Futures Near and Far (13 page)

Charles could have given the speech himself. He’d read
praise like it in eco-front journals. Whenever there was another oil spill,
Bennie was there providing legal advice to the impacted residents. He reminded
the public of violations by major corporations of the Montreal Accord every
time a new hole appeared in the ozone layer. When the plankton fertilizing
project yielded negligible results, he had a panel of scientists prepped with
the “I told you so’s.”

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

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.

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.