Earth

Still, he was pretty sure nobody had ever told him about benzene or hydrogen cyanide or ammonia, or all the other bizarre chemicals given off in trace amounts by creatures like himself. Chemicals which — if not for all sorts of hardworking bacteria — would have choked the atmosphere and killed everybody off long before humans ever fooled around with fire.

“Were you aware of the importance of wool moths and hair beetles?” Dr. B’Keli had asked when Nelson first started showing an interest. “If it weren’t for those specialized eaters of fur and hair, we mammals would have covered the land with a layer of sheddings more than two meters thick by now. Think of that, next time you spread mothballs to save your favorite sweater!”

Nelson shook his head, certain he was being had. I might be a changed person, but I still don’t like Dr. B’Keli.

Still, it had gotten him thinking. What made the system of cycle and recycle work so well for millions of years? For every waste product it seemed there was some species out there willing to consume it. Every plant or animal depended on others and was depended on by others still.

Even more amazing, the interdependence was usually a matter of eating one other! As individuals, each creature tried hard to avoid becoming anyone else’s meal. And yet, it was all this eating and being eaten, this preying and being preyed upon, that made the great balancing act work!

Months ago, he would never have allowed himself the presumed weakness of curiosity. Now it consumed him. The pattern of symmetry had been going on for three billion years, and he wanted to know everything about it.

How? How did it all come about?

That visiting professor some weeks back, the old woman from England, had called the process “homeostasis”… the tendency of some special systems to stay in balance for a long time, even if they’re rocked by temporary setbacks.

Nelson mouthed the word.

“Homeostasis…”

It had a sensual sound to it. He picked up the book again and found his place.

Nearly every culture has laws to shelter family, tribe, and nation from the impulses of individuals. In recent times we’ve extended these codes of protection to include those without family, the weak, even the alien, and agonize that we don’t live up to these standards perfectly. A kind of cultural quasi-citizenship has even been granted some of our former food animals — whales, dolphins, and many other creatures with whom it’s possible now to feel a sense of kinship.

Arguing endlessly over ways and means, most of us still agree on a basic premise, an ideal. If asked to envision paradise, we would indeed have the lion lie down with the lamb, and all people, great and small, would treat each other with kindness.

But it’s important to remember these are our morals, based on our background as particularly social mammals. Creatures who need a nurturing tribe — who are helpless and lost without a clan.

What if intelligence and technology had been discovered by some other species, say crocodiles? Or otters? Would they share our ideas of fundamental morality? Even among humans, despite our talk about caring for others, all too often it’s “look out for number one.”

Still, I’d like to suggest here that the drift from egotism toward cooperation is an inevitable one. It derives from basic patterns that have guided the evolution of life on Earth for three and a half billion years and continue to shape and transform our world.

Yes, Nelson thought. She’s the only one I’ve found who talks about the real stuff. I don’t understand half of what she says, but it’s here. This is where I start.

He stroked the scratchy paper pages, and for the first time thought he understood why some oldtimers still preferred such volumes to modern books. The words were here, now and always, not whispering ghosts of electronic wisdom, sage but fleeting like moonbeams. What the volume lacked in subtlety, it made up for in solidity.

Like me, maybe?

Nelson laughed.

“Right! Dream on, eh?”

He returned to the text. When the monkeys returned from their bath, they found him deeply immersed in an adventure they could not begin to follow. This time, however, they merely sat and watched, letting him do this strange human thing in peace.

For half a century the city of West Berlin was something of an ecological island.

Its isolation wasn’t total of course. Water seeping underground ignored political boundaries, as did the rain and pollution from Communist factories just beyond the wall. Except for one frightening episode, just after the Second World War, food and consumer goods flowed from the Federal Republic by rail and road and air.

Still, in many ways the city was an oasis less than ten miles by twenty, whose several million shut-ins interacted hardly at all with the territory surrounding them.

With no place to send their waste, Berliners of those days had to pioneer recycling. Refuse was strictly separated for curb-side pickup. Even sidewalks were made of stone tiles so they could be stacked during street repairs and then reused.

Despite the city’s flashy night life and reputation for irreverence, West Berlin had more park area per capita than New York or Paris. Gardeners grew more of their own food than other urbanites. One proud mayor proclaimed that, should humanity ever send a generation ship to the stars, it ought to be crewed by West Berliners.

A mayor of Bo

Berliners dismissed his sarcasm as churlish, and went on living.

• CORE

“You did not make Pele as angry this time, you well-endowed pakeha tohunga.”

The old priestess reached over to pat Alex’s knee.

With a reedy voice she went on complimenting him. “You must be learning better foreplay! Keep it up. That, surely, is the way to win Pele’s favor.”

Alex’s face reddened. He looked to George Hutton, sitting on a woven mat nearby. “Now what’s she talking about?”

The big Maori glanced across the fire pit at Meriana Kapur, who gri

“Auntie’s referring to the fact that there were fewer and milder quakes after the recent scans. That must mean the Earth goddess found your, er, probings… more acceptable this time.”

George said it with a straight face. Or almost straight. The ambiguity was just enough to make Alex suppress an impulse to laugh out loud.

“I thought Pele was a Hawaiian spirit, not Maori.”

George shrugged. “The Pacific’s cosmopolitan today. Hawaiian priests consult ours in matters of body magic, while we defer when it comes to volcanoes and planetary animism.”

“Is that where you studied geophysics, then?” Alex smirked. “In a shaman’s hut, beside a lava flow?”

He was surprised when George nodded earnestly, without taking offense. “There, and MIT, yes.” Hutton went on to explain. “Naturally, Western science is paramount. It’s the central body of knowledge, and the old gods long ago admitted that. Nevertheless, my ventures wouldn’t have got backing from my family and iwi and clan, had I not also apprenticed for a time with Pele’s priests, at the feet of Kilauea.”

Alex sighed. He shouldn’t be surprised. Like California fifty years ago, contemporary New Zealand had gradually transformed its longstanding tradition of tolerance into a positive fetish for eccentricity. Of course George’s people saw nothing inconsistent in mixing old and new ideas to suit their eclectic style. And if that occasionally made staid outsiders blink in wonder, so much the better.