David Brin - Earth

“Oh hell,” he sighed. The young mother backed against him. Her infant’s dark eyes were wide with fear.

Nelson glanced down at the ground, and saw with surprise that the way was clear below! As he watched, the head male and his followers cleared a path, cuffing other baboons aside. The alpha male looked up at Nelson then, and tilted his head.

With uncanny insight, Nelson suddenly understood. He had only to jump, and he could run all the way to the airlock unmolested before the crazy females caught up with him!

Perhaps. But he’d never make it encumbered. He exchanged a look with the bull. That, it seemed, was part of the bargain. He was not to interfere in the natural working out of their social order. Nelson nodded, comprehending. He waited till the small female next to him was fully engaged, all her attention given to answering the threatening grimaces of her stalkers. At that moment Nelson slipped over the edge.

It was a bad landing. He came to his feet gasping at a sharp twinge in his ankle. Hurriedly, though, he hopped away several meters before pausing to glance back.

Nobody was following him. In fact, the troop mostly faced the other way, watching the drama reach its climax on the ledge overhead. The bull appeared to have dismissed him completely now that he was leaving the scene.

Burdened by her infant, though, the small mother could not follow him. She stared after him instead, blinking with a mute disappointment he could read only too well. Then she had no time for anything but immediate concerns; with her infant on her back, she turned to bare her teeth at her assailants.

Nelson backed away another two steps toward the safety of the exit, now beckoning only twenty or so meters away. Still, he couldn’t tear his eyes away. He was captivated by the small baboon’s stand, grimacing final defiance at her foes, holding them back with brave lunges. It was an effort she could not keep up for long.

From experience, he knew the other females did not seek her death, only the baby’s. It was a bit of savagery he had not questioned until today. Now though, for the very first time, Nelson wondered… why.

It was so cruel. So awful. It reminded him of human nastiness. And yet, in all the time he had been here, he had never asked the experts about this or any other matter. It had been as if… as if to do so would be to admit too openly the ignorance he had nurtured for so long. His frail, rigid facade of cynicism could not bear curiosity. Once he started asking questions, where would it stop?

Nelson felt a pressure building in his head. It couldn’t be restrained…

“ Why ?” he demanded aloud, and felt his voice catch at the sound.

Protecting her child, the mother backed away awkwardly, shrieking at her enemies.

“Why’s it like this!” he asked, to no one present save himself.

Barely aware of what he was doing, Nelson found himself limping forward. He felt eyes track him as he held up his arms.

“Hey, you!” he called. “I’m back. Come on down…”

He had no need to repeat himself. The mother monkey grabbed her baby and launched herself from the doomed redoubt, landing in his arms as a taut bundle of scrawny brown fur, clawing for purchase on his already bleeding shoulders. Nelson hurriedly stepped away, fully resigned that now there was no way he’d reach the airlock in time. Sure enough, when he glanced back a crowd of angry baboons were catching up fast. The original pursuers had now been joined by several more irate monkeys, at least two of them large, pink-faced males, all dashing his way, screaming.

Nelson did not bother trying to run any further. He turned and scanned the ground for anything — anything at all — until his gaze fell upon a white rod.

His dung sampler.

Sighing that it wasn’t even the inadequate shock-prod, Nelson snatched it up, carrying the motion through just in time to catch a leaping baboon in the snout. The creature screamed and tumbled whimpering away.

The females scattered, dispersing on all sides. Dark eyes peered at him through the tall grass.

Panting, blinking in surprise, Nelson wondered. Was that it? Hey, maybe all it takes is the right bluff !

Then he saw why the females had given up so easily. They were moving aside to make room for a new force.

Rumbling with a low rage, the patriarch and his entourage arrived. Nine big males, their manes fully inflated, ambled with patient assuredness toward him and his frightened, weary charge. Their pace might be confident, but flecks of saliva dripped from their curled lips. Nelson read their eyes, and knew them for killers.

And yet, in that same suspended moment, Nelson had time to feel something he had never before imagined… a strange, crystal calm . As if this was all somehow familiar. As if he had been in this place, in this very predicament, many times before.

We were all like this, once , he realized, feeling the weight of his makeshift cudgel. White, black, yellow… men, women… our ancestors all shared this, long ago …

Back when Africa was new…

Human beings had changed the world, for well and ill. Would their efforts now save what was left? Nelson couldn’t begin to guess.

All he knew for sure was that for the first time he cared .

Nelson and the little mother shared communion in a moment’s eye contact. Leaving her baby clinging to his shoulder, she slipped down to stand beside his left knee, guarding his flank.

The pack slowed and circled. The bull shook his head, as if reading something different in Nelson’s stance, in his eyes. But Nelson suddenly knew the creature saw only part of it.

We humans almost wrecked the whole world. Humans may yet save it…

You don’t mess with guys who can do shit like that.

“Okay, it’s nine against two,” he said, hefting his rude club, smacking its reassuring weight in the palm of his left hand.

“That sounds about right.”

When at last they charged, Nelson was ready for them.

□ Running Census: Net datum request[□ ArBQ-P 9782534782]

U.S. Population Over Age 65

Year | Percent

1900 | 4.0%

1980 | 11.3%

2038 | 20.4%

Voting Clout of U.S. Citizen Age Groups

Citizen Age Group | Percent Who Vote | Political “Clout Factor”

18-25 | 19% | 5

26-35 | 43% | 23

36-52 | 62% | 39

53-65 | 78% | 44

66-99 | 93% | 71

National Comparisons

Nation | Citizenry Over 65 | Seniors’ Voting Clout

Japan | 26.1% | 87

U.S.A. | 20.4% | 71

Han China | 20.2% | 79

Russian S.F.S.R. | 19.1% | 81

Yakutsk S.S.R. | 12.1% *| 37

Yukon Province, Canada | 11.7% *| 31

Sea State | 10.0% | 19

Republic of Patagonia | 6.2% *| 12 **

*Biased by effects of immigration.

**Interactive and remote voting outlawed; polling allowed in person only, at voting stations.

The rattling truck stank to high heaven.

It wasn’t just the fumes from its gasoline engine—

Logan Eng was used to riding high-priority construction equipment. Fragrant, high-octane aromatics were as familiar as the grit of countless deserts or the metal tang of grease and drilling mud. Even the sweat fetor pervading the cracked upholstery spoke pungently of honor-able work.

But in addition to all that, Logan’s driver was a tobacco addict. Worse, he didn’t take his nicotine in pills or spray. No, Enrique Vasquez actually smoked paper-trapped bundles of shredded weed, inhaling the sooty vapors with deep sighs of satisfaction.