Earth

At first he’d been certain the amplified gravity waves originated from Beta itself. After all, what bizarre energy levels might lay within the roiling, folded world-sheets of a cosmic knot? In fact, on that night in New Zealand when Alex experienced his moment of drunken inspiration, he had also felt a wave of desperate hope. What if the knot itself was being stimulated to emit gravity radiation? Could Beta be forced somehow to give up energy faster than it could suck atoms from the core?

Alas, scans showed the beast hadn’t lost any weight at all, despite the titanic, Earth-rattling power released in the gazer beam. The only apparent effect on Beta had been to shift its orbit slightly, making it harder than ever to trace its history.

And so Alex still had no idea where the energy came from. Add another gnawing, frustrating mystery to the list. It was one thing to know he and everyone else were doomed to be destroyed. But to die ignorant? Not even having looked on the face of his destroyer? It was not acceptable.

“Mr. Sullivan? Pardon me, sir.”

Alex blinked. By now Hawaii was long gone from sight. He turned away from the blue Pacific to meet the almond eyes of the beautiful ASEAN Air flight attendant.

“Yes? What is it?”

“Sir, you’ve received a message.”

From her palm he took a gleaming data sliver. Alex thanked her. Unfolding his comp-screen, he slipped the chip inside and keyed access. Instantly, a holo of George Hutton frowned at him, sternly, under bushy eyebrows. A short row of block letters appeared.

THIS JUST ARRIVED ON A NET RECEPTION BOARD IN AUCKLAND, UNDER YOUR REAL NAME, MARKED URGENT. THOUGHT YOU’D BETTER SEE IT RIGHT QUICK — GEORGE.

Alex blinked. Only a few people on the planet knew he’d gone to New Zealand, and those obligingly used his cover name. Hesitantly, he touched the screen and instantly a flat-image photograph appeared in front of him, rather smudgy and amateurish looking. It showed a crowd of people — tourists, apparently — looking admiringly at a disheveled, youngish man, lanky and a little underweight. The center of attention was holding another man to the ground — a wild-eyed fellow with flecks of froth at the corners of his mouth.

I should have expected this, Alex thought with a sigh. Tourists loved using their True-Vu goggles. There must have been many records of his minor “heroics” in Rotorua. Apparently a few had made it onto the net.

He looked at his own image and saw a fellow who didn’t really want to be where he was, or doing what he was doing.

I should not have interfered. Now look what’s happened.

He touched the screen again to see the rest of the message, and suddenly a new visage loomed out at him — one he knew all too well.

Talk about looking on the face of your destroyer…

It was Pedro Manella, dressed in a brown suit that matched his pantry-brush mustache. The portly reporter gri

ALEX LUSTIG, I KNOW YOU’RE IN NEW ZEALAND SOMEWHERE. FROM THERE GENERAL DELIVERY WILL GET THIS TO YOU.

ARRANGE A MEETING WITHIN TWO DAYS, OR THE ENTIRE WORLD WILL BE HUNTING FOR YOU, NOT I ALONE.

— MANELLA

That man was as tenacious as a remora, as persistent as any taniwha. Alex sighed.

Still, he wondered if it really mattered anymore. In a way, he looked forward to watching Pedro Manella’s face when he told the man the news.

It was an unworthy anticipation. A grown man shouldn’t covet revenge.

Ah, he thought, but we are legion. I contain multitudes. And some of the people making up “me” aren’t grown-ups at all.

□ Each of the allies had its own reasons for entering the bloody conflict now variously known as the “Helvetian War,” the “Secrecy War,” and the “Last-We-Hope” — perhaps the most bizarre and furious armed struggle of all time.

A leading factor in the industrial north was the laundering of profits for drug merchants and tax cheaters. Overburdened with TwenCen debt, citizens of America and Pan-Europe demanded those groups at least pay their fair share, and resented the banking gnomes for sheltering criminals’ ill-gotten gains.

International banking secrecy was even more hated in the developing world. Those nations’ awesome debts were aggravated by “capital flight,” whereby leading citizens had for generations smuggled mountains of cash to safe havens overseas. Whether honestly earned or looted from national treasuries, this lost capital undermined frail economies, making it even harder for those left behind to pay their bills. Nations like Venezuela, Zaire and the Philippines tried to recover billions removed by former ruling elites, to no avail. Eventually, a consortium of restored democracies stopped railing at their ex-dictators and instead turned their ire on the banking havens themselves.

Still, neither taxpayer outrage up north nor cash starvation in the south would have been enough to drive the world to such a desperate, unlikely confrontation were it not for two added factors — a change in morality and the burgeoning Information Age.

Those were the days of the great arms talks, when mutual, on-site inspection was seen as the only possible way to ensure de-escalation. As each round of weapons reductions raised the verification ante, the international corps of inspectors became sacrosanct. Words like “secrecy” and “concealment” began taking on their modern, obscene co

To increasing numbers of “blackjacks” — or children of century twenty-one — the mere idea of secrecy implied scheming dishonesty. “What’re you hiding, zygote?” went the-now corny phrase. But in those days it conveyed the angry, revolutionary spirit of the times.

That wrath soon turned against the one remaining power center in whom secrecy was paramount and unrepentant. By the time the members of the Brazzaville Consortium gathered to write their final ultimatum, they were no longer in a mood for compromise. Belated conciliatory words, broadcast from Berne and Nassau and Vaduz, were too little and far too late to stifle the new battle cry:… Open the books. All of them. Now!

Would the allies have gone ahead, suspecting what death and horror awaited them?

Knowing what we do now, about what lay buried under the Glarus Alps, most agree their only mistake was not declaring war sooner. In any event, by the second year of fighting, mercy was hardly on anybody’s agenda anymore. Only vengeful modern Catos could be heard, crying from the rooftops of the world—

Helvetia delenda est!

By then it was to the death.

• EXOSPHERE

Pedro insisted they change vehicles three times during their roundabout journey from the Auckland aerodrome. At one point he bought them both new clothes, straight off the rack in a tourist clip joint in Rotorua. Changing at the store, they abandoned their former at-tire on the off chance someone might have planted a tracking device on them.

Teresa went along with these measures stoically, absurd and melodramatic as they seemed. Without appropriate experience or instincts to guide her, she could only hope Manella knew what he was doing.

Strangely, the Aztlan reporter appeared to grow calmer, the closer they neared the arranged rendezvous. He drove the final kilometers of winding forest highway with a peaceful smile, humming atonal compositions of dubious lineage.

Teresa’s contribution was to work away silently at her cuticles and rub a hole in the thin carpet with her right foot each time Pedro tortured the little rental car’s transmission or took a curve too fast. It didn’t help that they still drove on the left in this country, putting the passenger in a position she normally associated with having control. She had never found it easy letting someone else drive — even Jason. She was close to snatching the wheel out of Pedro’s hands by the time bright signs began appearing along the side of the road.