Earth

Maybe she only married me to get at her family. It wasn’t the first time the thought had occurred to Logan. At Tulane, she had said he was the only boy who seemed completely unimpressed with her money and name — which was true enough. After all, financiers just own things, while a skilled person with a job he loves has much, much more.

How strange then, years later, for Daisy to accuse him of being a “tool of rich-pig land rapists.” All that time it had been in his head that he was keeping his side of their bargain, forsaking lucrative deals in favor of confronting incompetence in the field, compelling governments and egotistic pla

Yes, he also had been motivated by a joy of craft and the pleasure of solving real, palpable puzzles. Was that a betrayal? Can’t a man have several loves at once — a wife, a child, and the world?

For Daisy, apparently, there could be only one. The world. And on her terms.

The truck passed out of the forest, zooming along dusty headlands. Sunlight reco

Queer waves, the professor from the University of C6r-doba had called them, ecstatically describing the recent surge of bizarre earthquakes. At first Logan’s interest had been solely to estimate possible hidden damage to large structures such as dams. But as he looked over the frequency spectrum of the tremors he saw one strangeness more peculiar than all the others.

Sharp peaks at wavelengths of 59, 470, 3,750, and 30,000 meters.

Octaves, Logan realized at the time. Eightfold harmonics. I wonder what that could possibly mean?

Then there was the mystery of one drilling tower that had vanished. Water miners, digging an exploratory well when the quakes struck, had run scurrying for shelter, some of them stumbling from vision blurred to the point of blindness. When it was over, and at last they could see again, it was only to stare blankly at the place where the rig had stood. There lay only a hole, as if. some giant had come along and uprooted everything!

Including its tower, the entire drill string had just reached a length of 470 meters.

Of course, it could be a coincidence. But even so, what on Earth could convert quake energy into . . .

“Senor.” The driver interrupted Logan’s lazy musing. Enrique nudged him with an elbow and Logan cracked one eyelid. “Hm?”

“Senor, you can the bay oversee now.”

Logan sat up, rubbing his eyes… then inhaled sharply. Instantly all thought of quakes and harmonic mysteries vanished. He gripped the door frame, looking across a sea that was the same color as Daisy McCle

For all her craziness, her obsessiveness, the single-mindedness that eventually drove him from their home — his former wife’s eyes were still the ideal by which Logan measured all beauties. Amid the noisy student demonstrations where they first met, she had thought it was shared ideological fervor that made him ignore her money and look directly at her instead. But in truth, it had been those eyes.

Transfixed, he didn’t even look for the tidal power station that was their destination. He had room right then for just the sea. It was enough to fill his soul.

The poor, tortured transmission screamed as Enrique downshifted and sent the rattling truck careening toward the aquamarine waters of the Bay of Biscay.

Along the banks of the Yenisey River, immigrants lay out their new farms and villages. It is a long, hard process, but they have seen starvation and the ruin of their homelands — covered by rising waters or blowing sands. They look across endless waves of rippling steppe grass and vow to adapt, to do whatever it takes to survive.

Relocation officials tell them — No, you may not use that valley over there; it is reserved for the reindeer.

No, you may not tap the river at that spot; flow rates must be maintained for proper oxygenation.

You must choose one of these proven designs for your houses. You’ll be glad you did when the arctic winter comes, and you wish the walls were thicker still.

Staring at vast reaches of perspiring tundra, swatting persistent gnats and mosquitoes, the newcomers find it hard to imagine this sweltering place blowing neck-deep in snow. Shivering at the thought, they nod earnestly and try to remember everything they are told. Grateful to be here at all, they thank their Russian and Yakut hosts, and promise to be good citizens.

The tall, well-fed Soviets smile. That is well, they say. Work hard. Be kind to the land. Restrict your birth rate as you have promised. Send your children to school. Before, you were Kurds, Bengalis, Brazilians. Now you are people of the North. Adapt to it, and it will treat you well.

The refugees nod. And thinking of all those left behind them, waiting to come to the land of opportunity, they vow once more to do well.

• CRUST

“Watching, all the time watching… goggle-eye geeks. Soon as I get out, I’m go

What brought on Crat’s sudden outburst was the sight of yet another babushka, glaring at them from a bench under one of the force-grown shade trees as Remrand Roland and Crat scrambled up a grassy bank from the culvert where they’d been smoking. The very moment they came into view, the old woman laid her wire-knitting aside and fixed them with the bug-eyed, opaque gape of her True-Vu lenses — staring as if they were freaks or aliens out of some space-fic vid, instead of three perfectly normal guys, just hanging around, doing nobody any harm.

“My, my!” Remi whined sarcastically. “Is it my breath? Maybe she smells… tobacco!

“No joke, bloke,” Roland replied. “Some of those new goggles’ve got sniffer sensors on ’em. I hear the geek lobby in Indianapolis wants to put even home-grown on the restrict list.”

“No shit? Tobacco? Even? Roll over, Raleigh! I just gotta move outta this state.”

“Settlers ho, Remi?”

“Settlers ho.”

The stare got worse as they approached. Remi couldn’t see the babushka’s eyes, of course. Her True-Vu’s burnished lenses didn’t really have to be aimed directly at them to get a good record. Still, she jutted out her chin and faced them square on, aggressively making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted to her home unit, blocks from here, in real time.

Why do they have to do that? To Remi it felt like a provocation. Certainly no one could mistake her tight-lipped expression as friendly.

Remi and his pals had promised their local tribes supervisor not to lose their tempers with “senior citizens on self-appointed neighborhood watch.” Remi did try, really. It’s just another geek. Ignore her.

But there were so gor-sucking many geeks! According to the Net census, one in five Americans were over 65 now. And it felt far worse in Bloomington — as if oldsters were a ruling majority, staking out every shady spot with their electronic sun hats and goggle-sca

It was Crat whose reserve broke as they approached that baleful inspection. Suddenly he capered. “Hey, gra