"Orna of Nildo was a courteous host who wished his guest to see all the sights." (p. 177)
The narrative has moved so far into the future that the forms of names have changed.
"Ganymede didn't have many, but the midnight sky was worth a good deal else." (ibid.)
In the previous chapter, spaceships from Earth had only just arrived on Mars.
"He helped Danivar into flexarmor; he himself needed only put on a coat and facial mask." (ibid.)
So Orna is more adapted to the Ganymedean environment?
They float up a gravity shaft. That technology had not existed before although Alaric Wayne might have invented it.
They see Jupiter at full phase, crags, scarps, a frozen lake and a few stars. Underground fusion plants have warmed Ganymede up to a hundred below and will have made it comfortable in maybe another century. Orna will be quite old before the task is completed. When he was a boy, there was neither hydrosphere nor air.
Collie, on the first Martian expedition, had thought that one day Mars would be green. (17, p. 166) Now, Danivar is from the richest Solar planet, the green Mars, and calls himself a Martian. (p. 178) (In The Winter Of The World, Mars is blue although astrologers say that it used to be red.) Ganymede is the frontier.
Like Isaac Asimov's Second Foundationers, Orna and Danivar converse in gestures and single syllables. Danivar had visited Earth "'...as esthetician of an archaeological party.'" (ibid.) Martians have dug on Earth for millennia. The Terrestrial biosphere collapsed at the time of the emigration to Mars. Danivar acknowledges that Alaric Wayne had established "'...a self-sufficient terrestroid ecology on Mars...'" (p.179) just in time. There is now an ecological restoration program on Earth.
Danivar found a box containing objects including a post card to Hugh Drummond. Having spent a few hours learning ancient languages, he was able to read it. He thinks that, in another hundred generations, when the sense of perception is fully developed, it might be possible to detect lingering auras.
They call themselves Homo Superior by contrast with the Old Humans. The cold gets to Danivar and he wants "'...to go back inside...'" (p. 180)
A comparable concluding story is James Blish's "Watershed."
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I remember this Epilogue, obviously set untold thousands of years into the future. And one thing I remember was either Danivar or Orna of Nildo wondering what might have happened if the Old Humans had not wrecked themselves and Old Earth.
Not sure I recall if these examples of "Homo Superior" are content to still have two arms and two legs. Physically, Danivar would seem to have strongly resembled the Old Humans.
I do plan to start rereading THE WINTER OF THE WORLD, with its mentioning of a green Mars, indicating Mars had been settled and terraforming started by or just before the Ice Age.
Sean
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