Blurb: How hard should we struggle against the indifferent Cosmos? How hard have we already struggled? Do we owe anything to those whose struggles brought us here? Do we owe anything to ourselves? With every fiber, Ditto. Yes, and Yes. Heinlein once said, "The Earth is too small a basket for the human race to put all its eggs into." Then, why aren't we doing anything about the greatest threat to Humanity?
Behind this story: In 1998, we faced this big threat ... but only at the multiplex. Two theatrical movies hit the big screen. Armageddon did better at the box office, but Deep Impact was the better movie for its portrayal of our response to such a threat. With this concept driving into the minds of America, I couldn't help but write my own take on it, hence this story. When I looked to selling it, I wrote Analog that one way to increase their circulation would be to work a joint-marketing deal, dedicate an issue to stories about this threat, then put it on sale in racks in the theater lobby ... and of course, you should include this story in the issue. They didn't buy any of my pitch, particular or general, and as you can see, their sales are still languishing. And Humanity still won't take the threat seriously.
Minimum Maturity
Maria broke out of the pine forest, stopped, and scowled. Splitgut Mountain, backlit by the sun already set, stood crisp, jagged, snow-dusted, glorious. Between her and the double peak lay an oval lake, its cobalt-blue surface brushed into ripples by the early evening breeze. And flaring at her, above the peak and its watery reflection, was Smack the Comet.
Maria hadn't planned it that way. Her goal had been lakeside by dusk, but she hadn't thought about where Smack would be then.
Still scowling — but determined to enjoy the spot like she had planned — she picked a tree to be her porch on the lake, its high skirt of branches a roof, its coarse and knotty bark a backrest, its discarded needles a carpet, its tangy scent smoothed by the gentle wind. She contemplated a spot in front of the tree. After a few seconds, she eased her pack down, squatted, tossed aside two pine cones and a potato-sized rock, then piled up a hummock of needles and other humus. Satisfied, she pivoted on one hand and settled her bottom into the mound of grainy softness. Then, at last, she rested her gaze on the lake and its tall companion and the sky framing them both.
She had trekked up here to reflect upon her life and she might as well get to it. She could set up camp in the dark (and at this rate, she would have to) so she didn't worry about that duty. She simply sat, hugging her knees, and stared somberly up at Smack the Comet, — or 2004 IX, to be numeric about it, or Guel-Lambkins, to honor its discoverers, or the Doom of Humanity, to be apocalyptic — any one of which was ready to smack life right off the planet Earth.
Up in the same sky, men — and some women — worked furiously to do something about the comet. A few had died already, a by-product of nations scurrying to throw everything they had into space, in the hopes that something would stick up there, something that could be cobbled together into a big enough club to protect Earth ... and infant Humanity.
Infant? Maria gave herself a borderline smirk. The theme of her retreat asserted itself. She had avoided it during the two-hour drive from Denver to trail-head by playing her favorite tape over and over and singing along at the top of her voice. She had avoided it during the six-hour hike from trail-head to here by focusing on the trail (littered and worn into the mountain-side) and the scenery (stodgy pine and golden aspen) and the obscure short-cut that led from the trail to this obscure mountain valley, a place guaranteed to be empty, where she could be alone and think this thing out.
But logic didn't express itself. Rather, a feeling arose, slipping over her thoughts, a cozy, cuddly, warm feeling that suggested mama and teddy-bear and soft blankets, like her body was telling her mind that everything was just the way it should be, that the child growing within her was a tender fate.
As if the fetus were taking over already.
A spiteful, fearful thing to think. But she was afraid, afraid that the backhouse was going to win after all, the backhouse where the women existed, barefoot and pregnant, out behind the main house where the men — and some women — lived, the main house with its real life, its excitement, its glory, its power, connected directly to the real world by a road that stretched along in front of it, coming from History on the left and heading toward the Future on the right. And if she stayed pregnant, then her hard-won, still tenuous place in the main house would be lost.
And that was why she'd come out here, to be alone, with the earth and the sky, with herself and God, and figure this thing out, to make this decision, the hardest decision she ever had to make. At least, thank God, it was hers to make, that Society — for now — understood that mother-and-child was a unique condition and it belonged only to them, to each occurrence, to decide their future.
As she watched, the sky darkened. Her spot on the spinning Earth left behind the light and warmth of the Sun. The rest of the Universe took over, spreading night across the sky as though displacing the air over Colorado. And Smack was its current limelight; the sideways simpleton smile of a new moon hadn't risen yet.
The comet shone steadily, gleaming like a scalpel held high before striking. Maria knew abortion was not knife-induced, at least not at this early stage, but the image was hard to shake. Smack would do that job, like the Universe's Abortionist, killing off baby Mankind before it had the chance to leave the womb.
Tears welled in Maria's eyes and blurred the hairy star of the comet, as well as all the others. Could she do the same thing to her baby? Smack it chemically, flatten its scant cells into mere debris, then slough it off? Why not? Could she tell the difference? Just another round of dark blood in a toilet, in a pad, in a tampon, would she even know when and where?
And if she didn't take the baby's life? Then it would threaten hers, at least the shape and direction of it.
Did Humanity threaten the Universe? Was that why this was happening?
No, of course not. Nature wasn't cognizant. Its pieces just did their thing, for their own individual reasons. Guel-Lambkins followed its specific nature, rode over space-time according to its rules, and if the Earth, following its own track, happened to be in the way, then that was just that. Smack! And then there were new pieces-parts, their future the result — again — of the rules that applied to pieces-parts.
The baby — her baby — hers and Santiago's — was just following the rules. His piece-part had smacked up against hers and following the rules, had made a baby, who would then follow the rules and challenge her for control of her own body.
And one of the Marias inside her, the primeval part of her, wanted the baby to do just that. It was natural for her to do that. To feel joy with the prospect of life thriving within her, growing bigger and stronger, taking all it needed from her to get big enough to stand on its own.
We're built that way, Maria observed as she dug into the pack for her jacket; the night seemed to suck the earth's heat up into it. If we weren't, we wouldn't be here, which was one of those self-fulfilling truths, like the sticker on the back bumper of a car that says, "I may be slow, but I'm ahead of you." The child wants to grow; even before it can think, it wants. And the parents want it to grow, inside, outside, so that it can handle the world by itself, so that it can take over.
Why doesn't Humanity feel that way? Why doesn't it want to grow out into its "world," which consisted — at the least — of the solar system? Why does it want to stay in the womb, safe, secure, vulnerable?
Well, she realized, not all of us want to hide. Some of us want to get out and get going, to be apart, be independent of Mother Earth. If we'd done that — and we could have done that, she knew, instead of turning aside from Apollo's promise — then Smack wouldn't be such a threat. It wouldn't even be much more than a job we knew how to do. We'd just go out there, using our stuff, and push it ... to someplace where it would do good, like the Moon or Mars, instead of dooming mankind.
Tears burned again in her eyes, and she didn't know whether to fight them or not ... so she didn't. They spilled then, gave up their burning to turn warm and wet on her cheeks. And suddenly, her chest joined her eyes, adding sobs to tears, then her heart joined in, in a rush of feelings that overwhelmed her thoughts, scattering them like the atoms of baby ... or Humanity, for that matter.
#
In time, Maria was drained, washed out, but not necessarily clean. She found herself collapsed on the pine-needle floor, her head tucked into her arms, her legs drawn up and close, as though wanting to comfort her — or was it the baby?
She roused, hands and arms sticky with needles and dirt. Smack had fallen behind, but she could still see it fluorescing through the notch between Splitgut's double peaks, one large, one small. Its wicked spark glowered for one last moment straight at Maria. She stared back, daring it to do something now, not "in due course."
"C'mon!" she shouted. "Show me what you got!"
At that moment, the crotch of the dark peaks eclipsed the Awful Star, cutting it out of sight ... but not out of mind. Just because you couldn't see something didn't mean it wasn't out to get you ... Maria knew she wasn't talking just about the comet.
Maria drew a ragged breath and waited, not moving, holding out for the marvel that had drawn her up here, to this particular spot as refuge. She waited as all sense of day faded. She waited as night flourished. She waited as her mind responded to the peace of the setting, its isolation, its primordial simplicity and access to truth.
As the moment stretched, Maria ceased being merely an instance of Humanity, a woman, a wife, an astronomer, a hiker, a member of Greenpeace, a Republican, a fan of David Brin — not necessarily in that order — and connected with her species.
Somewhen behind her, the founding members rallied their thoughts, just as she was, but in the warmth of equatorial Africa. Identifying with those early humans, she felt the world around her, its ground, its water, its air, its life, its embrace.
She existed a long ways from that Eden. She shivered as a chill gust brushed over her. She tested the air and found it crisp, thin, chaste. She picked at a pine needle by her thigh, at its spare adaptation to altitude and aridity. Did they, her distant ancestors, ever imagine being anywhere like this?
With these two points of evolution at her back, Maria turned her thoughts to the future. Could she, in turn, imagine where her descendants were going to be? That question lifted her eyes to the sky, to the star pricks that populated it, then smeared them with poignant tears. Somewhen, she believed, another human would sit in a place where the Sun would be an undifferentiated light in the sky and the life around her would be ... very different, very different indeed.
Suddenly, Maria was tired. She turned to the pack, intending to unleash her camp from it, but another thought brought her attention back to the Universe surrounding her, surrounding the whole planet. Her only way to such a future, if it happened, if Humanity survived, if Humanity dared, was through descendants.
Starting with the baby within her.
***
When Maria awoke in the morning, procrastination lined her head with dates and excuses. I could wait, she found herself thinking. No rush to erase the fetus. First trimester, or second trimester, no difference, it's all still legal.
What was the criteria here anyway? Viability? When is the fetus, the baby, the person, viable?
Physical criteria were a joke. No matter how you defined it — able to breathe on his own, feed himself, fend for himself — humans were not viable for a long time! Even after they're born, they're still gestating: look at their brains, their skulls, their lungs. The question, she thought, was minimum maturity, and she recognized, after a quick survey of her own life, that meant leaving home. You were really viable only when you could live somewhere else by yourself.
Which gave her about eighteen years to reject this baby ... ridiculous!
Of course, leaving home was a big step for one human — and for Humanity. Look at the challenges of space travel. Look at interplanetary distances. Reaching the minimum maturity for Humanity required a whole lot of effort ... and there was nobody to make it easier, nobody to care and guide, no Mother and Father.
Maria shed her sleeping bag and the small trek tent like layers of cocoon. She pulled boots out after her and slipped them on without tying. No need to dress; she hadn't undressed before seeking sleep in the dark mountain silence.
The pink, wan morning was cold, almost hard in its clarity. She unloaded stuff from her pack and made breakfast. Stew was an easy meal: dump package into pot, add water, stir over camp stove for a little while, eat.
And her little 'bun in the oven' certainly had a Mother ... and a Father. A complete microcosm of Humanity: Mother, Father, and Child. That point nagged at Maria. Humanity wasn't just a matter of pulse and gut and breath. Humanity was a state of mind ... literally.
When would her baby be Human? Was it there already? Did it become Human at conception, like the Church taught her? Did the promise of that union — if all went well, it would grow up into a Human — warrant the label of 'Human?' Then, what about the Promise of Humanity? If I'm supposed to protect the Promise of this one Human, why aren't we all protecting the Promise of all Humans?
What do you say about that, God?
She didn't need a priest for this talk with God. She didn't want anyone between her and the Answer now, let alone a childless, sexless man. She straightened and stared ahead at the lake and the peak, as much a cathedral as anything Man had built.
What do you say about that, God?
"God says," a voice in her mind answered, "that if Humanity figures out a way to survive in My Awesome Universe, then Humanity deserves to live here."
That, the main Maria knew, was blasphemy. Maybe that's why so many people who believe that Humanity is the acme of God's creation don't try to take care of the race ... because they think God will provide: God wouldn't strike us down; God sent his only Begotten Son to us, so He wouldn't ... would He? Well, that was then and this is now. Jesus Christ was a test, one for which we have not yet received a final grade.
The mother-child system was another test, to see who would focus on one side or the other, pro-choice or pro-life, to the cost of the other, to see who would forget that love is the greatest gift and challenge.
The Moat of Space is still another test and he who learns to live on the other side survives.
She cleared those thoughts and waited for an Answer.
No Other Voice spoke in her mind. As the daylight broadened, nothing came to her except the sounds of life. She put on a bitter smile, to prevent more tears, to assuage her feeling of abandonment. It was all up to her, eventually, even if she talked it over with Santiago — it was all up to her.
At least, she had that choice, and that was the best power, the best freedom of all. Perhaps that dominion was the real sign that women finally stood beside men as equals, even if that rightful place was constantly challenged. At least at this moment, she had that choice.
Maria looked down at her empty pot. She laughed: there were always dishes to be washed. She scrounged through the pack for the water-filter, then took it, the dirty pot, and her canteens over to the lakeside.
The lake lay within a skirt of rocks laid down by glaciers thousands of years ago, but still there, bleached, yet hardly touched by the weather in that geologically brief time. As she walked carefully among them, so as to disturb them as little as possible, so as to avoid turning an ankle, Maria Guel touched the alpine stillness, its silence, its windlessness, its warm strokes of sunlight.
It was only when she crouched at the water's edge that she became aware of another feeling. She was being watched ... by something evil. Its glare burned hotter than the sun on the back of her neck.
She whirled. Her eyes caught the spectre of Smack the Comet, rising in the east above the piney horizon. She froze, her blood chilled at the sight. This was the evil presence she had felt.
Humanity had just a couple of months yet to solve this little problem, even less if she and Bert Lambkin hadn't discovered this long-period comet during their study of the solar corona. They'd happen to catch this sungrazer, just as it passed perihelion, finishing an undetected hyperbolic trip into the solar system, all 1,000,000 cubic kilometers of it. When Humanity had realized that this Manhattan-sized wallop from Oort's primeval sphere was scheduled to come calling, then all hell had broken loose.
Now it was up to a handful of spacecraft — two American Shuttles, three Soyuz capsules, the only operational Delta Clipper (provided by Japan) — and a cluster of nuclear warheads — already on their way, to intercept Smack and parlay that earlier warning into an escape. Could the Tool-Maker conquer his environment one more time? Could the Naked Ape meet Mother Nature's challenge yet again? Could the Thinker see her way clear for another try at Immortality?
If we do fend off extinction one more time — Maria stood still as her mind climbed toward a decision — then she had her whole life ahead of her. Plenty of time for children and all they meant to her as woman, wife, and human being.
And if we fail this time? Then she lost her chance to be a mother, to complete her experience in that unique mother-child system. She knew then that the backhouse didn't reflect inferiority, but power and men's jealousy of it. Mothers controlled species survival and personal immortality. And no matter her desire for and success in the main house, she shouldn't deprive herself of her ultimate power. She decided to stay a mother.
And went back to correct herself. Even if that flotilla vanquished Smack the Comet, she would stay a mother ... because there was never plenty of time in this fragile life.
Calm for the first time in days, Maria finished the dishes, filled her canteens with purified water, returned to her campsite and crammed all her stuff into the pack, made one last check to make sure she'd left the site as close to pristine as possible, then started back down the mountain.
She had to tell Santiago — she laughed at the thought — that another body had entered their little system and was bound to play havoc with everything in it.
THE END
