limiting conditions.'
'Limiting conditions?'
One more diagram. This one showed a trend line like an italic letter S, level at the top. Over this I marked two parallel horizontal lines: one well above the trend line, marked 'A,' and one crossing it at the upcurve, marked 'B.'
'What are these lines?' Ina asked.
'They're both planetary sustainability. The amount of arable land available for agriculture, fuel and raw materials to sustain technology, clean air and water. The diagram shows the difference between a successful intelligent species and an unsuccessful one. A species that peaks under the limit has the potential for long-term survival. A successful species can go on to do all those things futurists used to dream about—expand into the solar system or even the galaxy, manipulate time and space.'
'How grand,' Ina said.
'Don't knock it. The alternative is worse. A species that runs into sustainability limits before it stabilizes its population is probably doomed. Massive starvation, failed technology, and a planet so depleted from the first bloom of civilization that it lacks the means to rebuild.'
'I see.' She shivered. 'So which are we? Case A or Case B? Did Wun tell you that?'
'All he could say for sure was that both planets, Earth and Mars, were starting to run into the limits. And that the Hypotheticals intervened before it could happen.'
'But why did they intervene? What do they expect from us?'
It was a question for which Wun's people didn't have an answer. Nor did we.
No, that wasn't quite true. Jason Lawton had found a sort of an answer.
But I wasn't ready to talk about that yet.
* * * * *
Ina yawned, and I brushed away the marks on the dusty floor. She switched off the desk light. The scattered maintenance lamps cast an exhausted glow. Outside the warehouse there was a sound like the striking of an enormous, muted bell every five or so seconds.
'Tick tock,' Ina said, arranging herself on her mattress of mildewy cardboard. 'I remember when clocks ticked, Tyler. Do you? The old-fashioned clocks?'
'There was one in my mother's kitchen.'
'There are so many kinds of time. The time by which we measure our lives. Months and years. Or the big time, the time that raises mountains and makes stars. Or all the things that happen between one heartbeat and the next. It's hard to live in all those kinds of time. Easy to forget that you live in all of them.'
The metronomic clanging went on.
'You sound like a Fourth,' I said.
In the dim light I could just make out her weary smile.
'I think one lifetime is enough for me,' she said.
* * * * *
In the morning we woke to the sound of an accordion door rolled back to its stops, a burst of light, Jala calling for us.
I hurried down the stairs. Jala was already halfway across the warehouse floor and Diane was behind him, walking slowly.
I came closer and said her name.
She tried to smile, but her teeth were clenched and her face was unnaturally pale. By then I had seen that she was holding a wadded cloth against her body above her hip, and that both the cloth and her cotton blouse were vivid red with the blood that had leaked through.
DESPERATE EUPHORIA
Eight months after Wun Ngo Wen's address to the General Assembly of the United Nations, the hypercold cultivation tanks at Perihelion began to yield payload quantities of Martian replicators, and at Canaveral and Vandenberg fleets of Delta sevens were prepped to deliver them into orbit. It was about this time that Wun developed an urge to see the Grand Canyon. What sparked his interest was a year-old copy of Arizona Highways one of the biology wonks happened to leave in his quarters.
He showed it to me a couple of days later. 'Look at this,' he said, almost trembling with eagerness, folding back the pages of a photo feature on the restoration of Bright Angel trail. The Colorado River cutting pre-Cambrian sandstone into green pools. A tourist from Dubai riding a mule. 'Have you heard of this, Tyler?'
'Have I heard of the Grand Canyon? Yes. I think most people have.'
'It's astonishing. Very beautiful.'
'Spectacular. So they say. But isn't Mars famous for its canyons?'
He smiled. 'You're talking about the Fallen Lands. Your people called it Valles Marineris when they discovered it from orbit sixty years ago—or a hundred thousand years ago. Parts of it do look a lot like these photographs from Arizona. But I've never been there. And I don't suppose I ever will be there. I think I'd like to see the Grand Canyon instead.'
'Then see it. It's a free country.'
Wun blinked at the expression—maybe the first time he'd heard it—and nodded. 'Very well, I will. I'll talk to Jason about arranging transportation. Would you like to come?'
'What, to Arizona?'
'Yes! Tyler! To Arizona, to the Grand Canyon!' He might have been a Fourth, but at that moment he sounded like a ten-year-old. 'Will you go there with me?'
'I'll have to think about that'
I was still thinking about it when I got a call from E. D. Lawton.
* * * * *
Since the election of Preston Lomax, E. D. Lawton had become politically invisible. His industry contacts were still in place—he could throw a party and expect powerful people to show up—but he would never again wield the kind of cabinet-level influence he had enjoyed under Garland's presidency. In fact there were rumors that he was in a state of psychological decline, holed up in his Georgetown residence making unwelcome phone calls to former political allies. Maybe so, but neither Jase nor Diane had heard from him recently; and when I picked up my home phone I was stunned when I heard his voice.
'I'd like to talk to you,' he said.
Which was interesting, coming from the man who had conceived and financed Molly Seagram's acts of sexual espionage. My first and probably best instinct was to hang up. But as a gesture it seemed inadequate.
He added, 'It's about Jason.'
'So talk to Jason.'
'I can't, Tyler. He won't listen to me.'
'Does that surprise you?'
He sighed. 'Okay, I understand, you're on his side, that's a given. But I'm not trying to hurt him. I want to help him. In fact it's urgent. Regarding his welfare.'
'I don't know what that means.'
'And I can't tell you over the goddamn phone. I'm in Florida now, I'm twenty minutes down the highway. Come to the hotel and I'll buy you a drink and then you can tell me to fuck off face-to-face. Please, Tyler. Eight o'clock, the lobby bar, the Hilton on ninety-five. Maybe you'll save somebody's life.'
He hung up before I could answer.
I called Jason and told him what had happened.
'Wow,' he said, then, 'If the rumors are true, E.D.'s even less pleasant to spend time with than he used to be. Be careful.'
'I wasn't planning to keep the appointment.'
'You certainly don't have to. But… maybe you should.'
'I've had enough of E.D.'s gamesmanship, thanks.'
'It's just that it might be better if we know what's on his mind.'
'You're saying you want me to see him?'
