GAIA

by Morton Chalfy

  Harrison added, "It should be do-able since they all preach care of the Earth whatever their practices might be."

  "It would be helpful," Mai Ling suggested in her soft voice, "if you reached out to other religious leaders and discussed this with them. You might even persuade a few of them to endorse the Gaian message."

  "Will you compose a letter?" Moms asked Mai Ling.

  "And perhaps we can hold an ecumenical retreat here, invite representatives from all religious groups and get them involved on our side," offered Harrison, "otherwise we could have some formidable enemies."

  They discussed the details of the outreach to the religious until Helene called them to look at her screen. She had taken the video of Moms' opening invocation and changed the background to the studio at the ranch. The Globe of Gaia was prominent above Moms' head and acolytes dressed in similar robes flanked her at the dais. Music had been added to the mix and the result was a powerful visual/aural presentation. "Something like this, recorded every week and distributed over social media should do it," said Helene.

  Harrison had grown increasingly quiet while he watched the presentation. Moms, sensitive to her brother's moods, asked, "What's wrong Harry?"

  "I'm worried by you doing this," he said. "All I can think of are the large number of crazies who'd like nothing more than to assassinate a prominent religious leader. All it would take is one mad Muslim or crazy Christian to get the idea that you're a threat to their belief system and poof, you could be gone in a heartbeat and a bomb blast."

  Moms reached for his hand. "We've got good security and I'd be harder to get at here than anywhere else."

  Harrison looked unconvinced and Mai Ling looked shocked, as though the thought had never occurred to her.

  "Besides," said Moms, "I can't live forever and if I'm assassinated you'll just have to proclaim me a martyr to the cause. It might even be the most effective recruiting tool we could get."

  Harrison looked quickly at his sister and then quickly away. "Drop that idea," he said, "or I drop giving any help."

  The seriousness of his tone cut into everyone's consciousness and Moms hastily said, "I wasn't seriously advocating that, just pointing out the obvious, but I'll be extra careful and I'll speak to Sam about heightening security."

  Harrison saw and heard the reckless tomboy she had been resounding in her voice. "No, I'll talk to Sam," he said with unmistakable meaning in his voice.

  In the silence that followed Helene said, "Hey, let's stay positive. She's safe here and there's no reason to be planning for anything but success. If you give me a couple of techs to work with you can do next week's sermon from your office and then send it out to the world.

  Helene's no-nonsense approach defused the atmosphere and refocused them all on working out the details. Harrison's face said "Security will be seen to," while Moms face became blander and less expressive to all eyes but her brother's. Helene, looking from one to the other thought, "This goes back to their childhood and we won't know what's happening until they tell us."

  When the meeting broke up Mai Ling went off to work with her assistants on the letter to the religious and the compilation of the Book of Gaia. Helene was to meet with the head of technology for the ranch and Moms dove back into the never ending work of answering correspondence. Harrison went in search of Sam.

  He found him in his office going over the list of provisions for Lucas and Maeve's expedition. "What's up?" he asked.

  Harrison recounted Moms remarks about martyrdom and was relieved to see the look of concern that spread over Sam's features.

  "That's not good," he said. "You know how she is when she gets an idea, you can't talk her out of it."

  "I know," said Harrison. "That's why I'm here."

  At his insistence they talked over the present security arrangements and whether and how they could be improved. Tighter screening procedures would eliminate many possible threats but not all.

  "I've tried to assign a personal bodyguard to her but she won't have it."

  "Insist on it."

  "I will. As soon as she gives the first sermon I'll have at least one person with her at all times." He looked at Harrison. "There will be no assassination on my watch," he said. "You can count on it."

  Chapter Forty

  The "tour bus" outfitted by Sam was more like a tank than a bus. Essentially an oversized robocar outfitted with armor plating and living quarters akin to those on a sailing vessel. It also boasted several advanced armaments and a swarm of insect-sized drones which could form a semi-intelligent pack of observers. The first fifty miles required close supervision of the robot because of frequent rock slides in the valleys leading away from the ranch. The next five hundred miles were on well paved secondary roads and allowed them to snuggle while the bus drove itself across the desert landscape.

  Lucas was relaxed and more playful than Maeve had ever seen him. He was feeling the euphoria of the belief that at last he was functionally off the radar of the world and could enjoy the privacy and the absence of paranoia. Maeve was bemused and attracted by this new side of her beau.

  "If this is the way you're going to be when we're on the mission," she said smiling, "I think we may just do this indefinitely."

  "Sure," he said, "put me in a rolling bedroom with you out where we're essentially invisible and I'm a happy guy."

  After a long day of travel they found a shaded spot to spend the night. Hidden beneath the leaves of a massive oak they spent time eating, making love and finally sleeping. Maeve was up at the first light of dawn to order breakfast from the robo-cook and to open the collection of notes she had on the Vegans.

  By the time Lucas joined her she was studying the history of the Vegan movement. With the rise of Grow Towers veganism became a much easier lifestyle to follow and the most extreme believers had come to the western desert to escape the "pollution of the urbs" and to practice living lives of "extreme purity."

  "What do you think?" asked Lucas.

  "I think we have to be very careful about our language. These people have taken the concept of purity to the extreme and are touchy about any questioning of their beliefs."

  "I'll only talk tech and leave the philosophy to you."

  "Good idea."

  They drove the next fifty miles to a turn-off marked only on their navigator and drove across a seemingly trackless expanse following a direct route to a set of coordinates in the middle of nowhere. Maeve kept peering ahead looking for the landmark shown as a tiny icon on the GPS display and at last called out to Lucas, "We should be there in a minute."

  "Where?" he asked. "I don't see anything."

  The tour bus came to a halt just at the spot on the map but there were no indications of life. After several minutes Lucas said, "Well, if we have to wait, let's get something to eat."

  "Just a few minutes more and then we'll fix something."

  As they stared across the empty landscape Maeve let out a small sound of surprise.

  "There's something coming."

  To their amazement the cloud of dust that approached them resolved itself into a small group of riders on camels plodding across the sands with a distinctive rolling motion. The riders were clearly soldiers and, when they reached the robobus, fanned out in a defensive array.

  Lucas and Maeve left the bus to engage them directly but outside of checking their IDs to make sure they were who was expected the leader instructed them to follow him up to the mesa. The journey was slow, the pace of the camels could not be hurried. It took all the robobus' ingenious engineering to keep them on the track that the animals traversed with ease. Twice they felt a wheel hanging over the edge of the path while the internal gyroscopes shifted the vehicle weight away from that side.

  Once the top of the mesa was reached they could see a Grow Tower in the distance and realized that was the core of the Vegan settlement. Arrayed along the far edge of the mesa, exposed to the sea breezes, was a line of water catchers, mesh walls which caught the moisture
on the breeze and funneled it to the cisterns that fed the Grow Tower and serviced the residents' water needs.

  "Water from the air, energy from the sun, and not another person in sight," said Lucas. "It looks good for Gaia."

  "I hope so," said Maeve. "They seem awfully insular."

  "But we're here by invitation."

  "Yes, I know. Still, people with extreme ideas can commit extreme acts."

  "Don't make me paranoid."

  "Well, just be ready."

  Their plodding traverse of the mesa gave them plenty of time to study the scene before them. The line of water catchers formed a backdrop, a fence along the rim of the cliff that sparkled and flowed with the action of the wind. Greenery carpeted the grounds leading inland from the edge, greenery made possible solely by the drips of water lost between the catchers and the pipes that carried the liquid bounty to the distribution facility.

  Houses built of adobe followed the curving line of the catchers. Their roofs were covered with ornamental plants and ivies of various sorts climbed their walls. The plain was dotted with what first looked like trees but when they got nearer were actually photovoltaic constructions in the form of trees. Each leaf was a working unit turning sunlight into electricity.

  "I read about those," said Lucas excitedly. "Sixty percent efficiency and no maintenance." He did the math quickly in his head. "That's enough power to run a much larger settlement than this appears to be." His voice trailed off while the implications sank in. "Keep your eyes open for where all that power is going."

  "Okay, but why?"

  "I don't know why and I don't like unexplained phenomena. Years of training to be paranoid."

  Maeve looked at him with a little concern. When Lucas became paranoid his personality shifted slightly and she had the feeling he was capable of actions she thought she didn't want to know about.

  "Don't go off on me," she said.

  "No, no. I'm just curious."

  The camel riders led them to the foot of the Grow Tower which was a smaller version of the ones in the urban areas. Again, doing the math in his head, Lucas calculated the number of people it was designed and sized to support and muttered to himself.

  "What?" asked Maeve.

  "Didn't you say this was a settlement of fewer than a thousand people?"

  "Yes. That's what Moms told me.

  "Well, that Grow Tower could easily support three or four times that amount."

  The riders had come to a halt and a small party of people came out to greet them. Maeve quickly slipped into her acolyte's robe and her most winning smile and they climbed down to meet their first "clients." Lucas was expecting some sort of extreme dress or adornment but the three people there to greet them seemed perfectly normal in appearance.

  They were led by a middle aged woman, her gray hair worn in a long pony tail and wearing casual pants and a tunic top. She looked like any one of the academic types he was used to. A younger man and woman accompanied her, clearly her aides.

  "Welcome to Veganville," she said. "I'm Mary and these are my assistants, John and Jane.

  The old fashioned names sounded odd in Lucas' and Maeve's ears but they smiled and nodded.

  "Let's go inside where you can rest and be refreshed and we can talk about Gaia."

  They followed her into the Grow Tower through what appeared to be a back door next to a loading dock. When Lucas paused to look around Mary said, "We do our shipping from here."

  "Shipping?"

  "Oh yes. We support ourselves growing specialty vegetables and preparing ready to eat meals. We ship by drones. We can hardly keep up with the demand."

  "So that's why the Tower is so large," said Lucas.

  "Yes. And I think we're soon going to have to add to it."

  Inside they were led to a private dining room which held a table set with a variety of foods.

  "Oh my," said Maeve. "How inviting."

  The room was cool and furnished with comfortable chairs. Soon they were sitting, plates in their laps, cool drinks to hand and mouths full of food.

  "This is delicious," offered Lucas holding a mini-sandwich with a bite taken out of it. "What is it?"

  "Let's see, that's a form of hummus and cucumber. They're specially grown hybrids."

  "Incredible. Delicious. I can see why your business is growing."

  "How far away do you deliver?" asked Maeve.

  "Within a hundred mile radius."

  "Oh, then we're too far away. Can these be frozen?"

  "Sure."

  "Then we'll have to load up our freezer. Moms will love this stuff."

  They spent a pleasant hour in the dining room, chatting about the food, the location, the water catchers and the forest of photovoltaic trees. At last Mary said, "John can take you to our head technician, Lucas, while Maeve and I prepare for a presentation after dinner. Okay?"

  Chapter Forty-One

  "The Head Technician," warned John, "is a grumpy old dinosaur who is against any modernization of anything. I think it's because he's the only one left who can work on the old stuff. Job security."

  Lucas nodded. "Well, what I'm going to do won't introduce anything new. The only reason I'm here is to maintain the security of the connection to Gaia central."

  John nodded back but his expression and body language clearly proclaimed, "I warned you."

  The grumpy old dinosaur turned out to be a pleasant, middle-aged ex-academic with a serious attitude toward his work. Before he allowed Lucas to get close to the equipment he grilled him about his knowledge of the systems and his specific intent. When he was satisfied he shielded the sign-on screen to hide the combination of words, numbers, finger and eyeprints that allowed entry to the underlying layers of code. Once in he stepped back to let Lucas go to work.

  After running a "potential leak check" on the system Lucas installed the little program he had written for the purpose. His security addition would alert communicators if there was a breach and would close down the channel. Unknown to the people whose machines would receive the fix he had also included a back door entry he could use to check the machines remotely.

  The process took less than half an hour and was completed with smiles and handshakes all around. Leaving the control room Lucas took a dongle from his pocket and showed it to John. He explained its use and operation and asked, "Do you think you'd ever have a use for this?"

  "No, I'm sure not. We never go to the urbs in person so we wouldn't have any need."

  "Well, take this one anyway. You never know when it might become necessary."

  John proposed taking him on a camel back tour of the settlement to which Lucas readily agreed. The camels were kept in a large barn and the two that were chosen for them to ride were unmistakably displeased at the interruption in their routine. They stamped and snorted during saddling and took mock nips at their riders' feet while they climbed aboard. Once out of the barn however they settled down resignedly to the job.

  John led them toward the mesa's edge to give Lucas a close-up view of the water catchers. The closer they got the higher the catchers loomed.

  "My goodness," said Lucas. "How tall are those things?"

  "Maximum height is about sixty feet. Right now they're set at forty."

  "From a distance they look much shorter."

  "Yes. The perspective at the edge of the mesa really is distorted. There's nothing to compare them with visually."

  At close quarters Lucas was aware of a complex combination of sounds. The wind through the very fine mesh made a low humming murmur and was counterpointed by a steady drip, drip, drip of water. At a slightly higher pitch the sound of streaming water in the collector pipes played a constantly changing tune.

  "Wow," exclaimed Lucas. "I never would have imagined this much water production."

  "It is incredible, isn't it?" said John proudly. Reluctantly the camels gave up munching the grasses at their feet and turned back from the edge. As John led them around the mesa they came across small groups o
f grazers, several llamas, a flock of sheep, two types of goats and, John assured Lucas, "rabbits, moles, voles and insects galore. Add water and life appears."

  "I guess so," said Lucas, impressed.

  They rode in silence for a bit until Lucas asked, "John, I know there's more to Veganism than not eating meat. Can you give me a short course?"

  "No killing," answered John quickly.

  "That's it?"

  "Pretty much."

  "Where do the camels fit in then? Why not robocars?"

  "The camels work out here. Robocars need infrastructure, roads, maintenance, all that stuff. The camels don't even need the barn. We tried living in the urbs, that's where the group began, but in a society based on the wholesale killing of animals there's a coarsening of sensitivities. You realize I'm quoting Mother Mary now, don't you?"

  Lucas nodded.

  "In a society like that people may be as brutalized as the animals if they run afoul of the law. In order for us to live in peace and harmony with the animals we have to be divorced from that society."

  Lucas thought for a moment. "You use drones to deliver and receive goods. Why not cars?"

  "We build the drones here. They're mostly bamboo. Robocars are a product of the brutalizing society even if the cars are innocent. The only real concession we make to outside manufacture is the communications equipment. We still depend on trade for some necessities and we need the educational resources."