David Brin - Earth

Jen shivered. She was no invalid at mathematical modeling. But just two pages into one of Alex’s papers she’d gotten utterly lost in a maze of gauzy unrealities that left her head spinning. She still couldn’t bring up an image of their enemy. Vanishingly small, titanically heavy, infinitely involute — it was the essence of deadliness. And from childhood, Jen had always feared most those dangers without faces.

“Five minutes, Dr. Wolling,” one of the technicians said, looking up from his station. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” His friendly smile was a marked contrast to Kenda’s sour attitude.

“Thank you, Jimmy. No, I think I’d better go get ready now.” He shrugged and rejoined the others, staring into video and holo displays, their hands gripping controller knobs or slipped into waldo gloves. Jen walked past them all to the corner unit she’d been assigned, where she was grudgingly allowed to tap in her subvocal. She donned the device and let holographic displays surround her.

She coughed, yawned, cleared her throat, swallowed — setting off waves of color as the unit tried to compensate for all the involuntary motions. With her own computer back home, the clearing process was quick and automatic. Here, deprived of all the custom design that made her terminal a virtual alter ego, she had to do it fresh each time.

Mists dissolved into blankness. Jen dialed the unit’s sensitivity upward…

… and a Tigerflashed out at her,

roared,and then quickly receded into the

background …

… sparkles dashedand hopped…

… coruscating words with images…

Even the tiniest signal to her jaw or larynx might be interpreted as a command. Keeping one hand on the sensitivity knob, she concentrated to erase mistakes the machine kept interpreting as nascent words.

Few people used subvocals, for the same reason few ever became street jugglers. Not many could operate the delicate systems without tipping into chaos. Any normal mind kept intruding with apparent irrelevancies, many ascending to the level of muttered or almost-spoken words the outer consciousness hardly noticed, but which the device manifested visibly and in sound.

Tunes that pop into your head… stray associations you generally ignore… memories that wink in and out… impulses to action… often rising to tickle the larynx, the tongue, stopping just short of sound…

As she thought each of those words, lines of text appeared on the right, as if a stenographer were taking dictation from her subvocalized thoughts. Meanwhile, at the left-hand periphery, an extrapolation subroutine crafted little simulations. A tiny man with a violin. A face that smiled and closed one eye… It was well this device only read the outermost, superficial nervous activity, associated with the speech centers.

When invented, the subvocal had been hailed as a boon to pilots — until high-performance jets began plowing into the ground. We experience ten thousand impulses for every one we allow to become action. Accelerating the choice and decision process did more than speed reaction time. It also shortcut judgment .

Even as a computer input device, it was too sensitive for most people. Few wanted extra speed if it also meant the slightest subsurface reaction could become embarrassingly real, in amplified speech or writing.

If they ever really developed a true brain-to-computer interface, the chaos would be even worse .

Jen had two advantages over normal people, though. One was a lower-than-average fear of embarrassment. And second was her internal image of her own mind.

Modern evidence notwithstanding, most people didn’t really believe their personalities comprised many subselves. Dealing with stray thoughts was to them a matter of control, and not, as fen saw it, negotiation.

I also have the advantage of age. Fewer rash impulses. Imagine giving a machine like this to young, libidinous, hormone-drenched male pilots! Of all the silly things to do .

Having thought that, she had a sudden memory of Thomas, on that summer day when he took her aloft in his experimental midget-zeppelin, back when such things were rare and so romantic. Her golden hair had whipped in his eyes as he held her close, high over Yorkshire. He had been so young, and so very male…

The unit couldn’t interpret any detail in her vivid recollection, thank heavens! But the sensitivity was set so high, multicolored flashes filled the display, in rhythm to her emotions. Again, a candy-striped feline poked its nose around a corner and mewed.

Back into your lair, tiger , she commanded her totem beast. The creature snarled and slunk back out of sight. The colors also cleared away as Jen consciously acknowledged all the extraneous impulses, quelling their irrelevant clamor.

A clock ticked down. At the one-minute mark there appeared in front of her an image of the Earth’s interior — a complex, many-layered globe.

This wasn’t one of her own, ideogenous constructs, but a direct feed from Kenda’s panel. Deep inside the core, a stylized purple curve showed the orbit of their enemy, Beta. Already that trajectory showed marginal deviations, disturbed by earlier proddings from the four Tangoparu resonators.

Outside that envelope lay a region of blue strands where channels of softened mantle flickered with sudden, superconducting electricity — the temporary concentrations of extra energy Kenda’s team needed for the coming push. She listened as the techs maintained a running commentary. They would wait till Beta’s orbit brought it behind a likely looking thread, then set off the “gazer” — Alex’s bizarre, incredible invention — releasing coherent gravitational waves and giving their foe another tiny nudge.

Jen felt a surge of adrenaline. Whatever the outcome, this was memorable. She hoped she’d live long enough to be proud of all this someday.

Hell, there’s a part of me that doesn’t care about the pride. It just wants to live longer, period.

There is, within me, a bit that wants to live forever.

It was a conceit that demanded a reply. And so, from some recess of imagination, something caused the subvocal to display a string of gilt words, right in front of her.

… If that is what you want, my daughter, that is what you shall have. For did I not promise you exactly that, long, long ago?

Jen laughed. In a low voice she answered. “Yes you did, Mother. You promised. I remember it well.” She shook her head, marveling at the texture of her own imagination, even after all these years. “Oh, I am a pip. I am.”

Concentrating carefully, Jen ignored further input from her goddess or any other extraneous corner of her mind. She focused instead upon the planned procedure and paid attention to the Earth.

To the Efe people, the advancing jungle was just another invader to adapt to. Legends told of many others, even long before the Tall People came and went away again.

To Kau, leader of his small band of pygmies, the forest was more real, more immediate, than that other world had been — back when he used to wear shirts woven in faraway factories and carried a carbine as a “scout” for something called “the Army of Zaire.” One thing for certain, the Tall People had been easier to please than any jungle. You could play to their greed or superstition or vanity, and get all sorts of things the jungle provided grudgingly, if at all.

The women, like his wife, Ulokbi, used to work in the gardens of the Lesse people for a share of the crop. In those days, Kau and his brothers hunted as they pleased, taking paper money for many of their kills, flattering themselves they were woodsmen as skilled as their grandfathers had been, before the hills were laced with wires and pipelines and logging roads.