Open Writing

The young pilot let the skimmer drop to five hundred meters and checked his course: 011 degrees, right on the button. The ship's beacon had been emitting its soft ping for about five minutes, and at any moment he should have the object in view.

Flashing across the frozen landscape, he throttled back and let the airspeed gradually decrease to one-eighty kph. Compensating for loss of lift, he increased power to the anti-grav motor, tapping a little more of the planet's magnetic field and holding his craft at a steady altitude. Only then did he look around, trying for visual contact.

As it did all over the world, the ice stretched in all directions, as far as eye or instruments could see. There was little to show whether the surface below was land or sea; the ice covered all without favour. It was a general rule among Seekers that ocean was a little smoother than land, although the rule was not universal. Planetary forces had distorted the ice all over both terrain and ocean, and only navrefs taken from unimaginably old maps and charts could tell him where he was with any degree of accuracy.

He punched up the co-ordinates of the area below, and watched as the data began to scroll across his computer screen. It told him that the area he was passing over had once been a fertile coastal plain to the north of a large city, now long gone. Ten thousand years had passed since there had been any civilized life there; the ice had taken it, as it had taken all the world.

The youth continued to throttle back, using his craft's braking foils to lose velocity in the frigid air until finally, arriving at the correct co-ordinates, all forward motion ceased. He set the anti-grav engine to hover, holding position five hundred meters above the object.

From his overhead position, he could not make naked-eye contact, and the object appeared on his screens only as a muddy, colourless smudge on the otherwise pristine albescence of the ice-covered landscape. He settled back in his acceleration seat to await the arrival of the drone ship carrying the equipment necessary for a complete analysis. With little to do until then, he cast his mind back to the previous afternoon's lecture on the Elder Days and in particular,its people, and the catastrophe they had visited upon the earth.

In the subterranean colonies where the young man and his people lived, there were those who kept alive stories of the Elder Days. They restored books, film, tapes, and discs; anything that contained references to the Old World, from the time before the ice. Not out of any desire to see those days return; rather, they were a warning to all, both current and future generations. If the disastrous errors of the past were not to be repeated, then the warning signs had to be recognized, and heeded.

Thousands of years ago, the fears of global warming had been but a mask concealing the true fate of the world. There should not have been another ice age for hundreds of thousands of years, but the industrialists of the time seemed to have been almost determined to bring one about. For more than two centuries they burnt fossil fuels, heedless of the poisons they were pouring into the atmosphere. They worshipped Croesus, not Gaia, and the great god Profit was the only deity to whom they bowed.

The young Seeker looked again at the strange smear on his screen. In his limited experience, there had never before been anything of this nature found in these latitudes. Perhaps somewhere in the thin belt at the equator, where temperatures sometimes rose above freezing for a few minutes in the middle of the day, there might exist such a thing. But only briefly; before now, nothing like it had been found.

To him, as to all of his people, from the humblest coolie in the hydroponic paddy fields right up to the High Master himself, the whole world was a glacial wilderness. All food, including the staple rice, was grown underground, special hybrid plants genetically engineered to germinate without sunlight, utilizing the heat from Gaia's core to aid fertilization.

In those vast underground caverns, his people survived, waiting, always waiting for the day when the earth would be made well again, and humanity could once more walk on her surface under the sun. There lived all races of people, and everyone had a task. Some grew the food, some prepared it for consumption, and some disposed of what little waste there was, and that was little indeed, since everything was recycled many times. And some, a select few, patrolled the skies of Gaia in a constant vigil, looking for The Sign.

There had, from time to time, been other indications such as this one, but all had proved fruitless, and the young man held any optimism he might have felt firmly in check. But even if this sign proved false, still the search would go on, as the last remnants of the human race sought an end to their long night. Time grew short, their resources were dwindling as the ice encroached on them, but still the search continued. All of them knew they must find it soon, before it became too late even for Gaia to turn things around.

The young man thought of those responsible for the state of the world. How, he wondered, could anyone do such a thing? Although he had studied the records from the Elder Days, he found it difficult to believe anyone could not know the truth; that the world was a living entity, as dependent on the goodwill of the creatures inhabiting it, as they were on her. The world and all her servants must work in harmony to preserve the ecology of the system. That is the only way, he thought, as he repeated the familiar litany to himself.

The youth had viewed the records many times, and he knew them well, those that had survived the Times of Darkness. His people, like the fifty generations before them, had never known any world other than the one in which they now lived, and only those ancient records gave them any knowledge of how the world had once been.

And would be again, he vowed, as he sat in the warmth of his ship, staring at the bleakness without. Oh Gaia, he mourned, how could they do this to You? Vast You may be, and for the longest time You absorbed the punishment inflicted on you by unknowing or uncaring generations.

But nothing tangible is infinite, and all too soon the skies of Gaia had become hazy, her air musty, then acrid. Then, finally, a poison to those who had depended on it for their lives. The gases they pumped into the atmosphere formed a wall around the planet, resulting at first in the infamous "Greenhouse Effect."

The origins of this name were long lost, but its consequences had proved only temporary. With the sun unable to penetrate the toxic mantle, the warming rapidly turned to cooling; the sun's rays, so vital to life, were reflected from the wall, which allowed neither heat nor light through.

So began the Times of Darkness.

A few scientists of the time had warned against the dangers of global warming, and spoke of rising tides and spreading deserts. But fewer still had predicted the ice that followed, and none had even imagined its extent or severity.

It began slowly, a mere fraction of a degree fall in the average annual temperature, and for a long time the earth fought back. When the looming disaster became obvious to all, then mankind strove to find a way to reverse the process, but it was too late. Finally, there came a year when the winter stayed, and did not give way to the thaw of spring. From that moment on, the earth changed, and nothing was ever the same again.

The Movement had been born out of desperation, and its leader was the very first High Master. He and his followers had been hounded and ridiculed for their beliefs, and had finally retreated to the high deserts to await the holocaust they were certain would come. And come it did.

When the survivors emerged from the rubble, the earth was no longer a fit place for humankind to live. Therefore, they retreated underground to allow Gaia to begin the task of healing herself.

So far, after these thousands of years, although the atmosphere had cleared, and its poisons dissipated, there had been no other Sign, and all the world was a white, frozen wasteland.

* * *

An electronic voice in his helmet brought the young pilot out of his reverie, and he turned in his seat to see the drone ship approaching from the south. Soon, when it had completed its in-depth analysis, they would have their answer, but he wasn't going to be holding his breath. He watched as the massive ship drifted to a halt alongside his own skimmer, now dwarfed by the other's immensity.

These enormous, pilotless craft, totally automated, circled the earth in parking orbits, only entering the atmosphere when called upon to perform their tasks. They carried the heavy equipment such as laser cutters and drills; originally built to explore the solar system, they now served much closer to home.

The young Seeker punched instructions into his computer and transferred the data to the drone, then watched as the giant ship descended to the plain below. Soon, he thought, soon we will know if this is The Sign, or just another disappointment. He sat back in his seat and focussed his attention on the screen before him.

* * *

Two hours later he was heading southeast, hurtling through the frigid high atmosphere at close to his maximum velocity of five thousand kilometres per hour, his young face aglow with exultation. He had left before the drone had completed its examination of the object, but the young Seeker had seen enough. He knew, with the certainty of the true believer, that The Sign had come at last.

As he sat pressed back into his seat by the acceleration, he reflected wryly that he would possibly receive a reprimand from his flight commander for this mad, headlong dash, this undisciplined display. Perhaps he would be grounded for a while, given duty in the waste tanks. If so, then he would not mind. But he did not think that would happen, not when they received the message from the drone ship, despite the fact that it would get to them long before he did. He knew they would not be too surprised or annoyed by his reaction; it was surely how any of them would behave, given these glorious circumstances. He checked his heading and urged his ship on, towards the base at what had once been the southern tip of Italy, across the frozen expanse of the ancient Mediterranean.

If he was to be punished, so be it. Nothing could tarnish the memory of what he had seen, the smudge resolving into a small circle of long-awaited life. That would stay with him through all the days ahead, for all of the rest of his life.

Colourless it was; drab and dull, desperately clinging to an existence so precarious, one could imagine it drifting away on the slightest breeze. But even in the worst storm, the strongest blizzard, the young man knew that Gaia would not allow that to happen. For this was The Sign, the beginning of the long road back out of the darkness. From here, they had only to wait; the healing process had begun.

When he had started to receive the data from the drone, he had interfaced his computer with other ship, to assist in the search for the identity of the strange growth. To his surprise, a long and complex history had come pouring forth; tales of a long-forgotten conflict of arms, fought with primitive weapons and resulting in appalling loss of life that had taken place on the plain, now many hundreds of kilometres behind.

He smiled inside his helmet as he recalled the moment when the match had been found. The original flower of the growth had been much more brightly coloured, and had grown in great profusion on that ancient coastal plain. This version, he knew, would never win any prizes for beauty, but to him it was the loveliest thing on the face of the planet. He smiled again, then laughed out loud as he remembered a line from the data that had issued from his computer.

The poppies had returned again to Flander's fields.

* * *

Brian has written a number of books. They are available from:

www.fictionwise.com