Free The Death of the Wave by G. L. Adamson Page A

contact you down the line again
    once you think of a draft.
    Oh, and Blue?
    Consider the children.
    —Descartes

PART FOUR: DECAY

    EDICT 7890: The Citadel is merciful. If a decision has been passed to restrict information, then that decision has been passed for the good of the citizenry. If a man revolts against the just decisions of the State, that man will be imprisoned or else put to death.

AUTHOR
----
    One fatal Tree there stands of Knowledge call’d,
    Forbidden them to taste: Knowledge forbidden?
    Suspicious, reasonless. Why should thir Lord
    Envie them that? can it be sin to know,
    Can it be death? and do they onely stand
    By Ignorance, is that thir happie state,
    The proof of thir obedience and thir faith?
    O fair foundation laid whereon to build
    Thir ruine! Hence I will excite thir minds
    With more desire to know, and to reject
    Envious commands, invented with designe
    To keep them low whom knowledge might exalt
    Equal with Gods; aspiring to be such,
    They taste and die.
     
    —John Milton “Paradise Lost”

BLUE
----
    For I am not the Artist!
    How I loath that name!
    But my Breaker and I are close to the same.
    We were born from the gutters together.
    We were both desperate and hungry.
    Desperate enough to face the tests.
    Hungry enough to succeed.
    For did we not?
    They gave you a gun and a uniform and me a pen.
    Is the pen mightier than gun or sword?
    Tell me.
    But that was where we differed, Author.
    Your precious Artists.
    I wanted to save them for you,
    after my betrayal,
    but I was no longer of them.
    Remember?
    No longer, like you, desperate for their approval,
    desperate to wash the blood of the Camps off my guilty hands.
    I was guilty only for you.
    Why else did you fight with the desperation of the lost?
    You had lost before it was well begun.
    You had lost from the moment that the plan
    began in the corroded mind of the aristo-who-wrote.
    You had lost from the second you believed it.
    Going against the system had cost far more lives
    than you could ever had imagined.
    You never understood the cost that you were proposing.
    No limit to the lives lost for the winning of a war of principle.
    You, a hero?
    You coldly weighed their lives and found them wanting.
    But still—
    you were right
    and you were selfless.
    Your life was as worthless in the grand revolution as theirs to you, Author.
    Just another life
    to be ended by fire, torture, firing squad
    for the good of your ideal.
    And after I lost you, I understood that.
    But was the cost worth it?
    Did the people understand the true cost of what you were proposing?
    For I am like you,
    and like you, will be remembered?

COMET
----
    Darwin is a monster, but only a little one
    and his disguise is better than most.
    Shorter, and broader than Galileo
    he does not wear robes, only formal suits
    for he says robes are old-fashioned.
    Darwin possesses a complete and androgynous beauty.
    He is referred to by everyone as male.
    It suits him better,
    the contours of his face,
    but he is really not either sex.
    He is a new one that can transcend categories and just be.
    Often in him I can see the graceful woman in the man
    and the man of action in the woman.
    But he is neither.
    Just coming into himself.
    Beyond.
    And his black eyes are wise for something so young
    so blessed for action, and so new.
    He is too far removed from the indifferent, predatory hunger
    of Galileo, the perfect male animal.
    And that is why I love him,
    he is too ethereal to breed.
    Something in me does not want
    to call him aristo at all.
     
    What is it then that I could call him?
    To-be king, but not a son of man,
    angel without wings,
    yes,
    and with the monstrous beauty of an angel.
    His lips are like sprayed blood
    upon a pane of translucent glass.
    His eyes are the dark in the space
    between the stars
    and like charcoal burned pits
    in the face of a figurine.
    Perfectly poised prince, now king,
    and sackcloth angel.
    But alone.
    He is always alone.
    There is more than a hint of