Earth

a novel by David Brin

Copyright © 1990, by David Brin. All rights reserved. No duplication or resale without permission.

• Holosphere (chapter 2, continued)

     Certainly the creature seemed happy enough. "How about it, Baby?" Jen murmured. "Are you glad to be smarter than the average elephant? Or would you rather be out on the plains, rolling in mud, uprooting trees, complaining about ticks and getting pregnant before you're ten?"
     The pink-tipped trunk curled around her hand. She stroked it, tenderly. "You're awfully important to yourself, aren't you? And you are part of the Whole.
     "But do you really matter, Baby? Do I?"
     Actually, she had meant every word she said to Pauline -- about how even mass extinctions would be essentially meaningless in the long run. A lifetime spent building the theoretical foundations of biology had convinced her of that. The homeostasis of the planet -- of Gaia -- was powerful enough to survive even great cataclysms.
     Many times, sudden waves of death had wiped out species, genuses, even entire orders. Dinosaurs were only the most glamorous victims of one episode. And yet, across each murderous chasm, plants kept removing carbon dioxide from the air. Animals and volcanoes continued putting it back again, give or take a few percentage points.
     Even the so-called Greenhouse Effect that had everyone worried -- melting icecaps, spreading deserts and driving millions before the rising seas -- even that catastrophic outcome of human excess would never rival the great inundations following the Permian age.
     Jen very much approved of the way everyone marched and spoke out and wrote letters these days, passing laws and designing technologies to "save the Earth" from twentieth century errors. After all, only silly creatures fouled their own nests, and mankind couldn't afford much more silliness. Still, she took her own, admittedly eccentric view, based on a personal, quirky, never-spoken identification with the living world.
     Out in the atrium, a low rumble echoed off the walls of the glass cavern. She recognized the deep, purring growl of a tiger, her totem animal according to a shaman she spent one summer with, before the last century ended. He had said hers was "the spirit of a great mother cat..."
     What nonsense. But oh, what a handsome fellow he had been! She recalled his aroma of herbs and wood-smoke and male musk, even though it was hard right now to pin down his name.
     No matter. He was gone. Someday, despite all the efforts of people like Pauline, tigers might be gone, too.
     But some things endured. Jen smiled as she stroked Baby's trunk.
     If we humans annihilate ourselves, mammalian genes are rich enough to replace us with another, maybe wiser race within a few million years. Perhaps descendants of coyotes or raccoons, creatures too adaptable ever to need refuge in arks. Too tough to be wiped out by any calamity the likes of us create.
     Oh, Baby's delicate species might not outlast us, but Norway rats surely will. I wonder what kind of planetary custodians their descendants would make.
     Baby whimpered softly. The elephant-mammoth hybrid watched her with soft eyes that seemed troubled, as if the creature somehow sensed Jen's disturbing train of thought. Jen laughed and patted the rough gray flesh. "Oh, Baby. Grandma doesn't mean half the things she says... or thinks! I just do it to amuse myself.
     "Don't worry. I won't let bad things happen. I'll always be watching over you.
     "I'll be here. Always."

"Three million citizens of the Republic of Bangladesh watched their farms and villages wash away as early monsoons burst their hand-built levees, turning remnants of the crippled state into a realm of swampy shoals covered by the rising Bay of Bengal...."

[Image of tear-streaked brown faces staring in numb dismay at the bloated bodies of animals and canted, drowned ruins of farmhouses.]

"These are the die-hards, who have refused all prior offers of resettlement. Now, though, they face a bitter choice. If they accept full refugee status, joining their brethren in Siberian or Australian New Lands, it will mean taking all the conditions attached, particularly that they swear population restriction oaths...."

[Image of a pregnant woman with four crying children, pushing her frightened husband toward fair-skinned medics. Zoom on one doctor's hammer and sickle shoulder patch... a nurse's Canadian maple leaf. Members of the screening team wear kindly smiles. Too nervous to show resentment, the young Bengali signs a clipboard and passes under the tent flap.]

"Having reached their limits of endurance, many have agreed to the host nations' terms. However, it's expected some will refuse even this last chance, and elect instead the harsh but unregulated life as citizens of Sea State, whose crude rafts already sail the fens and shallows where formerly stretched great, jute estates...."

[View of barges, rafts, salvaged ships of all shapes and sizes, clustered under pelting rain. Crude dredges probe skeletons of a former village, hauling lumber, furniture, odds and ends to use or sell for scrap. Other, quicker boats are seen pursuing schools of silvery anchovies through newly inundated shoals.]

[Real-time image 2376539.365x2370.398, DISPAR XVII satellite. $1.45/minute.]

"Already, spokesmen for Sea State are asserting sovereignty over the new fishing grounds, by right of reclamation...."

[Ref. UN document 43589.5768/UNORRS 87623ba.]

[Diplomats in marble halls, filing papers.]
[Surveyors mapping ocean expanses.]

[Time-delayed images; APW72150/09, Associated Press 2038.6683]

"As expected, the Republic of Bangladesh has issued a protest through its U.N. delegation. Though, with their capital now underwater, the remonstrations begin to sound like those of a tragic ghost...."

[View of a brown-skinned youth in a greasy bandanna, grasping a rusty railing, staring toward an uncertain future.]

Continue reading sample 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, or purchase Earth.