ch 1 | Gull

Gull was three hundred meters in the air when the call woke him. He was a teenaged boy dressed in a denim coverall, and from a distance, he seemed to be riding a bicycle suspended from soapbubbles. His eyes were closed; the air flowed by like silk. The sun massaged his shoulders through the iridescent film of the floater's monomolecular fabric. A firm tailwind was pushing him over the neat green and yellow fields of the kibbutz with little more than an occasional tweak of the controls. The houses and barns seemed to be embroidered onto the fabric of the green valley. The peace of the view soaked into the soul with the silence of altitude. The cries of the odd seagull ranging inland from the Atlantic only served as temple bells to the holy place the world had become. The boy's head nodded, encased in a bright red flight helmet, and he leaned into the safety harness.

"Hey Gull! Watch your heading! Keep it due north- you're starting to drift toward Crater!"

Gull jerked as his father's voice rang in the helmet's earphones. He called up the navigational overlay, and the image appeared, projected on the inside of his face shield. Adam Adamson always used the comm as if he was supplying the carrier wave wattage.

"Roj that, Da. I am adjusting heading." Gull shifted his weight, and the fat delta wing of the craft cleaved the air a little differently . The arrow that represented his vector shifted back to the north in the display, away from the blinking red circle that delineated the danger zone of the old tactical nuke strike, a relic of the Bad Years.

"Tell you what, Gull, you want to be a flier someday, you got to keep your mind on business. You're not riding a Native plowhorse." Da sounded peeved, and Gull hoped no one was listening to the flight comm channel today.

"Sorry, Da. I'm approaching the end of our fields, and should cross Fallow in under half an hour, be over dropsite by mid-afternoon." The repeater from his nav transponder would show his position on the House's computer, but Gull figured he'd better say something.

"Well, you'd better start pedaling, boyo, if you plan to hit the Badlands today! The morning weathereye says unstable air further north, so keep sharp."

"Roj that again, Sir," Gull sighed and started pedaling. The tailwind just wouldn't be fast enough.

"Oh, and Gull," Da yelled. "Mary stopped by, left a plate of brownies for you. Get back before dark, and I might save you one. Base clear."

Gull grinned behind the polarized plex of his helmet. Da could really ream you out, but he didn't mind letting you know your almost-girlfriend was asking about you. He bent over the control bar and sent a few more revs to the fan.

Despite Da's complaints, Gull was one of the better floater jocks among his kibbutzim. The children of the settlement all shared the various chores, learning the whole range of its occupations, but the most coveted duty was in and around the hangar. With no roads or major ground transportation system, flight was the lifeblood of the settlements. Huge, lighter than air dirigibles were the trucks and trains of the twentythird century. Comparatively tiny, but ever popular, were the floaters.

Hyperlights, as they were more formally called, were described as a bundle of paradoxes, held together by a wish. A floater was a bubble of plastic only a few molecules thick, but incredibly strong, shaped into a rounded, complex wedge by a skeleton of nanogrown carbon fiber and resin. The pilot was suspended under the wing on a vaguely bicycle-like frame, the pedals of which turned a ducted fan, also made of monomolecular film and graphite. Hair fine cables controlled wing shape and shifted the fan duct for manoevering. It was very much like flying nothing at all. Gull loved it.

A floater really did float- a cluster of jewel-like picoelectronics enclosed in the Delta wing just over the pilot's head did the trick. Gull knew that something called a Niven-Hawking field was produced by nodes suspended in the wing envelope. The field was only intense enough to shield the air molecules in its domain from gravity- Gull barely noticed the difference when it went on. The air enclosed in the wing, however, became lighter than hydrogen- and was a lot safer. The floater was a craft used for pleasure, or for jobs that didn't require great speed, since the pilot also was the motor.

Gull thought about the contrast as he pedaled: antigravity and muscle power. That morning, during schooltime, Rabbi Berbaum had called on him in history class.

"Mister Adamson. Contrast for us, if you will, the economic motivation now, and during the last half century Pre-City."

Gull had shifted uncomfortably in his desk chair. Physically, he was in his bedroom, in front of his personal computer slab. But the display under the glittering video lenses told him he was connected via the House Core unit to the University in Jerusalem. The Rabbi's image occupied most of the screen, but inset at the border like illuminations of an old manuscript were the faces of his classmates. Most of them were in other settlements on the Namerican coast, but Mary and Kev were visible at the 5 and 6 o'clock positions. Kev was leaning forward awaiting his answer with exaggerated interest. Gull was hard pressed to keep from laughing; leaning too close to the slab's pickup caused a comical fisheye distortion.

"Well, Sir, the accumulation of wealth was the primary motivation in the Old World. There were too many people struggling for limited resources. The City makes sure that no one goes hungry, now, and our society is more interrelated and cooperative, instead of competitive."

"A good answer, as far as it goes. But there was a good deal of economic control exerted in the past. Anyone else care to elaborate?"

The image of a dark-complected girl from the Alb'ny kibbutz began to flash.

"Yes, Ravia?"

"What about the effects of the Tree on our longevity? Perhaps we're not in such a rush to accumulate things because we know we have more time? I mean, we'll all study two or more crafts during our apprentice pilgrimages alone."

"Also a good point." The Rabbi stroked his long beard. "But let's not just consider what the City gives us, but also look at what they have taken away. We have a transportation system based on lighter than air craft, but they have not revived the petrochemical industry. Indeed, the Accords have banned most heavy industry. Most of our new construction uses bioengineered components, such as crystalmoss and stonecoral instead of concrete and rebar. No large scale steel industry. The western civilization, pre-City, was based on giving the individual more and more leisure. Whole factories were given over to the manufacture of motorized toothbrushes! Of course, the concept of disposability is a whole study in itself, and the wastefulness of westerners became a proverb, though they merely carried to absurdity what lesser civilizations did in their own humble way. Jerusalem itself stands on a foundation of broken clay pots, demolished houses and household sweepings. But I digress. Complex necessities, like our aircraft, are grown in tanks by semibiological nanomachines, factories composed of devices the size of bacteria.

Our techs are trying to figure out the theory behind the various gadgets the Nobles use, with the foundation of twentieth century science. But most of them are too far beyond. Imagine a jet engine no thicker than a coat of paint, for example. How would you even begin? So our society was left with what we can scavenge from the ruins, what manufacturing we have left in the undamaged portion of the middle east, and the 'black box' technology of the Nobles that we plug into our systems without really understanding , and therefore without being able to duplicate."

Kev signaled for attention and got it. "But is that fair?"

Rabbi Berbaum shrugged. "The Nobles are God's servants, and shall not the God of the earth do right? We may not feel it is fair, but I am certain that it is just. In the meantime, we are fed, we are well, we have work to do. We may be short of motorised toothbrushes, but we get by. Man does what he needs to do."

Gull figured it must mean that pedaling was one thing that he needed to do. He was as devout as the next eighteen year old, but, at the same time as opposed to unecessary exertion. The romance of flight, however, made the effort worthwhile.

The kibbutz' field behind him, he passed over Fallow, the area of detoxified, but uncultivated ground that ringed the valley of Kibbutz Jeshua. He tilted the nose up a little, but he would clear the crest of the ridge easily. Young, new growth saplings and brush competed with older, sparse forest that had struggled through the Bad Years.

Gaining altitude, Gull looked over the landscape- varicolor folds of forest draped the hills to the horizon. Bits of visible streams glinted at the bottom of some of the dales, and off to the west he could see the broader stroke of the Chak, which made a wide loop around his valley. On the far side of the Chak, Gull knew, were several Native communities, hidden by the forest. Most of them had as little to do with the kibbutz as possible, prefering a more primitive, independent existence, though they did trade for the grain the kibbutz produced. A tint of blue to the east indicated the Atlantic. All in all, a pretty but trackless landscape, except for Crater. The bombglass scar itself was hidden by a ridge, but the area was surrounded by the skeletons of old chemical plants. Blackened and twisted towers and pipes still had not relinquished their territory, but stood as monuments to persistent poisons. He activated the IR link to the floater's navigational transponder and called up the topographic overlay. Lasers around the edge of his face plate sketched a schematic of the area that shifted as the minicomputer sensed his head movements. It tinted the area the Settlement had reclaimed in green light and his objective in yellow.

Gull was on a bombing run. He popped the clasps on the ' picnic basket', a streamlined cargo pod mounted in front of him, and checked his load. Skuzzweed, or genengeneered kudzu was what made Kibbutz Jeshua and her sisters possible. Settlers returning to the Americas under the Accords could hold and farm what they could reclaim. The Natives had co-opted most of the clean lands since the Bad Years: old national parks, wildlife refuges, forests like the one to the north of the kibbutz. But considering all the old industrial areas, gas stations and toxic waste dumps, combined with old nuke strikes like Crater and the leftovers of chem and bio-war battles, land was available. If, that is, you didn't mind doing the cleanup. Nestled on finger-foam padding like rows of fist-sized waterballoons were skuzzweed seed pods. Like the Niven-Hawking generators, they were a gift from the City. Their taut blue-green skins would burst when dropped, scattering seeds over tens of meters. The plants grew rapidly, as much as a meter a day, putting down a dense network of roots that reached all the way to the aquifer. Skudzu loved heavy metals and complex hydrocarbons, and leached them from the soil. The plants grew in male and female forms and generated a respectable electrical potential between them, which helped move the contaminants. Poisons were concentrated into a tough, waterproof fruit, and then the plant died. You might want to pick skuzfruit with a long pole, but at least the poisons were out of the ecosystem.

Gull checked out the landscape. His 'bombing run' would take him over an area of several square miles. The kibbutz was gradually working their way toward and around the Crater area, which was entirely lifeless from radioactives and toxins. He looked for dead areas, or sections of the forest with diseased growth. All he had to do was release a seed pod over the target. The skudzu would take over an area of about four acres, subsuming everything within a leafy shroud. Organics would be consumed and the plants would settle slowly to the ground. By next year the area would be covered by a nutrient-rich humus dotted with rocklike orange fruit which would be collected and taken for processing.

Standard procedure would be for him to start in the center of the zone and fly a widening spiral. It left a lot of time for sightseeing, which suited Gull fine. Of course, the two hundred plus years since the Rescue had let the forest grow over most of the sights. Off to the northeast, Gull could see a few bits of the old interstate system stiching between the mini-forests that had grown up from the old interchange landscaping. All the old towns and suburbs were pretty much gone. The infrastructure that had made western civilization possible had crumbled like wet particle board in the Bad Years. Gull had read of the earthquakes, meteor strikes and the less natural disasters- the Stutter War, the terrorist plagues. Now, all Gull knew of the old USA was the stories the Elders told, and the amateur archaeology he and his friends did on their own.

"Time for the Secret Ingredient," he told a passing raven. Long late nights over the House comp, with a scanner and a yellowed, crumbling copy of something called the '-nd McNally Road Atlas 1998' (the corner of the antique magazine had been chewed off years ago) had resulted in a data wand that he slipped into the 'Special' port of the his helmet's comp. The little computer integrated the information off the old flat maps and the network of towns that hadn't existed since the last millenium came to ghostly life on Gull's face shield.

Knowing where to look made a world of difference. That low hill, perhaps a klick to the northeast suddenly seemed much too regular to be natural. The letters Emersburg (pop. 124,670) floated just to the left of it. Perhaps that had been a mini-mall, or a municipal office- who knew? Gull shifted weight again and the floater slipped gently sideways to overfly the knoll. Through gaps in the cover Gull could see edges and surfaces of a smooth, pale material. Marble or concrete? He caught a flash of reflected light.

"Bingo," he whispered, tapping a marker into the nav records on his compcuff. A big piece of antique plate glass would make a nice addition to the windows of the Kibbutz's Common Hall. He and his cousins could make a treck up there next season, after the skudzu died.

Gull checked the time display. 1300 hours floated in the upper right corner of his field of vision. Da should still be manning House comm. The watch was the eyes and ears of the settlement. The comp would trigger alarms for fire or if a call came in from other Houses or even the City, but the watch acted as an intramural 'phone operator, or, if he was so inclined, disc jocky on the House's entertainment frequency. Gull flipped the channel; sure enough, he recognised Da's taste: a retro '20's band playing 'The Mountains Danced' . Heavy on the sitar. He flipped back to comm, and keyed the transmitter.

"Gull to House. I'm approaching fresh ground. Will make the usual patern.

"Roj that, Gull," Da bawled. "No flags yet from weathereye, but the afternoon report won't be in for awhile. You eyeball anyth'?"

Sweeping the horizon, Gull noticed some suspicious masses of cloud crouching over the northernmost hills.

"Nothing I can't handle, Da. We need to get rid of some of these pods- they're getting pretty ripe. I'll be careful."

"'kay, Son. Just remember the brownies. I'll be off watch soon, so I'll take them to the kitchen. House clear."

"Will do, Da. Tell Mary thanks if you see her. Floater Clear."

Gull flipped the display from overlay to map and checked to see that his blip was more or less centered in the target area. He set the controls to take him in a constant slight turn to the right.

"Now the real work begins," he said. The floater's monomole fabric was so smooth as to be almost frictionless. The bearing surfaces of the pedals and fan were coated with a similar material. His body and the viscosity of the air itself provided the only resistance, but a floater jock still developed great leg muscles pedaling all over the sky. For the next four hours all his attention was on the forest. Gull found several areas where the trees didn't look quite right, and a patch about three acres in size that was completely devoid of any growth. Grey and oily ground showed through the stubs of trees- probably an old dumpsite. The snaggle-teeth of old cinderblock structures showed occasionally, festooned with old vines, mostly obscured by years ofrank, weedy growth. The records were sketchy, but this had to have been a fairly industrialized area. Gull varied routine by dive bombing the most menacing looking patches.

Like most of the other floater jocks, he longed to be a part of the Rangers, a quasi-military outfit under the Isralei flag, but working closely with the Nobles. The Rangers, supposedly,were around to keep the peace between the Settlers and the Natives. With the power of the City of God to back the Accords, the Rangers mostly practiced forest fire control, and polished their skills flying their antique jets; a special dispensation from the Nobles allowed them fuel cultured from kerosene-producing bacteria. The floaters handled less like an HTA fighter with its noisy internal combustion engine and more the soapbubble that its appearance suggested. The best Gull could do was put it in a steep descent, then pull up at the last minute, standing on the pedals and leaning back until the fan blade clipped at his braid. He'd release the pod and climb seemingly in slow motion with the delta wing flexed down in a bow. The first time he had let the pod go too soon, and it blew before he was out of range. There had been no real danger, though skuzzweed pods explode with a peroxide-powered bang. The individual seeds are soft and monomole film would stop an arrow. It did sting, though, and stained right through the coverall. That night his cousin had presented him with the kibbutz' Order of the Green Butt at the evening's communal meal.

By the end of the afternoon, Gull's legs felt like two sticks of firewood, and his hamper was all but empty. He had marked another couple of sites for off-duty exploration. By Murphy's law he found, on checking the nav display, that he was at the opposite end of the new valley from home. There was still a light wind, but during the afternoon it had changed direction and now would give him a push toward the settlement. The sun was well on its way to the horizon.There were rather more clouds overhead, he realized. With his attention on the topography, they had crept over the hills to the north and were looking ugly.

"Gull to House! What's with the weathereye?"

A new voice crackled over the comm. "Yo, Gullible! Thought you'd never call. You coming home in time to do some real work?"

" Cousin Kev! You shrimp!" Kevin VanDuvier topped Gull by 15 cm. He was blonde to Gull's dark, stocky to his slim. Kev was a year older, and they were generally rivals for the air runs. "I've got a pod or two left here. Maybe I should stick them under your pillow tonight. What's the weather sat saying? It should have sent the update at least an hour ago."

There was a bit of dead air on the comm. In the background, he heard the sound of pots banging- the watch station was in the Common Hall, in an alcove near the kitchen. Around the floater, the air was definitely alive, rocking and tugging at him from several directions. He turned toward home and started pedaling doggedly, allowing for a growing crosswind. The evening air was cooling over the Atlantic, and the warm air from the landmass was flowing into it. In between Gull and the sea was Crater.

"Come back to me, Kev," Gull urged. "What's the story on the system north of me?"

There was the sound of paper rustling in his headphone. Kev's voice was oily, like petroleum jelly on a doorknob- one of his favorite tricks. "Oh, yeah, here it is. Must've fallen off the desk. Well, looky here, says we might get a bit of a blow this evening. Better hurry home- don't bend anything!"

"So help me, you pea-brained scuz sucker-" He was talking to a dead comm. Kev must have switched off on his end. Gull decided to save his breath. Da must be out getting the livestock settled, and the next watch came on at six. Kev probably figured on him getting good and soaked. If it didn't get too bad, Gull hoped to be able to surf down the leading edge of the storm- and get no more than a dressing down from Da for foolhardiness with expensive equipment. Gull craned his neck to see though the strobing of the fan blades behind him. The clouds were a solid wall of gunmetal from northeast to northwest, and were definitely overtaking him

He picked the nose up and began reaching for some altitude. The turbulence of the storm could take him and bounce him into the treetops if he stayed too low. The display in his faceplate began flashing. Focusing on the readout, Gull saw a red arc creeping onto the left side of the display. The crosswind must be stronger than he thought. He was getting close enough for the warning zone to show, and that was closer than he liked.

Crater itself was a four kilometer wide circle of fused earth and bedrock; some said you could see a blue glow from it at night. Gull didn't want to find out if that was true. A moment of rapid calculation: too many variables. Gull flipped a toggle labled 'Emergency Lift'. The NivenHawks drew power from rechargable superconducting cells; the floater wing was coated with a photovoltaic layer that kept the cells charged and gave the film its irridescent sheen. Emergency lift intensified the field enough to reduce his weight perceptibly, but would drain down the cells faster than they could recharge.

Gull settled down to a strong but steady pace, balancing the need for speed against altitude. The storm wasn't a hurricane, but it was big enough. The wind continued to build in gusts. The floater made a great kite, with Gull to provide the tail and keep it from spiraling out of control, but he wasn't able to make much headway against the current. The warning zone kept sliding further into the readout. He thought about going to ground, but the buffeting would have him imitating a basketball if he tried. Rain started to score through the dusk, skittering off the skin of the wing, but soaking his clothes and stinging the back of his neck.

"Mayday, Mayday, this is Jeshua House Floater. I'm being blown over Crater!" The comm gave back only static. The radio in the floater had little carrying power; there was no chance that the Rangers would pick up his signal. There was no Noble staying in the prophet's room of the Hall, as sometimes occurred. Gull felt that a Noble might have heard his call, if there was one at all nearby. Perhaps even now, one of the 'Elder brothers' was winging to his rescue. But perhaps not; he redoubled his efforts. If he crashed, he might lay out there a long time before he died. That was still possible, in spite of all the City could do.

Gull imagined the sprawling Common Hall, actually a collection of buildings and additions that had grown with the colony. As Jeshua kibbutz prepared for the supper and the storm, Mom and the Aunts would be scurrying around the big kitchen, smelling of steam and spices, while younger cousins set the table and helped get the little ones cleaned up. The men would be just coming in from the barns and the stables. With all the activity, they probably wouldn't notice his absence until everyone set down to table. Gull would have felt sorry for Kev, if he had the time. He loved the odd practical joke. Nobody ever got hurt, and everyone laughed, except the one whose bed got shortsheeted or found a toad in their boot. Gull couldn't imagine what Da would do when he found out Kev had shut down comm. Gull didn't have an emergency transmitter, since he had the floater, and its transponder.

Gull gave up on fighting the storm and went for altitude. Nav said that Crater was almost dead ahead. Cloud cover began spreading, starting to interfere with the setting sun, which meant cell drain would be quicker. Gull was starting to see the glitter of bomb glass through the thinning trees as life began to loose the struggle to keep a whole set of chromosomes. He wasn't sure how high was high enough, but he was going to try to get over Crater as quickly as possible. He was probably already starting to take rads.

Through the rain, he caught his first sight. The trees were gone now, radiating away where they had been blown down by the blast, with a few blackened snags projecting from more sheltered spots. He had heard the missle had hit over a spent fuel storage site, and splattered nuclear waste over the surrounding hills. Those trees were over two hundred years old, Gull realised- the radiation had kept them bug and rot-free. If he didn't get to the other side, he'd recieve the same free embalming job.

Rain began to pour down, obscuring the view. The center of Crater was a fire-blackened curved mirror, cracks and crevices radiating from the center where a pool of water had collected. It looked like a blind, staring eye. The lightning started. Bolts started jumping from the clouds to the crater rim. Gull counted three seperate explosions of searing white light before one ripped the air close to the floater. Inducted current fried his electronics, and they gave up the ghost in a burst of white noise that spiked his eardrums. The floater field winked out; weightless air regained its weight, and the craft went from a dirigible to a glider. Unfortunately, it wasn't designed for that and started an erratic descent. Gull would have been terrified, if he had been concious.

chapter 2