A mountain of finned silver began to move south. The Charlotte Sound Plankton Pod was devoured quickly, but the engines of Cape Flattery Station promptly took over, catalyzing their own section of ocean. The station lit and warmed and fueled the cities of Olympia, Tacoma, Seattle, Bellingham, Ever-ett, and most of Washington State. Now it employed the sweat of its primary function to play god with small universes. Even this mass of life, too, was consumed.
But the hand of production was passed on as each pod did its job, vanishing sequentially down uncountable hungry maws, moving the growing mountain south down the finest coast hi the world.
Astoria Station . . . School coming! Coos Bay . . . School coming! Crescent City and Ukiah, San Mateo and San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara.
El Pueblo de la Nuestra Sefiora de Los Angeles . . . School coming!
“Well, what does the system bring today, Mendez?”
Archbishop Estrada stared back out the window, felt the surge of loving and cursing and wheeling and dealing of millionaires and beggars that was the life of Mexico City. He took in a deep, heady draught of the still clear moutain air, not smog-choked yet, by God, that eddied down from the slopes of slumbering Popocatepetl.
Gustavo and the other stalwarts on the antipollution board deserved recognition. A commendation or something, yes. He turned from the window.
At two meters and a solid hundred kilos, the archbishop was a giant of a man. In his casual slacks and shirt he was an imposing executive. In his churchly robes of office, he seemed a biblical visitation.