Earth

  Great crustal blocks buckled from the slow-motion force of that impact, gradually, inexorably piling mountains higher and higher until a huge plateau towered through the atmosphere, creating a vast wall that diverted air to the north and trapped the southern winds in a pocket.

  During each winter the land beneath this pocket cooled, lowering air pressure, drawing moisture-laden clouds onto the foothills to pour down monsoon rains. Each summer the countryside warmed again, raising pressures, driving the clouds back to sea.

  This regular cycle of wet and dry seasons made routine the bounty of the great alluvial plains below the mountains, fertilized by the plateau’s silty runoff. When human beings arrived to clear the forests and plant crops, they found a land of untold fecundity, where they could build, and create culture, and have babies, and make war, and have more babies, and make love, and have more babies still …

  Came then a time—only an eyeblink as the ages mark it—when the pattern changed. Gone were the great forests that had cooled the valleys with the transpired breath of ten billion trees. Instead, the soot of cook fires and industry rose into the sky like a hundred million daily sacrifices to individual, shortsighted gods.

  Not only in India, but all around the world, temperatures steadily climbed.

  As always with such changes, the sea resisted, and so the first grand effects were seen onshore. The chill of winter vanished like a memory, and summer’s ridge of high pressure remained in place year-round over a hardpan that had once welcomed fertile farms.

  In fact, it rained now more than ever. Only now the monsoons stayed where they were born … at sea.

  • 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.

  Although many struggled to keep their faith in a static, unchanging universe, it was already apparent to the best minds preceding Darwin that Earth’s creatures had changed over time.…

  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.

  Evolutionists themselves argued over how species changed. Darwin’s and Wallace’s “natural selection”—in which diversity within a species provides grist for the grinding mill of nature—had to pass ten thousand tests before it triumphed conclusively over Lamarck’s competing theory of “inheritance of acquired traits.”

  But even then arguments raged over essential details. For instance, what was the basic unit of evolution?

  For years many thought it was species that adapted. But evidence later supported the “selfish gene” model—that individuals act in ways that promote success for their descendants, caring little for the species as a whole. Examples of individual success prevailing over species viability include peacocks’ tails and moose antlers …

  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 bougainvillaeas. 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.

  Darwin spoke of two types of “struggle” in the wild—conflict between individuals for reproductive success, and the struggle of each individual against the implacable forces of nature, such as cold, thirst, darkness, and exposure.

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

  Influenced by the dour logic of Malthus, Darwin believed the first of these struggles was dominant. Much of the “generosity” we see in nature is actually quid pro quo—or “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Altruism is generally tied to the success of one’s genes.

  Still, even Darwin admitted that sometimes cooperation seems to transcend immediate needs. Examples do exist where working together for the common good appears to outweigh any zero-sum game of “I win, you lose.”

  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.

  This latter view of evolution—that it includes a place for kindness and cooperation—certainly is an attractive one. Don’t all our moral codes stress that helping one another is the ultimate good? We’re taught as babes that virtue goes beyond mere self-interest.…

  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.

&n
bsp; 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.

  Nearly every culture has laws to shelter family, tribe, and nation from the impulses of individuals. In recent times we’ve extended these codes of protection to include those without family, the weak, even the alien, and agonize that we don’t live up to these standards perfectly. A kind of cultural quasi-citizenship has even been granted some of our former food animals—whales, dolphins, and many other creatures with whom it’s possible now to feel a sense of kinship.

  Arguing endlessly over ways and means, most of us still agree on a basic premise, an ideal. If asked to envision paradise, we would indeed have the lion lie down with the lamb, and all people, great and small, would treat each other with kindness.

  But it’s important to remember these are our morals, based on our background as particularly social mammals. Creatures who need a nurturing tribe—who are helpless and lost without a clan.

  What if intelligence and technology had been discovered by some other species, say crocodiles? Or otters? Would they share our ideas of fundamental morality? Even among humans, despite our talk about caring for others, all too often it’s “look out for number one.”

  Still, I’d like to suggest here that the drift from egotism toward cooperation is an inevitable one. It derives from basic patterns that have guided the evolution of life on Earth for three and a half billion years and continue to shape and transform our world.

  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.

  For half a century the city of West Berlin was something of an ecological island.

  Its isolation wasn’t total of course. Water seeping underground ignored political boundaries, as did the rain and pollution from Communist factories just beyond the wall. Except for one frightening episode, just after the Second World War, food and consumer goods flowed from the Federal Republic by rail and road and air.

  Still, in many ways the city was an oasis less than ten miles by twenty, whose several million shut-ins interacted har
dly at all with the territory surrounding them.

  With no place to send their waste, Berliners of those days had to pioneer recycling. Refuse was strictly separated for curb-side pickup. Even sidewalks were made of stone tiles so they could be stacked during street repairs and then reused.

  Despite the city’s flashy night life and reputation for irreverence, West Berlin had more park area per capita than New York or Paris. Gardeners grew more of their own food than other urbanites. One proud mayor proclaimed that, should humanity ever send a generation ship to the stars, it ought to be crewed by West Berliners.

  A mayor of Bonn promptly suggested that would be a very good idea.

  Berliners dismissed his sarcasm as churlish, and went on living.

  • 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.”