Earth

The Polynesians weren’t particularly blameworthy. Humans had a long history of making messes wherever they went. But Alex recalled his grandmother once explaining the importance of scale. The smaller, more isolated the ecosystem, the quicker any damage became fatal. And there were few places on Earth as small, isolated, or fatal as Rapa Nui.

Within a few generations of humanity’s arrival, around 800 ad, not a tree was left standing. Without wood for boats, the settlers then had to abandon the sea, along with all possibility of escape or trade. What remained was native rock, from which they cut rude homes… and these desolate icons.

Overpopulation and boredom left open only the one option — endless war. One brief century after the great statues had been raised, nearly every one had been smashed in tribal forays and reprisals. By the time Europeans arrived — to arrogantly rename the place after a Christian holiday — the natives of Rapa Nui had nearly a

As if we moderns do much better. It only takes a bit more power, and greater numbers, to accomplish what the Easter Islanders never could… to foul something as big as the ocean itself.

Earlier, he had strolled the island’s one narrow beach, up at Anakena, where Hotu Matu’a long ago first landed with his band of hopeful settlers. And what Alex at first thought was white sand turned out to be bits of shredded styrofoam, ground from “peanuts” and other packing material spilled thousands of miles away. The stuff had been outlawed when he was still in university. Yet it still washed ashore everywhere. Scraggly sea birds poked through the detritus. They might not be dying, but they certainly didn’t look well, either.

Jen, he thought, wishing his grandmother were here to talk to. I need you to tell me it’s not already too late. I need to hear there’s enough left to be worth saving.

The glowering statues stared inland, seeming to share Alex’s gloomy premonitions.

Oh, the new gravity resonator worked all right. In its first test runs it had picked out Beta’s familiar glitter in brighter detail than ever. Echoes bracketed the massive, complex singularity within twenty meters inside Earth’s fiery bowels.

So far, so good. But in those reverberations Alex had also seen how fast the taniwha was growing.

Damn, we have hardly any time at all.

He looked beyond the dour stone figures, and in his imagination he suddenly pictured Ragnarok. Steam billowed as the sea was rent by sudden gouts of flame, leaving behind a measureless, bottomless hole.

Then, back into the unplugged depths, the despoiled ocean poured.

“Here’s the news,” June Morgan told him when he returned to the prefab hall the technicians had built not far from Vaihu. It felt like a small sports arena set upon a flat expanse of naked bedrock. Under the opaque roof they had erected their computers and the master resonator… a gleaming cylinder newly born from its vat of purified chemicals and now anchored to swiveled bearings. Alex said, “Just give me a summary, will you, June?”

Though she wasn’t part of the original cabal, June had proven invaluable, along with several of Pedro Manella’s “new people.” Her expertise on magnetism came in particularly handy as they traced the fields lacing Earth’s core, seeking those weird zones of superconducting current discovered only weeks ago.

Also, June was a demon for organization. As the hurried days passed, Alex came to rely on her more and more.

“Site two reports they’ll have full readiness in just a few hours,” the blonde woman said, confirming that George Hutton’s group in New Guinea was on schedule. “Greenland team says they’ll be in operation by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Good.” Alex had known Goldman and Tikhana would come through. “What about Africa?”

She lifted her eyes. “They were supposed to report in again two hours ago but…” She shrugged. With their program so delicately balanced, failure at even one location would be disastrous. And the African team was in territory completely out of their control. Still, it was amazing Jen had managed getting them into Kuwenezi at all.

“Don’t worry about it. My grandmother’s never been on time for an appointment in her life. Still, she somehow always comes through. We won’t need site four for a while yet.

“As for us, however, the time’s come,” he concluded, raising his voice. “So let’s get busy.”

He sat at a nearby station, showing the familiar holographic display of a cutaway Earth, with side projections for every factor he could possibly want to follow. Their earlier probes had set off all types of vibrations below — gravitational, sonic, electrical. Likening the planet to a complex, untempered bell seemed more appropriate each time they tapped it. At the world’s surface, all this “ringing” sometimes manifested in trembling movements — a resonant coupling Alex was just begi

“Hmm,” he pondered, looking at the latest output. “Looks like the tremors weren’t so bad this time, even though we increased power. Maybe we’re getting the hang of this.”

New maps indicated many zones below where raw power waited to be tapped, as soon as their network was complete. It’s a whole world down there, Alex thought. And we’ve only just begun exploring it.

Now the border between liquid core and mantle was shown in such detail, it appeared like the surface of an alien planet. There were corrugations which looked startlingly like mountains, and rippling expanses that vaguely resembled seas. Shadow continents mimicked thousands of kilometers below the familiar ones. Far under Africa, for instance, an intrusion of nickel-iron bobbed like an echo of the granite frigate floating far above.

There was “weather,” too — plumes of plasti-crystalline convection circulating in slow-motion currents. Occasionally, unpredictably, these streamways flickered into that astonishing, newly discovered state, and electricity flowed in perfect strokes of lightning.

It even “rained.” Long after most of Earth’s iron and nickel had separated from the rocky minerals, settling into the deep core, metal droplets still coalesced and migrated downward, pelting the boundary with molten mists, drizzles, even downpours.

I shouldn’t be surprised. Convection and change of state would have to operate down there, too. Still, it all seemed eerie and suggested bizarre notions. Might there be “life” on those shadow masses? Life to which the plastic, tortured perovskites of the mantle made up an “atmosphere”? To whom the overhead scum of granite and basalt was as diaphanous and chill as high cirrus clouds were to him?

“Ten minutes.” June Morgan gripped her clipboard plaque nervously. And Alex noticed others glancing his way with similar looks. Still, in his own heart he sensed only icy calm. A grim, composed tranquility. They had studied the monster, and now teratology was finished. It was time to go after the thing, in its very lair.

“I’d better get ready then. Thanks, June.”

He reached for his subvocal, fitting the multistranded device over his head and neck. As he adjusted the settings, he recalled what Teresa Tikhana had said to him back in the Waitomo Caves, just before they parted.

“… It’s a long way to the next oasis, Dr. Lustig. You know that, don’t you? Someday we may find other worlds and perhaps do better with them. But without the Earth behind us, at our backs, we’ll never ever get that second chance…”

To which Alex mentally added, If we lose this battle, we won’t deserve another chance.

He showed none of this, however. For the sake of those watching him, he gri