we just had the chance. And I have the experience to intervene without anyone ever knowing they’d been guided. But at the most crucial time of our social evolution, when that experience is utterly
“Why?” Jay pleaded.
Tracy’s frail shoulders trembled from repressed emotion. “Oh sweetie, haven’t you worked out what this dreadful place is yet? It’s a bloody retirement home.”
The view arrived suddenly. For over twenty minutes Louise had been sitting in one of the lounge’s big chairs, its webbing holding her in the deep hollow of cushioning. Her belly muscles were beginning to strain as they were obliged to hold her in a curving posture. Then she felt a slight trembling in the decking as the lift capsule was shunted onto the tower rail. A tone sounded. Thirty seconds later they flashed out of the Skyhigh Kijabe asteroid. There was a quick impression of soured-white metal mountains, but they quickly shrank from sight overhead. Gentle gravity relieved her muscles, and the webbing slackened.
Earth shone with a mild opalescent light below her. It was midday in Africa, at the base of the tower, and the clouds were charging in from the oceans on either side. There seemed to be a lot more of them than there had been on Norfolk, although the
Genevieve switched her webbing off, and glided over to the lounge window, pressing herself against it. “It’s beautiful,” she said. Her face was flushed as she smiled back at Louise. “I thought Earth was all rotten.”
Louise glanced about, slightly worried by what the other passengers would think of the little girl’s remark. With the quarantine, most of them must be from Earth or the Halo. But nobody was even looking at her. In fact, it seemed as though they were deliberately not looking. She went over to stand beside Gen. “I guess that’s as wrong as everything else in the school books.”
The Halo was visible against the stars, a huge slender thread of stippled light curving behind the planet, like the most tenuous of a gas-giant’s rings. For five hundred and sixty-five years, companies and finance consortiums had been knocking asteroids into Earth orbit. The process was standardized now; first the large-scale mining of mineral resources, hollowing out the habitation caverns, then the gradual build up of industrial manufacturing stations as the initial resources were depleted and the population switched to a more sophisticated economy. There were nearly fifteen thousand inhabited asteroids already drifting along in their common cislunar orbit, and new rocks were arriving at the rate of thirty-five a year. Tens of thousands of inter-orbit craft swooped between the spinning rocks, fusion exhausts tangling together in a single scintilating nimbus. Every asteroid formed a tiny bulge in the loop, wrapped behind a delicate haze of industrial stations.
Louise gazed at the ephemeral testament to astroengineering commerce. More fragile than the bridge of heaven in Norfolk’s midsummer sky, but at the same time, more imposing. The vista inspired a great deal of confidence. Earth was strong, much stronger than she’d realized; it sprang from a wealth which she knew she would never truly comprehend.
If we’re safe anywhere, we’re safe here. She put her arm round Genevieve. For once, contented.
Below the majesty of the Halo, Earth was almost quiescent by comparison. Only the coastlines of North and South America hinted at the equal amount of human activity and industry on the ancient planet. They remained in darkness, awaiting the dawn terminator sliding over the Atlantic; but the night didn’t prevent her from seeing where people were. Arcologies blazed across the land like volcanoes of sunlight.
“Are they the cities?” Genevieve asked excitedly.
“I think so, yes.”
“Gosh! Why is the water that colour?”
Louise switched her attention away from the massive patches of illumination. The ocean was a peculiar shade of grey green, not at all like the balmy turquoise of Norfolk’s seas when they were under Duke’s stringent white glare.
“I’m not sure. It doesn’t look very clean, does it? I suppose that must be the pollution we hear about.”
A small contrite cough just behind them made both girls start. It was the first time anyone apart from the stewards had even acknowledged they existed. When they turned round they found themselves facing a small man in a dark purple business suit. He’d already got some thin wrinkles on his cheeks, though he didn’t seem particularly old. Louise was surprised by his height, she was actually an inch taller than him, and he had a very broad forehead, as if his hair wouldn’t grow properly along the top of it.
“I know this is rude,” he said quietly. “But I believe you’re from outsystem?”
Louise wondered what had given them away. She’d bought the pair of them new clothes in Skyhigh Kijabe, one-piece garments like shipsuits but more elaborate, with pronounced pockets and cuffs. Other women were wearing the fashion; so she’d hoped they would blend in.
“Yes,” Louise said. “From Norfolk, actually.”
“Ah. I’m afraid I’ve never tasted Norfolk Tears. Too expensive, even with my salary. I was most sorry to hear about its loss.”
“Thank you.” Louise kept her face blank, the way she’d learned to do whenever Daddy started shouting.
The man introduced himself as Aubry Earle. “So this is your first visit to Earth?” he asked.
“Yes,” Genevieve said. “We want to go to Tranquillity, but we can’t find a flight.”
“I see. Then this is all new to you?”
“Some of it,” Louise said. She wasn’t quite sure what Aubry wanted. He didn’t seem the type to befriend a pair of young girls. Not from altruism, anyway.
“Then allow me to explain what you are seeing. The oceans aren’t polluted, at least not seriously; there was an extensive effort to clean them up at the end of the Twenty-first Century. Their present colouring comes from algae blooms. It’s a geneered variety that floats on the top. I think it looks awful, myself.”
“But it’s everywhere,” Genevieve said.
“Alas, yes. That’s our carbon sink these days. Earth’s lungs, if you like. It performs the job once done by forests and grasslands. The surface vegetation is not what it used to be, so Govcentral introduced the algae to prevent us from suffocating ourselves. Actually, it’s a far more successful example of terraforming than Mars. Though I would never be so undiplomatic as to say that to a Lunar citizen. We now have less carbon dioxide in our atmosphere than at any time in the last eight hundred years. You’ll be breathing remarkably clean air when you arrive.”
“So why do you all live in the arcologies?” Louise asked.
“Heat,” Aubry said sadly. “Do you know how much heat a modern industrial civilization of over forty billion people generates?” He gestured down at the globe. “That much. Enough to melt the polar ice and quicken the clouds. We’ve taken all the preventative measures we can, of course. That was the original spur to build the orbital towers, to prevent spaceplanes aerobraking and shedding even more heat into the air. But however economic we are, we can’t dissipate it at a rate that’ll turn the clock back. The old ocean currents have shut down, there’s no ozone layer at all. And that kind of ecological retro-engineering is beyond even our ability. We’re stuck with the current environment, unfortunately.”
“Is it very bad?” Genevieve asked. What he’d described sounded worse than the beyond, though she thought the man didn’t sound terribly upset by the cataclysm.
He smiled fondly at the planet. “Best damn world in the Confederation. Though I expect everyone says that about their homeworld. Am I right?”
“I like Norfolk,” Louise said.
“Of course you do. But if I might make an observation, this is going to be noisier than anything you’ve experienced before.”
“I know that.”
“Good. Take care down there. People aren’t likely to help you. That’s our culture, you see.”
Louise gave him a sideways look. “Do you mean they don’t like foreigners?”
“Oh no. Nothing like that. It’s not racism. Not overtly, anyway. On Earth everybody is a foreigner to their
