"Resurrection is trivial. The problem isn't technological; it's emotional and ethical. If I revive a cryocorpse, what are my responsibilities toward that person? What are my emotional commitments? Although everyone recognizes that their ancestors are here, those are remote ancestors. Think of your own time. Would you, if you could, have resurrected Hammurabi, or Augustus Caesar-even if you were a distant descendant? They would have been lost in your world of telephones and automobiles and computers. Yet they were exceptional people, not like most of the cryocorpses. Do you know the prime criterion that decided who was preserved in the cryowombs?"

Drake nodded glumly. "I can guess, from what the people at Second Chance told me. Money."

"Exactly. It took money to be frozen, and much more to maintain the condition over the centuries. You are an anomaly, Drake. I read all I could find about you, and I know that money didn't interest you. You acquired plenty, but only so you could be frozen. What you did was very smart. You learned things that people of the future would want to know.

What you had in your head was true wealth. But wealth as you knew it no longer exists. .

"You have a powerful imagination, Drake. Imagine this. Imagine resurrecting somebody who proves to be a money-hungry fanatic-someone who was once very rich, expects to be rich now, and hopes to receive specialtreatment simply because of that. Such people almost surely know nothing of interest to us. How could they be anything but miserable today?"

"You're saying it's becoming less and less likely that someone will be resurrected. So why are the cryowombs maintained?"

"What else can we do with them?" Ana shook her head in frustration. "The people in the wombs are legally dead, but because they can be resurrected we cannot think of them as dead. So what do we do? We do nothing, and pass the problem to our descendants."

She was sitting in the pilot's seat of a two-person ship, and now she stabbed at the control panel. "Don't give us too much credit, Drake," she said, as they lifted from Pluto's craggy surface. "People haven't changed at all. When it comes to making tough decisions, we're no better now than we were in your time."

People haven't changed. Perhaps not, but other things certainly had. The evidence that Ana was both right and wrong began to appear as the ship cruised closer to the Sun. It was her idea to introduce Drake to the new solar system in a practical way, by visiting or passing close to every planet and major moon, then heading out for the remoter and less familiar region of the Oort Cloud. It had been Drake's idea to use the small two-person ship, and leave their Servitors behind on Pluto until they returned.

Ana had also preferred a leisurely tour, one that would give them time to talk and Drake time to adjust. On their two-day journey to Neptune he decided that he was going to need all of it. Ana had stated that people had not changed. But what were people?

He had called for information about Neptune, and now he was staring at the three-dimensional image in the ship's display. It showed a large silvery superspider, fourteen multijointed legs emerging from a smooth central ovoid. The object was described as an "inhabitant of Neptune."

"What does it mean, 'inhabitant'?" He turned for the fiftieth time to Ana for assistance. "That suggests I'm looking at something intelligent, something that lives on Neptune. I thought that was impossible."

After the first few hours, he had stopped puzzling over the mysteries of language. Another sea change in communications technology had occurred since Par Leon's and Trismon Morel's time. The old languages, filled with their magical resonances of old times and beauties, still existed; but a new language, pruned of ambiguities and redundancies, had been created.

It was much preferred for factual transfers of information, and he and Ana were using it now. Misunderstanding in the new language, according to Ana, was almost impossible.

Maybe. But Drake, approaching communication with a context that was thirty thousand years out of date, suspected that he was coming perilously close.

"That's a Neptune dweller all right." Ana did not share his misgivings or confusion. "Of course, it's not ' an organic form-we may have evolved organic forms by now that can survive on Neptune, but I don't know what they are.

That's an inorganic form, and it operates deep enough in the Neptune atmosphere to be buoyant and mobile."

"But it says there, male human."

"Correct. That means it's a fully human male intelligence, downloaded to a brain of inorganic form. If it were anything different, it would say 'human-modified,' or 'human-augmented.' "

"How can you say a downloaded intelligence is human? That thing is nothing like a human."

"That argument ended a long time ago. Or let's just say, people gave up on it. Can you define a human? I know I can't.

It says it's human, that Neptune dweller. That's good enough for me."

"But what happened to the original human being?"

"I don't know. I expect he's around somewhere close by-on the big moon, Triton, more than likely. Neptune has been developed in a very natural way. There are colonies of humans and machines on Triton, and even a few on Nereid, though that doesn't have much to offer. The planet hardly needs human intelligence at all. There are plenty of Von Neumanns." She laughed at the look on Drake's face. "No, I don't mean the downloaded person. He died before cryocorpses. Von Neumanns are just self-reproducing machines."

"How many of them are on Neptune?""Millions? Billions? I have no idea. I doubt if anyone does, since they're self-reproducing. They're mining volatiles and collecting the rare heavier elements, and they manage very well on their own. The human Neptunians are not there for supervision. They have other reasons: to satisfy their curiosity, to experiment with extreme forms, or to maintain some privacy."

Neptune has been developed in a very natural way. Drake, peering down through endless kilometers of hydrogen and helium atmosphere smudged with icy methane clouds, could see no evidence of development; but according to Ana and the ship's information service, Neptune beneath those cloud layers swarmed with the spin-offs of human activity, with machines capable of independent activity like humans, and with humans that seemed more like machines.

He would call it anything but natural development.

He changed his mind when the ship flew on to their next port of call. Compared with Uranus, Neptune's development was natural.

Something monstrous was happening to Uranus.

The major moons, except for little Miranda nearest to the planet, had gone. The ship swung into co-orbit with Miranda and circled Uranus for two full revolutions. The gas-giant world was marked with a pattern of bright spots, ninety-six of them evenly spaced around the flattened sphere of the planet.

"Nothing yet," Ana said in reply to Drake's question. "In another two thousand years or so, when the preparation work is all done, those will be the main nodes. The stimulated fusion program will begin. Uranus is too small to maintain its own fusion, so there will have to be continuous priming and pumping. They'll move Miranda farther out, and do the fusion pumping from there."

She spoke casually, as though the conversion of a major component of the solar system from planet to miniature star was a routine operation. And perhaps it was.

"What happened to all the other moons?" He could see fifteen listed in the ship's data set, from tiny Cordelia, barely more than an orbiting mountain that shepherded the Uranus Epsilon ring, out to Titania and Oberon, good-sized worlds half as big as Earth's Moon. Miranda was now the only survivor.

"Oh, they're all right. They'll be moved back eventually." Again, the astonishing thing about Ana's reply was her offhand manner. "Miranda couldn't be moved, because it was needed. But the others must have been in the way for this phase of the work.''

Drake stared out of the ports and wondered. Uranus had not been a promising candidate for life to begin with. It would become an impossible one when hydrogen fusion turned the whole world to incandescence.

The thought nagged at him: Why do such a thing, within the original home system of mankind? On those rare occasions in the old days when he thought about the far future, he had imagined Earth, together with all the other planets of the solar system, preserved as some kind of grand museum. Humanity might spread out across the Galaxy, but the home worlds would always be there. Preserved in pristine condition, they would remind people of their origins.

But what had made him believe that, when Earth itself had already provided such a different lesson? Humans had been changing Earth in a thousand ways for five thousand years: draining lakes, damming rivers, making deserts bloom, razing mountains, clearing forests. Why would they stop, simply because they had left Earth?

Drake wondered if it was all his own wishful thinking: a human urge to turn back the clock to a happy time of simplicity and certitude. He stole a glance at Ana, who was looking out of the port and humming to herself in that beloved rich contralto. A surge of happiness engulfed him. Humans could change, the solar system could change, the universe itself could change. It did not matter, as long as Ana was with him.

After Uranus, the happenings about Saturn seemed minor. Its biggest moon, Titan, was being developed. It was not, however, being terraformed by machines or downloaded humans. Instead, bioengineered human forms were colonizing the unmodified moon.

"It's another experiment, of course," Ana said. "Just to see how far the human biological limits can be pushed. There's no doubt that we could do here exactly what we're doing on Neptune, but where's the fun and challenge in that? As it is, what we have on Titan is quite an undertaking. It's not the low temperature. That's a hundred and eighty below water freezing point, but it can be handled easily-just a matter of insulation, when you get right down to it. The hard piece is the chemistry, ours and Titan's. Nitrogen, methane, ethane, and organic smog: how would you like the problem of adapting a human to breathe and drink those? Do you want to take a closer look?" And, after one look at Drake'sface, "Right, then, I guess that's all for Titan and Saturn. Jupiter it is."

The activities they had seen back on Uranus made more sense to Drake after they had left Saturn and its horde of moons, approached Jupiter, and descended at last for a feathery landing on one of the Jovian satellites.

He remembered Europa from Par Leon's time as an ice world, the fifty-kilometer deeps of its continuous ocean plated over by a kilometer and more of icy plateaus and thick-ribbed pressure ridges. But it was that way no longer. Their little ship landed on a giant iceberg, floating in random currents along a broad river. With the sunlight striking in at a low angle, the long stretch of open water seemed mottled and tawny like the skin of a great snake. It wound its way to the horizon between palisades and battlements of blue crystal. As the berg carrying the ship moved sluggishly along, Drake saw open water leads running off in all directions. He shivered. He could imagine strange creatures, huge and misshapen, writhing along the icy horizon.

Europa in its tide-locked orbit turned steadily about Jupiter. The Sun slowly vanished from the black sky. The sounds of jostling floes became louder, carried to the ship through the water and ice of the dark surface. To Drake's musician's ear the bergs cried out to each other, sharp high-pitched whines and portamento moans in frightening counterpoint, against a background of deeper grumbles.

"This is why we need the Uranus fusion project," Ana said cheerfully. "Europa is warmed at the moment by individual fusion plants within the deep ocean, and that leads to patchy melting. It will be a lot better here when Jupiter produces a decent amount of heat."

"You mean you'll do the same thing for Jupiter as you're doing for Uranus?"

"Not the same. But similar. Uranus is really more like a test case."

"But if you're going to do it eventually, why wait?"

"Oh, the age-old problem. We still have ---."

She said a word that Drake had never heard before. A soft voice from the ship's communications system at once added, in English: "no exact equivalent; conservatives/Luddites is closest match." It was the first time Drake had realized that the ship's computer monitored every conversation, and had a program to provide near-equivalents for references it judged unfamiliar to Drake.

Ana didn't seem to realize how incongruous it was, that a project to transform Uranus beyond recognition could be judged as the "conservative" and old-fashioned approach. She went on, "But the Jupiter transformation will be approved eventually. Give it a few thousand years, and it will all be finished and working. The ice will go. And we'll have another whole world for development."

She had been setting out a meal for the two of them, and she obviously did not share Drake's increasing uneasiness.

But she must have sensed it, because suddenly she stopped what she was doing and came across to his side.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm fine." It was preposterous to be anything other than fine. He was with Ana again, after an endless separation. But maybe it was because he was with her that he was allowed to admit to fears and doubts. In any case, try as he would he could not stop shivering.

"You don't look good." She placed her hand on his forehead. "And you don't feel good. Damp and clammy. Let's take a look at you."

She walked over to the ship's controls, touched a panel, and studied a display.

"Hmm. It's nothing physical."

"How can you tell?"

"I can't. The ship can. It monitors the health of both of us continuously. It says you're all right. But it only deals with physical problems. So the rest is up to us."

Ana went across to the table where she had been working, returned to Drake's side, and handed him a drink. "Here.

This should help for starters. I told you there would be temporal shock, and I was right. It just took a while to show up.

You sip on that, while I order something as close as this crazy chef can manage to the foods you were raised on. And for tonight, I think we'll manage with a little less Europa. I'm going to dim the lights and close the ship screens. You cansit there and imagine you're safely back on good old Earth."

She could not have known it, but long ago, back in the happy days that Drake had not even allowed himself to think about, Ana had done just the same thing when he was upset. She took over. She was strong when he was weak, obligingly weak when he felt strong.

Drake did just as he was told. They ate a full, leisurely meal, with Ana doing almost all the talking. The chef provided a reasonable shot at the foods and even the wines of Old Earth. Finally, Drake could begin to relax and probe the cause of his problem. It was not rational, but he realized that it was the sounds of Europa. He could not rid his mind of them.

Others might hear nothing but moving ice floes on a changing moon. He heard tormented groans, and the agonized death cries of ice demons.

"You have too much imagination," Ana said firmly, when he told her about it. "One day you will have your reward. All this will turn itself into music." She switched off the lights, lay down next to him, and cradled his head against her breast. He hid himself away in the perfumed night of her long hair.

It was natural, perhaps inevitable, that they would become lovers that evening. Neither of them realized that Drake, deep inside, thought of it as "lovers again."

Chapter 13.

"And I was desolate and sick of an old passion."

Physical euphoria carried everything before it, all the way into the inner solar system. Lovemaking, as always with Ana, provided an epiphany for Drake. As an antidote to temporal shock it could not have been better. Immersed in the familiar touch and smell and taste of her soft body, he would have seen Earth and Sun destroyed with equanimity.

It was not quite that bad, although four thousand years earlier the Earth had come close.

"A disaster?" Drake looked around at the place where the ship had landed. They were on the winter edge of a diminished Antarctic ice cap. In his time, nothing had grown on this rocky shore. The only animal life in June and July had been the emperor penguins, huddled over their eggs to protect them from the fifty-below-zero polar blizzard.

Now a gentle rain was falling, and the air was filled with calling seabirds, skuas and petrels and albatrosses and terns.

Rank grass and flowering plants flourished along the salty margin of the beach. Plovers and curlews were nesting there in enormous numbers.

"It doesn't look like a disaster," Drake added. He and Ana were strolling along the shore, bareheaded.

She paused and skipped a flat stone over the brackish waters of the estuary. "Believe me, it was."

"What caused it?"

"The usual: stupidity. We still have our share of that. The old assumption was that Earth's whole biosphere had strong homeostasis. Disturb it, no matter how, and forces would come into play to restore it to its original condition. So while everyone was looking the other way, not worrying about this planet and wondering what to do with Venus and Europa and Ganymede and Titan, Earth started an environmental runaway."

"Runaway how?"

"Temperature, mostly. The atmospheric composition was starting to change, too, but the biggest problem was greenhouse warming. It was caught before it could go too far. Turning it around was another matter. For a while, people were imagining a new homeostatic end point, with temperatures hot enough to boil water."Drake stared out over the peaceful estuary. "Hubris," he said, in English.

"What?"

"Too much arrogance; the belief that you can do anything."

Ana stared at him. "Anything, no," she said at last. "A lot, yes. Recovery has been slow but steady. Mean equatorial temperatures are below forty degrees Celsius. The land animals are heading out of the temperate zone jungles, and they're traveling sunward. Don't worry, we've learned our lesson. This won't happen again-ever."

"I've learned not to trust ever." Drake looked north. "We used to live in a place called Spring Valley. If I tell you how to reach it, could we go there?"

"Were you living up in the mountains, or close to sea level?"

"Down right at the shore." Drake did not notice the change Ana had made, from "we" to "you."

"Then we could go there, but it would be a waste of time. I don't just mean the heat-suits would take care of that. But sea levels are up. Your old home will be under five to ten meters of water. Come back again in ten thousand years. The sea level should have dropped enough for you to pay a visit on dry land. But if you'd like to visit mountains, I have my favorites."

"You've been to Earth before?" It seemed like a ludicrous question-his Ana had been born and raised on Earth.

But she just nodded. "Five times. It's a backwater, but it's on every tourist list. The original home, the birthplace, the shrine of humanity. But if most people were honest, they'd admit that it's rather dull. It's not where the action is. Are there other things that you want to see?"

"My old mentor, Par Leon, lived deep beneath the African plateau. That was high above sea level. I know the location.

If we could just fly over there ..."

"Of course."

Ana agreed readily, although she must have suspected what they would find. Africa, at ten degrees north of the equator, was a seared world of dust and dead rock. The snows of Birhan were a memory, the peak a stark blackness jutting into a sky of fuming yellow. Drake looked at it and nodded to Ana. He had seen enough.

They took off for space and wandered to the innermost system. Venus terraforming, according to Ana, was right on schedule. The surface pressure was down from a stupefying ninety Earth atmospheres to less than twenty. Bespoke bacteria converted the sulfuric acid clouds to sulfur, water, and oxygen. The sulfur was delivered to the deep planetary interior. It would not emerge for hundreds of millions of years. Cyanobacteria, seeded into the upper atmosphere, went about their steady business, absorbing carbon dioxide, releasing oxygen, fixing nitrogen, and delivering a rain of organic detritus to start a planetary topsoil.

"Water is still the main problem," Ana said. "There's simply not as much as we would like. Venus will always be dry, unless we do an extensive Oort Cloud transfer, or combine the planet with one of the big Jovian water moons, like Callisto."

"Is that feasible?" The cure for temporal shock seemed to be working; Drake was starting to feel that anything was possible. But flying a satellite of Jupiter to coalesce with an inner planet? That still sounded ludicrous.

"It's not feasible yet," Ana said. "The impact would destroy Venus. But we're learning how to do a soft merge. For the moment, I don't recommend we make a Venus landing. It's too hot down there-hotter than Earth ever got, even at the height of the runaway. It would have to be suits all the time. Are you ready to go somewhere else?"