At the ends of these days he tried to work on his Chinese. No one he met spoke English, so his little translation belt was his best teacher, but it was hard. He would say things to it and then listen to the translation and try to say it back. But when he said it back in Chinese, and it translated what he’d said back into English, it never came out right. He said, “My radar is broken,” in exactly the Chinese he thought he had heard, and it translated back to him “immediate open air meeting.” He tried “Where do you live?” and it came back as “Your lotus has interpolated.”
“If only!” he said, laughing bleakly. “I’d like my lotus to interpolate, but how?”
Clearly he must be sounding crazy to the people he talked to. He was doing something wrong, but what?
“It is a hard language,” one of his dorm mates said when he complained. He tried to memorize that properly.
As it was, his translator was his best friend. They talked a lot. He hoped to start getting more out of it soon. Saying “hello” and “how are you?” and such was working better and better with the people he interacted with. And they were getting friendlier about talking slow.
The workers continued to chip away at the monumental tasks set before them, tasks thousands of times bigger than similar jobs on Earth. But if the job was shoveling snow, was that a good thing?
Once he sent a message to Swan to say he was glad to hear she had survived the attack on Terminator, and in it he mentioned that he never saw Shukra anymore. A message came back a few weeks later: Try Lakshmi. With a Venusian cloud address.
He looked into this and found that Lakshmi was a name that caused people to go silent and look away. A big power, based over in Cleopatra; an ally of Shukra’s, or an enemy—people didn’t really know, or didn’t want to say.
So: maybe Swan wanted to shift her informant to a place closer to the action. Or maybe she was just trying to help.
Or maybe he was just on his own.
Lists (6)
boreal forest (conifers); temperate forest (hardwoods or mixed hardwoods and conifers); tropical forest; desert; the alpine zone; grassland; tundra; and chaparral, sometimes called shrubland
these are the principal Terran biomes
cities; villages; croplands; rangelands; forests; and wildlands
these are the principal Terran human-use patterns anthromes
mix and match the above, and you get the 825 eco-regions of Earth
450 on land, 229 marine
65 percent of these now exist only off-planet
take an x-y graph to chart a Whittaker biome diagram, with precipitation marked vertically and temperature horizontally. Biomes can be plotted on this graph and will make a clearly shaped map of what kind of biome turns up in what kind of conditions. Left is hotter, right colder; wet is higher, dry lower; and thus the most general version is as follows:
Tropical rain forest
Tropical seasonal forest Temperate rain forest
Savanna Temperate deciduous forest Taiga
Subtropical desert Temperate grassland desert Tundra
The classifications can be much elaborated. The 450 named terrestrial eco-regions divide biomes by not only precipitation and temperature, but also combinations of latitude, altitude, geography, geology, and other factors
eco-regions themselves can be usefully divided into microenvironments as small as a hectare
34,850 known species went extinct between 1900 and 2100. It was, and remains ongoing, the sixth great mass extinction in Earth’s history
no extinctions from this point onward are inevitable (this has always been true, however)
19,340 terraria are known to exist in the solar system. Approximately 70 percent of these function as zoo worlds, either dedicated to sustaining an eco-region’s suite of animals and plants, or else to creating new combinations of suites, called Ascensions
92 percent of mammal species are now endangered or gone entirely from Earth and live mainly in their off-planet terraria
space: the zoo, the
inoculant
SWAN AND THE INSPECTOR
There are two problems in dealing with the Terminator incident,” Inspector Genette said to Swan one evening as they flew out to the asteroid belt. They were traveling with a little group from Interplan and Terminator, but often found themselves the last two in the galley at the end of an evening. Swan liked that; the inspector would sit right on the table while eating, on a plush brought for the purpose, and afterward lounge there on one elbow with a drink, so that they spoke eye to eye. It was a little like talking to a cat.
“Only two?” she said.
“Two. First, who did it, and second, how we can find and catch this agent without giving more people the idea of doing it. The so-called copycat problem, and more generally, the problem of preventing any kind of repetition of this attack. That I consider to be the more difficult problem of the two.”
“What about how it was done?” Swan asked. “Isn’t that a problem too?”
“I know how it happened,” the inspector said easily.
“You do?”
“I think so. It’s the only way it could have happened, I think, and so there you have it. No matter how implausible, as the line has it, although in this case it’s not implausible at all. But I must confess to you, I don’t want to say more about it when we are both being recorded by our qubes.” Genette raised a wrist and indicated the thick, almost cubical little wristpad that contained Passepartout. “You have your qube recording always, I assume?”
“No.”
“But often?”
“Yes, I suppose so. Like anyone else.”
“Well, in any case I want to see some things in the belt before I will be sure of my hypothesis. So we’ll talk about this more when we’re out there. But I want you to think about the second problem; assuming we catch a perpetrator and explain the deed, perhaps in a prosecution—how are we going to keep someone else from doing it? This is where I think you could help me.”
They were traveling in the terrarium Moldava, which ran in an Aldrin cycle that would take them out to Vesta in eight days. The interior of the Moldava was given over to growing wheat, and many of the people traveling in it congregated after their day’s labor in the fields at a resort on high ground near the bow, set on a broad hilltop, overlooking and then looking up at the upcurve of a big patchwork pattern of fields, different green and gold textures created by the many different strains being grown. It was like a quilter’s version of heaven.
Swan spent much of her time talking to the local ecologists, who had lots of little wheat disease problems they wanted to discuss. Inspector Jean stayed in the Interplan rooms and, as they passed Mars, spent time calling ahead to people in the terraria clustered around Vesta. At the ends of these days Swan would meet with the Interplan group to eat, then talk late with the inspector. Sometimes she talked about her daytime work. The locals were trying out wheat varieties that shed water from the seed heads better, and were exploring the genetic creation of microscopic “drip tips” like those seen in the macro world of tropical leaves, where the drip tips were long tips on the leaves that allowed water to break its surface tension and run away. “I want to have drip tips in my brain,” she said. “I don’t want to hold on to anything that will hurt me.”
“I wish you luck with that,” the little inspector said politely, staying focused on the meal, and eating a lot for such a small person.
A few days later they came to the Vesta Zone, one of the crowded areas of the asteroid belt. During the Accelerando many terraria had relocated near each other, creating something like communities, and the Vesta Zone was among the largest of these. Moldava released a ferry with the Interplan team on it, and when the ferry had decelerated and was near Vesta, they transferred again, this time to an Interplan ship with an Interplan crew.
This was an impressively fast little spaceship named Swift Justice, and in short order they were moving against the flow of the great current of asteroi
ds, stopping once or twice at little rocks for the inspector to talk with people. No explanation for these conversations was offered, and Swan held off asking, while they visited the Orinoco Fantastico, the Crimea, the Oro Valley, Irrawady 14, Trieste, Kampuchea, the John Muir, and the Winnipeg, after which she just had to ask.
“All these little worlds had recent perturbations in their orbits,” the inspector explained, “and I wanted to ask if they had explanations for them.”
“And had they?”
“There were some abrupt departures from the Vesta Zone, apparently, and people think those threw the neighbors off course.”
Vesta itself proved to be very substantial for an asteroid—six hundred kilometers in diameter, roughly spherical, and entirely tented, which made it one of the biggest examples of the paraterraforming method called bubble-wrapping. Usually tents covered only parts of a moon, like the older domes; they were the most common structures on Callisto and Ganymede and Luna, but those moons were all so big that covering them entirely hadn’t even been considered. To cover a little moon with a tentlike bubble represented the next stage, and a viable outie option to the hollowed-out innie worlds. Swan supposed that Terminator itself was a case of paraterraforming, though she was not used to thinking of it that way and had a prejudice against outies in the asteroid belt as being overexposed and low-g, compared to burrowing into a rock and spinning it.
But now, as she regarded Vesta from a short distance out, it looked good. It was a place that would have weather and a sky (the tenting was located two kilometers above the surface), and Pauline told her the Vestans had established boreal forests, alpine ranges, tundra, grassland, and lots of cold desert. All that would be in very low g, which meant everyone would be flying and dancing around a lot, in a puffy, almost floating landscape. Not such a bad idea. They even had an immense mountain.
So Swan was interested to visit Vesta, but Genette had a different destination in mind, and after a few more Interplan people joined them, they headed to a nearby terrarium called Yggdrasil.
As they approached Yggdrasil Swan saw it was yet another potato asteroid, in this case dark and unspinning. “It’s abandoned,” the inspector explained. “A cold case.”
In the hopper’s lock Swan floated to the suit rack with a graceful little plié, suited up, then followed Genette and several Interplan investigators out the outer lock door into the void.
Yggdrasil had been a standard innie, perhaps thirty kilometers long. They entered it by way of a big hole left in the stern; the mass driver had been removed. They jetted in gently, using their suits’ thrusters to keep them upright. Flowing forward side by side, they looked like a reversal of one of those pharaonic statue pairs in which the sister-wife is knee-high to the monarch.
Inside they jetted to a halt. The interior of the asteroid was a pure black, dotted with a few distant reflections of their headlamp beams. Swan had been in many a terrarium under construction, but this was not like those. Genette tossed ahead a bright lamp, jetted briefly to counteract the toss. The pinpoint flare floated forward through the empty space, illuminating the cylinder quite distinctly.
Swan spun a little under the force of her own looking around. So dim, so abandoned; she spun in some gust of emotion that perhaps came from her poor Terminator: fist to her faceplate, suddenly she heard herself moaning.
“Yes,” the little silver figure floating by her said. “There was a pressure failure here, with no warning. This was a chondrite and water-ice conglomerate asteroid, very common. The accident review found a small meteorite had by chance hit an undetected seam of ice in the cylinder wall, vaporizing it and depressurizing the interior catastrophically. It wasn’t the first time something like that had happened, although in this case the rock readers had given it a triple A rating. Usually the ones that have cracked have been Bs or Cs, and were occupied unwisely. So I’ve been reanalyzing old accidents, looking for certain flags, and decided I wanted to have a look at this one. Mainly at the outside, but first I wanted to check the inside.”
“A lot of people died?”
“Yes, around three thousand. It happened very fast. Some people were in buildings with shelters they got to in time, and others were near spacesuits, or air locks. Other than them, the whole city-state died. The survivors decided to leave it empty as a memorial.”
“So this is like a cemetery now.”
“Yes. There’s a memorial in here somewhere, I think on the other side. I want to take a look at the inner surface of the break.”
The inspector consulted with Passepartout, then led Swan through the interior space to a boulevard on the other side of the cylinder. The neighborhood here had a Parisian scale, with wide streets running between trapezoidal housing blocks four and five stories tall.
They hovered over an area of crumpled pavements and tilted buildings, which resembled old photos of earthquake-damaged areas on Earth. It was strange how still it was.
“Aren’t there enough nickel-iron asteroids around that no one needs to hollow a conglomerate?” Swan asked.
“You would think so. But they hollowed out a few of these and found they worked fine. Keep the walls thick enough and the rotation and interior air pressure are nowhere near enough to test them. They should work and they do. But this one broke. A little meteor hit just the wrong spot.”
They floated over an area where the intense buckling had left plates of white concrete thrown up and out, leaving a long gash between them. The gash was open to space; Swan could see stars through it.
They left the devastated street and floated back out of the asteroid. Outside they toed and jetted over the surface of the rock, negotiating the typical asteroid mini-g. Swan had spent some time in this g during her terrarium-building days, and she saw that the inspector was expert in it, which of course made sense for someone based in the asteroid belt.
When they got to the outside location of the open seam, they found several of the Interplan team already at work around it. Genette made a few balletic leaps, twisting in descent to float down headfirst, taking photos of the inside of the rupture. Close inspection of a few small pits to each side was accomplished by way of one-handed handstands, faceplate centimeters from the rock.
After a while: “I think I’ve got what I need.”
They floated there, watching the others continue to work. Genette said, “You have a qube there in your skull, isn’t that right?”
“Yes. Pauline, say hello to Inspector Genette.”
“Hello to Inspector Genette.”
“Can you turn it off?” the inspector asked.
“Yes, of course. Will you be turning off yours?”
“Yes. If that is indeed what really happens when we turn them off.” Through the faceplates Swan could see the inspector’s ironic smile. “All right, Passepartout has been put to sleep. Has Pauline?”
Swan had indeed pressed the pad under the skin on the right side of her neck. “Yes.”
“Very good. All right, now we can talk a little more openly. Tell me, when your qube is on, is it recording what you hear and see?”
“Normally, yes. Of course.”
“And does it have direct contact with any other qubes?”
“Direct contact? Do you mean quantum entanglement?”
“No, no. Decoherence makes that impossible, we are told. I only mean radio contact.”
“Well, Pauline has a radio receiver and transmitter, but I select what goes in and out.”
“Can you be sure of that?”
“Yes, I think so. I set the tasks and she does them. I can check everything she’s done in her records.”
The little silver figure was shaking its head dubiously.
“Isn’t it the same for you?” Swan asked.
“I think so,” Genette said. “I’m just not so sure about all the qubes that are not Passepartout.”
“Why? Do you think qubes may be involved with what happened here? Or on Mercury?”
“Yes.”
Swan stared in surprise at what seemed to be a big spacesuited doll floating beside her, feeling a little afraid of it. Its voice was in her ear because of her helmet mike, speaking from almost within her, much as Pauline did. A clear high countertenor, pleasant and amused.
“There are quite a few little crater pits to each side of the break here. Like that one…” Genette pointed with a forefinger, and a green laser dot appeared on the rim of a small pit, quickly circled the rim, then fixed at its center. “See that? And then that?” Circling another one. They were very small. “These are fresh enough that they may have happened during or after the break.”
“So, ejecta?”
“No. Gravity here is so slight, the ejecta seldom come back. If anything did, it would almost dock. These pits are deeper.”
Swan nodded. The asteroid’s lumpy surface had many rocks lying loosely on it. “So what did the accident report call these craters?”
“Anomalies. They speculated they might be pit ruptures, where ice deposits melted at the heat of impact. Could be. But I take it you have looked at the accident report for Terminator?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember there were anomalies there too? Whatever struck the tracks didn’t hit cleanly. There are outlier craters, very small, that were not there before the event. Now, on Mercury they could be ejecta coming back down, I grant you that—”
“Couldn’t the impactor have broken up coming in?”
“But that usually happens where there’s an atmosphere heating and slowing it.”
“Couldn’t Mercury’s gravity do it?”
“That effect would be negligible.”