• HYDROSPHERE

Daisy McClennon felt good.

For one thing, business was going well. She’d just finished a lucrative 3-D reprocessing of the entire nine-hundred-episode Star Trek saga, and all three Rambo movies. Pretty good for a business that had started out as piecework enterprise, a part-time occupation for a housewife!

Daisy admitted she worked as much for pride as cash. It meant independence from the family trust fund, so she could afford to snub her damned cousins more often than not.

You’ll come crawling back, they had told her long ago. But nowadays it was they who came to her asking favors, seeking answers their hired flunkies couldn’t give them.

They thought I’d never make it on my own. But now I’m a mover and a changer.

She was spending less time with movies these days, anyway, and more of it brokering “special” information. That recent bit of private espionage for the peepers, for instance. In desperation, the feds had finally agreed to her price. The coup caused quite a stir in certain parts of the Green underground, adding to her burgeoning reputation.

Of course, some purists said you shouldn’t ever deal with nature-killing pigs. But Daisy had grown up around wheeler-dealers. The trick is to take advantage of their short-term mentality, she answered her critics. Their greed can be turned against them if you have what they need.

In this case, the peepers wanted data on a rogue technoconspiracy of some sort. Something having to do with those missing drilling rigs and water spouts Logan Eng had been so uptight about. Her customers didn’t want to discuss specifics, and that was fine by her. The details weren’t important anyway. Let them play their adolescent-male, military-penis games. The deal she’d struck had saved more land than you could walk across in a day of hard marching. All in exchange for a simple map to the conspirators’ front door!

What’s more, she was already getting feelers from other clients who wanted information on the same subject. There were ways of getting around her oath of confidentiality to the feds. This affair might be milked a lot farther, for more acres set aside, more watersheds put off limits to rapacious man.

All told, it had been a very profitable month. In fact, it seemed such a pleasant spring day, Daisy put on her hat and sunglasses and gloves and left her den to go for a walk.

Of course once she crossed the bridge, leaving behind her wind generators and mulch turbines and acres of restored native foliage, she had to face all the garbage left by four centuries of desecrators … including, still visible above the cypress groves, the decaying spires of derelict riverside refineries. Some of them still seeped awful gunk, many decades after their abandonment and so-called cleanup. Only fools drank unfiltered groundwater from Louisiana wells.

That wasn’t all. Ancient power cables and sagging telephone poles laced the parish like atherosclerotic veins, as did concrete and asphalt roads, many no longer used but still stretching like taut lines of scar tissue across the fields and meadows. Even near at hand, in her quiet green neighborhood, there were those Kudzu-covered mounds in the nearby yards, which looked like vine-coated hillocks till you peered close and recognized the blurred outlines of long-­abandoned, rusted automobiles.

It all reminded Daisy of why, as the years passed, she left her carefully resurrected patch of nature less and less often. It’s a wonder I had the stomach to spend so much time in this countryside when I was young, instead of getting sick whenever I went outdoors.

Actually, the family estates were a ways north of here. Still, this general part of Louisiana was where her roots had sunk deeply, for better or for worse. Back when her brothers and sisters and cousins had been dashing madly about, taking juku lessons, struggling to live up to their parents’ expectations and be better horseriders, better at sports, better world cosmopolitans, always better than the children of normal folk—Daisy had fiercely and adamantly opted out. Her passion had been exploring the territory in all directions, the living textures of the land.

And exploring the Net too, of course. Even back then, the data web already stretched round the globe, a domain fully as vast as the humid counties she roamed in the “real” world. Only, in the Net you could make things happen like in stories about magic, by incantation, by persuasion, by invoking sprites and spirits and just the right software familiars to do your bidding for you. Why, you could even buy those loyal little demons in brightly colored boxes at a store, like a pair of shoes or a new bridle for your horse! No fairy tale wizard ever had it so easy.

And if you made a mistake on the Net … you just erased it! Unlike outside, where an error or faux pas left you embarrassed and isolated, or where a single careless act could despoil a habitat forever.

And it was an egalitarian place, where skill counted more than who your parents were. You could be pen pals with a farm girl near Karachi. Or join an animal rights club in Budapest. Or beat everybody at Simulation Rangers and have all the top gamesters on the planet arguing for months whether the infamous hacker called “Captain Loveland” was actually a boy or a girl.

Best of all, when you met someone on the Net, people’s eyes didn’t widen as they asked, “Oh? Are you one of those McClennons?”

It was a touchy subject, brought to mind by a recent message she’d received. Family interests were among those inquiring about the peeper matter. And much as she hated to admit it, Daisy was still snared in a web of favors and obligations to the clan. How else, these days, could she afford to turn so much prime agricultural acreage back to native bayou?

Damn them, she cursed silently, kicking a stone into one of the turbid man-made canals carrying drainage from a cluster of giant fish farms.

Maybe I can use this, though … find a way to turn things around on them. If they want the data bad enough, this could win me free of them forever.

For the first time she wondered, really wondered, about the conspiracy Logan and the peepers had been so upset over—that everyone in the world seemed to want to know about. I assumed it was just more physics and spy stuff.

Corporations and institutes and governments were always getting in a froth over this or that technological “breakthrough,” from fusion power and superconductors to nanotech and whatever. Every time it was “the discovery that will turn the tide, make the difference, harken a new era.” Always it seemed imperative to be the first to capitalize. But then, inevitably, the bubble burst.

Oh, sometimes the gadgets worked. Some even made life better for the billions, helping forestall the “great die-back” that had been due decades ago. But to what end? What good was putting off the inevitable a little while longer, which was all Logan and his ilk ever managed, after all? Daisy had learned not to pay much heed to techno-fads. To her fell the task of preserving as much as possible, so that when humanity finally did fall, it wouldn’t take everything else to the grave with it.

Now, though, she wondered. If this thing’s got everybody so excited, maybe I ought to look into it myself.

She turned back well before reaching the little town of White Castle. Daisy didn’t want the humming power cables from the nuclear plant to ruin what was left of her mood. Anyway, she’d begun thinking about ways to take advantage of the situation.

If the clan wants a favor, they’ll have to give one in return. I want access to Light Bearer. It’s the last ingredient I need to make my dragon.

On her way back past the cane fields and fish farms, Daisy contemplated the outlines of her superprogram—one that would make her surrogate “hounds” and “ferrets” look as primitive as those ancient “viruses” that had first shown how closely software could mimic life. She pondered the beautiful new structure mentally. Yes, I do think it would work.

Turning a bend, Daisy was roused from her thoughts by the sight of two teenagers up ahead, laughing and holding hands as they strolled atop a levee. The boy took the girl’s shoulders and she squirmed playfully, giggling as she avoided his attempts to kiss her, until suddenly she leaned up against him with an assertion all her own.

Daisy’s smile renewed. There was always something sweet about young lovers, though she hoped they were being careful about …

She took off her sunglasses and squinted. The girl—was her daughter! As she watched, Claire pushed at her boyfriend’s chest and whirled to stride away, forcing him to hurry after her.

Make a note to call Logan, Daisy filed for future reference. Have him talk to the girl about sexual responsibility. She won’t listen to me anymore.

The one time they had had a mother-daughter chat on the subject, it had been a disaster. Claire acted horrified when Daisy did no more than suggest the simplest, most effective form of birth control.

“I will not. And that’s final!”

“But every other method is chancy. Even abstinence. I mean, who knows? You could get raped. Or miscalculate your own mood and act on impulse. Girls your age do that sometimes, you know.

“This way you can be free and easy the rest of your life. You can look on sex the way a man does, as something to seek aggressively, without any chance of, well, complications.”

Claire’s expression had been defiant. Even contemptuous.

“I’m a result of ‘complications,’ as you call them. Do you regret the fact that your old-fashioned birth control methods failed, seventeen years ago?”

Daisy saw Claire was taking it all too personally.

“I just want you to be happy—”

“Liar! You want to cut down the human population just a bit more, by having your own daughter’s tubes tied. Well get this, Mother. I intend on experiencing those ‘complications’ you speak of. At least once. Maybe twice. And if my kids look like they’re going to be real problem-solvers, and if their father and I can afford it and are worthy, we may even go for a third!”

Only after Daisy had gasped in shock did she realize that was exactly the reaction Claire had wanted. Since that episode, neither of them ever mentioned the subject again.

Still, Daisy wondered. Might it be worthwhile to send out a ferret to look for, well, chemical means? Something nonintrusive, undetectable …

But no. Claire already did all the cooking. And she probably had her gynecologist watching for any signs of tampering. Daisy made a rule of avoiding meddling wherever it might lead to retaliation. And so she decided to let the matter lay.

The girl will be leaving soon, Daisy pondered as she neared home again. Automatically, a list of chores Claire currently took care of scrolled through her mind. I’ll have to hire one of those oath-refugees, I suppose. Some poor sod who’ll work a lot harder than my own lazy kid, no matter how I tried not to spoil her. Or maybe I’ll get one of those new domestic robots. Have to reprogram it myself of course.

On her way to the back door she nearly tripped over two unfamiliar mounds on the slope overlooking the creek. Fresh earth had been tamped over oblong excavations and then lined with stones.

What the hell are these? They look like graves!

Then she remembered. Claire had mentioned something about the gloats. Their two weed eaters had died last week of some damn stupid plague set loose by a bunch of amateur Greeners over in Africa.

That blasted kid. She knows the proper way to mulch bodies. Why did she bury them here?

Daisy made another mental note, to cast through the Net for other means of keeping the stream clear. It was a dumb compromise anyway, using gene-altered creatures to compensate for man’s ecological mistakes. Just the sort of “solution” touted by that Jennifer Wolling witch. Rot her.

What is Wolling up to, anyway? I wonder.

Soon Daisy was sitting before her big screen again. On impulse, she pursued her most recent mental thread.

Wolling.

Daisy ran a quick check of her watchdog programs. Hmm. She hasn’t published a thing since leaving her London flat. Is she sick? Maybe dead?

No. Too tough to get rid of that easily. Besides, her mailbox shows a simple transrouting to Southern Africa. Now why is that familiar?

Of course it would be trivial to create an associator search program to find out, but Daisy thought of something more ambitious.

Let’s use this as a test for my new program!

Last week one of her search routines had brought home a research article by an obscure theorist in Finland. It was a brilliant concept—a hypothetical way of folding computer files so that several caches could occupy the same physical space at the same time. The “experts” had ignored the paper on its first release. Apparently it would take the usual weeks, or even months, for its ideas to percolate upward through the Net. Meanwhile, Daisy saw a window of opportunity. Especially if she could also get her hands on Light Bearer!

If this works, I’ll be able to track and record anybody, anywhere. Find whoever’s hiding. Pry open whatever they’re concealing.

And who better to experiment on than Jen Wolling?

Daisy began filling out the details, drawing bits of this and that from her huge cache of tricks. It was happy labor and she hummed as the skeleton of something impressive and rather beautiful took shape.

Once, the door opened and closed. Daisy sensed Claire leave a tray by her elbow and recalled vaguely saying something to her daughter. She went through the motions of eating and drinking as she worked. Sometime later, the tray disappeared the same way.

Yes! Wolling’s the perfect subject, Even if she finds out, she won’t complain to the law. She’s not the type.

Then, after I’ve tried it out on her, there’s all sorts of others. Corporations, government agencies … bastards so big they could hire software guns smart enough to keep me out. Until now!

Of course, the program was structured around a hole where the keystone—Light Bearer—would go. If she could coerce it from her cousins in exchange for information.

There! Daisy stretched back and looked over the entity she’d created. It was something new in autonomous software. I must name it, she thought, having already considered the possibilities.

Yes. You are definitely a dragon.

She leaned forward to dial in a shape from her vast store of fantasy images. What popped into place, however, amazed even her.

Emerald eyes glinted from a long, scaled face. Lips curled above gleaming white teeth. At the tip of the curled, jeweled tail lay a socket where Light Bearer would go. But even uncompleted, the visage was impressive.

Its tail whipped as the creature met her gaze and then slowly, obediently, bowed.

You will be my most potent surrogate, Daisy thought, savoring the moment. Together, you and I will save the world.

It is told how the brave Maori hero Matakauri rescued his beautiful Matana, who had been kidnapped by the giant, Matau.

Searching all around Otago, Matakauri finally found his love tied to a very long tether made from the skins of Matau’s two-headed dogs. Hacking away with his stone mere and hardwood maipi did Matakauri no good against the rope, which was filled with Matau’s magical mana—until Matana herself bent over the thong and her tears softened it so it could be cut.

Yet Matakauri knew his bride would never again be safe until the giant was dead. So he armed himself and set off during the dry season, and found Matau sleeping on a pallet of bracken surrounded by great hills.

Matakauri set fire to the bracken. And although he did not wake, Matau drew his great legs away from the heat. The giant began to stir, but by then it was too late. The flames fed on his running fat. His body melted into the earth, creating a mighty chasm, until all that remained at the bottom was his still-beating heart.

The flames’ heat melted snow, and rain filled in the chasm, forming Lake Whakatipua—which today bears the shape of a giant with his knees drawn up. And sometimes people still claim to hear Matau’s heartbeat below the nervous waves.

Sometimes, whenever the mountains tremble, folk wonder what may yet awaken down there. And when.