Landfall: Tales From the Flood/Ark Universe Read Online Free PDF Page B

if each cell is an individual biosphere all to itself – everything you need for life packed into a single genome.
    ‘And the second extraordinary thing is that this is all the multicellular life we’ve found. Spores, just like this clump, together in a variety of forms, of more or less sophistication – stable reefs like stromatolites, or more advanced composite creatures something like slime molds. We’ve found similar forms as fossils dating back a billion years. That’s twice as old as similar entities on Earth, by the way, according to the Founders. This is an older world than Earth. But all of these, fundamentally, are assemblies of the spores, and can be broken back down into their individual parts. It’s extraordinary that you have a whole biosphere, at the multicellular level anyhow, which is actually a manifestation of a single organism.’
    ‘These are wonderful ideas.’
    ‘Yes, they are, Maxx, and I wish more people could appreciate that. But even after the emergence of multicellularity the trajectories of Earth and Earth II diverged. On Earth, it took another half-billion years for intelligent life to evolve – mammals like us. Here, technological intelligence emerged most immediately. Well, within a few tens of millions of years. But it vanished almost as quickly.’
    ‘You’re talking about the Dead.’
    ‘Yes. That’s why traces like the ruins on the island of Little Jamaica, and the Reef on the Belt, are so old.’
    ‘The Reef, where my mother is going.’
    ‘Yes.’ He clenched a bony fist. ‘I wish I could be with her! If only she had thought to stop and take some scientists on her scientific expedition …’
    ‘If she thought about such things she wouldn’t be doing it at all,’ Maxx said. ‘That’s what my dad says.’
    ‘Quite. Well, I envy her.’ He brushed the dirt from his palm back onto the ground, and checked the position of the sun. ‘We had better go. It’s time for Proctor Chivian’s daily audience with your father – and maybe a chance for me, at last, to deliver the briefing on the Library he asked for.’
    ‘We have to be patient,’ Maxx said solemnly. ‘My father’s very busy.’  
    ‘Busy he may be, but he needs to make a decision soon on the Library, or it will be too late to break the ground this season …’ They began walking back to town and the parliament complex, the old man stiffly leaning on Maxx’s shoulder. ‘We do need the Library, you know. It isn’t just all about my calculations or the Proctor’s personal ambition. I do hope you understand that, Maxx.’
    ‘We have to be patient,’ Maxx repeated.

V

    The day was already ending by the time Xaia and her party came upon the Reef.
    Amid kilometres of arid crimson dust they found an oasis, a hollow surrounded by plates of uplifted rock, evidence of some ancient geological torment, the water pooling from some accidental aquifer. Green plants grew, grass and moss and straggling trees, and clumps of Purple sat passively amid the rocks.  
    Xaia allowed the caravan to break up. The great horses were unharnessed and led to the water. She and her aides and her fifty crew members, most of them women warriors, wearily laid down packs and loosened dust masks. Manda clambered up a ridge with a spyglass, to survey the landscape.
    Xaia sought out Chan Hil. Teif followed her. Chan had taken off his boots, replacing them with soft camp sandals, and was unfolding his tent. Xaia had a chart prepared by the Cora ’s navigator, a sketch map of this northerly section of the Belt, gradually being filled in. ‘We should be here,’ she said, pointing. ‘At the Reef. Here are the coordinates you gave us, latitude and longitude. Here is our calculation …’
    ‘I told you we should have sent out scouts,’ Teif rumbled.
    ‘We are close,’ Chan insisted. ‘Unless everything known at Ararat about the Reef is wrong.’ Two months after walking out of Ararat, Chan looked quite different, his skin sunburned