Waters wiped the scat from his face and glared.  The chimp bobbed its head up and down, then climbed away across the steel beams that served for branches in his cage.  Waters remembered himself and relaxed his grip on the gun in his holster.  Explosive rounds would be overkill.

Yu lowered his eyes in shame.  "My apologies, Mr. Waters.  Captive behaviors are something of an occupational hazard here."

Waters nodded.  He knew all about captive behaviors—things you never saw in animals in the wild, back when there had been a wild.

"So that’s why you need security here?" he asked.  "Monkey insurgents?"

Yu didn’t laugh, the prick.  "No.  Your job is to guard against ecoterrorists."

"Ecoterrorists?  Against a space station that’s saving the world’s wildlife?"

"They think it’s not natural."  He waved a hand, dismissing the very idea. "There have been leaflets, graffiti, slurs, protests.  But just last a few months back, they sent anthrax, knowing it would affect both human and animal.  We were lucky it was a weakened strain."

"Slurs?"  Waters asked, as if he didn’t know.

Yu cleared his throat and lowered his eyes again.  "Cowkillers."

"Cowkillers?"

"They blame us for the extinction of cattle."

As they should, Waters thought.  It was people like Yu at the UN that had illegalized meat as an "inefficient strain on the ecosystem."  It was people like Yu that had taken all the land meant for herds and distributed what little could grow there to the starving poor.  Every last domesticated bull and cow had starved to death, their bodies left to rot because eating them would have been met with imprisonment.

They kept walking, and Waters managed not to glare hatred at the man. The director would be from China.  From imperialism to Communism, with philosophies that championed the absence of thought and demanded absolute obedience to the state, with a literary tradition that cherished the desires of bureaucrats over personal needs, with even a mythology that resonated with imposed order, it was no wonder Yu made such a dreary and effective manager.

"What security do you have?"  Waters finally asked.  He had to pretend he didn’t already know these things.  "Besides hiring me, I mean.  What if somebody brings a bomb aboard?"

"In case of breach, Manu will descend into the atmosphere.  The entire hull has heat shielding for that exact purpose.  Once in the troposphere, several very large parachutes will deploy and thrusters will fire downward at full force.  The entire station would land safely, I assure you."

The tour continued.  As they crossed a walk over a pool, Waters could see lazy humpbacks, their dorsal fins folded like arches.

Yu smiled a crooked smile.  "As you see, we finally saved the whales."

His eyes briefly checked with those of Waters for assurance, then looked away.  This was a man unused to humor, still struggling with it.  Even with all that pressure to conform as an automaton, the human spirit still struggled to break free.

Waters tried to relate.  "The weird thing?  It was actually oil that saved the whales.  Why fish for Leviathan when you only have to fight the ground and you get to go home at the end of the day?"

Even the little trace of humor left Yu’s face.  "We do not allow political propaganda aboard Station Manu."

They passed even more habitats that were about as authentic as a child’s drawing.  Bears, lions, gorillas, wolves, horses, deer, rhinos . . . they all had one thing in common.  They all had no will left.  Mostly, they sat and did nothing.  Even the pacing was listless, purposeless. Postures fell, tails stayed between legs without any effort.  There was no foraging, no hunting, no sexual displays.  The people on the station fed them and the people on the station chose their partners.  When the males showed no interest—which became more and more common as the years passed— they harvested the sperm and impregnated the females in vitro.

At last, they came to a viewing room that overlooked the Earth, now populated by humans over every inch.  The only animals left down there were pets in people’s homes.  Waters could see four of Manu’s sister stations: the original Noah and Utnapishtim to the left, Deucalion and Nu’u to the right.  Below sat Eurasia, that single continent that people pretended was two for the sake of Eurocentrism.  Good.  He wanted the most landmass possible.  He didn’t want to land in the oceans that covered most of Earth’s surface.

"That is our operation," Yu finished.  "Now, we are ready to replenish the world’s animal kingdom whenever the catastrophe comes."

The sad thing was, Yu really thought this was the solution.  But Nature didn’t survive in sterile conditions, not a specimen born in the wild.  It struggled for food and reproduction and status.  The longer these stations lasted, the less capable these animals would be.  You didn’t save Nature by perverting it.

Fire lanced from Utnapishtim’s hull.  Waters only saw it because he had been looking for it.  The space station began to fall, even as Deucalion vented air.

"That security system," Waters finally said.  "The one that puts us safely on the ground.  Is it active?"

"Oh, yes," Yu assured him.  "It’s always at the ready."

Station Noah listed like its drunken namesake, rocked by some unseen action on the opposite side.

"Just checking."

He pulled his gun on the window and fired.