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Inherit the Earth

Стэблфорд Брайан Майкл

BRIAN STABLEFORD

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

INHERIT THE EARTH

A much shorter and substantially different version of this novel entitled “Inherit the Earth” appeared in the July 1995 issue of Analog.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Edited by David G. Hartwell

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

Tor Books on the World Wide Web:

http://www.tor.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

ISBN 978-0-312-86493-4

First Edition: September 1998

Printed in the United States of America

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Jane, and all those who toil in the forge of the will

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Stanley Schmidt, the editor of Analog, for buying the shorter version of this story, thus establishing its ideative seed and its commercial credentials. I am grateful to David Hartwell for suggesting that I rewrite the final section so drastically as to obliterate any lingering similarity to the ending of the earlier version, thus proving my versatility. I should also like to pay my respects to Eric Thacker and Anthony Earnshaw, who provided their illustrated novel Wintersolwith a dedication that would otherwise have been ideal for this book: “To the meek, who will only inherit the Earth by forging the Will.”

One

ilas Arnett stood on the bedroom balcony, a wineglass in his hand, bathing in the ruddy light of the evening sun. He watched the Pacific breakers tumbling lazily over the shingle strand. The ocean was in slow retreat from the ragged line of wrack that marked the height of the tide. The dark strip of dead weed was punctuated by shards of white plastic, red bottle tops and other packaging materials not yet redeemed by the hungry beach cleaners. They would be long gone by morning—one more small achievement in the great and noble cause of depollution.

Glimpsing movement from the corner of his eye, Silas looked up into the deepening blue of the sky.

High above the house a lone wing glider was playing games with the wayward thermals disturbed by the freshening sea breeze. His huge wings were painted in the image of a bird’s, each pinion feather carefully outlined, but the colors were acrylic-bright, brazenly etched in reds and yellows. Now that the gaudier birds of old were being brought back from the temporary mists of extinction mere humans could no longer hope to outdo them in splendor, but no actual bird had ever been as huge as this pretender.

Silas frowned slightly as he watched the glider swoop and soar. The conditions were too capricious to allow safe stunting, but the soaring man was careless of the danger. Again and again he dived toward the chalky cliff face that loomed above the ledge on which the house was set, only wheeling away at the last possible moment. Silas caught his breath as the glider attempted a loop which no bird had ever been equipped by instinct to perform, then felt a momentary thrill of irritation at the ease with which his admiration had been commanded.

Nowadays, a careless Icarus would almost certainly survive a fluttering fall from such a height, provided that he had the best internal technology that money could buy. Even the pain would quickly be soothed; its brutal flaring would merely serve as a trigger to unleash the resources of his covert superhumanity. Flirtation with catastrophe was mere sport for the children of the revolution.

Silas’s sentimental education had taken place in an earlier era, when the spectrum of everyday risks had been very different. His days with Conrad Helier had made him rich, so he now had all the benefits that the best nanotech repairmen could deliver, but his reflexes could not be retrained to trust them absolutely. The bird man was evidently young as well as rich: authenticallyyoung. Whatever PicoCon’s multitudinous ads might claim, the difference between the truly young and the allegedly rejuvenated Architects of Destiny was real and profound.

“Why does the sun look bigger when it’s close to the horizon?”

Silas had not heard his guest come up behind him; she was barefoot, and her feet made no sound on the thick carpet. He turned to look at her.

She was wearing nothing but a huge white towel, wrapped twice around her slender frame. The thickness of the towel accentuated her slimness—another product of authentic youth. Nanotech had conquered obesity, but it couldn’t restore the full muscle tone of the subcutaneous tissues; middle age still spread a man’s midriff, if only slightly, and no power on earth could give a man as old as Silas the waist he had possessed a hundred years before.

Catherine Praill was as young as she looked; she had not yet reached her full maturity, although nothing remained for the processes of nature to do, save to etch the features of her body a little more clearly. The softness of her flesh, its subtle lack of focus, seemed to Arnett to be very beautiful, because it was not an effect of artifice. He was old-fashioned, in every sense of the word, and unrepentant of his tastes. He loved youth, and he loved the last vestiges which still remained to humankind of the natural processes of growth and completion. He had devoted the greater part of his life to the overthrow of nature’s tyra