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were far beyond the horizon, but while they shared the same spherical surface and the same atmosphere they had to be reckoned close neighbors. From the forest’s viewpoint, the MegaMall’s minions were the neighbors from hell.

    Ultimately, of course, it was the MegaMall that paid Magnus his living wage, just as it paid the wage of every other man and woman living on and beyond Earth, but Magnus always thought of his particular portion of the great capitalist pie as conscience money, or as a tribute to the oldest goddess of them all: the ultimate mother, Gaea the Great.

    Tired as he was, Magnus had neither the inclination nor the energy to make an elaborate investigation of his new captives. The most interesting specimens, in any case, would be too small to see without the aid of a magnifying glass, and his eyes, long overdue for replacement, were too weak to take the strain. He took his time decanting the contents of his specimen jars into more economical storage units, and then put the empty jars into the sterilizer, ready to be taken out into the field again tomorrow. They would be alternated with their duplicates for the sixty-third time, with thirty-seven still to go.

    When his duty had been adequately done, Magnus used the microwave oven—which had been dutifully storing solar power all day long—to heat up a plastic-wrapped meal. The sole meuniere tasted excellent, as was to be expected of one of the finest products of modern food science, but Magnus hardly noticed. In the wilderness, eating was a utilitarian business, a mere matter of fueling the body.

    The tropical night arrived with characteristic swiftness, but Magnus did not reach for the wall panel whose virtual control keys were displayed in patterns of red light. He could have instructed the Life-Simulating Plastic to become opaque, but he did not want to do that. Privacy was not an issue hereabouts, and the fact that the discreetly muted lights inside the bubble dome would attract every moth for miles around did not concern him—except, of course, insofar as the moths themselves might be inconvenienced.

    Magnus loved wilderness better than anything else in the world. That is to say, he loved green wilderness: wilderness the color of the world that men had all but lost What he hated most in all the world was wasteland: gray wasteland, the color of the glutinous organic dust which had consumed the first-generation cities left derelict by the Crash, and the color of the second-generation cities that had been gantzed out of that dust to supply the alleged needs of the multitudinous produce of Conrad Helier’s New Reproductive System. Today’s third-generation cities were multicolored, and Magnus knew that the fourth-generation complexes which were no longer to be called cities—out of respect for the current fashionability of the absurd philosophy of Decivilization—would take care to mimic the green which had been banished from the ever-extending jet-black SAP fields; to Magnus, however, the underlying color of the human hive and all its honeycombs would always be gray.

    Magnus loved to sleep beneath the stars, as if in the open air. Even though the LSP prevented his breathing in the myriad scents of the renewed rain forest while he lay upon his bunk, he felt that he was sharing communion with the benign soul of the world. Thanks to the protective power of the tent, he could lie naked on his bed without the least fear of cold or persecution by predators and parasites.

    It was still early when he finished his strictly utilitarian meal, but he was too tired for serious work, and the last thing he wanted was to watch TV. He discarded his beltphone along with his clothes, knowing full well that it would not emit the slightest sound. His answering machine was a low-grade silver, and he had trained it very carefully to be as stubborn as it was clever. It would not break into his communion even to give him news of the end of the world.

    He turned the