Earth

PART V

PLANET

In the new world’s earliest days, there was no-one to speak ill of carbon dioxide, or methane, or even hydrogen cyanide. Under lightning and harsh sunlight those chemicals merged to stain the young ocean with amino acids, purines, adenylates… a “primeval soup” which then reacted still further, building complex, twisting polymers.

Mere random fusings would have taken a trillion years to come up with anything as complex as a bacterium. But something else was involved beyond just haphazard chemistry. Selection. Some molecules were stable, while others broke apart easily. The sturdy ones accumulated, filling the seas. These became letters in a new alphabet.

They, too, reacted to form still larger clusters, a few of which survived and accrued… the first genetic words. And so on. What would otherwise have taken a trillion years was accomplished in a relative instant. Sentences bounced against each other, mostly forming nonsense paragraphs. But a few had staying power.

Before the last meteorite storm was over or the final roaring supervolcano finally subsided, there appeared within the ocean a chemical tour de force, surrounded by a lipid-protein coat. An entity that consumed and excreted, that made true copies of itself. One whose daughters wrought victories, suffered defeats, and multiplied.

Out of alphabet soup there suddenly was told a story.

A simple tale as yet. Primitive and predictable. But still, a raw talent could be read there.

The author began to improvise.

□ Worldwide Long Range Solutions Special Interest Group [□ SIG AeR.WLRS 253787890.546] Steering Committee Report.

For weeks now there’s been a marathon debate going on over in subgroup six (techno-cures), category nine, forum five, concerning the relative merits of nano-constructors versus Von Neuma

The word “exhausted” applies as well to the weary moderators of this tag-team endurance round. Finally the forum chair said, “Enough already! Don’t any of you people have jobs? Families?”

We agree. It’s all very well to talk about how these two technologies might someday “generate enough wealth to make even TwenCen America look like a Cro-Magnon tribe.” But one of the purposes of this SIG is to take ideas beyond mere speculation and offer the world feasible plans!

So let’s call a pause on this one, people. Get some sleep. Say hello to your children. Come back when you can show a workable design for a truly sophisticated machine that can make copies of itself — whether grazing on lunar soils or swimming in a nutrient bath. Then the rest of us will happily supply the carping criticism you’ll need to make it work.

In sharp contrast, the soc-sci freaks in group two have had some very witty forums about the current fad of applying tribal psychology to urban populations. At one point over half a million Net users were tapping in, taking our SIG, once more, all the way up to commercial-grade use levels! Digest-summaries of those forums are already available, and we commend group two’s organizers for ru

• EXOSPHERE

They were still pumping out Houston from last week’s hurricane when she got into town. Teresa found it marvelous how the city had been transformed by the calamity.

Avenues of inundated shops rippled mysteriously just below floodline, their engulfed wares glimmering like sunken treasure. The towering glass office blocks were startling vistas of blue and white and aquamarine, reflecting the summer sky above and bright-flecked waters below.

Limp in the humidity, rows of canted trees marked the drowned borderlines of street and sidewalk. Their stained trunks testified to even higher inundations in the past. Under fluffy clouds pushed by a torpid breeze, Houston struck Teresa like some hypermodernist’s depiction of Venice, before that lamented city’s final submergence. A wonderful assortment of boats, canoes, kayaks, and even gondolas negotiated side streets, while makeshift water taxis plowed the boulevards, ferrying commuters from their residential arcologies to the shimmering office towers. With typical Texan obstinacy, nearly half the population had refused evacuation this time. In fact, Teresa reckoned some actually reveled living among the craggy cliffs of this manmade archipelago.

From the upper deck of the bus she saw the sun escape a cloud, setting the surrounding glazed monoliths ablaze. Most of the other passengers instantly and unconsciously turned away, adjusting broad-brimmed hats and polarized glasses to hide from the harsh rays. The only exceptions were a trio of Ra Boys in sleeveless mesh shirts and gaudy earrings, who faced the bright heat with relish, soaking in it worshipfully.

Teresa took a middle path when the sun emerged. She didn’t react at all. It was, after all,, only a stable class G star, well-behaved and a safe distance removed. Certainly, it was less dangerous down here than up in orbit.

Oh, she took all the proper precautions — she wore a hat and mild yellow glasses. But thereafter she simply dismissed the threat from her mind. The danger of skin cancer was small if you stayed alert and caught it early. Certainly the odds compared favorably with those of dying in a helizep accident.

That wasn’t why she’d avoided taking a heli today, skipping that direct route from Clear Lake, where the NASA dikes had withstood Hurricane Abdul’s fury. Teresa had used a roundabout route today mostly to make sure she wasn’t being followed. It also provided an opportunity to collect her thoughts before stepping from frying pan to fire.

Anyway, how many more chances would she have to experience this wonder of American conceit, this spectacle that was Houston Defiant? Either the city moguls would eventually succeed in their grand, expensive plan — to secure the dikes, divert the water table, and stabilize everything on massive pylons — or the entire metropolis would soon join Galveston under the Gulf of Mexico, along with large patches of Louisiana and poor Florida. Either way, this scene would be one to tell her grandchildren about — assuming grandchildren, of course.

Teresa cut off a regretful twinge as thoughts of Jason almost surfaced. She concentrated on the sights instead as they passed a perseverant shopkeeper peddling his soaked fashions from pontoons under a sign that read, “preshrunk, guaranteed salt resistant.” Nearby, a cafe owner had set up tables, chairs, and umbrellas atop the roof of one of their bus’s stranded, wheeled cousins and was doing a brisk business. Their driver delicately maneuvered past this enterprise and the cluster of parked kayaks and dinghies surrounding it, then negotiated one of the shallow reefs of abandoned bicycles before regaining momentum on Lyndon Johnson Avenue.

“They ought to keep it this way,” Teresa commented softly, to no one in particular. “It’s charming.”

“Amen to that, sister.”

With a momentary jerk of surprise, Teresa glanced toward the Ra Boys and saw what she had not noticed before, that one of them wore a quasi-legal big ear amplifier. He returned her evaluation speculatively, touching the rims of his sunglasses, making them briefly go transparent so she could catch his leer.

“Water makes the old town sexy,” he said, sauntering closer. “Don’tcha think? I love the way the sunlight bounces off of everything.”

Teresa decided not to point out the minor irregularity, that he wore no sign advertising his eavesdropping device. Only in her i