David Brin - Earth

Alex blinked once, twice. “Oh,” he said.

For the first time, Manella’s expression grew pensive, thoughtful. “I can guess what you’re thinking, Lustig. That all your conclusions back in Waitomo must be wrong. That Beta couldn’t have been a berserker machine, a weapon sent to wreck the Earth. Because see what actually happened! Rather than ruin a world, Beta became essential to bringing an entire planet alive.”

“Auntie Kapur. She told me to ‘seek the wisdom of sperm and egg.’… Oh, these damn bloody metaphors!” Alex’s temples hurt. “Are you saying Beta was sent here to fertilize — ?”

“Hey, I never admitted knowing any more about it than you do. We’re just doing a particularly bizarre, imaginative, pretend scenario right? Frankly, after all the things I’ve been called in my life, it’s a bit refreshing to be cast in the role of a friendly alien for a change!”

Manella laughed. “Anyway imagine a bunch of clever parameciums, trying to parse a Shakespeare play by likening it to ripples in the water when they wave their flagella. That’s a lot like you and me claiming we understand a living planet.”

“But the effects of Beta—”

“Those effects, combined with your intervention, combined with a thousand other factors, including my own small influence… yes, surely, all these things helped bring about something new and wonderful. And perhaps similar events have happened before in this galaxy, here and there.

“Maybe the results aren’t always as pleasant or sane as what happened here. Perhaps humans really are very special people, after all. Despite all your faults, this may be a very special world. Maybe others out there sensed something worth preserving and nurturing here.”

The warmth in Pedro’s voice surprised Alex. “You mean we don’t have enemies out there after all?”

“I never said that!” Manella’s brows narrowed with sudden intensity. Then, just as quickly, he visibly retreated again into his mood of blithe playfulness. “Of course we’re still only speaking hypothetically. You do come up with brilliant what-ifs, Lustig. This one is so intriguing.

“Let’s just say one possibility is that Beta came at an opportune time. After a painful transition, it was turned into an instrument of joy. But does it necessarily follow that the ‘father’ of this particular sperm was a friend? That’s one possibility. Another is, this world has managed to make the best out of a case of attempted rape.”

Alex stared at Manella. The man talked, but somehow nothing he said seemed to make any sense.

“I know you don’t want to hear more, metaphors,” Pedro went on. “But I’ve given some thought lately to all the different roles humanity has to play in the new planetary being that’s been born. Humans — and man-made machines — contribute by far the largest share of her ‘brain’ matter. They’ll be her eyes, her hands, as she learns to shape and spread life to other worlds in this solar system.

“But the best analogy may be to a body’s white blood cells! After all, what if the universe is a dangerous place as well as a beautiful one? It will be your job, and your children’s and their children’s, to protect what’s been born here. To serve Her and sacrifice yourselves for Her if need be.

“And then, of course, there is the matter of propagation…”

The vistas Manella presented — even hypothetically — were too vast. He kept talking, but suddenly his words seemed barely relevant anymore.

By the same token, Alex suddenly didn’t care any longer whether his suspicions about the man were valid or just more tantalizing similes, drawn against the universe’s infinite account of coincidence and correlation. Rather, Manella’s latest comparison suddenly provoked in Alex thoughts about Teresa , how he felt about her in his blood, in his skin, and in the busy flexings of his heart. He found himself smiling

“… I’d like to think it’s that way,” Pedro went on in the background, as if garrulously lecturing an audience. “That there might exist others out there, scattered among the stars, who foresaw some of what was fated here. And maybe arranged for a little help to arrive in time.

“Perhaps those others feel gladness at this rare victory, and wish us well…”

An interesting notion, indeed. But Alex’s thoughts had already moved well ahead of that, to implications Manella probably could not imagine, whatever his true nature. His gaze pressed ahead, past the bustling construction yards, along the film of air and moisture enveloping the planet’s soft skin. Skirting the hot, steady glow of the sun, Alex’s eyes took in the dusty scatter of the galactic wheel. And as his perplexed musings cast outward, he felt a familiar presence pass momentarily nearby, a propinquity invisible and yet as real as anything in the universe.

“ YES, IT GOES ON, ” his grandmother’s spirit seemed to whisper in his ear. “ IT GOES ON AND ON AND ON… ”

Fluttering ribbon banners proclaim condemned, and warning lights strobe keep away. But even tales of radioactive mutants cannot keep some people from eventually coming home. Even to the Glarus Alps, where gaping, glass-rimmed caves still glow at night, where angry fire once melted glaciers and cracked fortress mountains to their very roots.

Strange trees cover slopes once given to farms and meadows. Their branches twist and twine, creating unusual canopies. Beneath that forest roof, without metal objects or electronics, a band of homesteaders might feel safe enough. And anyway, even if they are spotted, why should the great big world fear one tiny restored village of shepherds in these mountains?

“Mind the dogs, Leopold!” an old man tells his youngest son, who knows packed city warrens and life at sea far better than these ancestral hills. “See they keep the sheep from straying, now.”

The youth stares across the valley of his forebears toward those tortured peaks. Their outlines tug at his heart and the air tastes pure, familiar. And yet, for a moment he thinks he sees something flicker across the cliffs and snowy crags. It is translucent yet multihued. Beautiful if elusive.

Perhaps it is an omen. He crosses himself, then adds a circular motion encompassing his heart.

“Yes, Father,” the young man says, shaking his head. “I’ll see to it at once.”

They had come to break up Sea State, and nobody, not even the Swiss navy, put up a fight to stop them. Not that there was much to fight for anymore, Crat figured. Most citizens of the nation of creaking barges had come here in the first place because there was no-where else to go and be their own masters. Now, though, there were plenty of places. And somehow most people had stopped worrying so much about mastery anymore.

Crat lingered on deck watching the gradual dismemberment of the town that had until a few weeks ago seemed so gritty and vital. Under the Admiral’s Tower, orderly queues of families boarded zeps that would take them to new homes in the scoured zones… areas stripped of human life during the brief terror of the death angels. Now that the angels had been transformed, there were whole empty cities waiting to be refilled, with room enough for all.

Anyway, it had been made clear by the highest authority that the oceans were just too delicate to tolerate the likes of Sea State. Other territories, like Southern California, seemed to cry out for boisterous noise and other human-generated abuse. Let the refugees head there then, to remake the multilingual melting pot that had bubbled in that place before the crisis, and amaze the world with the results.

That was how one commentator put it, and Crat had liked the image. He’d even been tempted to go along — to have a house in Malibu maybe. To learn to surf. Maybe become a movie star?