Earth

• NOOSPHERE

Somewhere in the background Alex heard voices and thought other refugees must have come aboard. But that couldn’t be. By now he and Teresa must be the only ones left alive on Easter Island, protected by the thin, passive field of his little resonator. It had to be some news cha

In parts of Eurasia, the Americas, Africa, the effects were straightforward — no earthquakes, nothing hurled into space. Just death, simply death.

Death of human beings.

It’s actually a rather simple combination, he pondered as his device built a finely meshed picture of events on the gravitational bands. He worked cautiously, so as not to be detected by the enemy network. They’re using parameters that couple perfectly with human flesh, in pocket standing waves shaped to match, tidally, the human figure. I never even thought of that, though it’s obvious enough from earlier data. The clues were there in all those effects Teresa and others felt. It just took a certain mindset to see it.

Wave a beam like that around and you can kill millions. It depletes interior fields so little, it’s potentially self-sustaining.

The first strikes had been surgical, precise, taking out the world’s centers of gravitational research… all possible points of opposition. That included Colonel Spivey’s former resonators, for instance, and the Russian and Japanese and Han stations, too. Most of those were off-line now. Some flickered on idle, with no one at the helm. And two or three appeared even to have been hijacked, joining the original rebel cylinders in spewing beams of death.

It was too horrible to grasp, of course. If he let the full meaning penetrate it would numb him to uselessness, and Alex couldn’t afford that right now.

He tried some tentative pulses to get the feel of the sphere. It was touchy, delicate, like a wild beast. As it spun, it gave off the queerest, brief half images — subtly warped reflections of the spotlights, the looming shuttle cargo bay, his own face.

He hadn’t any chance to get familiar with the resonator since it was lifted, dripping, out of the nanogrowth tank many days ago. Now he had to leap straight into the saddle, without benefit of practice or simulation, from the gazerdynamic equivalent of a dray wagon straight to a rodeo horse.

What he wanted to do was give the bastards a taste of their own medicine. But without diagnostic backup, that would take too long. Meanwhile, thousands were dying in Tokyo and other places. Something had to be done about that first.

“All right—” he said aloud.

The subvocal mistook his words as commands and sent the sphere precessing in its housing. It took several seconds of concentrated effort to settle it back down again. Jen used to warn him about using the temperamental input device when emotions were ru

All right, Alex thought with silent, iron discipline. Here goes nothing.

She is slicing through Manaus — scouring the cities and towns of the Amazon — when her familiars report yet another band of desperate military men trying to interfere again. Now a squadron of them are streaking toward one of her resonators in screaming hypersonic aircraft, attempting to overcome her guardian whirlwinds with sheer speed and agility, trying to lock their missiles on target before she can respond.

Daisy obliges them in their courage to face death. Tracking their telemetry, she fills their cockpits with blood and grue.

But two aircraft continue on course. Their pilots have succeeded in setting their autopilots in time! She slips into military cha

Then it’s back to work. There is so much housecleaning left to do. She’s barely begun her chores. In minutes she has cleared the island of Sumatra, where the few remaining orangutans may now dwell in peace, undisturbed by terrible tall interlopers. No more human hands will wield chain saws there. On to Borneo! Her whirlwinds respond and sweep across the sea.

Strictly speaking, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She is no physicist, no geologist. The actual nature of the forces she is tapping matters as little to Daisy as the manufacturing details of a computer. All are technical fields that other experts studied, analyzed, and then reduced to beautifully simple, publicly accessible world-models.

Daisy knows all about models. She’s stolen many choice ones recently, from her now-extinct cousins, from her ex-husband’s employers, from all those clever males who thought they knew so much. She deals with the Earth’s interior now through such software intermediaries, as an enchantress might coerce nature by commanding demons and sprites to do her bidding for her. She treats the roiling, surging cha

In minutes a terrible storm of death has been unleashed across Java. Now she directs her attention below again, gathering yet another bundle of energy to focus against that fu

But what’s this? In a faraway quarter, Daisy senses a presence where she’d thought all competition vanquished. Where only the dead were supposed to reign!

At the briefest of commands, her familiars streak to check out this effrontery…

•

Alex rocked back in dismay. For an instant the whirling sphere had conveyed a sudden, vivid illusion of slitted lizards’ eyes! Only by quickly switching cha

He breathed raggedly for a moment. All right. Don’t let it shake you!

But it was impossible to escape the sense of loneliness. Always, before, he’d had scores of skilled workers to help him. True, they called him “wizard” and “tohunga.” But press flacks and Nobel committees to the contrary, no scientist with a grain of honesty ever claims he “did it all alone.”

And yet, that’s exactly what I’ve got to do now.

With a shuddering sigh, Alex pictured the Earth’s involute interior, now livid with convecting magnetism, strung and laced with man-modified cha

No more delays. You’ll have just one chance to take them by surprise.

And so, with desperate determination, he triggered his best shot.

Again, for the briefest instant he thought he saw a glitter of scales sweep across the spi

The explosion feels like an abrupt amputation. Suddenly, one of her captive resonators vanishes from the Earth’s surface, as if an arm or leg had been sliced away, cauterized by actinic heat.

“Damn!” Daisy cries. “It’s that meddler on the island again.”

She must put off for a little while her next project — scourging the ancient hub where Asia and Africa and Europe meet, where man first took up the cursed profession of farmer. This new nuisance must take priority over even that too-long-delayed correction.

She swings on-line those extra resonators seized after the cleansing of Tokyo and Colorado Springs. This should take only a few moments…