He turned and stared evenly at her. “Casperdan, for many, many years now I’ve done nothing but observe things with a reasoned eye, done nothing without thinking it through beginning, middle, and end and all possible ramifications, done nothing I wasn’t absolutely sure of completing.
“Now I’m going to take a chance. Not because I want to do it this way, but because I’ve run out of options. I’m not mad, no … but I am obsessed.” He looked away from her.
“But I can’t do it without you, damn it, and you know why … no mal can bead a private concern that employs humans.”
She threw up her hands and stalked back to her desk. It was silent in the office for many minutes. Then she spoke softly.
“Pericles, I don’t share your obsession . . . I’ve matured, you know . . . now I think I can survive with just the memory of my dream-share. But you rescued me from my own narcissism. And you’ve given me … other things. If you can’t shake this psychotic notion of yours, I’ll stay around till you can.”
Horses and geniuses don’t cry … ah, but poets …!
And that is how the irony came about—that the first world where terraforming was attempted was not some sterile alien globe, but Old Earth itself. Or as the horse
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WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . . ,
Pericles is reputed to have said, “Remade in its own image.”
The oceans were cleared … the laborious, incredibly costly first step. That done, and with a little help from two thousand chemists and bioengineers, the atmosphere began to cleanse itself. That first new air was neither sweet nor fresh—but neither was it toxic.