Changing a world doesn’t always require nukes. Life is a powerful force, and a dreadful weapon …

Chapter 3 Life Force

Life does more than adapt to the Earth. It changes the Earth to its own purposes. James Lovelock

Botany Bay, Hellmouth Base, Snowball

Sheina looked very dubiously at the rigid inflatable boat tied up by the makeshift pier. Such piers on Snowball, she had been told quite offhandedly, were always temporary because the current sea level was temporary. The orientation video had made the reason clear. The glacier-born tsunami which had scoured its way around the equator of the planet had opened up wide expanses of open ocean. Smaller icebergs calving off the planetary ice sheets produced smaller tsunamis.

Oh, God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small. The nuclear powered black boat seated eight. She did not doubt that the grinning boatman had gone out of his way to mention that little detail.

She had sighed and said nothing. Winding up the new girl was a popular sport anywhere and anywhen. She busied herself securing the one-litre containers in their rack, ready for loading.

The Lead of Hellmouth Base, Dr. Chen Chao, an impassive Chinese man who moved with cool assurance, watched the preparations intently. The raven-haired woman with him looked around her like a child at the fairground, the hood of her parka thrown back to let her hair flow in the cold breeze.

Chen shook hands. “Dr. Marshall, I am pleased to see you here. Is your cargo all right?”

“Yes, quite. Magellan‘s crew were very good about maintaining the environment control. Your people neglected no precaution, as well.” Sheina waved to the one-litre stainless steel containers of plankton.

The woman stepped up and impulsively hugged Sheina. “Ayesha, darling. I am the Bard of Snowball.”

Taken aback, Sheina returned the hug briefly and disentangled herself. Ayesha stood back, looked her up and down. “So, the harbinger of life comes to our world, to play her part in the saga of its conquest. Darling, you must tell me all about it.”

Chen intervened. “She can tell you all about it in the boat. Come now.” He helped her into the boat and saw her strapped down next to Sheina. The solicitude with which he did so left Sheina in no doubt about the relationship between them.

I have seen some odd couples in my time, but these two absolutely take the Guinness. She watched them a little. Happiness is where you find it. Would that I could be so lucky.

The seat had shock absorbers built into it, which provoked another sigh. The boatman would be showing off the capabilities of what was clearly the apple of his eye.

They cast off the lines and the engine churned up white froth under the stern. The quiet engine left only the rush and splash as the boat skipped over the waves. Beaches of black sand surrounded the bay, at the foot of cliffs of black rock. She saw no trace of life, only desolation.

Ayesha drew a few deep appreciative breaths, then turned to Sheina. “In the last few months the air has gained enough oxygen that we do not need those thrice-cursed oxygen packs. Chen tells me that your project will keep it so.”

Sheina gulped as the boat slammed over an especially large wave. “Yes. Plankton are small plants which live and grow in the ocean, absorbing sunlight and producing oxygen. This ocean here will be a paradise for them, vast areas rich in nutrients with plenty of sunlight.”

Ayesha looked down at the canisters, looking dubious. “Small seeds to alter a world.”

Sheina had heard that comment many a time. “Life is a powerful force, Ayesha. Once Earth had as little life as Snowball does now. Then the first green plants evolved, and the oxygen they produced drove the older life forms to extinction. That event shaped the surface of the Earth as we know it today.”

Ayesha looked back down at the canisters again. “So, we ride with the descendants of conquerors. Did you scoop a sample from the ocean?”

“Oh, nothing so simple as that. I had to choose which of many organisms were hardy enough to survive in these seas, efficient in producing oxygen, quick to reproduce. The star of the show was one of the oldest and smallest, going back billions of years to the great oxygenation event.” Sheina summed up the results of months of work.

Ayesha swept back her hair, letting it blow in the wind. “The hardy and fertile frontiersmen will go forth to take this world by storm as once they took ours. Indeed you wield a powerful force, Sheina.”

They placed the first set of cultures in a sheltered inlet near where the entrance of the bay gave on to the wide ocean. The resulting small green patch in the water looked small and forlorn as they motored away.

Dr. Chao watched with interest. “I take it this small inlet will act as a reservoir, spilling over into the bay, which will then feed into the ocean current?”

“That’s correct. It should take a couple of days to cover this inlet, a few more for the entire bay,” Sheina said.

Chen raised his eyebrows, turning and raising his voice to be heard over the sound of wind and water. “So soon?”

“The sum of a geometric series, Dr. Chen, and given favourable conditions the time of reproduction is hours. Part of the package is actually scavengers to clean up the dead ones, ensuring that rot does not reduce the oxygen production.” Sheina felt more confident discussing a technical matter where she could defend her statements.

They had just finished dumping the canisters for the last site when the radio crackled to life with a rapid drumbeat. “Tsunami warning. Intensity Seven. Tsunami Warning. Intensity Seven.”

The boatman did not reply or ask any permission of anyone. He spun the wheel and slammed the throttle against the stop. “Strap in! Tight.”

“Can we make it to shelter in time?” Sheina scrambled to obey. She didn’t know what scale they used or what it meant, but the boatman’s instant reaction spoke volumes.

Ayesha’s silver laughter brought Sheina’s head around in astonishment. “There is no shelter from this, darling. We head out to sea, to meet the danger head on.”

Sheina concentrated on making sure she had her straps cinched down tight, and rode the jolts as they slammed across the waves out to the mouth of the bay and out into the open water. The waves were longer and higher, and instead of leaping across them they climbed up the face of them and skied down the back again.

Sheina hung grimly on to the handles of her seat, each wave looking as if it would break and swallow them like an orca devouring a minnow. Movement beside her took her attention from the next wave, and to her horror she saw Ayesha unsnap her straps and stand up, holding onto the the handholds built into the seat. She stood straight, her hair blowing in the wind like a banner.

She faced the sea with passionate intensity, and laughed again. “Strike back if you will, Snowball. Too late! Life has come upon you, and you shall lie at our feet in submission!”

Is she quite mad? Sheina turned her head to look at Chen. Perhaps he could talk some sense into her. He reached out and snapped a strap onto her belt, but did nothing else. Sheina could not tell if his quiet smile betokened acceptance of her erratic whims, or approval of them.

Sheina’s attention snapped back to the boat’s course as it powered its way up the shoulder of a monster swell. Her stomach dropped out from under her as they plunged down again into the deep wide chasm of the next wave. Mind blank with fear, she waited for the sea to swallow them, heedless of the nausea which surged up into her throat.

“First wave!” the boatman shouted, exuberantly.

There are others? Sheina’s momentary hope that she might survive this maelstrom ebbed again. They slammed down into the chasm of water with the next wave towering above them, and she felt her weight increase and the boat creak under the strain as they climbed the face of the next wave. They made it to the top of the wave with a little to spare, and surfed down the back side of it.

Three more times they rode the roller coaster before the waves ebbed down to the comparative blessed calm of mere ordinary waves again. Ayesha resumed her seat and Chen saw her strapped in again.

The boatman spun his wheel, and they headed back toward the bay again. The sweet sensation of relief swept through Sheina as she realized that she had actually survived this insanity. She fumbled a water bottle out of its clips, rinsed her mouth out to remove the acrid taste, and spat downwind. A long drink later, she felt a little less wrung out from the whipsaw of fear and relief.

Chen leaned over, and aside from raising his voice to be heard over the wind and sea, he could have been sitting in a classroom. “We get such waves frequently, Dr. Marshall. I believe they would sweep up nutrients from the ocean floor, would they not?”

Sheina seized hold of the lifeline of understandable normality amid all this madness. “Yes, there would be a definite effect there. I think my initial analysis severely underestimated it. Did the bottom of the waves touch the sea bottom?”

“Yes, which made the waves so large. In the deep ocean they would have been barely noticeable, just a long swell. Here in the Straits, they were higher but not excessively so. If we had stayed in the shallows of the bay, we would have been flung up onto the land, and would probably not have survived,” he said.

Facing the danger head on actually made it less. She looked back over at Ayesha, who seemed to be in some transcendent place of creation. Fragments of lines, poetry or perhaps song, blew away on the wind.

What is it like to live with such passionate fearless intensity? Madwoman that you are, I envy you.