"You're not the first I've cured," Juliano said as they walked
toward it. "I always said my Superbright students had promise.
Some of them work here. A pilot project. I want to show you what
they've done. They've been tackling botany from a perspective of
Prigoginic complexity theory. New species, advanced chlorophylls, good solid constructive work."
"Wait," said Lindsay. "I want to talk to this youngster." He had
noticed the boy's kite. Its elaborate paint job showed a nude man
crammed stiflingly within the rigid planes of the box kite's lifting
surfaces.
A woman in mud-smeared corduroy leaned over the woven fence, waving a pair of shears. "Margaret! Come see!"
"I'll be back for you," Juliano said. "Don't go away."
Lindsay ambled unsteadily to where the boy stood, expertly
managing his kite. "Hello, old cousin," the boy said. "Got any
tapes?"
"What kind?"
"Video, audio, anything from the Ring Council. That's where
you're from, right?"
Lindsay reached automatically for his training, for the easy network of spontaneous lies that would show the boy a plausible
image. His mind was blank. He gaped. Time was passing. He
blurted the first thing that came into his head. "I'm a sundog. From
Czarina-Kluster."
"Really? Posthumanism! Prigoginic levels of complexity! Fractal
scales, bedrock of space-time, precontinuum ur-space! Have I got it
right?"
"I like your kite," Lindsay hedged.
"Old Cataclyst logo," the boy said. "We get a lot of old Cataclysts around here. The kite gets their attention. First time I've caught a Cicada, though."
Cicada, Lindsay thought. A citizen of C-K. Wellspring had always been fond of slang. "You're a local?"
"That's right. My name's Abelard. Abelard Gomez."
"Abelard.That name's not too common."
The boy laughed. "Maybe not in C-K. But every fifth kid in the
Republic's named Abelard. After Abelard Lindsay, the big historical cheese. You must have heard of him." The boy hesitated. "He
used to dress like you. I've seen pictures."
Lindsay looked at the boy's own clothes. Young Gomez wore a
faked-up low-grav outfit which sagged dreadfully. "I can tell I'm
out of date," Lindsay said. "They make a big deal out of this
Lindsay fellow, do they?"
"You don't know the half of it," Gomez said. "Take school.
School's completely antique here. They make us read Lindsay's
book. Shakespeare, it's called. Translated into modern English by
Abelard Lindsay."
"Is it that bad?" Lindsay said, tingling with deja vu.
"You're lucky, old man. You don't have to read it. I've looked
through the whole thing. Not one word in there about spontaneous self-organization."
Lindsay nodded. "That's a shame."
"Everybody's old in that book. I don't mean fake-old like the
Preservationists here. Or weird-old like old Pong."
"You mean Pongpianskul?" Lindsay said.
"The Warden, yeah. No, I mean everybody's used up too fast. All burnt up and cramped and sick. It's depressing."
Lindsay nodded. Things had come full circle, he decided. "You
resent the control on your life," he speculated. "You and your
friends are radicals. You want things changed."
"Not really," the boy said. "They only have me for sixty years. I've got hundreds, cousin. I mean to do big things. It's going to take a lot of time. I mean big things. Huge. Not like those little dried-up
people in the past."
"What kinds of things?"
"Life-spreading. Planet-ripping. World-building. Terraforming."
"I see," Lindsay said. Me was startled to see so much self-
possession in one so young. It must be the Cataclyst influence.
They'd always favored wild schemes, huge lunacies that in the end
boiled down to nothing. "And will that make you happy?"
The boy looked suspicious. "Are you one of those Zen
Serotonists? 'Happy.' What kind of scam is that? Burn happiness,
cousin. This is the Kosmos talking. Are you on the side of life, or
aren't you?"
Lindsay smiled. "Is this political? I don't trust politics."
"Politics? I'm talking biology. Things that live and grow. Organisms. Integrated forms."
"Where do people come in?"
The boy waved his hand irritably and caught the kite as it swooped.
"Never mind them. I'm talking basic loyalties now. Like that tree. Are you on its side, against the inorganic?"
His recent epiphany was still fresh in Lindsay's mind. The boy's
question was genuine. "Yes," he said. "I am."
"You see the point of terraforming, then."
"Terraforming," Lindsay said slowly. "I've seen theories. Speculations. And I suppose that it's possible. But what does it have to do with us?"
"A true commitment to the side of Life demands the moral act of Creation," Gomez said promptly.
"Someone's been teaching you slogans," Lindsay said. He smiled.
"Planets are real places, not just grids on a drawing board. The effort would be titanic. All out of human scale."
The boy was impatient. "How big are you? Are you bigger than
something inert?"
"But it would take centuries-"
"You think that tree would hesitate? How much time do you have, anyway?"
Lindsay laughed helplessly.
"Fine, then. Are you going to live a squished-down little human life, or are you going to go for the potential?"
"At my age," Lindsay said, "if I were human I'd already be dead."
"Now you're talking. You're as big as your dreams. That's what
they say in C-K, right? No rules, no limits. Look at the Mechs and
Shapers." The boy was contemptuous. "All the power in the world,
and they're chasing each other's tails. Burn their wars and midget
ideologies. Posthumanity's bigger than that. Ask the people in
there." The boy waved one hand at the woven-wire enclosure.
"Ecosystem design. Rebuilding life for new conditions. A little
biochemistry, a little statistical physics, you can pick it up here and
there, that's where the excitement is. If Abelard Lindsay was alive
today that's the sort of thing he'd be working on."
The irony of it stung Lindsay. At Gomez's age, he'd never had any sense, either. He felt a sudden alarm for the boy, an urge to protect him from the disaster that his rhetoric would surely earn him.
"You think so?"
"Sure. They say he was a hot Preservationist type, but he
sundogged off when the getting was good, didn't he? You didn't see
him hanging around here to 'die of old age.' Nobody really does
anyway."
"Not even here? In the home of Preservationism?"
"Of course not. Everyone here over forty's on the black market
for life extension. When they turn sixty they scarper for Czarina-
Kluster. The Cicadas don't care about your history or your genes.
They take all clades. Dreams matter more."
Dreams, Lindsay thought. Dreams of Preservationism, turned
into a black-market scrabble for immortality. The dream of Investor Peace had rusted and collapsed. The dream of terraforming still
had a shine on it. Young Gomez could not know that it too would
surely tarnish.
But somehow, Lindsay thought, you had to dream or die. And
with new life pouring through him, he knew which choice was his.
Margaret Juliano leaned over the fence. "Abelard! Abelard, over here! You need a look at this."
The boy, startled, began reeling in his kite hand over hand.
"Now this is luck! That old psychotech wants to show me something in the compound."
"Go to it," Lindsay said. "You tell her that I said to show you
anything you like, understand? And tell her that I've gone off for a