But the veils that had screened it from his mind were opening. Only now was he beginning, fully, to grasp the meaning of death tolls counted in billions; of entire civilizations, their works, and their cities disappearing beneath walls of water miles high as the Earth’s axis shifted and oceans surged across continents; of seas boiling, crustal blocks tilting, rifts opening, lava sheets spreading for hundreds of miles to reenact in hours and days tectonic processes previously thought to require millions of years.
Keene was not the only one to be affected in this way. He could pick out another evacuee, even one that he hadn’t met before, maybe sitting on the far side of the cafeteria in an industrial complex on Titan, or passing by in one of the habitats on Dione. They all had the same gaunt look that comes with unsettled digestion and troubled sleep. And they seldom laughed.
It was different for the dozen or so others around him in the transorbital’s main cabin, all of them Kronian-born, or at least raised, talking among themselves, reading, following whatever was playing on their vi-spex, or simply immersed in their own contemplations. For Kronians, the impact of what had happened lay more at an intellectual level. Their reality had always been the insides of domes or subterranean galleries, stars seen through armored glass or a helmet visor. Open skies and the rustling of trees, or the rush of surf on beaches was not the stuff of immediate experience. The world that was no more, while perhaps one that they might have briefly sampled, was not a world they had known.
A voice from the chatter around him percolated through his broodings. “Lan’s very quiet. Are you okay there, Lan?” It was Bryd, a trainee life-support tech, who was going down to Titan for a few days’ break.
The line of Keene’s mouth softened slightly. “Just tired, Bryd,” he grunted.
Myel, the Kronian girl next to Bryd, had been cook and dietician up in LORIN 5, as well as pharmacist and medical assistant. She was also learning three languages. Preserving as much as possible of Earth’s cultures was something that everyone took a part in. “Will you be going straight back to the program you’re with at Essen?” she asked Keene. Essen was a fusion-driven materials extraction and processing complex located on Titan. Keene was involved in the development of advanced energy technologies at an electrical research facility called the Tesla Center, that was attached to it. Given his background, that was the most valuable contribution he could make toward the colony’s ongoing viability. Contributing mattered a lot in Kronia.
“For now, anyway,” Keene answered. “There’s no end of things that need to be done.”
“You have a family on Dione, though, don’t you?” Myel said.
“Not exactly family. A friend who was my business partner back on Earth. Her name’s Vicki. She has a son—he’s eighteen now. Her husband was in the Navy back on Earth. He died in an accident. That was a long time before Athena . . . happened.”
The third member of the group sitting with Keene was called Esh. Like the other two, he was young with an intense intelligence, and imbued with the personal dedication to Kronia and its values that the society that had taken root here instilled. They were similarly clad in plain workaday tunics, Bryd and Myel’s olive green; Esh’s, navy. Personal adornment was a rare luxury these days.
“I have a son back on Dione too,” Myel said.
“What’s his name?” Keene asked her.
“Carlen. He’s three. Blond hair and brown eyes like Obert—that’s his father. And all mischief. He’s going to be an engineer too. I can tell. He takes things apart already—but he’s still such a long way from being able to put them back together.” Keene smiled faintly. By now, he was used to encountering what he would once have considered unusually young parenthood. Myel went on, “He’s been in a preschool dorm in between staying with his grandmother. But now Obert’s getting some leave too. I can’t wait to see them again.”
“So is Obert away a lot too?” Keene asked.
“He’s with the Swiss Cheese Project—one of the people who make sure the lighting spectra are right.” Mimas, the second inner major moon after Janus, was being hollowed into internally heated and illuminated crop-growing spaces that it was said would eventually measure a mile across. Nobody quite knew how far the project would be taken, but if just a hundredth of the 300-mile-diameter volume were to be excavated, the total surface area of the resulting spaces would be over twenty percent that of the former U.S.A.