Existence

  Despite a promise to himself, he soon lost track of how many days and nights had passed. Moreover, gradually, Hacker even stopped worrying about where the pickup boats could be. He no longer rushed to the surface, bobbing frantically, whenever engine sounds rumbled through the shallow currents. It happened frequently, but though he often glimpsed a distant boat or plane, it was never within reach of his shouting voice, or waving arms.

  Angry mutterings about revenge and lawsuits rubbed away under relentless massage by current and tide. Immersed in the dolphins’ communal sonic chatter, he began concerning himself with daily problems of the Tribe, such as when two young males got into a fight, smacking each other with their beaks and flukes, then trading snaps and rakes with sharp teeth, until half a dozen adults intervened, forcibly separating the brawlers.

  Using a combination of spoken words, sign language and his growing vocabulary of click-code, Hacker made inquiries and learned that a female (whose complex name he translated to Blue Lady) was in heat. The youths held little hope of mating with her—top males circled much closer. Still, their nervous energy needed an outlet. At least no one was seriously harmed.

  One old-timer—Mellow Yellowbelly—shyly presented a pectoral fin to Hacker, who used his knife to dig out several wormlike bloodsuckers. The dolphin chuttered unhappily, but barely flinched.

  “You should see a real doctor,” Hacker urged, as if one gave verbal advice to cetaceans every day.

  # Helpers go away, Yellowbelly tried to explain in click-code. Though Hacker had to ask for three repeatings.

  # Fins need hands. Helper hands.

  It supported a theory slowly gestating in Hacker’s mind—that something had been done to these creatures. An alteration that made them distinctly different. A breed somehow apart from others of their species. But what? The mystery grew each time he witnessed some behavior that just couldn’t be natural.

  At the same time, Yellowbelly’s answer lit a spark in one corner of Hacker’s mind—the section assigned to wariness and suspicion. It had been dozing, of late, but nothing could ever turn off that part of his character. Not completely.

  Could their kindness to me have a double purpose? Maybe it’s no accident that we’ve not passed near any boats or shore. Or any of the search parties that Mark and Lacey would have sent out.

  Having a human may be useful to them.

  Perhaps they have no intention of letting me go.

  Hacker wondered afresh about his own survival. Despite being fed by the Tribe—and sustained by the wonderful suit—there were limits to how long a man could last out here. I’m developing an itch, all over. The human body isn’t meant for perpetual exposure to salt, and deposits must be building up on my skin. My waste products are easy to dispose of … but what if the gills or freshwater distiller get permanently clogged? Already, he saw signs of declining efficiency.

  Still, there seemed to be no life-or-death urgency.

  Except to one mother, a brother, three girlfriends, four avocation clubs, and my investment company, drifting rudderless without me. And all the searchers that Lacey has probably sent scurrying across the Caribbean looking for me.

  How, he wondered, could the rescuers keep missing him? Had every transponder chip failed, including several in the suit?

  One theory occurred to Hacker—that jibbering, noble twit, Lord Smits, must have used something more powerful than a signal laser, during that brief-stupid attempt at playing space war. Perhaps the snooty, inbred bastard also wielded a narrow beam EMP-thrower, firing an electromagnetic pulse that fritzed Hacker’s ailectronics. It could explain the rapid deterioration of his suborbital capsule, at a crucial moment.

  If so, it was nothing less than attempted murder.…

  Yet, even that realization did not fill him with the expected flood of fury. Somehow, wrath seemed out of place down here. Perhaps it was the implacable push of solar and lunar tides, so much more palpable and insistent than mere atmospheric breezes. Or else the infectious attitude of his companions. Not perfectly cheerful or always accepting … they had their frets and upsets … still, the dolphins were keyed to a wholly different scale. One that seemed less egocentric or self-important. Or that seldom saw a point in frenzy.

  # Sea gives …

  # … though we must leave her

  # … to breathe …

  So explained Yellowbelly. At least, that was how Hacker loosely interpreted one set of sonic glyph images.

  # And Sea takes it all away again.

  Of course, it was an iffy thing, trying to decipher a brief sound sculpture, crudely perceived with a jaw implant that hadn’t been designed for this purpose. Translating Yellowbelly’s explanation as some kind of poetical theology was probably a product of Hacker’s own imagination. Yet even that seemed amazing, for he had never been one for theology. Or poetry, for that matter.

  Whatever it is, I’ve managed to figure out all this without assistance. No clever mechanisms or hired experts or AI helpers. There was a grim-amused satisfaction in that. If I’ve gone mad, at least I managed it all by myself!

  Life drifted on, a cadence of hunting, eating, socializing, exploring, and tending to the needs of the Tribe—followed by evenings bathed in equal measures of warm water and sound. When a storm or rain squall passed through the area, he listened to the dolphins as they kept a kind of syncopated time with the rippling waves and pelting drops.

  Then came one day when the whole community grew excited, spraying nervous clicks everywhere. Amid a swirl of daunting gray forms, swooping and chattering, it took Hacker some time to gather a gist of what was up. Apparently, by group consensus, it had been decided all at once to head for one of their regular haunts, a favorite place of some kind. One they seemed to think of as home.

  For quite some time Hacker had been trying to keep up with the group on his own, kicking hard with his flippers and swimming with increasing strength, at a pace he was pretty proud of … even knowing that they were indulging him with affectionate tolerance, amused by his clumsy efforts. Now though, a note of impatience intruded. Several times adult members pulled alongside, offering their dorsal fins, crafting resonant shapes that urged Hacker to grab ahold. But he felt obstinately determined.

  Well, after all, they have to go up for air and I don’t. That ought to count for something.

  After refusing three times, striving hard to keep up with their increasing pace, he abruptly felt a narrow beam of unpleasantness rattle his jaw on one side. Turning, he felt struck, full-face, by a wave of sharp rebuke—there was no other way to interpret the harsh sonic waves—cast from the brow of an irascible dolphin he had nicknamed Bicker-a-lot.

  Heck, make that Bicker-a-ton! The creature glared the way cetaceans do, by crafting a jagged shape around Hacker’s head, composed of craggy, uneven sound waves. None of it showed visibly. There was no change in the beguiling, misleading dolphin smile.

  All right. All right. If you feel that strongly about it.

  The top female Sweet Thing, offered Hacker a dorsal fin, and this time he accepted. Soon, they were streaking along, building speed, alternately dipping below the thermocline and then racing upward to jet out of the water. Each time, he got an exhaled blast across the facemask as she arched and soared, blowing and filling her lungs while gravity was checked for a brief, glorious moment. Hacker couldn’t help flinching and squinting—and giving a hoarse yell. It was no rocket, but one hell of a ride.

  He also tried to take advantage, every leap, of the chance to look around. After a while, Hacker glimpsed something—a blurry line of white and tan and blotchy green up ahead. It was hard to make out amid the jostling of spray and exhilaration. He didn’t dare to linger on the hopeful word—land.

  Too soon the rollicking journey ended. The pod of cetaceans slowed and submerged, heading downward at a shallow slant. Now I’ll find out what “home” means to a pack of wild …

  A bulky object emerged out of blue dimness, down at the sloping bottom. No more than te
n meters below the surface, between sheltering, sedimentary rilles, it had the edgy lines of something man-made. At-first it seemed a derelict, perhaps a sunken ship. Then Hacker sucked in his breath, as the object resolved into another kind of thing altogether. A construct that had come to the muddy sea floor with deliberate purpose.

  They were approaching an undersea habitat dome, hidden in a narrow canyon—one of thousands that had been mass produced in the twenties, during a brief suboceanic boom, when some thought it to be the next great property-rush frontier. Dad invested in a few underwater hotels and mining facilities, Hacker recalled. With sea levels rising, he said that humanity would adapt, as always, and we needed to be part of it. Even make money off it.

  Too bad none of the ventures ever made a profit.

  While his heartbeat settled down, Hacker noticed a few other things. Like the shape of the gully, clearly formed by drifting sand and silt, piled up over many years. It was the kind of terrain that only formed where ocean bottom approached the continental verge. In fact, he could now pick up growling, repetitive rhythms with his implant—a complex pattern that any surfer would recognize—of breaker slapping against the shore.

  Shore … The word tasted strange after all these days—weeks?—spent languidly swimming, living on raw fish and listening to timeless ocean sounds. Suddenly, it felt odd to contemplate leaving this watery realm, returning to the surface world of air, earth, cities, machines, and nine billion human beings inhaling each other’s humid breath everywhere they went.

  That’s why we dive into our own worlds, I suppose. Countless thousands of hobbies. A million ways to be special, each person endeavoring to be expert at some arcane art … like rocketing into space.

  Psychologists approved, saying that frenetic amateurism was a much healthier response than the most likely alternative—war. They called this the “Century of Aficionados,” a time when governments and professional societies could barely keep up with private expertise, which spread at lightning speed across the World Mesh. A renaissance-without-a-cause, lacking only a clear sense of purpose.

  A renaissance that seemed to be dancing atop a layer of fragile ice, moving its feet quickly, as if afraid that standing still could be lethal. The prospect of soon rejoining that culture left him suddenly pensive, even a bit sad, pondering something he never would have considered, before that ill-fated desert launch.

  What’s the point of so much obsessive, frenetic activity unless it propels you toward something worthwhile?

  Once, a few days ago, he had heard one of the dolphins voice a similar thought in their simple but expressive click-language, as far as he could dimly interpret.

  # If you’re good at diving—chase fish!

  # If you have a fine voice—sing!

  # If you’re great at leaping—bite the sun!

  Hacker knew he should clamber up the nearby beach now, to borrow a phone and call people—his partners and brokers, mother and brother, friends and lovers.

  Tell them he was alive.

  Get back to business.

  Instead, he swiveled in the water and kicked hard at a downward slant, following his new friends to the habitat dome.

  Maybe I’ll learn what’s been done to them, he thought.

  And why.

  DISPUTATION

  Why haven’t we overpopulated the planet?

  That may seem an odd question, while refugee riots wrack overcrowded cities that incubate new diseases weekly. Forests topple for desperate farmland, even as drought bakes former farms into desert. Starvation lurks beyond each year’s harvest and human waste is now the world economy’s biggest product by sheer mass. One can understand why some view nine billion humans as a curse, shredding and consuming Earth to the bone.

  Yet, it could have been worse. A generation ago, scholars forecast we’d be past fourteen or fifteen billion by now and still climbing toward the limit prophesied by Malthus—a great die-off. It happens to every species that out breeds its habitat capacity.

  Trouble is, any die-off won’t just dip our population to sustainable levels. Humans don’t go quietly. We tend to claw and drag others down with us. Out of blame, or for company. Given today’s varied tools of ready wrought destruction, any such event would affect everyone. So, aren’t we lucky that population growth rates are way down? With the total even tapering a bit? Maybe enough to squeak by? Sure, that means old folks will outnumber kids for a while. Well, no one promised survival would be free of consequences.

  But how did it happen? Why did we escape (even barely) the Malthusian Trap? Some credit the fact that humans can separate the recreational and procreative aspects of sex.

  Animals feel a compulsive drive to mate and exchange genes. Some scatter their offspring in great numbers. Others care intensively for just a few. But animals who finish this cycle and are healthy enough, routinely return to the driver of it all—sex—starting the process over again. Its power is rooted in one simple fact. Those who felt its urgency had more descendants.

  This applied to us, too, of course, till technology gave us birth control.

  Then suddenly, the sex compulsion could be satisfied without procreation, with amazing effects. Everywhere that women were empowered with both prosperity and rights, most of them chose to limit childbearing, to concentrate on raising a few privileged offspring instead of brooding at max capacity. We became a non-Malthusian species, able to limit our population by choice, in the nick of time.

  Too bad it can’t last. Today, some humans do overbreed. These tend not to be the rich, or those with enough food or who have sex a lot. They are having lots of kids because they choose to. And so, whatever inner drives provoked that choice get passed down to more offspring, then more. Over time, this extra-strong desire will appear in rising portions of the population.

  It’s evolution in action. As time passes, the locus of compulsion will shift from sex to a genetically-driven, iron willed determination to have more kids.…

  … and then we’ll be a Malthusian species again—like the “motie” beings in that novel The Mote in God’s Eye, unable to stop. Unable to say “enough.” A fate that may commonly entrap a great many other species, across the cosmos.

  Before that happens to us, we had better finish the job of growing up.

  —from The Movement Revealed, by Thormace Anubis-Fejel

  33.

  STRAIGHT FLUSH

  As he changed into formal dinner clothes in the luxurious guest bedroom, one furnishing caught the attention of Hamish Brookeman—a modernized, antique chamber pot.

  Not the Second Empire armoire, or the Sforzese chest of drawers, nor even the Raj era rug from Baluchistan. (He needed a Mesh-consult to identify that one, with Wriggles whispering a description in his ear.) Hamish had an eye for detail—he needed one, while moving in circles like these. The mega wealthy had grown judgmental, of late. They expected you to know about such things, to better understand your place.

  Hamish was a rich man, ranking five percentile nines—enough to classify him as a member of the First Estate, if he weren’t already a legend in the arts. Nevertheless, there was nothing in this room that he could afford. Not one blessed thing.

  And I’m far from the most important guest who has come to this gathering in the Alps. I can only imagine what kind of digs they’re giving Tenskwatawa and his aides, or the aristocrats flying in from Shanghai and Yangon, Moscow and Mumbai.

  Of course, Hamish had another reason for scanning, hungrily, everything in sight. Always at the back of his mind was the question: Can I use this in a novel?

  Even when storytelling ceased to be what it had been for three centuries, an author’s hermetic craft, transforming into a hybrid, multimedia team effort, with eye-clickable hyperlinks that required a whole staff to provide … even so, he still had the solitary habit of mind, envisioning the narrative in paragraphs, punctuation and all.

  That Heian era tea table would be worth a three-sentence aside, revealing something about the character
of the one who owns it.

  Or—

  I could go on for a couple of pages about this Bohemian Renaissance four-poster bed, with snakes twisting insidiously, perhaps voluptuously, or else biblically, among the deeply carved curly vines. Maybe even write it into the plot as a haunted soul-reliquary … or high-tech life-extension device … or a disguised scanner, meant to read the minds of houseguests while they sleep.

  Each of the scenarios was about Science Gone Terribly Wrong in Unforeseen Ways, of course. There were always far more potential stories about the penalties of human technological hubris than even he could put down.

  But no, the particular item he found squatting by the foot of the damask coverlet was especially interesting. Decorated in Georgian style, the chamber pot was either an excellent reproduction (unlikely in this mansion) or else the genuine eighteenth century article—a late Whieldon or an early Josiah Wedgwood design. And yet, evidently, it was also meant to be in service—the modern, hermetically sealed lid made that plain, along with a soft green night-light, designed to prevent fumbling in the dark. No doubt, when he opened the pot for use, he would also find another light within, to improve nocturnal aim.

  Can’t have guests pissing on the rug, Hamish mused. A functional combination of old and new. And also—just as explicitly—not to be sat on. Not for women, then, or for defecation. Men only. And just old Number One. Any modern person would understand the narrow purpose—for collecting the contemporary equivalent of gold.

  But why here, by the bed? Why not simply walk to the loo?

  Just fifteen steps took him through an ornate doorway to the elaborately tiled private bath, with heated floor and seven nozzle shower, where nanofiber towels awaited their chance to massage his pores while wicking moisture and applying expensive lotion, all at the same time. The facilities were sumptuous and up-to-date, except …

  Well I’ll be hog-tied. There’s no phos-urinal.

  The toilet-bidet had every water and air jet accoutrement, along with the latest seat warmer-vibrator from Kinshasa Luxe. But clearly, the porcelain bowl itself simply flushed, straight into the sewer, just like in the bad old days. There was no separate collector unit, or PU. No way for a man to perform the modern duty never asked of women. The one obligation that few women—even the most egalitarian or environmentally dedicated—volunteered to perform.