GENELLAN: PLANETFALL(196)

"You think it's the same race?" Merriwether asked.

"Who knows?" Runacres replied. "Regardless, there's a great danger out there. I have a feeling we'll face it again in our lifetimes." He listened to the happy noises of the children and envied their bliss. He ran their names over in his mind. They would be famous: the oldest, Honey, ran along the beach cove, splashing the lake waters; little Adam followed, waddling in her footsteps; the youngest baby—Hope—still in her mother's arms, was just awakening.





Epilogue


She breathed deeply. Beach smells redolent of wet sand and seaweed—the odors of ocean tides—rose to meet her. Her senses responded to a symphony of stimuli. She touched warm ocean waters with bare toes and, listening carefully, heard plaintive sounds drifting inshore, inshore through the fog. The sweet sounds of Trident's horn, soft and temporal, lingered but for seconds before trailing into the background—a mysterious sound. Genellan had many mysteries.

Buccari stared seaward, into the thick bank of fog standing offshore, a curtain of inscrutable gray cotton obscuring the distance to the open horizons, but she knew a horizon was out there somewhere. Overhead, morning skies bespoke the coming of another balmy day, and at her feet the surf frothed softly, a comfortable, metronomic hissing sound—water gliding over sand. The breeze freshened; the fog bank receded. She could not feel the wind, but she could see it; clusters of tiny ripples marred the mirror-smooth surface of the low swells and gentle waves. Cat's paws, the ripples were called, and she understood why.

The breeze wandered ashore, blowing her dark hair, fine and lustrous, across her face. She reached up innocently and brushed it aside, touching the long scar on her cheek. Her fingers lingered, as they often did—the scar a bittersweet memory. She slowly dropped her hands, and they fell naturally, with fingers spread around gravid belly. She felt the burgeoning existence, a reminder of the past and an element of the future. A wonderment.

Difficult for her to comprehend, this biological activity in her womb. Her mind was facile and her intellect expansive; rarely did processes or systems cause her confusion. Reason was her ally, and logic a well and often-used tool. Yet somehow, in some way, this was different, and the limits of her intelligence were tasked. This was so very different; her body was performing on its own, and it was creating something—something from almost nothing. A miracle—it was a miracle, the miracle of life, and a new beginning, exquisitely profound.

Fine white sand squeaked behind her. She turned to see the great mass of Kateos plodding across the strand. Buccari moved back from the warm ocean, sensitive to the kone's fears and perceptions. The human raised her hand in greeting, and the kone, rising onto her hinds, replied in kind. Kateos removed her helmet.

"The fog-ah is lifting," the kone said. "Soon you will see them."

"The whales? Does the noise come from the whales?" Buccari asked. The horn again—a high-pitched moaning close inshore, and distinct clicking sounds, the loudest she had heard yet.

"Yes, they are come back. That is their call," Kateos replied, taking a nervous step away from the water's edge. "That-ah one is very close to shore. Look, the fog goes."

The friends stood on the shore and watched as freshening breezes parted the veil of fog, until only scattered clouds remained. The horizon expanded to the full limits of Buccari' s elevation, and she observed the churning caused by giant ocean creatures. Great mammals surfaced constantly, and puffs of vaporous steam hissed from their blowholes. Colossal rounded backs, barnacle-encrusted, smoothly cleaved the ocean surface, and languid flukes gracefully arched into the sky.

"They come here to bear their young, just as you have. Your beautiful baby will be born here, too," Kateos said, rapture in her voice.

"Yes, it will be born by the sea," the human replied. "And then we must return to MacArthur' s Valley. Just as the whales return to deep ocean."

They stared in silence, watching the endless movement of nature.

"Will you return to space, Sharl?" asked the kone enviously, dropping back on all fours so that she could stand face-to-face with her human friend.

Buccari looked Kateos squarely and deeply into her kindly face.

"The deeper oceans of space...Maybe, my good friend. Maybe."