Lost in frantic despair, the remaining people of the earth looked at broadcasts of the ships moving out to sea -- and those still living wondered what it all meant. When the ships did not reappear there was a sudden, final collapse of the human spirit.

And in the emptiness that followed, the remaining few wondered if there had indeed ever been any meaning to human suffering. Had all mankind's wars been in vain? Was music, all painting and sculpture simply meaningless? Would there be nothing left of humankind to say to the universe -- We were here?!

And that night, while many of the earth's people slept, something happened. The broadcast simply crushed all other programming, pushed it aside, moved it away, and for the very first time the people of earth listened to a voice from the stars.

The President of the United States of America was sitting in his office, in the West Wing of the White House, when the broadcast started playing. He was not amused, and appeared to be in no mood to listen.

+++++

An owl -- and a fairy.

That's what many people thought they were watching when the broadcast commenced. They were looking at an owl, and someone -- or something -- that looked, perhaps, a little like the Tinker Bell they pulled free of childhood memories.

And the owl was staring at them. Benevolently, perhaps, but people saw sadness, even a little wisdom in her eyes.

But then the owl spoke.

"Good evening, my name is Hope," the owl began incongruously, "and I am speaking with you tonight from a ship in orbit above the earth, 4,000 miles above Antarctica. Tonight I have a story to tell you, a most unhappy story, a story with a sad ending -- for most of us -- "

And the owl told them of the people in the starships, people from another world. She told them of a race of people she'd come to call the Vulcans, because, she said, these beings seemed to be guided more by principles of logic than emotion, and that this race had millennia ago turned away from irrationalism and mysticism. They had become explorers, as once the people of earth had been, and, perhaps, how we might be once again.

So, they were explorers, she told humanity. Seekers. A People willing to reach beyond themselves -- into the unknown. As we had been not so long ago, before that spirit was consumed by fantasy and illusion.

She told the people of earth a little of what she knew about the people who built these ships, the ships that had settled over the earth's religious centers. They were a race that had moved out into the stars tens of millions of years ago, a people who took worlds and remade them when they expanded outward, into the systems beyond their Homeworld. This race, she told the people of the earth, now counted thousands of planetary systems as their own, and she spoke of the literally millions of planets they now traveled between. She spoke of having visited several of these worlds, and she tried to convey the majesty of the places she beheld, and the people who had made them.

And then she told them of the Phage:

"There is a force in our galaxy," she began, "that appears to exist for no other purpose than to eliminate irrationalism, in whatever form it takes." She paused, let the words sink in. "Religion is one such force," she said, "but the Vulcan's seem to have accepted that this form of thought is self-limiting, that religious cultures always collapse as various inherently contradictory and self-destructive impulses overwhelm other cultural institutions, and the Vulcans have accepted for some time our species now approaches such a fate. The Vulcans do not think we will escape our destiny, but they are prepared to offer a refuge -- of sorts -- for some of us. That said, the Vulcans did not come to our earth to rescue humankind. There is another species on our planet, one even more irrational than humans, but one which possesses -- a power -- that the Vulcans want to preserve. They are now taking steps to insure the continuity this species.

"One week from today the Vulcan mission on earth will be at an end. One week and one hour from now those humans whom the Vulcans have chosen will be taken from this planet. The final number chosen is not known yet, as even now the Vulcans are gathering resources to save as many humans as they can. Some of you will be resettled on planets the Vulcans have already established, some will be housed in temporary facilities around worlds that are still being terraformed, but the vast majority of people still alive now will -- not -- be -- transported. Those people not chosen next week will remain here on earth, and you will be here -- on earth -- when the Phage arrive.

"And the Phage will arrive soon after the Vulcan's depart. The exact time of their arrival is not known, but it could be as soon as a ten days, perhaps as long as two weeks -- so, three weeks from today. The Vulcans have observed, from afar, what the Phage do to the worlds they target -- and they have taken steps to observe what happens to earth. They have advised me there is no chance of survival, that there is no weaponry powerful enough to defeat this force.

"Yet there remains an outside chance the Vulcans will be able to relocate more of us before the Phage arrive. If this appears likely, there will be one more broadcast after The Departure."

The owl named Hope looked out at the people she addressed, then stoically added "Goodbye to you all," before the broadcast faded away. Normal broadcasts around the world resumed, and while a curious sense of Hope prevailed, people began to look up into the night sky with more than just curiosity and wonder.

Those people who paused to stare into space now did so with hearts full of darkness -- their minds full of something unfettered and wild -- something now well beyond fear.

+++++

Sumner felt the sense of finality everywhere he walked now, and the few people he did run across seemed to waver somewhere along this newly discovered -- and indifferent -- razor's edge. Faces, he saw, hovered between dread and nothingness, though the few people he knew passed on reports they'd heard from the handful of observatories still operating: the Coalsack Nebula had roughly tripled in size, while Doppler and angular velocity measurements indicated that whatever was coming to earth was coming -- 'from right there, in the middle of Caldwell 99' -- and it was coming fast.

Most people on earth had been too far north to observe the looming cloud, but when simulations revealed the Coalsack's change in apparent magnitude fear turned to panic, panic to hysteria and, finally, hysteria into a sort of resignation that bordered on listlessness.

Then people in the northern hemisphere began to make out the pure blackness of the Coalsack. One night the southern horizon went dark; the next night the blackness filled the half the night sky, well into mid-northern latitudes...

...and three nights later more than two thirds of the northern sky was obscured by the vast, expanding Coalsack, yet the shattered remnants of humanity who stared into the night sky were no longer afraid.

These people had endured too much over the past several weeks to experience fear as anything other than a pale, washed-out emotion, an emotion no longer able to command their attention for very long. Simple fear, Collins knew all too well, is what people experienced when they still had some hope for the future, and that when hope is at long last gone, so too is fear. Nothing remains, nothing but the last grudging acceptance of an imponderable fate, and as earth's remaining people stood out under the night sky, watching vast fields of stars simply smudged out of existence before the advancing cloud, they could at last see the form death would take in it's final confrontation with life on earth.

+++++

Exactly one week after the owl spoke people began 'winking' out of existence, and within hours a pattern to these disappearances began to emerge. Younger women disappeared at twice the rate men did, yet the physically infirm? None at all disappeared. Scientists, physicians, engineers and builders of all sorts vanished immediately, while prisons and shelters for the indigent remained untouched. A literal handful of people over forty vanished, yet even those older people who disappeared were notable for their intellectual ability, while almost a half million academically undistinguished men, most involved in the construction trades, vanished immediately as well. Philosophers by the thousands vanished, yet not one lawyer was unaccounted for after that long day's journey into night.

And then the owl announced herself again. American and Canadian farmers and ranchers, she said, those few still alive, had 24 hours to tend to their affairs and get ready for transfer, and these men and women were to gather their herds and seed-stocks immediately. After a final farewell, she was gone again.

Librarians went to their libraries the next morning, only to find shelves had been picked over. Laboratories were similarly ransacked, and factories too. The means to pick up where humanity had left off were already aboard the 'Vulcan's' ships, and a half day later the last 'essential' people were gone.

And those remaining on earth woke to yet another new reality.

There was no escape now. Whatever the Phage were, they were close -- their arrival imminent. Food had all but disappeared, and now there were no means to produce more. Cities grew dark when power plants failed, all means of transportation ground to a halt within a few hours and people seemed to retreat further into themselves.

Families and communities gathered in the night. They built fires and told stories, and listened to one another as they never had before. That thing called love was on full display now, and at long last people reached out to one another...they reached out while they looked up at the night sky, a remembering long overdue.

And soon the vast black cape of the Coalsack had swung 'round and blotted out the entire night sky; only the Sun and her planets remained visible now, and most people felt the looming darkness had become a metaphor of the future. Still, they took some comfort from Jupiter and Saturn and all earth's celestial neighbors...

...and then -- Neptune disappeared...

+++++

[Log entry SailingVessel Gemini: 21 August, 0730 hrs GMT - 1.

COG: 200M, 200 yards off l'île de la Tortue, departing Marseilles;

SOG: 5.3kts;

Temp: 97F;

Winds: NNW at 12kts;

Barometer 29.95 rising;

GPS: 43°12'55.54"N 5°19'17.12"E.

Cooling out now as much of the sun's light is obscured, though it's still warm enough out. Cool, dry wind coming off the Alps, last night the low temperature was 93F -- the lowest it's been in months. No food available anywhere now, anywhere; I would have expected riots under other circumstances, but most people have simply retreated indoors to wait for the inevitable. A neighbor on the boat next to Gemini stood outside and watched with us two nights ago, and we watched the Coalsack for a half hour or so. He's was from the UK and planning to return, to be at home when it happens, but frankly, I don't think he has time and told him just that. At any rate, he left yesterday morning, and Liz went with him. She said she wanted to be home too, and I felt ambivalent as I watched her leave. C'est la vie, I suppose. Charley and I sat up last night and we'd been watching the sky for a while when my old friend turned up, my dolphin. I jumped in the water with her, and I don't know, but I had the damnedest feeling she was talking to me. It's never felt that way before...not like the way it was last night.]

Collins felt Liz's departure acutely today, and he drifted back to that time north of Bermuda after Charley passed -- and the dolphin took her from him -- carried his friend into the night. He recalled falling into absolute loneliness when he watched her body fall away into the depths, crushing all hope from his life. Yet when the dolphin returned she had sensed his despair, and she'd stayed with him, swimming lazily alongside Gemini day after day. He recalled how he'd dropped sail from time to time, how she'd consoled him when he joined her in the water.

And then, she appeared the night Liz left --

He'd been sitting on the aft deck looking at the moon rising over the old city, surprised at how utterly quiet the night was. No cars or buses, no trains leaving the station, and only a very few people out -- and those few he saw stopped to stare at the black veil of the night -- when he heard a commotion in the water and saw her dorsal fin slicing through the inky blackness.

She was there, only agitated, so he jumped into the water beside her and held her for what felt like hours, and when she leaned against him he heard little moaning sighs coming from deep within -- and he could see fear reflected in her eyes. When at last she calmed down he felt her communicating -- with him. Definitely a link of some sort, then he felt visions -- before he saw them in his mind's eye. Swimming one moment -- underwater amidst vast schools of fish -- and then adrift among stellar nurseries. Tumbling endlessly among vast fiery nebulae, the Coalsack turning to follow as she ran.

And then, in a voice as clear as any he'd ever heard: "We must leave. You must follow."

He pulled back from her, looked her in the eye.

"We must leave, now?" he repeated back to her.

She became very agitated as he spoke, swam away at an impossible speed -- then turned and rocketed back to his side.

"Now? We must leave now?"

And she nodded her head, almost hysterical now -- then her body rose almost completely out of the water and grew quite still.

Collins turned and followed her eye, and he saw a woman on the dock behind Gemini.

At first he didn't recognize her, but he could see the woman was terrified -- shivering and terrified. She was standing knock-kneed, her arms crossed protectively over her breast, her hands crossed on her shoulders...

He felt the dolphin pushing him, pushing him to the dock, so he swam to the aft platform and pulled himself up into the night and jumped across to the dock...

And he found himself face to face -- with Corrine Duruflé.

She was aghast, trembling uncontrollably, her face awash with tears.

"Corrine?"

Nothing. No response -- yet he saw her eyes were almost crossed, focused somewhere above, perhaps on the enveloping Coalsack.

He turned and looked up into the night again, and saw ragged orbs of red streaking towards earth.

+++++

A few minutes later he was steering Gemini through the outer harbor, motoring to the southeast under autopilot while he wrapped Corrine in a blanket -- but he'd yet no see a change in her. He'd helped her into the cockpit and cast off lines, getting underway as quickly as he could. Once they were clear of the l'île de la Tortue the dolphin turned almost directly east, and Gemini followed.

At one point he saw missiles arcing up into the blackness -- but whatever they were, whoever had launched them -- they simply disappeared. He saw no detonations, heard no explosions. The red orbs remained, only now there were more of them.

They motored out of Marseilles, sailed towards the calanque where he and Liz -- and Ted and Carol -- had been anchored just a few months back, and still Corrine seemed lost to this world. By mid-morning, though the sun's light was almost gone the wind picked up and Gemini was broad-reaching under a full main and 120% genoa, barreling along at an honest eight knots. He went below and fixed sandwiches, poured two Dr Peppers and carried them back up into the cockpit.

He held the sandwich under Corrine's nose and she sniffed at it, shook her head for a moment then stared at Sumner...

"Who -- what are you doing here?" she said at last

"Who, me? What am I doing here?"

"Yes, you."

"Well, take a look around."

Corrine looked at him, then around the boat. She turned and looked at the shoreline about five miles off -- and seemed completely disoriented.

"Where am I? Am I dead?"

"Not as far as I can tell, but I've had my doubts. We're about a third of the way from Marseilles to Toulon, sailing east, following my friend there," he said, pointing at his dolphin.

Corrine stood and looked at the dolphin. "Your friend?"

"Yes. She's my friend. You remember? From Honfleur?"

"So. I am dead. Or I am having a, what is the word, a...?"

"A nightmare? No, I don't think so. And no, you're not dead, and as far as I can tell you're wide awake now. What's the last thing you remember?"

She looked around again, as if taking her bearings one more time -- just to be sure. "I was home. Things are very bad there. Fire...fires everywhere, unimaginable riots. The police and fire brigades finally gave up. I was near the Bastille, near the marina. I went down to see if you might have returned..."

"You know, you're the only woman I know who'd dress for the end of the world in five inch heels."

She looked down at her shoes and laughed. "Old habits, Sumner."

"I remember you saying once you'd like to get away from it all, maybe sail with me to Polynesia."

"Ah. Is that why I'm here? I think I said we'd end up together, didn't I?"

He shook his head, looked up at the sky: the red streaks clear now in the fading light of the sun, only now the sky had taken on an oddly variegated violet hue, the sea an even more peculiar, purple-gold color that was now oddly streaked.

"Oh, over there," she said suddenly, pointing off the port quarter. "Another dolphin!"

Collins turned and saw this new one, then turned and looked aft...

Yes, there she was. Hyperion -- under full sail, about two hundred yards astern -- with Carol at the wheel and Ted cleaning-up lines on the foredeck...

And was that Hopie sitting on the aft rail -- looking at him?

+++++

Hyperion and Gemini followed the dolphin past the rocks, around the little lighthouse and beyond, into the tiny, protected harbor that revealed itself beyond cliffs of granite and pine. The village of Portofino looked empty, almost deserted, yet Collins could see one sailboat tied bow-to the seawall just ahead. It was an old Hinckley, blue-hulled and elegant, one of the Southwester' 42s he'd admired along the Maine coast decades ago, and now he looked through his binoculars at the boat. The name on the stern: Springer, and he saw the companionway hatch lay open -- and a very small brown and white pup sitting under the dodger. When the pup saw him, or rather Gemini and Hyperion, sailing into the harbor it stood and started barking. Even through his field glasses, Collins could see the hair on the back of the pup's neck standing on end, and he smiled -- until Charley saw the pup and ran up to the bow.