Low rust-hills of a marshy world.
No people I can see. Like we
saw dolphins, Africans, women! The
people men don't see could fill a globe.
Earthlings build
tractor-tread
cities to crawl across the bog.
Borough-sized
water-bugs.
I visit one offering me a job.
Stumble on a secret! Frosted deep in
the Civic Fridge I find a time-
bottle that wombs the moment when
a saboteur set off a Bomb.
Here, heft the egg of slow-glass:
head-size, under a pound. Within,
red diodes glare. The box is live,
self-Caesarian, cracked to bare
death-light! A trigger too compact
to be mere fusion: antimatter caught
frozen here in nanosecond one! What
if the timelock fails? For years
they've cradled latent doom.
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"Why carry it? Can't you just
set it in the Barrens
and let the bomb
blow?"
The Mayor, a solemn woman, says
"We don't know how big
that blast'd
grow.
And even if we detonated deep
in the Sandhills, miles
of local life'd
fry."
True. Concerned for people and town,
I overlooked (again) wild lives.
Just as pale and decent men
once ruled their
slaves. And
wives.
For all this world's unpeople
she bears the adder's egg.
Her town crawls on, gravid with
the cyst of fire and death.
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