Moon Flower (44 page)

“What is it?” Shearer asked.

“Oh... I suppose it was me talking about Cyrene as if it were home,” she replied.

“Well, it’s going to be now,” Shearer said. “And it will be a fine one. You’ll see.”

“Yes. I don’t doubt it. But that’s the point.”

“What do you mean?”

Jerri sighed and then smiled faintly, as if feeling slightly silly. “Everything feels so right here. And then I think back to that nightmare of a world that we lived in once, and it seems... I’m not sure. As if we’re walking out on all of those people back there, somehow. Abandoning them. They’re our own kind, after all. We’ve always said it’s just a corrupt few who cause all of the grief. Most of the ordinary people just want the same as we do — to live their lives the way they want, and to be left alone. They believe the ones they should be able to trust, but they’re lied to. They work, they suffer, and they try, but everything is taken away from them. They don’t have any chance, do they?”

Shearer shook his head somberly. “I hear what you’re saying, Jerri. But what can you do? We both know the reason now. Maybe the way you have to look at it is that every planet is a biological experiment. That all of life was supposed to fit and work together the way it does on Cyrene. Becoming fully conscious needs the environment provided by the plants. But Earth turned out incomplete. And so the intelligence that evolved on Earth is functionally incomplete. And the rest is what you get.” He was about to say more, but then shrugged and left it at that.

The center of the lake was choppier than the last time they saw it, the boats fewer. In the distance, the higher peaks were visible, their tops already showing touches of white.

Yes, he was saddened by the thought too, he had to admit to himself. Earth had had its chance in the cosmic roulette game and been unlucky. Earth would have to live with it. There was nothing that anyone could do.

EPILOGUE

In a village in southern China, far above the city of Canton in the valley of the Bie river, Tsien-cho, the schoolmistress, came out to call her charges in from their morning break. The games were reluctantly ended, subsiding into chattering and giggling. As the children converged to file past her inside the door, one of the girls stopped and showed her a flower. “Can you tell me what this is, Miss? I’ve never seen one like it before.”

Tsien-cho took it, and as she turned it over in her hands, her puzzlement grew. She had studied flowers assiduously since she was as young as the girl asking the question, but she had never seen the likes of this one either. It was like a small orchid, delicately formed, with petals of pale lilac showing a blush of pink at the base and white at the tips. But strangest of all was the dark red collar encircling the stem immediately below. It looked almost like a second set of petals, but curled shut.

“No, this is new to me,” she confessed. “Where did you find it?”

“Over there, by the fence. There’s a little bunch of them.”

Beside Tsien-Cho, one of the boys pointed at the hillside above that side of the village. “Look up there!” he exclaimed. “There are hundreds of them! Everywhere!”