David Brin - Earth

The young woman glanced over at him, her scarf framing a lovely oval face. Crat would have given his heart gladly when she smiled. He stumbled back, however, when another visage suddenly intervened, a crone who snarled at him in some strange dialect. Crat spun away to hurry forward again, toward the Governor’s Tower and the Admiral’s Bridge, twin monoliths that overlooked the center of town.

In a city rife with odors, the shaded bazaar was an especially pungent place where the fish was generally fresh but everything else was second hand, including the whores beckoning from a provocatively carved wooden balcony along the aft quarter.

Likewise the religions that were pitched from the opposite side, where a dozen midget temples, churches and mosques vied for the devotion of passersby. Here at least one was safe from one all-pervading creed, Gaia-worship. The few NorA ChuGa missionaries who tried preaching in Sea State were glad to depart with their lives. The lesson they took home with them was simple; it takes a full belly before a man or woman gives a tinker’s damn about anything as large as a planet.

Other types of outside recruiters were tolerated. The Resettlement Fund’s kiosk offered a third form of redemption, equidistant from sex and faith. Queued up there were men, women, whole families who had finally had enough… who would sign any document, have any surgery, swear any oath just to set foot on land again — in the Yukon, Yakutsk, Patagonia — anywhere there’d be steady meals and a patch of real ground to farm.

For Sea State this wasn’t treason. It was a population safety valve, one far less disturbing than another Crat had witnessed one dim twilight during his first stay on this drifting island-city.

He’d been lazing by one of the sidestream canals, picking away at a roast squid purchased from his shrinking purse, when a dark figure appeared slinking behind one of the shabbier apartment barges. It was a woman, he soon saw, wrapped in black from head to toe. The noise of clattering pots and shouting neighbors covered her stealth as she made her way to where the current was strongest.

Crat faded into a nearby shadow, watching her look left and right. There was a momentary flash of string as she tied two articles together, one heavy, the other wrapped in cloth. Crat had no inkling what was going on, though he thought for a moment he heard a faint cry.

The heavier object splashed decisively as it hit the water, instantly dragging the other bundle after it. Still he didn’t catch on. Only when he glimpsed the woman’s tired, bleak face and heard her sob did the light dawn. As she hurried away he knew what she had done. But he could only sit in stunned silence, his appetite quite gone.

He tried to understand, to grasp what must have driven her to do such a thing. Crat remembered what old prof Jameson used to say about Sea State… how most families who fled there came from societies where all decisions were made by men. In principle, Crat saw nothing wrong with’ that. He hated the arrogant, independent way girls were taught to act in North American schools, always judging and evaluating . Crat preferred how a thousand older, wiser cultures used to do it, before Western decadence turned women into not-women-anymore.

Still, for weeks he was haunted by the face of that anguished young mother. She came to him at night, and in his dreams he felt torn between two drives — one to protect her and the other to take her for his own.

Of course no one was asking him to do either. No one was exactly clamoring to make him a chief.

It was in the bazaar’s fourth quadrant, beyond the fish stalls and junk stands and traders hawking enzyme paste, that Crat came at last to the “Meat Market.”

“There are opportunities in Antarctica!” one recruiter shouted, near a holo depicting mineshafts and open-pit works, gouging high-grade ores out of a bleak terrain. Icy glaciers loomed in the background.

The images looked stark and honest — showing hard work in a harsh environment. Still, Crat could feel the holo’s subsonic music cajoling him to see more than that. The men depicted in those scenes grinned cheerfully beside their towering machines. They looked like bold men, the sort who tamed a wilderness and got rich doing so.

“The greeners have been given their dumpit parks and preservation areas now.” The speaker cursed, causing the crowd to mutter in agreement. “Half the bloody continent of Antarctica was set aside for ’em, almost! But the good news is, now the rest is open! Open wide for brave souls to go and win with their own strong hands!”

The recruiter sounded like he truly envied such gallant heroes. Meanwhile, the holos showed spare but comfortable barracks, hot meals being served, happy miners counting sheaves of credit slips.

Huh I Maybe company men get to live like that. They can recruit for those jobs anywhere.

In fact, Crat had applied for positions like those before finally falling back on Sea State. And if he hadn’t been up to the companies’ standards in Indiana, why would they accept him here? You don’t fool me. I can just guess what kind of work you’ll offer Sea State volunteers. Work a robot would refuse .

Even the poorest citizens of the poorest nations were protected by the Rio Charter, except those whose leaders had never signed, such as Southern Africa and Sea State. That gave them a queer freedom — to volunteer to be exploited at jobs animal rights groups would scream about if you assigned them to a pig. But then, every member of the Albatross Republic supposedly had chosen his own fate rather than accept the world’s terms. Rather than give up the last free life on Earth , Crat thought proudly. He departed that booth with aloof pride, preferring honest crooks to liars.

Over by the Climate Board, passersby scrutinized the fortnight forecast, of life-or-death interest to all floating towns. Two weeks was just long enough to evade bad storms. The Climate Board was also where the gamblers gathered. Whatever other exotic games of chance were fashionable, you could always get a bet on the weather.

Nearby, a small band played the style known as Burma Rag — a catchy mix of South Asian and Caribbean sounds with a growing following on the net, though naturally little profit ever made it back to Sea State. Crat tossed a piaster into the band’s cup, for luck.

The booths he sought lay near the gangway of a sleek little ship, obviously new and powerful and rigged for deep running. In front of the submersible a table lay strewn with rocky, egg-shaped objects, glittering with spongelike metallic knobs. Together, the vessel and ore nodules were probably worth half the town itself, but not many citizens loitered near the well-dressed company solicitors standing there. The real crowd clustered just beyond, where men in turbans jabbered into note plaques while bearded doctors poked and prodded would-be volunteers.

No holos proclaimed the virtues of life in the various Sea State salvage cooperatives. But everyone knew what it was about. It’s about dragging a frayed air hose behind you while you walk the sunken streets of Galveston or Dacca

or Miami, prying copper wires and aluminum pipes out of tottering ruins.

It’s working in stinking shit-mud to help raise blocks of sunken Venice… hoping a chunk will come up whole so it can be sold off like St. Mark’s Square was… to some rich Russ or Canuck theme resort.

It’s hauling dredges up the bloody Ganges, hired by the Delhi government, but shot at by the local militia of some province that doesn’t really exist anymore, except on hilltops.

Crat fingered the note Peter Schultheiss had given him. He edged alongside one queue and tapped a turbaned interviewer on the shoulder. “Can… can you tell me where…” he peered at the writing. “… where Johann Freyers is?”