Make a note to call Logan, Daisy filed for future reference. Have him talk to the girl about sexual responsibility. She won’t listen to me anymore.
The one time they had had a mother-daughter chat on the subject, it had been a disaster. Claire acted horrified when Daisy did no more than suggest the simplest, most effective form of birth control.
“I will not. And that’s final!”
“But every other method is chancy. Even abstinence. I mean, who knows? You could get raped. Or miscalculate your own mood and act on impulse. Girls your age do that sometimes, you know.
“This way you can be free and easy the rest of your life. You can look on sex the way a man does, as something to seek aggressively, without any chance of, well, complications.”
Claire’s expression had been defiant. Even contemptuous.
“I’m a result of ‘complications,’ as you call them. Do you regret the fact that your old-fashioned birth control methods failed, seventeen years ago?”
Daisy saw Claire was taking it all too personally.
“I just want you to be happy—”
“Liar! You want to cut down the human population just a bit more, by having your own daughter’s tubes tied. Well get this, Mother. I intend on experiencing those ‘complications’ you speak of. At least once. Maybe twice. And if my kids look like they’re going to be real problem-solvers, and if their father and I can afford it and are worthy, we may even go for a third!”
Only after Daisy had gasped in shock did she realize that was exactly the reaction Claire had wanted. Since that episode, neither of them ever mentioned the subject again.
Still, Daisy wondered. Might it be worthwhile to send out a ferret to look for, well, chemical means? Something nonintrusive, undetectable …
But no. Claire already did all the cooking. And she probably had her gynecologist watching for any signs of tampering. Daisy made a rule of avoiding meddling wherever it might lead to retaliation. And so she decided to let the matter lay.
The girl will be leaving soon, Daisy pondered as she neared home again. Automatically, a list of chores Claire currently took care of scrolled through her mind. I’ll have to hire one of those oath-refugees, I suppose. Some poor sod who’ll work a lot harder than my own lazy kid, no matter how I tried not to spoil her. Or maybe I’ll get one of those new domestic robots. Have to reprogram it myself of course.
On her way to the back door she nearly tripped over two unfamiliar mounds on the slope overlooking the creek. Fresh earth had been tamped over oblong excavations and then lined with stones.
What the hell are these? They look like graves!
Then she remembered. Claire had mentioned something about the gloats. Their two weed eaters had died last week of some damn stupid plague set loose by a bunch of amateur Greeners over in Africa.
That blasted kid. She knows the proper way to mulch bodies. Why did she bury them here?
Daisy made another mental note, to cast through the Net for other means of keeping the stream clear. It was a dumb compromise anyway, using gene-altered creatures to compensate for man’s ecological mistakes. Just the sort of “solution” touted by that Jennifer Wolling witch. Rot her.
What is Wolling up to, anyway? I wonder.
Soon Daisy was sitting before her big screen again. On impulse, she pursued her most recent mental thread.
Wolling.
Daisy ran a quick check of her watchdog programs. Hmm. She hasn’t published a thing since leaving her London flat. Is she sick? Maybe dead?
No. Too tough to get rid of that easily. Besides, her mailbox shows a simple transrouting to Southern Africa. Now why is that familiar?
Of course it would be trivial to create an associator search program to find out, but Daisy thought of something more ambitious.
Let’s use this as a test for my new program!
Last week one of her search routines had brought home a research article by an obscure theorist in Finland. It was a brilliant concept—a hypothetical way of folding computer files so that several caches could occupy the same physical space at the same time. The “experts” had ignored the paper on its first release. Apparently it would take the usual weeks, or even months, for its ideas to percolate upward through the Net. Meanwhile, Daisy saw a window of opportunity. Especially if she could also get her hands on Light Bearer!
If this works, I’ll be able to track and record anybody, anywhere. Find whoever’s hiding. Pry open whatever they’re concealing.
And who better to experiment on than Jen Wolling?
Daisy began filling out the details, drawing bits of this and that from her huge cache of tricks. It was happy labor and she hummed as the skeleton of something impressive and rather beautiful took shape.
Once, the door opened and closed. Daisy sensed Claire leave a tray by her elbow and recalled vaguely saying something to her daughter. She went through the motions of eating and drinking as she worked. Sometime later, the tray disappeared the same way.
Yes! Wolling’s the perfect subject, Even if she finds out, she won’t complain to the law. She’s not the type.
Then, after I’ve tried it out on her, there’s all sorts of others. Corporations, government agencies … bastards so big they could hire software guns smart enough to keep me out. Until now!
Of course, the program was structured around a hole where the keystone—Light Bearer—would go. If she could coerce it from her cousins in exchange for information.
There! Daisy stretched back and looked over the entity she’d created. It was something new in autonomous software. I must name it, she thought, having already considered the possibilities.
Yes. You are definitely a dragon.
She leaned forward to dial in a shape from her vast store of fantasy images. What popped into place, however, amazed even her.
Emerald eyes glinted from a long, scaled face. Lips curled above gleaming white teeth. At the tip of the curled, jeweled tail lay a socket where Light Bearer would go. But even uncompleted, the visage was impressive.
Its tail whipped as the creature met her gaze and then slowly, obediently, bowed.
You will be my most potent surrogate, Daisy thought, savoring the moment. Together, you and I will save the world.
It is told how the brave Maori hero Matakauri rescued his beautiful Matana, who had been kidnapped by the giant, Matau.
Searching all around Otago, Matakauri finally found his love tied to a very long tether made from the skins of Matau’s two-headed dogs. Hacking away with his stone mere and hardwood maipi did Matakauri no good against the rope, which was filled with Matau’s magical mana—until Matana herself bent over the thong and her tears softened it so it could be cut.
Yet Matakauri knew his bride would never again be safe until the giant was dead. So he armed himself and set off during the dry season, and found Matau sleeping on a pallet of bracken surrounded by great hills.
Matakauri set fire to the bracken. And although he did not wake, Matau drew his great legs away from the heat. The giant began to stir, but by then it was too late. The flames fed on his running fat. His body melted into the earth, creating a mighty chasm, until all that remained at the bottom was his still-beating heart.
The flames’ heat melted snow, and rain filled in the chasm, forming Lake Whakatipua—which today bears the shape of a giant with his knees drawn up. And sometimes people still claim to hear Matau’s heartbeat below the nervous waves.
Sometimes, whenever the mountains tremble, folk wonder what may yet awaken down there. And when.
• CORE
“… so for the third time they untied Cowboy Bob from the stake and let him speak to Thunder, his wonder horse.”
June Morgan’s eyes seemed to flash as she leaned toward Alex and Teresa.
“This time, though, Bob didn’t whisper in Thunder’s left ear. He didn’t whisper in the right. This time he held the horse’s face, looked him straight in the eye, and said—‘Read my lips, dummy. I told you to go get
a Posse!’ ”
As June sat back with an expectant smile, Alex had to bite his lower lip to contain himself. He watched Teresa sitting across the room, as her initial confusion gave way to sudden understanding. “Oh! Oh, that’s awful!” She laughed while waving at the air, as if to fan away a bad odor.
June grinned and picked up her glass. “Don’t you get it, Alex? See, the first two times, the horse brought back women …”
He held up both hands. “I got it, all right. Please, Teresa’s right. It’s bloody offensive.”
June nodded smugly. So far, she was having by far the best of it. No joke he or Teresa told was delivered half as well or elicited such approving groans of feigned nausea. Probably, her skill came from being Texan. The only nationality Alex knew who were better at this odd ritual were Australians.
As bearer of good tidings, June could hardly be begrudged. This party in Alex’s tiny bungalow was to celebrate an end to weeks of tension.
At least one hopes it’s over. I still feel twinges of paranoia, looking over my shoulder for men in snap-brim hats and trench coats.
June had arrived on Rapa Nui this morning with word of Colonel Spivey’s complete agreement to their terms. In exchange for their cooperation—and especially Alex’s expertise —all charges would be dropped against Teresa and Easter Island would be left alone.
Naturally, Spivey will smuggle in a spy or two. But at least Teresa and I are no longer on the run.
It was still an open question whether there was any place to run to. The struggles against Beta weren’t over yet. Still, even the most fatalistic of Alex’s technicians were starting to act as if they thought there might be a planet under them by this time next year.
Now if only they can convince me.
Things had changed since theirs was a tiny, tight-knit cabal, wrestling subterranean monsters all alone. Now they were part of a large official enterprise, albeit one still veiled under a “temporary” cloak of security. June was here to cement the partnership, conveying the determination of both Glenn Spivey and George Hutton to make it work, for now. In that rote as emissary, she would leave again tomorrow with Alex’s chief token of cooperation—a box of cubes with fresh data for the other teams. Her courier route ought to bring her back every week or so from now on.
Teresa, for her part, had gone to great pains to make things clear to June—that her new, close friendship with Alex wasn’t sexual.
Not that the two of them hadn’t thought about it. At least he had. But on reflection he had come to realize that anything intimate between them would demand more intense attention than either could spare right now. For the time being, it was enough that they had a silent understanding—a link that had never been severed since they emerged hand in hand from that odyssey underground, like twins who had gestated together and shared the same act of being reborn.
For her part, June Morgan’s outwardly relaxed posture and easy humor surely overlayed anxiety. Alex’s relationship with her had been a wartime affair, mutual, uncomplicated. He had no idea where it stood now and didn’t mean to push it.
At least the two women appeared to have buried whatever tension once lay between them. Or most of it, at least. Alex was glad. For one thing, it meant he could stand up now and leave them alone together for a little while.
“If you ladies will excuse me,” he said, stepping to the door of the little bungalow. “I have to go see someone about an emu.”
June nodded briefly at him, but Teresa was already leaning forward in her chair, almost touching the other woman’s arm. “All right then,” she said. “Here’s one for you, while he’s out playing fire drill with the bushes.”
Moving quickly, Alex made it outside before she started telling the joke. A long one might have snared him and set off a crisis in his kidneys.
It was a balmy night, though winter had lingered a long time, turning this desolate island even more windblown and sere. Apparently spring would be late and blustery. Even the trees at the experimental reforestation zone up at Vaiteia seemed to shiver and cower whenever the gales picked up.
He didn’t bother walking downslope to the shower-commode, shared by five of the prefabricated cottages. Instead, he climbed the hill a ways to where the view was better. As he watered the scrub grass, Alex looked westward toward the lights of Hanga Roa town, just north of Rano Kao’s towering cliffs. The solitary jet runway glittered palely next to five compact tourist hotels and a moored cargo zeppelin. Nearer at hand lay the Atlantis monument, bottom-lit so that at night the ancient, crippled space shuttle actually seemed caught nobly in the act of taking off.
Since their close escape from New Zealand, wincing and limping from their bruises, he and Teresa had perforce taken up different activities. For her part, she spent most of her days with the old model-one shuttle. Presumably she knew a way inside, past the vandalism alarms. Or perhaps she was just scraping off the graffiti and gull droppings that made the broken spacecraft look so pathetic by daylight.
Possibly, she was just sitting in Atlantis’s pilot seat, brooding over the slim likelihood she’d ever see space again—even given a pardon from Spivey’s masters.
Anyway, he was busy enough for both of them. Rapa Nui station was again the fulcrum for up to several dozen gazer beams a day, pulsating through the Earth’s interior in a dizzying variety of modes and leading to countless surface manifestations. Now, at least, Alex had secure consultation links with Stan Goldman in Greenland, and data streamed in from the NATO ground teams, as well, helping him refine his models with each passing day.
(He’d even had a chance to get in touch with his grandmother, over in Africa. Good old Jen. After berating him several minutes for neglecting her, she had immediately dropped the subject and launched into a long, excited explanation of her new research, which Alex vaguely gathered had something to do with schizophrenia.)
Alex spent a good part of each day watching the singularity on the big display, where Beta could be seen spending more of its time in the “sparse” zones of the lower mantle. Already the monster was on an enforced diet, and soon they’d reach break-even—that milestone when the deadly knot began losing mass-energy as fast as it absorbed it. That would be time for real celebration … a true miracle, given their odds just a few months ago.
But then what?
Behind him, he heard the women laugh out loud, Teresa’s alto blending harmoniously with June’s contralto. It was a sound that cheered him. Finished with his business, Alex found himself suddenly shivering in the chill breeze. He zipped up and walked a little further along the slope, crunching the dry grass underfoot.
Apparently, a surprising number of Colonel Spivey’s superiors believed Alex’s theory, that Beta was a smart bomb sent by alien foes to destroy humanity. If so, then Spivey had a point. The gazer could become the pivot of Earth’s only credible defense. In fact, to hear Spivey put it, the world might someday erect statues to Alex Lustig.
Savior of the planet, forger of our shield.
The image would appeal to any man’s vanity. And Alex wasn’t sure he had the will to resist. What if it’s true? he thought, tasting the honey sweetness of Spivey’s fable.
The colonel’s plan had one more advantage. It meant they might soon reduce the number of pulses to just a nudge now and then.
He scuffed the ground. Inhaled the scented air. Shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. All right. Keeping it down there makes sense. Maybe. And yet Alex felt edgy.
Everywhere Beta passes, the minerals seem to change … at least momentarily.
It was hard to tell how, exactly, even with their wonderfully improved sensitivity. Beta was still a tiny, if ferocious object, with an actual physical zone of influence only millimeters across. The affected track of altered perovskites was consequently extremely thin. Still, with each orbit more slender tubes of transformed mineral glittered in the singularity’s wake, flickering oddly.
How can we leave the thing down there when we have no idea what the l
ong-term effects will be?
Maybe it was a good thing he hadn’t told Hutton or Spivey about his new resonator, the one with the spherical, compact design. Better to wait and be certain what the colonel’s actual scheme was … what-he was going to do when word inevitably leaked out.
For they weren’t going to be able to keep the lid on forever, that was clear to everyone. Spivey’s bosses had to be preparing for a political powwow soon.
Maybe all they want is to present the world with a fait accompli, Alex thought hopefully. “Look, see what we in the West have done? We saved the world! Now, of course, we’ll let the tribunals have the keys to the gazer. It’s far too dangerous for any one group to control.”
Alex smiled. Yes. Quite possibly that was exactly what they had in mind.
Right. Surely.
On his way back to the bungalow, Alex passed before a row of seaside moai sculptures, this strange island’s contribution to world imagery. Gloomy and almost identical, they nonetheless struck him differently each time he saw them. On this occasion, despite the wind and sparkling stars, they just looked like huge chunks of stone, pathetically chiseled by desperate folk to resemble stern gods. People did bizarre things when they were afraid … as most men and women had been for nearly all the time since the species evolved.
We didn’t make Beta though, Alex reminded himself. So we’re foolish, fearful, sometimes crazy, but maybe not damned.
Not yet, at least.
Back at the bungalow, Alex wiped his feet before entering.
“… know it’s logical, and maybe justified,” Teresa said, nodding seriously. “But after Jason … well. I can’t share again. I don’t think I could handle it.”
“But that was different—” June stopped and looked up quickly as Alex entered.
“Share what?” he asked. “What’s so different?”
Teresa looked away, but June stood up, smiling. She took him by the lapels and drew him into the room. “Nothing important. Just girl talk. Anyway, we decided to call it a night. I have a busy day tomorrow, so—”