these days means damn nearly every species; and
they're slowly but determinedly fucking up the
entire planet' Li shrugged and looked momentarily
defensive. 'Not a particularly exciting or
remarkable planet, for a life-sustainer type, true,
but it's still a planet, it is quite pretty, and the
principle remains.Frighteningly dumb or
majestically evil, I suggest there is only one way to
deal with this incontestably neurotic and clinically
insane species, and that is to destroy the planet!'
Li looked round at this point, waiting to be
interrupted, but nobody was rising to the
bait.Those of us not distracted by the drink,
whatever drugs, or each other, just sat smiling
indulgently and waited to see what Li's next crazy
idea was.He went on. 'Now, I know this might
seem a little extreme to some of you -' (cries of 'no
no', 'bit lenient if you ask me', 'wimp!' and 'yeah;
nuke the fuckers')'- and more importantly very
messy, but I have talked it over with the ship, and
it informs me that the best method from my point of
view is actually quite elegant, as well as extremely
effective.
'All we do is drop a micro black hole into the
centre of the planet.Simple as that; no untidy debris
left floating about, no big, vulgar flash, and, if we
do it right, no upsetting the rest of the solar
system.It takes longer than displacing a few tonnes
of CAM into the core, but even that has the
advantage of giving the humans time to reflect on
their past follies, as their world is eaten away
beneath them.In the end, all you'd have left is
something about the size of a large pea in the same
orbit as the Earth, and a minor amount of X-ray
pollution from meteoric material.Even the moon
could stay where it is.A rather unusual planetary
sub-system, but - in terms of scale as much as
anything else - a fitting monument, or memorial -'
(Here Li smiled at me.I winked back.) '- to one of
the more boringly inept rabbles marring the face of
our fair galaxy.
'Couldn't we just wipe the place clear with a virus,
I hear you ask?But no.While it is true that the
humans have still done relatively little damage to their planet so far - from a distance it still looks
fine - it is still the case that the place has been
contaminated.Even if we wiped all human life off
the rockball, people would still look down at the
thing and shiver, recalling the pathetic but fiercely
self-destructive monsters that once stalked its
surface.However even memories find it difficult to
haunt a singularity.'
Li stuck the point of the light sword into the top of
the table and made to lean on the pommel; the
wood flared and burned, and the sword started to
drill through the flaming redwood in a cloud of
smoke.Li pulled the sword out, shoved it in its
scabbard and repeated the manoeuvre while
somebody poured a small fortune in wine over the
burning wood. ('Did they have scabbards?'
Roghres asked, puzzled. 'I thought they just turned
it off') The resulting steam and fumes rose
dramatically around Li as he leant on the pommel
of the sword and looked seriously and sincerely at
all of us. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' he nodded, grim-
faced. 'This, I submit, is the only solution; a
genocide to end all genocides.We have to destroy
the planet in order to save it.Should you decide to
do me the honour of electing me as your ruler, to
serve you, I shall set about putting this plan into
immediate effect, and shortly Earth, and all its
problems, will cease to exist.Thank you.'
Li bowed, turned, stepped down and sat.
Those of us who'd still been listening clapped, and
eventually more or less everybody joined in.There
were a few fairly irrelevant questions about stuff
like accretion disks, lunar tidal forces, and
conservation of angular momentum, but after Li had
done his best to answer those, Roghres, Tel,
Djibard and I went to the head of the table, lifted
Li up, carried him down the length of the table to
the sound of cheers, took him into the lower
accommodation level, and threw him in the
pool.Fused the light sabre, but I don't think the ship
meant to leave Li with something that dangerous to
wave around anyway.
We finished the fun off on a remote beach in
Western Australia in the very early morning,
swimming off our heavy bellies and wine-fuddled
heads in the slow rollers of the Indian Ocean, or
basking in the sunlight.
That's what I did; just lay there on the sand,
listening to a still pool-damp Li tell me what a
great idea it was to blow the entire planet away (or
suck the entire planet away).I listened to people
splashing in the waves, and tried to ignore Li.I
dozed off, but I was woken up for a game of hide-
and-seek in the rocks, and later we sat around and
had a light picnic.
Later, Li had us all play another game; guess the