Earth

  Claire bit her lip—enjoying the pressure on sensitive nerve endings. A couple of times lately, she had let Tony kiss her and had been surprised both by his eager roughness and by how much she liked it.

  Maybe I’m only a little slower than other girls, instead of plain retarded, as I thought.

  Her mother’s generation, of course, had been precocious and downright crazy, starting sex on average around age eleven—an appalling notion she figured explained a lot about the present state of the world.

  Still, there might be such a thing as moving too slowly.…

  All right, let’s see what happens. Anyway, I can always insist on actually looking for cracks in the levee.

  With a smile, she punched Tony’s number. Predictably, he answered before the second ring.

  At the same moment, Daisy McClennon watched rivers of data stream down the walls of her private chamber, each reflecting another view of the world.

  One screen panned the recent Wyoming dam collapse … pictures laxly stored by her ex-husband where she could easily get at them. Taking into account other case studies in his file, this series of “coincidences” had gone well beyond happenstance into the realm of enemy action.

  She’d already tapped her usual sources and come up with, at best, rumors and vague hints. One of the rich expatriate banking co-ops in Ulan Bator seemed to have an intense interest in these events. So did a Canadian old-money clan in Quebec. Then there were the government spook agencies—one of whom Logan was clearly working for. They were hard to crack, and risky, too. For one thing, some of their best hackers were about her equal. Daisy preferred sniffing round the edges till she knew enough to warrant a full assault.

  One possible hint turned in a nearby holo tank—a pictorial globe of the Earth, sliced in half, with lines drawn through the cutaway. The anonymous tip had found its way into her box this morning—no doubt from someone in her web of worldwide contacts. At first it made little sense. Then she saw how each line was pinned, at one end, on the location of one of the “anomalies” in Logan’s file. Each line then passed through the center of the Earth to arrive inside one of four broad ovals at the antipodes.

  What could that mean? So far nothing much had occurred to her. Daisy was about to discard the hint as spurious when she saw one of the ovals centered on Southern Africa.

  I wonder. Jen Wolling seemed to be involved in something she thought serious, even dangerous. Then she up and left for Southern Africa again. Could there be a connection?

  There was another link, now that she thought about it. Wolling’s collaborators were based in New Zealand. Wasn’t that where some of the earliest quakes had been centered?

  Daisy poked away at the puzzle, sending her electronic servant beasts to seek and fetch new pieces. Brazenly, she rifled the files of several companies owned by a cousin she hadn’t seen in years, but who owed her more favors than an aristocratic prig like him would ever want to be reminded of. One of his companies handled data transfers from Australasia.…

  Slowly, pieces fell into place. They’re using a communication nexus in Washington. A very good one, in fact. Wouldn’t have caught on if it weren’t for that little glitch there … happened just this morning. What luck.

  Meanwhile, ignored for the moment, the last wall of her workroom shone with her latest video-enhancement handiwork … a bootleg, colorized, 3-D version of The Maltese Falcon, with extra scenes extrapolated for a set of Chicago collectors who were apparently unhappy that some works were protected in primitive form by the National Treasures Act.

  Miles Archer smiled, then took two bullets in the belly, as he had so many times for about a hundred years. Only this time his groans were in digital quad, and the blood that seeped three-dimensionally round his fingers was vivid, spectrally certified to be exactly the correct shade of arterial red.

  Net Vol. A69802-554, 04/20/38: 04:14:52 UT User T106-11-7657-Aab Historical Reenactments Special Interest Group. Key: “Authenticity”

  Brussels—Belgian Historical Society authorities called in the police this morning, to help disperse thirty thousand disappointed history buffs dressed in Napoleonic military uniforms. Some of them had traveled from as far as Taipei to participate in this year’s reenactment of the Battle of Waterloo, only to be turned away. Many angrily waved valid registration forms, claiming they already had official membership in the annual pageant.

  This reporter asked BHS Director Emile Tousand: Why were so many accepted, only to be turned back at the battleground itself?

  “Out of three hundred and fifty thousand applicants, only one hundred and ninety-three thousand qualified with authentic, handmade kits—from muskets to uniform buttons. Of this number, we predicted a no-show rate over thirty percent, especially after this year’s increase in coach-class zep tickets.”

  When asked to explain the discrepancy, Tousand explained.

  “It appears we are suffering for our success. Except for Gettysburg and Borodino, ours is the best-respected battle recreation. Many a hobbyist is eager to play a simple foot soldier, even if only to have a radio-controlled blood capsule explode on him the first day.”

  Then why were so many sent away?

  “Our passion is accuracy. How, I beg you, could we have that with more ersatz soldiers than were at the main battle itself? The idea’s absurd!

  “Besides, environmental groups routinely agitate against us. Unless we keep the trampling and noise below a certain level, musket era reenactments may go the way of those ill-fated attempts to recreate Kursk and El Alamein, back in the teens.”

  Would that be such a bad thing? Can we afford to have thousands of men marching about, playing war, when that scourge nearly destroyed us only a generation ago?

  “Is it a coincidence that as more men join clubs to ‘play war,’ there has been less and less of the real thing? I can tell you that our boys come to have fun. They get fresh air and exercise, unlike so many whose passive hobbies have turned them into mere net junkies, or even dazers. And there are very few injuries or fatalities.”

  But don’t war games encourage a romantic fascination with the real thing?

  “Any sane man knows the difference between falling dramatically before the cameras, because his blood cartridge has been set off, and what it must have been like for real soldiers … to actually feel musket balls tearing through your guts, shattering your bones. None of our members fails to weep when staring across the terrible finale—the tableau of the Old Guard, lying in bloody heaps upon their last redoubt. No man who has gazed on it in person could ever long to experience the real thing.

  “Fascination, yes. There will always be fascination. But that only increases our appreciation of how far we’ve come. For all our problems today, I doubt anyone who studies what life was like in bygone times would sanely trade places with any ancestor, peasant or soldier, general or king.”

  • IONOSPHERE

  The moon shone on the horizon, setting in an unusual direction. Almost due south.

  Of course at that moment all land headings were approximately southward. Such was the trickery of crossing over the north pole. Or near it.

  Drifting alongside the tiny model-three shuttle Intrepid, Mark Randall turned from the moon to look down upon the estuary of the arctic River Ob, artery of the new Soviet grainlands. The steppe stretched across a flat expanse below him, an infinity of dun and green. Mark spoke a single word of command.

  “Magnify.”

  In response, a portion of his faceplate instantly displayed an amplified image. The Ob delta leaped toward him in fine, amplified detail.

  “Prepare record sheet six,” he continued, as a reticle scale overlaid the ribbon of muddy blue, weaving across a vast, thawing tundra plain. Sensors tracked every movement of his pupils, so Mark could roll the scene as fast as he could look. “Zero in on position twelve point two by three point seven … expand eightfold.”

  Smoothly, the main telescope in Intrepid’s observation bay turned microscopically on mag
netic gimbals, focusing on the specified coordinates. Or at least the inertial tracker said they were the right coordinates. But Mark’s experience working with Teresa Tikhana had rubbed off, especially after the Erehwon disaster, so he double-checked by satellite references and two distinct landmarks—the Scharansky Power Station and the Cargil Corporation grain silos, bracketing the river from opposite shores. “Commence recording,” he said.

  Between those two landmarks, the waters showed severe agitation—surface ripples and stirred-up bottom mud—each symptom detected in another optical or infrared or polarization band. A flotilla of vessels nosed about the disturbed area. Mark wondered what had churned the River Ob so. It must be important for Intrepid’s orders to be changed so abruptly, extending this simple peeper run far beyond normal.

  I’m going to talk to the guild about this, Mark thought. Polar assignments pile up too many rads. They shouldn’t be prolonged without extra shielding, or bonus pay. Or at least a damn good reason …

  It got especially inconvenient when a model-three shuttle was involved. The HOTOL technology was a pilot’s dream during takeoff and landing, but a bizarre, unexpected, and uncorrectable vibration mode meant the crew had to step “outside” during high-resolution camera work, in order not to ruin the pictures with their slightest movements. The flaw would be fixed in the next generation of vehicles … in maybe twenty years or so.

  He spoke again, commanding the telescope to zero in even closer on the activity below. Now he clearly made out machinery on the dredges, and men standing at the gunwales of squat barges, peering into the river. Mark even saw black figures in the water. Probably divers, since as yet the burgeoning Ob was still too chilly to support other life forms so large. Lab-enhanced photos would, of course, make out even manufacturers’ labels on the divers’ masks.

  Green telltales showed the recording was going well. This kind of precision wasn’t possible with surveillance satellites, and manned space stations didn’t operate this high in latitude, so Intrepid was the only platform available. Mark hoped it was worth it.

  Anyway, so much for the rewards of fame and good works. After Erehwon and his tour for NASA on the lecture circuit, it had been good to be promoted to left seat on a shuttle. Still, of late he’d begun wondering if maybe Teresa weren’t right to be so suspicious, after all. Something smelled funny about the way he’d been glad-handed and diverted from asking questions about what Spivey and his crew had learned about the disaster.

  Apparently that was who he was working for now, anyway … Glenn Spivey. The peeper had a large and growing group under him. Quite a few of Mark’s friends had been swept into the colonel’s growing web of subordinates and investigative teams. But what were they investigating? When Mark asked, old comrades looked away embarrassed, muttering phrases like national security or even—it’s secret.

  “Bloody hell,” Mark muttered. Fortunately, his suit computer was narrow minded, and didn’t try to interpret it as an instruction. After hard experience, the astronaut corps went for literal-minded equipment that was difficult to confuse, if less “imaginative” than what civilians used.

  Something moved at the corner of Mark’s field of view. He shut down the helmet projection and turned. The spacesuited figure approaching wasn’t hard to identify, since his copilot was the only other person within at least a hundred kilometers. Drifting alongside, Ben Brigham touched two fingers of his gloved right hand to a point along the inside of his left sleeve. This was followed by two quick chopping motions, a hand turn, and an elbow flick.

  The sun was behind Mark, shining into Ben’s face, turning his helmet screen opaque and shiny. But Mark didn’t need to see Ben’s expression to read his meaning.

  Big chiefs hope to catch coyote in the act, his partner had said in sign talk, descended not from the speech of the deaf, but from the ancient Indian trade language of the American plains.

  Mark laughed. He left the comm channel turned off and used his own hands to reply. Chiefs will be disappointed … Lightning never strikes twice in same place …

  Although space sign talk formally excluded any gesture that might be hidden by a vacuum suit, Ben answered with a simple shrug. Clearly they’d been sent to observe the latest site of the “disturbances” … weird phenomena that were growing ever creepier since Erehwon was blown to kingdom come.

  Still, are we really needed here? Mark wondered. By treaty, NATO and U.N. and USAF officers were probably already prowling the disaster site below in person, even cruising by in observation zeps. The only way Intrepid’s orbital examination would add appreciably to what on-site inspectors learned would be for the shuttle’s instruments to catch a gremlin in the very act. So far routine satellite scans had captured a few bizarre events on film, at extreme angle, but never yet with a full battery of peeper gear.…

  Mark’s thoughts arrested as he blinked. He shook his head and then cursed.

  “Oh, shit. Intercom on. Ben, do you feel—”

  “Right, Mark. Tingling in my toes. Speckles around the edge of my visual field. Is it like when you and Rip, on Pleiades—?”

  “Affirmative.” He shook his head again, vigorously, though he knew that wouldn’t knock away the gathering cobwebs. “It’s different in some ways, but basically … oh hell.” Mark couldn’t explain, and besides, there wasn’t time for chatter. He spoke another code word to start their suits transmitting full physiological data to ship recorders. “Full view, main scope,” he ordered then. “Secondary cameras—independent targeting of transient phenomena.”

  The picture of the river loomed forth again. Now, though, the scene was no longer efficient and businesslike. Men scurried about the barges like angry ants, some of them diving off craft that bobbed and shook in the suddenly choppy water.

  Tiny windows appeared on Mark’s faceplate, surrounding the main scene as Intrepid’s secondary telescopes began zooming in under independent control. Half the scenes were too blurry to make out as Mark’s eyesight grew steadily worse. Bright pinpoints swarmed inward like irritating insects.

  “What do we do?” Ben’s voice sounded scared. Mark, who had been through this before, didn’t blame him.

  “Make sure of your tether,” he told his copilot. “And memorize the way back to the cabin. We may have to return blind. Otherwise …” He swallowed. “There’s nothing we can do but ride it out.”

  At least the ship is probably safe. There aren’t other structures around, like Teresa had to deal with. And a model-three shuttle is too small to worry about tides.

  Mark had himself convinced, almost.

  The outer half of his visual field was gone, though it kept fluctuating moment by moment. Through the remaining tunnel, Mark watched a drama unfold far below, where the Ob jounced and writhed as if someone were poking it with invisible rods. Flow deformed the hills and depressions nearly as quickly as they formed. Still, the undulations seemed to take clear geometric patterns.

  Then, within a circular area, the Ob simply disappeared!

  It was only pure luck none of the study vessels were inside the radius when it happened. As it was, the boats had a rugged ride as the columnar hole rapidly filled in.

  “Where … where’d the water go?” Ben asked.

  Joining the growing ringing in Mark’s ears came the blare of a camera alert. One of the secondary pictures suddenly ballooned outward, rimmed in red. For a moment Mark couldn’t make out what had the computer so excited. It looked like another view of the river valley, but at much lower magnification, or from higher altitude.

  But this image appeared warped somehow. Then he realized it wasn’t unfocused. He was looking down at the Ob through a lens. The lens was a glob of water, which had suddenly manifested in midair at an altitude of … he squinted to read the lidar numbers … twenty-six kilometers!

  Mark breathed the sweaty incense of his own dread. Something tiny and black squiggled inside the murky liquid blob that paused, suspended high above the planet. But before he could order the te
lescope to magnify, the entire watery mass was gone again! In its wake lay only a rainbow fringe of vapor, melting into the speckles at his eyes’ periphery.

  “What the …?”

  “It’s back!” Ben cried. “Fifty-two klicks high! Here …” and he rattled off some code. Another scene, from another instrument, popped into view.

  Now the ground looked twice as far below. The Ob was a thin ribbon. And the portion of stolen river had reappeared at double the altitude. Mark had time to blink in astonishment. The black object within looked like …

  The spherule vanished again. “Mark,” Ben gasped. “I just calculated the doubling rate. It’s next appearance could be—Jesus!”

  Mark felt his copilot’s hand grab the fabric of his suit and shake it. “There!” Ben’s voice crackled over the intruding roar of static. An outstretched arm and hand entered Mark’s narrow field of view and he followed the trembling gesture out to black space.

  There, in the direction of Scorpio, an object had appeared. He didn’t have to command amplification. Even as telescopes slewed to aim at the interloper Mark cleared all displays with one whispered word and stared in direct light at the oblate spheroid that had paused nearby, shimmering in the undiminished sunlight.

  What strange force might have hurled a portion of the Ob out here—momentarily, magically co-orbital with Intrepid—Mark couldn’t begin to imagine. It violated every law he knew. Small flickerings told of bits being thrown free of the central mass. But in its center there floated a large object—

  —a woman. A diver, wearing a black wetsuit and scuba gear, with twin tanks that Mark bemusedly figured ought to last her another couple of hours, depending on how much she’d already used.

  Mark had left only a narrow tunnel of vision, but it was enough. Through the diver’s face mask he caught the woman’s strange expression—one of rapt fulfillment mixed with abject terror. She began to make a sign with her hands.