John Barnes - Mother of Storms

Louie and Carla tell this part of the future together, so that Mary Ann is truly alone in her head, hearing the words come out of her mouth as the pictures scroll by. She sees Clem breaking up into a thousand tinier squalls and storms, scattering onto the land—it is going to be a long, foul winter in the Northern Hemisphere, but only a long, foul winter. She sees human beings moving back down onto the coastal plains and new cities rising, some on the sites of the old, some where new coastlines have shaped new harbors and river mouths.

And she sees Louie—or his physical manifestation in the one-time space station—making his way out again, to gather more comets and more material, to build up more replicators, and then—

Life spreads onto Mars first, and then Venus is spun up to rotational speed, cooled and seeded, and the moon itself is given a continuously replenishing supply of air (indeed, there is already a trace of air there now from what has drifted off 2026RU, and there will be much more—as she watches, she sees, a thousand years from now, the fall of rain on the lunar plains, and the green and blue moon that will rise in the skies of Earth).

She sees the many thousands of ships depart for distant stars; she sees the Earth become richer and more comfortable, and as industry moves into space, sees the green return to the Earth….

And she understands that none of this is what must be (except that Louie seems determined to turn the solar system green), but only what human beings can choose to do—and the story moves on again. The time has come, finally, when the world is one whether it likes it or not, when every voice can be heard—indeed, every voice that speaks must be heard, forever. It all rests with the billion people experiencing directly, and with all those who will come to know of this in the next few days.

She understands now, too, that when the image stops, she will cease to be a witness and listener—cease to be the channel for all of this—and then finally she will be alone, for their last gift to her will be to turn off the transmitters in her head permanently. She is about to be alone, along with all the Earth’s billions again.

It makes her think for a moment, while she can still see with god’s eyes, and she sees Jesse, standing in the crowd and drinking it all in but unable to form it into words, a small brown child on his shoulders because the boy couldn’t see and Jesse helps as naturally as he breathes, the boy’s family around him—he is not, and never will be, one of them, but they can stand together. She looks beyond that to see Berlina Jameson and Brittany Lynn Hardshaw looking over the shoulders of the world, feels the sense of their own unimportance washing over the reporter and the President… and beyond them, she looks into the eyes of Louie and Carla….

“You are gods,” she breathes quietly, and is rewarded with a roar of laughter from them. We aren’t even fully human , Louie explains.

And Carla adds, Oh, no you don’t. We’ve shown you the whole big Earth, and the universe beyond, and put it in your hands. You don’t get to hand it back. We’ll hang around to help out and see what you do—at least until we get bored—but we’re not taking responsibility for this show. You want gods, make somebody else be god—and make it somebody bigger than yourself, not just smarter or stronger.

Otherwise , Louie adds, we might just decide to do a little idol-smashing. We’re very glad we were once human and we wouldn’t have missed it, so if you dummies don’t appreciate being human, we just might decide to make you appreciate it .

And with that they are gone from her head, and the holograms vanish. Mary Ann is standing alone on the roof of Building J, the stones laid thousands of years ago under her feet, looking out across the huge crowd. The last of the blazing red sunlight is just bouncing off the great wall of clouds around the space, and the valley below is dark—darker than it has been in a hundred years, for the power is still off in Oaxaca and the villages.

The vast crowd around her seems to be looking at her, but she isn’t even sure how many of them, in the dim light of sunset, can pick her out from her background.

She is plain old Mary Ann Waterhouse again, though given what’s been done to her body she will probably have a problem with backaches, a butt too scrawny to sit comfortably on, and pestering men for quite a while, at least until she gets some surgery.

There is a loud stir in the crowd, as if many thousands of people had turned, seen, and shouted, and then a roar as everyone turns to see. There is a great light in the clouds, and her first thought is that it’s the moon—but it’s much too big for the moon—and then the clouds roll away, and it’s there.

2026RU, from which Louie is throwing Frisbees, in its libration-point orbit out in front of the moon, looms seven times as big as the full moon, for though the core of rock and ice is only a few hundred miles across, the thin cloud of gas and dust it gives off—too thin to breathe, and up close you wouldn’t see it at all—reflects the sunlight brilliantly.

The great, dead city of Monte Alban, where once the heavens were worshipped, and where tens of thousands have just seen a vision of matters as they are, resounds with cheering as the new moon climbs into the sky.

Orbital Resonance

A Million Open Doors

Every book accumulates some debts, but this one accumulated some special and important ones:

Dr. Stephen Gillett, who taught me what a clathrate was and kept me poking at the science until he said, “Good enough to fool me, anyway.”

Daniel D. Worley and David Pan, for information about the Pacific and a window into an all-but-forgotten corner of the world.

Ashley Grayson, my agent, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden, my editor, for frequently telling me I really was going to finish. And then for making me go through it all one more time so that I was really finished.

Melissa Gibson, who not only typed, but read, and not only read, but occasionally pointed out places where it was turning into nonsense.

And, during the very last week of getting the book done, two people who restored my ability to concentrate. I expect to see them at the top of the do-it-yourself field someday soon—Anna Rosenstein, author of How to Bob for Cats Through Your Kitchen Floor, and David Wintersteen, author of Special Weapons and Tactics in Covert Home Repair.

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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

MOTHER OF STORMS

Copyright © 1994 by John Barnes

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

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