Page:Fantastic Volume 08 Number 01.djvu/50

 of fright which had held everyone outside the war-zone for a month was relaxed, but people had still not fully got over their astonishment at finding themselves and their homes surviving undamaged. Still persisting, too, was that heightened awareness which made each new, untroubled day seem a gracious gift, rather than a right. There was a dazed pause, a sense of coming-to again before the worries of life swept back.

And all too soon the worries were plentiful—not only over radiation, active dusts, contaminated waters, diseases threatening both flora and fauna, and such immediate matters; but also over the whole problem of re-orientation in a world where most of a hemisphere had become a malignant, unapproachable desert.

Jamaica, it was clear, was not going to have much to offer except exports for which there was virtually no market. It could sustain itself; one might be able to go on living there, with much diminished standards, but it was certainly no place to build a new life.

My grandmother was in favor of a move to South Africa where her father was chairman of the board of a small aircraft company. She argued that my grandfather's knowledge and experience would make him a useful addition to the board, and that with most of the great aircraft factories of the world now destroyed, a tremendous growth of the company was inevitable.

My grandfather was unenthusiastic, but he did go as far as to pay a visit there to talk the matter over with his father-in-law. He returned unconverted, however. He was not, he said, at all taken with the place; there was something about it that made him uneasy. My grandmother, though disappointed, refrained from pressing the matter —which turned out to be fortunate, for a little over a year later her father, and all her relatives there, were among the millions who died in the great African Rising.

But before that took place my grandfather had made his own decision.

"China," he said, "is not out, but she has been very badly mauled and reduced—it will take her a long time to recover. Japan has suffered out of proportion to the material damage there because of the concentration of her population. India is weakened, as 50