Drakon by S.M. Stirling Page B

anyone else.
    "Because it wasn't doing any good," he went on. "Not Greenpeace or Earth First, or any of the others. We were putting Band-Aids on cancers at best. More often, we were just provoking backlash.
    Earth First couldn't think of anything better to do than try and get poor dumb loggers fired. I'd have joined the ecoterrorists, if I thought they'd accomplish anything. Detroit can produce bulldozers a lot faster than anyone can blow them up, though."
    "So you gave up and came to the Bahamas to practice corporate law," she said.
    He nodded his head jerkily. He'd gone a little further into the fringes than that, which made the move advisable until things quieted down, but it was essentially true. His parents had helped; Dad had real pull, enough to square his work permit with the Bahamian government. It was stupid not to take advantage of family connections if you had them. There were more lawyers in Nassau than sharks in the waters offshore, but he'd done well.
    "Sure. Why not dance on the deck if the Titanic's going down?" And what a depressing subject for a dinner date.
    Gwen leaned forward, fixing his eyes with hers. "Imagine a world," she said softly, almost whispering, forcing him to lean closer to hear, "where the population of Earth is five hundred million and stable, not seven billion and rising. Where not an ounce of fossil fuel is burned. No mines, no factories, no fission reactors or coal-burning plants, no tankers full of oil. The sea and the skies and the land swarm with life, and whole continents are nature preserves."
    He jerked his head away. "That's not funny."
    "No, it's not funny. But it's possible, given the right technology and the right management."
    "And we'll never get there from here," he said, feeling anger mount. "Look, what's the point of this?"
    She smiled and pulled a featureless black rectangle the size of a credit card out of her bag.
    "Yes, this civilization is never going to do that," she agreed, and ran a fingernail down its side.
    The card opened out, and opened again, until it was the size of a hardcover book. The surface was black in a way he'd never seen before, as if it drank every photon that impacted on it and reflected nothing.
    A hole in the table, thinner than a sheet of paper and completely rigid. She touched the side, and the background noise faded quickly to nothing. He looked around in startlement; they were off in one corner, near the tall windows, but he could see mouths moving in talk, silverware in use. Everything was dead silent, like a video with the sound control turned off.
    "What is that thing?" he said. His voice sounded slightly flat in the perfect silence, as if in a room with absorptive baffles on the walls.

    "It's the equivalent of a file-folder," Gwen replied. "For old-fashioned types like me who don't like to just close their eyes and downlink from the Web through their transducers for an image. Now, we were discussing the potential future of civilization."
    Tom felt sweat break out on his forehead and trickle clammily down his flanks, more than the Bahamian night could account for. He reached for his wineglass and drank. It was no easy thing, to have your ordinary life suddenly touched by strangeness.
    "Go ahead," he said softly.
    "A planetary surface is a bad place for an industrial economy," she went on. "You could have gotten out of that trap, but it's probably too late now, and certainly will be in another generation."
    Tom shook his head. "Technofixes wouldn't solve our problems. It's in the nature of humanity to foul its nest. We'd have to change human nature: that's why I gave up."
    "I'm glad you said that," Gwen said, her smile growing broader. "You agree then, that humans aren't fit to be in charge here?"
    "What's the alternative—a Dolphin Liberation Front?" he replied.
    She tapped the black rectangle. "Look."
    He glanced down. The surface of the square . . . vanished. It wasn't a screen; the view through it had full depth, exactly like a