David Brin - Earth

In this case, the peepers wanted data on a rogue techno-conspiracy of some sort. Something having to do with those missing drilling rigs and water spouts Logan Eng had been so uptight about. Her customers didn’t want to discuss specifics, and that was fine by her. The details weren’t important anyway. Let them play their adolescent-male, military-penis games. The deal she’d struck had saved more land than you could walk across in a day of hard marching. All in exchange for a simple map to the conspirators’ front door!

What’s more, she was already getting feelers from other clients who wanted information on the same subject. There were ways of getting around her oath of confidentiality to the feds. This affair might be milked a lot farther, for more acres set aside, more watersheds put off limits to rapacious man.

All told, it had been a very profitable month. In fact, it seemed such a pleasant spring day, Daisy put on her hat and sunglasses and gloves and left her den to go for a walk.

Of course once she crossed the bridge, leaving behind her wind generators and mulch turbines and acres of restored native foliage, she had to face all the garbage left by four centuries of desecrators… including, still visible above the cypress groves, the decaying spires of derelict riverside refineries. Some of them still seeped awful gunk, many decades after their abandonment and so-called cleanup. Only fools drank unfiltered groundwater from Louisiana wells.

That wasn’t all. Ancient power cables and sagging telephone poles laced the parish like atherosclerotic veins, as did concrete and asphalt roads, many no longer used but still stretching like taut lines of scar tissue across the fields and meadows. Even near at hand, in her quiet green neighborhood, there were those Kudzu-covered mounds in the nearby yards, which looked like vine-coated hillocks till you peered close and recognized the blurred outlines of long-abandoned, rusted automobiles.

It all reminded Daisy of why, as the years passed, she left her carefully resurrected patch of nature less and less often. It’s a wonder I had the stomach to spend so much time in this countryside when I was young, instead of getting sick whenever I went outdoors .

Actually, the family estates were a ways north of here. Still, this general part of Louisiana was where her roots had sunk deeply, for better or for worse. Back when her brothers and sisters and cousins had been dashing madly about, taking juku lessons, struggling to live up to their parents’ expectations and be better horseriders, better at sports, better world cosmopolitans, always better than the children of normal folk — Daisy had fiercely and adamantly opted out. Her passion had been exploring the territory in all directions, the living textures of the land.

And exploring the Net too, of course. Even back then, the data web already stretched round the globe, a domain fully as vast as the humid counties she roamed in the “real” world. Only, in the Net you could make things happen like in stories about magic, by incantation, by persuasion, by invoking sprites and spirits and just the right software familiars to do your bidding for you. Why, you could even buy those loyal little demons in brightly colored boxes at a store, like a pair of shoes or a new bridle for your horse! No fairy tale wizard ever had it so easy.

And if you made a mistake on the Net… you just erased it! Unlike outside, where an error or faux pas left you embarrassed and isolated, or where a single careless act could despoil a habitat forever.

And it was an egalitarian place, where skill counted more than who your parents were. You could be pen pals with a farm girl near Karachi. Or join an animal rights club in Budapest. Or beat everybody at Simulation Rangers and have all the top gamesters on the planet arguing for months whether the infamous hacker called “Captain Loveland” was actually a boy or a girl.

Best of all, when you met someone on the Net, people’s eyes didn’t widen as they asked, “Oh? Are you one of those McClennons?”

It was a touchy subject, brought to mind by a recent message she’d received. Family interests were among those inquiring about the peeper matter. And much as she hated to admit it, Daisy was still snared in a web of favors and obligations to the clan. How else, these days, could she afford to turn so much prime agricultural acreage back to native bayou?

Damn them , she cursed silently, kicking a stone into one of the turbid man-made canals carrying drainage from a cluster of giant fish farms.

Maybe I can use this, though… find a way to turn things around on them. If they want the data bad enough, this could win me free of them forever.

For the first time she wondered, really wondered, about the conspiracy Logan and the peepers had been so upset over — that everyone in the world seemed to want to know about. I assumed it was just more physics and spy stuff .

Corporations and institutes and governments were always getting in a froth over this or that technological “breakthrough,” from fusion power and superconductors to nanotech and whatever. Every time it was “the discovery that will turn the tide, make the difference, harken a new era.” Always it seemed imperative to be the first to capitalize. But then, inevitably, the bubble burst.

Oh, sometimes the gadgets worked. Some even made life better for the billions, helping forestall the “great die-back” that had been due decades ago. But to what end? What good was putting off the inevitable a little while longer, which was all Logan and his ilk ever managed, after all? Daisy had learned not to pay much heed to techno-fads. To her fell the task of preserving as much as possible, so that when humanity finally did fall, it wouldn’t take everything else to the grave with it.

Now, though, she wondered. If this thing’s got everybody so excited, maybe I ought to look into it myself .

She turned back well before reaching the little town of White Castle. Daisy didn’t want the humming power cables from the nuclear plant to ruin what was left of her mood.

Anyway, she’d begun thinking about ways to take advantage of the situation.

If the clan wants a favor, they’ll have to give one in return. I want access to Light Bearer. It’s the last ingredient I need to make my dragon .

On her way back past the cane fields and fish farms, Daisy contemplated the outlines of her superprogram — one that would make her surrogate “hounds” and “ferrets” look as primitive as those ancient “viruses” that had first shown how closely software could mimic life. She pondered the beautiful new structure mentally. Yes, I do think it would work .

Turning a bend, Daisy was roused from her thoughts by the sight of two teenagers up ahead, laughing and holding hands as they strolled atop a levee. The boy took the girl’s shoulders and she squirmed playfully, giggling as she avoided his attempts to kiss her, until suddenly she leaned up against him with an assertion all her own.

Daisy’s smile renewed. There was always something sweet about young lovers, though she hoped they were being careful about…

She took off her sunglasses and squinted. The girl — was her daughter! As she watched, Claire pushed at her boyfriend’s chest and whirled to stride away, forcing him to hurry after her.

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.