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Page 73.

Dot and Bella appeared in a walls image as Alex pushed the steaming kraft-colored brown tub against a receptor in the wall, and a grid of red lights came on while the accompanying DNA codes started uploading.

“We still have work to do,” Bella said while Dot hovered, looking over her shoulder. Bella sifted through virtual handfuls of what looked like ancient memory disks. “You guys, here is a complete library of all the films, all the poetry readings, all the spoken books, all the great theatrical performances that were stored on the station. You’ll have plenty of things to watch during those long, boring nights.” She winked before disappearing in a blur as the boat picked up speed.

The boat streaked down the runway, where robots stood frozen over blocks of stone and metal on the mass driver. Faster and faster the boat streaked, into the black sky, and toward the station. The station still hung in space, slowly coming apart like some creation of metallic confetti coming apart underwater, but that would all change now. The floating mummies still in their evening gowns and tuxedoes, with their enigmatic freeze-dried expressions, would be cremated in the sun. The Wooloo! would be safe forever in what had become their own world. With the help of a thousand friendly programs like Charlie Dugway, and Dot, and Bella, Alex and Maryan would instruct the station to really start rebuilding itself. With an unlimited supply of solar power, and the resources including the race track on the moon, nothing could stop the human race now. A million men and women awaited their birth and nurturing in the cylinder (with all due respect to the cylinder’s proper owners, the Wooloo!) for a triumphal return to claim back much of the earth. They would assign places to the Takkar and the Siirk, with strict controls to ensure neither encroached on the other until a higher civilization had developed to sort things out.

Like a train, the boat raced through the dark city. Alex helped Maryan sit up. Bella reappeared at a sort of keyhole or spigot in the wall. She pushed forth quivering cubes of tomato-colored jelly that contained water and nutrients. And tasted like soupy blood, Alex noted distastefully when he tried one. But it seemed to rally Maryan. As he tended to Maryan, Dot said: “Bella and I can find our other friends with whom we lived in the village.”

“The village will be a memorial,” Bella said, “to all the good souls who lived and died through the ages. Their lives mean something more now that we’re putting humankind back together.”

“And the Siirk?” Maryan asked with a tinge of bitterness. She added more kindly: “The Takkar? What becomes of them?”

“I recommend a firm message. Your choice,” Bella said. “You and Maryan are the only two humans alive, so you become the mother and father of everyone who comes after us.” She rattled some equipment, and turned holding a large machine gun with dangling ammunition belts. She slapped a magazine in place. “Lock and load. Ready to rock ‘n roll.”

Maryan was first to speak, but Alex too was thinking of Xumar and his people. “Go slow,” Maryan said, to which Alex added: “It’s just possible that at one time we were like the Siirk, like when one group of us invaded and conquered another.” He thought of the Europeans, the Mongols, the many fierce invaders and killers of human history. “The Siirk and the Takkar have much of us in them—much more than we might wish.”

The boat shot over the peeling silver cylinder and past the glowing crazy-quilt windows of the dead city. For a few instants, sunlight reflected in the windows gave an illusion of light and life. “Soon enough,” Alex whispered as he held Maryan close and they looked out of the viewport together, “a whole lot of our people will once again be punching their tickets and eating noodles in there, making love and arguing about all those little nothings.”

“Digitating their tickets,” she said, bursting into laughter. He laughed with her.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Dot said, “but you can transform this boat into whatever kind of warship you wish.”

Maryan dozed while Alex sat at the controls, tinkering with various models displayed in wireframe and then fleshed out complete with shadows. Maryan looked ghostly, wrapped in a blanket in a plush seat in the rear area. Bella’s image sat in the wall beside Maryan, quietly offering company.

Dot and Alex sat in cockpit area. He talked his way through the routines. He reached up and manipulated sheets of menus that shimmered in the air. “First, we arm this baby. Look, there must be 500 different plans for a warship. Let’s go with this one.” As he manipulated the controls, a holographic image of the boat took shape, bristling with weapons. The boat widened and grew wings. On the wings, huge turbofan tubes sprouted. Pods bulged and swelled out of the boat’s skin. Weapons systems grew up. Guns poked their ugly snouts from the pods. Rockets sat in tightly braced six-packs under the pods and where wheels ought to be. Alex had no plan to waste energy on wheels or skids. They weren’t setting down. They were just going to blaze through and do maximum damage. The boat’s skin changed from silver to a sullen, mean olive-drab with big bluish-black waves of camouflage offset with white stipples and gray blobs. Behind the boat, two cubes floated into position. Factory robots and cranes labored around the boat, as did automated blowtorches and jets. The two added cubes turned into extra power plants, one on each side, each with its own tail assembly consisting of a vertical fin and one oblique inward tilting tail wing. The boat quadrupled in size and grew a hundred fold in power. “Good luck,” Dot said as the Earth loomed above. The Earth looked like a vast wall of blue ocean and sandy-brown solid surfaces, swathed in misty clouds. “Here’s where Bella and I get off because we have work to do back at the station helping Charlie put the world back to normal.”