David Brin - Earth

The man looked at Crat as if he were some loathsome type of sea slug. He shouted something incomprehensible. Undeterred, Crat moved to another station. Again those in line watched him suspiciously. This time, though, the gaunt, sunken-chested fellow in charge was friendlier. Clean shaven, his face showed the stigmata of many long hours underwater — permanently bloodshot eyes and scars where breathing masks had rubbed away the skin.

“Freyers… over at…” He stopped to inhale, a desperate-sounding whistle. “… at…” With amazing cheerfulness for one who couldn’t even finish a sentence, he smiled. Snapping his fingers brought a young boy forth from under the table. “Freyers,” he told the boy in a wheeze.

“Uh, thanks,” Crat said, and to his surprise found himself being dragged away from the recruiting booths, toward the gangway of the sleek submersible. There, two men in fine-looking body suits conversed quietly with folded arms.

“Are you sure… ?” Crat started asking the boy.

“Yes, yes, Freyers. I know.” He snatched the note out of Crat’s hand and tugged the sleeve of one of the men, whose sandy hair and long face made Crat think of a spaniel. The mainlander looked bemused to receive such a token, turning the paper over as if savoring its vintage. He tossed a coin to the little messenger.

“So you were sent by Peter Schultheiss, hmm?” he said to Crat. “Peter’s a landsman known to me. He says you’ve good lungs and presence of mind.” Freyers looked at the note again. “A Yank, too. Have you a full reliance card, by any chance?”

Crat flushed. As if anyone with a card would emigrate to this place. “Look, there’s some mistake…”

“Well, I assume you at least have high school.”

Crat lifted his shoulders. “That’s no plishie. Only dacks don’t finish high school.”

The long-faced man looked at him for a moment, then said in a soft voice. “Most of your fellow citizens have never seen high school, my young friend.”

“Of course they have—” Then Crat stopped, remembering he wasn’t an American anymore. “Oh. Yeah, well.”

Both men continued regarding him. “Hm,” the shorter one said. “He’d be able to read simple manuals, in both Common and Simglish.” He turned to Crat. “Know any written Nihon or Han? Any kanji?”

Crat shrugged. “Just the first hundred signs. They made us learn simple ideo, uh—”

“Ideograms.”

“Yeah. The first hundred. An’ I picked up some others you guys prob’ly wouldn’t care about.”

“Hmm. No doubt. And silent speech? Sign language?”

Crat couldn’t see the point to this. “I guess, grade school stuff.”

“Tech skills? What kind of Net access did you use at home?”

“Hey, you an’ I both know any tech stuff I got is just pissant shit. You wanted someone educated, you wouldn’t be here , for Ra’s sake. There must be three fuckin’ billion college graduates out there, back in the world!”

Freyers smiled. “True. But few of those graduates have proven themselves aboard a Sea State fishing fleet. Few come so well recommended. And I’d also guess only a few approach us with your, shall we say, motivation?”

Meaning he knows I can’t say no to a job that pays good. And I won’t complain to no union if they give me tanks with rusty valves or an air hose peeling rubber here an’ there.

“So, can we interest you in coming aboard and taking some refreshment with us? We have cheese and chocolates. Then we can talk about getting you tested. I cannot promise anything, my boy, but this may be your lucky day.”

Crat sighed. He had long ago cast himself to fate’s winds. People looked at him, heard him speak, and figured a guy like him couldn’t have a worldview — a philosophy of life. But he did. It could be summed up in five simple words.

Oh, well. What the fuck.

In the end, he let hunger lead him up the gangway after the two recruiters. That and a powerful sense that he had little choice, after all.

□ Given their declining petroleum reserves and the side effects of spewing carbon into the atmosphere, why were twentieth century Americans so suspicious of nuclear power? Essentially, people were deeply concerned about incompetence .

Take the case of the Bodega Bay Nuclear Power Plant. The developers knew full well that its foundations straddled the San Andreas fault, yet they kept it quiet until someone blew the whistle. Why?

It wasn’t just hunger for short-term gain. Enthusiasts for a particular project often create their own mental versions of reality, minimizing any possibility things might go wrong. They convince themselves any potential critic is a fool or cretin.

Fortunately, society was entering the “era of criticism.” Public scrutiny led to an outcry, and the Bodega Bay site was abandoned. So when the great northern quake of ’98 struck, half the State of California was saved from annihilation.

The other half was preserved four years later during the great southern quake. Only a few thousand were killed in that tragedy, instead of the millions who would have died if the nuclear facilities at Diablo Canyon and San Onofre hadn’t been reinforced beforehand, thanks again to the free give and take of criticism. Instead of adding to the calamity, those power plants held fast to assist people in their time of need.

Other “nuclear” examples abound. Just a few small pumps, installed to placate critics, kept Three Mile Island from becoming another Chernobyl — that catastrophe whose radioactive reverberations bridged the interval from Nagasaki to Berne and delay-triggered the first cancer plagues.

Many still seek uranium’s banishment from the power grid, despite its present safety record and improved waste-disposal situation. They warn we are complacent, demanding each design and modification be released for comment on the net.

Ironically, it is precisely this army of critics that inspires confidence in the present system. That plus the fact that ten billion people demand compromise. They won’t stand for ideological purity. Not when one consequence might be starvation.

Sepak Takraw finished his third circuit of the ASEAN perimeter that day and verified that there was still no way out of the trap. Elite Indonesian and Papuan troops had secured this little plateau deep in rain-drenched Irian Java. Nothing got in or out without sophisticated detectors tracking and identifying it. Actually, Sepak was impressed by the troops’

professionalism. One hardly ever got to see military craftsmanship up close, except the presidential band on Independence Day. It was fascinating watching the sentries meticulously use pocket computers to randomize their rounds, so what might have become routine remained purposely unpredictable.

The first few days after finding his own rat-hole path to the surface, Sepak had his hands full just keeping out of the soldiers’ way. But then, for all their sophistication, they weren’t exactly looking for anyone already inside their perimeter. That meant George Hutton’s techs had kept mum about him, damn them. Their loyalty planted an obligation on him in return.

So once a day he squirmed through his tiny rocky passage to check up on the Kiwis. For the first few days things looked pretty grim. The boys and girls from New Zealand slumped against the limestone walls, staring at their captors, speaking in monosyllables. But then things changed dramatically. Inquisitors were replaced by a swarm of outside experts who descended on the site in a storm of white coats, treating the New Zealanders with utter deference. Suddenly, everything looked awfully chummy.