How strange then, years later, for Daisy to accuse him of being a “tool of rich-pig land rapists.” All that time it had been in his head that he was keeping his side of their bargain, forsaking lucrative deals in favor of confronting incompetence in the field, compelling governments and egotistic planners with grandiose schemes to look more than a decade ahead, to work with nature instead of always against her.
Yes, he also had been motivated by a joy of craft and the pleasure of solving real, palpable puzzles. Was that a betrayal? Can’t a man have several loves at once—a wife, a child, and the world?
For Daisy, apparently, there could be only one. The world. And on her terms.
The truck passed out of the forest, zooming along dusty headlands. Sunlight reconnoitered the edges of Logan’s sunglasses as his thoughts drifted randomly. The zigzag speckles under his eyelids reminded him at one point of waves on a seismograph.
Queer waves, the professor from the University of Córdoba had called them, ecstatically describing the recent surge of bizarre earthquakes. At first Logan’s interest had been solely to estimate possible hidden damage to large structures such as dams. But as he looked over the frequency spectrum of the tremors he saw one strangeness more peculiar than all the others.
Sharp peaks at wavelengths of 59, 470, 3,750, and 30,000 meters.
Octaves, Logan realized at the time. Eightfold harmonics. I wonder what that could possibly mean?
Then there was the mystery of one drilling tower that had vanished. Water miners, digging an exploratory well when the quakes struck, had run scurrying for shelter, some of them stumbling from vision blurred to the point of blindness. When it was over, and at last they could see again, it was only to stare blankly at the place where the rig had stood. There lay only a hole, as if some giant had come along and uprooted everything!
Including its tower, the entire drill string had just reached a length of 470 meters.
Of course, it could be a coincidence. But even so, what on Earth could convert quake energy into …
“Señor.” The driver interrupted Logan’s lazy musing. Enrique nudged him with an elbow and Logan cracked one eyelid. “Hm?”
“Señor, you can the bay oversee now.”
Logan sat up, rubbing his eyes … then inhaled sharply. Instantly all thought of quakes and harmonic mysteries vanished. He gripped the door frame, looking across a sea that was the same color as Daisy McClennon’s eyes.
For all her craziness, her obsessiveness, the single-mindedness that eventually drove him from their home—his former wife’s eyes were still the ideal by which Logan measured all beauties. Amid the noisy student demonstrations where they first met, she had thought it was shared ideological fervor that made him ignore her money and look directly at her instead. But in truth, it had been those eyes.
Transfixed, he didn’t even look for the tidal power station that was their destination. He had room right then for just the sea. It was enough to fill his soul.
The poor, tortured transmission screamed as Enrique downshifted and sent the rattling truck careening toward the aquamarine waters of the Bay of Biscay.
Along the banks of the Yenisey River, immigrants lay out their new farms and villages. It is a long, hard process, but they have seen starvation and the ruin of their homelands—covered by rising waters or blowing sands. They look across endless waves of rippling steppe grass and vow to adapt, to do whatever it takes to survive.
Relocation officials tell them—No, you may not use that valley over there; it is reserved for the reindeer.
No, you may not tap the river at that spot; flow rates must be maintained for proper oxygenation.
You must choose one of these proven designs for your houses. You’ll be glad you did when the arctic winter comes, and you wish the walls were thicker still.
Staring at vast reaches of perspiring tundra, swatting persistent gnats and mosquitoes, the newcomers find it hard to imagine this sweltering place blowing neck-deep in snow. Shivering at the thought, they nod earnestly and try to remember everything they are told. Grateful to be here at all, they thank their Russian and Yakut hosts, and promise to be good citizens.
The tall, well-fed Soviets smile. That is well, they say. Work hard. Be kind to the land. Restrict your birth rate as you have promised. Send your children to school. Before, you were Kurds, Bengalis, Brazilians. Now you are people of the North. Adapt to it, and it will treat you well.
The refugees nod. And thinking of all those left behind them, waiting to come to the land of opportunity, they vow once more to do well.
• CRUST
“Watching, all the time watching … goggle-eye geeks. Soon as I get out, I’m gonna Patagonia, buy it? That’s where the youth growth is. More ripe fruit like us, Cuzz. And not so many barrel spoilers … rotten old apples that sit an’ stink and stare atcha …”
Remi agreed with Crat’s assessment as the three of them strode side by side down a gravel path through the park. Roland also expressed approval, nudging Crat’s shoulder. “That’s staccato code, boy-oh.”
What brought on Crat’s sudden outburst was the sight of yet another babushka, glaring at them from a bench under one of the force-grown shade trees as Remi and Roland and Crat scrambled up a grassy bank from the culvert where they’d been smoking. The very moment they came into view, the old woman laid her wire-knitting aside and fixed them with the bug-eyed, opaque gape of her True-Vu lenses—staring as if they were freaks or aliens out of some spacefic vid, instead of three perfectly normal guys, just hanging around, doing nobody any harm.
“My, my!” Remi whined sarcastically. “Is it my breath? Maybe she smells … tobacco!”
“No joke, bloke,” Roland replied. “Some of those new goggles’ve got sniffer sensors on ’em. I hear the geek lobby in Indianapolis wants to put even home-grown on the restrict list.”
“No shit? Tobacco? Even? Roll over, Raleigh! I just gotta move outta this state.”
“Settlers ho, Remi?”
“Settlers ho.”
The stare got worse as they approached. Remi couldn’t see the babushka’s eyes, of course. Her True-Vu’s burnished lenses didn’t really have to be aimed directly at them to get a good record. Still, she jutted out her chin and faced them square on, aggressively making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted to her home unit, blocks from here, in real time.
Why do they have to do that? To Remi it felt like a provocation. Certainly no one could mistake her tight-lipped expression as friendly.
Remi and his pals had promised their local tribes supervisor not to lose their tempers with “senior citizens on self-appointed neighborhood watch.” Remi did try, really. It’s just another geek. Ignore her.
But there were so gor-sucking many geeks! According to the Net census, one in five Americans were over 65 now. And it felt far worse in Bloomington—as if oldsters were a ruling majority, staking out every shady spot with their electronic sun hats and goggle-scanners, watching from porches, watching from benches, watching from lawn chairs …
It was Crat whose reserve broke as they approached that baleful inspection. Suddenly he capered. “Hey, granny!” Crat bowed with a courtly flourish. “Why don’t you record this!” Roland giggled as Crat swept off his straw cowboy hat to display a garish scalp tattoo.
Merriment redoubled when she actually reacted! A sudden moue of surprise and revulsion replaced that glassy stare. She rocked back and turned away.
“Astonishing!” Roland cried, mimicking their least favorite teen-behaviors teacher at J. D. Quayle High School. He continued in a snooty, midwestern drawl. “It should be noted that this small urban band’s totemistic innovation achieved its desired effect … which was? Anybody?”
“Shock value!” all three of them shouted in unison, clapping hands, celebrating a minor victory over their natural enemy.
Used to be, you could break a babushka’s stare with an obscene gesture or show of muscular bluster—both
protected forms of self-expression. But the biddies and codgers were getting harder to shake. Any time nowadays you actually made one of them yank back that awful, silent scrutiny was a triumph worth savoring.
“Freon!” Crat cursed. “Just once I’d like to catch some goggle geek alone, with fritzed sensors and no come-go record. Then I’d teach ’em it’s not polite to stare.”
Crat emphasized his point with a fist, smacking his palm. Today, since it was cloudy, he had forsaken his normal Stetson for a plaid baseball cap, still acceptable attire for a Settler. His sunglasses, like Remi’s, were thin, wire framed, and strictly for eye protection. Nothing electronic about them. They were a statement, repudiating the rudeness of geriatric America.
“Some people just got too much free time,” Roland commented as the three of them sauntered near the babushka, barely skimming outside the twenty-centimeter limit that would violate her “personal space.” Some oldsters were gearing up with sonar, even radar, to catch the most innocent infraction. They went out of their way to tempt you, creating slow-moving bottlenecks across sidewalks whenever they saw young people hurrying to get somewhere. They hogged escalators, acting as if they hoped you’d bump them, giving them any excuse to squeeze that police-band beeper, or raise the hue and cry, or file a long list of nuisance charges.
These days, in Indiana, juries were composed mostly of TwenCen grads anyway. Fellow retirement geeks who seemed to think youth itself a crime. So naturally, a guy had to accept the endless dares, skirting the edge whenever challenged.
“Granny could be doin’ something useful,” Crat paused to snarl, bending to really scrape the zone. “She could be gardening or collectin’ litter. But no! She’s gotta stare!”
Remi worried Crat might spit again. Even a miss would be a four-hundred-dollar fifth offense, and despite Granny’s averted gaze those sensors were still active.
Fortunately, Crat let Remi and Roland drag him out of sight into the formal hedge garden. Then he leaped, fist raised, and shouted, “Yow, tomodachis!” pumped by nicotine and a sweet, if minor, victory. “Patagonia, yeah!” Crat gushed. “Would that be dumpit great? Kits like us run it all there.”
“Not like here, in the land o’ the old and the home of the grave,” agreed Remi.
“Huh, say it! Why, I hear it’s better’n even Alaska, or Tasmania.”
“Better for Settlers!” Roland and Remi chanted in unison.
“And the music? Fuego-fire’s the only beat that Yakuti Bongo-Cream can’t meet.”
Remi didn’t care much about that. He liked the idea of emigrating for other reasons.
“Naw, cuzz. Patagonia’s only the first step. It’s a staging area, see? When they open up Antarctica, settlers from Patagonia’ll have the jump. Just a hop across the water.” He sighed. “We’ll have new tribes, real tribes when the ice melts enough. Set it up our way. Real freedom. Real people.”
Roland glanced at him sidelong. Months ago they had qualified as a youth gang, which meant mandatory tribal behaviors classes. That was okay, but Remi’s friends sometimes worried he might actually be listening to what the profs were saying. And sometimes he did have to fight that temptation … the temptation to be interested.
No matter. It was a good afternoon to be with pals, drooping out in the park. It was well past the sweltering heat of midday—when those without air-conditioning sought shade in the hedge garden for their siestas—so right now people were scarce in this section of the garden. Just a couple of seedy ragman types, slumped and snoring under the fragrant oleanders. Whether they were dozers or dazers, Remi couldn’t tell from here. As if the difference mattered.
“Real privacy, maybe,” Roland agreed. “You just make sure that’s in the constitution, Rem, if they nom you to write it.”
Remi nodded vigorously. “Dumpit A-okay! Privacy! No gor-suckers watchin’ your every move. Why, I hear back in TwenCen … aw, shit.”
Sure enough, bored with just talking, Crat had gone over the top again. With no one in sight from this hedge-lined gravel path, he started drum-hopping down a line of multicolored trash bins, rattling their plastic sides with a stick, leaping up to dance on their flexing rims.
“Sweet perspiration … Sweat inspiration …” Crat chanted, skipping to the latest jingle by Phere-o-Moan.
“Sniffin’ it stiffens it …” Roland countertimed, catching the excitement. He clapped, keeping time.
Remi winced, expecting one of the bins to collapse at any moment. “Crat!” he called.
“Damn what, damn who?” His friend crooned from on high, dance-walking the green container, shaking its contents of grass cuttings and mulch organics.
“U-break it—U-buy it,” Remi reminded.
Crat gave a mock shiver of fear. “Look around, droogie. No civic-minded geepers, boy-chik. And cops need warrants.” He hopped across to the blue bin for metals, making cans and other junk rattle.
True, no goggle-faces were in sight. And the police were limited in ways that didn’t apply to citizens … or else even the aphids on the nearby bushes could be transmitting this misdemeanor to Crat’s local youth officer, in real time.
“An aroma for home-a, and a reek for the street …”
Remi tried to relax. Anyway, what harm was Crat doing? Just having a little fun, was all. Still, he reached his limit when Crat started kicking wrappers and cellu-mags out of the paper-recycle bin. Misdemeanor fines were almost badges of honor, but mandatory-correction felonies were another matter!
Remi hurried to pick up the litter. “Get him down, Rollie,” he called over his shoulder as he chased a flapping page of newsprint.
“Aw petrol! Lemme ’lone!” Crat bitched as Roland grabbed him around the knees and hauled him out of the last container. “You two aren’t sports. You just—”
The complaint cut short suddenly, as if choked off. Picking up the last shred of paper, Remi heard rhythmic clapping from the path ahead. He looked up and saw they were no longer alone.
Bleeding sores, he cursed inwardly. All we needed were Ra Boys.
Six of them slouched by the curving hedge, not five meters away, grinning and watching this tableau—Remi clutching his flapping load of paper, and Roland holding Crat high like some really homely ballerina.
Remi groaned. This could be really bad.
Each Ra Boy wore from a thick chain round his neck the gleaming symbol of his cult—a sun-sigil with bright metal rays as sharp as needles. Those overlay open-mesh shirts exposing darkly tanned torsos. The youths wore no head coverings at all, of course, which would “insult Ra by blocking the fierce love of his rays.” Their rough, patchy complexions showed where anti-onc creams had sloughed precancerous lesions. Sunglasses were their only allowance for the sleeting ultraviolet, though Remi had heard of fanatics who preferred going slowly blind to even that concession.
One thing the Ra Boys had in common with Remi and his friends. Except for wristwatches, they strode stylishly and proudly unencumbered by electronic gimcrackery … spurning the kilos of tech-crutches everyone over twenty-five seemed to love carrying around. What man, after all, relied on crap like that?
Alas, Remi didn’t need Tribal Studies 1 to tell him that was as far as teen solidarity went in the year 2038.
“Such a lovely song and dance,” the tallest Ra Boy said with a simper. “Are we rehearsing for a new amateur show to put on the Net? Do please tell us so we can tune in. Where will it be playing? On Gong channel four thousand and three?”
Roland dropped Crat so hurriedly, the Ra Boys broke up again. As for Remi, he was torn between a dread of felonies and the burning shame of being caught picking up litter like a citizen. To walk just three steps and put it in the bin would cost him too much in pride, so he crumpled the mass and stuffed it in his pocket—as if he had plans for the garbage, later.
Another one joined the leader, sauntering forward. “Naw, what we have here … see … are some neo-fem girlie-girls … dressed up as Settlers. Only we caught them being girlie when ??
? when they thought no one was looking!” This Ra Boy seemed short of breath and a bit droopy eyed. Remi knew he was a dozer when he lifted an inhaler and took a long hit of pure oxygen from a hip flask.
“Hmm,” the tall one nodded, considering the propotition. “Only problem with that hypothesis is, why would anyone want to dress up like a gor-sucking Settler in the first place?”
Remi saw Roland seize the growling Crat, holding him back. Clearly the Ra Boys would love to have a little physical humor with them. And just as clearly, Crat didn’t give a damn about the odds.
But even though no geeps were watching now, dozens must have recorded both parties converging on this spot … chronicles they’d happily zap-fax to police investigating a brawl after the fact.
Not that fighting was strictly illegal. Some gangs with good lawyer programs had found loopholes and tricks. Ra Boys, in particular, were brutal with sarcasm … pushing a guy so hard he’d lose his temper and accept a nighttime battle rendezvous or some suicidal dare, just to prove he wasn’t a sissy.
The tall one swept off his sunglasses and sighed. He minced several delicate steps and simpered. “Perhaps they are Gaians, dressing up as Settlers in order to portray yet another endangered species. Ooh. I really must watch their show!” His comrades giggled at the foppish act. Remi worried how much longer Roland could restrain Crat.
“Funny,” he retaliated in desperation. “I wouldn’t figure you could even see a holo show, with eyes like those.”
The tall one sniffed. Accepting Remi’s weak gambit, he replied in Posh Speech. “And what, sweet child of Mother Dirt, do you imagine is wrong with my eyes?”
“You mean besides mutant ugliness? Well it’s obvious you’re going blind, oh thou noonday mad dog.”
Sarcasm gave way to direct retort. “The Sun’s rays are to be appreciated, Earthworm. Momma’s pet. Even at risk.”