Futures Near and Far

by Dave Smeds

  Nor did he spare old friends their share of criticism. Charles’s glance dropped to the lawn. It was green. The cemetery had replanted with one of the genetically modified strains, and had the water allotment to keep the grass alive. Old scenes tugged at his heart: his and Bennie’s final discussion, half a decade back. Another argument. Bennie had wanted the name of a contact inside DuPont. Charles declined. He had made his deal. Helping Bennie win that suit would not have restored those Brazilians to health. And DuPont would only have appealed.

  Charles touched his pocket where the datacoin lay. Redemption?

  The eulogist raised a book and put on reading glasses. “This was one of Bennie’s favorite poems,” the man said. “It’s a bit long, but I know you’ll bear with me.” The man cleared his throat and began. Deft phrases and striking analogies rose from the page, and just as Charles expected, their subject was the beauty and gentleness of Earth as it existed before machines, industry, and European colonization of the globe.

  The words flowed past. Charles was no longer listening. A different poem filled his consciousness, one of the many pieces of classic verse that Bennie loved — a quote Bennie had cited when Exxon made him that first offer-he-couldn’t-refuse and Charles abandoned their public advocacy law firm. It was a stanza from Virgil — the Sybil’s warning to Aeneas concerning the Underworld.

  The way downward is easy from Avernus

  Black Dis’s door stands open night and day.

  But to retrace your steps to heaven’s air,

  There is the trouble, there is the toil. . . .

  His hand dropped from his pocket. You always were a pain in the ass, Bennie.

  He remained long enough to toss a handful of dirt on the coffin, but that was the limit of his endurance. A thick river of sweat stained his dress shirt, had soaked through to his suit. Avoiding Melanie’s glance, he fled to the temperature-controlled cocoon of the limousine.

  “Home,” he snapped. “Now.”

  This time he let the guidance system follow the standard route, up 101 to 280 and straight back to Hillsborough. The limousine broadcast the protocols that allowed it through the security gates and into the underground garage of the Estates. It came to rest in its regular berth. Charles took the escalator up into the residential section.

  His condominium lay on the far side of the ring-shaped structure. He crossed the central park via moving sidewalk. Slipping under the verdant summer foliage, Charles drew in a lungful of sweet, blossom-kissed air. Across the soccer field, he saw his youngest son, age fourteen, deep into a practice game with some of his friends, hatless and safe thanks to the PureGlass canopy high above. The new Estates uniforms looked great. Charles waved to his offspring.

  His butler greeted him at his door. “Madame will be back shortly,” he announced.

  “Very good,” Charles said. “I’ll have a cappuccino in the den, Harold.”

  Harold disappeared into the kitchen. Charles weaved his way through foyer, living room, parlor, and finally to his personal sanctuary. And there, at last, he stopped and took Bennie’s datacoin from his pocket.

  Rubbing the item pensively between forefinger and thumb, Charles stared at his broad view window. “Natural view,” he commanded.

  The scene shifted. Outside lay the sere hills of the Coastal Range. Buildings crowded every level spot. Blackened stubble disfigured a nearby slope. There were fewer trees than when last he’d checked.

  He shook his head, and sighed.

  “Restore previous image,” he said. Instantly the view transformed again. Lush green hills extended to the horizon, absent any structures, the sky cerulean blue save for a picturesque layer of fog far to the west.

  Bennie always said that Charles denied the catastrophe striking the environment, striking the economy, striking society. Charles did not deny it. He never had, no matter how much he might play the part of apologist in public. He knew the truth. It was Bennie who worshipped the lie, thinking that one man’s effort could ever change things.

  “If we don’t do something, our world is going to turn into hell,” Bennie always said.

  No, Bennie, thought Charles bitterly. It already is hell. Always was. Except, perhaps, for the ten percent of the population who could afford otherwise. If one is to reside in hell, far better to live as a minion of the devil than as a member of the damned.

  “Your cappuccino is ready,” Harold announced, appearing in the archway.

  “Thank you,” Charles said.

  As he reached for the beverage, his other hand dropped the datacoin into the waste basket.

  Return to Table of Contents

  INTRODUCTION TO “REEF APES”

  As I mentioned in the introduction to “Suicidal Tendencies,” I approached my “nanotech” stories as self-contained glimpses at a milieu similar to the one I was developing for my subsequently-abandoned novel Light Years Apart. However, it’s safe to say that “Reef Apes” did double duty. I was scratching an itch to explore a hypothesis I find fascinating. It is the idea that the reason humans evolved so differently from other apes is because our ancestors were on their way toward becoming an aquatic species.

  If you think we’d make poor whales, you might be right. Think semi-aquatic, like otters or polar bears.

  The theory was first popularized in The Descent of Woman, a wry, irreverent layperson’s examination of human-evolution theory written by a British housewife named Elaine Morgan, published in 1973. She in turn took her inspiration from a nearly forgotten 1960 paper by renowned biologist Alister Hardy published in The New Scientist in 1960. Hardy and Morgan pointed out that humans possess anatomical features entirely consistent with aquatic mammals — a layer of subcutaneous fat, larger size than our forebears, a streamlined longitudinal body shape (well suited to both swimming and bipedalism), hairlessness, nostrils tucked on the undersides of our noses, and on and on. These traits are not found among chimpanzees or gorillas. Perhaps our ancestors did spend a lot of time in the water. Perhaps the first tools were used to bash open clams, not poke hyenas. It’s an idea that reviewer Mark Kelly of Locus, when reviewing “Reef Apes,” pointed out either must be true, or is too silly to be true.

  Alas, Elaine Morgan couched her ideas in the context of a feminist manifesto, going so far afield as to suggest that the tendency of human females to have difficulty achieving sexual climax is because our species is stuck halfway between terrestrial and aquatic forms. She omitted this and other off-the-deep-end speculation in her 1982 follow-up, The Aquatic Ape, but the damage was done. The fundamental premise, worthy as it may be, was ignored in spite of Descent’s healthy sales numbers. Only lately have reputable scientists been speaking up and pointing out that, by gosh, Lucy and other early hominid fossils do have an astonishing propensity to have been originally laid down in the mud of lakes. Perhaps they will find confirmation of the hypothesis. Perhaps they won’t. I’m glad to know they’re making the attempt to know one way or the other.

  REEF APES

  The audience loved it when the reef ape killed the researcher.

  Louis Sheldon listened to the commotion and smiled. He backed up the replay to let those who had been caught unaware get a better look.

  Click. The primate troop gambolled in the shoals, cleaving to amorphous family units, with young adult males roaming farther afield. Barely four feet tall, the females resembled Ituri pygmies, except for the long, Rapunzel-style tresses that their babies clung to as they floated in the surf. The largest males fell shy of five feet in height, but corded muscle draped their brown bodies from neck to ankle.

  The researcher, a lean, wiry man with Nordic features, towered over the apemen, but nevertheless gave them plenty of room. He waded along the fringes of the troop, taking care not to truly mingle. The creatures ignored his familiar presence.

  With one exception. The alpha male, perched on a spur of reef just above tide level, monitored the man with a baleful, irrational glare. The researcher failed to notice the surveillance, nor
did he see that the creature was picking obsessively at a raw, pus-swollen foot.

  The human passed a bit too near a particular reef ape female. With a covetous shriek, the alpha male launched from his rock. He careened through the waist-deep water toward the researcher, who barely had time to turn before he was seized by the neck. Vertebrae cracked. The researcher’s eyes glazed.

  Screeching, the reef ape held the human below the waves until the spasmodic jerking ceased.

  “Reef apes rarely kill,” Sheldon told the observers. “They aren’t even especially aggressive. But obviously, they’ve lost little of the strength their progenitors needed to swing in the trees.”

  The alpha male returned to his rock, snorting, and shook his wet hair off of his shoulders. Nanodocs repaired the researcher’s broken neck, flushed the salt water from his lungs, and kick-started him back to life. He rose, sputtering. The alpha male glared again. The man, frowning, strode away from the troop and continued his observations from a safer distance.

  The fire in the reef ape’s eyes died out. He regarded the remote figure with a distinctly apologetic expression.

  Several members of the audience meandered between killer and victim like ghosts walking on the water. In fact, it was they who were part of reality. The primates, the shoals, and the East African sunshine were simulations of a scene that had transpired nearly a year earlier. Louis reduced the action to slow motion to allow everyone to step up close and examine the reef apes in detail.

  “Note the bipedal gait, the humanlike noses, the lack of body hair, the pendulous breasts. We’ve only evolved our Proconsul stock one point five million years into the aquatic phase, and already they’ve clearly entered the genus Homo. Say hello to your great-great-great grandparents.”

  On the far side of the simulation dome, a woman leaned down to assure herself that a reef ape baby, floating face down apart from her mother, was truly enjoying its independence and not drowning. The infant raised its head, took a breath, and dunked down again. The woman grinned with the joy baby antics can inspire.

  Louis, without interrupting his narration, gazed at the woman intently, memorizing her features. He marked the moment that she left the dome. Ultimately his glib, polished lecture wound down. Smiling at the applause, he bequeathed the question-and-answer session to an assistant and escaped the simulation theater.

  Seventy yards from the dome, waves lapped gently against the coast of the peninsula. Shaking the hands that reached out to congratulate him, Louis wandered down the beach toward the main hotel. The seas were calm, the humid weather made tolerable by the smooth breeze pouring off the gulf waters. The sand glistened, white and pure, a playground reserved exclusively for conference attendees. Louis had to concede that the site selection committee had chosen an outstanding venue for the annual get-together.

  Louis stopped near the docks, in the shade of the banner reading welcome — Council of Marine Biologists. The beach bustled with his colleagues and their associates, many of whom waved him toward their dense, research-citing conversations. Louis shook his head politely. He’d had enough shop talk. He was searching for a more exciting pastime.

  He drank in the sea air, leavened with the scent of sun-warmed humanity. How differently this compared to last year, when he had transmitted his virtual self to the conference, leaving behind his senses of taste and smell, touch and temperature. Not this time. This was Baja California. The waters of the gulf provided one of the most vibrant marine ecologies on the planet. It wouldn’t be the same if he couldn’t get his feet down in the silt, taunt the manta rays first-hand, lick the brine. One hundred ten years back, he’d done his first fieldwork here; the place meant something to him.

  And now it was the crucible of his success.

  Half the individuals on the beach were taking advantage of the locale to strut their choice of seaside attire. Louis saw examples of styles from as early as 1900 a.d. through every century since, some exquisitely color-coordinated to the wearer’s complexion, others so garish as to set teeth on edge. The two standouts, both modern, were a chameleon bodysuit that, when viewed against the right background, made the man inside it nearly invisible below the neck; and a woman’s one-piece that made her torso appear to be an aquarium stocked with the various tropical fish species that she studied.

  Everyone else went naked. Among them, Louis found the woman he had marked.

  She was a tall, sleek redhead with a wide, sensuous mouth and emerald eyes. Though several equally stunning women stood within a few paces of her, Louis scarcely noticed them. His stare caught the prominent contours of her clavicle, paused on her widely-set breasts, and followed the supple indentation of her midriff downward. He didn’t recognize her, though from the ease with which she ingratiated herself into conversations and the careful attention paid to her comments, she had to be someone well-established in the marinebio community.

  “Interrogative,” he said, locking his gaze on her face. “Who’s that woman?”

  “Rizal, Veronica,” replied the disembodied voice of the Net. “Specialist in plankton synthesis, related areas. Adept status.”

  Veronica Rizal. Wearing a new body, wasn’t that interesting? Unlike those people who adopted a new morph with each change of mood, Veronica had always favored the same look — beautiful, of course, as was the rule in these days of molecule-by-molecule cosmetology, but consistent. She was the kind of woman who, in an earlier age, would have eschewed make-up, perfume, and the latest clothing fashions, and simply let hygiene, heredity, and a wholesome lifestyle frame her attractiveness.

  She was playing a different game now. No wonder she was bare. Why wear a swimsuit? Her body was a swimsuit. Putting anything over it would be redundant.

  Louis nodded his head slowly in approval. He was likewise naked. Though he seldom changed his morph, he had over many years refined it the exact design he liked. Why hide the handiwork?

  Veronica extracted herself from a conversation and waded out into the surf. She dipped into a mild swell and came up wet. Louis, mesmerized, watched the rivulets drain off her chin, her elbows, the underside of her breasts. She’d programmed her sunscreens to give her skin an ideal medium tan; the water droplets beaded upon it and sparkled like jewels on a fairy tale princess.

  The woman tucked her chin down, shrouding her face within a wreath of deep red hair. Lips drawn tight, she stared at the wave retreating down her calves and ankles, but Louis could tell her mind was not focussed on her feet. Confirming his guess, she raised her glance and held it on a knot of people standing down the beach, toward the turtle sanctuary. She sighed, bowed her head again, and drifted off to the edge of another group.

  Louis searched the party that Veronica had glanced at. As he expected, he discovered within it the sandy-haired figure of Bernd Hauser, a maestro in null gravity marine environments. Louis knew him, of course. Louis made it a point to meet all the maestros and adepts of his field. For the last five of these conferences, Bernd and Veronica had been arm-in-arm, sharing smiles and hotel accommodations. That was before Bernd went off on sabbatical to Ganymede, and came back married.

  With one last glance at the lonely redhead, Louis approached and filtered into Bernd’s group. At first he avoided the maestro, engaging in small talk with others, but when Bernd drifted out of the conversational spiral, Louis appeared like a Cheshire Cat beside him.

  “How’s it going, Bernd?”

  “Hmmm? Oh, Louis. Hello. Say, your Homo maritimus research is the talk of the weekend. You’ll make adept for sure now.”

  “I hope so,” Louis said modestly. He was anything but humble inside. He’d carefully orchestrated his nomination, making sure his name was listed first on the right papers, developing friendships with just the right colleagues — he’d even done a significant fraction of the actual research. He treasured every last confirmation of his achievement.

  They chatted, Louis lulling Bernd with sincere, often complimentary references to the man’s work, tempered with rando
m gossip. Bernd listened raptly — few people could be as spellbinding as Louis — but from time to time, the maestro’s eyes drifted down the beach. Louis concealed his interest.

  Finally the moment came. “That new morph of Veronica’s is exceptional, don’t you think?”

  “Everything about Veronica is exceptional,” Bernd replied wistfully.

  “I couldn’t help but notice that she’s over there, and you’re over here.”

  Bernd dug his toes into the sand. “Yes. I wish it didn’t have to be that way. My wife’s not with me at the conference, but if it got back to her that I . . .”

  “It’s not over, then?” Louis said softly.

  “Oh, it’s over. But not because it was meant to be. Time and opportunity just got in the way. I suppose I should try to talk to her, try to explain, but I keep telling myself that if she’s angry enough, she’ll talk to me.” He chuckled sheepishly.

  It was not anger that Louis read in Veronica’s somber posture.

  “It’s probably best that you go your own directions,” Louis said, in his most brotherly way. Bernd nodded with relief. The conversation shifted to other topics, and when Bernd wasn’t looking, Louis slipped away toward the main hotel, heading for the glass double doors that Veronica had just vanished through.

  o0o

  He caught up to her as she perused the hotel’s Spanish galleon exhibit. He set one hand against the mizzenmast next to her.

  “Veronica? It’s been a long time.”

  She stared blankly at him. “Oh. Louis. I just saw some of your marine primate show.”

  “Ah, and did you like it?” he asked warmly. “I seem to recall seeing you enjoying one of the babies.”

  Her distant gaze suddenly sharpened, anchoring her in the present. But where Louis had expected a smile, a first breach through the wall of her melancholy, he found a rockhard aura of isolation.