Fierce September Read Online Free PDF Page A

much sick as worried about the future. The man took her hand for a moment, smiled and spoke to her in a voice too low for me to hear. She relaxed and managed a brief smile in return.
    Willem took a microphone and began speaking. ‘People of Taris – Doctor Roger Fellowes will be looking after your health while we’re at sea. Any difficulties, please see him.’
    Dr Fellowes smiled and lifted a hand in acknowledgement.
    Willem was brisk. ‘We are going to show you images from Outside.’ He indicated the woman. ‘This is Leng, and the work you are about to see is hers.’
    Leng sat down on a seat attached to a wall. She held a control of some sort in her hand. ‘We will start with the world as it was when Taris was first settled,’ she said.
    We younger ones sat entranced as film clips of cities we’d only heard of played on the big screen against the end wall. There was Paris in the spring with soft green on the trees, New York on a snowy day, Melbourne in the middle of a heat wave, Beijing under a cloud of pollution, Wellington beaten by a fierce wind, Auckland with sun shimmering on the harbour, Sydney with the graceful span of the bridge and the opera house with its winged roof, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Manila, Sao Paulo, Barcelona, Prague, Tokyo … so many places.
    The clips finished, and some of the older people wiped their eyes. These were the places they had come from.
    ‘And now,’ said Leng, ‘you will see these cities as they are today.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I have to warn you – some of it makes shocking viewing.’
    My grandmother Leebar picked up Hera from where she sat leaning against Mother and wrapped her arms around her. ‘We’re ready,’ she murmured. But she didn’t look ready.
    As the images played in front of us none of us seemed aware of the wind battering the ship. Paris in the spring: bare, blackened tree branches and few people around. New York in winter without the snow.
    ‘But where are the people?’ Ranu cried. ‘That’s Fifth Avenue. And there’s Central Park.’
    Leng said, ‘Few people live there now. It’s much hotter in the summer but, as you can see, much of the lower-lying land is flooded. All the subways are flooded and the airports too are under water.’
    ‘But the people! Where have they gone?’ my grandfather Bazin called out. ‘What happened to them?’
    ‘Some moved inland,’ Leng said. She paused. ‘But many died. There have been eleven separate pandemics over the past fifty years.’
    ‘Couldn’t they be controlled?’ Rofan asked. ‘Or managed? What happened?’
    Leng gestured at Willem and it was plain she didn’t want to tell us – or maybe she couldn’t, for we saw the sadness in her face.
    Willem got to his feet. His words were stark. ‘Millions died. But there hasn’t been an outbreak for seven years. We are hopeful the worst is now behind us.’ If he had suffered loss from the pandemics he had no intention of letting us glimpse his sorrow. He would have done well on Taris, for our elders too had given us only the bare facts of our history and had locked away the stories behind them in their hearts.
    ‘Seven years,’ Leebar said. ‘So brief a span of time to be a buffer between life and death.’
    The images continued. Beijing: a ghost city. Moscow: withered from lack of water. London: still busy with people but tropical plants now grew outside in the parks. Los Angeles: burned and derelict.
    We watched until Alvek could stand it no longer. ‘Where are you taking us? We would have been better to stay on Taris.’
    Willem stood again to speak as if he needed to give weight to his words. ‘You were right to leave Taris. Our satellites have been photographing the dome for all the years of its existence. We calculate that it has perhaps one week more before the crack on the western side splits open. When that happens, the whole island will again be exposed to the weather.’
    Nixie spoke for us all when he asked, ‘With respect,