Finding a “place” for everybody was going to take a while: one thing human, Man, and Tauran cultures had in common was the assumption of the immutability of physical law. We may not understand everything, but everything does follow rules, which are eventually knowable.
That was gone now. We had no idea what parts of physics had been a whim of the nameless. It had laid claim to the constancy and limitation of the speed of light, which meant that most of post-Newtonian physics was part of the joke.
It had said it was going to leave that unaffected, to keep us in our cage. Were there other laws, assumptions, constants that did not please it? All of science was in question now, and had to be checked.
Religion was less in question, interestingly enough. Just change a few terms, and ignore uncertainty as to the existence of God. God’s intent had never been that clear, anyhow. The nameless had left the faithful incontrovertible proof of its existence, and enough new data for millenniums of fruitful theological debate.
My own religion, if you can call it that, had changed in its fundamental premise, but not its basic assertion: I’d always told religious friends that there may or may not be a God, but if there is one, I wouldn’t want to have him over for dinner. I’ll stand by that last part.
——————————————————————————–
Chapter thirty-three
After a couple of weeks, there was little we could do or learn on Earth, and we were anxious to get back. The Omni who had met us at our arrival wanted to go along, and I was glad to include it. A few magic tricks would make our fantastic story more acceptable.
Nobody died on the jump, so five months later we came out of the SA coffins and stared down at Middle Finger, blinding white with snow and cloud. We should have found a few years of stuff to do on Earth; come back in thaw or spring.
There was no one on duty at the spaceport, but we were able to get through to the Office for Interplanetary Communications, and they had a flight controller sent out. It took us a couple of hours to transfer to the shuttle, anyhow.
The landing was a big improvement over our last one: reassuring lines of smoke from chimneys in outlying towns; a snarl of winter traffic in Centrus.
A woman who identified herself as mayor came out in the transfer vehicle, along with her Man liaison–and Bill, who got the most attention from Marygay and Sara and me. He was growing a beard, but otherwise hadn’t changed much.
Except perhaps in his attitude toward me. He wept when we embraced, as I did, and for a minute couldn’t do anything but shake his head. Then in heavily accented English he said, “I thought I’d lost you forever, you stubborn old bastard.”
“Sure, me stubborn,” I said. “Good to have you back. Even though you’re city folk now.”
“Actually, we’re back in Paxton”–he blushed–“my wife Auralyn and I. We went back to set the place up. Plenty of fish. Figured you’d come back soon, if you were coming back, so I came into Centrus last week to wait.
“Charlie’s with me in town. Diana’s stuck in Paxton, doctoring. What the hell happened?”
I groped for words. “It’s kind of complicated.” Marygay was trying not to laugh. “You’ll be glad to know I found God.”
“What? On Earth?”
“But he just said hello–goodbye and left. It’s a long story.” I looked out at the snow, plowed higher than the vehicle’s windows. “Plenty of time to talk, before things get busy in the thaw.”
“Eight cords of wood,” he said. “Ten more on the way.”
“Good.” I tried to summon up the warm memory of sitting around the fireplace, but reality intruded. Slipping around on the ice, pulling in fish that froze in the air. Plumbing jammed by frozen pipes. And shovel, shovel, shovel snow.
——————————————————————————–
Chapter thirty-four
We resumed “everyday” life in the sense of fishing and fighting the winter, though we were suddenly a household of five adults. Sara still had a term of school left before she could start university, but she got permission to wait a few months rather than start at midterm and play catch-up.