Remembering her words made Nelson smile. He turned again to stare at Earth, the oasis everyone now spoke of as a single living thing. It hardly mattered whether that was a new fact, or one as old as life itself. Let the NorA ChuGas preach that Gaia had always been there, aware and patient. Let others point out that it had taken human technology and intervention to bring violent birth to an active planetary mind. Each extreme view was completely correct in its way, and each was just as completely wrong.
That was as it should be.
Competition and cooperation… yin and yang… Each of us participatin’ in the debate is like one of the thoughts that bubble and fizz in my own head — whether I’m concentrating on a problem or daydreaming at a cloud. Does one particular thought worry about its “lost independence” if it realizes it’s part of something larger?
Well, some prob’ly do, I guess. Others aren’t bothered at all. So it’ll be with us, too.
Nelson replayed his last musings to himself, and silently laughed. Listen to you! Jen was right. You’re a born philosopher. In other words, full of shit.
But then he had an answer to that, too. We may be mere thoughts, each of us a fragment. But that don’t mean some thoughts aren’t important! Thoughts could be the only things that never die.
From below decks a lowing wafted through the air grilles. Sedatives were wearing off and some of the wildebeests were waking up. Perhaps they sensed imminent arrival. Soon Nelson would have his hands full tending this, the first sapling cast forth by the mother world… the first of a myriad that might stream outward if the new gravity technologies proved workable. And if Earth’s nations agreed to the bold enterprise.
And if the new Presence let it be so.
Anyway, until the promised help came, he’d be too busy for philosophy… either for Gaia’s sake or for his own. Westward, the lunar mountains loomed higher and higher. The plains rose rapidly. And not too far below, he now saw the shadow of the ark. That dark patch coalesced and then spread across the gaping foundation awaiting it — freshly carved and vitrified within the ancient regolith by more magic from Atlantis.
Nelson put his arms around Shig and Nell during the final descent, which ended in a grating bump so gentle it was almost anticlimactic. The small, fluttering variations in gravity disappeared, and the moon’s light but firm grasp settled over them for good.
“Hello, ark four,” the voice of the woman pilot said. “Come in, ark. This is Atlantis. Is everything okay over there?”
Nelson lifted his belt phone.
“Hello, Atlantis. Everything’s just fine. Welcome to our world.”
□ Worldwide Long Range Solutions Special Interest Group [□ SIG AeR.WLRS 253787890.546]
… found an old TwenCen novel in which something like our present-day Net got taken over by software “gods and demons” based on some Caribbean sect. If that’s what happened, we’re all in deep trouble. But what we’re seeing doesn’t seem to be anything like-How can I tell? Yeah, I know it’s hard getting any sort of explicit answer from the Presence, whatever it is. But I’m sure all right. Call it a feeling.
Oh, yes, I agree with that! We are in for interesting times…
• EXOSPHERE
The contradiction was almost too absurd. Atlantis was the most capable ship in history. Atlantis was also a creaking wreck, threatening to fall apart at any moment. The air recyclers kept leaking. The carbon dioxide scrubbers had to be kicked every ten minutes or so to unclog them. The toilet was so awful they’d taken to using plastic bags, tying them off and storing them un-der webbing at the back of the cargo bay. At least the water coming out of her slapped-to-gether fuel cells was pure. But for food they had only some bruised fruits provided by that lonely caretaker-ecolo-gist — his way of saying thanks for rescuing his marooned ark and depositing it safely on the moon. The oranges were tart, but an improvement over what they’d survived on during the first few days in space — a single box of stale crackers and five suspicious candies found in Pedro Manella’s jacket pocket.
Now, at last, their travails seemed about to end. Teresa peered through the sighting periscope at the winking lights outlining the European space station just ahead. “Bearing six zero degrees azimuth,” she said into her chin mike. “Vector angle seventeen degrees, relative. Speed point eight four—”
“Okay, I’ve got it, Rip,” Alex’s voice crackled from the makeshift intercom. “Hang on, we’re heading in.”
It was hard getting used to this new mode of space travel. Using the puff-puff rockets of old, you had to calculate each rendezvous burn with a kind of skewed logic. To catch up with an object in orbit ahead of you, first you had to decelerate, which dropped you in altitude, which sped you up until you passed below your objective. Then you’d fire an acceleration burn to rise again, which slowed you down…
It was an art few would have much use for in the future. No more delicate, penny-pinching negotiation with Newton’s laws. All Teresa had to do now was tell Alex where to look and what to look for, and he took it from there. His magic sphere transmitted requests deep into the Earth, which elicited precise, powerful waves of gravity to propel them along. It made space travel almost as simple as pointing and saying, “Take me there!”
That was what made this the greatest spaceship ever, able to fly rings around anything else. And so it would remain for the next ten minutes or so, until they docked. Then arrangements would be made to transfer Alex and his gear to a modern craft, and poor old Atlantis would become another museum piece in orbit.
That’s all right, baby. She thought, patting the scratched, peeling console. Better this way, after one last wild ride, than sitting down there letting sea gulls crap all over you.
Now and then she still closed her eyes, remembering that hurtling launch — climbing just ahead of a pillar of volcanic flame as they were scooped into the sky by something greater than any rocket. Perhaps Jason had found it even more vivid and exalting as he bolted toward the stars. She hoped so. It felt fitting to think of him that way as she was finally able to say adieu.
Anyway, there were busy times ahead. After spending the better part of a week in hurried rescue missions, helping clean up the mess left in orbit by the war, she and Alex were about to take leading roles in the new international space plan. With Lustig-style resonators about to be mass produced, soon even skyscrapers and ocean liners might take to the sky. Within a year, there could be thousands living and working out here and on the moon. At least that seemed to be the general idea, though people still scratched their heads over how this had been agreed to so quickly.
In spite of having been close to the center of great events, Teresa admitted being as confused as anyone about what — or who — was in charge now. The “presence” that had been born out of recent chaos wasn’t wielding a heavy hand, which made it hard to really pin down or define.
Was it an independent entity with its own agenda to impose on subordinate humanity? Or should it be looked on as little more than a new layer of consensus overlaying human affairs, a personification of some global zeitgeist? Just one more step in a progression of such worldview revolutions — so-called renaissances — when the process of thinking itself changed.