"Very well." He turned to Susie and smiled slightly. "You may continue, Susan."

Susie grinned at me, and I relaxed. I was very glad they seemed to understand. They certainly

understood more about me than I did. I smiled back at her.

"Sorry, Susie."

"That's okay. I remember my first time accessing. I was three, and I acted just about the same way you

did. No offense." I blushed-or it felt like I did. I didn't know if an energy signature could turn red from embarra.s.sment.

"Anyway," she continued, "the answer to your question is, yes, we can access higher, and the view is

even better. But there's a downside, too. Although access to the puterverse is a mental operation, there is a physical strain on the entire body. The higher you access, the more p.r.o.nounced the strain. You can train yourself to an extent to tolerate the stress, but the benefit is realized normally with the length of stay and only marginally on level of access."

"How bad is the strain?" I asked, trying to sound calm.

"Very. Only one in a hundred go higher than level nine. Fewer than one in ten thousand can access level twelve. And at level thirteen, the stress on your body becomes actual damage. Few have ever been higher than eighteen and survived.

"Don't worry, though, Abigail. We're not going anywhere near there today. You'll be pretty sore tonight, but it shouldn't be too bad. No point in overdoing it. This is your first time here, so you're not ready for it. And also, we don't need to go that high to show you what we want you to see."

"And what is that?" I asked, sounding calmer than I was. I had a feeling something unpleasant was about to happen.

"You'll see. Literally." Susie looked at Sanchez, who nodded. She took my hand and spoke to no one in particular: "Locate Oregon fire storm, 2414."

A tunnel just large enough for the three of us opened in the air about thirty meters in front of us. We remained still as it approached and engulfed us. Streaks and slivers of light, similar to the river, flashed by us on all sides. In almost no time, I noticed we were hurtling toward a pinpoint of light. The pinpoint grew to the size of an exit, and the light reddened. Then, as quickly as it had sprung on us, the tunnel abruptly terminated and we were in h.e.l.l.

All around us were the ma.s.sive flames of an uncontrollable firestorm. Vague shapes of buildings could be seen through the curtain of flames. Intertwined in the roar of the flames so as to almost come from them, were the screams of the dying, perhaps the already dead. I spun around, to look for escape, but there was none. Desperate to escape, I called for a platform, and we lifted up into the air, twenty, fifty, one hundred, meters. From horizon to horizon was nothing but flames and the sickening smell of death.

I had never seen anything so completely and utterly destructive. It had been, to me, almost ten years since I had left the horror of the Ethiopian Campaigns behind me. But I still should have been able to cope at some level with this conflagration. I couldn't. My senses were reeling from the horror. I felt no heat, but the terror would burn my soul for a long time. I covered my ears and started to sink down, but Raul lifted me up. He shouted something at Susie over the flames. She nodded and the flames died out as the platform we were standing on darkened and turned into another tunnel. Instead of falling in, our orientation seemed to change and we were standing in it, traveling quickly through it, the flickering red skies at our backs diminishing into the past.

The tunnel ended in moments, and we were standing on the moon's surface. I should have been overcome with the wonder, but the memory of the firestorm demanded all my attention. It took Raul gently shaking me to make me look up and put the horrible sight behind me to see this beautiful one.

The Earth sat in the sky, only just risen. All around was the rocky, pitted surface of the moon. I recognized the site as our first permanent moon base, established only twenty years prior, memory time. I realized we were also in a kind of lunar park, for the surface area of the base had ropes around it, and roughhewn benches, cut from native rock, were scattered around. Several flags, stiff with wire and shaped to flutter in a nonexistent wind, decorated the base. In all directions, I saw dozens of plastic bubbles protruding from the surface. Air locks, most likely.

"Look over there, Abigail," Susie said quietly. She pointed to a large rectangular rock about ten meters to our right. Walking closer, I could see an inscription. I leaned down and read it out loud.

"Forever enshrined to honor those who so valiantly fought in the Terran/Martian Wars, there lies here a fallen comrade, known but to G.o.d." It was dated 2389.

Terran/Martian Wars. Then they had established a colony. I stood and looked into the black sky to see if Mars was up. It was, its redness even more evident in the vacuum of s.p.a.ce. It looked so peaceful. Susie, was also looking up, but in another direction, towards Polaris. Her face was quiet and thoughtful. I turned to Sanchez.

"How many?" I asked in a small voice. Since there were no ambient noises, it still sounded abrasively loud.

"Three million from Mars, 481 million from Earth. There were four wars lasting sixteen years," Raul said with an impa.s.sive tone.

"How can you be so cold?" I said with stunned surprise. A half-billion people. I couldn't begin to grasp a carnage that great.

"It was a long time ago, Abigail. Three hundred years. But though we may sound indifferent about it, we are not, and the war still leaves its mark. As one-sided as the numbers may appear, Mars lost the war because their entire population was three million. Fewer than one thousand survived. Mars was never again resettled. The terra forming operations were abandoned, and it is again a dead planet."

"What do this war and the firestorm have in common?"

He didn't answer me. Instead, he nodded again to Susie, and the tunnel appeared to rush us away.

And so it went for more than an hour. We saw New York City turned into a ma.s.sive crater, surrounded by a flat, gla.s.sy plain, no life to be seen. They showed me dark hospital wards and filthy asylums, buried deep underground, housing horribly mutated things that may or may not have once been human. We saw a series of ripes, some of which were definitely not human, their brain cases merely welded, sealed boxes bolted into a control panel. In later images, not even that vestige of humanity was left them, as their intangible minds were moved into circuitry and hard memory. There were many, many more images, sounds, and experiences. How I managed to make it through without fainting, I don't know. Finally, we were taken back to the riverside. I looked into the ethereal data stream, shooting ribbons of silver and gold, and wondered how two such worlds could exist within each other. I looked up at Sanchez, feeling very weak from either our long access time or the mentally draining sights. Probably both.

"Why did you show me these things?"

He didn't respond, but instead leaned against the railing that ran along the riverbank, contemplating me. I looked at Susie, who stood quietly beside him, staring down at the hard floor of the puterverse. It was for me to find out.

"Computer. Access Abigail Wyeth."

"Access granted." The obsidian walls shot up into the air, and the area became darker, less friendly.

"Locate common focus of past twenty queries."

Again a tunnel came up, and we were inserted into it. We shot along, my hand groping for and finding Susie's. Lt. Sanchez stood close behind us. I had a sudden flash of fear and shivered.

A pinpoint of an exit appeared and raced toward us. The light increased quickly; it was clearly daylight at the end. I heard the distant rumble of voices and could even make out a few faces before we were suddenly in the midst of them. No one seemed to notice us, and several pa.s.sed through us, causing no harm nor having any come on them. I looked around, trying to orient myself. I first noticed the almost even proportions of race among the mult.i.tude. Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, everyone was represented in almost the same number. It could have been anywhere in the world, but nowhere in mine. Many were civilians. Many more were in a military style of uniform.

After a few more moments of studying the crowds, I looked up. Being shorter than everyone but the younger children, it was the only other way for me to look.

Filling the entire sky in front of me was a ma.s.sive complex of buildings. We were in a manmade canyon, surrounded on all sides by these huge structures, most hundreds of meters high and a few as wide as they were tall.

The complex was so ma.s.sive that it was more a carved mountain, made to look like buildings. An unearthly steel and gla.s.s mountain, reflecting the sunlight in such a way as to be blinding, even from my low vantage point. It made it difficult to get a proper look at the structures, other than size. I did make out a logo on several of the buildings, but the shimmering reflection made it impossible to make out anything other than shape. And people were constantly getting in my way. I tried jumping up to see over, but it didn't help much.

"Computer, delete people." They faded away and we were in a deserted valley of gla.s.sy concrete. "Accelerate time to two hours past sunset." Time slipped quickly by, and the large buildings flashed with the setting sun's rays, then took on a luminescence of their own in the gathering twilight. Night descended, and the stars came out. The logos flickered, then flared to life, and suddenly they were very easy to see.

At last I understood. I could see why these people had been so happy to have me, and so upset. I knew now why my I ... I ... IHAD had gone on for so long, why they had questioned me, and questioned me, and questioned me, though I had no memory of it. As I stared up at the accusing symbols, the ground beneath us began glowing, and suddenly we were standing on another ma.s.sive logo, flooding the air with brilliant blue light. I looked down at it and realized how lucky I was to still be alive, and not burned to a cinder by Susie's gun as I lay helpless. I stared at the logo, hoping it would go away, or change into something else. But it didn't.

NATech Supreme.

"End access." My voice was very small, very quiet.

The sounds faded, the images quavered a moment, then collapsed back into the flimsy sheet attached to Lt. Sanchez's wall.

"We don't know exactly when NATech was formed. The records have long since been lost, altered, deleted or secured. We had guessed sometime in the mid twenty-first century. Until you came along, Abigail."

I stretched out on my bed and looked up at the rock ceiling. It was a constant source of amazement that the rock could be cut to be so smooth, so flawless. I would have thought that natural imperfections in the native rock would leave the surface pockmarked and scarred. They must have some sort of blending method.

I rolled on my side to face Susie, groaning slightly as my aching muscles protested. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, largely unaffected by our puterverse accessing. Our room was so small that she was less than a meter from me, so our conversation was still pretty intimate. Not that anyone would hear us; we had shut the door for the night.

"You missed by a century," I replied. "NATech was a result of the Second World War and the forming of the United Nations. Almost no one knew of it because it would compromise our mission. We wanted to be able to prepare society for the changes that it was going to go through. We also did a large amount of research in what were considered to be fantastic, unrealistic ideas. By keeping our existence quiet, we were able to focus on our work and not the ever-changing politics."

She shook her head in disbelief. "It sounds unbelievable. And it's so completely impossible that the very ent.i.ty we fight against, and by whose hand so many of us die, could at any time have been benevolent. But I heard it from you, now and in the past days. The shock of the story you told us is still there."

"No more than the shock to me of seeing what NATech became. We had antic.i.p.ated something like this could happen, and had installed numerous safeguards to prevent it. In fact, shortly before I 'died', I..." I broke off and hedged. "...was also working on a long range safeguard. It's painfully clear those safeguards were useless. How far reaching is their power?"

She shrugged. "No one really knows, which by itself is a frightening indication. We do know it's nearly complete here on Earth. After the Terran/Martian Wars, the world government was destroyed. The planet had united under a common government as far back as 2209, but the more powerful countries, the United States , j.a.pan , Brazil and Australia , remained autonomous. But then singularity drives were invented in 2243, and the first hypers.p.a.ce corridor was established to a cla.s.s M planet in 2267. And that changed Earth's future forever."

"I had wondered if s.p.a.ce travel to other solar systems had been perfected. There seemed to be indicators in some of the things I looked at in the puterverse, but there were also very few facts."

"That's for two reasons. First is your current access level. There's not a whole lot you can find out at three limited four. As you feel more comfortable with the system, and we feel more comfortable with you, that access will be increased.

"The second reason is that s.p.a.ce travel is not that important to us. Everyone who wanted to leave the planet did. The singularity drive ships-we call them ball chasers-allowed for exploration of Earth cla.s.s planets that could be colonized, providing that they were not already inhabited by another civilization. If they were, relations would be established. If they weren't, emigration corridors would be set up after an experimental colony had proven the viability of self support.

"And I'll bet you've never found intelligent life, have you?"

She shook her head. "Of course, not. The very way the universe was created points to the improbability of intelligent life anywhere but on Earth. Of course, a lot of people still believe we'll find intelligent alien life one day."

"And maybe we will. I wouldn't hold my breath, though," I commented dryly.

"I suppose." Susie didn't sound too convinced, either. "Anyway, after the hyperidors were established to the first two or three planets, emigration could begin on a large scale."

"That follows. I'm not sure what a hyperidor is, but I'd guess it debunks the law of the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Probably a marked route through a type of subs.p.a.ce that twists those two points so they're closer to each other."

"I'll never get over that, Abigail! How do you do that?" Susie said wonderingly.

"You probably know as well as I do, Susie. As the Lieutenant pointed out, NATech didn't pick me for my good looks, nor for my more obvious military career."

"That military career would fetch you a high rank today with them. But you're right, I do know why NATech picked you; because of your success and ingenuity in the numerous recon missions you and your squad conducted. After we had you pegged, we were able to access many of your mission files. They were sketchy, and coded, but we could make out some of the details. Your skills with logic and personnel are brilliant. They'd make an excellent study in military tactics."

I blushed a bit. "Somehow, I doubt I'd find too many listeners if I gave the lectures. As for their 'brilliance', I did what I could to obtain the mission objective and keep my men alive. You were talking about the emigration."

"Sorry. Didn't mean to embarra.s.s you. It seems like I'm talking about a different person when discussing your past.

"Once the first hyperidors were safe, around 2270, huge transport ships could move with little effort or cost through them. The population of the world, nearly eight billion, dropped ten percent the first five years."

"Eight hundred million people emigrated?" I whistled. "I can just imagine the impact that had on the world economy."

"Don't whistle, it's very unladylike. Actually, it helped the economy immensely. Think about it. It's a gross over-generalization, but the people most likely to cause unrest or show aggressive tendencies are also the people willing to take the risk of emigration. Further, for those who remained, the stress upon the planet's resources eased by that same ten percent. Perhaps more. Do you mind if I turn down the lights?"

"No, not at all."

She called for the lights to dim. She seemed to almost fade, her smooth, ebony skin blending softly into the smooth, dark rock of the bedroom's wall. She stretched out on her bed, wriggling in under the blankets. I did the same, my sore, sore body thanking me once I lay still.

"But wasn't there support of the colonies?" I asked, picking up the conversation again. "Or did you really treat them as colonies, taking resources while providing finished products?"

"There was some of that in the beginning. In fact, they were not so much colonies as much as fledgling countries. There never was any intention to keep them as extensions of the Earth government.

"There were, however, many corporations who took advantage of the new markets to set up trade. It was pretty one-sided at first, with each new planet having an agrarian society until industrialization could be implemented. Some stayed with their agrarian cultures and set up trade with other planets."

"And Earth was the pivot for the entire trading system?"

"Well, yes, at first. Until hyperidors were marked between the other planets. And even then Earth remained the primary route of trade. Until 2373."

"The Terran/Martian Wars."

"Yes. The wars changed everything. There really is no connection between the settlements on Mars and the colonization of the Cla.s.s-M planets. Mars couldn't support life on its own; the others were chosen because they could. Mars had to remain a colony, forever dependent upon a planet with a breathable atmosphere. Terra-forming had begun, but it would be eight hundred years before Mars could even approach something close to an actual life-sustaining atmosphere.

"But the Earth government held them too tightly in check, and they rebelled. Using crude plasma drives, they aimed asteroids from the asteroid belt into the path of the Earth, turning them into guided comets. This allowed them to work with impunity, for they didn't need to wage battle directly. By the time it was discovered what had been done, dozens of these asteroids had been launched. They started to hit the Earth with alarming frequency. Nearly all of them penetrated the atmosphere. Most burned up when entering the atmosphere, releasing ma.s.sive amounts of heat. A few survived and hit the Earth. Of course, it was nearly impossible to aim the things. They just had a general idea.

"The result was all consuming terror for Earth. Whole cities, destroyed within minutes, without warning. The majority of deaths happened then, over 400 million. Even the misses that crashed into the oceans caused ma.s.sive tidal waves and temporarily raised ocean temperatures and destroyed the currents. And the final injury were the primitive plasma drives themselves. There was no effort to reinforce the casings, so many times the plasma exploded on impact, irradiating the area and electrifying the air, burning huge holes in the ozone."

I shivered from the descriptions. Such total, indiscriminate war. I tried to draw up a defense plan for the scenario, SCENARIO 1947588375 INDICATES THAT A FULL ORBITAL ATTACK ON THE SURFACE OF THE PLANET WILL RENDER THE PRIMARY MARTIAN CITY OF VERMILION 97% INEFFECTIVE IN ALL EIGHT KEY MILITARY AREAS, BUT ALLOW FOR A SURVIVAL RATE OF 38.86%, WHICH INDICATES THAT ASTEROID BOMBARDMENT OF EARTH CAN CONTINUE. SCENARIO 1947588376 INDICATES THAT A FULL ORBITAL ATTACK ON THE SURFACE OF THE PLANET, FOLLOWED BY A GROUND FORCE ATTACK OF 5,000 SHOCK TROOPS WILL RENDER THE PRIMARY MARTIAN CITY OF VERMILION 98.2% INEFFECTIVE IN ALL EIGHT KEY MILITARY AREAS, BUT ALLOW FOR A CITIZENRY SURVIVAL RATE OF 34.92% WHICH INDICATES THAT ASTEROID BOMBARDMENT OF EARTH CAN CONTINUE. SCENARIO 1947588377 INDICATES THAT A FULL OR.

but was either too tired to come up with one, or one didn't exist. In a situation like that, even a plan that was ninety-five percent effective would still be a failure. Susie continued.

"After the first three or four hits, Earth was ready for total response. They launched ma.s.sive strikes against the colonies, and Mars lost two-thirds of its population, two million people, in one week. But a million survived, deep underground."

I could picture the rest as she talked. It got nasty after that. What followed was unlimited warfare. They couldn't destroy the planet, so they had to go into the lair. In the meantime, only a relative few were needed to continue the offensive against the Earth by launching more asteroids. The asteroid belt is a big place, as is the Earth's...o...b..t. By this time, Earth's defense forces had devised a method of destroying the larger asteroids. But there were too many, and the meteors continued, though fewer of them. Only the complete destruction of the Mars colony could cut the supply line of the comet launchers. And that's exactly what the Earth did. A terrible solution to a terrible war.

"It was during the wars that emigration peaked. Before the wars, nearly a fourth of the world's population, two billion people, had emigrated to one of twelve open planets. In the sixteen years of the war, another two billion emigrated, even though only three more planets were opened to emigration. Since then, three dozen more planets have been discovered and settled, and another three billion have left. The Earth's current population is less than one billion, and has been that for over a century."

"A void like that must have caused a collapse of the very fabric of Earth's society," I commented. Just as Susie had a hard time dealing with my personal history from my perspective, I had difficulty dealing with a history of an entire planet that was in many ways still the future to me. Indeed, I had spent most of the day in a kind of daze, trying to cope with the overwhelming events of six centuries. I was still a little numb.

"Collapse is putting it mildly. If there had not been a central government already in place, the entire planet would have fallen into an endless state of war. It almost did anyway. Those that remained after the wars and ma.s.sive emigration did try to maintain order under the central government. By this time, even the superpowers had joined into the system, surrendering their nationalistic ident.i.ties completely. It helped, but only a little. The people were ravaged by war, and despite justification carried the guilt of the utter extermination of the Martian colony. The ecosystem was gone, the polar ice caps were shattered and melting from bombardment, and hundreds of thousands of kilometers of land was now submerged.

"It was at that time that NATech first became public. They had developed experimental technologies that took care of the two largest problems: the damage to the ozone and ice caps.

"It was nearly a miracle. Within five years, NATech had managed to restore over eighty percent of both ice caps. And they completely repaired the ozone layer. And the biggest miracle of all was that they expected nothing in return. The government, nearly crushed by the debt of rebuilding, was grateful and accepted the service. Today that acceptance is taught, quietly, as one of the biggest mistakes of human civilization."

"From what I've seen of NATech now, I'd have to agree," I said. " My NATech would not have accepted payment either, but neither would they have made public their role. It was up to us to find the solutions, then ease them into the public conscience through our own scientists, marketing agencies or even unrelated resources."

"It must have been wonderful, working for an organization so dedicated to the advancement of mankind. I wish it was still like that. But it's not. NATech was soon consulted for other solutions, which they always seemed to have. Their abilities were incredible.

"Soon, NATech didn't wait for the questions, but volunteered solutions. They were given a permanent seat on the central government. Then they had veto power. It continued until 2422, when NATech a.s.sumed custody of the central government and began to model the agencies after their own structure. Soon, the civil servants became NATech servants. Then the military. Finally, the media. By 2461, NATech controlled the Net, and effectively, the world. It was then that they became NATech Supreme.

"At first, everyone was very content with the situation. The economy continued to improve, as did the environment. There was the ongoing problem with riping, but no one had ever attributed that to NATech, and many were confident they would address the issue in time."

Despite the comfort and warmth of the bed and blankets, a tingle went up and down my spine. I could tell where this was leading, and the bitter irony of it was pathetically humorous. NATech, to save my life as John Wyeth, had started down a course that would bring me up against them in my life as Abigail Wyeth. Desperate to save me as an ally, had they ultimately turned me into an enemy? For if what Susie was telling me was true, I could not stand with NATech. Just as they had apparently abandoned their ideals and methods, so I must now abandon them. I very much doubted that my decision would upset them terribly.

"Disillusionment was gradual," Susie continued. "In 2466, NATech closed all immigration to Earth. There had not been too much to begin with, perhaps fifty thousand each year. But Earth was now an isolated planet. You could leave, but you could never come back. Still, no one complained. The war was still in the recent past, and there were rumors that what Mars had done to us, several of the colonized planets were willing to try."

"That doesn't make any sense, Susie," I interrupted. "The situations are completely different. Not only would there be no reason, the logistics of another meteor war would have been nearly impossible. From your description, a hyperidor could be easily monitored. Unless one were established in a secret location. But again, there's no motive."

"It's so clear now, isn't it?" Her voice smiled sadly in the darkness. "But NATech has mastered the use of propaganda. They never actually said that there had been secret hyperidors established, but it quickly became common knowledge, despite lack of evidence. The populace became frantic with worry. Another devastating loss of five hundred million-essentially the planet's total population-would destroy civilization on Earth. And the mere fact of their existence proved that there was a motive, though no one knew what it was.

"Of course, it was all false. The entire hysteria was designed to further tighten the grip NATech had on the planet. They were our great protector. And so they remain today. Most still don't understand the hold NATech Supreme has on our lives."

She fell silent. I stared up at the barely illuminated ceiling. NATech. How could we have gone so wrong? Did we change over the centuries, or had that seed been planted from the very beginning? Did their ideals falter when offered the opportunity to provide ma.s.sive help at the cost of anonymity? Or could NATech have foreseen the events that led up to that opportunity? Or could they even have...