She scooped up the baby and the afterbirth — she hadn’t even tied off the cord — wrapped him up in her angora sweater, and cradled him in her arms. His little face was oddly calm. She thought she’d lost him. ‘Joshua,’ she said. ‘Your name is Joshua Valienté.’
A soft pop, and they were gone.
On the plain, nothing remained but a drying mess of blood and bodily fluids, and the grass, and the sky. Soon, though, the scent of blood would attract attention.
And, long ago, on a world as close as a shadow:
A very different version of North America cradled a huge, landlocked, saline sea. This sea teemed with microbial life. All this life served a single tremendous organism.
And on this world, under a cloudy sky, the entirety of the turbid sea crackled with a single thought.
I…
This thought was followed by another.
To what purpose?
2
THE BENCH, BESIDE a modern-looking drinks machine, was exceedingly comfortable. Joshua Valienté was not used to softness these days. Not used to the fluffy feeling of being inside a building, where the furnishings and the carpets impose a kind of quiet on the world. Beside the luxurious bench was a pile of glossy magazines, but Joshua was not particularly good at shiny paper either. Books? Books were fine. Joshua liked books, particularly paperback books: light and easy to carry, and if you didn’t want to read them again, well, there was always a use for reasonably thin soft paper.
Normally, when there was nothing to do, he listened to the Silence.
The Silence was very faint here. Almost drowned out by the sounds of the mundane world. Did people in this polished building understand how noisy it was? The roar of air conditioners and computer fans, the susurration of many voices heard but not decipherable, the muffled sound of telephones followed by the sounds of people explaining that they were not in fact there but would like you to leave your name after the beep, this being subsequently followed by the beep.