“Neither do the gods,” Nerine said grimly.

  “Some advice,” Kelsey said. “I know and respect your powers, but this is not your venue. Don't go up against the fossils directly. They run the world.”

  “They're destroying the world!” Neris said.

  “Yes. But they're making money now. That's what counts, with them. They'd rather wipe the world out tomorrow than lose a buck today. You know that.”

  “I know it,” Neris agreed. Hedva had already made that point to him. The fact that Kelsey, of a quite different social culture, was saying the same was persuasive. “So what do we do?”

  “Well, if there's one thing more potent than greed, it's life. Not one of them will die for greed. Not intentionally; not if it's happening today.”

  “But if we start killing them, they'll simply be replaced by others like them.” Again, it was Hedva's point.

  “Sure. But if you scare them off with the fear of death, they may get the message. Together with a bribe of a taste of immortality. Carrot and stick: offer them added life, threaten them with death.”

  “This is interesting,” Nerine said. “I'm reading your mind.”

  “Any time you want to make any of my thoughts about you real, doll, you sure are welcome.”

  “All in due course,” she said, smiling. She had been teasing him for years, and would indeed oblige him if she had reason. That was of course his ardent hope.

  But this wasn't getting the job done. “I don't get it,” Neris said. “How can we do anything like that when we don't even know who they are?”

  “You don't need to knew who planted the bomb,” Kelsey said. “Hired thugs are a dime a dozen. It's the source you want to touch, the one who hires the thugs. Just send the return message.”

  “What message? How?”

  “That there will be deadly consequences if they try to intimidate you again.”

  Neris nodded. “Such as assassinations of guilty parties.”

  But when they talked with Hedva, she was adamant. “No violence.”

  “But they are practicing violence on us,” Rosie said. “The bombed the lab.”

  “You can't make a better world by descending to the level of your opponent.” Hedva suppressed their protest with a glance. “Yes I know the person who is constrained by conscience and ethics is at a disadvantage when confronting the person who is not; that's why evil prospers in the world. The key is to accomplish your purpose by ethical means. If you want me aboard you will be ethical.”

  “You have become our conscience,” Rosie said, impressed.

  Neris was impressed too. “We'll try,” he promised. “If we can find a way.”

  “There's a way,” Nerine said. “But we'll need Ouroborus' help.”

  You will have it.

  The executive felt a sudden urge to go swimming. Not in a heated chlorinated pool, but in the great natural sea with seaweed and fish. He hadn't done that in ages.

  “Reschedule my appointments,” he told his secretary. “I'll be out the rest of the day.”

  “Yes sir,” she said dutifully, not questioning it.

  He buzzed his chauffeur, who also didn't question it. The car was waiting by the side door as he exited the building.

  “To the sea,” he said simply.

  The man needed no further instruction. He angled the vehicle into the traffic and drove for the nearby beach.

  On the way, the exec got out of his clothing and rode naked except for his dark glasses, beach sandals, and waterproof watch. No one saw; the windows were reflectively tinted. Not that anyone was looking.

  The chauffeur parked at the private section reserved for club members, then got out to open the exec's door. The exec got out and walked across the beach. No one else was there. He waded into the surf, then splashed down into the water with a belly flop. The water was wonderfully warm, yet bracing.

  There was a titter. Two girls were there, pretty teens, lithe as only the young could be, surely the daughters of another privileged exec. One was a blonde, the other a brunette. They must have seen him flop. In fact they must have seen him before he flopped, in his Adamic splendor. It hardly mattered, as they were naked too. “Going my way?” he inquired.

  “Sure, handsome,” the blonde replied.

  As though he were not a middle aged and portly specimen. “Aren't you concerned about being alone with a strange man?”

  “No more than you are being alone with two strange women,” the brunette said, smiling.

  They fell in on either side of him, matching him stroke for stroke as he swam out to sea. Their hair remained perfectly coiffed; they were careful not to duck underwater.

  “How about sharks?” he asked. Not that there were any in these waters; privileged beaches were always safe.

  “You'll protect us, won't you?” the blonde asked in return, smiling.

  “Especially if we get in close, like this?” the brunette asked, coming in close enough to brush him with a soft warm breast.

  Then there was a ripple ahead as a wave approached. It was oddly discolored. “I don't like the look of this,” the exec said. “We'd better stay clear.”

  The three of them reversed course, backstroking toward the beach. He loved the way their fair young breasts moved as they swam, and their slender legs rose and fell, not quite showing their bottoms.

  But the wave pursued them, looking more menacing by the moment. “Faster!” he gasped.

  They stroked faster, but still the ugly wave gained. The glistening blackness of it looked hungry. In moments it was lapping at their toes.

  The exec accelerated, outdistancing the girls. But now his feet stung. What was in that wave? Acid?

  The two girls screamed almost together. “Oh, it's pulling me in!” the blonde cried.

  “There's an undertow!” the brunette exclaimed.

  Helplessly he watched as the wave engulfed them both. He knew they were drowning.

  But now he had to look out for himself. The wave was swelling higher and darker, with a hungry edging of foam. He swam desperately away from it, but it sent up a curving surface that rose over his head, like a mouth, taking him in. “I'm going to eat you up!” it said.

  “Nooo!” He was terrified, yet still struggling to escape. He did not question its ability to speak.

  It crashed down on him, and suddenly his eyes and mouth were stinging. He flailed, trying to swim up through it to the surface, but could no longer see where he was going. It got in his mouth and nose, choking him with its foulness.

  Then he was aimlessly floating within it, having been consumed. His hand smacked into something; he grabbed it, hoping to pull himself out. Then he realized that it was the dead hand of one of the drowned girls, and flung it away in horror. Her floating hair brushed him as she drifted lifelessly past him.

  There was no hope. He gave himself up to his doom.

  Your industry's pollution is poisoning the sea.

  He woke shuddering. It had been a dream, a horrible dream. Its elements were nonsensical when considered in retrospect. The nearest ocean beach was five hundred miles away, impossible to reach in half an hour by car. He never drove or swam nude, or flirted with teen girls. Yet it had seemed so real! Obviously his dream mind had turned off any sensible analysis of the proceedings. And why was his conscience tweaking him about pollution? Of course there was some pollution; it was a necessary byproduct of the process, minor in comparison with the benefits. Where would mankind be without sufficient energy? The whole thing was a wildly unrealistic figment of fiction.

  Still, the dream left him shaken.

  Neris, Rosie, Hedva, Nerine and Kelsey considered. It had been two days, and there was no apparent reaction to the broadcast dream.

  “Sometimes a single warning isn't enough,” Kelsey said. “It can be dismissed as a fluke. That's why companies run repeat adds; each one adds to the total effect.”

  “Then we'll send another,” Rosie said. “We do have time on our hands while we are negotiating for a replacement laboratory.”

  “Write another script,” Nerine said. “I'll notify my sisters and Ouroborus.”

  Needless.

  They all laughed. Of course the serpent was with them. He found this byplay highly entertaining.

  “Air, this time,” Kelsey said. He had never considered himself a screenwriter, but had openly enjoyed crafting the first dream, perhaps because it put him into close collaborative context with the luscious nereids.

  Two nereids appeared. One had yellow hair, the other brown hair. They looked exactly like the girls of the sea dream, by no coincidence. “What's up, doctor?” the blonde inquired.

  “My pecker, seeing you,” Kelsey answered.

  “We can down it,” the brunette said eagerly.

  “Not here. Not now,” Nerine said sharply. Neris privately marveled again at her primness, which she had never shown before her sisters were on the scene. Could she be jealous of their freedom to do whatever they chose, as they had no responsibilities, or was it that she didn't like sharing associations that had before been hers alone? Or was it that she wanted to reserve Kelsey for herself? What good was it to tease him, if he then went to another nereid?

  Nerine, reading his thoughts, sent him a dark look. But she didn't deny it.

  “But this is business, girls,” Kelsey said with clear regret. “We need another dream.”

  “We like dreaming,” the blonde said.

  “Especially with lusty mortals,” the brunette said.

  The three went to another room to work it out, while Nerine scowled.

  “This is certainly serious business,” Hedva said. “But I confess it has its passing amusement.”

  “What, you like sexy nymphs?” Rosie asked teasingly.

  “In my secret heart I'd like to be one,” Hedva said candidly. “To have the capacity to drive men mad with lust, instead of being a dumpy forty two year old maid. But I would settle for a serious romance with a good man. Not that I ever had any such prospects, and of course there would not be time even if I magically had the body.”

  “That youth elixir,” Nerine said. “I'm sure we could spare some for you.”

  “No, I don't want magic. That would be cheating. It was always an idle dream anyway. I have lived my life.”

  “You know why I work with Neris?” Rosie said. “It's not because of his magnetic attraction, though I do enjoy it, even as a lesbian. It's not entirely because he is doing something transcendentally useful, though that does appeal too. It's that he is staying close to you. We were both your students, and you guided and shaped us to became better and more realistic people. He has the same abiding respect for you that I do, and that unites us. This project is a pretext for me to work closely with you. The idea of you leaving us prematurely appalls me. I wish you'd take the magic.”

  “Dear, I would not be the person I am, if I did that.”

  “I know,” Rosie said, and a tear rolled down her cheek. She seldom if ever cried for anyone, but she was doing so now.

  Hedva put her arm around around Rosie. “I'm sorry.”

  And Neris felt much the same, with the added component of his resurging crush.

  Kelsey and the nereids returned. “We have it ready for filming,” he announced. Ouroborus could absorb it and send it out, but had to have the basis; that was what they provided. The script.

  They set up props to represent the approximate interior of an airplane, looking somewhat like an office, as that was their stage. The two nereids waited just outside. Kelsey entered from a side door and sat down in an office chair. “I am in a private jet plane, bound for the south seas,” he announced. “Then to my surprise I spy two bare girls. What are they doing here?”

  It was a little play. Ouroborus picked it up with his mind, added details and conviction, and projected it to the hundred targets, all CEOs of leading fossil fuel companies and suppliers. It would have been laughable, except for that conviction; the recipients would believe, at least while in the dream, and fill in incidental details as appropriate.

  The exec took time off to visit his retreat in Tahiti. His crew had his personal jet fueled and ready at the private airport. They were airborne with minimal delay, and soon crossing the great Pacific Ocean.

  He plumped down into his easy chair. The padding emitted a rude-sounding noise as the air cushion flattened.

  There was a titter. The exec looked up from his magazine and saw two nude girls. How had they gotten aboard? “This is a personal plane!” he protested.

  “Oh? We didn't know,” the blonde said, smiling winsomely. She looked to be about sixteen, superbly shaped.

  “Do you want us to get off?” the brunette asked frowning. She was if anything even prettier than the other.

  “No, of course not. I just want to know what you're doing here.”

  “Well, we thought we would get to know you, handsome,” the blonde said, perching her pert bare derriere on his left armrest.

  “You are surely a fascinating person,” the brunette said, leaning over the left armrest so that her fine hanging tresses and bare breasts almost touched his arm.

  This was distinctly awkward. Rather than admit that he did not know how to react, he heaved himself up. “Gotta go check with the pilot,” he muttered.

  “Oh, let's!” the blonde agreed enthusiastically.

  The two followed closely as he made his way to the cockpit. The pilot did not question his presence.

  He looked out the front port as he sipped his cocktail. There was a looming dark cloud that looked like nothing so much as a monstrous serpent. “What is that?”

  “I don't know, sir,” the pilot said. “I never saw anything like it before.”

  The snakelike cloud loomed larger as they approached. Its tail dropped down to touch the sea below; its upper reaches flared like the neck of a threatening cobra. “Better avoid it,” the exec advised.

  “Yes sir.” The plane swerved.

  “Snakes on a plane!” the brunette said, shuddering.

  The cobra struck, jaws gaping, fangs leading. It bit the plane and hurled it about. It was a gigantic tornado!

  The girls screamed in unison, soprano and alto.

  “The engines are fouled,” the pilot cried. “Something in the air is coating them, making them flame out.” Indeed, one jet then the other ceased functioning, leaving the plane without propulsion. It was dead in the atmosphere.

  The exec clung to the co-pilot's empty seat as the plane was caught up in the deadly swirl of air, in his distraction spilling his drink. In moments the wings were torn off, together with the motors, and the stricken hulk plunged toward the water. It crashed, its fuselage breaking open. Icy water surged in.

  The girls screamed again, despairingly, as they were washed into the sea. But the exec had problems of his own. The chill liquid was swirling around his waist, then his chest, then his neck. It caught his legs and dragged him out of the plane. He tried to scream himself, but the salt water poured into his mouth and then his lungs, drowning him.

  Your industry's pollution is poisoning the air.

  He woke with an ugly start. It had been another dream, worse than the first. This one, too made no sense when examined objectively. He had no private jet, no retreat on Tahiti. Certainly no nude girls could have wandered accidentally into such a plane. Tornadoes did not reach miles into the sky and strike like poisonous snakes. And pollution did not form such images in any event; it was more diffuse, invisible.

  But it had seemed completely real at the time. His pulses were still pounding, and not from joy.

  And there was that anti-pollution message again. Was it really his conscience? Yet trying to reduce the pollution threatened to cut seriously into the profit margins, and therefore his ample bonus pay. Possibly even his position with the company; there were others eager to take his place the moment he faltered. He was not about to give up a compensation package ultimately worth millions per year for that. Better simply to get a better air scrubber for his house.

  Days later there was still nothing in the news, and no detectable change in policy. The pollution express continued unabated.

  “We'll try it once more,” Neris said. “After that we'll try stronger medicine.”

  “Fracking,” Kelsey said.

  Fracking: fracturing underground rock to release the embedded gas. It was a process that generated huge amounts of waste that had to be contained, but even huger amounts of usable gas. It was making America more than self-sufficient in energy production, which had powerful global implications. But there were drawbacks, such as the copious use of fresh water, when the world was running short of it. Not to mention contaminating aquifers.

  They worked out the play, rehearsed it, and set it up for presentation.

  The exec was having dinner with two lovely girls. No one else in the posh restaurant seemed to notice that they were nude. That was intriguing.

  “You are such a handsome man!” the blonde enthused as she toyed with her luscious dessert.

  “And generous too,” the brunette added, daintily sipping her hundred dollar a bottle liquor.

  “Nothing but the best for my honored guests,” he said grandly. He seemed to know them from somewhere before, though he couldn't quite remember. Family friends? Regardless, with careful management and a little luck he might get them both into his bed tonight, together.

  Both of them smiled fetchingly at him. Yes, it was going well.

  There was a rumble, and the dishes shook slightly. “Oh, I feel a little dizzy,” the blonde said nervously.

  “That's not you, it's the table,” the brunette said. “It's shaking.”

  “Surely nothing to be concerned about,” the exec said. “There may be blasting in the area.”

  “That's a relief,” the blonde said.

  “We'd hate to have our evening interrupted,” the brunette said. “Just when it's about to get interesting.”

  Yes indeed!