Evolution

For a time there had been communications. But then the high-altitude electronics-busting bombs, fired off at the height of the messy multipolar wars, had wrecked the ionosphere. And when the last satellites were shot out of the sky, that had been the end of TV, even speech radio. Joan had long maintained a regime of listening, as long as their sets and power lasted. But it had been years since they had heard anything.

No radio, then. No contrails in the sky, no ships on the horizon. There was no outside world, for all intents and purposes.

They were getting used to the isolation. You always had to remember that when something wore out it was gone forever. But the supplies left behind by those vanished thousands — tools and clothing and batteries and torches and paper and even canned foods — would sustain this little community of fewer than a hundred for their lifetimes and beyond.

The world might be ending — but not here, not yet.

Humanity had not vanished; of course not. The great terminal drama that was unfolding around the planet had many years, even decades to run yet. But sometimes, when Joan thought about the very long run, she realized she could see nothing ahead for Lucy, still just eighteen, and her children after her; none at all. So, mostly, she didn’t think about it. What else was there to do?

At Lucy’s feet, crabs scuttled across the rocks, brilliant red against the black surface, with stalk-mounted sky-blue eyes.

"Mom—"

"Yes, dear?"

"Do you ever wonder if we’re doing the right thing for these kids? I mean, what if the grandparents of those marine iguanas had said, ‘No, you can’t eat that gloopy sea stuff. Get back up the trees where you belong.’ "

Joan’s eyes were closed. "We should let the kids evolve, like the iguanas?"

"Well, maybe—"

"In order for the descendants of a handful of the kids to adapt, most of those alive now would have to die. I’m afraid we humans don’t have the moral capacity to sit back and let that happen. But if the day comes when we can’t help them, well, that’s when Papa Darwin takes over." Joan shrugged. "Adapt they would, that’s for sure. But the result might not be very much like us.

To survive here, the cormorants have lost flight, perhaps the most beautiful gift of all. I wonder what would be taken from us. Of course that’s just my prejudice. Isn’t it a wonderful thought to imagine that however cruel the process of evolution might seem to us, something new and in some senses better than us might some day come out of it?"

Lucy shuddered, despite the heat. "That’s scary."

Joan tapped Lucy’s leg. "Scared is good. It shows you are starting to use your imagination. The implications of who we are and how we got here — sometimes it scares me, even now."

Lucy clutched her hand. "Mother, I have to say this. Your view of life is so godless."

Joan drew back a little. "Ah. I knew this day would come. So you’ve discovered the great Ju-Ju in the sky."

Lucy felt unreasonably defensive. "You’re the one who has always encouraged me to read. I just find it hard to believe God is nothing but an anthropomorphic construct. Or that the world is just a… a vast machine, churning through our tiny lives, morphing our children like a handful of algae in a dish."

"Well, maybe there is still room for a God. But what kind of God would intervene the whole time? And isn’t the story wonderful enough on its own?

"Look at this way. Think about your grandmothers. You have many ancestors in each generation, but only one maternal grandmother. So there is a molecular chain of heredity, leading from each of us into the deepest past, as far as we can see. You have ten million grandmothers, Lucy. Since that comet wiped out the dinosaurs and gave those first little ratty primates a chance, ten million. Imagine if they were all lined up, side by side, your grandmother beside her own mother, and then hers in turn.