Bewilderment

-

I MANAGED TO RENT the same cabin we stayed in so long ago, the one with its wraparound deck open to the woods and stars. We crunched down the steep gravel drive, chasing the shadows of trees. Robin bolted from the car and took the front steps two at a time. I followed, with the bags. Inside, all the light switches still bore their labels—Hallway, Porch, Kitchen, Overhead—and the cabinets were still covered in the same color-coded instructions.

Robbie tore into the living room and flung himself onto that couch emblazoned with its procession of bears, elk, and canoes. Three minutes later he fell asleep. His breathing was so peaceful I left him there to sleep through the night. He woke only when dawn poured in.

That morning we hit the trails. I found a climb not far inside the boundary of the park that faced the southern sun while backing onto a damp ledge. Every twenty yards we came across another wet outcrop packed with more species than a manic terrarium. You could have cut out a chunk, loaded it into the cargo bay of an interstellar spacecraft, and used it to terraform a distant Super Earth.

Robin clutched his list. He was finding new flowers left and right. But he’d lost his ability to name things. Are these rue anemones, Dad?

He’d found a clump identical to the picture in his field guide. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

Well, the petals don’t quite match up. And the little thingies in the middle are a lot longer.

I looked at the picture and then at him. He’d lost his confidence. Four months ago, he would have been correcting the book. “Trust yourself, Robbie.”

He fretted and waved his hands in the air. Dad. Just tell me.

I confirmed his guess. He drew a clumsy little clump of rue anemone. He went on to find, then worry over, both true and false Solomon’s seal. Then he drew those, too.

Only drawing gave him a little peace. With a sharp pencil in his hand and a log to sit on, he was still okay. But it took him forever to re-create the ghostly purple streaks lining the inside of a spring beauty. He raged against the shakiness of his trout lilies. And, honestly, his draftsmanship had shriveled a little, from the airy, open boldness of a month before.

The checklist filled in. He found ten, then a dozen species of ephemerals in full flower, faster than any stranger to this place would have imagined. Each new find filled him with dogged satisfaction. Before we were half a mile up the ridge, he found every kind of plant that I’d put on my challenge. He looked back down along the wall of sun-covered, wet rock so packed with cooperating experiments. Spring will keep coming back, whatever happens. Right, Dad?

There were strong arguments either way. The Earth had been everything from hell to snowball. Mars had lost its atmosphere and fizzled away to a frigid desert, while Venus descended into hammering winds and a surface hotter than a smelter. Life could crash and spin out, pretty much overnight. My models said as much, and so did the rocks of this planet. Here we were, in a place fast becoming something new. Predictions were shaky from a sample size of one.

“Yes,” I told him. “You can count on spring.”

He nodded to himself and headed up the ridge. We came around a switchback onto a level stretch. The forest cleared from one step to the next. Lush laurel undergrowth surrendered to open stands of oak and pine. My phone pinged. It shocked me to be in coverage, even up here. But it was the job of coverage to cover every uncovered spot on Earth.

I checked. I couldn’t help it. I flicked past the lock screen—Aly and Robbie on his seventh birthday, their faces painted like tigers. Seventeen messages in six different text chains waited for me. I looked up to see Robbie heading down the trail, his gait almost easy again. I sneaked a look at the texts, fearing the worst. But I failed to imagine what that might be.

The NextGen Telescope was dead. Thirty years of planning and ingenuity, twelve billion dollars, the work of thousands of brilliant people from twenty-two countries, the hope of all astronomy, and our first good chance to see the contours of other planets. The newly reelected President had killed it with glee:

My colleagues were scrambling in the ruins, pouring out their fury, grief, and disbelief. I typed in something, five words of uncomprehending solidarity. The message queued but wouldn’t send.

Down the trail, Robbie knelt at the foot of a hemlock, fixed on something. I put my phone away and headed toward him. He stood as I approached. Did Mom ever hike this trail?

Fierce as death is love. “What were you looking at?”

He kept his eyes on a spot in the rhododendrons, back down the ravine. Did she?

“I don’t think so. Why?”

Then could we just go to the river? The one she liked?

“It’s early yet, bud. I thought we’d head down after lunch. We’re going to camp there tonight.”

Could we just go now? Please?

We headed back over the ridge, along the rock seeps and their packed bouquets. He bore down the mountainside. I tried to slow him to look. “Check out the fire pinks. They were barely open when we came up. Can you believe what they’ve done in one hour?”

He looked and declared his amazement. But he was elsewhere.

We came out at the bottom of the mountain and got back in the car. I drove to the other trailhead, the one we’d hiked a year and a half ago. The one my wife and I had hiked on our honeymoon a decade before that. I’d seduced her, as we walked, with stories of the thousands of exoplanets popping up all over, where there had been none for all of human history.

How long before you find the little green men?

“Very little,” I told her. “Probably not men. Maybe not even green. But we’ll both live to see them.” Neither of us would.

Robin sensed something, as we got the frame packs from the car and slung them on. He waited until we were on the first switchback, a quarter mile down the trail. He stopped under a stand of freshly flowering serviceberry and looked at me sideways. Something’s bugging you.

Some primal part of my brain imagined that if I never spoke the fact out loud, it might yet turn out otherwise. “It’s nothing. I’m just a little thoughtful.”

It’s me, isn’t it?

“Robbie. Don’t be ridiculous!”

My screaming got us in trouble with the Child Protectors. They’re going to take me away from you, aren’t they?

It’s hard to hug someone half your height when you’re both wearing frame backpacks. My attempt only confirmed his suspicions. He pushed away and started down the trail. Then he stopped, turned, and warned me with a drawn finger.

You shouldn’t try to protect me from the truth.

“I’m not.” My hand went up and traced a squiggle in the air, a flick three inches high and two across. It meant, Forgive me, I’m making a lot of mistakes. His head dropped a millimeter. That meant, Me, too.

“Robbie, I’m sorry. It’s bad news. We heard from Washington.”

They’re killing the Seeker?

“Worse. They’re killing the NextGen.”

He cupped his ears and gave a soft cry, like something half in flight. That’s crazy. All those years. All that work and money. Didn’t they hear your talk?

I swallowed a bitter laugh.

What about the Seeker?

“Not a prayer now.”

Never?

“Not while I’m alive.”

He couldn’t stop shaking his head. Wait. That’s not right. He frowned, doing the math in his head. The years it had taken to conceive, design, and build the NextGen. The wasted years of planning that had gone into the Seeker. The years that would have to pass before anyone dared propose a space-based telescope again. And the years left to me. Math wasn’t Robin’s strongest subject. But it didn’t have to be.

What are they going to do with it?

A question sure to wreck the sleep of astronomers and ten-year-olds everywhere. A twelve-billion-dollar device meant to travel fifty thousand times farther from Earth than the Hubble, align its eighteen hexagonal mirrors into an array with a precision less than one ten-thousandth of a millimeter, and peer to the universe’s edge would, presumably, be scavenged and carted away in pieces—history’s most expensive shipwreck.

Dad. Everything’s going backward.

He was right. And I had no idea why.

The trail narrowed to a single track and passed through a long tunnel of rhododendrons. I watched him from behind, struggling under the weight of his pack and the force of realization. We crested and began the mile-long dive back down to the water. He stopped short and I almost knocked him over.

All those civilizations out there. They’re gonna wonder why they never heard from us.