Earth

PLANET

In a large enough universe,

even unlikely things can happen.

As unlikely as a tiny ball of star-soot

taking upon itself, one day,

to say aloud,

to one and all,

“I am.”

• BIOSPHERE

From the topmost tier of the life ark, Nelson watched Earth turn slowly against the Milky Way. It was the only splash of real color in a drab cosmos, and at this distance one might never imagine what chaos had just reigned on that peaceful-looking globe. Even the continent long palls cast by still-smoldering volcanoes weren’t visible to the naked eye from here — though scientists were already predicting a rough winter ahead.

Until recently, Nelson had been too busy just keeping himself and the majority of his charges alive. Now, though, as the ark settled gradually toward a dusty, gray-brown plain, he could at last spare a moment to look up in wonder at the ocean-planet, swathed on its sunlit side with streamers of cottony clouds. Leftward, on its night side, city lights testified to humanity’s narrow escape — though gaping dark patches also showed what a terrible price had been paid in mankind’s final war.

That conflict was over now… guaranteed with more certainty than any peace treaty ever signed. All across the world, men and women still argued over what insured this. But few doubted any longer that a presence had made itself known, and from now on nothing would be the same.

“Ark four, we’re at three kilometers altitude. Descent under control with five minutes to landfall. Confirm readiness please.”

Nelson turned away from the blue-green world and sought northward across the starscape. There it was, the shuttle, hovering over the mountains rimming Mare Crisium. It was a battered-looking hulk, like something hijacked out of a neglected museum. And yet it flew more powerfully, with more assurance, than anything else made before by human hands. He lifted his belt-phone. “Yeah… uh, I mean, roger, Atlantis. I guess we’re as ready as ever.”

He lowered the phone, thinking, Sure. But just how ready can you be when you’ve been volunteered as the first permanent residents of another world?

He felt a tug at his pants leg. Shig, the little baboon, squeaked and demanded to be picked up. Nelson grinned. “So? You were all over the place when we were weightless. But now a little gravity makes you lazy again?”

Shig clambered from his arm onto his shoulder, perching there to look across their new home, one even drier and emptier than the savannas of Africa, to be sure, but theirs nonetheless, for better or worse. From the railing nearby, Shig’s mother glanced at Nelson in unspoken question. He shrugged. “I don’t know where the nearest water hole is, Nell. They say they’ll send some ice our way in a while, along with the first bunch of people. Don’t ask me how they’ll manage it, but we’ll be fine till then. Don’t worry.”

Nell’s expression seemed to say, “Who’s worried?” Indeed, after what they’d been through together, they couldn’t be faulted for a little team cockiness.

Uprooted from the soil of Africa and hurled into high orbit, Kuwenezi’s experimental ark four went through hours, days, during which disaster kept missing them by seconds. For instance, if certain circuits had failed during those first critical instants, Nelson wouldn’t have been able to order most of the hurtling pyramid sealed against hard vacuum. Nor could he have shifted fluids from one vast storage tank to another, gradually damping out the unwilling satellite’s awkward tumble.

As it was, fully a third of the biosphere’s life habitats were dead — their occupants having asphyxiated or been crushed against adamant glass-crystal barriers, or simply having succumbed to drastically altered circumstances.

He’d never have managed saving the rest without Shig and Nell, whose nimble grace in free fall made them invaluable at fetching floating tools or herding panicking creatures into makeshift stalls where they could be lashed down and sedated. Even so, the job had seemed utterly hopeless — a futile staving off of the inevitable — until that weird moment when Nelson felt something like a tap on his shoulder.

Whirling about in shock and exhaustion, he had turned to find no one there. And yet, that hallucinatory interruption had been enough to draw him back from a tunnel-torpor of drudgery . . far enough to let him notice that his belt-phone was ringing.

“H-hello?” he had asked, unable to believe anyone knew or cared about his plight, cast from the Earth, bound for oblivion aboard a glass and steel Flying Dutchman.

There had been a long pause filled with static. Then a voice had said, “nelson…”

“Uh… yeah?”

“I wanted you to know — help is coming. i haven’t forgotten you.”

He remembered blinking in amazement.

“D-Dr. Wolling? Jen?”

He couldn’t be sure in retrospect. The voice had seemed different in countless ways. Distant. Preoccupied. And yet, somehow it had made the hours of hectic labor that followed more bearable just knowing he hadn’t been overlooked — that someone knew he and the animals were out here, and cared.

So it wasn’t with total surprise when — after lashing the last beast down, after sealing the last whistling crack, after adjusting gas and aeration balances in the complex panels that recycled the ark’s basic stuff of life — he suddenly heard the phone ring again, and lifted his eyes to see a stubby white and black arrow homing in on this derelict little worldlet.

Nelson’s knowledge of physics was too slender to truly appreciate what it meant when Atlantis’s pilot promised to provide gravity again to the ark’s weary inhabitants. He only felt gratitude as the shuttle’s crew somehow delivered, recreating up and down via some magic they generated at long range. Then they began hauling the drifting tower toward a promised new home.

En route, he finally had time to listen to condensed summaries of what had been going on, back on Earth. It was all too complex and bizarre to comprehend at first, in his dazed state. But later, as he took advantage of his first real chance at sleep, partial realization came to him in his dreams.

At one point he saw a dismembered snake writhe and bring together its many parts. He heard a hundred braying instruments settle down under a conductor’s baton to create symphonies where there had been mere noise.

E pluribus unum … a voice murmured. Many can make up a whole…

Now, as the time of landing approached, Nelson wondered if anyone on Earth had a better understanding of what had happened than he did.

They’re all so busy arguing about it, discussing the change and what it means—

Gaians claim it’s their Earth Mother… that she’s been shaken awake at last, to step in and save foolish mankind and all her other creatures.

Others say no, it’s the Net… the whole store of human knowledge that poured into all those unexpected

new circuits deep inside the Earth. All that virgin computational power, suddenly multiplied, only naturally had to lead to some sort of self-awareness.

There was no end to theories. Nelson heard Jungians proclaiming a race consciousness had manifested itself during the crisis, one that had been there, waiting, all along. Meanwhile, Christians and Jews and Muslims made noises much like the Gaians’ — only they seemed to hear the low voice of a “father” when they tuned in on those special channels that now carried new, awesome melodies. To them, recent miracles were only what had been promised all along, in prophecy.

Nelson shook his head. None of them seemed to understand that they — their very arguments and discussions — were helping define the thing itself. Yes, a greater level of mind had been born, but not as something separate, or even above them. All the little noisy, argumentative, even contradictory voices across the planet — these were parts of the new entity, just as a human being consists naturally of many disputing “selves.”

Nelson recalled his last conversation with his teacher, when the topic had swung to her latest project — her bold new model of consciousness. A model that, he knew somehow, must have played some key role in the recent coalescence.

“The problem with a top-down view of mind is this, Nelson,” she had said. “If the self at the top must rule like a tyrant, commanding all the other little subselves like some queen termite, then the inevitable result will be something like a termite colony. Oh, it might be powerful, impressive. But it will also be stiff. Oversimplified. Insane.

“Look at all the happiest, sanest people you’ve known, Nelson. Really listen to them. I bet you’ll find they don’t fear a little inconsistency or uncertainty now and then. Oh, they try always to be true to their core beliefs, to achieve their goals and keep their promises. Still, they also avoid too much rigidity, forgiving the occasional contradiction and unexpected thought. They are content to be many.”

Remembering her words made Nelson smile. He turned again to stare at Earth, the oasis everyone now spoke of as a single living thing. It hardly mattered whether that was a new fact, or one as old as life itself. Let the NorA ChuGas preach that Gaia had always been there, aware and patient. Let others point out that it had taken human technology and intervention to bring violent birth to an active planetary mind. Each extreme view was completely correct in its way, and each was just as completely wrong.

That was as it should be.

Competition and cooperation… yin and yang… Each of us participatin’ in the debate is like one of the thoughts that bubble and fizz in my own head — whether I’m concentrating on a problem or daydreaming at a cloud. Does one particular thought worry about its “lost independence” if it realizes it’s part of something larger?

Well, some prob’ly do, I guess. Others aren’t bothered at all. So it’ll be with us, too.

Nelson replayed his last musings to himself, and silently laughed. Listen to you! Jen was right. You’re a born philosopher. In other words, full of shit.

But then he had an answer to that, too. We may be mere thoughts, each of us a fragment. But that don’t mean some thoughts aren’t important! Thoughts could be the only things that never die.

From below decks a lowing wafted through the air grilles. Sedatives were wearing off and some of the wildebeests were waking up. Perhaps they sensed imminent arrival. Soon Nelson would have his hands full tending this, the first sapling cast forth by the mother world… the first of a myriad that might stream outward if the new gravity technologies proved workable. And if Earth’s nations agreed to the bold enterprise.

And if the new Presence let it be so.

Anyway, until the promised help came, he’d be too busy for philosophy… either for Gaia’s sake or for his own. Westward, the lunar mountains loomed higher and higher. The plains rose rapidly. And not too far below, he now saw the shadow of the ark. That dark patch coalesced and then spread across the gaping foundation awaiting it — freshly carved and vitrified within the ancient regolith by more magic from Atlantis.

Nelson put his arms around Shig and Nell during the final descent, which ended in a grating bump so gentle it was almost anticlimactic. The small, fluttering variations in gravity disappeared, and the moon’s light but firm grasp settled over them for good.

“Hello, ark four,” the voice of the woman pilot said. “Come in, ark. This is Atlantis. Is everything okay over there?”

Nelson lifted his belt phone.

“Hello, Atlantis. Everything’s just fine. Welcome to our world.”

• EXOSPHERE

The contradiction was almost too absurd. Atlantis was the most capable ship in history. Atlantis was also a creaking wreck, threatening to fall apart at any moment. The air recyclers kept leaking. The carbon dioxide scrubbers had to be kicked every ten minutes or so to unclog them. The toilet was so awful they’d taken to using plastic bags, tying them off and storing them un-der webbing at the back of the cargo bay. At least the water coming out of her slapped-to-gether fuel cells was pure. But for food they had only some bruised fruits provided by that lonely caretaker-ecolo-gist — his way of saying thanks for rescuing his marooned ark and depositing it safely on the moon. The oranges were tart, but an improvement over what they’d survived on during the first few days in space — a single box of stale crackers and five suspicious candies found in Pedro Manella’s jacket pocket.

Now, at last, their travails seemed about to end. Teresa peered through the sighting periscope at the winking lights outlining the European space station just ahead. “Bearing six zero degrees azimuth,” she said into her chin mike. “Vector angle seventeen degrees, relative. Speed point eight four—”

“Okay, I’ve got it, Rip,” Alex’s voice crackled from the makeshift intercom. “Hang on, we’re heading in.”

It was hard getting used to this new mode of space travel. Using the puff-puff rockets of old, you had to calculate each rendezvous burn with a kind of skewed logic. To catch up with an object in orbit ahead of you, first you had to decelerate, which dropped you in altitude, which sped you up until you passed below your objective. Then you’d fire an acceleration burn to rise again, which slowed you down…

It was an art few would have much use for in the future. No more delicate, penny-pinching negotiation with Newton’s laws. All Teresa had to do now was tell Alex where to look and what to look for, and he took it from there. His magic sphere transmitted requests deep into the Earth, which elicited precise, powerful waves of gravity to propel them along. It made space travel almost as simple as pointing and saying, “Take me there!”

That was what made this the greatest spaceship ever, able to fly rings around anything else. And so it would remain for the next ten minutes or so, until they docked. Then arrangements would be made to transfer Alex and his gear to a modern craft, and poor old Atlantis would become another museum piece in orbit.

That’s all right, baby. She thought, patting the scratched, peeling console. Better this way, after one last wild ride, than sitting down there letting sea gulls crap all over you.

Now and then she still closed her eyes, remembering that hurtling launch — climbing just ahead of a pillar of volcanic flame as they were scooped into the sky by something greater than any rocket. Perhaps Jason had found it even more vivid and exalting as he bolted toward the stars. She hoped so. It felt fitting to think of him that way as she was finally able to say adieu.

Anyway, there were busy times ahead. After spending the better part of a week in hurried rescue missions, helping clean up the mess left in orbit by the war, she and Alex were about to take leading roles in the new international space plan. With Lustig-style resonators about to be mass produced, soon even skyscrapers and ocean liners might take to the sky. Within a year, there could be thousands living and working out here and on the moon. At least that seemed to be the general idea, though people still scratched their heads over how this had been agreed to so quickly.

In spite of having been close to the center of great events, Teresa admitted being as confused as anyone about what — or who — was in charge now. The “presence” that had been born out of recent chaos wasn’t wielding a heavy hand, which made it hard to really pin down or define.

Was it an independent entity with its own agenda to impose on subordinate humanity? Or should it be looked on as little more than a new layer of consensus overlaying human affairs, a personification of some global zeitgeist^? Just one more step in a progression of such worldview revolutions — so-called renaissances — when the process of thinking itself changed.

Philosophers typed earnest queries into the special channels where the Presence seemed most intense. But even when there was a reply, it often came back as another question.

“WHAT AM I? YOU TELL ME I’M OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS…”

That attitude, plus an impression of incredible, overpowering patience, sent some mystics and theologians into frenzies of hair pulling. But to the rest of humanity it brought something like-relief. For the foreseeable future, most decisions would be left to familiar institutions — the governments and international bodies and private organizations that existed before everything went spinning off to hell and back again. Only in matters of basic priority had the Law been laid down, in tones that left no doubt in anybody’s mind.

Gravity resonators, for instance,- they could be constructed by anyone who had the means — but not all “requests” made through them would be granted. Earth’s interior was no longer vulnerable to intrusion. The new, delicate webbery of superconducting circuits and “neuronal pathways” that now interlaced smoothly with humanity’s electronic Net had made itself impervious to further meddling.

It also became clear why the nations were expected to commence major space enterprises. Henceforth, the raw materials for industrial civilization were to be taken from

Earth’s lifeless sisters, not the mother world. All mines currently being gouged through Terra’s crust were to be phased out within a generation and no new ones started. Henceforth, Earth must be preserved for the real treasures — its species — and man would have to look elsewhere for mere baubles like gold or platinum or iron.

That was the pattern of it. Certain forests must be saved at once. Certain offensive industrial activities had to stop. Beyond that, details were left to be worked out by bickering, debating, disputatious humankind itself.

With one additional, glaring exception, which had caused quite an impression. Perhaps to show the limits of its patience, the Earth-mind had gone out of its way, a few days ago, to set a particularly pointed example.

Since the “transformation of the angels,” when the horror had suddenly ceased worldwide, there had nevertheless been confirmed cases — no more than a few hundred total — of people being ripped to shreds by sudden deadly force, without warning or mercy. In each case, investigating reporters found evidence appearing on their screens as if by magic, proving the victims to be among the worst, most shameless polluters, conspirators, liars…

Clearly, some “cells” were just too sick — or cancerous — to be kept around, even by a “body” that proclaimed itself tolerant of diversity.

“death is still part of the process…”

That was the coda spread across newspaper displays. Strangely, the warning caused little comment, which in itself seemed to say a lot about consensus. The cases of “surgical removal” ceased, and that appeared to be that.

Teresa wondered at her own reaction to all this. It surprised her that she felt so little rebelliousness at the thought of some “planetary overmind” taking charge. Perhaps it was because the entity seemed so vague. Or that it appeared uninterested in meddling in life at a personal level. Or that humans, after all, seemed to be the mind’s cortex, its frontal lobes.

Or perhaps it was just the utter futility of rebellion. Certainly the presence didn’t seem to mind as certain individuals and groups schemed in anger to topple it. There were even channels on the Net set aside especially for those calling for resistance! After listening in a while, Teresa likened those strident calls to the vengeful, cathartic daydreams any normal person has from time to time… vivid thought-experiments a sane person can contemplate without ever coming close to carrying them out. They’d probably boil and simmer a while, and then, like the more outrageous passions of puberty, evaporate of their own heat and impracticality.

“Captain Tikhana,” a voice called from behind, stirring her contemplations. “As long as we’re almost there, may I please stop kicking pipes and rest a while?”

Pedro Manella’s head and torso extended halfway through the tunnel from middeck. The normally impeccable journalist was grimy and odorous from many days’ labor without bathing. Teresa almost sent him below again, to keep him out of the way. But no. That would be unfair. He’d been working hard, doing all the scutt labor and shit carrying while she and Alex were busy. Probably, they wouldn’t have made it without him.

“All right, Pedro,” she told the journalist. “I don’t figure the cooling system will freeze up in the next five minutes. You can watch the approach if you’re quiet.”

“Like a church mouse, I’ll be.” He carefully float-hopped over to grab the copilot’s chair, but didn’t try sitting down. The seat was filled with another of her make-do consoles. Teresa tried to ignore the aromas wafting from the big man. After all, she probably smelled little better.

As Alex brought them toward a gentle rendezvous with the waiting station, Teresa used her tiny store of precious, hoarded reaction gas to orient Atlantis for docking. Space-suited astronauts made signals in the efficient, lovely language of hands, more useful to her now than the tense words of the station’s traffic controllers, who had no idea what to make of this weird vessel anyway.

At last, with a bump and a clank, they locked into place. Atlantis’s ancient airlock groaned as it was put to use for the first time in decades, hissing like an offended crone.

Teresa flicked off switches and then patted the console one last time.

“Good-bye, old girl,” she said. “And thanks again.”

After transferring the equipment, after meetings and conference calls with everyone from tribunes to investigative com-missions to presidents, after they were finally allowed to shower and change and eat food fit for human consumption… after all of that, Teresa at last found herself unable to settle down within her tiny assigned cubicle. Sleep wouldn’t come. So she got up and made her way to the station’s observation lounge, and wasn’t surprised to find Alex Lustig there already, looking out across the carpet of blue and brown that seemed to stretch forever just beyond the glass.

“Hi,” he told her, turning his head and smiling.

“Hi, yourself.” And no more needed to be said as she joined him gazing at the living world.

Even in weightlessness there are influences, subtle and sometimes even gentle. Eddies of air and tide brushed them, bringing their shoulders together as they floated side by side, their faces bathed in Earthlight. It took little more to fold her hand into his.

From then on, all was kept in place by sound… the silent pulsebeat of their hearts, and a soft low music they could hear alone.

• LITHOSPHERE

When the helicopters had first arrived, Logan’s first numb, hopeful thought had been how swift and efficient the rescue effort was! How powerful were the forces of compassion, so soon after the levees broke. But then he saw the markings on the olive-gray aircraft, and their bristling arms, and realized that their sudden appearance over the roiling, muddy waters was coincidental. Such overpowering military presence couldn’t have been organized so swiftly since the Mississippi burst its banks, plowing a new course to the sea. Nor were those deadly birds bound on any mercy mission.

As they circled, shining hot spotlights on him and the kids, Logan suddenly realized in the gathering twilight why they had come. No coincidence, after all.

Daisy. They’ve come after Daisy. Jesus! What’s she done this time?

He still couldn’t bring himself to believe she was gone. Logan clung to hope the same way he had clutched Tony and Claire when the house was torn off its foundations and hurled into the raging torrent. He hung onto that faith through every impact with floating trees and protruding telephone poles, believing fervently that Daisy might have found some pocket of air below. After what he’d seen these last few months, Logan figured anything at all was possible. Even as the helicopters circled overhead — perhaps deliberating whether to make certain of their mission by blasting the house anyway — their tottering bungalow-raft miraculously came aground on one of the sloping, man-made berms thrown up by some TwenCen oil company to hide its ugly refinery towers. Claire cried out as the villa tilted. They grabbed each other and the dangling antennae to keep from spilling into the deadly waters. The churning Mississippi beckoned…

Then the tilting stopped. The house settled back and was still.

Suddenly men were dropping out of the sky, plummeting down ropes to land on the canted rooftop. At the mention of his ex-wife’s name, Logan quickly pointed toward the jammed attic hatch. He had no thought to spare her arrest, only a glimmering hope they might haul her out of there alive.

Several soldiers pulled him and the kids back while others laid gray paste round the hatch. “Cover your eyes!” a sergeant bellowed. But even that didn’t exclude the flash, outlining the bones in Logan’s hands. Blinking through speckles, Logan saw soldiers dive with reckless courage into a black, smoking hole, as if about to face hell’s own legions, instead of one unarmed, middle-aged woman. It seemed so incongruous. These grim-faced men had the set-jawed look of volunteers for a suicide squad.

When word came out what the skirmishers had found, Logan looked at his daughter. There was sadness in her eyes, but also a kind of relief. When she turned his way though, Claire’s face suddenly washed with concern. “Oh, Daddy. I didn’t know.”

Didn’t know what? he tried to ask. But his voice wouldn’t function. He blamed the whipping helicopter blades for the stinging in his eyes, and exhaustion for the quivering that seemed to take over his body. Logan tried to turn away, but Claire only threw her arms around him.

He clutched her tightly as his lungs gave way to wracking, heartbroken sobs.

Military custody wasn’t so bad. The authorities gave them fresh clothes and medical attention. And as realization spread that the worst of the crisis was indeed over, the questioning grew less frantic and shrill.

Not that anyone really believed it all came down to one solitary woman, manipulating forces all over the world from a cottage on the bayou. There had to be more, the intelligence officers insisted. Though now less brutally frenetic, the inquiry went on and on, long after Logan’s revealed participation in the Spivey network brought in yet more officials, more voices asking the same questions over and over. What finally put a stop to it was intervention from the top. And when Logan learned what “the top” meant these days, he understood the wide-eyed expressions on his interrogators’ faces.

HE WAS ON OUR SIDE…

So came word over those special channels, referring specifically to him.

FINISH YOUR WORK, BY ALL MEANS. THEN LET HIM GO.

Everyone treated Logan courteously after that. He got to see Claire and Tony. His plaque was returned to him. And soon, after promising to keep himself available to the appropriate commissions, he was escorted outside into a bright afternoon.

Logan sniffed a breeze that seemed faintly scented with springtime. Claire took his hand and led him toward a waiting chauffeured car. “Your office has been calling,” she told him, consulting her wrist display. “The mayor of New Orleans won’t even talk about plans for a new waterfront and reservoir system without you there — ‘to keep ’em honest,’ as he put it. And the Nile Reclamation Agency sent an urgent message saying they’ve changed their minds about that idiotic, shortsighted dam project. Instead, they dug out your old plans for the Aswan silt diversion system. I told them better late than never, but they’ll still have to wait till you’ve rested. Anyway, I wanted to go over some ideas with you before we talk to them.”

He smiled at her. “Sounds like you’ve been handling the family business while Dad was in stir.”

She lifted her chin. “I’m seventeen now. You said we’d be partners someday. So? It sure looks like there’s enough to do.”

That was true enough. The list of cleanup jobs was long and intimidating — even without having to satisfy a new planetary intelligence that your plans were good ones, truly designed for the long term. From now on the first rule of engineering would be to work with Earth’s natural forces, never against them.

“You’re still going to college,” he insisted. “And by the way, you can’t leave Tony hanging in midair, either. At least, you better tell the poor boy where he stands.”

She tilted her head, then nodded. “Fine. Okay. I’ll take care of being a teenager. That’ll still leave me… thirty hours a week to—”

“ — to be an engineer,” he laughed. “All right. If I tried to stop you, I’d probably just get overruled anyway.”

She grinned and squeezed his arm. Their driver held the door. Before getting into the car, though, Logan stopped to look at the sky. There was a patch over to the north, in the place farthest from the sun, where the dark hue was so clear and icy blue…

Briefly, he closed his eyes and let out a sigh.

“Let’s go,” he said as he sat down beside his daughter. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

• CORE

Alex found Pedro Manella standing by one of the big space-windows in the observation lounge, overlooking a vast, glittering expanse of assembly cranes and cabling. More parts sent up from Earth were being fitted to a second huge, wheel-shaped space station. Workers and swarms of little tugs clustered around the latest giant gravity freighter, only recently delivered atop a pillar of warped space-time.

Well, it can’t be put off any longer, Alex thought.

After months of hard work, the practical running of these grand undertakings had finally passed out of his hands, freeing him to concentrate on basic questions once more. Soon, he and Teresa would be heading groundside to join others fascinated by the quandary of this new world. Stan Goldman would be there, he was glad to learn. And George Hutton and Auntie Kapur. Each had earned a place on the informal councils that were gathering to discuss all the whys and hows and wherefores.

Perhaps, between deliberations, he and Teresa would also find some long-awaited time to be alone, to explore how much farther they wanted to take things, beyond simply sharing the deepest trust either of them had ever known.

That was all ahead. Before leaving for Earth, however, there was one unfinished piece of business he had to take care of.

“Hello, Lustig,” Pedro said in a friendly tone.

“Manella.” Alex nodded. “I thought I’d find you here.”

“Indeed? So. What can I do for you?”

Alex stood still for a minute, appreciating the semblance of gravity created by the rotating station’s centrifugal force — a reassuring sensation, though now there were other ways to duplicate the feat. Ways unimagined even a year ago, but which were now the foundations of new technologies, new capabilities, new opportunities.

Ways that had also come near ending everything forever.

“You can start by telling me who the hell you are,” Alex said in a rush, unable to completely keep a nervous quaver from his voice. “You can tell me why you’ve been fucking with our world.”

He kept his hands on the rail, watching the busy space-yards. But Alex felt painfully aware of the large figure standing nearby, turning now to look at him. To his surprise, Manella didn’t even pretend not to know what he was talking about.

“Who else, other than you, suspects?”

“Only me. It was too bizarre a notion to tell even Teresa or Stan.”

That protected those he loved, at least. If Manella was willing to kill to maintain his secret, then let it end here. That is, if there was a secret…

The big man seemed to read Alex’s thoughts, which must have been on his face. “Don’t worry, Lustig. I wouldn’t harm you. Anyway, it’s not at all clear I could. This world’s overmind has affection for you, my boy.”

Alex swallowed. “Then your job here…”

“Is finished?” Pedro blew his moustache. “Now if I answered that straight, I’d be admitting you were right in your wild, preposterous hunch. As it is, I’m just playing along with an amusing game of what-if, invented by my friend Dr. Alex.”

“But—” Alex sputtered in frustration ” — you just now confessed—”

“ — that I know what you suspect me of. Big deal. I’ve noticed the way you’ve watched me the last few days… making inquiries. I’ve made a life study of you, too. Don’t you imagine I can tell what you’re thinking?

“But please, do spell it out for me. I’m most interested.”

Alex found he couldn’t keep his composure looking directly at Manella. He turned back toward the window again.

“There have been so many coincidences. And too many of them revolve around you, Manella. Or events under your control. While everything was flying thick and fast, I had no time to put it all together. But during the last few weeks I kept getting this nagging feeling it was all too pat.”

“What was too pat?”

“The way I was hired by those generals, for instance … giving me carte blanche to experiment with cavitronic singularities, even though there were only vague hopes of giving them what they wanted in secret.”

“Are you accusing me of manipulating generals for your benefit?”

Alex shrugged. “It sounds ridiculous. But given the rest of the story, it wouldn’t surprise me. What is irrefutable is your role in what followed — seeing to it those riots caused my Alpha singularity to fall, just when I’d discovered a flaw in the old physics, and was about to arrange for a controlled shutdown myself.”

“You imply I made Alpha fall on purpose. What reason could I have?”

“Only the obvious. It made me obsessed with finding again what I’d lost… chivvying support from Stan and then George Hutton, till at last we built a resonator capable of chasing down Alpha—”

“ — and incidentally detecting Beta, as well,” Manella finished for him. “Which means what?”

Alex could tell the man was toying with him, forcing him to lay down all his cards. So be it. “Finding Beta was key to all that followed! But never mind. Your tenacity in tracking me to New Zealand was another feat that fell just inside the range of the believable. So was the way you gathered together a team whose abilities just complemented what we had in New Zealand, so when the two groups merged—”

“ — the sum was greater than its parts. Yes, we did bring together some competent people. But then, it was so hard keeping things secret after that—”

“Don’t prompt me, Pedro,” Alex snapped. “It’s patronizing.”

“Sorry. Really. Do go on.”

Alex exhaled. “Secrecy, yes. You proved uncannily able, running interference on the Net for us. Even with all his resources, Glenn Spivey marveled at how hard it was to track us down… till finally he did find us. Supposedly it was that McClennon woman who leaked the clues to him. But—”

“ — but you suggest I leaked word to her. Hmph. Go on. What’s next?”

Alex kept a lid on his irritation. “Next there’s your disappearing trick at Waitomo, abandoning Teresa on the trail when Spivey arrived…”

“Presto.” Manella snapped his fingers.

“… and your equally dramatic reappearance on Rapa Nui, conveniently in time to influence my research and foil June Morgan’s sabotage.”

Manella shrugged. “Such thanks I get.”

“Thanks enough not to question how you rescued Teresa from that pit… or managed to be the sole person on the entire island to make it alive past the death angels and knock on Atlantis’s door… just in time to hitch a ride—”

He stopped as Manella lifted a meaty hand. “It’s still awfully thin, Lustig.”

“Thin!”

“Come on. All of those things could have happened without my being — what you imply. Where’s your proof? What are you trying to say?”

Alex turned now to face Manella fully. His blood was up and he no longer felt reticent at all. “It was you, I now recall, who seeded the idea of asking my grandmother to help get us a resonator site in Southern Africa. In exchange, you made sure she had full-time computer access!”

“So I’m a nice fellow. And things worked out so she was in a place to make a difference. Still, all you have is a tower of teetering suppositions and guesses.”

“I don’t suppose,” Alex growled, “it would bother you much if I insisted you be medically examined—”

“ — not at all—”

“ — down to the level of a DNA scan? No?” Alex sighed. “You could be bluffing.”

“I could be. But you know I’m not. This body’s human, Alex. If I were some little green pixie riding around inside this carcass — if this were some sort of big, ugly disguise — don’t you think I’d have suffocated by now? Wouldn’t I have arranged to wear a better-looking model?” Manella groomed his moustache in the window reflection. “Not that I’ve had many complaints from the ladies, mind you.”

In exasperation, Alex fought to keep from shouting. “Dammit, you and I both know you’re not human!”

The tall figure turned and met his eyes. “How do you define ‘human’? No, seriously. It’s a fascinating notion.

Does it include your grandmother, for instance? In her present state?

“This is such an amusing discussion! But just for the sake of argument let’s follow your reasoning. Suppose we posit you have cause to suspect — no proof, mind you — that I’m unusual in some way.”

Alex swallowed again. “What are you?”

Manella shrugged again. “A reporter. I never lied about that.”

“Dammit—”

“But for the sake of argument, let’s consider the chance a fellow like me, who was involved in all the things I’ve been, might have had another job as well.”

“Yes?”

“Well, there are possibilities. Let’s see…” Pedro lifted an eyebrow. “Maybe as a friendly neighborhood policeman? Or a social worker?” He paused. “Or a midwife?”

Alex blinked once, twice. “Oh,” he said.

For the first time, Manella’s expression grew pensive, thoughtful. “I can guess what you’re thinking, Lustig. That all your conclusions back in Waitomo must be wrong. That Beta couldn’t have been a berserker machine, a weapon sent to wreck the Earth. Because see what actually happened! Rather than ruin a world, Beta became essential to bringing an entire planet alive.”

“Auntie Kapur. She told me to ‘seek the wisdom of sperm and egg.’… Oh, these damn bloody metaphors!” Alex’s temples hurt. “Are you saying Beta was sent here to fertilize — ?”

“Hey, I never admitted knowing any more about it than you do. We’re just doing a particularly bizarre, imaginative, pretend scenario right? Frankly, after all the things I’ve been called in my life, it’s a bit refreshing to be cast in the role of a friendly alien for a change!”

Manella laughed. “Anyway imagine a bunch of clever parameciums, trying to parse a Shakespeare play by likening it to ripples in the water when they wave their flagella. That’s a lot like you and me claiming we understand a living planet.”

“But the effects of Beta—”

“Those effects, combined with your intervention, combined with a thousand other factors, including my own small influence… yes, surely, all these things helped bring about something new and wonderful. And perhaps similar events have happened before in this galaxy, here and there.

“Maybe the results aren’t always as pleasant or sane as what happened here. Perhaps humans really are very special people, after all. Despite all your faults, this may be a very special world. Maybe others out there sensed something worth preserving and nurturing here.”

The warmth in Pedro’s voice surprised Alex. “You mean we don’t have enemies out there after all?”

“I never said that!” Manella’s brows narrowed with sudden intensity. Then, just as quickly, he visibly retreated again into his mood of blithe playfulness. “Of course we’re still only speaking hypothetically. You do come up with brilliant what-ifs, Lustig. This one is so intriguing.

“Let’s just say one possibility is that Beta came at an opportune time. After a painful transition, it was turned into an instrument of joy. But does it necessarily follow that the ‘father’ of this particular sperm was a friend? That’s one possibility. Another is, this world has managed to make the best out of a case of attempted rape.”

Alex stared at Manella. The man talked, but somehow nothing he said seemed to make any sense.

“I know you don’t want to hear more, metaphors,” Pedro went on. “But I’ve given some thought lately to all the different roles humanity has to play in the new planetary being that’s been born. Humans — and man-made machines — contribute by far the largest share of her ‘brain’ matter. They’ll be her eyes, her hands, as she learns to shape and spread life to other worlds in this solar system.

“But the best analogy may be to a body’s white blood cells! After all, what if the universe is a dangerous place as well as a beautiful one? It will be your job, and your children’s and their children’s, to protect what’s been born here. To serve Her and sacrifice yourselves for Her if need be.

“And then, of course, there is the matter of propagation…”

The vistas Manella presented — even hypothetically — were too vast. He kept talking, but suddenly his words seemed barely relevant anymore.

By the same token, Alex suddenly didn’t care any longer whether his suspicions about the man were valid or just more tantalizing similes, drawn against the universe’s infinite account of coincidence and correlation. Rather, Manella’s latest comparison suddenly provoked in Alex thoughts about Teresa, how he felt about her in his blood, in his skin, and in the busy flexings of his heart. He found himself smiling

“… I’d like to think it’s that way,” Pedro went on in the background, as if garrulously lecturing an audience. “That there might exist others out there, scattered among the stars, who foresaw some of what was fated here. And maybe arranged for a little help to arrive in time.

“Perhaps those others feel gladness at this rare victory, and wish us well…”

An interesting notion, indeed. But Alex’s thoughts had already moved well ahead of that, to implications Manella probably could not imagine, whatever his true nature. His gaze pressed ahead, past the bustling construction yards, along the film of air and moisture enveloping the planet’s soft skin. Skirting the hot, steady glow of the sun, Alex’s eyes took in the dusty scatter of the galactic wheel. And as his perplexed musings cast outward, he felt a familiar presence pass momentarily nearby, a propinquity invisible and yet as real as anything in the universe.

“^{_{YES, IT GOES ON,}}” his grandmother’s spirit seemed to whisper in his ear. “^{_{IT GOES ON AND ON AND ON…}}”

• CRUST

They had come to break up Sea State, and nobody, not even the Swiss navy, put up a fight to stop them. Not that there was much to fight for anymore, Crat figured. Most citizens of the nation of creaking barges had come here in the first place because there was no-where else to go and be their own masters. Now, though, there were plenty of places. And somehow most people had stopped worrying so much about mastery anymore.

Crat lingered on deck watching the gradual dismemberment of the town that had until a few weeks ago seemed so gritty and vital. Under the Admiral’s Tower, orderly queues of families boarded zeps that would take them to new homes in the scoured zones… areas stripped of human life during the brief terror of the death angels. Now that the angels had been transformed, there were whole empty cities waiting to be refilled, with room enough for all.

Anyway, it had been made clear by the highest authority that the oceans were just too delicate to tolerate the likes of Sea State. Other territories, like Southern California, seemed to cry out for boisterous noise and other human-generated abuse. Let the refugees head there then, to remake the multilingual melting pot that had bubbled in that place before the crisis, and amaze the world with the results.

That was how one commentator put it, and Crat had liked the image. He’d even been tempted to go along — to have a house in Malibu maybe. To learn to surf. Maybe become a movie star?

But no. He shook his head as sea gulls dived and squawked, competing for the last of what had been a rich trove of Sea State garbage. Crat listened to their raucous chorus and decided he’d heard enough from stupid birds … even smarty-pants dolphins. The ocean wasn’t for him after all.

Nor Patagonia, especially now that volcanic dust threatened a reversal of the greenhouse effect, returning ice to the polar climes.

Nor even Hollywood.

Naw. Space is the place. That’s where the real elbow room is. Where there’ll be big rewards for guys like me. Guys willing to take chances.

First, of course, he’d had to finish taking big official types on tours of the seabed site where the company’s mystery lab had been. Apparently some nasty stuff had gone on down there, but nobody seemed to hold him responsible. In fact, one of the visiting investigators had called him “a steady fellow and a hard worker” and promised a good recommendation. If those tough jobs for miners on the moon ever opened up, that reference might come in handy.

I wonder what Remi and Roland would’ve thought. Me, a steady fellow… maybe even goin’ to melt rocks on the moon.

First he had to get there, though. And that meant working his way across the Pacific, helping haul the remnants of Sea State to reclamation yards now that ocean dumping wasn’t just illegal, but maybe suicidal as well. It would take months, but he’d save up for clothes and living expenses and a new plaque, and tapes to study so they wouldn’t think him a complete ignoramus when he filled out application forms…

“Hah! Listen to you!” He laughed at himself as he hopped nimbly over narrow gangways to the^gunwale where his work team was supposed to meet. “Becomin’ a reet intellectual, are ya?”

To show he wasn’t a complete mama’s boy, he spat over the side. Not that it hurt her nibs a bit to do so. She’d recycle it, like she would his soddy carcass when the time came, and good riddance.

A whistle blew, calling crew to stations. He grinned as the tug’s exec nodded to him. There was still plenty of time, but Crat wanted to be early. It was expected of him.

The others in his team shambled up, one by one and in pairs. He made a point of scowling at the last two, who arrived just before the final blow. “All right,” he told the gang. “We’re haulin’ hawsers here, not some girly-girl’s drawers. So if you want your pay, put your backs in, hear?”

They grunted, nodded, grimaced in a dozen different dialects and cultural modes. Crat thought them the scum of the Earth. Just like himself.

“Ready, then?” he cried as the bosun called to cast off lines. The men took up the heavy jute rope. “Okay, let’s show Momma what even scum can do. All together now… pull!”