2312

boreal forest (conifers); temperate forest (hardwoods or mixed hardwoods and conifers); tropical forest; desert; the alpine zone; grassland; tundra; and chaparral, sometimes called shrubland these are the principal Terran biomes cities; villages; croplands; rangelands; forests; and wildlands these are the principal Terran human-use patterns anthromes mix and match the above, and you get the 825 eco-regions of Earth 450 on land, 229 marine 65 percent of these now exist only off-planet take an x-y graph to chart a Whittaker biome diagram, with precipitation marked vertically and temperature horizontally. Biomes can be plotted on this graph and will make a clearly shaped map of what kind of biome turns up in what kind of conditions. Left is hotter, right colder; wet is higher, dry lower; and thus the most general version is as follows:

Tropical rain forest

Tropical seasonal forest

Temperate rain forest

Savanna

Temperate deciduous forest

Taiga

Subtropical desert

Temperate grassland desert Tundra

The classifications can be much elaborated. The 450 named terrestrial eco-regions divide biomes by not only precipitation and temperature, but also combinations of latitude, altitude, geography, geology, and other factors eco-regions themselves can be usefully divided into microenvironments as small as a hectare 34,850 known species went extinct between 1900 and 2100. It was, and remains ongoing, the sixth great mass extinction in Earth’s history no extinctions from this point onward are inevitable (this has always been true, however) 19,340 terraria are known to exist in the solar system. Approximately 70 percent of these function as zoo worlds, either dedicated to sustaining an eco-region’s suite of animals and plants, or else to creating new combinations of suites, called Ascensions 92 percent of mammal species are now endangered or gone entirely from Earth and live mainly in their off-planet terraria space: the zoo, the inoculant

SWAN AND THE INSPECTOR

There are two problems in dealing with the Terminator incident,” Inspector Genette said to Swan one evening as they flew out to the asteroid belt. They were traveling with a little group from Interplan and Terminator, but often found themselves the last two in the galley at the end of an evening. Swan liked that; the inspector would sit right on the table while eating, on a plush brought for the purpose, and afterward lounge there on one elbow with a drink, so that they spoke eye to eye. It was a little like talking to a cat.

“Only two?” she said.

“Two. First, who did it, and second, how we can find and catch this agent without giving more people the idea of doing it. The so-called copycat problem, and more generally, the problem of preventing any kind of repetition of this attack. That I consider to be the more difficult problem of the two.”

“What about how it was done?” Swan asked. “Isn’t that a problem too?”

“I know how it happened,” the inspector said easily.

“You do?”

“I think so. It’s the only way it could have happened, I think, and so there you have it. No matter how implausible, as the line has it, although in this case it’s not implausible at all. But I must confess to you, I don’t want to say more about it when we are both being recorded by our qubes.” Genette raised a wrist and indicated the thick, almost cubical little wristpad that contained Passepartout. “You have your qube recording always, I assume?”

“No.”

“But often?”

“Yes, I suppose so. Like anyone else.”

“Well, in any case I want to see some things in the belt before I will be sure of my hypothesis. So we’ll talk about this more when we’re out there. But I want you to think about the second problem; assuming we catch a perpetrator and explain the deed, perhaps in a prosecution-how are we going to keep someone else from doing it? This is where I think you could help me.”

T hey were traveling in the terrarium Moldava, which ran in an Aldrin cycle that would take them out to Vesta in eight days. The interior of the Moldava was given over to growing wheat, and many of the people traveling in it congregated after their day’s labor in the fields at a resort on high ground near the bow, set on a broad hilltop, overlooking and then looking up at the upcurve of a big patchwork pattern of fields, different green and gold textures created by the many different strains being grown. It was like a quilter’s version of heaven.