David Brin: Earth

Out in the atrium, a low rumble echoed off the walls of the glass cavern. She recognized the deep, purring growl of a tiger, her totem animal according to a shaman she’d spent one summer with, before the last century ended. He had said hers was “the spirit of a great mother cat…”

What nonsense. But oh, what a handsome fellow he had been! She recalled his aroma of herbs and wood smoke and male musk, even though it was hard right now to pin down his name.

No matter. He was gone. Someday, despite all the efforts of people like Pauline, tigers might be gone, too.

But some things endured. Jen smiled as she stroked Baby’s trunk.

If we humans annihilate ourselves, mammalian genes are rich enough to replace us with another, maybe wiser race within a few million years. Perhaps descendants of coyotes or raccoons, creatures too adaptable ever to need refuge in arks. Too tough to be wiped out by any calamity the likes of us create.

Oh, Baby’s delicate species might not outlast us, but Norway rats surely will. I wonder what kind of planetary custodians their descendants would make.

Baby whimpered softly. The elephant-mammoth hybrid watched her with soft eyes that seemed troubled, as if the creature somehow sensed Jen’s disturbing train of thought, Jen laughed and patted the rough gray flesh. “Oh, Baby. Grandma doesn’t mean half the things she says… or thinks! I just do it to amuse myself.

“Don’t worry. I won’t let bad things happen. I’ll always be watching over you.

“I’ll be here. Always.”

□ World Net News: Channel 265/General Interest/Level 9+ (transcript)

“ Three million citizens of the Republic of Bangladesh watched their farms and villages wash away as early monsoons burst their hand-built levees, turning remnants of the crippled state into a realm of swampy shoals covered by the rising Bay of Bengal …”

[Image of tear-streaked brown faces staring in numb dismay at the bloated bodies of animals and canted, drowned ruins of farmhouses.]

[□ Viewer option: For details on cited storm, voice-link STORM 23 now.]

“ These are the die-hards, who have refused all prior offers of resettlement. Now, though, they face a bitter choice. If they accept full refugee status, joining their brethren in Siberian or Australian New Lands, it will also mean taking all the conditions attached, particularly that they must swear population restriction oaths …”

[Image of a pregnant woman with four crying children, pushing her frightened husband toward fair-skinned medics. Zoom on one doctor’s hammer and sickle shoulder patch… a nurse’s Canadian maple leaf. Members of the screening team wear kindly smiles. Too nervous to show resentment, the young Bengali signs a clipboard and passes under the tent flap.]

[□ To read out specific oaths, voice-link REFUGE 43.]

[□ For specific medical procedures, voice-link VASECT 7.]

“ Having reached the limits of their endurance, many have agreed to the host nations’ terms. Still, it’s expected some will refuse even this last chance and elect instead the harsh but unregulated life as citizens of Sea State, whose crude rafts already sail the fens and shallows where formerly stretched great, jute estates …”

[View of barges, rafts, salvaged ships of all shapes and sizes, clustered under pelting rain. Crude dredges probe skeletons of a former village, hauling up lumber, furniture, odds and ends to use or sell for scrap. Other, quicker boats are seen pursuing schools of silvery anchovies through newly inundated shoals.]

[□ Real-time image 2376539.365x-2370.398, DISPAR XVII satellite. $1.45/minute.]

[□ For general background, link SEASTATE 1.]

[□ For data on specific flotilla, link SEA BANGLA 5.]

“ Already, spokesmen for Sea State are asserting sovereignty over the new fishing grounds, by right of reclamation …”

[□ Ref. UN document 43589.5768/UNORRS 87623ba.]

[Diplomats in marble halls, filing papers]

[Surveyors mapping ocean expanses.]

[□ Time-delayed images APW72150/09, Associated Press 2038.6683]

“ As expected, the Republic of Bangladesh has issued a protest through its U.N. delegation. Though, with their capital now underwater, the remonstrations begin to sound like those of a tragic ghost …”

[View of a brown-skinned youth in a greasy bandanna, grasping a rusty railing, staring toward an uncertain future.]

To Stan Goldman it was a revelation, watching Alex Lustig hurry from work site to work site under the vaulted, rocky ceiling. You never can tell about some-one till you see him in a crisis , he mused. Take Alex’s familiar gangling stoop. It no longer appeared lazy or lethargic down here, half a kilometer underground. Rather, the lad seemed to lean forward for leverage as he moved, pushing a slow-moving tractor here, a recalcitrant drill bit there, or simply urging the workers on. Air resistance might have been the only thing slowing him down.

Stan wasn’t the only one watching his former student, now transformed into a lanky, brown-haired storm of catalysis. Sometimes the other men and women laboring in this deep gallery glanced after him, eyes drawn by such intensity. One group had trouble connecting data lines for the big analyzer. Lustig was there instantly, kneeling on the caked, ancient guano floor, improvising a solution. Another team, delayed by a burned-out power supply, got a new part from Alex in minutes — he simply ripped it out of the elevator.

“I guess Mr. Hutton will notice when no one comes up for dinner,” Stan overheard one tech say with a shrug. “Maybe he’ll use a rope to lower us a replacement part.”

“Naw,” another replied. “George will lower dinner itself. Unless Dr. Lustig plugs us all with intravenous drips so we don’t even have to stop to eat.”

The remarks were made in good humor. They can tell this isn’t just another rush job, but something truly urgent . Still, Stan was glad necessity forced him to stay by his computer. Or else — age and former status notwithstanding — Alex would have drafted him by now to help string cables across the limestone walls.

Moment by moment, a laboratory was taking shape below the mountainous spine of New Zealand’s North Island.

It was still only the three of them — Stan, George, and Alex — who knew about the lost singularity, the Iquitos black hole that might now be devouring the planet’s interior. The techs had been told they were seeking a “gravitational anomaly” far deeper than any prior scan for trace ores or hidden methane had ever looked. But most of them knew a cover story when they heard one. The leading rumor — exchanged with fleeting smiles — was that the boss had found a map to the subterranean Lost World of Verne and Burroughs and TwenCen B-movies.

They’ll have to be told soon , Stan thought. Alex and I can’t handle the scans all by ourselves . Probing for an object smaller than a molecule, through millions of cubic kilometers of stressed minerals and liquid metal, would be like chasing a hurtling needle through countless fields of haystacks.

As if they’d be able to do anything about it if they did find the taniwha down there. Even Stan, who understood most of Alex’s new equations, could bring himself to believe the terrifying results for only a few seconds at a time.

I have four grandchildren, a garden, bright students with all their creative lives ahead of them, a woman who has made me whole by sharing my life for decades… There are books I’ve saved for reading “later. ” Sunsets. My paintings. Tenure …

Such wealth, modest in monetary terms, nonetheless made George Hutton’s billions seem like no big difference in comparison. It was hard, yet poignant, to be forced at this late date to take inventory and realize that.