Philosophers typed earnest queries into the special channels where the Presence seemed most intense. But even when there was a reply, it often came back as another question.
“WHAT AM I? YOU TELL ME I’M OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS…”
That attitude, plus an impression of incredible, overpowering patience, sent some mystics and theologians into frenzies of hair pulling. But to the rest of humanity it brought something like-relief. For the foreseeable future, most decisions would be left to familiar institutions — the governments and international bodies and private organizations that existed before everything went spinning off to hell and back again. Only in matters of basic priority had the Law been laid down, in tones that left no doubt in anybody’s mind.
Gravity resonators, for instance,- they could be constructed by anyone who had the means — but not all “requests” made through them would be granted. Earth’s interior was no longer vulnerable to intrusion. The new, delicate webbery of superconducting circuits and “neuronal pathways” that now interlaced smoothly with humanity’s electronic Net had made itself impervious to further meddling.
It also became clear why the nations were expected to commence major space enterprises. Henceforth, the raw materials for industrial civilization were to be taken from
Earth’s lifeless sisters, not the mother world. All mines currently being gouged through Terra’s crust were to be phased out within a generation and no new ones started. Henceforth, Earth must be preserved for the real treasures — its species — and man would have to look elsewhere for mere baubles like gold or platinum or iron.
That was the pattern of it. Certain forests must be saved at once. Certain offensive industrial activities had to stop. Beyond that, details were left to be worked out by bickering, debating, disputatious humankind itself.
With one additional, glaring exception, which had caused quite an impression. Perhaps to show the limits of its patience, the Earth-mind had gone out of its way, a few days ago, to set a particularly pointed example.
Since the “transformation of the angels,” when the horror had suddenly ceased worldwide, there had nevertheless been confirmed cases — no more than a few hundred total — of people being ripped to shreds by sudden deadly force, without warning or mercy. In each case, investigating reporters found evidence appearing on their screens as if by magic, proving the victims to be among the worst, most shameless polluters, conspirators, liars…
Clearly, some “cells” were just too sick — or cancerous — to be kept around, even by a “body” that proclaimed itself tolerant of diversity.
“death is still part of the process…”
That was the coda spread across newspaper displays. Strangely, the warning caused little comment, which in itself seemed to say a lot about consensus. The cases of “surgical removal” ceased, and that appeared to be that.
Teresa wondered at her own reaction to all this. It surprised her that she felt so little rebelliousness at the thought of some “planetary overmind” taking charge. Perhaps it was because the entity seemed so vague. Or that it appeared uninterested in meddling in life at a personal level. Or that humans, after all, seemed to be the mind’s cortex, its frontal lobes.
Or perhaps it was just the utter futility of rebellion. Certainly the presence didn’t seem to mind as certain individuals and groups schemed in anger to topple it. There were even channels on the Net set aside especially for those calling for resistance! After listening in a while, Teresa likened those strident calls to the vengeful, cathartic daydreams any normal person has from time to time… vivid thought-experiments a sane person can contemplate without ever coming close to carrying them out. They’d probably boil and simmer a while, and then, like the more outrageous passions of puberty, evaporate of their own heat and impracticality.
“Captain Tikhana,” a voice called from behind, stirring her contemplations. “As long as we’re almost there, may I please stop kicking pipes and rest a while?”
Pedro Manella’s head and torso extended halfway through the tunnel from middeck. The normally impeccable journalist was grimy and odorous from many days’ labor without bathing. Teresa almost sent him below again, to keep him out of the way. But no. That would be unfair. He’d been working hard, doing all the scutt labor and shit carrying while she and Alex were busy. Probably, they wouldn’t have made it without him.
“All right, Pedro,” she told the journalist. “I don’t figure the cooling system will freeze up in the next five minutes. You can watch the approach if you’re quiet.”
“Like a church mouse, I’ll be.” He carefully float-hopped over to grab the copilot’s chair, but didn’t try sitting down. The seat was filled with another of her make-do consoles. Teresa tried to ignore the aromas wafting from the big man. After all, she probably smelled little better.
As Alex brought them toward a gentle rendezvous with the waiting station, Teresa used her tiny store of precious, hoarded reaction gas to orient Atlantis for docking. Space-suited astronauts made signals in the efficient, lovely language of hands, more useful to her now than the tense words of the station’s traffic controllers, who had no idea what to make of this weird vessel anyway.
At last, with a bump and a clank, they locked into place. Atlantis’s ancient airlock groaned as it was put to use for the first time in decades, hissing like an offended crone.
Teresa flicked off switches and then patted the console one last time.
“Good-bye, old girl,” she said. “And thanks again.”
After transferring the equipment, after meetings and conference calls with everyone from tribunes to investigative com-missions to presidents, after they were finally allowed to shower and change and eat food fit for human consumption… after all of that, Teresa at last found herself unable to settle down within her tiny assigned cubicle. Sleep wouldn’t come. So she got up and made her way to the station’s observation lounge, and wasn’t surprised to find Alex Lustig there already, looking out across the carpet of blue and brown that seemed to stretch forever just beyond the glass.
“Hi,” he told her, turning his head and smiling.
“Hi, yourself.” And no more needed to be said as she joined him gazing at the living world.
Even in weightlessness there are influences, subtle and sometimes even gentle. Eddies of air and tide brushed them, bringing their shoulders together as they floated side by side, their faces bathed in Earthlight. It took little more to fold her hand into his.
From then on, all was kept in place by sound… the silent pulsebeat of their hearts, and a soft low music they could hear alone.
□ “We are born to be killers, of plants if nothing else. And we are killed. It’s a bloody business, living off others so that eventually they will live off you. Still, here and there in the food web one finds spaces where there’s room for something more than just killing and being killed.
“Imagine the island of blue in the middle of a tropical storm, its eye of peace.
“You must admit the hurricane is there. To do otherwise is self-deception, which in nature is fatal, or worse, hypocritical. Even honest, decent, generous folk must fight to survive when the driving winds blow.
“And yet, such folk will also do whatever they can, whenever they can, to expand the blue. To increase that gentle, centered realm where patience prevails and no law is made by tooth or claw.