About two dozen meters west of the place where Hunter College had once stood, and a kilometer beneath it, she maneuvered Alvin to a small chimneylike structure that had begun to condense from the mineral broth. It was in places such as this, Hollis believed, that some of Earth’s first living things had taken root. Somewhere out there, her own exhaled bacteria, and perhaps a few organisms already living near hydrothermal vents and undersea volcanoes when the end came, having survived deep in the oceans as she and Jonathan had, were simply drifting with the currents, waiting to wash up against these life-giving springs.

“Pentecostal apocalypse,” Hollis said. “God is starting over.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean, naturally,” said Jonathan, beginning to envy her sense of calm optimism and control. It seemed to be one of the benefits of her ever-questioning, always-probing faith, which had not only helped make her a good explorer, but also had somehow preadapted her to living through the death of civilization. Sometimes, though, he wished that she would stop thinking so much. Most of the time he found her thoughts a little jarring, as had most people who were not well versed in the Dead Sea Gospels and the Book of Revelation.

“If you’d like me to explain, Wayville, just ask. It concerns how the universe is set up. Whether or not you want to believe God ever had a hand in it, every beginning must have its end. What I believe these vents are trying to teach us is that from every end there must also arise a new beginning.”

“Well, Hollis, sometimes I think you must be crazy. But no one will ever accuse you of being uninteresting.” He laughed. “Since I’m the only one left who could do that.”

“Just consider the facts. Do you really think DNA cares which species—man or bacterium—inherits the Earth? Do you really think it matters?”

” ‘Matters’ is always a question of to whom—but go on.”

“There’ll be bacterial reefs here soon. You can bet on it. DNA is the ultimate parasite, the ultimate survivor. For billions of years it has managed to preserve its same, essential structure, residing for a little while in you or me, or in a dinosaur, or a bacterium, and then moving on fully intact to the next generation. You like to think your genes serve your best interests, but in a very real sense it is quite the other way around. They simply orchestrate the construction of our bodies, then occupy us for a few decades, with no purpose other than producing and maintaining reproductive systems, so they can carry on in fresh young bodies just as ours begin to wear out. Every breath we take, every sip of water, every bite of food, immortalizes our genetic code, not us. We are just one of the many masks that DNA will wear.”

“Seems to belittle the whole point of living, doesn’t it?”

“Not at all. Quite the opposite. Here, let me renew your appreciation of the miracle of life. The first microbe that arrives here, and manages to survive in these springs, will reproduce itself with amazing rapidity. Within a year you’ll have bacterial mats thick enough to fill this sub, and all the ropes of DNA contained in that single reef, if laid end to end, will reach to the Sun and back over three hundred times, yet will occupy a volume no bigger than an ice cube. So life is—”