Earth

PLANET

The planet had orbited its sun only a thousand million times before it acquired several highly unusual traits, far out of equilibrium.

For one thing, none of its sister worlds possessed any free oxygen. But somehow this one had acquired an envelope rich in that searing gas. That alone showed something odd was going on, for without constant replenishment, oxygen must quickly burn away.

And the planet’s temperature was unusually stable. Occasionally ice sheets did spread, and then retreated under glaring sunshine. But with each swing something caused heat to build up or leak away again in compensation, leaving the rolling seas intact.

Those seas… liquid water covering two thirds of the globe… no other world circling the sun shared that peculiar attribute. Then there was the planet’s pH balance — offset dramatically from the normal acidic toward a rare alkaline state.

The list went on. So far from equilibrium in so many ways, and yet so stable, so constant. These were strange and unlikely properties.

They were also traits of physiology.

• CRUST

Roland fingered the rifle’s plastic stock as his squad leaped off the truck and lined up behind Corporal Wu. He had a serious case of dry mouth, and his ears still rang from the alert bell that had yanked them out of exhausted slumber only an hour before. Who would’ve imagined being called out on a real raid? This certainly broke the routine of basic training — running about pointlessly, standing rigid while sergeants shouted abuse at you, screaming back obedient answers, then running some more until you dropped. Of course the pre-induction tapes had explained the purpose of all that.

“… Recruits must go through intense stress in order to break civilian response sets and prepare behavioral templates for military imprinting. Their rights are not surrendered, only voluntarily suspended in order to foster discipline, coordination, hygeine, and other salutary skills…”

Only volunteers who understood and signed waivers were allowed to join the peacekeeping forces, so he’d known what to expect. What had surprised Roland was getting accepted in the first place, despite mediocre school grades. Maybe the peacekeepers’ aptitude tests weren’t infallible after all. Or perhaps they revealed something about Roland that had never emerged back in Indiana.

It can’t be intelligence, that’s for sure. And I’m no leader. Never wanted to be.

In his spare moments (all three of them since arriving here in Taiwan for training) Roland had pondered the question and finally decided it was none of his damn business after all. So long as the officers knew what they were doing, that was enough for him.

This calling out of raw recruits for a night mission didn’t fill him with confidence though.

What use would greenies like us be in a combat operation? Won’t we just get in the way?

His squad double-timed alongside a towering, aromatic ornamental hedge, toward the sound of helicopters and the painful brilliance of searchlights. Perspiration loosened his grip on the stock, forcing him to hold his weapon tighter.

His heartbeat quickened as they neared the scene of action. And yet, Roland felt certain he wasn’t scared to die.

No, he was afraid of screwing up.

“Takka says it’s eco-nuts!” the recruit running beside him whispered, panting. Roland didn’t answer. In the last hour he’d completely had it with scuttlebutt.

Neo-Gaian radicals might have blown up a dam, someone said.

No, it was an unlicensed gene lab or maybe an unregistered national bomb — hidden in violation of the Rio Pact…

Hell, none of the rumored emergencies seemed to justify calling in peach-fuzz recruits. It must be real bad trouble. Or else something he didn’t understand yet.

Roland watched the jouncing backpack of Corporal Wu. The compact Chinese noncom carried twice the weight any of them did, yet he obviously held himself back for the sluggish recruits. Roland found himself wishing Wu would pass out the ammo now. What if they were ambushed? What if… ?

You don’t know anything yet, box-head. Better pray they don’t pass out ammo. Half those mama’s boys runnin’ behind you don’t know their rifles from their assholes.

In fairness, Roland figured they probably felt exactly the same way about him.

The squad hustled round the hedge onto a gravel driveway, puffing uphill toward the glaring lanterns. Officers milled about, poring over clipboards and casting long shadows across a close-cropped lawn that had been ripped and scraped by copters and magnus zeps. A grand mansion stood farther upslope, dominating the richly landscaped grounds. Silhouettes hastened past brightly lit windows.

Roland saw no foxholes. No signs of enemy fire. So, maybe ammo wouldn’t be needed after all.

Corporal Wu brought the squad to a disorderly halt as the massive, gruff figure of Sergeant Kleinerman appeared out of nowhere.

“Have the weenies stack weapons over by the flower bed,” Kleinerman told Wu in flat-toned Standard Military English. “Wipe their noses, then take them around back. UNEPA has work for ’em that’s simple enough for infants to handle.”

Any recruit who took that kind of talk personally was a fool. Roland just took advantage of the pause to catch his breath. “No weapons,” Takka groused as they stacked their rifles amid trampled marigolds. “What we supposed to use, our hands?”

Roland shrugged. The casual postures of the officers told him this was no terrorist site. “Prob’ly,” he guessed. “Them and our backs.”

“This way, weenies,” Wu said, with no malice and only a little carefully tailored contempt. “Come on. It’s time to save the world again.”

Through the bright windows Roland glimpsed rich men, rich women, dressed in shimmering fabrics. Nearly all looked like Han-Formosans. For the first time since arriving at Camp P6rez de Cuellar, Roland really felt he was in Taiwan, almost China, thousands of miles from Indiana.

Servants still carried trays of refreshments, their darker Bengali or Tamil complexions contrasting with the pale Taiwanese. Unlike the agitated party guests, the attendants seemed undisturbed to have in their midst all these soldiers and green-clad marshals from UNEPA. In fact, Roland saw one waiter smile when she thought no one was looking, and help herself to a glass of champagne.

UNEPA… Roland thought on spying the green uniforms. That means eco-crimes.

Wu hustled the squad past where some real soldiers stood guard in blurry combat camouflage, their eyes hooded by multisensor goggles which seemed to dart and flash as their pulse-rifles glittered darkly. The guards dismissed the recruits with barely a flicker of attention, which irked Roland far worse than the insults of Wu and Kleinerman.

I’ll make them notice me, he vowed. Though he knew better than to expect it soon. You didn’t get to be like those guys overnight.

Behind the mansion a ramp dropped steeply into the earth. Smoke rose from a blasted steel door that now lay curled and twisted to one side. A woman marshal met them by the opening. Even darker than her chocolate skin was the cast of her features — as if they were carved from basalt. “This way,” she said tersely and led them down the ramp — a trip of more than fifty meters — into a reinforced concrete bunker. When they reached the bottom, however, it wasn’t at all what Roland had expected — some squat armored slab.

Instead, he found himself in a place straight out of the Arabian Nights.

The recruits gasped. “Shee-it!” Takka commented concisely, showing how well he’d picked up the essentials of Military English. Kanakoa, the Hawaiian, expressed amazement even more eloquently. “Welcome to the elephant’s graveyard, Tarzan.”

Roland only stared. Tiny, multicolored spotlights illuminated the arched chamber, subtly emphasizing the shine of ivory and fur and crystal. From wall to wall, the spoils of five continents were piled high. More illicit wealth than Roland had ever seen. More than he could ever have imagined.

From racks in all directions hung spotted leopard pelts, shimmering beaver skins, white winter fox stoles. And shoes! Endless stacks of them, made from dead reptiles, obviously, though Roland couldn’t begin to conceive which species had given its all for which pair.

“Hey, Senterius.” Takka nudged him in the ribs and Roland looked down where the Japanese recruit pointed.

Near his left foot lay a luxurious white carpet… the splayed form of a flayed polar bear whose snarling expression looked really angry. Roland jerked away from those glittering teeth, backing up until something pointy and hard rammed his spine. He whirled, only to goggle in amazement at a stack of elephant tusks, each bearing a golden tip guard.

“Gaia!” he breathed.

“You said it,” Kanakoa commented. “Boy, I’ll bet Her Holy Nibs is completely pissed off over this.”

Roland wished he hadn’t spoken the Earth Mother’s name aloud. Hers wasn’t a soldierly faith, after all. But Kanakoa and Takka seemed as stunned as he was. “What is all this?” Takka asked, waving at the heaped stacks of animal remains. “Who in the world would want these things?”

Roland shrugged. “Used to be, rich folks liked to wear gnomish crap like this.”

Takka sneered. “I knew that. But why now? It is not just illegal. It’s… it’s—”

“Sick? Is that what you were going to say, Private?”

They turned to see the UNEPA marshal standing close by, looking past them at the piled ivory. She couldn’t be over forty years old, but right now the tendons in her neck were taut as bowstrings and she looked quite ancient.

“Come with me, I want to show you soldiers something.”

They followed her past cases filled with pinned, iridescent butterflies, with gorilla-hand ashtrays and stools made from elephants’ feet, with petrified wood and glittering coral no doubt stolen from nature preserves… all the way to the back wall of the artificial cave, where two truly immense tusks formed a standing arch. Tiger skins draped a shrine of sorts — a case crafted in dark hardwood and glass, containing dozens of earthenware jars.

Roland saw veins pulse on the backs of her hands. The recruits fell mute, awed by such hatred as she radiated now. Nothing down here impressed them half as much.

Roland found the courage to ask, “What’s in the jars, ma’am?”

Watching her face, he realized what an effort it took for her to speak right now, and found himself wondering if he’d ever be able to exert such mastery over his own body.

“Rhinoceros… horn,” she said hoarsely. “Powdered narwhal tusk… whale semen…”

Roland nodded. He’d heard of such things. Ancient legends held they could prolong life, or heighten sexual prowess, or drive women into writhing heat. And neither morality nor law nor scientific disproof deterred some men from chasing hope.

“So much. There must be a hundred kilos in there!” Takka commented. But he stepped back when the UNEPA official whirled to glare at him, her expression one of bleak despair.

“You don’t understand,” she whispered. “I hoped we’d find so much more.”

Roland soon discovered just what use recruits were on a mission like this.

Sure enough, he thought, resigned that he had only begun plumbing the depths of exhaustion the peacekeeping forces had in store for him. Hauling sixty-kilo tusks up the steep ramp, he and Private Schmidt knew they were important pieces in a well-tuned, highly efficient, rapid-deployment force whose worldwide duties stretched from pole to pole. Their part was less glamorous than the on-site inspectors prowling Siberia and Sinkiang and Wyoming, enforcing arms-control pacts. Or the brave few keeping angry militias in Brazil and Argentina from each other’s throats. Or even the officers tagging and inventorying tonight’s booty. But after all, as Corporal Wu told them repeatedly, they also serve who only grunt and sweat.

Roland tried not to show any discomfort working with Schmidt. After all, the tall, skinny alpine boy hadn’t even been born yet when the Helvetian War laid waste to much of Central Europe, and anyway you couldn’t exactly choose your background. Roland made an effort to accept him as a native of “West Austria” and forget the past.

One thing, Schmidt sure spoke English well. Better, in fact, than most of Roland’s old gang back in Bloomington. “Where are they hauling this stuff?” his partner asked the pilot of one of the minizeps as they took a two-minute breather outside.

“They’ve got warehouses all over the world,” the Swedish noncom said. “If I told you about them, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try us,” Roland prompted.

The flier’s blue eyes seemed to look far away. “Take what you found in that tomb and multiply it a thousandfold.”

“Shee-it,” Schmidt sighed. “But…”

“Oh, some of this stuff here won’t go into storage. The ivory, for instance. They’ll implant label isotopes so each piece is chemically unique, then they’ll sell it. The zoo arks harvest elephant tusks nowadays anyway, as do the African parks, so the beasts won’t tear up trees or attract poachers. That policy came too late to save this fellow.” He patted the tusk beside him. “Alas.”

“But what about the other stuff? The furs. The shoes. All that powdered horn shit?”

The pilot shrugged. “Can’t sell it. That’d just legitimize wearing or using the stuff. Create demand, you see.

“Can’t destroy it, either. Could you burn billions worth of beautiful things? Sometimes they take school groups through the warehouses, to show kids what real evil is. But mostly it all just sits there, piling up higher and higher.”

The pilot looked left and right. “I do have a theory, though. I think I know the real reason for the warehouses.”

“Yes?” Roland and Schmidt leaned forward, ready to accept his confidence.

The pilot spoke behind a shielding hand. “Aliens. They’re going to sell it all to aliens from outer space.”

Roland groaned. Schmidt spat on the ground in disgust. Of course real soldiers were going to treat them this way. But it was embarrassing to have been sucked in so openly.

“You think I’m kidding?” the pilot asked.

“No, we think you’re crazy.”

That brought a wry grin. “Likely enough, boy. But think about it! It’s only a matter of time till we’re contacted, no? They’ve been searching the sky for a hundred years now. And we’ve been filling space with our radio and TV and Data Net noise all that time. Sooner or later a starship has to stop by. It only makes sense, no?”

Roland decided the only safe reply was a silent stare. He watched the noncom warily.

“So I figure it’s like this. That starship is very likely to be a trading vessel… out on a long, long cruise, like those clipper ships of olden times. They’ll stop here and want to buy stuff, but not just any stuff. It will have to be light, portable, beautiful, and totally unique to Earth. Otherwise, why bother?”

“But this stuff’s dumpit contraband!” Roland said, pointing to the goods stacked in the cargo bay.

“Hey! You two! Break’s over!” It was Corporal Wu, calling from the ramp. He jerked his thumb then swiveled and strode back into the catacomb. Roland and his partner stood up.

“But that’s the beauty of it!” the pilot continued, as if he hadn’t heard. “You see, the CITES rules make all these things illegal so there won’t be any economic market for killing endangered species.

“But fobbing it all off on alien traders won’t create a market! It’s a one-stop deal, you see? They come once, then they are gone again, forever. We empty the warehouses and spend the profits buying up land for new game preserves.” He spread his hands as if to ask what could be more reasonable.

Schmidt spat again, muttering a curse in Schweitzer-Deutsch. “Come on Senterius, let’s go.” Roland followed quickly, glancing only once over his shoulder at the grinning pilot, wondering if the guy was crazy, brilliant, or simply a terrific sculptor of bullshit.

Probably all three, he figured at last, and double-timed the rest of the way. After all, fairy tales were fairy tales, while Corporal Wu was palpable reality.

As he worked, Roland recalled the days not so long ago when he and his pals Remi and Crat used to sit in the park listening to old Joseph tell them about the awful battles of the Helvetian War. The war that finally did end war.

Each of them had reacted differently to Joseph’s eventual betrayal — Remi by turning tragically cynical, and Crat by declaring void anything spoken by anyone over thirty. To Roland, however, what lasted were the veteran’s tales of combat — of comrades fighting shoulder to shoulder, hauling each other through mountain passes clogged with germ-laden, radioactive mud, struggling together to overcome a wily, desperate foe…

Of course he didn’t actually wish for a real war to fight. Not a big one on the vast, impersonal scale the old vet described. He knew battle sounded a lot more attractive far away, in stories, than it would seem in person.

Still, was this to be the way of it from now on? Hauling off contraband seized from CITES violators? Manning tedious observer posts separating surly, bickering nations too poor and tired to fight anyway? Checking the bilges of rusting freighters for hidden caches of flight capital?

Oh, there were real warriors in the peacekeeping forces. Takka and some of the others might get to join the elite units quelling fierce little water wars like the one going on now in Ghana. But as an American he’d have little chance of joining any of the active units. The Guarantor Powers were still too big, too powerful. No little country would stand for Russian or American or Chinese troops stationed on their soil.

Well, at least I can learn how to be a warrior. I’ll be trained, ready, in case the world ever needs me.

So he worked doggedly, doing as he was told. Hauling and lifting, lifting and hauling, Roland also tried to listen to the UNEPA officials, especially the dark woman. Had she really wished they had found more of the grisly contraband?

“… thought we’d traced the Pretoria poaching ring all the way here,” she said at one point as he passed by laden with aromatic lion skins. “I thought we’d finally tracked down the main depot. But there’s so little white rhino powder, or—”

“Could Chang have already sold the rest?” one of the others asked.

She shook her head. “Chang’s a hoarder. He sells only to maintain operating capital.”

“Well, we’ll find out when we finally catch him, the slippery eel.”

Roland was still awed by the UNEPA woman, and a bit jealous. What was it like, he wondered, to care about something so passionately? He suspected it made her somehow more alive than he was.

According to the recruitment tapes, training was supposed to give him strong feelings of his own. Over months of exhaustion and discipline, he’d come to see his squadmates as family. Closer than that. They would learn almost to read each other’s thoughts, to depend on each other utterly. If necessary, to die for one another.

That was how it was supposed to work. Glancing at Takka and Schmidt and the other strangers in his squad, Roland wondered how the sergeants and instructors could accomplish such a thing. Frankly, it sounded awfully unlikely.

But hell, guys like Kleineiman and Wu have been soldiering for five thousand years or so. I guess they know what they’re doing.

How ironic, then, that they finally made a science of it at the very end, just as the profession was trying to phase itself out of existence forever. From the looks given them by the UNEPA marshals, that day could come none too soon. Necessity allied the two groups in the cause of saving the planet. But clearly the eco-officers would rather do without the military altogether.

Just be patient, Roland thought as he worked. We’re doing the best we can as fast as we can.

He and another recruit disassembled the shrine at the back of the cavernous treasure room, carefully unwinding snakeskin ropes binding the two huge archway tusks. They were lowering one of the ivory trophies to the floor when Roland’s nostrils flared at a familiar smell. He stopped and sniffed.

“Come on,” the Russian private groused in thickly accented Standard. “Now other one.”

“Do you smell something?” Roland asked.

The other youth laughed. “I smell dead animals! What you think? It stink worse here than Tashkent brothels!”

But Roland shook his head. “That’s not it.” He turned left, following the scent.

Naturally, soldiers weren’t allowed tobacco, which would sap their wind and stamina. But he’d been quite a smoker back in Indiana, puffing homegrown with Remi and Crat — as many as eight or ten hand-rolled cigs a week. Could a noncom or UNEPA be sneaking weed behind a corner? It had better not be a recruit, or there’d be latrine duty for the entire squad!

But no, there weren’t any hiding places nearby. So where was it coming from?

Corporal Wu’s whistip blew, signaling another short break. “Hey, Yank,” the Russian said. “Don’t be a pizdyuk. Come on.”

Roland waved him to silence. He pushed aside one of the tiger skins, still sniffing, and then crouched where he had first picked up the scent. It was strongest near the floor beside the glass case — now emptied of its brown jars of macabre powder. His fingers touched a warm breeze.

“Hey, give me a hand,” he asked, bracing a shoulder against the wood. But the other recruit flipped two fingers as he walked away, muttering. ” Amerikanskee kakanee zas-sixa …”

Roland checked his footing and strained. The heavy case rocked a bit before settling again.

This can’t be right. The guy who owned this place wouldn’t want to sweat. He’d never sweat.

Roland felt along the carved basework, working his way around to the back before finding what he sought — a spring-loaded catch. “Aha!” he said. With a click the entire case slid forward to jam against one of the huge, toppled tusks. Roland peered down steep stairs with a hint of light at the bottom.

He had to squeeze through the narrow opening. The tobacco smell grew stronger as he descended quietly, carefully. Stooping under a low stone lintel, he entered a chamber hewn from naked rock. Roland straightened and pursed his lips in a silent whistle.

While this hiding place lacked the first one’s air of elegant decadence, it did conceal the devil’s own treasure… shelves stacked high with jars and small, bulging, plastic bags. “Hot damn,” he said, fingering one of the bags. Gritty white powder sifted under a gilt-numbered label adorned with images of unicorns and dragons, though Roland knew the real donor must have been some poor, dumb, mostly blind rhino in southern Africa, or another equally unprepossessing beast.

“The freaking jackpot,” he said to himself. It was definitely time to report this. But as he turned to head back upstairs,-a voice suddenly stopped him.

“Do not move, soldier-fellow. Hands up or I will shoot you dead.”

Roland rotated slowly and saw what he’d missed in his first, cursory scan of the room. At about waist level, near a smoldering ashtray in the corner of the left wall, some of the shelving had swung aside to reveal a narrow tunnel. From this opening a middle-aged man with Chinese features aimed a machine pistol at him.

“Do you doubt I can hit you from here?” the man asked levelly. “Is that why you don’t raise your hands as I command? I assure you, I’m an expert shooter. I’ve killed lions, tigers, at close range. Do you doubt it?”

“No. I believe you.”

“Then comply! Or I will shoot!”

Roland felt sure the fellow meant it. But it seemed this was time for one of those inconvenient waves of obstinacy his friends used to chide him for, which used to get him into such trouble back home.

“You shoot, and they’ll hear you upstairs.”

The man in the tunnel considered this. “Perhaps. On the other hand, if you were to attack me, or flee or call for help, the threat would be immediate and I would have to kill you at once.”

Roland shrugged. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

“So. A standoff, then. All right, soldier. You may keep your hands down, as I see you’re unarmed. But step back to that wall, or I will consider you dangerous and act accordingly!”

Roland did as he was told, watching for an opportunity. But the man crawled out of the tunnel and stood up without wavering his aim once. “My name is Chang,” he said as he wiped his brow with a silk handkerchief.

“So I heard. You been a busy guy, Mr. Chang.”

Brown eyes squinted in amusement. “That I have, soldier boy. What I’ve done and seen, you could not imagine. Even in these days of snoops and busybodies, I’ve kept secrets. Secrets deeper than even the Helvetian Gnomes had.”

No doubt this was meant to impress Roland. It did. But he’d be damned if he’d give the bastard any satisfaction. “So what do we do now?”

Chang seemed to inspect him. “Now it’s customary for me to bribe you. You must know I can offer you wealth and power. This tunnel bears a floater trolley on silent rails. If you help me take away my treasure, it could begin a long, profitable relationship.”

Roland felt the piercing intensity of the man’s scrutiny. After a moment’s thought, he shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

Now it was Chang’s turn to pause. Then he giggled. “Ah! I do enjoy encountering wit. Obviously you know I am lying, that I’d kill you once we reached the other end. And I, in turn, can tell you have more urgent goals than money. Is it honor you seek, perhaps?”

Again, Roland shrugged. He wouldn’t have put it quite that way.

“So, again we have a standoff. Hence my second proposition. You help me load my trolley, at gunpoint. I will then depart and let you live.”

This time Roland’s pause was calculated only to delay. “How do I know…”

“No questions! Obviously I can’t turn my back on you. Agree or die now. Begin with the bags on the shelf by your shoulder, or I’ll shoot and be gone before others can come!”

Roland slowly turned and picked up two of the bags, one in each hand.

The “trolley” did indeed float a few millimeters above a pair of gleaming rails, stretching off into interminable darkness. Roland had no doubt it was meant for swift escape, or that Chang would be long gone by the time UNEPA traced the other end. The guy seemed to have thought of everything.

He tried to carry as little as he could each trip. Chang lit a cigarette and fumed, watching him like a cat as Roland leaned over the tiny passenger’s pallet to lay his loads in the trolley’s capacious cargo hamper.

Roland’s experience with babushkas and grempers back in Indiana helped, for he seemed to know by instinct how to just brush the inside edge of provocation. Once, he fumbled one of the clay jars. It hit hard and trickled powder onto the tunnel floor, crackling where bits struck the silvery rails. Chang hissed and the knuckles of his hand whitened on the pistol grip. Still, Roland figured the geep wouldn’t shoot him just yet. He’d do it at the last moment, probably when the trolley was ready to go.

“Hurry up!” the Han millionaire spat. “You move like an American!”

That gave Roland an excuse to turn and grin at the man. “How’d you guess?” he asked, slowing things another few seconds, stretching Chang’s patience before grabbing two more jars and resuming work.

Chang kept glancing up the stairs, obviously listening… but never letting his attention waver long enough to give Roland any foolish notions. You should’ve reported the secret passage the minute you found it, Roland thought, cursing inwardly. Unfortunately, the opening was behind the display case, and who knew when it would be discovered? Too late for Private Roland Senterius, probably.

The look in Chang’s calculating eyes made Roland reconsider the scenario. He knows that I know I’ll have to jump him, just before the end.

What’s more, he knows that I know that he knows.

That meant Chang would shoot him before the last moment, to prevent that desperate lunge. But how soon before?

Not too soon, or the smuggler would have to depart with a half-empty trolley, abandoning the rest of his hoard forever. Clearly, Chang’s profound greed was the one thing keeping Roland alive. Still, he’d have to do it before the cargo hamper was topped off… before Roland’s adrenaline was pumping for the maximum, all-or-nothing effort.

Five loads to go, Roland thought while fitting more jars snugly into place under Chang’s watchful eye. Will he do it at three? Or two!

He was delivering the next load, beginning to screw up his courage, when a noise echoed down the steep stair shaft, preempting all plans.

“Senterius! It’s Kanakoa. And Schmidt. What the hell you doing down here?”

Roland froze. Chang edged against the wall near the steps, watching him. There came the scrape of footsteps on stone.

Dumpit, Roland cursed. He was bent over the trolley in an awkward position, much too far away to attack Chang with any chance of success. In addition, his hands were laden with bags. If only he were carrying jars, that could be thrown…

“Senterius? What are you doing, asshole? Smoking? Kleinerman’ll roast all of us if they catch you!”

Roland suddenly realized why Chang was watching him so intently. Chang’s following my eyes!

Roland’s gaze could not help widening when one booted foot appeared on the topmost visible step. Chang was using him to gauge where the other recruits were, to tell when the moment was just right for killing all three of them! In holding onto seconds of life, Roland knew suddenly, horribly, he was murdering Kanakoa and Schmidt.

Still, even knowing that, he remained statuelike. In Chang’s eyes he saw understanding and the glitter of contemptuous victory. How did he know? Roland railed inside. How did he know I was a coward?

The admission belied every one of his dreams. It betrayed what Roland had thought were his reasons for living. The realization seared so hot it tore through his rigor and burst forth in a sudden scream.

“Cover!” he cried, and threw himself onto the pallet, slamming home the trolley’s single lever. Almost simultaneously a series of rapid bangs rattled the narrow chamber and Roland’s leg erupted in sudden agony. Then there was blackness and the swift whistle of wind as the little car sped into a gloom darker than any he had ever known.

Seconds ticked while he battled fiery pain. Clenching his jaw to keep from moaning, Roland desperately hauled back on the lever, bringing the trolley to a jerky halt in the middle of the arrow-straight shaft. Waves of dizziness almost overwhelmed him as he rolled over onto his back and clutched his thigh, feeling a sickening, sticky wetness there.

One thing for certain, he couldn’t afford the luxury of fainting here. Funny — he’d been taught all that biofeedback stuff in school, and drilled in it again here in training. But right now he just couldn’t spare the time to use any of those techniques, not even to stop the pain!

“There are two types of simple thigh wounds,” memorized words droned as he wrestled the belt from his waist. “One, a straight puncture of muscle fiber, is quite manageable. Treat it quickly and move on. Your comrade should be able to offer covering fire, even if he can no longer move.

“The other kind is much more dangerous …”

Roland fought shivers as he looped the belt above the wound. He had no idea which type it was. If Chang had hit the femoral artery, this makeshift tourniquet wasn’t going to do much good.

He grunted and yanked hard, cinching the belt as tight as he could, and then slumped back in reaction and exhaustion.

You did it! He told himself. You beat the bastard!

Roland tried to feel elated. Even if he was now bleeding to death, he’d certainly won more minutes than Chang had intended giving him. More important still, Chang was brought down! In stealing the smuggling lord’s only means of escape, Roland had ensured his capture!

Then why do I feel so rotten?

In fantasy Roland had often visualized being wounded, even dying in battle. Always though, he had imagined there’d be some solace, if only a soldier’s final condolence of victory.

So why did he feel so dirty now? So ashamed?

He was alive now because he’d done the unexpected. Chang had been looking for heroism or cowardice — a berserk attack or animal rigor. But in that moment of impulse Roland had remembered the words of the old vet in Bloomington. “A fool who wants to live will do anything his captor tells him. He’ll stand perfectly still just to win a few more heartbeats. Or he may burst into a useless charge.

“That’s when, sometimes, it takes the most guts to retreat in good order, to fight another day.”

Yeah, Joseph, sure. Roland thought. Tell me about it.

As his heart rate eased and the panting subsided, he now heard what sounded like moans coming down the tunnel. Kanakoa or Schmidt, or both. Wounded. Perhaps dying.

What good would I have done by staying? Instead of a leg wound, he’d have gone down with several bullets in the heart or face, and Chang would have gotten away.

True enough, but that didn’t seem to help. Nor did reminding himself that neither of those guys back there were really his friends, anyway.

“Soldier boy!” The shout echoed down the narrow passage. “Bring the trolley back or I’ll shoot you now!”

“Fat chance,” Roland muttered. And even Chang’s voice carried little conviction. Straight as the tunnel was, and even allowing for ricochets, the odds of hitting him were low even for an expert. Anyway, what good was a threat, when to comply meant certain death?

It wasn’t repeated. For all the millionaire knew Roland was already at the other end.

“Why did I stop?” Roland asked aloud, softly. At the terminus he might find a telephone to call an ambulance, instead of lying here possibly bleeding to death.

A wave of agony throbbed up his leg. “And I thought I was so smart, not becomin’ a dazer.”

If he’d ever slipped over that line — using biofeedback to trip-off on self-stimulated endorphins — he’d certainly have a skill appropriate for here and now! What would have been self-abuse in Indiana would be right-on first aid at a time like this.

But then again, if he’d ever been a dazer, he wouldn’t even be here right now. The corps didn’t accept addicts.

Suddenly the cavern erupted in thunder, shaking the very walls. Roland covered his ears, recognizing pulse-rifle fire. No doubt about it, the real soldiers had arrived at last.

The gunshots ended almost immediately. Could it be over already? he wondered.

But no. As the ringing echoes subsided, he heard voices. One of them Chang’s.

“… if you throw down grenades. So if you want your wounded soldiers to live, negotiate with me!”

So Chang claimed two captives. Roland realized gloomily that both Schmidt and Kanakoa must have been caught, despite his shouted warning.

Or maybe not! After all, would Chang admit to having let one recruit escape down the tunnel? Perhaps he only had one of the others and used the plural form as a ploy. Roland clung to that hope.

It took a while for someone in authority to begin negotiations. The officer’s voice was too muffled for Roland to make out, but he could hear Chang’s side of the exchange.

“Not good enough! Prison would be the same as death for me! I accept nothing more rigorous than house arrest on my Pingtung estate…

“Yes, naturally I will turn state’s evidence. I owe my associates nothing. But I must have the deal sealed by a magistrate, at once!”

Again, the officials’ words were indistinct. Roland caught tones of prevarication.

“Stop delaying! The alternative is death for these young soldiers!” Chang shouted back.

“Yes, yes, of course they can have medical attention… after I get my plea bargain! Properly sealed! Meanwhile, any sign of a stun or concussion grenade and I shoot them in the head, then myself!”

Roland could tell the marshals were weakening, probably under pressure from the peacekeeper CO. Dammit! he thought. The good guys’ victory would be compromised. Worse, Chang surely had means at his estate for another escape, even from state detention.

Don’t give in, he mentally urged the officers, though he felt pangs thinking of Kanakoa, or even Schmidt, lying there dying. If you plea bargain, the bastard’ll just start all over again.

But Chang’s next shout carried tones of satisfaction. “That’s better! I can accept that. You better hurry with the document though. These men do not look well.”

Roland cursed. “No!”

He rolled over and reached into the cargo hamper, tossing bags and jars onto the tracks ahead. They split and shattered. Narwhal tusks and rhino horns coated the tracks in powdered form, obstructing further travel in that direction. Then Roland fought fresh waves of nausea to writhe around on the narrow trolley, facing the direction he had come.

He’d worried he might have to manipulate the lever with his feet. But there was a duplicate at the other end. A red tag prevented the switch from being pushed past a certain point. This Roland tore out, ripping one of his fingers in the process.

“Yes, I am willing to have my house arrest fully monitored by cameras at all times…”

“I’m sure you are, carni-man,” Roland muttered. “But you don’t fool me.”

He slammed the lever home and the trolley glided forward. What began as a gentle breeze soon was a hurricane as power flowed from the humming rails.

You forget, Chang, that your estate is still on Mother Earth. And my guess is that Mom’s had just about enough of you by now.

The light ahead ballooned in a rapidly expanding circle of brilliance. Roland felt solenoids try to throw the lever back, but he strained, holding it in place. In an instant of telescoped time, he saw a figure turn in the light, stare down the shaft, raise his weapon…

“Gaia!” Roland screamed, a battle cry chosen at the last second from some unknown recess of faith as he hurtled like a missile into space.

It was a mess the UNEPA team came down to inspect, after peacekeeping personnel pronounced it safe, and once the wounded boy had been rushed off to hospital. They were still taking pictures of the two remaining bodies when the green-clad Ecology Department officials came down the steep stairs at last to see what had happened.

“Well, here’s your missing cache, Elena,” one of them said, picking carefully through the white and gray powders scattered across the floor. Three walls of shelves were intact, but a fourth had collapsed over two quiet forms, sprawled atop each other in the corner. There, the snowdrifts had been stained crimson.

“Damn,” the UNEPA man continued, shaking his head. “A lot of poor beasts died for one geek’s fetish.”

Elena looked down at her enemy of all these years. Chang’s mouth gaped open — crammed full of powder that trailed off to the limp hand of the young recruit she had spoken to early in the evening. Even dying, riddled with bullets, this soldier apparently had a sense of symmetry, of poetry.

A peacekeeping forces noncom sat near the boy, smoothing a lock of ruffled hair. The corporal looked up at Elena. “Senterius was a lousy shot. Never showed any promise at all with weapons. I guess he improvised though. He graduated.”

Elena turned away, disgusted by the maudlin, adolescent sentiment. Warriors, she thought. The world is finally growing up though. Someday soon we’ll be rid of them at last.

Still, why was it she all of a sudden felt as if she had walked into a temple? Or that the spirits of all the martyred creatures were holding silent, reverent watch right now, along with the mourning corporal?

It was another woman’s low voice Elena seemed to hear then, so briefly it was all too easy to dismiss as an echo or a momentary figment of exhaustion. Still, she briefly closed her eyes and swayed.

“There will be an end to war,” the voice seemed to say, with gentle patience.

“But there will always be a need for heroes. ”

• BIOSPHERE

The trick to reading, Nelson Grayson decided, was slipping into the rhythm of the words, but not letting that get in the way of listening. Nelson concentrated on the sentences zigzagging across the page.

The worst thing about studying, Nelson had decided, was books. Especially this old-fashioned kind, with motionless letters the color of squashed ants splayed across musty paper. Still, this dusty volume contained Kuwenezi’s sole copy of this essay. So he had to stick with it.

Nelson thought he understood the basic issue here. A good example was how people often did what was good for themselves, even if it hurt their family, friends, or society.

But what do peacocks’ tails have to do with it?

Nelson sat beneath overhanging bougainvilleas. Nearby, the gentle flow of water was punctuated by the sound of splashing fish. The air carried thick aromas, but Nelson tried to ignore all those deceptively natural sensoria for the archaic paper reading device in his hands.

If only it were a modern document, with a smart index and hyper links stretching all through the world data net. It was terribly frustrating having to flip back and forth between the pages and crude, flat illustrations that never even moved! Nor were there animated arrows or zoom-ins. It completely lacked a tap for sound.

Most baffling of all was the problem of new words. Yes, it was his own damn fault he had neglected his education until so late in life. But still, in a normal text you’d only have to touch an unfamiliar word and the definition would pop up just below. Not here though. The paper simply lay there, inert and uncooperative.

When he’d complained about this, earlier, Dr. B’Keli only handed him another of these flat books, something called a “dictionary,” whose arcane use eluded him entirely.

How did students back in TwenCen ever learn anything at all? he wondered.

Good, Nelson thought. This is what I was looking for.

The book suddenly jolted as a brown paw slapped it. A long snout, filled with gleaming teeth, thrust into view. Feral brown eyes glittered into his.

“Oh, not now, Shig,” Nelson complained. “Can’t you see I’m studyin’?”

But the infant baboon craved attention. It reached out and squeaked appealingly. Nelson sighed and gave in, though his arms were still tender with freshly healed scar tissue.

“What do you have there, eh?” He pried open the little monkey’s paw. Something reddish and half gnawed rolled out — a piece of fruit purloined from a forbidden source. “Aw, come on, Shig. Don’t I feed you more’n enough?”

Of course this was night shift and no one else was around to witness the minor theft. He dug a small depression in the soft loam and buried the evidence. With all recycling factors above par, one pilfered fruit probably wouldn’t trigger catastrophe.

A broad expanse of tinted crystal panes separated this portion of the biosphere from the star-sprinkled night. More than mere practicality had gone into creating this enclosed miracle of biological management. The tracks and runners, the sprinklers and sprayers, were so tastefully hidden one might think this an arboretum or greenhouse rather than a high-tech sewage plant.

Settling Shig in his left arm, Nelson tried to resume where he’d left off.

Affronted at being ignored, Shig dealt with the insult by turning and sitting on the open book, then looking about innocently.

“Oh, yeah?” Nelson said, and retaliated by tickling the infant, whose jaws gaped in a silent laughter as he writhed and finally escaped by toppling onto the soft grass.

Then, switching states quickly, the little baboon suddenly crouched warily, sniffing the brookside foliage and listening. Shig’s gaze swept the pebbly banks of the nearby stream and the maze of dripping vines crisscrossing overhead. Then, suddenly, a larger baboon emerged from the rustling plantain beds and Shig let out a squeak of pleasure.

Nell sniffed left and right before climbing down and sauntering, toward her offspring, tail high. Sleek and well fed, she hardly resembled the scraggly outcast Nelson had rescued from ark four’s savannah biosphere. Nelson couldn’t help comparing her transformation to his own. We’ve come a long way from sampling shit for a living, he thought.

While in the hospital he at first had worried what the scientists would do to him for leaving six male baboons battered and whimpering beneath the dusty acacia trees. Self-defense or no, Nelson had visions of dismissal, deportation, and a year’s corrective therapy back in a Yukon rehab camp.

But apparently the Ndebele regarded his exploit in ways he hadn’t imagined. Director Mugabe, especially, spoke of the episode having “a salutary effect on the baboons’ relationship with their caretakers…”

If by that he meant the troop would henceforth treat humans more respectfully, Nelson supposed the director had a point. Beyond that though, the people of Kuwenezi claimed to appreciate the “warrior’s virtues” he’d displayed. Hence the battery of placement exams that followed his release from care, and his astonishing assignment here, with the prestigious title of Waste Management Specialist/2.

“Of course the pay’s still shitty,” he reminded himself. Nevertheless, the skills he learned here were in high demand and would guarantee his prospects if he did well.

Modern cities dealt with sewage biologically these days, imitating nature’s own methods. The flow from tens of millions of toilets coursed through settling and aerating paddies the size of large farms. One stretch might be a riot of bulrushes and aloe, bred to remove heavy metals. Next, a scum of specially designed algae would convert ammonia and methane into animal fodder. Finally, most urban treatment plants ended in snail ponds, with fish to eat the snails, and both harvested to sell on the open market.

The water that emerged was generally as pure as any mountain stream. Purer, given the state of most streams these days. It was to this craft at recycling water that most now credited the survival of modern cities. Without it, the least consequence nearly everywhere would have been war.

The problem with bio-treatment, though, was that it took acres and acres. A life ark had no room for that. The refuge ecospheres had to be self-contained, and self-supporting, or weary taxpayers might someday forget their pledge to fund these living time capsules, preserving genetic treasures for another, more fortunate age.

So Director Mugabe had decreed that this system must be “folded.” What might have covered hectares now fit into the area of a large auditorium.

Diluted sewage first seeped between the sandwiched glassy layers overhead, encountering special algae and sunlight. After aeration, the green slurry then sprayed over suspended trays of vegetation. Dripping slowly down the hanging roots, filtered water at last fell to the streamlet below, where duckweed completed the process, helped by several species of fish that thrived here, even though they were now extinct in the wild.

Shig climbed onto his mother’s back and Nell carried her infant over to the miniature river to splash at the shallows playfully. Naturally the recycling plant was deserted at this hour. At first nervous about handling a shift all by himself, Nelson soon found the task strangely easy, as if the complex interplay of details — adjusting flows and checking growth rates — seemed natural, even obvious somehow. Mugabe and B’Keli said he possessed a “knack,” whatever that meant. The whole thing had Nelson terribly puzzled, if also pleased.

Back in school he hadn’t given much thought to what the teachers said — about how vegetation took in carbon dioxide, nitrates, and water, and used sunlight to turn those ingredients into oxygen, carbohydrates, and protein. In essence, plants converted animals’ waste products into the very things animals needed for living, and vice versa. Those lessons had been part of his curriculum since preschool, including all the ways man’s industry had thrown the system out of balance.

Still, he was pretty sure nobody had ever told him about benzene or hydrogen cyanide or ammonia, or all the other bizarre chemicals given off in trace amounts by creatures like himself. Chemicals which — if not for all sorts of hardworking bacteria — would have choked the atmosphere and killed everybody off long before humans ever fooled around with fire.

“Were you aware of the importance of wool moths and hair beetles?” Dr. B’Keli had asked when Nelson first started showing an interest. “If it weren’t for those specialized eaters of fur and hair, we mammals would have covered the land with a layer of sheddings more than two meters thick by now. Think of that, next time you spread mothballs to save your favorite sweater!”

Nelson shook his head, certain he was being had. I might be a changed person, but I still don’t like Dr. B’Keli.

Still, it had gotten him thinking. What made the system of cycle and recycle work so well for millions of years? For every waste product it seemed there was some species out there willing to consume it. Every plant or animal depended on others and was depended on by others still.

Even more amazing, the interdependence was usually a matter of eating one other! As individuals, each creature tried hard to avoid becoming anyone else’s meal. And yet, it was all this eating and being eaten, this preying and being preyed upon, that made the great balancing act work!

Months ago, he would never have allowed himself the presumed weakness of curiosity. Now it consumed him. The pattern of symmetry had been going on for three billion years, and he wanted to know everything about it.

How? How did it all come about?

That visiting professor some weeks back, the old woman from England, had called the process “homeostasis”… the tendency of some special systems to stay in balance for a long time, even if they’re rocked by temporary setbacks.

Nelson mouthed the word.

“Homeostasis…”

It had a sensual sound to it. He picked up the book again and found his place.

Yes, Nelson thought. She’s the only one I’ve found who talks about the real stuff. I don’t understand half of what she says, but it’s here. This is where I start.

He stroked the scratchy paper pages, and for the first time thought he understood why some oldtimers still preferred such volumes to modern books. The words were here, now and always, not whispering ghosts of electronic wisdom, sage but fleeting like moonbeams. What the volume lacked in subtlety, it made up for in solidity.

Like me, maybe?

Nelson laughed.

“Right! Dream on, eh?”

He returned to the text. When the monkeys returned from their bath, they found him deeply immersed in an adventure they could not begin to follow. This time, however, they merely sat and watched, letting him do this strange human thing in peace.

• CORE

“You did not make Pele as angry this time, you well-endowed pakeha tohunga.”

The old priestess reached over to pat Alex’s knee.

With a reedy voice she went on complimenting him. “You must be learning better foreplay! Keep it up. That, surely, is the way to win Pele’s favor.”

Alex’s face reddened. He looked to George Hutton, sitting on a woven mat nearby. “Now what’s she talking about?”

The big Maori glanced across the fire pit at Meriana Kapur, who grinned as she stirred the coals with an iron poker. Quiescent flames licked higher and the tattoos on her lips and chin seemed to flicker and dance. The crone appeared ageless.

“Auntie’s referring to the fact that there were fewer and milder quakes after the recent scans. That must mean the Earth goddess found your, er, probings… more acceptable this time.”

George said it with a straight face. Or almost straight. The ambiguity was just enough to make Alex suppress an impulse to laugh out loud.

“I thought Pele was a Hawaiian spirit, not Maori.”

George shrugged. “The Pacific’s cosmopolitan today. Hawaiian priests consult ours in matters of body magic, while we defer when it comes to volcanoes and planetary animism.”

“Is that where you studied geophysics, then?” Alex smirked. “In a shaman’s hut, beside a lava flow?”

He was surprised when George nodded earnestly, without taking offense. “There, and MIT, yes.” Hutton went on to explain. “Naturally, Western science is paramount. It’s the central body of knowledge, and the old gods long ago admitted that. Nevertheless, my ventures wouldn’t have got backing from my family and iwi and clan, had I not also apprenticed for a time with Pele’s priests, at the feet of Kilauea.”

Alex sighed. He shouldn’t be surprised. Like California fifty years ago, contemporary New Zealand had gradually transformed its longstanding tradition of tolerance into a positive fetish for eccentricity. Of course George’s people saw nothing inconsistent in mixing old and new ideas to suit their eclectic style. And if that occasionally made staid outsiders blink in wonder, so much the better.

Alex refused to give George the satisfaction. He shrugged and turned to regard the priestess once again.

Here under the hand-carved beams of the centuries-old meeting house, he had only to squint to imagine himself transported in time. Even her tattoos looked genuine… unlike those the entertainers at Rotorua put on and took off as easily as hair or skin color. Still, it was doubtful many ancient Maori women, even priestesses, reached Auntie’s age with all their own teeth still in place, as hers were, gleaming straight and white from a life of hygiene and regular professional care.

Alex realized she was waiting for a reply, and so he nodded slightly. “Thank you, Auntie. I’m glad the goddess found my attentions… pleasing.”

George planted a hand on his shoulder. “Of course Pele liked them. Didn’t the Earth move for you?.”

Alex shrugged the hand aside. George had insisted they come here tonight, implying it was important. Meanwhile Alex chafed for the lab and his computer. One more simulation might break the logjam. Maybe if he kept at it, kept trying…

“You pursue a great taniwha that has burrowed into Our Mother,” the priestess said. “You seek to grasp its nature. You fear it will devour Our Mother and ourselves.”

He nodded. A colorful appraisal, but it summed things up rather well. Their most recent gravitational tomography scans had lit up Earth’s interior with a startling clarity that struck George’s technicians dumb, sketching the planet’s deep layers in fine, prickled, searing complexity that defied all previous geophysical models.

The search had revealed both “taniwhas,” the two singularities slowly orbiting near the planet’s heart. Both the shriveled, evaporating remnant of his own Alpha and the ominous, massive spectre of Beta had shown up as tiny, perfect sparkles within the maelstrom. Everything he’d surmised about the larger beast had been confirmed in those scans. The cosmic knot was growing, all right. And the more closely he examined its convoluted world-sheets, its torturous topology of warped space-time, the more beautiful it grew in its implacable deadliness.

Unfortunately, he was no closer to answering any of the really basic questions, such as when and where the thing had originated. Or how it was that probing for it triggered earthquakes at the surface, thousands of miles away.

Hell, he couldn’t even figure out the thing’s orbit! Prior to these recent scans he’d been so sure he had Beta’s dynamics worked out — the way gravity and pseudo-friction and centrifugal forces balanced in its slow whirl about the inner core. But its trajectory had shifted after the first scan. Some additional factor must have nudged it. But what?

Auntie Kapur tapped a steady beat on a miniature ceremonial drum- — which some called a zzxjoanw — while making fatidic statements about amorous goddesses and other superstitious nonsense.

“… You reach deep within Pele’s hidden places, touching Her secrets. She would not permit this of just any man. You are honored, nephew.”

Gaia worship took many forms, and this Pele-venerating version seemed harmless enough. He’d even heard Jen speak favorably of Auntie’s cult, once. Under other circumstances he might have found all this very interesting, instead of a damned nuisance.

“Have no fear,” she went on. “You will tame this beast you pursue. You will keep it from harming Our Mother.”

She paused, looking at him expectantly. Alex tried to think of something to say.

“I am an unworthy man,” he answered, modestly.

But the old woman surprised him with a quick, reproachful glare. “It’s not for you to judge your worthiness! You serve, as a man’s seed serves the woman who chooses him. Even the taniwha serves. You would do well, boy, to consider the lesson of the tiny kiwi bird and her enormous egg”

Alex stared. The suggestion seemed so bizarre — and the tension of the last few weeks had him wound up so tight — that he couldn’t contain himself any longer. He guffawed.

Auntie Kapur tilted her head. “You are amused by my metaphors?”

“I…” He held up one hand placatingly.

“Would you prefer I used other terms? That I ask you to contemplate the relationship between ‘zygotes’ and ‘gametes’? Would you understand better if I spoke to you of dissipative structures? Or the way, even amid catastrophe, life creates order out of chaos?”

Alex was unable to react except by blinking. While she stirred the coals again, George whispered, “Auntie has a biophysics degree from the University of Otago. Don’t make assumptions, Lustig.”

Trapped — by a movie clichi! Alex had known this was a modern person sitting across from him. And yet her pose — what Stan Goldman would call her “schtick” — had drawn him in.

“You… you’re saying the singularity won’t harm the Earth?. That it might instead trigger some…”

Auntie reached over the coals and rapped him sharply on the back of his hand. “I say nothing! It’s not my job to tell you, a ‘genius,’ what to think — you, who have many times my brains and whose prowess impresses even Our Mother. Those are silly endowments but they serve their purposes.

“No, I only pose you questions, at a time when you’re obviously concentrating much too closely on your problem. You show every sign of being ensnared by those very brains of yours — of being cornered by your postulates! To nudge you off balance then, I offer you the wisdom of sperm and egg-

“Heed my words or not. Do as you will. I have confused you and that is enough. Your unconscious will do the rest.”

She concluded rattling the drum, then put it aside and dismissed both men with a brusque wave. “I forbid further work until you’ve rested and distracted yourselves. You are commanded to get drunk tonight. Now go.”

The priestess watched the fire pit silently as they stood up. Alex grabbed his shoes and followed George out of the meeting house, into a starry night. Ten feet down the path, however, the two men stopped, looked at each other, and simultaneously broke into fits of laughter. Alex nearly doubled over, his sides hurting as he desperately tried to catch his breath. George slapped him roughly on the back. “Come on,” the big Maori said. “Let’s get a beer. Or ten.”

Alex grinned, wiping his eyes. “I… I’ll join you in an hour or so, George. Honestly. I only have to check one simulation and… what’s the matter?”

Suddenly frowning, George shook his head. “Not tonight. You heard what Auntie said. Rest and distraction.”

For the third time that evening, Alex gaped. “You can’t take that crazy old bat seriously!”

George smiled sheepishly, but also nodded. “She is a bit of a ham. But where her authority applies, I obey. We get drunk tonight, white fellow. You and I, now. Whether you cooperate or not.”

Alex had a sudden vision of this massive billionaire holding his head under a beer tap, while he sputtered and fought helplessly. The image was startlingly credible. Another believer, he sighed inwardly. They were everywhere.

“Well… I wouldn’t want to flout tradition…”

“Good.” George slapped Alex on the back once more, almost knocking him over. “And between rounds I’ll tell you how I once substituted for the great Makahuna, back in ’20, when the All Blacks smashed Australia.”

Oh, no. Rugby stones. That’s all I need.

Still, Alex felt a strange relief. He’d been commanded to seek oblivion, and by no less than a spokeswoman for Gaia herself. On such authority — despite his agnosticism — he supposed he could let himself forget for just one night.

Alex had been in pubs all over the world, from the faded elegance of the White Hart, in Bloomsbury, to rickety, fire-trap shanties in Angolan boom towns. There had been that kitschy Russian tourist bistro, near the launch site at Kapustin Yar, where dilute, vitamin-enriched vodka was served in pastel squeeze tubes to background strains of moon muzak… very tacky. He’d even been to the bar of the Hotel Imperial, in Shanghai, just before the Great Big War Against Tobacco finally breached that mist-shrouded last bastion of smoking, driving grumbling addicts into back alleys to nurse their dying habit.

In comparison, the Kai-Keri was as homey and familiar as the Washington, his own local back in Belsize Park. The bitter brown ale was much the same. True, the crowd around the dart board stood closer than in a typical British pub, and Alex had gotten lost during his last two trips to the loo. But he attributed that to the coriolis effect. After all, everything was upside down here in kiwi land.

One thing you wouldn’t see in Britain was this easy fraternizing of the races. From full-blooded Maoris to palefaced, blond pakehas and every shade in between, nobody seemed to notice differences that still occasionally caused riots back home.

Oh, they had names for every pigmentation and nationality, including postage stamp island states Alex had never even heard of. The New Zealand Herald just that morning had run an outraged expose about promotion discrimination against Fijian guest-workers in an Auckland factory. It had sounded unfair, all right… and also incredibly picayune compared with the injustices and bigotries still being perpetrated almost everywhere else, all over the world.

Actually, Alex figured Kiwis fretted over such small-scale imperfections so they wouldn’t feel left out. Harmony was all very good in theory, but in practice it sometimes seemed a bit embarrassing.

Soon after arriving in New Zealand, he had asked Stan Goldman just how far the attitude stretched. How would Stan feel, for instance, if his daughter came home one night and said she wanted to marry a Maori boy?

Alex’s former mentor had stared back in surprise.

“But Alex, that’s exactly what she did!”

Soon he also met George’s family, and the wives and husbands and kids of several Tangoparu engineers. They had all made him feel welcome. None seemed to blame him for the deadly thing that was growing in the Earth’s core.

And you’re not responsible. It’s not your monster.

Again, the reminder helped, a little.

“Drink, Lustig. You’ve fallen behind Stan and me.”

George Hutton was accustomed to getting his way. Dutifully, Alex took a breath and lifted the tapered glass of warm brew. He closed his eyes, swallowed, and put it down again, empty.

When he reopened them, however, the pint had magically resurrected! Was this divine intervention? Or defiance of entropy? The detached portion of Alex’s mind knew someone must have poured another round, presumably from a pitcher that even now existed somewhere outside his diminishing field of vision. Still, it was fun to consider alternatives. A negentropic time-reversal had certain arguments in its favor.

With yet another of his unraveling faculties, Alex listened to Stan Goldman’s recollections from dimly remembered days at the end of the last century.

“I was thinkin’ about becoming a biologist in the late nineties,” his former research advisor said. “That’s where all the excitement was then. Biologists think of those days the way we physicists look back on the early nineteen-hundreds, when Planck an’ Schrodinger were inventing the quantum, and old Albert himself nailed the speed o’ light to the bleeding reference frame… when the basis for a whole science was laid down.

“What a time that must have been! A century’s engineering came out of what those lucky bastards discovered. But by my time it was all lookin’ pretty dumpit boring for physics.”

“C’mon, Stan,” George Hutton protested. “The late nineties, boring? For physics? Wasn’t that when Adler and Hurt completed grand unification? Combinin’ all the forces of nature into one big megillah? You can’t tell me you weren’t excited then!”

Stan brought one spotted hand to his smooth dome, using a paper serviette to dab away spots of perspiration. “Oh, surely. The unification equations were brilliant, elegant. They called it a “theory of everything”… TOE for short.

“But by then field theory was mostly a spectator sport. It took almost mutant brilliance to participate… like you have to be eight feet tall to play pro basketball these days. What’s more, you started hearing talk about closing the books on physics. There were profs who said ‘all the important questions have been answered.’ ”

“That’s why you thought about leaving the field?” George inquired.

Stan shook his head. “Naw. What really had me depressed was that we’d run out of modalities.”

Alex had been pinching his numb cheeks, in search of any feeling. He turned to peer at Stan. “Modalities?”

“Basic ways and means. Chinks in nature’s wall. The lever and the fulcrum. The wheel an’ the wedge. Fire an’ nuclear fission.

“Those weren’t just intellectual curiosities, Alex. They started out as useless abstractions, sure. But, well, do you remember how Michael Faraday answered, when a member of Parliament asked him what use would ever come of his crazy ‘electricity’ thing?”

George Hutton nodded. “I heard about that! Didn’t Faraday ask, um… what use was a newborn baby?”

“That’s one version,” Alex agreed, commanding his head to mimic the approximate trajectory of a nod. “Another story has him answering — ‘I don’t know, sir. But I’ll wagell, er… wager someday you’ll tax it!’ ” Alex laughed. “Always liked that story.”

“Yeah,” Stan agreed. “And Faraday was right, wasn’t he? Look at the difference electricity made! Physics became the leading science, not just because it dealt in fundamentals but also ’cause it opened doors — modalities — offering us powers we once reckoned belonged to gods!”

Alex closed his eyes. Momentarily it seemed he was back in the meeting house, with Auntie Kapur slyly referring to the ways of heavenly beings.

“Grand unification depressed you because it wasn’t practical*.” George asked unbelievingly.

“Exactly!” Stan stabbed a finger toward the big geo-physicist. “So Hurt described how the electroweak force unifies with chromodynamics and gravitation. So what? To ever do anything with the knowledge, we’d need the temperatures and pressures of the Big Bang!”

Stan made a sour look. “Pfeh! Can you see why I almost switched to quantum biology? That was where new theories might make a difference, lead to new products, and change people’s lives.”

Hutton regarded his old friend with clear disappointment. “And I always thought you math types were in it for the beauty. Turns out you’re as much a gadget junky as I am.” He waved to a passing barmaid, ordering another round.

Goldman shrugged. “Beauty and practicality aren’t always inconsistent. Look at Einstein’s formulas for absorption and emission of radiation. What elegance! Such simplicity! He had no idea he was predicting lasers. But the potential’s right there in the equations…”

Alex felt the words wash over him. They were like swarming creatures. He had a strange fantasy the things were seeking places within him to lay their young. Normally, he had little use for the popular multimind models of consciousness. But right now the normal, comforting illusion of personal unity seemed to have been dissolved by the solvent, alcohol. He felt he wasn’t singular, but many.

One self watched in bemusement while a dark pint reappeared before him, again, as if by magic. Another sub-persona struggled to follow the thread of Stan’s rambling reminiscence.

But then, behind his tightening brow, yet more selves wrestled over something still submerged. Benumbed by fatigue and alcohol, logic had been squelched and other, more chaotic forces seemed to romp unfettered. Ninety-nine to one the results would be just the sort that sounded great during a party and like gibberish the morning after.

“… when, out of nowhere, the cavitron appeared! Imagine my delight,” Stan went on, spreading his gnarled hands. “All of a sudden we found there was, after all, a way to gain access to the heart of the new physics!”

The elderly theoretician made a fist, as if grasping tightly some long-sought quarry. “One year the field seemed sterile, sexless, doomed to mathematical masturbation or worse — perpetual, pristine theoretical splendor. The next moment — boom! We had in our hands the power to make singularities! To move and shape space itself!”

Stan appeared to have temporarily forgotten the tragic consequences of that discovery. Even so, Alex took sustenance from his friend’s enthusiasm. He recalled his own feelings on hearing the news — that the team at Livermore had actually converted raw vacuum into concentrated space-time. The possibilities seemed endless. What he himself had envisioned was cheap, endless energy for a shaky, impoverished world.

“Oh, there remained limitations,” Stan went on. “But the chink was there. The new lever and fulcrum. Perhaps a new wheel! I felt as Charles Townes must have, the day he bounced light back and forth through the lattice in that pumped-up ruby crystal, causing it to…”

Alex’s chair teetered backward as he stood suddenly. He steadied himself with his fingertips against the tabletop. Then, staring straight ahead, he stumbled awkwardly through the crowd, weaving toward the door.

“Alex?” George called after him. “Alex!”

A stand of Norfolk pine, twenty meters from the rural pub, drew him like flotsam from a roaring stream. In that eddy the air was fresh and the chatty hubbub no longer sought to overwhelm him. Here Alex had only the rustle of boughs to contend with, a gentle answer to the wind.

“What is it?” George Hutton asked when he caught up a minute later. “Lustig, what’s the matter?”

Alex’s mind spun. He swiveled precariously, torn between trying to follow all the threads at once and grabbing tightly onto just a few before they all blew away.

He blurted, “A laser, George. It’s a laser!”

Hutton bent to meet Alex’s eye. It wasn’t easy, both men wavered so.

“What are you talking about? What’s a laser?”

Alex made a broad motion with his hands. “Stan mentioned Einstein’s abs — absorption and emission parameters. But remember? There were two ‘B’ parameters — one for spontaneous emission and one for stimulated emission from an excited state.”

“Speaking of an excited state,” George commented. But Alex hurried on.

“George, George!” He spread his arms to keep balance.

“In a laser, you first create an — an inverted energy state in an excited medium… get all the outer electrons in a crystal hopping, right? The other thing you do is you place the crystal inside a resonator. A resonator tuned so only one particular wave can pass back and forth across the crystal…”

“Yeah. You use two mirrors, facing each other at opposite ends. But—”

“Right. Position the mirrors just so, and only one wave will reach a standing state, bouncing to and fro a thousand, million, jillion times. Only one frequency makes it, one polarization, one orientation. That one wave goes back and forth, back and forth at the speed of light — causing stimulated emission from all the excited atoms it passes, sucking their excited energy into one single—”

“Alex—”

“ — into a single coherent beam… all the component waves reinforcing… all propagating in parallel like marching soldiers. The sum is far greater than the individual parts.”

“But—”

Alex grabbed George’s lapels. “Don’t you see? We fed a single waveform into such a medium a few weeks back, and again two days ago. Each time, something emerged. Waves of energy far greater than what we put in!

“Think about it! The Earth’s interior is a hot soup of excited states, like the plasma in a neon tube or a flashed ruby crystal. Given the right conditions, it took what we fed it and magnified the output. It acted as an amplifier!”

“The Earth itself?” George frowned, now seriously puzzled. “An amplifier?. In what way?”

Then he read something in Alex’s face. “Earthquakes. You mean the earthquakes! But… but we never saw any such thing in our old resource scans. Echoes, yes. We got echoes and used them for mapping. But never any amplification effect.”

Alex nodded. “Because you never had a resonator before! Think of the mirrors in a laser, George. They’re what create the conditions for amplification of one waveform, one orientation, into a coherent beam.

“Only, we’re dealing in gravity waves. And not just any gravity waves, but waves specifically tuned to reflect from—”

“From a singularity,” George whispered. “Beta!”

He stepped back, wide-eyed. “Are you saying the taniwha …”

“Yes! It acted as part of a gravity wave resonator. With the amplifying medium consisting of the Earth’s core itself!”

“Alex.” George waved a hand in front of his face. “This is getting crazy.”

“Of course the effect ought to be muddy with only one mirror, and we had only Beta to bounce off of. The second series of tests conformed to that sort of a model.”

Alex stopped and pondered. “But what about that first scan, weeks ago? That time our probe set off narrow, powerfully defined quake swarms. That output beam was so intense! Focused enough to rip apart a space station…”

“A space station?” George sounded aghast. “You don’t mean we caused the American station to…”

Alex nodded. “Didn’t I tell you that? Tragic thing. Awful luck it just happened through a beam so narrow.”

“Alex…” George shook his head. But the flow of words was too intense.

“I understand why the amplification was muddy the second time — just what you’d expect from a one-mirror resonator. But that first time…” Alex slammed his fist into his palm. “There must have been two reflectors.”

“Maybe your Alpha, the Iquitos black hole…”

“No. Wrong placement and frequency. I…” Alex blinked. “Of course. I have it.”

He turned to face George.

“The other singularity must have been aboard the space station itself. It’s the only possible explanation. Their being directly in line with the beam wasn’t coincidental. The station hole resonated with Beta and caused the alignment. It fits.”

“Alex…”

“Let’s see, that would mean the outer assembly of the station would be carried off at a pseudo-acceleration of…”

He paused and looked up through a gap in the branches at the stars overhead. His voice hushed in awe. “Those poor bastards. What a way to go.”

George Hutton blinked, trying to keep up. “Are you saying the Americans had an unlicensed…”

Again, however, Alex’s momentum carried him. “We’ll need a name, of course. How about ‘gravity amplification by stimulated emission of radiation’? Might as well stay with traditional nomenclature.” He turned to look at George. “Well? Do you like it? Shall we call it a ‘graser’? Or would ‘gazer’ sound better. Yes, ‘gazer,’ I think.”

Alex’s eyes glittered. Pain dwelled there, mixed equally with a startled joy of discovery. “How does it feel, George, to have helped unleash the most powerful ‘modality’ ever known?”

The two men looked at each other for a stretched moment of time, as if each were suddenly acutely aware of the pregnant relevance of sound. The silence was broken only when Stan Goldman called from the door of the pub.

“Alex? George? Where are you fellows? You’re taking a long time relieving yourselves. Are you too drunk to find your zippers? Or have you found something else out there that’s interesting?”

“We’re over here!” George Hutton called, and then looked back at Alex, who was staring at the stars again, talking to himself. In a somewhat lower voice, George added, “And yes, Stan, it appears we’ve found something interesting after all.”

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