Earth

Alex refused to give George the satisfaction. He shrugged and turned to regard the priestess once again.

Here under the hand-carved beams of the centuries-old meeting house, he had only to squint to imagine himself transported in time. Even her tattoos looked genuine… unlike those the entertainers at Rotorua put on and took off as easily as hair or skin color. Still, it was doubtful many ancient Maori women, even priestesses, reached Auntie’s age with all their own teeth still in place, as hers were, gleaming straight and white from a life of hygiene and regular professional care.

Alex realized she was waiting for a reply, and so he nodded slightly. “Thank you, Auntie. I’m glad the goddess found my attentions… pleasing.”

George planted a hand on his shoulder. “Of course Pele liked them. Didn’t the Earth move for you?.”

Alex shrugged the hand aside. George had insisted they come here tonight, implying it was important. Meanwhile Alex chafed for the lab and his computer. One more simulation might break the logjam. Maybe if he kept at it, kept trying…

“You pursue a great taniwha that has burrowed into Our Mother,” the priestess said. “You seek to grasp its nature. You fear it will devour Our Mother and ourselves.”

He nodded. A colorful appraisal, but it summed things up rather well. Their most recent gravitational tomography scans had lit up Earth’s interior with a startling clarity that struck George’s technicians dumb, sketching the planet’s deep layers in fine, prickled, searing complexity that defied all previous geophysical models.

The search had revealed both “taniwhas,” the two singularities slowly orbiting near the planet’s heart. Both the shriveled, evaporating remnant of his own Alpha and the ominous, massive spectre of Beta had shown up as tiny, perfect sparkles within the maelstrom. Everything he’d surmised about the larger beast had been confirmed in those scans. The cosmic knot was growing, all right. And the more closely he examined its convoluted world-sheets, its torturous topology of warped space-time, the more beautiful it grew in its implacable deadliness.

Unfortunately, he was no closer to answering any of the really basic questions, such as when and where the thing had originated. Or how it was that probing for it triggered earthquakes at the surface, thousands of miles away.

Hell, he couldn’t even figure out the thing’s orbit! Prior to these recent scans he’d been so sure he had Beta’s dynamics worked out — the way gravity and pseudo-friction and centrifugal forces balanced in its slow whirl about the i

Auntie Kapur tapped a steady beat on a miniature ceremonial drum- — which some called a zzxjoanw — while making fatidic statements about amorous goddesses and other superstitious nonsense.

“… You reach deep within Pele’s hidden places, touching Her secrets. She would not permit this of just any man. You are honored, nephew.”

Gaia worship took many forms, and this Pele-venerating version seemed harmless enough. He’d even heard Jen speak favorably of Auntie’s cult, once. Under other circumstances he might have found all this very interesting, instead of a damned nuisance.

“Have no fear,” she went on. “You will tame this beast you pursue. You will keep it from harming Our Mother.”

She paused, looking at him expectantly. Alex tried to think of something to say.

“I am an unworthy man,” he answered, modestly.

But the old woman surprised him with a quick, reproachful glare. “It’s not for you to judge your worthiness! You serve, as a man’s seed serves the woman who chooses him. Even the taniwha serves. You would do well, boy, to consider the lesson of the tiny kiwi bird and her enormous egg”

Alex stared. The suggestion seemed so bizarre — and the tension of the last few weeks had him wound up so tight — that he couldn’t contain himself any longer. He guffawed.

Auntie Kapur tilted her head. “You are amused by my metaphors?”

“I…” He held up one hand placatingly.

“Would you prefer I used other terms? That I ask you to contemplate the relationship between ‘zygotes’ and ‘gametes’? Would you understand better if I spoke to you of dissipative structures? Or the way, even amid catastrophe, life creates order out of chaos?”

Alex was unable to react except by blinking. While she stirred the coals again, George whispered, “Auntie has a biophysics degree from the University of Otago. Don’t make assumptions, Lustig.”

Trapped — by a movie clichi! Alex had known this was a modern person sitting across from him. And yet her pose — what Stan Goldman would call her “schtick” — had drawn him in.

“You… you’re saying the singularity won’t harm the Earth?. That it might instead trigger some…”

Auntie reached over the coals and rapped him sharply on the back of his hand. “I say nothing! It’s not my job to tell you, a ‘genius,’ what to think — you, who have many times my brains and whose prowess impresses even Our Mother. Those are silly endowments but they serve their purposes.

“No, I only pose you questions, at a time when you’re obviously concentrating much too closely on your problem. You show every sign of being ensnared by those very brains of yours — of being cornered by your postulates! To nudge you off balance then, I offer you the wisdom of sperm and egg-

“Heed my words or not. Do as you will. I have confused you and that is enough. Your unconscious will do the rest.”

She concluded rattling the drum, then put it aside and dismissed both men with a brusque wave. “I forbid further work until you’ve rested and distracted yourselves. You are commanded to get drunk tonight. Now go.”

The priestess watched the fire pit silently as they stood up. Alex grabbed his shoes and followed George out of the meeting house, into a starry night. Ten feet down the path, however, the two men stopped, looked at each other, and simultaneously broke into fits of laughter. Alex nearly doubled over, his sides hurting as he desperately tried to catch his breath. George slapped him roughly on the back. “Come on,” the big Maori said. “Let’s get a beer. Or ten.”

Alex gri

Suddenly frowning, George shook his head. “Not tonight. You heard what Auntie said. Rest and distraction.”

For the third time that evening, Alex gaped. “You can’t take that crazy old bat seriously!”

George smiled sheepishly, but also nodded. “She is a bit of a ham. But where her authority applies, I obey. We get drunk tonight, white fellow. You and I, now. Whether you cooperate or not.”

Alex had a sudden vision of this massive billionaire holding his head under a beer tap, while he sputtered and fought helplessly. The image was startlingly credible. Another believer, he sighed inwardly. They were everywhere.

“Well… I wouldn’t want to flout tradition…”

“Good.” George slapped Alex on the back once more, almost knocking him over. “And between rounds I’ll tell you how I once substituted for the great Makahuna, back in ’20, when the All Blacks smashed Australia.”

Oh, no. Rugby stones. That’s all I need.

Still, Alex felt a strange relief. He’d been commanded to seek oblivion, and by no less than a spokeswoman for Gaia herself. On such authority — despite his agnosticism — he supposed he could let himself forget for just one night.

Alex had been in pubs all over the world, from the faded elegance of the White Hart, in Bloomsbury, to rickety, fire-trap shanties in Angolan boom towns. There had been that kitschy Russian tourist bistro, near the launch site at Kapustin Yar, where dilute, vitamin-enriched vodka was served in pastel squeeze tubes to background strains of moon muzak… very tacky. He’d even been to the bar of the Hotel Imperial, in Shanghai, just before the Great Big War Against Tobacco finally breached that mist-shrouded last bastion of smoking, driving grumbling addicts into back alleys to nurse their dying habit.