David Brin - Earth

But by then it appeared already too late.

A dust drifts through the hills and valleys of Iceland. The people of the island nation do more than simply sweep it from their porches. They show it to their children and tell them it is life floating in ghostlike hazes down the mountain slopes. It is their land.

Families adopt an acre here, a hectare there. Some have been tending the same patch since early in the twentieth century, devoting weekends to watering and shoring up some stretch of heath or gorse or scrub pine.

Pilots on commuter flights routinely open their windows and toss grass seeds over the rocky landscape, in hopes a few will find purchase.

Towns and cities reclaim the produce of their toilets, collecting sewage as if it were a precious resource. As it is. For after treatment, the soil of the night goes straight to the barren slopes, to succor surviving trees against the bitter wind.

A dust colors the clouds above the seas of Iceland.

At the island’s southern fringe, a cluster of new volcanoes spills fresh lava into the sea, sending steam spirals curling upward. Tourists gawp at the spectacle and speak in envy of the Icelanders’ “growing” land. But when natives look to the sky, they see a haze of diminishment that could not be replaced by anything as simple or vulgar as mere magma.

A dusty wind blows away the hills of Iceland. At sea, a few plankton benefit, temporarily, from the unexpected nurturance. Then, as they are wont to do, they die and their carcasses rain as sediment upon the patient ocean bottom. In time the layers will creep underground, to melt and glow and eventually burst forth again, to bring another island to life.

Short-term calamities are nothing to the master recycling system. In the end, it reuses even dust.

Nelson Grayson had arrived in the Ndebele canton of Kuwenezi with two changes of clothes, a satchel of stolen Whatifs, and an inflated sense of his own importance. All were gone by the time, nine months later, he gathered his tools by the Level Fourteen Ape-iary and stepped through the hissing airlock into a bitter-bright, air-conditioned savannah. By then, of course, it was far too late to regret the reckless way he’d spent the profits from his smuggled software. Too late to seek another career path.

By then, Nelson felt irrevocably committed to shoveling baboon shit for a living.

It was not a highly regarded occupation. In fact, the keepers would have assigned robots the job, if not for the monkeys’ annoying habit of nibbling plastic. As yet, robots lacked the kind of survival instincts Nelson had been born with — courtesy of a million years of frightened ancestors.

At least, each of those ancestors had survived long enough to beget another in the chain leading to him. In his former life Nelson had never given much thought to that. But of late he’d grown to appreciate the accomplishment, especially as his employers reassigned him from habitat to habitat — catering to one wild and unpredictable species after another.

Most of his first months had been spent in the sprawling main ark — Kuwenezi Canton’s chief contribution to the World Salvation Project, where scientists and volunteers recreated entire ecosystems under multi-tiered, vaulting domes, where gazelles and wildebeest ran across miniature ranges that looked and felt almost real. Nelson’s first task had been to carry fodder to the ungulates and report when any looked sick. To his surprise, it wasn’t all that hard. In fact, boredom made him ask for a more demanding job. And so they named him dung inspector.

Great. I had to open my mouth. If I ever make it home to Canada, you can bet I’ll tell them what kind of hospitality you can expect in South Africa, these days.

It was apparently no different here in ark four — a tapered wedge of steel and reinforced glass two miles from Kuwenezi’s main tower, sitting atop the canton’s long-abandoned gold mine. Ark four was the gene-crafters’ lab, where new types were sought that might endure the sleeting ultraviolet outside or adapt to the creeping deserts and shifting rains.

Nelson had nursed a fantasy that his reassignment here was a promotion. But then the director had handed him the familiar electroprod and sampler, and sent him to face more baboons.

I hate baboons! I can feel them lookin’ at me. It’s like I can tell what they’re thinking .

Nelson did not like what he imagined going on in the minds of baboons.

These monkeys were different at least. He could tell soon after pushing into sight of a copse of grey-green acacia trees, their leaves drooping in the dusty heat. Clustered beneath those gnarled limbs were about forty creatures, darker than the tawny beasts he had known in the main ark, and noticeably larger, too. They moved lazily, as sensible creatures would under the noon sun — even moderated by the expanse of reinforced glass overhead. Only idiotic humans like Dr. B’Keli insisted on work in conditions like these;

Procrastinating, Nelson looked the troop over. Perhaps they weren’t completely natural baboons at all. Nelson had heard rumors about some experiments…

His nostrils flared as fickle air currents wafted his way. They sure smelled like baboons. And when he shuffled through the sharp savannah grass toward them, Nelson soon knew that any genetic differences had to be minor. They still moved about on four feet, tails flicking, stopping to pry open nuts or groom each other or snarl and cuff their neighbors, jockeying for status and dominance within the stepped hierarchy of the troop.

Oh, they’re baboons, all right.

As soon as he came in sight, the troop rearranged itself, with strong young males taking posts at the periphery. Grizzled, powerful elders rose up on haunches to watch him nonchalantly.

Nelson knew these creatures lived mostly as vegetarians. He also knew they ate meat whenever they could. Until the collapse of the planetary ozone layer and the accompanying weather changes, baboons had been among the most formidable wild species in Africa. It had amazed Nelson when he first overheard, a month ago, one scientist commenting that mankind had evolved alongside such adversaries.

I’ll never call a caveman stupid again , he vowed as one of the creatures lazily bared impressive fangs at him. Paranoid, yes. Cavemen must’ve been real paranoid. But paranoia ain’t so dumb .

At least the troop appeared calm and well fed. But that was deceptive. Back in the main ark Nelson had come to compare life in a baboon troop with an ongoing — often violent — soap opera without words.

He saw one senior male rock on his haunches, watching a pregnant female seek tasty grubs under nearby rocks. Rhythmically smacking his lips, the patriarch pulled in his chin and flattened his ears, exposing white eyelid patches. The female responded by ambling over to sit by him, facing away. Methodically, he began picking through her fur, removing dirt, bits of dead skin, and the occasional parasite.

Another female approached and began nudging the expectant mother to move over and share the male’s attention. The screeching fit that ensued was brief and inconsequential as such things went. In a minute the two had been cuffed into silence and all three monkeys turned away, minding their own business again.

Nelson’s job was to sample monkey droppings for a routine microflora survey — whatever that was. As he approached, he recalled what Dr. B’Keli had told him after his first, unpleasant encounter with baboons.

“Don’t ever look them in the eye. That was exactly the wrong thing to do! The dominant males will take it as a direct challenge.”

“Fine,” Nelson had answered, wincing as the nurse sutured two narrow bites on his posterior. Wow you tell me!”