Earth

  “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.”

  PART V

  PLANET

  In the new world’s earliest days, there was no one to speak ill of carbon dioxide, or methane, or even hydrogen cyanide. Under lightning and harsh sunlight those chemicals merged to stain the young ocean with amino acids, purines, adenylates … a “primeval soup” which then reacted still further, building complex, twisting polymers.

  Mere random fusings would have taken a trillion years to come up with anything as complex as a bacterium. But something else was involved beyond just haphazard chemistry. Selection. Some molecules were stable, while others broke apart easily. The sturdy ones accumulated, filling the seas. These became letters in a new alphabet.

  They, too, reacted to form still larger clusters, a few of which survived and accrued … the first genetic words. And so on. What would otherwise have taken a trillion years was accomplished in a relative instant. Sentences bounced against each other, mostly forming nonsense paragraphs. But a few had staying power.

  Before the last meteorite storm was over or the final roaring supervolcano finally subsided, there appeared within the ocean a chemical tour de force, surrounded by a lipid-protein coat. An entity that consumed and excreted, that made true copies of itself. One whose daughters wrought victories, suffered defeats, and multiplied.

  Out of alphabet soup there suddenly was told a story.

  A simple tale as yet. Primitive and predictable. But still, a raw talent could be read there.

  The author began to improvise.

  Worldwide Long Range Solutions Special Interest Group [ SIG AeR,WLRS 253787890.546] Steering Committee Report.

  For weeks now there’s been a marathon debate going on over in subgroup six (techno-cures), category nine, forum five, concerning the relati
ve merits of nano-constructors versus Von Neumann machines as possible sources of wealth to replace our tired planet’s exhausted mines and wells.

  The word “exhausted” applies as well to the weary moderators of this tag-team endurance round. Finally the forum chair said, “Enough already! Don’t any of you people have jobs? Families?”

  We agree. It’s all very well to talk about how these two technologies might someday “generate enough wealth to make even TwenCen America look like a Cro-Magnon tribe.” But one of the purposes of this SIG is to take ideas beyond mere speculation and offer the world feasible plans!

  So let’s call a pause on this one, people. Get some sleep. Say hello to your children. Come back when you can show a workable design for a truly sophisticated machine that can make copies of itself—whether grazing on lunar soils or swimming in a nutrient bath. Then the rest of us will happily supply the carping criticism you’ll need to make it work.

  In sharp contrast, the soc-sci freaks in group two have had some very witty forums about the current fad of applying tribal psychology to urban populations. At one point over half a million Net users were tapping in, taking our SIG, once more, all the way up to commercial-grade use levels! Digest-summaries of those forums are already available, and we commend group two’s organizers for running such a lively, productive debate.

  • EXOSPHERE

  They were still pumping out Houston from last week’s hurricane when she got into town. Teresa found it marvelous how the city had been transformed by the calamity.

  Avenues of inundated shops rippled mysteriously just below floodline, their engulfed wares glimmering like sunken treasure. The towering glass office blocks were startling vistas of blue and white and aquamarine, reflecting the summer sky above and bright-flecked waters below.

  Limp in the humidity, rows of canted trees marked the drowned borderlines of street and sidewalk. Their stained trunks testified to even higher inundations in the past. Under fluffy clouds pushed by a torpid breeze, Houston struck Teresa like some hypermodernist’s depiction of Venice, before that lamented city’s final submergence. A wonderful assortment of boats, canoes, kayaks, and even gondolas negotiated side streets, while makeshift water taxis plowed the boulevards, ferrying commuters from their residential arcologies to the shimmering office towers. With typical Texan obstinacy, nearly half the population had refused evacuation this time. In fact, Teresa reckoned some actually reveled living among the craggy cliffs of this manmade archipelago.

  From the upper deck of the bus she saw the sun escape a cloud, setting the surrounding glazed monoliths ablaze. Most of the other passengers instantly and unconsciously turned away, adjusting broad-brimmed hats and polarized glasses to hide from the harsh rays. The only exceptions were a trio of Ra Boys in sleeveless mesh shirts and gaudy earrings, who faced the bright heat with relish, soaking in it worshipfully.

  Teresa took a middle path when the sun emerged. She didn’t react at all. It was, after all, only a stable class G star, well-behaved and a safe distance removed. Certainly, it was less dangerous down here than up in orbit.

  Oh, she took all the proper precautions—she wore a hat and mild yellow glasses. But thereafter she simply dismissed the threat from her mind. The danger of skin cancer was small if you stayed alert and caught it early. Certainly the odds compared favorably with those of dying in a helizep accident.

  That wasn’t why she’d avoided taking a heli today, skipping that direct route from Clear Lake, where the NASA dikes had withstood Hurricane Abdul’s fury. Teresa had used a roundabout route today mostly to make sure she wasn’t being followed. It also provided an opportunity to collect her thoughts before stepping from frying pan to fire.

  Anyway, how many more chances would she have to experience this wonder of American conceit, this spectacle that was Houston Defiant? Either the city moguls would eventually succeed in their grand, expensive plan—to secure the dikes, divert the water table, and stabilize everything on massive pylons—or the entire metropolis would soon join Galveston under the Gulf of Mexico, along with large patches of Louisiana and poor Florida. Either way, this scene would be one to tell her grandchildren about—assuming grandchildren, of course.

  Teresa cut off a regretful twinge as thoughts of Jason almost surfaced. She concentrated on the sights instead as they passed a perseverant shopkeeper peddling his soaked fashions from pontoons under a sign that read, “PRESHRUNK, GUARANTEED SALT RESISTANT.” Nearby, a cafe owner had set up tables, chairs, and umbrellas atop the roof of one of their bus’s stranded, wheeled cousins and was doing a brisk business. Their driver delicately maneuvered past this enterprise and the cluster of parked kayaks and dinghies surrounding it, then negotiated one of the shallow reefs of abandoned bicycles before regaining momentum on Lyndon Johnson Avenue.

  “They ought to keep it this way,” Teresa commented softly, to no one in particular. “It’s charming.”

  “Amen to that, sister.”

  With a momentary jerk of surprise, Teresa glanced toward the Ra Boys and saw what she had not noticed before, that one of them wore a quasi-legal big ear amplifier. He returned her evaluation speculatively, touching the rims of his sunglasses, making them briefly go transparent so she could catch his leer.

  “Water makes the old town sexy,” he said, sauntering closer. “Don’tcha think? I love the way the sunlight bounces off of everything.”

  Teresa decided not to point out the minor irregularity, that he wore no sign advertising his eavesdropping device. Only in her innermost thoughts … and her lumpy left pocket … did she have anything to hide.

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she answered, giving him a measured look he could take as neither insult nor invitation. It didn’t work. He sauntered forward, planted one foot on the seat next to her, leaned forward, and rubbed the close-cropped fuzz covering his cranium.

  “Water serves the sun, don’t ya know? We’re supposed to let it come on come on come. It’s just one of His ways o’ lovin’, see? Coverin’ Earth like a strong man covers a woman, gently, irresistibly … wetly.”

  Fresh patches of pink skin showed where over-the-counter creams had recently cleared away precancerous areas. In fact, Ra Boys weren’t many more times as likely to develop the really deep, untreatable melanoma tumors than other people. But their blotchy complexions heightened the image they desired—of dangerous fellows without respect for life. Young studs with nothing to lose.

  Teresa felt the other passengers tense. Several made a point of turning toward the young toughs, aiming their True-Vus at them like vigilant, crime-fighting heroes of an earlier era. To these the boys offered desultory, almost obligatory gestures of self-expression. Most of the riders just turned away, withdrawing behind shadow and opaque lenses.

  Teresa thought both reactions a bit sad. I hear it’s even worse in some cities up north. They’re nothing but teenagers, for heaven’s sake. Why can’t people just relax?

  She herself found the Ra Boys less frightening than pathetic. She’d heard of the fad, of course, and seen young men dressed this way at a few parties Jason had taken her to before his last mission. But this was her first encounter with sun worshippers in daylight, which separated nighttime poseurs from the real thing.

  “Nice metaphors,” she commented. “Are you sure you didn’t go to school?”

  Already flushed from the heat, the bare-shouldered youth actually darkened several shades as his two friends laughed aloud. Teresa had no wish to make him angry. Dismembering a citizen—even in self defense—wouldn’t help her now-precarious position with the agency. Placatingly, she held up one hand.

  “Let’s go over them, shall we? Now you seem to be implying the rise in sea level was caused by your sun deity. But everyone knows the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting because of the Greenhouse Effect—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” the Ra Boy interrupted. “But the greenhouse gases keep in heat that originates with the sun.”

  “Those gases were man-m
ade, were they not?”

  He smiled smugly. “Carbon dioxide and nitrous oxides from cars and TwenCen factories, sure. But where’d it all come from originally? Oil! Gas! Coal! All buried and hoarded by Her Nibs long ago, cached away under her skin like blubber. But all the energy in the oil an’ coal—the reason our grempers dug and drilled into Old Gaia in the first place—that came from the sun!”

  He bent closer. “Now, though, we’re no longer enslaved to Her precious hoard of stolen fossil fat-fuel. It’s all gone up in smoke, wonderful smoke. Bye-bye.” He aimed a kiss at the clouds. “And there’s nowhere else to turn anymore but to the source itself!”

  Ra worshippers were backers of solar energy, of course, while the more numerous Gaians pushed wind power and conservation instead. As a spacer, Teresa ironically found her sympathies coinciding with the group whose appearance and style were the more repulsive. Probably all she had to do was let these fellows know she was an astronaut and all threat and bluster would evaporate. Honestly, though, she liked them better this way—loud, boisterous, reeking of testosterone and overcompensation—than she would as fawning admirers.

  “This city ain’t gonna last long anyway,” the Ra Boy continued, waving at the great towers, up to their steel ankles in Gulf waters. “They can build their levees, drive piles, try to patch the holes. But sooner or later, it’s all goin’ the way of Miami.”

  “Fecund jungle’s gonna spread—” one of the others crooned through a gauzy, full-backup mouth synthesizer. Presumably it was a line from a popular song, though she didn’t recognize it.

  The growling motors changed pitch as the bus approached another stop. Meanwhile, the leader leaned even closer to Teresa. “Yessiree, blistery! The Old Lady’s gonna brim with life again. There’ll be lions roaming Saskatchewan. Flamingoes flocking Greenland! And all ’cause of Ra’s rough lovin’.”