we hunted and gathered, used to be rather like the jellyfish, nomadically drifting about the world. Eventually, however, we settled down and begin to secrete cities and civilizations around ourselves. Think of the ‘reef’ as the growth of human populations throughout history, along with our ‘excretions,’ all our trash and toxins, all the buried cities beneath and just outside our cities. The reef is the conversion of what is ‘not us’ into us and our products. The reef is that something reaching toward the light, as the past it is built upon sinks slowly deeper into darkness. The ‘ship’ is the full set of possible human scientific and technological capabilities. The ‘ocean’ is the medium of spacetime.”
Paul stared at the colorful reef in the tank, not yet catching Vang’s meaning.
“But what does it mean to say we will become the ‘reef of our own shipwreck’?” he asked, still trying to puzzle out that saying’s weird non-dual duality.
“What if we don’t learn to turn all our rubbish into resources?” Vang said. “What if our reproductions and toxic productions outpace our capacity for invention? What if our biology and our technology converge in a mutually destructive fashion? What if we persist in our deep denial of the paradoxical fact that our very success as a species is the single greatest threat to our future survival as a species?”
Suddenly Paul got what Vang was driving at. Watching the pleasant play of fish round and about stone, he suddenly saw the underwater scene more darkly, as if an unseen cloud had passed across the face of an unseen sun.
“Then the ship will crack up on the reef,” he said quietly, “spewing toxins that will kill the reef in turn. A pretty grim scenario.”
“Potentially, yes,” Vang said. “The two best alternatives to it would seem to be either learning to control the rate of the reef’s growth or, failing that, leaping out of the ocean entirely, toward that ‘light’ beyond space and time that we’ve always been growing toward. That’s where your fungus comes in.”
Paul stood up—still a bit wobbly, despite the coffee—trying to imagine coral polyps leaping from the ocean and flying like pulsing jellyfish toward the sun. He looked at Vang.
“Sounds like you’re talking about either something for controlling population growth or for travelling faster than light,” Paul said with a small smile. “I really have no idea how that fungus I brought back could help with either one.”
“You don’t?” Vang said, as if he didn’t quite believe Paul. The older man walked into the ellipse of the bar. “My associates and I do. We have several ideas—and we are willing to pay you quite lucratively for the right to investigate those possibilities.”
Vang gestured at a thinscreen document which had at that moment appeared in the top of the bar. Paul scanned the document, which read his eyes as he read it, so that it obligingly went to the next page each time he finished the previous one. The document, he saw, was a contract between Paul Larkin and something called the Tetragrammaton Consortium. The contract made Paul both a consultant and senior research scientist with Tetragrammaton, in addition to paying him quite handsomely for the right to patent any materials extracted from the Cordyceps fungus he had brought back with him from Caracamuni tepui. The amounts of money involved were extravagant beyond his most avaricious dreams.
When he had finished reading the document, he straightened up, stunned.
“Does the contract not meet with your approval?” Dr. Vang asked, concerned.
“Wha—?” Paul asked, disoriented. “No, it’s fine. Generous.”
“Good, good!” Dr. Vang said. “But then, what’s the problem?”
“I’m not sure,” Paul said. “It’s just that this is all happening so fast, like some kind of anti-James Bond scenario.”
Vang smiled broadly, pleasantly surprised by the Bond comparison. Maybe it brought up some kind of memory from the old man’s childhood, Paul thought.
“How exactly do you mean?” Vang asked eagerly.
“Instead of the billionaire telling Bond how he intends to destroy the world and kill Bond—” Paul began.
“Here I am, another billionaire, telling you how I intend to save the world,” Vang said, nodding enthusiastically.
—and give me a reason to go on living, Paul thought, though he did not say it.
“Right,” Paul said. “I guess what we’ve talked about smacks of the same sort of great man’s conspiracy theory of history, for me anyway. I’ve never believed in such theories. People just can’t plan that thoroughly, or keep secrets that long.”
Vang smiled slyly, but then covered it with a shrug.
“The greatest conspiracy is the one that says there are no conspiracies,” Vang said, handing him a phone. “Think of this as a conspiracy for good, if you like. We have taken the liberty of running the contract past your lawyer, particularly in regard to the clauses on intellectual property rights. We have her on the line. Here—”
Vang handed him the phone. Paul talked to Sarah Campbell, his legal advisor in the all-too-recent debacle with his former university employer. She very much approved of the contract and spoke forcefully in favor of it. Paul handed the phone back to Vang, who nodded and gave it to Athena Griego, who appeared again in her B-58 Hustler stewardess’s dress, seemingly out of nowhere.
“Ms. Griego is our agent and witness in this matter,” Vang continued, handing Paul an electronic stylus. “If you feel confident enough of the document to sign, please do.”
Without another thought and with only a glance at the fish in the aquarium, Paul signed. Vang smiled broadly and shook his hand again.
“Welcome aboard indeed, Dr. Larkin. Happy to have you with us. My ghost ship is at your disposal. We will send someone for your car. Where would you like to go?”
“West,” Paul said, lost in thought. “Oh, and I left an empty bottle of Scotch on the sand when you stopped for me. If someone might pick that up—”
Vang nodded. The sound of the invisible dirigible’s engines rose slightly as it pivoted on its axis. The spore print, folded in paper enfolded in plastic, hung lightly over Paul’s heart inside his vest pocket, invisible with Paul inside the belly of Vang’s stealthy machine, heading west at a tenth of the speed of sound, rising into night above the Sierra Nevadas.
* * * * * * *
Weird-Wired
Jiro sat bolt upright. He knew that he was dead, but his mouth still worked.
“!begursprocketbombonanacatl?” he mouthed. He was trying to say how, if you try to throw your arms around the world, they’ll nail you to a cross and say it was a workplace accident because you were employed as a carpenter. “?losangelatintinnabiledictu!” He thought he was saying how, if you try to communicate your uncomfortable piece of the truth, they’ll assassinate you for it for your own peace of mind.
“Jeez, Jiro!” Seiji said angrily from his bed in the dark bedroom they shared. “You’re talking in your sleep again! Wake up, for God’s sake!”
“Wha—?”
“You were talking in your sleep,” Seiji said again. “Go back to sleep.”
Silence. Then Jiro blurting, “Was not!” before he fell horizontal again. He felt his eyelids closing, but now he fought against sleep, trying to make sense of his night visions.
He had dreamed of a religion of flowers, not a religion of blood. A religion of bees, not a religion of ashes.
He’d better not tell anyone about it, he thought. He still remembered how, back in second grade, he had scandalized the nuns at Guardian Angels School when they found him wandering around on the school playground with his arms stretched out like a soaring bird, like an eagle dancer, like Christ on the cross. The nuns were supposed to be brides of Christ, but apparently they preferred