Across Realtime

"Put enough stuff in Luna's orbit and you'll see more than just a few new stars. In my time, millions lived there. All Earth's heavy industry was there. Things were getting crowded. There's only so much thermal and chemical pollution you can dump before your factories begin to poison themselves."

Now Wil remembered things Marta and Yel‚n had said. "But it's mainly bobbles there now."

"Yes. This light isn't caused by factories and civilization. Third-body perturbations have long since flushed the original artifacts. Now it's a handy place for short-term storage, or to park observing equipment."

Wil stared at the pale glow. He wondered how many thousands of bobbles it took to make such a light. He knew Yel‚n still had much of her equipment off Earth. How many millions of to

They went another couple of hundred meters eastwards. Gradually Wil's coordination returned, till he was walking without help and only an occasional wobble. His eyes were fully dark-adapted now. Light-colored flowers floated in the bushes to the side of the path, and when they nodded close the sweetish smell came stronger. He wondered if the path was natural or a piece of Korolev landscaping. He risked his balance by looking straight up. Sure enough, there was something dark against the stars. Yel‚n's auton-and probably Della's, too was still with them.

The path meandered southwards, to the naked rock that edged the cliffs. From below came a faint sighing, the occasional slap of water against rock. It could have been Lake Michigan on a quiet night. Now for some mosquitoes to make him feel truly at home.

Blumenthal broke the long silence. "You were one of my childhood heroes, Wil Brierson." There was a smile in his voice.

"What?"

"Yes. You and Sherlock Holmes. I read every novel your son wrote."

Billy wrote... about me? GreenInc had said Billy's second career was as a novelist, but Wil hadn't had time to look at his writing.

"The adventures were fiction, even though you were the hero. He wrote 'em under the assumption that Derek Lindema

"Derek Lindema

Wil nodded. "Yeah, Rohan." Wimpy Derek Lindema

He glanced at the high-tech. "Glad you enjoyed my adventures, Tun‡. I assume you grew out of it. From what I hear, you were in construction."

"True and true. But had I wished to be a policeman, it would've been hard. By the late twenty-second, most habitats had fewer than one cop per million population. It was even worse in rural areas. A deplorable scarcity of crime, it was." Wil smiled. Blumenthal's accent was strange-almost singsong, a cross between Scottish and Amerasian. None of the other high-techs talked like this. In Wil's time, English dialect differences had been damping out; communication and travel were so fast in the Earth-Luna volume. Blumenthal had grown up in space, several days' travel time from the heartland.

"Besides, I wanted more to build things than to protect folks. At the begi

Wil had read that in Yel‚n's summaries. The difference hadn't seemed terribly important. "You bobbled out in 2210?"

"True. Della Lu was latest before me, in 2202. We've never found anyone who lived closer to the Singularity."

Rohan said softly, "You should be the most powerful of all."

"Should be, perhaps. But the fact is, I'm not one of the willing travelers. I was more than happy to live when I was. 1 never had the least inclination to hop into the future, to start a new religion or break the stock market.... I'm sorry, Rohan Dasgupta, I-"

"It's okay. My brother and I were a little too greedy. We thought `What can go wrong? Our investments seem safe; after a century or two, they should make us very rich. And if they don't, well, the standard of living will be so high, even being poor we'll live better than the rich do now.' " Rohan sighed. "We bet on the progress you speak of. We didn't count on coming back to jungles and ruins and a world without people." They walked several paces in silence. Finally Rohan's curiosity got the better of him. "You were shanghaied, then. like Wil?"

"I... don't think so; since no one lived after me, it's impossible to know for sure. I was in heavy construction, and accidents happen.... How's the legs, Wil Brierson?"

"What?" The sudden change of topic took Wil by surprise "Fine now." There were still pins and needles, but he had no trouble with coordination.

"Then let's start back, okay?"

They walked away from the cliffs, past the sweet blossoms The campfires were invisible behind several ridgelines; they had come almost a thousand meters. They walked most of the way back with scarcely a word. Even Rohan was silent.

Wil's rage had cooled, leaving only ashes, sadness. He wondered what would happen the next time he saw Derek Lindema

"Thanks for... talking to me. I-I'm not usually like this." That was true, and perhaps the most u