Earth

HI MICRO-BIOTA. SAW AMAZING THINGS HERE IN SPAIN. SPELL THAT “UH-MAZING! “(□ SEE ATTACHED PIX.)

HAVE CRAZY THEORY TO EXPLAIN THESE EVENTS. WROTE A PAPER ABOUT IT FOR A SPEC-FACT SIC. IF I’M RIGHT, SOMETHING MIGHTY FISHY IS GOING ON!

ATTACHED A DRAFT (□) FOR YOU TO LOOK AT, IF YOU LIKE. A LITTLE TECHNICAL. NOTION’S PRO’BLY NONSENSE. BUT YOU MAY FIND THE ABSTRACT AMUSING.

MY BEST TO DAISY. SAY I’ll COME TO DINNER AFTER CLEARING PAPERWORK. I AM AT OFFICE.

LOVE YOU, HONEY. — DADDY □

Claire smiled. He wasn’t supposed to call himself “Daddy.” That was her affectation.

She touched the data appended tag and called up Logan’s speculative paper. Claire recognized the net-zine he was submitting it to… one where scientists could let their hair down without risking their reputations. She had a hunch Logan was really going to set off a ripe one this time.

Then she frowned. Suddenly suspicious, Claire queried her security program.

“Dumpit!” she cursed, stamping her feet in a

The older generation as a whole seemed to have no respect for privacy, but this was downright insulting. As a brilliant hacker, Daisy could have brushed aside her daughter’s simple security system and read Claire’s mail without leaving traces. That she hadn’t even bothered to cover her tracks showed either blithe indifference or straight contempt.

“Only half a year and I’m gone from here,” Claire told herself, repeating it like a mantra to calm down. “Only half a year.”

She wished, oh how she wished, that at sixteen, almost seventeen, that didn’t feel like eternity.

Meanwhile, in another room not far away, all four walls flickered with light and sound. And every glimmer found its own reflection in Daisy McCle

To the left, a full-sized Davy Crockett — soot smeared and bloodied, but undaunted — defended the Alamo in color far more brilliant than ever imagined by the original director. Soon, sophisticated equipment under Daisy’s subtle guidance would add a third dimension and more. For the right price, she’d even intensify the experience with smell and the floor-rattling concussion of Mexican ca

Her best, most pricey enhancements were so good, in fact, they had to carry a truth-in-reality warning… a little pink diamond flashing in one corner, signifying “this isn’t real” to those with weak hearts or soft minds. While many called her an artist, Daisy did holo-augmentations for cash income, period. The other walls of her laboratory were devoted to her really important work.

Columns of data flowed like spume over a waterfall. Torrents — and yet mere samplings from the river, the ocean of information that was the Net. Daisy’s blue eyes skimmed scores of readouts at once.

Here a UNEPA survey assayed remaining rain-forest resources. Next to it rippled a project proposal by a major mining company. And over to the right, one of her subroutines patiently worked its way through a purloined list of antisabotage security procedures for the West Havana Nuclear Power Station… still apparently impregnable, but Daisy had hopes.

The visible portion of the flow was only a sliver, a fragment distilled and sent back to this nexus by her electronic servants — her ferrets and foxes, her badgers and hounds — data-retrieval programs euphemistically named after beasts, some now extinct but known in earlier times for their tenacity, hunger, and unwillingness to take “no” for an answer. All over the world, Daisy’s electronic emissaries searched and probed at her bidding, prying loose secrets, correlating, combining, devouring.

Daisy’s cover business helped explain her prodigious computing needs, her means. But actually, she lived and worked for ends. Into the universe of data she sent forth guerrillas, her personal contingents in the war against planet rapists.

Such as Chang. It was she who had tipped UNEPA off to the whereabouts of that awful man’s grisly cache near Taipei. News of Chang’s death had come as a welcome surprise. She’d been so sure he’d escape or at worst get a wrist slap. Perhaps those wimps at UNEPA were getting some guts, after all.

But now, on to other things. Daisy sat padmasama on a silk cushion amidst a cyclone of pictures and data. Her eyes quickly sifted what her creatures brought her… industrial “development” plans… laxity by weak, compromise-ridden public agencies… betrayal by bribed, gor-sucked officials. And worse.

Within the movement, her name was spoken in hushed tones, with respect, awe, and a little fell dread. In another era, Daisy might have heard the voices of angels in church bells. Today, though, her talents truly flowered as she plucked the schemes of builders as well as the prevarications of moderates, even half a world away.

“So Logan thinks his idea’s just amusing… probably nonsense…” she whispered as she wove her ex-husband’s recent paper into a special database. Of course she couldn’t follow his more arcane mathematical derivations, but that didn’t matter. She had programs for that. Or human consultants just a net call away.

“… the station’s anchor boom couldn’t have been lifted by any known explosive. For lack of other explanations, I’m led to imagine incredibly focused seismic waves…”

Daisy’s nostrils flared as she watched a pa

Still, she knew him. She knew her former love better than he knew himself. Logan’s poorest hunches were often better than other engineers’ best analyses.

“It’d be just like him to latch onto something big and not even trust his own instincts,” she sighed.

Daisy stared at the broken tidal barrage. Anything that could disrupt a big project like that interested her. There were people she knew… others who also despised the slow, reformist methods of the North American Church of Gaia. A loose network of men and women who knew how to take action. This news of Logan’s might mean some new threat. Or perhaps an opportunity.

Daisy’s eyes stroked the data flow pouring endlessly from the Net sea. The blue eyes of a hunter, they flashed and sought. Their patience was that of mission, and in them dwelled the perseverance of dragons.