Trust me.”
“I do,” she said.
I stared at her. There was no cause for wonder in the fact that she could be so calm and so controlled and yet not be able to hurl herself into that black airless void—but I had to get her out before I got out myself. I couldn’t show her the way because I couldn’t leave her alone.
“Listen to the water on the outside,” she whispered. “Feel the rocking. It must have been a hurricane that overturned the boat… but we have to go, don’t we, Mister Mortimer? We have to get out.”
“Yes,” I said. “The pod’s bright orange and it has a distress beacon. We should be picked up within twenty-four hours, but there’ll be supplies for a week.” I had every confidence that our suitskins and our internal technology could sustain us for a month, if necessary. Even having to drink a little seawater if our recycling gel clotted would only qualify as a minor inconvenience—but drowning was another matter. Drowning is one of the elementary terrors of emortality, along with a smashed skull, a fall from a great height and a close encounter with a bomb.
“It’s okay, Mister Mortimer,” Emily said, putting her reassuring hand in mine for one more precious moment, so that we could both take strength from the touch. “We can do it. It’ll be all right.”
And so saying, she leaped into the pool of darkness.
ELEVEN
I knew that I couldn’t afford to be paralyzed by apprehension, for Emily’s sake. I also knew—and am convinced of it to this very day—that if Emily hadn’t been there to create the absolute necessity, I would not have been able to lower myself through that hole. I would have waited, cravenly, until there was no more air left to breathe. While I waited, I might have been injured by the buffeting of the rigid-hulled boat, or the boat might have taken on water enough to go down, but I would have waited, alone and horribly afraid.
I couldn’t swim.
In the early twenty-sixth century, it was taken for granted that all members of the New Human Race were perfectly sane. Madness, like war and vandalism, was supposed to be something that our forefathers had put away, with other childish things, when they came to understand how close the old Old Human Race had come to destroying themselves and taking the entire ecosphere with them. It was, I suppose, true. Ali Zaman’s firstborns were, indeed, perfectly sane from the age of eight until eighty, and we lived in contentedly uninteresting times until 23 March 2542. We always knew what counted as the reasonable thing to do, and it was always available to us—but even we New Humans couldn’t and didn’t always do it. As sane as we undoubtedly were, we were still capable of failing to act in our own best interests. Sometimes, we needed an extra reason even to do what we knew full well we
had
to do—and I needed the responsibility of taking care of Emily Marchant to make me jump into the hot and seething sea, even though I could not swim, and trade the falsely unsinkable
Genesis
for an authentically unsinkable life raft.
But Emily was right. We
could
do it, together, and we did.
It was the most terrifying and most horrible experience of my young life, but it had to be done, and as soon as Emily had had time to get clear I filled my lungs with air and hurled myself into the same alien void. I had the handgrip of the life-raft pod tightly held in my right hand, but Ihugged it to my chest nevertheless as I kicked with all my might, scissoring my legs.
Much later, of course, I realized that if I had only followed Captain Cardigan’s instructions and read the safety manual, I would have known where to find breathing apparatus as well as a life raft. That would have done wonders for my confidence, although it would not have made my feeble imitation of swimming any more realistic. I have no way of knowing, but I suspect that it was pure luck and the seething of the sea that carried me far enough away from the boat to ensure
“I do,” she said.
I stared at her. There was no cause for wonder in the fact that she could be so calm and so controlled and yet not be able to hurl herself into that black airless void—but I had to get her out before I got out myself. I couldn’t show her the way because I couldn’t leave her alone.
“Listen to the water on the outside,” she whispered. “Feel the rocking. It must have been a hurricane that overturned the boat… but we have to go, don’t we, Mister Mortimer? We have to get out.”
“Yes,” I said. “The pod’s bright orange and it has a distress beacon. We should be picked up within twenty-four hours, but there’ll be supplies for a week.” I had every confidence that our suitskins and our internal technology could sustain us for a month, if necessary. Even having to drink a little seawater if our recycling gel clotted would only qualify as a minor inconvenience—but drowning was another matter. Drowning is one of the elementary terrors of emortality, along with a smashed skull, a fall from a great height and a close encounter with a bomb.
“It’s okay, Mister Mortimer,” Emily said, putting her reassuring hand in mine for one more precious moment, so that we could both take strength from the touch. “We can do it. It’ll be all right.”
And so saying, she leaped into the pool of darkness.
ELEVEN
I knew that I couldn’t afford to be paralyzed by apprehension, for Emily’s sake. I also knew—and am convinced of it to this very day—that if Emily hadn’t been there to create the absolute necessity, I would not have been able to lower myself through that hole. I would have waited, cravenly, until there was no more air left to breathe. While I waited, I might have been injured by the buffeting of the rigid-hulled boat, or the boat might have taken on water enough to go down, but I would have waited, alone and horribly afraid.
I couldn’t swim.
In the early twenty-sixth century, it was taken for granted that all members of the New Human Race were perfectly sane. Madness, like war and vandalism, was supposed to be something that our forefathers had put away, with other childish things, when they came to understand how close the old Old Human Race had come to destroying themselves and taking the entire ecosphere with them. It was, I suppose, true. Ali Zaman’s firstborns were, indeed, perfectly sane from the age of eight until eighty, and we lived in contentedly uninteresting times until 23 March 2542. We always knew what counted as the reasonable thing to do, and it was always available to us—but even we New Humans couldn’t and didn’t always do it. As sane as we undoubtedly were, we were still capable of failing to act in our own best interests. Sometimes, we needed an extra reason even to do what we knew full well we
had
to do—and I needed the responsibility of taking care of Emily Marchant to make me jump into the hot and seething sea, even though I could not swim, and trade the falsely unsinkable
Genesis
for an authentically unsinkable life raft.
But Emily was right. We
could
do it, together, and we did.
It was the most terrifying and most horrible experience of my young life, but it had to be done, and as soon as Emily had had time to get clear I filled my lungs with air and hurled myself into the same alien void. I had the handgrip of the life-raft pod tightly held in my right hand, but Ihugged it to my chest nevertheless as I kicked with all my might, scissoring my legs.
Much later, of course, I realized that if I had only followed Captain Cardigan’s instructions and read the safety manual, I would have known where to find breathing apparatus as well as a life raft. That would have done wonders for my confidence, although it would not have made my feeble imitation of swimming any more realistic. I have no way of knowing, but I suspect that it was pure luck and the seething of the sea that carried me far enough away from the boat to ensure
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