floated the planet Earth with all its peoples. Down there on that crowded globe, alarms were flashing across innumerable softscreens, the great telescopes were searching the skiesand an uncertain humanity feared that history was drawing to a close.
The Q-bomb could become master of this world. But the cry it had heard caused it conflict. Conflict that had to be resolved by a decision.
The bomb marshaled its cold thoughts, brooding over its still untested powers. And it turned away.
PART 5 LAST CONTACTS 52: PARADE
Bisesa and Emeline stepped out of the apartment for the last time. They were both laden with backpacks and valises. The sky was a lid, but at least it wasnt snowing.
Emeline locked up her apartment carefully, and tucked the keys away in a pocket in her thick fur coat. Of course she would never come this way again, and it wouldnt be long before the ice came and crushed the building. But Emeline locked up even so. Bisesa said nothing; she would have done exactly the same.
Bisesa made sure one more time that she had brought out the only possession of real importance to her: her phone, tucked into an inside pocket with its spacesuit battery packs.
Then they set off for Michigan Avenue.
Michigan, a canyon of concrete and brick running between blackened skyscrapers and shut-up stores, was always a wind tunnel, and Emeline and Bisesa turned away from the north to protect their eyes.
But the procession was already gathering, thousands of people standing around in the frozen mud, gradually forming up into an orderly column. Bisesa hadnt known there were still so many left in Chicago. There were carriages of every kind, from farmyard carts to graceful phaetons and stanhopes, with those stocky Arctic-adapted horses harnessed up. Even the citys grip-car streetcars were standing ready to roll one last time, full of passengers.
Most people, though, were on foot, with bundles on their backs or in barrows, and with their children or grandchildren holding their hands. Many of the Chicagoans were bundled up in their Arctic furs, but today some defied the elements and wore what looked like their Sunday best, frock coats and sweeping gowns, top hats and fur coats. Even the citys many prostitutes had come out into the light. With painted lips and rouged cheeks and defiant flashes of ankle or cleavage, they laughed and flirted like colourful birds. There was an excited buzz of conversation.
The parade was to be led by gleaming black carriages that lined up outside the Lexington Hotel. These would carry the citys dignitaries, principally Mayor Rices relatives and allies. Thomas Edison, it was rumored, was wrapped up in blankets in a carriage of his own design, heated and lit by a portable electric generator.
Rices own carriage of polished wood and black ribbon was at the very head of the procession, and Bisesa was astounded to see that it was to be drawn by a woolly mammoth. The animal was restless. It raised its head with that odd bulge over the crown, and its long tusks curled bright in the air. As its nervous handlers beat at it with rods and whips, it trumpeted, a brittle call that echoed from the windows of the skyscrapers. It was quite a stunt for Rice, Bisesa admitted grudginglyjust as long as the mammoth didnt wreck the carriage it was supposed to haul.
The whole thing was a spectacle, just as it was meant to be, and Bisesa admired Rice and his advisors for setting it up this way, and for choosing the date. On Mir this was July 4, according to the calendars devised by the university astronomers.
But this Independence Day parade was actually the final abandonment of old Chicago. These were not revelers but refugees, and they faced a great trial, a long walk all the way down through the suburbs and out of the city, heading south, ever south, to a hopeful new home beyond the ice. Even now there were some who refused to join the flight, hooligans and hedonists, drunks and deadbeats, and a few stubborn types who simply wouldnt leave their homes. Few expected these refuseniks to survive another winter.
Human life would go on here, then. But today saw the end of civilized Chicago. And beyond the bright human chatter Bisesa could hear the growl of the patient ice.
Emeline led Bisesa to their place among the respectable folk who massed behind the lead carriages. Drummers waited in a block, shivering, their mittened hands clutching their sticks.
They quickly found Harry and Joshua,