Earth

“I’m afraid we’ve probably inflicted our first casualties.”

Teresa forgave Stan his oversight. Or maybe he was right to leave out those killed on Erehwon. That debacle had been a true accident, after all. This time though, despite all their precautions, they were directly to blame. Everyone in the cabal knew this venture would cost even more lives before it was over.

For a few minutes they walked in silence. Teresa thought about cracks in the ice, fractures in the ground, peals of thunder in the sky.

She also thought about how good it felt to breathe the crisp air. To feel the breeze off the glacier on her skin. To be alive.

“I wish I could go with you,” Stan said as they neared the bobbing zeppelin. “I’d give anything to talk to Alex and George and find out what’s going on in the big picture. Our images of the interior are poor with this slave resonator. The master must be giving Alex such a view of the beast.”

Teresa realized he must envy Lustig the chance to map their enemy’s anatomy, too small to measure except in units familiar to atoms, denser than a neutron star. “I’ll have him send you a portrait with the next courier. You can keep it by your bedside, along with Ellen and the grandkids.”

Her gentle teasing made him grin. “You do that.”

Standing near the gangway, he offered his hand. She threw her arms around him instead. I’ll also tell Ellen she’s a lucky old girl.

Lifting her eyes over his shoulder, she saw a much taller man at the edge of the field, standing near a big, round lifter-crane. His hands are probably already stained with oil, she thought, recalling how, even after Lars had washed, his skin had given off the piquant, exciting tang of engines. They had said their good-byes… she with a promise of a future message or visit he probably knew to be a lie. And so he simply lifted his hand and shared with her a soft smile of no regrets.

NASA thought she was still at a seclusion resort in Australia. It wouldn’t do to have a random Net inventory show her flitting about on the other side of the globe. But at any moment there were millions drifting across the sky in everything from cruise liners to economy “cattle cars” to tramp freighters like this one. That was why the trip back to New Zealand would include several lighter-than-air legs, linking points where she could sneak long passages on Tangoparu Ltd. turboprops. Settling near a window to observe the crew cast off, Teresa resigned herself to a long time alone with her thoughts.

Two men watched her go. One waving from the docking site and the other farther off, standing next to an open cowling. But as the airship leaped in a rush of released buoyancy, Teresa’s gaze lifted beyond the airstrip, beyond the dome where Stan’s crew conspired to chivvy a monster, beyond the stony pit where sleuths sought clues to ancient cataclysms. She skimmed breathlessly over the great ice sheet, but even its mass could not hold her. Teresa felt a lifting in her heart. The soft, happy thrumming of the little zep’s engines seemed to resonate with the tempo of her pulse.

It was no unaccustomed thing, this affair she had with flight. And yet each time felt as if she’d fallen in love again. It was a romance separate from all earthly ardors, more steadfast, yet unjealous of any other passion.

It’s not speed that matters, she thought. It’s the act. It’s breaking the bonds.

Far beyond the unsetting sun, she felt the pull of faraway planets and longed to follow even there.

It’s flying… she thought.

So Teresa crossed her arms and settled in to make the best of a long voyage round the world.

Elvis roams the open interstates in a big white cadillac.

It has to be him. How else to explain what so many flywheel-bus and commuter-zep riders claim to have seen… that plume of dust trailing like rocket exhaust behind something too fast and glittery to be tracked with the naked eye?

Squint and you might glimpse him behind the wheel, steering with one wrist while fiddling the radio dial, then reaching for that never-ending, always frosty can of beer. “Thank you, honey,” he tells the blonde next to him as he steps on the accelerator.

The roar of V-8 power, the gasoline smell of freedom, the rush of clean wind blowing back his hair… Elvis hoots and lifts one arm to wave at all true Americans who still believe in him.

Certain chatty Net-zines are rife with blurry pictures of him. Snooty tech types claim the photos are fakes, but that doesn’t bother the faithful who collect grand old TwenCen automobiles and polish them, saving up for that once-a-year spin down the highway, meeting at the nearest Graceland Shrine for a day of chrome and music and speed and glory.

Along the way, they stop at ghostly abandoned gas stations and check for signs that he’s been by. Some claim to have found pumps freshly used, reading empty but still somehow reeking of high octane. Others point to black, bold, fresh tire tracks, or claim his music can be heard in the coyotes’ midnight serenade.

Elvis roams the open interstates in a big white cadillac. How else to explain the traces some have found, sparkling like fairy dust across the fading yellow lines?

A pollen of happier days… the glitter of rhinestones.

• CORE

Across eight thousand miles of open ocean, the autumn gale had plenty of time to accelerate, to pick up power and momentum. So did the waves and tides. Over that great stretch, each grew accustomed to mastery. When they met the island’s stiff resistance, therefore, they protested in fists of spume that climbed the steep shelf then clenched and shook in rage.

Alex stood at the window of his hut, listening to the storm. Even indoors, he felt each boom with his fingertips. Each breaker set the glass panes vibrating. Rain bursts assaulted the roof in sudden, pelting furies, rattling it like a war drum before receding just as quickly again, driven by the wind to drench some other place.

Out beyond the bluffs, over the sea, luminous backlit clouds advanced on parade, parting now and then to let the moon spread a brief, pearly sheen across the turbid waters.

A lonely color, he thought. No wonder they say moonlight is for lovers. It makes you want someone to cling to.

Alex was remembering. Remembering when weather like this had been his friend.

As a student he used to walk the fens and dikes of Norfolk, traveling all the way from Cambridge at the rumor of a squall. They were seldom as powerful as this gale, of course. Easter Island lay unsheltered in the middle of a vast ocean, after all. Still the North Sea used to put on some impressive shows.

The locals must have thought him daft to go out in his wellies and slicker, striding into stiff gusts and cloudbursts. But that hardly mattered. Nothing in the world felt as vivid or as potent as a tempest. That year, facing the torture of exams, he had felt a real need for vividness, for potency. Others craved su

Once, while walking in keraunophilic splendor through a thunderstorm, he had actually experienced a sudden insight into mysteries of transactional quantum mechanics, an intuition that had led to his first important paper. Another time he shouted into the rain, demanding it explain to him why Ingrid… yes, that had been her name… why Ingrid had dropped him for another boy.

Generally, the thunder answered only irrelevancies. But perhaps it had been the shouting itself that provided a cleansing generally unavailable to Englishmen indoors. Whatever. He usually came away drenched, drained, restored.