Omega

chapter 9

Arlington.

Saturday, March 15.

HAROLD NEVER REGAINED consciousness, and was pronounced dead at 4:32 A.M.

Hutch was still there when the word came, trying to provide what support she could to Mildred and the cousin. She notified the lab watch officer and listened while the doctor said he was sorry, there was really nothing they could have done.

He was 106. Mildred explained that the doctors had wanted to give him a synthetic heart a few years back, but he’d refused. She wondered why. He’d always seemed rational. And he had everything to live for: He seemed content with his work and was respected around the world.

“He was alone,” Mildred said. Tears leaked out of her eyes. She looked relatively young, but she was Harold’s aunt so she, too, was past the century mark.

Hutch came out of the hospital under a sky still dark and cold, wondering why she hadn’t seen it coming, why she hadn’t stepped in. She’d never invited him to the house. Not once. Despite the fact they’d eaten lunch countless times, that she’d confided in him when she’d gotten frustrated with the job. And he’d always told her to calm down, everything would be okay. It’ll pass. It was his favorite line. Everything passes.

Tor’s parents lived in Britain, and her own father was long dead. Harold would have made a superb substitute grandfather for Maureen, if Hutch had only known. Had only thought.

So she stood in the access station, watching the last few flakes drifting across the rooftop. Probably windblown, she decided, suspecting the snow had stopped. Banks of the stuff were piled up around the landing pads.

Harold gone. It was hard to believe.

Her link sounded. It was Tor. “What’s happening?”

“We lost him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“About a half hour ago.”

“You okay?”

“Yes. I’m on my way home now.”

“All right. I’ll have some breakfast waiting.”

“No. Nothing for me, thanks. I’m not hungry.”

A taxi descended, a woman got out, and Hutch’s commlink sounded, alerting her it was her cab. She climbed in, and the harness descended on her. And the thought she’d been pushing aside for the last two hours settled in beside her. Harold, what are the omegas?

A medical unit drifted down onto the far end of the roof, where the emergency pad was located. She gave the taxi her address and settled back.

It lifted off, turned south, and picked up speed toward the Potomac.

SHE USUALLY WORKED a half day Saturdays, especially when things were happening, which was pretty much all the time. She’d been at her desk less than an hour when the report came in. The Gallardo had inspected a cloud out near Alpha Cassiopeiae and found another hedgehog. The circumstances were the same: It was out front, same course, same velocity. Six and a half kilometers in diameter. Preliminary scan suggested it was an identical object. The only thing different was its range from the cloud, only fifteen thousand klicks.

The two sites were hundreds of light-years apart.

She’d barely digested the information when the watch officer called with more. The local cloud had one too. Again it was identical in everything except range, which was forty-two hundred kilometers. Even the spines were set in an identical pattern. As if the objects had come out of the same mold. There was some minor damage, probably caused by collisions.

It looked harmless.

She sat several minutes studying the images and went down to the lab. Harold’s office was empty, but Charlie Wilson was there, and a few of the technicians. It had been Hutch’s experience that bosses are rarely loved, and whatever the employees might say, there was inevitably a sigh of relief when they moved on. Even when the movement was to a better world. But everyone had liked Harold. And the mood in the lab was genuinely depressed.

“You know why we needed him?” Charlie told her after she’d sat down to share a glass of pineapple juice. “He was as big as any of the people who try to shoulder their way to the equipment. Which meant he could say no. He could keep things orderly. Who’s going to refuse time on the systems now to Stettberg? Or to Mogambo?”

“You will, Charlie,” she said. “And I’ll back you up.” He looked doubtful, but she smiled. “You’ll do fine. Just don’t show any hesitation. You tell them no, that’s it. Let them know we’ll call them if we get available time. Then thank them kindly and get off the circuit.”

He took a long pull at the juice without saying anything.

“Charlie.” She changed her tone so he’d see the subject was closed. “I want to talk with you about the omegas.”

“Okay.”

“Last week, Wednesday, I think, Harold told me he thought he knew what they were.”

Charlie tilted his head, surprised. The reaction was disappointing. She’d hoped Harold had confided in him. “He didn’t say anything to you?”

“No, Hutch. If he had any ideas, he kept them to himself.”

“You’re sure.”

“Of course. You think I’d forget something like that?” Harold’s office was visible through a pane of glass. The desk was heaped with paper, disks, magazines, books, and electronic gadgets. Waiting for someone to clear them away, box them and ship them home. “I just don’t know what he was thinking, Hutch. But I can tell you one thing you might not know.”

“What’s that, Charlie?”

“We matched the tewks with the omegas. With the waves. Or at least with the places where the waves should be if they’re consistent.”

“He told me that. So there’s a connection.”

“Apparently.”

And two of them with hedgehogs. Did all the clouds have hedgehogs? “Charlie,” she said, “these objects that we’ve spotted running in front of the omegas: They seem to be booby traps. Bombs. Is it possible that what you’ve been seeing is hedgehogs exploding?”

“No.” He shook his head.

“How can you be sure?”

“Did you look at the pictures from the Heffernan?”

Hutch hadn’t. She’d read the report.

“The explosion that destroyed the Quagmor—Is that right? I keep hearing two different names for the ship—is nothing like what we see when one of the tewks goes off. It’s on the order of difference between a firecracker and a nuke.”

“Okay,” she said. “Just a thought.”

THEY WENT INTO Harold’s office and looked through the stacks of documents. But nothing presented itself as particularly relevant. “Charlie,” she said, “I need you to go over everything he was working on. See if you can find anything new on the clouds. Or the tewks.”

“Okay.”

“Let me know if you find something.”

“Actually,” he said, “we’ve already started.” Charlie was tall and rangy, with sandy hair and clear blue eyes. Unlike most of the researchers who came to the Academy, Charlie kept himself in decent physical condition. He played basketball with his kids on weekends, swam an hour a day in the Academy pool, and played occasional tennis. He lacked his boss’s brilliance, but then so did pretty much everybody else.

“Okay,” she said. “Stay with it. Let me know if anything turns up.” She started to leave but stopped short. “What about the nova patterns, Charlie? Anything new on those?”

“You mean, about the way they line up?” He shook his head. “Maybe if more of them get sighted, we’ll have a better idea. But I think the notion there’s a pattern is an illusion.”

“Really. Why?”

“They tend to bunch up in a relatively small space. When that happens, you can almost always rotate the viewpoint and get a pattern.”

“Oh.”

“And the sightings are probably confined to those two areas not because that’s the only places they are, but because we don’t have that many packages up yet and functioning. Give it time. There will probably be more. If there are, I think you’ll see the patterns go away.”

LIBRARY ENTRY

Harold Tewksbury

. His achievements over an eighty-year career have been adequately chronicled elsewhere. He is one of the fortunate few whose work will survive his lifetime. But that is also on the record elsewhere. What mattered to me was his essential decency, and his sense of humor. Unlike many of the giants in our world, he was never too busy to talk to a journalist, never too busy to lend a hand to a friend. It is entirely fitting that he died helping a neighbor.

Everyone who knew him feels the loss. We are all poorer this morning.

— Carolyn Magruder

UNN broadcast

Sunday, March 16, 2234

chapter 10

Union Space Station.

Sunday, March 16.

TWICE TO THE Wheel in a weekend.

Standing with Julie Carson, the ship’s captain, Hutch watched the people from Rheal Fabrics pack the kite onto the Hawksbill. Eight large cylinders, each more than thirty meters in diameter and maybe half again as long, were clamped to the hull. These were described on the manifest as chimneys. They were, in fact, rainmakers. Four landers had been stored in the cargo bays, along with an antique helicopter whose hull was stenciled CANADIAN FORCES. There was also an AV3 cargo hauler; a shuttle reconfigured to accommodate an LCYC projector, like the big ones used at Offshore and other major theme parks; a half dozen pumps; and lengths of hose totaling several kilometers. A second LCYC was already mounted on the underside of the ship.

The Hawksbill was not part of the Academy fleet; it was a large cargo carrier on loan from a major shipping company which had donated it for the current project with the understanding that they would get all kinds of good publicity. Plus some advantages in future Academy contracts. Plus a tax break.

Like all ships of its class, it wasn’t designed to haul passengers, and was in fact limited to a pilot plus two. Or three, in an emergency.

The workers from Rheal were in the after cargo hold, running a final inspection on the kite before closing the doors. A cart carrying luggage appeared on the ramp and clicked through the main airlock. “Dave Collingdale will direct the operation,” Hutch was explaining. “Anything that has to do with the Hawksbill, you’re in charge. Kellie will be there with the Jenkins. Do you know her? Yes? Good. She’ll be switching places with you so you can help Marge get the rainmakers set up.”

“Which means,” said Julie, “that she’ll be taking the Hawksbill out to play tag with the omega?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” she said. “Whatever you guys want.”

Julie was an Academy pilot, about the same age Hutch had been when she’d taken her first superluminal out of the solar system. She’d had her license for a year, but she’d already acquired a reputation for competence.

Hutch felt a special kinship with her. She was the daughter of Frank Carson, who had dodged the lightning with her during their original encounter at Delta.

She was tall, like her father, same military cut, brown eyes, her mother’s red hair. She also had her mother’s conviction that there was no situation she could not handle. It was one of the reasons Hutch had offered her the assignment. She was facing a long time away with a limited social life, but it was a career-enhancing opportunity and a chance to show what she could do. The other reason was that she could pilot the AV3 hauler.

One of her passengers appeared at the top of the ramp. Avery Whitlock was one of a long line of philosophical naturalists who had come to prominence originally in the nineteenth century with Darwin and Thomas Huxley, and continued with Loren Eiseley, Stephen Jay Gould, and Esther Gold. He had silver hair, a long nose, and a timid smile. He was a black man, had grown up with all the aristocratic advantages, gone to the right schools, mixed with the right people. But he had a populist talent that shone through his work, and made him the most widely read scientific writer of his era. Eventually, Hutch knew, he would produce a history of the attempt to rescue the Goompahs. Succeed or fail, Whitlock liked the human race and would ensure that it, and the Academy, got just due for the effort it was making.

He looked out at the ship, and Hutch saw his jaw drop a bit. “It’s a behemoth,” he said. “Really only room for two of us?”

Hutch grinned and shook his hand. “Good to see you, Whit. And actually, if you count the captain, it holds three.” She introduced him to Julie, who surprised her by commenting that she was familiar with Whitlock’s work. “I especially liked The Owl and the Lamp,” she said. Whitlock beamed, and Hutch saw again that there was no quicker way to a writer’s heart than by expressing admiration for his work.

Julie had her own views, it turned out, about avian evolution. Hutch listened for a couple of minutes, then pointed out that it was getting late. “Of course,” said Julie.

“You’ll have plenty of time on the flight,” she added.

“I had no idea,” Whitlock said, returning his gaze to the ship, “that it would be so big.”

“It’s pretty much all storage space,” said Julie. “Living quarters are on the top deck.” A line of viewports was visible. “Most of the rest of it has no life support.”

“Incredible. What are we carrying?”

“Some rainmakers and a kite,” said Hutch.

Marge Conway showed up moments later. She was a big woman, a onetime ballet dancer, though Hutch would have liked to see the guy who would catch her in his arms and give her a quick spin. More to the point, she was an accomplished climatologist. The years had caught up with her somewhat since the last time Hutch had seen her. Her hair had begun to show patches of gray, and a few lines had appeared around her eyes. But there was still something feline in the way she got around.

Julie took them on board and showed them their compartments. Avery here, Marge there, sorry folks, they’re a little cramped, but they’re comfortable.

Hutch had been surprised when Marge announced she would make the flight personally. She didn’t seem to mind that it would be a two-year mission. “Once in a lifetime you get to do something like this,” she said, “if you’re lucky. No way I’m sending somebody else.” Her kids were grown, her husband had not renewed, and she’d explained she wanted to get as far from him as she could.

Hutch stayed with them until it was time to leave. This was of course a different kind of social arrangement from the al-Jahani, which had been a small community setting out. The onboard interplay there would be vastly different. Cliques would form, people would make friendships, find others with shared attitudes, and they’d have no real problem.

The Hawksbill would be nine months in flight with three people. At the far end, if they were sick of each other, Collingdale could make other arrangements to get them home. But for the better part of a year they’d be sealed together and they would have to get along. Hutch had interviewed Marge a couple of days earlier, to reassure herself, and she knew Whitlock well enough to have no qualms about him. They should be all right. But it would be a long trip, and she knew they’d be glad to see daylight at the other end.

While they got settled, she repaired to the bridge with Julie. “One critical thing you should pass on to Kellie,” she said. “This ship wasn’t designed to go anywhere near omegas. The architecture isn’t right, and it could draw the lightning. You hear what I’m saying?”

“Yes, ma’am. I will tell her.”

“She’ll be captain during that phase of the operation. I don’t care what anybody tells her, she will keep minimum range from the cloud. She’ll have it in writing from me long before then, but it’s maybe a little more convincing coming from you.”

“I doubt that,” Julie said. “What’s minimum range?”

“Two hundred kilometers is standard for this kind of vessel.”

“Two hundred klicks. Okay. I’ll tell her.”

Hutch asked permission to sit in the pilot’s seat, and inquired about Julie’s parents. Her father was semi-retired, teaching at the University of Maine and still serving as a consultant to the Margaret Tufu Foundation. Her mother Linda was curator of the Star Museum, which contained the third largest collection of extraterrestrial artifacts in North America, behind the Academy Museum and the Smithsonian.

“Say hello for me,” Hutch said.

“I will.”

“I hope you’re as good as they are.”

“Yes, ma’am. I am.”

It was the right reply. Hutch shook her hand and gazed at the console, at the navigation monitor to the pilot’s right, at the orange ready lamp indicating energy buildup, and she felt again the awesome power of the drive units. Finally, realizing Julie was waiting for her to leave so she could get to her check list, she said good-bye.

She wished Marge and Whitlock success, and strode up the ramp and back into the Wheel.

GREGORY MACALLISTER WAS waiting when she got home. Tor, who was a better chef than she was, had dinner on. Maureen was entertaining Mac by running in circles while a black kitten watched.

MacAllister was a big man in every sense of the word. He took up a lot of space. He was an intellectual linebacker. When he walked into a room, everyone inevitably came to attention. Mac was an international figure, an editor and essayist whose acquaintance with Hutch had begun when they were stranded together on Deepsix.

He’d become interested in the Goompahs and had called, asking whether he could talk with her about what the Academy intended to do on Lookout.

Hutch explained over the pork chops. She told him about the limitations imposed by the Protocol, about her fears as to what would happen if they set the wrong precedent, about the hedgehogs.

When they finished, they retired to the living room and Hutch put up some pictures of the Goompahs. These were long-range, taken from telescopes on the Jenkins and on satellites. There were shots of temples, of the isthmus road and some of its traffic, of farms, of parks and fountains. “Not bad,” Mac remarked from time to time, obviously impressed with Goompah culture. Hutch understood he was impressed because he hadn’t expected much. Hadn’t done his homework. “I thought they were primitives,” he said.

“Why would you think that?” The screen had paused on a picture of three Goompahs, mom, dad, and a kid, probably, almost as if Jack had asked them to pose. A tree like nothing that ever grew on Earth rose behind them, and the images were filled with sunlight.

Mac made a face, suggesting the answer should be obvious. “Because—” He looked up at one of Tor’s paintings, a depiction of a superluminal cruising through moonlight, and paused, uncertain. “Well, they look dumb. And they have a fifth-century society.” He glanced over at Maureen playing with her dollhouse. “She has her mother’s good looks, Hutch.”

“Thank you.”

“I guess the question at issue is whether the Goompahs are worth all the fuss being made over them.”

“They’re worth the fuss,” said Tor. “They’re intelligent.”

MacAllister smiled. “That puts them ahead of us.”

Gregory MacAllister was not the best-known journalist of the age, but he was certainly the most feared. Acerbic, acid-tongued, not given to taking prisoners, he liked to think of himself as a champion of common sense and a dedicated opponent of buffoonery and hypocrisy in high places. During the course of an interview the previous evening regarding the drive to make lightbenders available to the general public, he’d commented that while people have the right to commit suicide, he saw nothing in the Constitution requiring the government to expedite matters. “Invisible drunks,” he’d said. “Think about it.” Then he’d added, “The original sin was stupidity, and it is with us still.”

“Maybe it does,” said Tor. “That’s all the more reason to give them a chance.”

Hutch produced a cold beer for Mac, and wine for herself and Tor. Mac took a pull at the beer, expressed himself satisfied, and asked Tor why he thought the creatures were intelligent.

Tor rolled his eyes. “You’ve seen their architecture. And the way they’ve laid out their cities. What more do you need?”

Mac’s eyes usually darkened when he considered the issue of intelligent behavior. They did so now. “Tor,” he said, “the bulk of the human race shouldn’t be allowed out by themselves at night. A lot of them live near parks, fountains, and even spaceports. But that’s assigning worth by reflection.”

“You’re not serious.”

Mac had liberated some chocolate cookies from the kitchen. He held one out for Maureen, who took it happily and told Mac he wasn’t supposed to give any to Babe. That was the kitten, who showed no interest anyhow. “Tor,” he said, “most generations produce a handful of rational people who, so far, have been able to keep us going while everyone else spends his time falling into the works. Most people are programmed by the time they’re six, and learn nothing worthwhile afterward.”

Tor made a sound indicating he was in pain. In fact, of course, he was used to Mac’s exaggerations and would have expected no less.

But Hutch never got used to it. “Are you suggesting,” she asked, “that we should give an IQ test before rescuing someone, or something, in trouble?”

“Not at all. By all means, we should help anyone if we can reasonably do it. And the Goompahs do look worth saving. But I think you’re facing a no-win situation.”

That surprised her. “How do you mean?”

“You’ll probably have to break the Protocol to do anything for them. I mean, you’re even going to be shipping relief supplies. How do you possibly get them to these creatures without announcing your presence?” A look of genuine concern passed over his craggy features. “If you don’t succeed in helping them and a lot of them get wiped out, or they all get wiped out, you won’t forgive yourself. And the Academy will take a beating.”

Tor nodded reluctantly. “He’s probably right, Hutch.”

She looked at Mac across the top of her wineglass. And then leveled her gaze at her husband. “What would you two have me do? Just ignore them? Let them die by the thousands and not lift a finger?”

For a time no one spoke. Maureen looked at her oddly, as if Mommy had misbehaved. Babe the kitten came over and tried to chew on her ankle.

“I take it,” said Mac, “that there really is no way of shutting down the cloud?”

“None that we’ve been able to figure out. There’s never been enough money to fund a serious effort.”

Mac laughed. “But there’s enough money to underwrite the farming industries. And to provide tax breaks for General Power and Anderson & Goodbody.” He growled. “The truth is that it’s hard to justify spending money on a hazard that’s so far off, Hutch. Or that’s threatening somebody else. Still, I can understand the reluctance.”

She knew that. Mac had remained silent while major pundits laughed at Senator Blasingame, when he’d put together a bill demanding an extensive effort to find a way to neutralize the omegas. Blasingame had even made Hal Bodley’s annual Boondoggle List. Mac might have been able to stem the tide had he gotten into the fight.

“We could have used you,” she said.

“Hutch, the sun’s going to expand in a few billion years and wipe out all life on Earth. Maybe we should do something about that, as well.”

“Try to keep it serious, Mac,” she said.

“Okay.” He emptied his glass, trundled out to the kitchen, and came back with a refill. It was an uncomfortable moment, and Hutch suspected she shouldn’t have said anything, but damn it, Mac’s point of view was shortsighted. Maureen got a pulltoy out and she and the kitten retreated into the den.

Rachmaninoff’s Concerto Number Two was playing softly in the background. Light swept briefly through the window as a flyer descended onto the landing pad they shared with the Hoffmanns.

“It strikes me,” Mac said, easing back into his chair, “that it’s not true. Or at least, it’s not a universal truth.”

“What isn’t, Mac?”

“That cultures get swamped when they encounter a more developed civilization.”

“Can you name an exception?”

“Sure,” he said. “India.”

“They weren’t swamped,” said Tor. “But they were taken over.”

“That doesn’t count. The Brits at the time were imperialists. That wouldn’t apply on Lookout. But my point is that Indian culture survived pretty well. The essentials, their music, their marital patterns, their self-image, didn’t change at all.”

“What about the Native Americans?”

He smiled. “It’s a myth, Hutch. They didn’t collapse because they were faced with an intrinsically stronger culture. They were beaten down by a superior military. And maybe because their own cultural habits wouldn’t allow them to unite.

“Priscilla, if I felt the way you do, I wouldn’t mess around with all these half measures.”

“What would you do, Mac?”

“I’d send the Peacekeepers out there and get them all out of the cities when the damned thing gets close. Get them behind rocks or in caves or whatever else they have until it passes. It only takes a day or so, right?”

“Mac, I can’t do that.”

“Then you don’t have the courage of your convictions.”

She glanced over at Tor. He was shaking his head at her. You know better than to take Mac seriously. Relax. Let it go.

“There is this,” pursued Mac. “If you called out the troops, you’d have the satisfaction of knowing you gave it your best shot.”

Maureen had finished her cookie, leaving crumbs everywhere. Hutch let her head drift back for a moment, then got up and took Maureen’s hand. “Time for bed, Mo.”

“Too early, Mommy,” said the child, who began to fill up. She hated going to bed when they had company. She especially liked Mac. What on Earth was there about him that a child could love?

“We’ll read for a while,” she said. “Say good night to Uncle Mac.”

Maureen made a sad face at Mac. “Good night, Uncle Mac,” she said. And she reached for him, and kissed his cheek.

“Good night, darling,” said Mac.

HUTCH COULD HEAR them chattering away downstairs while she read to Maureen. Benny Rabbit makes friends with Oscar the Cat. Hutch would believe it when she saw it. But Maureen giggled and Babe the kitten joined them and stayed when Maureen fell asleep and Hutch turned out the lamp and went downstairs.

They were talking about Paxon Carbury’s latest novel, Morley Park. It had gotten strong reviews, and Tor had liked it, but Mac was consigning it to the unwashed. “It’s just more adultery in the suburbs,” he said.

And that seemed to settle it. Tor made a few objections, tried to explain what he had liked about the book, then backed off. Mac asked Hutch whether she’d read it.

“No,” she said. “I’ve been a little pressed lately.”

In the background, the commlink chimed. Hutch excused herself and went into the dining room. “Who is it, George?”

“Academy watch officer,” said the AI.

She was beginning to hate these calls. A screen lit up. Actually it was Charlie. “I hate to bother you at home,” he said.

“Yes, Charlie, what have you got?”

“You wanted to hear anything that came in on the hedgehogs.”

“What happened?”

“They found another one.”

“Who?”

“The Santiago. We don’t have any details yet. But it’s beginning to look as if they all have them. All the clouds, I mean.”

“Yes, Charlie, I think you’re right. Thanks. Let me know if you hear anything else.”

“There is something else.”

“Yes?”

“We don’t think the hedgehogs and the clouds are actually running at the same velocity.”

“Oh? I didn’t think any questions had been raised about that.”

“They hadn’t. The difference is so slight, it’s hard to detect. Even now, we’re not really certain. But it looks as if the hedgehogs are moving a bit slower.”

“How much?”

“Almost too little difference to measure. It’s why we didn’t pick it up at first. I mean, a cloud’s not a solid object, so you don’t really get—”

“How much difference, Charlie?”

“The escorts are slower by between four and five meters an hour.”

“All of them?”

“Two of them. We’re still trying to get measurements on the others.”

SHE DIDN’T KNOW what to make of it. It didn’t sound especially important until she found herself telling Tor and Mac about it. And suddenly the lights went on and a chill ran through the room. “Dumb,” she said, breaking into the middle of a sentence.

“What is?” asked Tor.

“Me. I am.”

“In what way, Priscilla?” said Mac.

“You know about the tewks. We think they all happen where there are clouds.”

“And—?”

“If each cloud has a hedgehog, and each hedgehog is running at a slightly slower speed so that the cloud eventually overtakes it—”

“Oh,” said Mac.

“The escorts are exactly the sort of things that the clouds seem to want to attack. Lots of right angles. Couple hundred of them.”

Tor was nodding. “They’re designated targets.”

“I think so,” she said. “Has to be.”

Mac couldn’t accept the idea. “Not at those rates of closure. You’re talking a couple of thousand years before the clouds catch the damned things.”

“But what’s the point?” asked Tor. “I don’t get it.”

She reactivated her link. “Charlie?”

“Yes, Hutch?”

“Contact Serenity. Tell Audrey the hedgehogs may be triggers.”

“Triggers?”

“Right. They go boom. And they initiate something.”

“Like what?”

“Like a tewk. Listen, I’ll be in touch with her tomorrow. Meantime, I want her to start looking at sending a mission to push one of the damned things into a cloud. See what happens.”

“I’ll tell her.”

“Explain that we’ll want the whole thing done by robot. Nobody is to go anywhere near any part of the operation. Okay?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll pass it on.”

She switched off. “When you talk to her tomorrow—” said Tor.

“Yes—?”

“Tell her to pick a cloud that’s well away from anybody’s neighborhood.”

LIBRARY ENTRY

The stores are filling up with Goompah dolls, and we are becoming increasingly aware of the existence of these terminally cute off-world wobblies. Children cannot resist them. They are showing up in games and books. There is already an activist society devoted to their welfare. Yet they face possible extinction.

It may be necessary to lay the Noninterference Protocol aside. Indeed, it’s hard to see how we can go to their rescue without doing so. But it would help if we defined the exception as a one-time only affair. Make it clear that we are not setting a precedent, and draw a line across which interested manufacturers, religious groups, charitable organizations, trading companies, and everybody else who’d like to use these creatures to play out their own fantasies and ambitions, may not venture.

— Gregory MacAllister

“How’s the Jihad Going?”

Lost on Earth Interview, Monday, March 17

chapter 11

On board the Jenkins, in orbit around Lookout.

Tuesday, March 18.

…Be advised that your primary objective is to get the job done. If you find it necessary to set the Protocol aside, this constitutes your authority to do so…

…Collect and run analyses of food samples…

…Time is of the essence. In view of the lag between Lookout and your other points of contact, you are free to use discretion.

IN FACT, JACK didn’t like the idea of using discretion. Not in this kind of situation. It was purely political. No matter what he did, and how things turned out, he would be criticized. Any blame to be assigned would come his way, and credit would go to the Second Floor at the Academy. He’d been around too long not to know how these things worked.

After watching Hutchins’s transmission, Winnie was exasperated, too. “How,” she demanded, “do they expect us to record conversations down there? For a start, where are we going to get recording equipment?”

“We might be able to rig some pickups,” said Digger.

It had required more than two weeks for their report to cross the interstellar gulfs, and the answer to come back. And their instructions had been a surprise. They were to attempt to establish contact with the Goompahs. They were to record conversations, if in fact these creatures actually conversed, and send the results back, where a team of linguists would work to break into the language. They were to get visuals of the creatures as they spoke, so that nonverbal cues could be included in the translation effort. And they were to provide whatever additional information they could to help ferret out meaning. And they were to do all this, preferably, while respecting the Protocol.

Preferably.

Bureaucratic double-talk.

Translation: Get the job done without compromising the Protocol. If you compromise the Protocol, and things go badly, you will be asked why you found it necessary to do so.

Markover knew Hutchins, had always thought he could trust her, but he’d been around too long not to understand how these things went.

There was good news: The air sample analyses they’d transmitted to Broadside had undergone additional tests. No dangerous bioagents had been found, and no toxins. That was no surprise: So far, experience indicated that diseases from one world generally had no effect on life-forms from another. (Just as creatures operating outside their own biosystem would have a hard time finding anything digestible.) They could, if necessary, operate for a short time outside the e-suits.

Jack and Winnie both had notebooks, which were, of course, equipped with audio recorders and projectors. These could be used as pickups. Kellie said she thought the ship could contribute three more units.

“So how do we go about this?” asked Winnie.

Jack could see only one way. “I think,” he said, “if you read between the lines, we just go down and say hello. See how they react.”

Digger reread the message. “That’s not what I see between the lines.”

“What do you see?”

“The message literally says that we can ignore the Protocol. But she’d like us to use our imagination and find a better way.”

Jack liked to think of himself as the kindly old director. Patient, easygoing, willing to listen. And to an extent he was correct. But it wasn’t true that he had no temper; he was simply quite good at not letting people see it. This business with Hutch’s message, though, was exactly the sort of thing that drove him up the wall. Because she was laying out contradictory propositions. If she could think of a way to accomplish what she wanted without talking directly to the Goompahs, why didn’t she say so? Or, if she couldn’t, why not just tell him flat out to take care of things. “Do you know of a better way?” he asked.

“No,” said Digger.

Winnie looked out the viewport, peering down into the sunstreaked atmosphere, as though she could find an answer out there somewhere.

“Well,” said Jack, “barring any other ideas, I think what we do is go down and say hello. See how they react. Then we plant some pickups so we can start recording their conversations.” He swung around in his seat and looked at the transmission again.

“FIRST THING WE want to do,” said Jack, “is to create an avatar. One of us to say hello.”

“All right,” said Winnie. “You don’t think we’d do better to have someone just step out and wave?”

“Too dangerous. Let’s see what they do when they see the avatar.” He looked around. “We need pictures of somebody who looks friendly.”

Winnie studied each of them as if that was no easy task. “Who do you suggest?”

“One of the women,” said Digger. “They’ll be less threatening.”

Kellie was watching him carefully, her nose wrinkled, trying to restrain a smile. “I think you’d be our best bet, Dig.”

“Me? Why?”

But he knew. Nobody had to say it. Digger possessed a slight approximation to their size and shape. He was a bit overweight, and somewhat less than average height.

“I think that’ll work fine,” said Jack. “So we let them take a look at the avatar. It waves and says hello, and if things go well, we shut off the visuals and, Digger, you step out of the underbrush and continue the conversation. Make friends on the spot.”

“First ambassador from Earth,” said Winnie.

Digger sucked in his belly.

Kellie beamed at him. “I’m proud of you, Dig.” She circled him, measuring his dimensions. “We should give him a large shirt. Yellow, I think. Green leggings. Nice floppy hat. Get you looking a little bit like one of the locals.”

That hurt. “You think I look like a Goompah?”

“No.” Kellie laughed and gave him a hug. “You’re cuter than they are. And you have a great smile.” She paused and must have seen he was embarrassed. Her tone changed: “Digger, you’re easy to like.” She gripped his arm. “If they’ll respond to any of us, it’ll be you.”

Digger conceded. “Doesn’t fool me for a minute,” he grumbled. “And I don’t waddle, you know.”

Kellie embraced him again. Longer this time. “We know that, Dig.” Her eyes told him she meant it. Or, if he did waddle, it didn’t matter to her. Either way, he guessed it was all right.

They produced the appropriate clothing, floppy everything, and he put it on, a bright yellow shirt that felt as if it was made from sailcloth, and baggy green leggings and sandals three sizes too big. Most of it, Kellie informed him, was made from blankets. The sandals had belonged to the previous skipper. A woman’s red hat, origin unknown, came out of storage. Looked as if it had been with the ship for years.

When he was dressed they took pictures of him. “Why not make me look like a Goompah?” he suggested. “Why stop here?”

He half expected someone to remark that he already did. But Jack, reading his mind, only smiled. “Because eventually,” he said, “we’ll have to be able to talk to them. The avatar needs to look like you. Not them.”

They made up the visuals and jury-rigged a projector by removing the heart of one of the VRs and connecting it to the power cells from a laser cutter. In the same way, they constructed three audiovisual pickups. They were clumsy and bigger than they’d have preferred. But the things worked, and that was sufficient for the moment. “All set,” said Kellie, after they’d tested everything.

Below, it was early morning on the isthmus, a couple of hours before dawn. “Who wants to come?” asked Jack.

“I guess I’m going,” said Digger.

And Kellie would pilot. “Winnie,” he said, “you hold the fort.”

She shook Digger’s hand solemnly as he started toward the cargo bay. Good luck, Dig, the body language said. I’m with you, kid.

THE CARGO BAY also served as the launch area. Digger’s pulse picked up a few notches as they descended through the ship. He was telling himself to relax, don’t worry, we’re about to make history. Hello, Goompahs.

The lander was a sleek, teardrop craft. It had less capacity than the older, boxy vehicles, but it provided a smoother ride. They climbed in, and Kellie started the launch process.

Jack began dispensing advice. He was a good guy, but he was a bit too helpful. If we decide it’s okay for you to show yourself, don’t make any sudden moves. Try to smile. Nonverbals are different from culture to culture, but the Noks and the Angels both recognize smiles, so it can’t hurt. Unless, of course, things are different here.

He continued in that vein despite all Digger’s efforts to change the subject, until finally Dig simply asked him to stop. “You’re getting me rattled,” he complained.

“I’m sorry. Listen, Dig, everything’ll be okay.”

Digger sat there in his native finery, feeling both foolish and scared. The Goompahs looked friendly. But he’d read about the Angels on Paradise, how harmless they’d looked, how angelic, before they tore two members of the Contact Society to shreds.

“I’m fine, Jack,” he said. “I just wish I knew the language.”

They dropped through a cloudless sky. The ground was dark despite innumerable individual lights. But they were mere sparks in the night, like distant stars, a few in the cities, some on the isthmus road, and a handful along the docks and on anchored ships.

They had no way of concealing the lander, and though Kellie turned off all the lights, they were nonetheless descending through a cloudless moonlit sky. Kellie, up front in the pilot’s seat, held up five fingers to signify everything was okay. “All in it together,” she said.

Jack sat lost in thought. “I wonder,” he said, “if we could do this strictly through the use of avatars.”

“How do you mean, Jack?” asked Digger.

“Produce a native avatar and stick with it. We stay out of sight altogether.”

Digger thought about it. “Eventually,” he said, “it would have to talk to them.”

Jack made a pained sound. The avatar could not be made spontaneous. It could be programmed to deliver lines, but unless they knew how the Goompahs would react, there was no way to have it respond to them.

“Just as well,” Jack said. “You look so good it would be a pity not to put you out there.” Har-har.

Digger sat in his chair, thinking how this was the gutsiest thing he’d done in his life. Except maybe for the time in high school when he’d gotten his courage together and asked Veronica Keating for a date. Veronica had passed—thanks but I’m tied up for the next couple years—but he’d tried. Next time out of the barn he’d done better. With somebody else, of course.

They picked up some wind as they descended. Digger would have liked to open a window to get a sense of what the sea and the forest smelled like. Of course, they couldn’t do that. The atmosphere was breathable, but it was oxygen-rich. He didn’t know what the effect of that would be over an extended period, but it couldn’t be good.

Jack was looking at the map, trying to decide where they should set down. “Here,” he said at last, indicating the isthmus road a short distance north of the city with the temple by the sea.

The temple, lost in darkness now, looked Greek. That made the city Athens. He smiled at the notion. Athenians as oversize green critters waddling around.

He couldn’t see anything out the windows other than the stars and the lights on the ground.

“You all set?” asked Jack, trying to relieve the tension.

“I’ll be okay.” He wasn’t used to riding in the lander with the navigation lights out. It was hard to say why, but it was disquieting, as if they were sneaking up on an enemy stronghold. Kellie had done something to render the vehicle quieter than usual, had made it virtually silent.

“Be on the ground in two minutes, gentlemen,” she said. “Activate your suits.”

Digger checked his harness and his converter, and complied. One advantage of a relatively earthlike atmosphere was that they didn’t have to haul air tanks around. The converter would provide an air supply from the existing atmosphere. Jack switched his on, and Digger momentarily caught the glow of the Flickinger field in the moment of ignition. Then it faded.

He activated his suit, pulled on a vest, attached his converter, and wondered briefly if he should have brought some trinkets to hand out to the natives.

Below, lanterns floated through the dark, spread out, and vanished. Trees rose around him. Kellie held the vehicle aloft for a moment to ensure that the ground was solid, then let the weight settle. They were down in a glade, the first streaks of light showing in the east.

IT WAS DIGGER’S first time on a world that could really be said to be alive. He squeezed Kellie’s shoulder and shook hands with Jack. They were now eligible to join the Corbin Society, whose membership was limited to people who had made a first landing on a world with life-forms big enough to be visible. The Society was named for the director of the Tarbell mission, who, forty-five years before, had been the first to look out a window across extraterrestrial soil and see a live animal. In his case, it had been a large reptile, still the biggest land creature on record. It had inspected, then tried to eat, the lander.

Kellie turned on her e-suit. Her voice sounded in his link. “It’s almost dawn. By the time we get out to the road, it should be daylight.”

Jack’s notebook would provide the projector. He pushed it into a vest pocket and handed the avatar disk to Digger. “You hang on to this,” he said.

Digger nodded, released his restraints, and started for the airlock.

Kellie got out of her seat and pocketed the second notebook. “You might want to use the washroom before we leave. It’ll be a while before we get back here.” Their e-suits had no provision for disposing of bodily waste. Attachments were available but no one saw any need for them on this trip. Just get out, go to the road, say hello, and see how the locals respond. Then hustle back to the lander. Simple enough.

THEY WENT THROUGH the airlock and stood momentarily in the outer hatch. There was some fluttering in the trees, and the steady clacking of insects, but otherwise the forest remained quiet. They switched on dark lights. Digger would have preferred a regular lamp, but who knew what might be wandering around in the woods.

“Everyone ready?” asked Jack, climbing down onto saw-tooth grass. He knelt, reacted with an ouch, and said, “Be careful. It’s sharp.”

In fact it was like a field of daggers. Digger squared his shoulders the way he had seen Jack Hancock do when facing danger in a dozen sims. He cautioned Kellie and stepped aside to let her pass. Then he fell in behind to bring up the rear.

They all wore pistols, just in case. Digger was qualified but unpracticed. He’d never before been on ground where there was a risk from local wildlife.

The line of trees was dark and quiet. Jack paused, looking for a break in the forest. Shrubbery, blossoms, vines, thorns, dead leaves, and misshapen trees crowded on them. Jack picked a spot and plunged in. Kellie followed, and Digger watched her plow through a spiderweb. Or something’s web. Digger remembered reading somewhere that, so far, spiders had been found only on Earth. Even safely enveloped in the Flickinger field, he felt queasy about them.

It was slow going. The vegetation was thick, and the e-suits provided no defense against thorns and needles. The road was less than a half klick away from the landing site, but after an hour’s time they were still struggling through heavy growth.

Winnie called from the ship twice to ask why it was taking so long. Jack, who usually stayed cool, told her that next time she should come and her grasp of the situation would improve.

Then he felt badly about growling at her and apologized. On his private circuit, he told Digger that he understood why she was worried, that anything could happen, that nobody really knew what kind of creatures might be loose in this forest.

That did nothing for Digger’s state of mind.

Through breaks in the canopy of overhead branches and leaves, they saw the ship, a bright star moving through the fixed constellations. That alone, he realized, in a low-tech culture, could be enough to cause a major reaction.

The eastern horizon was getting bright. Behind him, in the bushes, something moved, and there was a brief scuffle. But Digger never saw anything.

“Road,” said Jack.

At last. Digger came up beside him and looked out at it. It was really only a trail. But it had been laboriously cut through the forest, and it was wide enough for two wagons to pass side by side.

There was a low hill directly opposite. “He should stand up there,” said Jack, referring to the avatar. “On the crest. I’d say under the tree would be good.”

The tree looked more like an overgrown mushroom. Digger surveyed the area. To his left, north, the road proceeded another fifty meters or so before disappearing over the top of a hill. To his right, toward Athens, he could see for a considerable distance, maybe the length of a football field, before it curved off into the forest.

They crossed the road, climbed the hill, and hid themselves behind a clump of bushes with bright red blossoms. Digger handed over the disk, which Jack inserted into his notebook. “Test run, Holmes?” he asked.

“Indubitably, old chap.”

The notebook was equipped with a projector on its leading edge. Jack aimed it toward the tree, which was about ten meters away, and punched a button. Digger’s image, in green and gold and with his bright red hat, blinked on. He was standing a half meter in the air. Jack adjusted the picture, focused it, and brought the feet to Earth. Then he turned to Digger. “Okay,” he said. “I think we’re in business.”

THERE WERE GREEN trees, and pale gray growths like the big mushroom at the top of the hill. The wind sucked at them all, and when Digger closed his eyes, it sounded like any forest back home. Avery Whitlock had once written that all forests were alike in their essence, that there was a kind of universal forest that was a prerequisite for intelligent life. Wherever sentience is found, he’d predicted, it will have come to fruition in a deep wood.

Kellie produced the second notebook and assured Digger she would take pictures and record everything for his grandchildren. She apparently thought remarks like that would put everybody off the trail of what was really happening (or not happening) between the two of them. But Jack was too excited wondering what was going to come around the curve in one direction or over the hill in the other, to give a damn about onboard romance.

“Traffic on the road.” Winnie’s voice. As planned, she was watching through the ship’s scopes and satellites. (The ship by then was over the horizon and somewhere on the other side of the world.) As long as the sky stayed clear, the Jenkins would have them constantly in view. “Looks like two of them. And a cart.”

“Thanks, Winnie.”

“And a few more behind. Three on foot. And a second cart. Make that two, no, three, more carts. They’re coming from the south. About a half kilometer from you.”

Around the curve.

They waited, listening to the wind until they heard the sounds of creaking wheels, snorting, heavy clop-clops. And music. Pipes and stringed instruments, Digger thought. And thumping on a drum. And voices in allegro, maybe a little high-pitched.

The song, if that was what it was, lacked the easy rhythms of human melodies. “They’re not exactly Ben and the Warbirds,” Kellie observed.

Well, no. The voices were a bit lacking. But the critical news was that Digger hadn’t heard anything yet that wasn’t within the range of human capabilities.

“But you’ll need women to do it,” commented Kellie.

A large animal rounded the bend, hauling a cart, and lumbered toward them. It was one of the rhinos they’d spotted from orbit, big, heavy, with long tusks, and a body shaped like a barrel. The eyes were larger than a rhino’s, though; they were saucer-shaped and had the same sad expression that was so prominent a part of the inhabitants’ physiognomy. The eyes turned their way, and Digger got the distinct impression the beast could see them through their screen of shrubbery.

“Maybe it can smell us,” said Digger.

“No.” Kellie’s voice had gone flat. The way it might if she perceived danger. “Not through the e-suit.”

Jack activated the recorder in the notebook.

The cart was loaded with plants. Vegetables, maybe? Two Goompahs sat in the vehicle, singing at the top of their lungs. It was all off-key.

“I’m tempted to take my chances,” said Jack, “and just go out and say hello.”

“Don’t do it,” said Kellie.

And there came the three on foot. And the other three wagons. They were filled with passengers. Everybody was singing. They plucked on instruments that looked like lutes, blew into pipes, and pounded on the sides of the carts. They were having a roaring good time.

“They know how to travel,” said Kellie.

There were eleven Goompahs in all. “Too many,” said Jack. “Let them go.”

“Why?” asked Digger. “They’re in a good mood. Isn’t that what we want?”

“If they turn out to be hostile, there are too many. I want to be able to get clear if things take a bad turn.”

Some had mammaries. All were clumsy. Hadn’t evolution worked at all on this world? Digger couldn’t imagine how they’d avoided predators.

The convoy passed, gradually climbed to the crest of the hill and disappeared beyond.

TEN MINUTES LATER they got their chance. They heard the crunch of footsteps coming over the hill. A lone pedestrian appeared at the top. He carried a staff and swung it jauntily from side to side as he started down.

He wore boots and red leggings and a shirt made of hide. A yellow cap was pulled almost rakishly over one saucer eye. “Ladies’ man,” said Kellie.

The sky was clear. “Anybody else on the road?” Jack asked Winnie.

“Not anywhere near you.”

It struck Digger that the fact the creature was traveling alone said a great deal about the kind of society in which it lived. In early Europe, strolling about the highways without an armed escort would have been an exercise in recklessness.

Digger felt Kellie’s hand on his shoulder. Here we go.

Jack waited until the traveler was immediately adjacent. Then he switched on the projector. Digger’s avatar appeared gradually atop the crest opposite, as if striding up from the far side, paused on its summit, and waved.

The traveler swung his large head in the avatar’s direction. “Hello, friend,” the avatar said cheerfully, in English. “How are you doing?”

The Goompah stared.

The avatar raised its hand and waved again.

The Goompah’s eyes widened, grew enormous.

The avatar started slowly down the slope.

The Goompah growled and showed a set of incisors Digger hadn’t seen before. It retreated a step, but quickly found its back against a tree.

“How are you today?” the avatar asked. “What a lovely day this is. I just happened to be in the neighborhood and thought I’d pop by. Say hello.”

“Careful,” said Kellie.

The Goompah edged away from the tree, back in the direction from which it had come. It bowed its head, and Digger could see its lips moving although he couldn’t hear any sounds. It was, if he was reading the signs correctly, terrified.

“What’s happening?” asked Winnie.

Kellie told her to wait a minute.

The creature was shaking its head from side to side. It moaned and choked and spasmed. It threatened the avatar with its staff. It waved its hands, odd gestures, signs almost.

“This isn’t going well,” said Jack.

“Where are you headed, friend?” asked the avatar, oblivious of the effect it was having. “By the way, my name’s Digger.” It waved yet again, in the friendliest possible fashion.

The Goompah opened its mouth and said “Morghani,” or something very much like it. Then it turned and sprinted back the way it had come, moving far more quickly than Digger would have thought possible. It swayed wildly from side to side, tumbled but picked itself up without breaking stride, charged up the hill at the end of the road, and disappeared behind it.

When it was gone, the avatar said, “It’s been good talking with you.”

Kellie couldn’t resist snickering. “You are pretty fearsome,” she said, “now that I think of it.”

DIGGER THOUGHT THEY should go back to the lander and rethink things. But getting back there would be a battle, and Kellie told him he was giving up too easily. Jack agreed and that was the vote that counted.

“The problem,” Jack argued, “was that the image wasn’t responsive. The thing got scared, and the avatar can’t shrug, and say, ‘Hey buddy, it’s okay, don’t worry.’ ”

“But who here can speak Goompah?” asked Digger.

“Don’t have to,” said Jack. “All we need is a rational reaction. A sign that we can deal with them on a one-to-one basis. Nonverbals will do it.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“We dispense with the avatar.”

IT DIDN’T MATTER. The second attempt, with Digger in the flesh trying to be friendly, went pretty much the same way. They passed on a couple of single travelers, selecting instead a group of four, bouncing along in a wagon pulled by one of the rhinos. Should have been enough to grant a sense of security to the proceedings. But they took one look at Digger, the real Digger, safely perched atop his hill so that a quick retreat was feasible, and went screaming back down the road, abandoning their wagon and the rhino.

“Well,” he told Kellie, “I’m beginning to wonder if I’m not quite as charming as I always thought.”

“Eye of the beholder,” she said, turning to Jack. “What do we do now?”

“I’m not sure.”

“How about walking in through the front door? Just stroll right into the city.”

“I don’t think so.”

He asked Winnie to send a report to Hutch, informing her that initial attempts at contact had been unsuccessful.

“Do you want to say that we’ll try again?”

“Yes,” he said, but Digger knew that tone. He’d decided it wasn’t a good idea.

“Having successfully completed phase one,” said Kellie, “we should turn our attention to figuring out how to plant the pickups.”

They brought up images of the cities and looked through them one by one. All had waterfront areas, and that’s where the shops tended to be. And where the population clustered. “I say we go into downtown Athens,” Digger said. “How many pickups do we have? Six?”

“Five,” said Kellie. “Including the notebooks.”

There was one other assignment: The Academy wanted information on Goompah nutrition. During the past two weeks, they’d seen the Goompahs eating a variety of fruits, vegetables, meat, and fish. (At least, that’s what it looked like through the telescopes.) Some of the fruit they’d seen hung on trees in their immediate area. Red pears, large golden melons that looked delicious, small silver apples. They picked up samples of everything.

In addition to buildings that appeared to be ordinary cabins or dwellings for housing individuals or small families, there were structures clearly intended to be living quarters, but they were big, rambling places, with wings and upper floors, large enough to provide shelter to fifty or more. And the places looked occupied and busy.

When they had seen enough, they retired to the lander to await the coming of dark.

IT DIDN’T TAKE long. A twenty-two-hour rotational period created a short day. Jack napped, while Kellie watched for intruders and Digger watched Kellie. But the woods stayed quiet, and the afternoon passed without incident. Winnie informed them that there was still occasional traffic on the highway, in case they “wanted to try again.” She sounded serious. Digger half expected that the palace guard and the local militia would arrive to put a volley of arrows into whatever the thing was that had been seen terrifying travelers along the isthmus road. But the area remained quiet, and Winnie observed nothing that looked like a militia response.

Clouds gathered, and rain began to fall. By sunset it was a steady downpour. Ideal weather for strange creatures that needed to get out and do some lurking.

When night came, it grew absolutely dark. Back-of-the-basement locked-in-the-storage-bin dark. There wasn’t a speck of light out there anywhere. There was no way to judge, of course, the quality of the locals’ ability to see at night, but they did have large eyes.

Jack, however, had a substantial advantage: night goggles. Kellie got them out of the supply locker, and ten minutes later the lander, operating in silent mode, drifted through heavy rain over Athens and its harbor.

Athens was medium-sized, compared with the other Goompah cities. It was located on the eastern side of the isthmus. Four piers jutted out into the harbor, where a few ships lay at anchor. Tumbledown storage facilities lined the waterfront. Lights flickered in one or two of them. The streets were deserted. “A part of Athens you don’t usually hear about,” said Digger.

Jack smiled in the glow of the instrument panel. “Nobody uses Doric columns to build warehouses,” he said. His tone suggested it was wisdom for the ages.

Kellie brought them down alongside one of the piers. Jack turned in his seat and looked back at Digger. “Listen, if you want, I’m willing to do this.”

Digger would have been happy to turn the job over to him. But Kellie would never have approved, would have seen it as an act of cowardice. Jack was not young, was slow afoot, and would have a difficult time if the mission went wrong. This was a rare chance for Digger to show off. And he suspected there was no real danger. Goompahs were terrified of him, so what did he have to fear? “You don’t have the build,” he said laconically. “Or the clothes.”

He stuffed the pickups and the notebooks into a bag and headed for the airlock. “Be careful,” Kellie said. She surprised him with a quick embrace.

He slipped through the hatch, looked around, saw nothing moving, and stepped out onto the pier.

The sea was high, and the wind tried to push him into the water. The e-suit kept him comfortable but he knew it was cold out there.

He signaled to Kellie, and she began to pull away. “Good luck, Champ,” she said.

Digger hurried off the pier and slipped into a narrow street. There were small wooden buildings on either side, mostly sheds. But there was noise ahead: music and loud gargling sounds and pounding like the pounding he’d heard on the road. He rounded a corner and saw an open-front café.

It was half-empty, but the Goompahs inside were drinking, eating, dancing, and having a good time. The café was located in a dreary four-story stone building. A stout wooden canopy was erected to protect daytime patrons from the sun. He stood beneath it, peering into the interior, when two Goompahs he had not seen passed behind him and wandered into the café without giving him a second look.

He strolled closer, squeezing down inside his shirt and pulling his wide-brimmed hat down over his face.

The pickups, because they were jury-rigged, were of different sizes and shapes. Each had a strip of adhesive affixed that would allow him to attach it to a flat surface.

The café was an ideal spot, and the obvious flat surface was in the juncture of cross-fitting wooden beams supporting the canopy. Digger wandered casually close to it, and was able to stay out of sight of the customers while he put one of the notebooks in place. He’d have preferred to install it higher, where it would be less visible and out of everyone’s reach. But it was reasonably well hidden, and he thought it would probably be okay for a while.

He withdrew into the shadows and away from the noise. “Jack,” he said. “I just planted number four. How’s it look?”

“Good. Perfect. One thing, we won’t have any problem hearing them.”

The area was lined with wooden stalls hung with skins. Rain poured down on them. Somewhere, down the street and around a corner, there was more noise. Another drinking establishment, obviously. He tried to look in a couple of the shops, but they were locked.

The streets were becoming a swamp. Occasionally, figures hurried along, bundled against the downpour, too intent on keeping dry to think much about strangers. One of these came out from behind a wall without warning and almost collided with Digger. The creature said something, glanced at him, and its eyes went wide. Digger smiled back and said, “Hi,” in his best falsetto.

The creature shrieked.

Digger broke into a run, turned left behind a shed, cut across a muddy expanse of open ground, and found himself in a quiet street of stone-and-brick houses. He listened for a long moment, heard sounds of commotion behind him, but there was no evidence of pursuit.

“How you doing?” asked Kellie. He jumped at the sound of the voice.

“I just crashed into one of them.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I never kid. I think the thing saw enough of me to realize I wasn’t a local.” He couldn’t altogether keep the pride out of his voice.

“Are you okay now?”

He found an alley and turned into it. “I think so.”

“If he gets too curious, just show him what you really look like.”

“Har, har.” The sounds behind him were dying down. And the street remained empty.

“Maybe you should just plant the pickups and get back here.”

“Relax,” he said. “Everything’s under control.” But something was coming. Two animals, large-jawed, trimmer than the rhinos, sort of like fat horses. Two Goompahs rode them, bent against the storm. He hurried to the other end of the alley and came out on a street that was given over to more shops.

He found occasional bits of vegetable and meat or fish lying about. He recovered them and dropped them into sample bags, grateful for the Flickinger field that prevented his having to touch them. Some of the stuff looked repulsive.

He broke into a storage building, found an office, and planted one of Kellie’s pickups. He got it up on a shelf, between vases, where it seemed relatively safe. The truth was that none of these devices could really be hidden. Later, when the shipment they’d been promised from Broadside showed up, they’d be working with units not much bigger than coins.

He hid the third pickup in a tree near a meat shop. And the fourth in a park, aimed at a couple of benches.

Two blocks away, there were buildings whose architecture had been taken seriously and which were therefore probably either public or religious. Or both.

Several of them had signs outside. The signs contained some hand-drawn pictures, of Goompahs, and of a boat, and, on another, of a torch. There was writing on all of them, delicate, slender characters that reminded him of Arabic.

He took pictures, then tried a door. It opened, and he stepped into a long, high-ceilinged hallway. No lights anywhere. No sounds.

The floor might have been made of marble. The walls were dark-stained wood, and suggested that the authorities were not without resources. Several sets of large doors lined the corridor. He opened one and looked in.

It might have been a theater-in-the-round. Or possibly an auditorium. A platform stood in the center of a large room, surrounded by several hundred oversize seats.

Perfect. Digger found a column, climbed atop a seat, and attached the last pickup, the remaining notebook, as high as he could, aiming it at the platform.

They tested it on the lander, and Jack pronounced it satisfactory.

Time to go back.

THE RAIN HAD finally stopped, and Digger was within a block of the waterfront, moving through the shadows, when a pair of doors directly across the street banged open, light spilled into the night, and a crowd began to pile out. It was too late to duck, so he tried to squeeze down, to minimize his height, and kept going. But several were looking at him already. And the voices died off completely. “I’ve attracted attention, Jack.”

“You need help?”

Sure. A lot of help Jack would be. “No. Stay put. I think they they’re wondering about my size.”

“Yeah. It’s probably not de rigueur in that neighborhood.”

Digger wished he had a bigger collar to pull up. He stared at the street and kept walking, but he could feel their eyes on him until he got past them. He wanted to break into a run. He heard nothing behind him. No movement, no sound. It was eerie.

A Goompah appeared in front, coming in his direction. On the same side of the street. There was no way to get around him, no way to avoid being seen. The Goompah’s eyes reacted, in a reflex that was becoming painfully familiar. It squealed, turned, and fled. The shriek triggered the crowd, which joined in the screaming, but they were coming after him. Something sailed past his head.

That put Digger in the impossible position of seeming to chase the fleeing Goompah, whose cries must have been audible all over the waterfront.

They reached the end of the street, the Goompah barreling along in abject terror, Digger right on its heels. It turned right, the direction Dig needed to go to get to the pier where the rendezvous was to take place. But the creature, out of its mind with fear, fell down and rolled out of the way.

Digger was distancing the crowd. “Jack,” he said, “pier in three minutes.”

ALL FIVE PICKUPS passed their field tests, and they were recording that night. Digger watched and listened with satisfaction as the day’s customers haggled and pleaded, criticized and pressed their hands to the tops of their skulls in dismay. They watched a supervisor behind a desk working with subordinates and occasionally reporting to others to whom he was responsible. They watched young Goompahs romp in a park while older ones sat on benches and carried on animated conversations. And they watched a seminar of some sort conducted from the stage in the public building. Digger was surprised how easy it became to interpret substantial passages of the conversation.

Meantime a fresh transmission came in from Hutch. When Jack saw it, he ran it for all of them.

“Help is coming. The al-Jahani will have left by the time you receive this. Dave Collingdale is heading up the operation, and he needs as much information as you can get him. Particularly anything that will allow him to gain access to the language.

“Also, we’re dispatching the Cumberland from Broadside to take supplies and equipment to you. It’ll take off anybody who wants to go home. But it won’t be able to leave for a few days yet. It looks as if it’ll be about seven weeks before you’ll see it. I hate to ask this of you, but it’s essential that we keep somebody at the scene to learn whatever we can. So I need you to hang on there until it arrives. I know that’s not exactly the mission plan, and it’s an inconvenience to you. But you’ll understand this is a special circumstance.

“Also, I need to know what you want to do. We have to maintain an Academy presence until the al-Jahani gets there. But that won’t be until December. Do you want to stay on? Or do you want me to organize a relief mission? Jack, I’d prefer to have you stay, but I understand if you feel enough is enough. Let me know.

“The Cumberland will be carrying shipments of lightbenders and pickups. Plant as many of the devices as you can. It’s essential that we get the language down.

“All data relating to the Goompahs should be designated for relay by Broadside directly to the al-Jahani, and I’d appreciate it if you included me as an information addee.

“Thanks, guys. I know this doesn’t make you happy, but if it means anything, I’m grateful.”

There was a long silence when the Academy logo appeared on-screen. They looked at one another, and Kellie grinned. “The aliens are lunatics,” she said. “And the cloud is coming. Is there anyone who wants to go home?”

It wasn’t exactly what Digger had hoped to hear.

IN FACT, THERE was one. “I don’t plan to spend the next year or so of my life out here,” Winnie told Jack. “It’d be different if there were something constructive I could do. But I’m not needed. I’m ready to head out.”

So was Digger. But Kellie wouldn’t be leaving, so he wasn’t about to go anyplace. Digger let her see that he wanted to stay on, wanted to be part of a major achievement, and all that. The truth was, he wanted Kellie, and everything else was a sideshow. But with Kellie watching, he had no choice but to play the selfless hero. He knew her too well and understood clearly what would happen to her respect for him if he didn’t stand up and do his duty.

He wished, as a compromise, he could think of a way to persuade Jack to go back to Broadside while he stayed here with Kellie. Don’t worry about the details, big fella. We’ll take care of anything that comes up. You go ahead and take some time off.

LIBRARY ENTRY

“You should never talk to strangers, Shalla.”

“Why not, Boomer? Some of the nicest people I know are strangers.”

“But if you know them, they’re not strangers.”

“Oh.”

“Do you see what I mean?”

“Not really, Boomer. I mean, you were a stranger once. Should I not have spoken to you?”

“Well, that’s different.”

“How?”

“I’m a nice person.”

“But how can I find out if I don’t talk to you?”

“I’m not sure, Shalla. But I know it’s not a good idea.”

— The Goompah Show

All-Kids Network

March 19

chapter 12

On board the Jenkins, in orbit around Lookout.

Wednesday, March 19.

BILL DID AN overnight analysis of the food samples and told Digger he probably wouldn’t like any of the local cuisine. They forwarded the results to Broadside and the al-Jahani.

They were having breakfast in the common room when Winnie carried her tray in. “I just saw something odd,” she said, sitting down at the table with the other three. “There’s a parade of some sort out on the road. Near where you were yesterday.”

“Really?” Jack rolled up a biscuit, dipped it into his egg yolk, and finished it off. “How do you mean, a parade?”

“Well, not really a parade. But a bunch of locals look as if they’re headed for the spot where you showed up.”

“Are you serious?” asked Digger.

“They’re coming from the north. About twenty of them. The guy in front is wearing a black robe.”

“They’re probably just going through to Athens,” said Digger.

Jack looked interested. “It’s the first black robe we’ve seen. These folks like bright colors.”

Kellie had been trying to finish her breakfast without getting caught up in the latest bout of Goompah mania. But she sighed. “You think they came to see where the critter was?”

“Maybe. There’s a bunch of wagons parked up the road a bit. We didn’t have coverage this morning because of clouds, but I think these guys rode in on them. There are still a few back there. With the wagons. Looks as if they’re waiting,”

“Bill—?” said Jack.

The screen lit up. There was indeed a Goompah in a black robe. He was approaching the spot where the avatar had appeared. Approaching in the sense, Digger thought, that he was coming up on it with great care. The crowd was trailing, but giving him plenty of room.

He carried a staff, and when he’d reached the spot on the road in closest proximity to the hill on which the avatar had stood, he stopped, planted the staff, leaned on it, and appeared to survey his surroundings. After a minute he looked behind, and one of the onlookers came forward. There was a conversation and some pointing.

“Looks as if Digger may have stirred something up,” Jack said.

Right. Digger did it.

A cloud drifted into the field of view.

“What do you think?” asked Kellie.

“It looks ceremonial.”

Winnie wondered whether anybody recognized any of the Goompahs.

Digger smothered a laugh. “They all look alike. Can you tell them apart?”

“I haven’t seen them up close. Not the way you have. I thought you might recognize one of the guys you talked to yesterday.” She put a slight emphasis on the verb, and she was obviously talking about the one who had been traveling alone and whom Digger now saw was indeed there, carrying a javelin.

“I have no idea,” Digger said.

“He’s saying something,” said Kellie, meaning the one in the robe.

“I think he’s singing,” said Jack. “We should have left a pickup in the area.”

The marchers spread out on either side of the black robe, forming an arc centering on him.

“It’s a chant,” said Winnie. “Look at them.” They had all begun doing a kind of coordinated swaying.

“They’re looking for me,” said Digger.

Jack leaned forward, intrigued. Digger, whose training should have produced the same curiosity, felt only a chill. “It’s a religious ceremony,” Jack said.

“Maybe we need to go back down,” said Winnie. “Explain to them it’s okay.”

Kellie’s eyes shone. “I’ll be damned,” she said. “They think they saw a god.”

“I doubt it,” said Jack.

The one in the robe shook down long sleeves and pulled a hood over his head. The javelin was held out for him to take. He made signs over it, lifted it, and waved it in a threatening gesture at the top of the hill. The chant ended.

Everyone stood quietly for another minute or so. Then he climbed the hill while the others watched with—Digger thought—no small degree of anxiety, and came finally to the spot where the avatar had stood. The one who’d been on the road, who’d carried the weapon, called out to him and he moved a couple of steps to his right. They seemed to agree that was the correct location. And without further delay, he brandished the javelin with practiced ease and plunged it into the ground.

He made more signs, drew his hands together, and looked at the sky. They all bowed their heads and closed their eyes. Their lips moved in unison. One of them crept up the hill and recovered the javelin. And they withdrew.

Down the hill and back along the road until they reached the waiting wagons. Into the wagons and headed north.

“I think,” said Digger, “we’ve just seen a declaration of war.”

Jack was still looking ecstatic. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I believe we’ve just watched an exorcism.”

THEY SPENT MUCH of the next few days watching and listening to Goompah conversations. Winnie hung a sign on the bulkhead that said It’s Greek to me. Each of the five channels allotted to the pickups had been routed in, but one had gone inactive. They’d seen a Goompah hand close over it, and then for a while all they could see was the grass. And finally the unit shut down. Somebody had probably hit it with a stick.

But they still had four links.

They listened and marked down phonetic impressions and bounced phrases off each other while Bill recorded everything, collapsed the signals into compressed transmissions, and fired them off every six hours by way of Broadside to the al-Jahani.

The language seemed straightforward enough. Some of the sounds were odd, lots of grunts and gargles, a load of aspirates and diphthongs. And nobody rolled their l’s like these guys. There was an overall harshness to the diction, but Digger didn’t hear much that a human tongue couldn’t reproduce. And they’d even deciphered a couple of words.

Challa, collanda appeared to be the universal greeting. Two Goompahs met, morning or evening, male or female, it didn’t seem to matter: “Challa, collanda,” they would say.

Hello, friend. Kellie took to greeting her passengers with it, and soon they were all using it. Challa, Jack.

Digger discovered the sheer pleasure in reproducing some of the sounds he was hearing. He could roll his l’s and grunt with the best of them. He also began to discover something he hadn’t known about himself: He had a facility for language. Next time he ran into some Goompahs he’d be ready. He wondered if things might have gone a bit differently had he been able to raise his hand and, in his jolliest demeanor, send the proper greeting: “Challa, collanda.”

But there wouldn’t be a next time. Lightbenders were on the way, so when they went back down to set up more listening posts they’d be invisible.

Well, there was nothing to be done about it now. But he knew he’d be tempted to walk up to one of the Goompahs, no more than a voice in the wind, and say hello. Just whisper it and watch him jump.

He’d never worn a lightbender. They were prohibited to private ownership. A few had gotten out and become invaluable tools for criminals. But there was a National Lightbender Association claiming that people had a constitutional right to the devices. It struck Digger that once they became generally available everyone would have to wear infrared glasses to protect himself. Even imagining himself invisible bestowed a sense of both power and recklessness.

About a week after they’d gone down to the surface, Jack announced that a message had arrived from the Academy. “We’ve got something else to look for,” he said.

Hutch’s image appeared on-screen.

“Jack,” she said, “This is a hedgehog.” The screen divided and produced a picture of an object with triangular spikes sticking out all over it. An accompanying scale indicated it was six and a half kilometers in diameter.

“To date, we have three reports of these objects. We have no idea what they are or what their purpose is. We do know that one of them exploded while it was being inspected by the Quagmor. If you can take a look around without compromising your main objectives, please do so. We’d like very much to know if your cloud has one. It’ll be directly out front, running on the same course, at the same speed. The ranges between the objects and the clouds have varied out to sixty thousand klicks.

“So far, the things are identical. They have 240 sides. Lots of right angles. If you see one, keep a respectful distance. Don’t go near it. We don’t want an inspection; we just want to know whether it’s there.” She allowed herself a smile but Digger could see she was dead serious. “Thanks,” she said. “Be careful. We don’t want to lose anybody else.”

The hedgehog remained a few seconds after Hutch’s image blanked, and then it, too, was gone, replaced by the Academy logo.

All those spines. Like stalagmites. But with flat tips. “What is it?” asked Winnie. “Do they have any idea?”

“You heard as much as I did,” said Jack.

Kellie looked thoughtful. “I’ll tell you what it might be,” she said. “It looks designed to attract the clouds. Maybe somebody’s been using them to get rid of the damn things. A cloud shows up and you give it a whatzis to chase.”

They all looked at her. “It’s possible,” said Digger. “That might be it.”

Kellie’s eyes shone. It was a pleasure to be first to solve a puzzle.

“Well,” said Jack, “let’s go see if we’ve got one.”

THE CLOUD’S SHAPE had changed during the few weeks since they’d first seen it. It had become distorted, and was throwing jets forward and to one side, blown off by gee forces as it continued to decelerate and to turn. At the rate the thing was braking, Digger had trouble understanding how it managed to hold together at all. He was not a physicist, but he knew enough to conclude that the stability of the gas and dust, in the face of those kinds of stresses, demonstrated that this was no natural phenomenon. There were widespread claims by mystics, and even some physicists, who should know better, that the omegas were an evolutionary step, a means by which the galaxy protected itself from the rise of the supercivilization, the one entity that could raise havoc, that could eventually take control and force it away from its natural development.

It was a notion very much in play these days, fitting perfectly with the idea that the present universe was simply a spark in a vast hypersky, one of countless universes, afloat in a cosmos that was perhaps itself an infinitesimal part of an ever-greater construct. Grains of sand on a beach that was a grain on a much bigger beach.

Where did it all end?

Well, however that might be, the omega clouds were too sophisticated to have developed naturally.

“How do you know?” asked Kellie, sitting quietly looking out at the monster, while Digger went on about stars and universes.

He explained. How it held together. How it had long-range sensors far better than anything the Jenkins had. How it had spotted Athens from a range of 135 billion kilometers when they couldn’t find it from orbit.

She listened, nodding occasionally, apparently agreeing. But when he’d finished, she commented that there were people around who’d argue that Digger couldn’t have happened simply as a result of natural evolution. “I think,” she said, “you’re doing the argument from design.”

“I suppose. But this is different.”

“How?”

“It’s on a bigger scale.”

“Dig, that’s only a difference in degree. Size doesn’t count.”

He couldn’t find an adequate response. “You think these things are natural objects?”

“I don’t know.” The cloud was misshapen, plumes thrown forward and to one side. It was a dark squid soaring through the night. “I’m keeping my mind open.” Neither spoke for a minute. Then she said, “I’m not sure which scares me more.”

“Which what?”

“Which explanation. Either they’re natural, which leads to the conclusion that the universe, or God, however you want to put it, doesn’t approve of intelligence. Or they’re built and set loose. That means somebody who’s very bright has gone to a lot of trouble to kill every stranger he can find.”

AT THEIR CURRENT range, Lookout’s sun was only a bright star.

The Jenkins had begun a sweep when it had approached within 12 million klicks of the cloud. They moved steadily closer over the next three days but saw nothing.

On the fourth day of the hunt Kellie suggested they terminate.

“You’re sure there’s nothing there?” said Jack.

“Absolutely. There are a few rocks but that’s it. Nothing remotely resembling the dingus.” She waited for instructions.

“Okay.” Jack’s attitude suggested the hell with it. “Let’s go back to Lookout.”

Kellie directed them to belt down and began angling the Jenkins onto its new course. It was going to be a long turn and they’d be living with gee forces for the better part of a day. Consequently, she wasn’t particularly happy. “If I’d used my head,” she told Digger, “I’d have arranged things differently. We could have been on a more efficient course at the end of the pattern. But I assumed we were going to find something.”

“So did I,” he said. “If you’re right, though, that the hedgehogs are lures, they won’t be everywhere. Only close to clouds that are threatening something their makers are interested in.”

Jack sent off a message to Hutch, information copies to the al Jahani: “No hedgehog at Lookout. Returning to orbit.”

While they made the long swing, they decided to watch a sim together, and Kellie, at their request, brought up a haunted house thriller. Digger didn’t have much taste for horror, but he went along. “Scares me though,” he told them, making a joke of it, as if the idea were ridiculous, but in fact it did. He took no pleasure watching a vampire operate, and there’d been times even here, in the belly of a starship, maybe especially here, when he’d gone back through a dimly lit corridor to his quarters after that kind of experience and heard footsteps padding behind him.

The problem with the superluminal was that, even though it was an embodiment of modern technology, a statement that the universe is governed by reason, a virtual guarantee that demons and vampires do not exist, it was still quite small. Almost claustrophobic. A few passageways and a handful of rooms, with a tendency toward shadows and echoes. It was a place you couldn’t get away from. If something stalked you through the ship’s narrow corridors, there would be nowhere to run.

His problem, he knew, was that he suffered from an overabundance of imagination. Always had. It was the quality that had drawn him into extraterrestrial assignments. Digger was no coward. He felt he’d proved it by going down on Lookout and sticking his head up. He’d worked on a site in the middle of the Angolan flare-up, had stayed there when everybody else ran. On another occasion he’d gotten a couple of missionaries away from rebels in Zampara, in northern Africa, by a mixture of audacity, good sense, and good luck. But he didn’t like haunted houses.

The plot always seemed to be the same: A group of adolescents looking for an unusual place to hold a party decide to use the abandoned mansion in which there reportedly had been several ghastly murders during the past half century. (It wasn’t a place to which Digger would have gone.)

There was always a storm, rain beating against the windows, and doors opening and closing of their own volition. And periodically, victims getting cornered by whatever happened to be loose in the attic.

He tried to think about other things. But the creaking doors, the wild musical score, and the tree branches scraping against the side of the house kept breaking through. Jack laughed through much of the performance, and energetically warned the actors to look out, it’s in the closet.

Midway through, strange noises come from upstairs. Shrieks. Groans. Unearthly cries. Two of the boys decide, incredibly, they will investigate. Only in the sims, Digger thinks. But he wants them to stay together. The boy in the lead is tall, good-looking, with a kind of wistful innocence. The kid next door. Despite the silliness of the proceedings, Digger’s heart is pounding as he and his companion climb the circular staircase, while the tempo builds to a climax. As they arrive at the top, another shriek rips through the night. It comes from behind the door at the end of the hallway.

The door opens, apparently unaided, and Digger sees a shadowy figure seated in an armchair facing a window, illuminated only by the flickering lightning. The second boy, prudently, is dropping behind.

Stay together. Digger shakes his head, telling himself it’s all nonsense. No sensible kids would do anything like this. And if they did, they’d certainly stick close to each other.

And he found himself thinking about the hedgehog. They’d overlooked the obvious.

“WHAT WOULD IT be doing way out there?” asked Jack.

Digger has used a cursor to indicate where he thought the object could be found. “We assumed the cloud and the hedgehog were a unit. Where one goes, the other follows. But here, we’ve got a cloud that has thrown a right turn.

“The cloud’s been turning and slowing down for a long time. Maybe over a year. But there’s no reason to assume the hedgehog wouldn’t keep going.”

“Original course and velocity?” said Jack.

“Probably.”

“Why would it do that?” asked Winnie.

“Why any of this? I don’t know. But I bet if we check it out, we’ll find it where the cloud would have been if it hadn’t decided to go for a walk.”

Kellie’s dark eyes touched him. Go to it, big boy.

“Why not take a look?” he asked. “It’s not as if we have to be anywhere tomorrow.”

THEY FOUND IT precisely where Digger had predicted. It was moving along at a few notches under standard omega velocity. As if the great cloud still trailed behind.

LIBRARY ENTRY

The discovery of escort vehicles with the omegas reveals just how little research has been done over the past thirty years on this critical subject. What other surprises are coming? And how many more lives will be sacrificed to bureaucratic inertia?

— The London Times

March 23

chapter 13

On board the Heffernan, near Alpha Pictoris, 99 light-years from Earth.

Friday, April 4.

THE PICTORIS HEDGEHOG made it six for six. They all have one.

It was twenty-eight thousand kilometers in front of the cloud. Its diameter was the standard six and a half kilometers. “Report’s away,” Emma said.

Sky didn’t like going anywhere near the damned thing. But they’d asked for volunteers, told him they’d probably be okay, but to be careful, don’t take any unnecessary chances, and keep your head down. Emma had said not to hesitate on her account, and the Heffernan was the only ship in the neighborhood.

Ordinarily Sky loved what he did for a living. He enjoyed cruising past ringed giants, lobbing probes into black holes, delivering people and supplies to the ultimate out-of-the-way places. But he didn’t like the clouds. And he didn’t like the hedgehogs. They were things that didn’t belong.

They were far enough away from Pictoris that the only decent illumination on the object was coming from their probe.

“Its magnetic field matches the signature of the other objects,” said Bill.

“Ajax is ready to go,” said Emma.

There was no known entry hatch anywhere, so Drafts would have chosen a spot at random. Which is what the Heffernan would do.

Emma and Sky were looking forward to celebrating their sixteenth anniversary the next day, although they hadn’t been married precisely sixteen years. Participating in experiments with the new hypervelocity sublight thrust engines had alternately speeded them up and slowed them down, or maybe just one or the other. He’d never been able to figure out relativity. He just knew the numbers didn’t come together in any way he could understand. But it didn’t matter. He’d had a lot of time with Emma, and he was smart enough to appreciate it. She’d told him once, when they were still a few months from their wedding, and were eating dinner at the Grand Hotel in Arlington, that he should enjoy the moment because the day would come when they’d give anything to be able to return to that hour and relive that dinner.

It was true, of course. Everything was fresh and young then. They hadn’t yet learned to take each other for granted. When he was tempted to do so now, he reminded himself that the life he had wouldn’t be forever, and if he couldn’t go back to the Grand Hotel when his romance with Emma was still new, when the entire world was young and all things seemed possible, it was equally true that he’d remember the hedgehog, and how they’d stood on the bridge together, watching it come close, a piece of hardware put together by God knew what, for purposes no one could imagine. A bomb. But it was still a moment that he savored, because he knew that, like the Grand Hotel, he would one day give much to be able to return.

Sixteenth anniversary. How had it all gone by so quickly?

“Relativity.” She laughed.

“Recommend Ajax launch,” said Bill.

“Okay, Bill. Keep in mind that we want it to snuggle up very gently. Just kiss it, right?”

“Just a smooch,” said Bill. He appeared beside them, wearing a radiation suit and a hard hat. Protection against explosions. His idea of a joke.

“Okay,” Sky said. “Launch Ajax.”

Warning lamps blinked. The usual slight tremor ran through the ship. “Ajax away. Time to intersection: thirty-three minutes.”

“Okay, Bill. Let’s leave town.”

THEY ACCELERATED OUT. Sky directed the AI to maintain jump capability, which required firing the main engines throughout the sequence to build and hold sufficient charge in the Hazeltines.

It was the first time in all these years that he’d been in this kind of situation, not knowing well in advance whether he’d have to jump.

“Out of curiosity—” she said.

“Yes?”

“On the jump, can you override Bill? If you had to?” The jump engines couldn’t be used until they were charged. That usually required twenty-eight minutes off the main engines. Any attempt to do a jump prior to that risked initiating an antimatter explosion, and consequently would be refused by the AI.

“We could do a manual start if something happened to Bill.”

“You know,” she said, “I suspect that’s what the hedgehog is loaded with, too.”

“Antimatter?”

“Yes. That would explain the magnetic field.”

“In what way?” asked Sky.

“Containment envelope. It’s probably what happened to Drafts. He did something that impaired its integrity.”

Sky shook his head. Who’d have expected anything like that out here?

EMMA WAS AN astrophysicist. When he’d warned her that marrying someone who took a superluminal out for months at a time might not be a smart move for her, she’d said okay, that she’d really wanted a tall blond guy anyhow, good-bye. And he’d tried to recover ground, said he wasn’t entirely serious, didn’t want to lose her, just wanted to be sure she knew what she was getting into.

It had taken almost two years to get the joint assignment to the Heffernan, but it had happened, largely because the Academy had a policy of trying to keep its captains happy.

They were both on the bridge, sharing, after all these years, their first moment of danger. The danger was remote, fortunately, but it added a dash of spice to the experience.

“Ajax has closed to four klicks,” said Bill. “Contact in eleven minutes.”

They could see Ajax, which looked like an insect, wings and legs spread, angling toward the spiked surface.

“Is it going to work?” asked Sky.

“If it’s what we think it is, Ajax will find the frequency and interfere with the magnetic belt. That should be enough. If it isn’t, it’ll start cutting the thing up with its lasers. One way or another, yes, it should work.”

Sky listened to the innumerable sounds the ship’s systems routinely make, whispers and sighs and clicks and the ongoing background thrum of the engines, boosting them to ever-higher velocities.

They talked occasionally about retirement, about her getting a job at home, maybe having the child they’d always promised themselves. Can’t really do that if you’re bottled up inside a container all the time. Virtual beaches are all right for adults, but a kid needs real sand.

Emma, reading his thoughts, nodded. “Time for something new?” she suggested.

“I don’t know,” he said uncertainly.

“There is this, Sky. Where else could we be this useful?”

Can’t hug her. Not while under acceleration. So he reached over and took her hand.

“Five minutes,” said Bill. “We are ready to jump on command.”

One of the screens carried the cloud, its image captured live through the telescopes. Sky thought the omegas possessed an ethereal kind of beauty. Not this one, because it was too dark, there wasn’t enough light hitting it. But when they got lit up by sunlight, they were actually very striking. He grinned at the unintentional pun.

Emma couldn’t see it. She thought they were the embodiment of pure malevolence. A demonstration that there were devils loose in the universe. Not the supernatural kind, of course. Something far worse, something that really existed, that had left its footprint among the stars, that had designed booby traps and sent them out to kill strangers.

Sky had grown up with the notion that evil inevitably equated to stupidity. The symbol of that idea was embodied in the fact that superluminals were not armed, that no one (other than fiction writers) had ever thought of mounting a deck gun on an interstellar vessel.

It was a nice piece of mythology. But mythology was all it was.

“Two minutes.” Bill loved doing countdowns. There was a picture of him on the auxiliary screen, sitting in an armchair, still safely tucked inside his suit, and with his helmet visor down.

“Bill, ready to bail if we have to.” There was no way to be sure the energy levels of the hedgehog were all the same.

“We are QBY,” he said. Ready to go. Bill favored the official terminology. He sometimes admitted to Sky that he regretted that starship life was so peaceful. He talked occasionally, and wistfully, of running missions against alien horrors that were determined to destroy civilization, to overrun Berlin and all it stood for. (Sky could never tell for sure when Bill was kidding.) The AI wished for pirates and renegade corporations, hiding in the dust of giant clouds. Clouds, he added, hundreds of light-years across, clouds that would make the omegas look like puffs of mist on a summer breeze.

Bill, this Bill, had a poetic streak. Sometimes he went a bit over the top, but he did seem to have a passion for flowers and sunsets and the wind in the trees. All a facade, of course. Bill had never experienced any of that, wasn’t even self-aware if you believed the manual. Furthermore, although the Academy AIs were compatible, and in fact most people thought there was really only one Academy AI, which sometimes simply got out of contact with its various parts, Sky knew that Bill was different on different ships. Sometimes the manifestation was withdrawn and formal, seldom showing up visually, and then usually in dress whites; on other vessels, on the Quagmire, for example (which Sky had piloted on a couple of missions), he’d been young, energetic, always advancing his opinion, usually in a jumpsuit with the ship’s patch on his shoulder. The Heffernan AI was philosophical, sometimes sentimental, inclined to quote Homer and Milton and the Bible. And apparently a fan of melodrama.

Sky was one of the few Academy captains who believed that a divine force functioned in the universe. He’d heard Hutch say one time that the notion of a God was hard to accept out here because of the sheer dimensions of the cosmos. Richard Feynman had made a comment to that effect. “The stage is just too big.” Why create something so enormous? Why make places so far away that their light will never reach the Earth?

But that was the reason Sky believed. The stage is immense beyond comprehension. The fallacy in Hutch’s reasoning, he thought, was the assumption that the human race was at the center of things. That we were what it was all about. But Sky suspected the Creator had made everything so large because He simply liked to create. That’s what creators do.

“Twenty seconds,” said Bill.

He watched the package move in. The hedgehog was rotating, slowly, once every thirty-seven minutes. The others rotated at different rates. It depended on the gravity fields they’d passed through.

“Ten.”

It closed and snuggled in against one of the object’s 240 sides.

“Contact.”

“Very good, Bill.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He looked over at Emma.

“Bill,” she said, “proceed with Ajax.”

“Proceeding.” And, a moment later: “Lockdown.” The magnetic couplers took hold. There had been a possibility that might have been enough to detonate the thing, but Emma hadn’t thought so. If it had no more stability than that, it would have gone up long ago. Objects drifting through interstellar space are bathed by particles and gravitons and you name it.

“You know,” said Emma, “I think I’m going to enjoy blowing this son of a bitch to hell.”

“There’s nobody in it.”

“Doesn’t matter.” She looked over at him. Her eyes were green, and they were smoldering. She didn’t share his faith in a benign creator, but she felt that the universe should be a place of pristine beauty and wonder. And most of all it should be neutral, and not loaded against intelligence. We’re the only reason there’s any point to it, she believed. Unless there’s someone smart enough to look at it, and appreciate its grandeur, and do the science, the universe is meaningless.

“Are we ready to pull the trigger?” Sky asked.

“Just enjoying the moment,” she said.

“Fire when ready, babe.”

She checked the status board. All green. “Bill,” she said.

“Locked and loaded.”

“Proceed to degauss.”

“Activating.” His image vanished. He was all business now.

Sky watched the time tick off. “Would the reaction be instantaneous?” he asked.

“Hard to say. But I’d think so.”

“I do not detect a change in the object’s magnetic signature.”

“Doesn’t work?” asked Sky.

“Let’s give it a little more time.”

The hedgehog was getting smaller as the Heffernan continued to withdraw.

“Still no change,” said Bill.

“Maybe it’s not antimatter?”

“It might be that we don’t have enough energy to shut it down. Or that we haven’t calibrated correctly. Or who knows what else? It’s not exactly my field.” She took a deep breath, “You ready to go to phase two, Sky?”

“Yes. Do it.”

“Bill?”

“Yes, Emma?”

“Activate the blade.” The laser.

“Activating blade.”

“Can you enhance the picture?” Sky asked.

“Negative. We are at maximum definition now.”

Emma had told him it would probably take time, but Sky kept thinking about Terry Drafts poking a laser into its shell. The record showed that once you did that, things happened pretty quickly. But some parts of the object might be more vulnerable than others.

Sky was beginning to amuse himself thinking how the Academy might say okay, it’s obviously not going to work, go back in and retrieve the unit when it went, erupted in a white flash.

ARCHIVE

No one denies that the effort to find a way to dispose of the omega clouds is of value. But they do not constitute a clear and present danger. They are in fact so remote a hazard that it remains difficult to understand why so many continue to get exercised over the issue. At a time when millions go hungry, when repairing environmental damage is exhausting vast sums of money, when the world population steams ahead, we can ill afford to waste our resources on a threat that remains so far over the horizon that we cannot even imagine what the planet will look like when it arrives. The Council and the Prime Minister need to set their priorities, and live with them despite the shifting political winds.

— Moscow International

April 5

chapter 14

Arlington.

Monday, April 4.

ASQUITH NEVER REALLY looked happy, except when VIP visitors were present. This morning, which was rainy, gloomy, and somehow tentative, was momentarily devoid of VIPs. The commissioner was making the kinds of faces that suggested he was tired of hearing about problems that didn’t go away. “So we know the hedgehogs—can’t we get a better name for them, Hutch? — are bombs. Tell me about the one that’s going to pass close to us. Tony’s going to be over this afternoon, and I need some answers. What happens if it goes off?”

Tony was the ultimate VIP: the NAU’s funding liaison with the Academy.

“You don’t have to worry about it, Michael. It’s as far away as the cloud is. It can’t hurt us.”

“Then why are we worried about it?”

“We aren’t worried in the sense that it can do any damage to us. Not at its current range. Maybe in a few centuries.”

“Then why do we care about it?”

“Because we don’t know its purpose.”

“So we’re talking a purely academic issue? Nobody’s at risk?”

“No.”

He’d gotten up when she came into the room. Now he eased himself back into his chair. “Thank God for that,” he said. He motioned her to a chair. “Why would anybody be putting bombs out there?”

“We think they’re triggers.”

“Triggers. Bombs. We’re arguing terminology.” He rolled his eyes. “What do they trigger?”

“The clouds.”

“What’s that? How do you mean? The clouds blow up?”

“We don’t really know yet, Michael. But I think it’s something like that. I think you get a special kind of explosion.”

“How many kinds of explosions are there?”

She sat down and tried to get the conversation onto a level at which she could handle it. “The reason they’re important,” she said, “is that if these things turn out to be what they seem to be, they may give us a way to get rid of the clouds.”

“By blowing them up.”

“Yes. Maybe. We don’t know.” She felt good this morning. Had in fact felt pretty good for the last few days. “We need to find out.”

“So what precisely do you propose?

“We need to run a test.”

He nodded. “Do it.”

“Okay.”

“But not with the cloud.” The local one.

“We won’t go near it.”

“Good.” He took a deep breath. “I’d be grateful if it worked.”

“As would I, Michael.”

“I guess you’ve noticed the Goompahs have been getting popular.” His tone suggested that was a problem.

Of course she’d noticed. Everywhere she looked there were Goompah dolls, Goompah games, Goompah bedding. People loved them. Kids especially loved them. “Why is that bad news?” she asked innocently. But she knew the reason.

“There’s a growing body of opinion that the government hasn’t done enough to help them.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“They’d like to keep the media away. In case things go badly.”

“They being the president and the Council.”

He nodded. Who else? “They’re afraid there’ll be graphic pictures of Goompahs getting killed in large numbers.”

“Too bad they’re not insects.”

He didn’t pick up the sarcasm. “Anything but these terminally cute rollover critters.”

“The media say they’ll be there.”

He made a sound in his throat that resembled a gargle going awry. “I know. But there’s no way to stop them. If our little experiment works out, though, the problem will be solved.” He looked happy. As if the sun had come out in the office. “Make it happen, Hutch.”

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Michael, I think we’ve had a communication breakdown. Even if it works, we aren’t going to be able to use the technique to help the Goompahs.”

Shock and dismay. “Why not? I thought that was the whole point.”

“The whole point is to get control of the clouds. To forge a weapon.” She tried to sound reassuring. “I’m sorry I misled you. But the cloud at Lookout is too close.”

“How do you mean?”

“If we get the result we expect, we’re going to learn how to destroy the damned things. But we expect a very big bang. Trigger the cloud at Lookout, and you’d fry them all.”

“How can you know that before you’ve run the test?”

“Because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen other clouds explode. I know what kind of energy they put out.”

And suddenly he understood. “The tewks.”

“Yes.” She’d put it all in the reports, but it was becoming clear he didn’t read the reports.

“All right,” he said. He was still disappointed and he let her see it. “Let me know how it turns out.”

“Okay.” She started to get up, but he waved her back down. Not finished with you yet.

“Listen, Hutch. I’ve gone along with everything you’ve wanted to do. We sent out Collingdale and his people. We sent out the kite. And we’re sending meals, for God’s sake. We’ll be broke for three years after this. Now you owe me something.

“We’ve gotten some help from the Council on this. So we need to play ball with them. I’m going to tell Tony we’ll go all out to save the poor bastards. That’s what they want, by the way. Save them. Divert the goddam cloud. If you can’t blow it up, make your kite work. Make it happen.

“If you don’t, if the cloud hammers them, we’ll all be in the soup.”

Hutch kept her voice level. “Michael,” she said, “we’ve had thirty years to figure out how to do something about the omegas. The Council felt safe because the danger seemed so far away. It didn’t occur to them that political fallout might come from a different direction. I personally don’t care if they all get voted out. But we are trying to save the Goompahs. We were trying to do it before it became politically popular.”

She was at the door, on her way out, when he called her back. “You’re right, Hutch,” he said. “I know that. Everybody knows it. Which is why the Academy will look so good if we can pull these fat little guys out of the fire.”

“Right,” she said, and let it drop.

ARCHIVE

“Senator, we’ve all seen the pictures of the cloud at Moonlight. Is there anything at all we can do for the Goompahs?”

“Janet, we are moving heaven and earth to help. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet learned how to turn these things aside. The first shipload of supplies will be leaving day after tomorrow. We’re doing everything we can.”

— Senator Cass Barker,

Press Conference, April 4

chapter 15

On board the al-Jahani, in hyperflight.

Wednesday, April 23.

THERE WERE TOO many people on the mission. Collingdale had heard that the entire scientific community had wanted to go, despite the distance to Lookout. And Hutch had accommodated as many as she possibly could. That was a mistake. They were going to have to work as a team, and he had the unenviable task of trying to organize, mollify, control, and entertain a task force that included some of the biggest egos on the planet. There were historians and xenologists and mathematicians and specialists in other lines of inquiry of which he’d never heard. Every one of whom thought of him/herself as a leading light in his or her field. And they were going to be locked up together until late November.

Frank Bergen was a good example of the problem. Frank expected everyone to take notes whenever he spoke. Melinda Park looked stunned if anyone took issue with any of her opinions, even those outside her area of expertise. Walfred Glassner (“Wally” behind his back) thought everyone else in the world was a moron. Peggy Malachy never let anyone else finish a sentence. The others, save Judy Sternberg’s linguists, were no better. Before it was over he was convinced there’d be a murder.

They comprised the Upper Strata, the scientific heavyweights.

Bergen was, in his view, the only one of them who really mattered. After everybody else had debarked onto the Jenkins, he would make the flight with Kellie Collier to try to distract the omega. Bergen, who was short, dumpy, arrogant, was sure the plan would succeed if only because anything he touched always succeeded. They had at their disposal visual projections, and if those didn’t do the job, they had the kite. One way or the other, he assured anybody who would listen, they’d get rid of the thing. He sounded as if he thought the cloud wouldn’t dare defy him.

In fact, it seemed to Collingdale that the only other ones crucial to the mission were the linguists. They were all kids, all graduate students or postdocs, save for their boss, Judy Sternberg.

They were already at work with the data forwarded by the Jenkins, trying to decipher and familiarize themselves with basic Goompah. He’d have preferred to double their number and get rid of the giants-in-their-field. But he understood about politics. And Hutch had maintained that it was impossible to find, in a few days’ time, an adequate supply of people, no more than five and a half feet tall, with the kind of specialized skill they needed, who were willing to leave home for two years. She had done the best she could and he’d have to make do.

They were indeed of minimal stature. Not one of the twelve, male or female, rose above his collarbone.

It had been an ugly scene, those last few days before departure. He’d never seen Hutch lose her temper before, but it was obvious she was under pressure. You have to understand the reality, he’d told her, and she’d fired back that politics was the reality.

Nonetheless, they were doing as well as could be expected. The Upper Strata had settled in and seemed to have achieved an amicable standoff with each other. And the linguists were hard at work on the daily flow of recordings. They were both enthusiastic and talented, and he expected that, by the time they arrived on-station, he’d have people able to speak with the natives.

He’d been trying to master the language himself but had already fallen far behind the young guns. His lack of proficiency surprised him. He spoke German and Russian fluently and, despite his fifty-six years, had thought he’d be able to pace the help. Within the first two weeks he’d seen it wasn’t going to happen. But maybe it was just as well. Staying ahead of the old man provided an incentive for them.

The incoming data consisted of audiovisual recordings. The pictures weren’t very good. Sometimes the conversations took place entirely out of view of the imager. On other occasions, the Goompahs walked out of visual range while they talked. Even when the subjects stayed still, the angles were usually less than ideal. At this early stage, in order to have a reasonable chance to understand, the linguists needed to be able to see what was happening. But they were getting enough to match actions with talk and, still more important, with gestures.

Most of the Upper Strata were looking forward to putting on lightbenders and walking unseen among the population. They would try to do what they’d done on Nok, penetrate the libraries, eavesdrop on conversations, observe political and religious activities. But Nok was a long time ago. They’d all been young then. And Collingdale had already noticed a reluctance among them to learn the language. He knew what would happen: They’d put it off, finding one pretext or another to avoid the effort. And when they got to Lookout they’d be asking to borrow one of the linguists, somebody to go down and interpret.

It was clear that whatever was to be accomplished on this mission would be done by Judy’s team.

When he’d heard the conditions under which he would be making the flight, he’d almost changed his mind about going. But he had asked Hutch for the assignment, and he didn’t feel he could back away. Moreover, he hoped that Bergen was right, that the cloud would be turned aside, and that they would beat the thing. He desperately wanted to be there if it happened.

THEY WERE MAKING some progress in figuring out the syntax, and they had already begun to compile a vocabulary. They had words for hello and good-bye, near and far, ground and sky, come and go. They could sometimes differentiate among the tenses. They knew how to ask for a bolt of cloth, or to request directions for Mandigol. (Nobody had any clue where that was.)

There was some confusion about plurals, and they were mystified by pronouns. But Judy was there, reassuring them that time and patience would bring the solutions. Her plan called for the establishment of a working vocabulary of at least one hundred nouns and verbs by the end of their first month on board, and a basic grasp of syntax by the end of the second. They’d achieved the first goal, but the second was proving elusive. At the end of the second month, no English would be permitted in the workroom. At the end of the third month, they would speak Goompah exclusively, everywhere on the ship, except when communicating with home.

Several objected to that provision. How were they to talk with their fellow passengers? To Collingdale’s immense satisfaction, Judy replied that was the problem of the passengers. It would do Bergen and the others good, she said, to begin hearing the native language. They’re supposed to be learning it anyhow.

The Upper Strata, when it heard the idea, dismissed it out of hand. Utterly unreasonable. They had more important things to do. Not that it mattered. But Collingdale didn’t want more division and in the end he was forced to intervene and insist, in the interests of peace, that Judy back down. The surrender was disguised as a compromise: English, or other non-Goompah languages, would be spoken by the linguists outside work hours when members of the Upper Strata or the captain were present, or at anytime during any emergency.

Collingdale did his best to appease Judy by including in the declaration that he henceforth considered himself a member of the language team, and would be bound by their rules, except when his duties made it impractical.

THE ONLY OTHER functioning culture that had been found during the decades of interstellar travel was on Nok. It was the right name for the world. The inhabitants were in the middle of an industrial age, but they’d been up and down so many times they’d exhausted most of their natural resources. They were always at war, and they showed no talent whatever for compromise or tolerance.

The research teams had experienced massive problems there during the first couple of years because everybody who wanted a lightbender just checked one out and went down to the surface. They were forever running landers up and down with consequent waste of fuel. They had people fighting over e-suits, trying to monopolize the language specialists, and arguing constantly about the no-contact policy. A substantial number maintained it was immoral for the Academy to stand by while the idiots made war on one another, and huge numbers of noncombatants were killed. It happened all the time, the wars never really ended until everybody was exhausted, and as soon as they got their breath back they started up again.

The level of animosity among the researchers rose until it became apparent that the human teams weren’t able to rise much above the level of the Noks. It was as if the Protocol should have been working the other way, shielding humans from the less advanced culture.

There was no evidence of conflict at Lookout, but once again they were facing the intervention issue. Except this time they were prepared to confront the natives, if it seemed prudent.

Not everyone on board was in agreement with that policy. Jason Holder, who described himself as the world’s only exosociologist, had wasted no time taking Collingdale aside to warn him that contact would cause extensive harm in the long run, that if the Goompahs could get past the Event on their own, they’d be far better off if we kept out of it. “Sticking our noses in,” he’d said, “all but guarantees they’ll be crippled.”

When Collingdale asked how that could be, he’d trotted out the usual explanation about the clash of civilizations, and how the weaker one always, always, went down. “The effects might not be immediately noticeable,” he’d said, “but once they understand there’s a more advanced culture out there, they lose heart. They give up, roll over, and wait for us to tell them the Truth, provide dinner, and show them how to cure the common cold.”

“But we won’t let them become dependent,” Collingdale had said. “We won’t be there after the Event.”

“It’ll be too late. They’ll know we exist. And that will be enough.”

Maybe he was right. Who really knew? But the natives weren’t human, so maybe they’d react differently. And maybe Holder didn’t know what he was talking about. It wouldn’t be the first time an authority had gotten things wrong.

JUDY STERNBERG WAS a little on the bossy side, and she ran her operation like a fiefdom. She laid out each day’s assignments in detail, added projects if time permitted, and expected results. She might have run into some resentment except that she didn’t spare herself.

Her specialty was, she explained, the interrelationship between language and culture. “Tell me,” she was fond of saying, “how people say mother and I’ll tell you how their politics run.”

Like Hutch, she was a diminutive woman, barely reaching Collingdale’s shoulders. But she radiated energy.

They’d been out more than five weeks when she asked whether he had a moment to stop by Goompah Country, which was the section of the ship dedicated to the linguists, housing their workrooms and their individual quarters. “Got something to show you,” she said.

They strolled down to B Deck, started along the corridor, and suddenly a door opened and a Goompah waddled out and said hello. Said it in the native tongue. “Challa, Professor Collingdale.”

Collingdale felt his jaw drop. The creature was realistic.

“Meet Shelley,” Judy said, trying to restrain a smile.

Shelley was even shorter than her supervisor. In costume she was wide, green, preposterous. Her saucer eyes locked on him. She adjusted her rawhide blouse, tugged at a yellow neckerchief, and held out a six-fingered hand.

“Challa, Shelley,” he said.

She curtsied and pirouetted for his inspection. “What do you think?” she asked in English. The voice had an Australian lilt.

“We haven’t done much with the clothing yet,” said Judy, “because we’re not really sure about texture. We’ll need better data. Preferably samples. But by the time we get there, we’ll have our own team of Goompahs.”

“Well,” he said, “it looks good to me, but I’m not a native.”

She smiled. “Have faith. When we go down, nobody will be able to tell us from the locals.”

Shelley took off her mask, and Collingdale found himself looking at an amused young blonde. Her figure in no way resembled Goompah anatomy. And he was embarrassed to realize he was inspecting her.

“I suspect you’re right,” he told Judy.

HE SENT A twenty-minute transmission to Mary, describing what they were doing, and telling her how much he’d have enjoyed having dinner with her tonight on the al-Jahani. “It’s very romantic,” he said, smiling into the imager. “Candlelight in the dining room, a gypsy violinist, and the best food in the neighborhood. And you never know whom you’re going to meet.”

None of it made much sense, except that she would understand the essential message, that he missed her, that he hoped she’d wait for him. That he regretted what had happened, but that it was a responsibility he really couldn’t have passed off.

He had been getting messages from her every couple of days. They were shorter than he’d have preferred, but she said she didn’t want to take advantage of Hutch’s kindness in providing the service and run up the bill on the Academy. It was enough to satisfy him.

This was the only time in his life that he’d ever actually believed himself to be in love. Until Mary, he’d thought of the grand passion as something adolescents came down with, not unlike a virus. He had his own memories of June Cedric, Maggie Solver, and a few others. He remembered thinking about each of them that he had to possess her, would never forget her, could not live without her. But none of it had ever survived the season. He’d concluded that was how it was: A lovely and charming stranger takes your emotions for a ride, and the next thing you know you’re committed to a relationship and wondering how it happened. He’d even suspected it might turn out that way with Mary. But each day that passed, every message that came in from her, only confirmed what now seemed true. If he lost her, he would lose everything.

WHILE HE WAS composing the transmission to Mary, Bill had signaled him there was a message from Hutch.

“Dave,” she said, “you know about the hedgehogs.” She was seated behind her desk, wearing a navy blouse, open at the neck, and a silver chain. “It’s beginning to look as if all the clouds have one. Jenkins tells us there’s one at Lookout. The cloud has fallen away from it since it angled off to go after the Goompahs.” The imager zoomed in on her until her face filled the screen. Her eyes were intense. “It gives us a second arrow. When Frank uses the projectors, instead of just giving it a cube to chase, let’s also try showing it a hedgehog. If one doesn’t work, maybe the other will.

“Hope everything’s okay.”

HE WAS APPALLED to discover that some of his colleagues were actually looking forward to the coming disaster. Charlie Harding, a statistician, talked openly about watching a primitive culture respond to an attack that would certainly seem to them “celestial.”

“The interesting aspect,” he said, “will come afterward. We’ll be able to watch how they try to rationalize it, explain it to themselves.”

“If it were a human culture,” commented Elizabeth Madden, who had spent a lifetime writing books about tribal life in Micronesia, “they would look for something they’d done wrong, to incur divine displeasure.”

And so it went.

It would be unfair to suggest they were all that way. There were some who applauded the effort to get the natives out of the cities, get them somewhere beyond the center of destruction. But anyone who’d seen the images from Moonlight and 4418 Delta (where the first omega had hit) knew that a direct strike by the cloud might render irrelevant all efforts to move the population.

Most nights, before retiring, he sent angry transmissions off to Hutch, damning the clouds and their makers.

She seemed curiously unresponsive. Yes, it was a disaster in the making. Yes, it would be helpful if we could do something. Yes, getting them out of the cities might not be enough. She knew all that, lived with it every day. But she never mentioned giving the Academy a kick in the rear to try to jump-start something.

THEY HAD GOOD pictures of several of the isthmus cities, identified by latitude. Their names were not considered a critical order of business by the linguists, but since they would probably not survive the Event, it seemed appropriate to get past the numbers. Collingdale wondered which of them would turn out to be Mandigol.

The cities were attractive. They were spacious and symmetrical, the streets laid out in a pattern that suggested a degree of planning mixed in with the usual chaotic growth that traditionally started at a commercial area and spread out haphazardly in all directions. Unfortunately, the patterns of the Goompah cities were exactly what would draw the cloud.

Markover’s people had commented on a general style of design that had approximated classical Greek. They were right. Whatever one might say about the clownishness of these creatures, they knew how to lay out a city, and how to build.

The center of activity in the cities was usually near the waterfront area. But he saw parks and wide avenues and clusters of impressive structures everywhere. Bridges crossed streams and gulleys and even, in a couple of places, broad rivers. Roads and walkways were laid out with geometric precision.

Buildings that must have been private homes spread into the countryside, thinning out until forest took over. He spent hours studying the images coming from the Jenkins. The place wasn’t Moonlight, but it was worth saving.

LIBRARY ENTRY

The notion that a primitive race, or species, is best served by our keeping away from it, is an absurdity. Do we refrain from assisting remote tribes in South America or Africa or central Asia when they are in need? Do we argue that they are best left to starve on their own when we have wheat and vegetables to spare? To die by the tens of thousands from a plague when we have the cure ready to hand?

Consider our own blighted history. How much misery might we have avoided had some benevolent outsider stepped in, say, to prevent the collapse of the Hellenic states? To offer some agricultural advice? To prevent the rise to power of Caligula? To suggest that maybe the Crusades weren’t a good idea, and to show us how to throw some light into the Dark Ages? We might have neglected to create the Inquisition, or missed a few wars. Or neglected to keep slavery with us into the present day.

The standard argument is that a culture must find its own way. That it cannot survive an encounter with a technologically superior civilization. Even when the superior civilization wishes only to assist. That the weaker society becomes too easily dependent.

The cultures pointed to as examples of this principle are inevitably tribal. They are primitive societies, who, despite the claims made for their conquerors, are usually imposed on by well-meaning advocates of one kind or another, or are driven off by force. One thinks, for example, of the Native Americans. Or the various peoples of Micronesia.

However one may choose to interpret terrestrial experience, it is clear to all that the Goompahs are an advanced race. It is true that their technology is at about the level of imperial Rome, but it is a gross error to equate civilization with technology. They are, for the most part, peaceful. They have writing, they have the arts, they appear to have an ethical code which, at the very least, equals our own. A case can be made that the only area in which we excel is in the production of electrical power.

There is in fact no reason to believe that a direct intervention on behalf of the Goompahs would not be of immense benefit to them. Especially now, when they face a lethal danger of which they are not even aware. To stand by, and permit the massive destruction of these entities in the name of a misbegotten and wrongheaded policy, would be damnable.

The Council has the means to act. Let it do so. If it continues to dither, the North American Union should take it upon itself to do something while there is yet time.

— The New York Times

Wednesday, April 23, 2234

chapter 16

On board the Hawksbill, in hyperflight.

Saturday, April 26.

JULIE, MARGE, AND Whitlock had become friends. The women called him Whit, and they talked endlessly about omegas and cosmology, elephants and physicists, Goompahs and God. The days raced by, and Julie began to realize she had never been on a more enjoyable journey. It was almost as though her entire life had been spent preparing for this epochal flight.

Whit consistently delivered odd perspectives. He argued that the best form of government was an aristocracy, that a republic was safest, and that a democracy was most interesting. Mobs are unpredictable, he said. You just never know about them. He pointed out that during the Golden Age, the worst neighbor in the Hellespont had been Athens. On the major knee-bending religious faiths, he wondered whether a God subtle enough to have invented quantum mechanics would really be interested in having people deliver rote prayers and swing incense pots in His direction.

Marge had been reserved at first, had seemed always buried with work. But gradually she’d loosened up. Now the three of them plotted how to save the Goompahs, and make sure that the Academy was funded afterward so that it could learn to deal decisively with the omegas.

Julie wanted to see an expedition put together to track the things to their source. There’d been plans for years to do just that. The old Project Scythe, for one. And then Redlight. And finally, in its early stages, Weatherman. But it was expensive, the target was thought to be near the core, thirty thousand light-years away, and the resources were simply not there.

“We’ll only get one chance to beat these things,” Whit said, referring to the omegas. “The time spans are so great that people get used to having them around. Like hurricanes or earthquakes. And eventually we’ll try to learn to live with them. So if we don’t succeed on the first attempt, the window will close and it won’t get done.”

“But why does it have to be us?” Julie asked. “Why not somebody six centuries from now?”

“Because we’re the ones who lived through the shock of discovery. For everybody else, it’ll be old stuff. Which means people will still be sitting in London and Peoria complaining about why the government didn’t do something when the cloud shows up to shut them down.”

Although he lived in a society of renewable marriages and, in many places, multiple spouses, Whit was a romantic. At least, that was the impression Julie had gotten after reading Love and Black Holes, his best-known collection of commentaries on the human condition. True love came along only once in a lifetime, Whit maintained. Lose her, or him, and it was over. Everything after that was a rerun. Julie assumed that Whit, who wasn’t married, had suffered just such a loss and never recovered. She was careful not to ask about it, but she wondered who it had been, and what had happened. And, eventually, if the woman had any idea what she’d let get away.

Whitlock was tall, with a lined face, one of those faces that had been lived in. He had white hair, and exuded dignity. The rejuvenation treatments had come along too late to do him much good, but he didn’t seem to mind. He told her he’d lived the life he wanted and had no regrets. (That was clearly a falsehood, but a brave one.) He was on board because Hutch liked him and liked his work. There’d been a battle about his coming, apparently. Whit wasn’t a serious scientist, in the view of many, and consequently was not on the same level as others who would have liked the last seat on the mission. Julie had heard that Hutchins had taken some heat for giving it to him.

He asked Julie whether a lightbender would be made available to him when they got to Lookout because he wanted to go down to the surface and actually see the Goompahs. He was even working with some of the people on the al-Jahani, trying to familiarize himself with their language, but he confessed he wasn’t having much luck picking it up. “Too old,” he said.

He had turned out to be a dear. He did not assume a superior attitude, as she’d expected when she first saw his name on the manifest. He was already taking notes, not on what was happening on the Hawksbill, but on his own reaction to learning that an intelligent species was at risk. At Julie’s request, he’d shown her some of his work, and had even gotten into the habit of asking for her comments. She doubted he really needed her editorial input, but it was a nice gesture, and she had quickly learned he wanted her to tell him what she really thought. “Doesn’t do any good to have you just pat me on the head and say the work is great,” he’d said. “I need to know how you really react, whether it makes sense. If I’m going to make a fool of myself, I’d prefer to keep the fact in the ship’s company rather than spread it around the world.”

He had a habit of referring to humans as smart monkeys. They were basically decent, he told her one evening in the common room when they were talking about the long bloodbath that human history had been. “But their great deficiency is that they’re too easily programmed. Get them when they’re reasonably young, say five or six, and you can make them believe almost anything. Not only that, but once it’s done, the majority of them will fight to the death to maintain the illusion. That’s why you get Nazis, racists, homophobes, fanatics of all types.”

Marge Conway’s assignment was to assume the cloud would arrive over the isthmus precisely on schedule, and to find a way to hide the cities. She would do so by generating rain clouds. If a blizzard had concealed a city on Moonlight, there was no reason to think storm clouds wouldn’t have the same effect on Lookout.

If the mission to shoo the cloud away succeeded, her job would become unnecessary. Marge was one of those rare persons who was primarily concerned with overall success, and didn’t much care who got the credit. In this case, though, she couldn’t conceal that she longed to see her manufactured clouds in action.

Marge admitted that she’d gotten the appointment not because she was particularly well thought of in her field, but because of her connection with Hutchins. She’d worked on a number of projects for the Academy, but had never before been on a superluminal. She didn’t even like aircraft. “The ride up to the station,” she told Julie, “was the scariest experience of my life.” Julie wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not because the woman didn’t look as if anything could scare her.

“We have one major advantage,” Marge commented. “Nobody expects us to get the job done.”

“Hutch does,” said Julie.

Marge didn’t think so. “Hutch puts on a good show. She knows that Moonlight might have been an anomaly. She’s seen the clouds in action, and I doubt she thinks anything can turn them aside.”

“Then why are we being sent out?”

“You want the truth?” said Whit.

“Please.”

“Because the politicians want to be able to say they made a serious effort. If we don’t try this, and a lot of Goompahs die, which they almost certainly will, the public’s going to be looking for whose fault it is.”

Whit’s statement cast a pall over things because he was usually so optimistic.

Marge asked him why he thought the decoy wouldn’t work.

“Because somebody else tried it. We don’t really know who, although we suspect it was the Monument-Makers. Somebody tried to save Quraqua at one time by building a simulated, and very square, city on its moon. At Nok, they put four cube-shaped satellites, each about two kilometers wide, in orbit. Both places got hit anyhow.”

“Sounds definitive to me,” said Marge.

“Maybe they waited too long,” said Julie.

“How do you mean?” asked Whit.

“At both places, the decoys were too close to the targets. By the time the cloud picked them up, it would already have been locked on its objectives. Lots of cities on both worlds.”

Whit considered it. “You may be right,” he said. “But we’ll be showing up at the last minute, too. It’s not as if we’re getting there with a year to spare.”

Dead and buried, she thought. He must have seen her disappointment because he smiled. “But don’t give up, Julie. There’s a decent chance the rain makers will work.”

WHIT WANTED TO look at the cloud-making equipment, so in the morning Julie took them down to the cargo bay, which required everyone to get into an e-suit because it was in vacuum.

The bay itself looked like a large warehouse. Marge and Whit had not been off A Deck, which was the only area of the ship maintaining life support. It had therefore been easy for them to forget how big the Hawksbill was until they stood gazing from prow to stern, down the length of an enclosure filled with four landers, an AV3 heavy-duty hauler, and an antique helicopter. The rainmakers were attached to the hull. Julie took them into the airlock and opened up so they could see them. They resembled large coils.

“They’re actually chimneys,” Marge said. “When they’re deployed, they’ll be three kilometers long. Each of them.”

“That’s pretty big.”

“As big as we could make them.”

Avery Whitlock’s Notebooks

One of the unfortunate side effects of organized religion is that it seeks to persuade us that we are inherently evil. Damaged goods.

I’ve watched volunteers work with kids injured in accidents; I’ve seen sons and daughters give over their time to taking care of elderly parents. There are a thousand stories out there about people who have given their lives for their children, for their friends, and sometimes for total strangers. We go down to the beach to try to push a stranded whale back into the ocean.

Now we are trying to help an intelligent species that cannot help itself. Whether we will pull it off, no one knows. But of one thing I am certain: If we ever start to believe those who think God made a race of deformed children, then that is what we will become.

And who then would help the Goompahs?

chapter 17

On board the Heffernan, near Iota Pictoris, 120 light-years from Earth.

Monday, April 28.

SKY STAYED WELL clear of the hedgehog. Since he’d watched the one at Alpha Pictoris explode, he’d gained a lot of respect for the damned things.

Emma was beside him, enjoying a mug of beef stew. The aroma filled the bridge. “Bill,” he said, “send the packages.”

He sensed, rather than heard, the launch. “Packages away,” said Bill.

The hedgehog was forty-four thousand kilometers in front of the cloud.

“Withdraw to five thousand kilometers.”

Bill swung the Heffernan around and retreated as directed.

“Keep the engines running.”

The AI smiled. He was on-screen, seated in his armchair. “We are ready to accelerate away, should it become necessary.” He looked off to his left. “Sky,” he said, “we are receiving a transmission from the Academy. From the DO.”

Emma smiled. “That’ll be another warning to play it safe,” she said.

“Let’s see what she has to say for herself, Bill.”

The overhead screen blinked on, first the Academy seal, a scroll and lamp framing the blue Earth of the United World, and then Hutch. She was seated on the edge of her desk.

“Emma,” she said, “Sky, I thought you’d be interested in the preliminary results we’re getting. It looks as if, when these things blow up, they’re not ordinary explosions. I can’t explain this exactly, but I suspect Emma will be able to. The energy release is sculpted. That’s the term the researchers are using. They think it’s designed for a specific purpose.

“We hope, when you’re finished out there, we’ll have a better idea what the purpose is. And we appreciate what you’ve been doing. I know it’s not the most rousing assignment in the world.”

She lifted a hand in farewell, the seal came back, and the monitor shut down. Sky looked at his wife. “Sculpted?”

“Just like the lady says,” said Emma. “Think of it as a blast in which the energy doesn’t just erupt, but instead constitutes a kind of code.”

“To do what?”

She gazed at the image of the omega, floating serenely on the auxiliary screen. “Sometimes,” she said, “to excite nanos. Get them to perform.”

THE PACKAGES ARRIVED in the vicinity of the hedgehog and opened up. Twelve sets of thrusters assembled themselves, collected their fuel tanks, and circled the hedgehog. At a signal, each located the specific site it had been designed for and used its set of magnetic clamps to attach itself. The twelve sites had been carefully chosen, because on this most uneven object, the thrusters lined up almost perfectly parallel with each other. They would function as retrorockets.

“Everything’s in place,” said Bill. “Ready to proceed.”

“Execute, Bill.”

The thrusters fired in unison. And continued to fire.

Satisfied, Sky got himself a mug of Emma’s soup.

“You do good work, darling,” she said.

“Yes, I do.” He reclaimed his seat and slowly put away the soup. Bill screened the figures on deceleration rate, the fuel supplies left in the retros, and attitude control.

There had been some concern that the magnetic clamps would set the device off, but that had happily not occurred.

They were in a dark place, in the well between stars, where no sun illuminated the sky. It wasn’t like a night sky seen from Earth. You knew you were far out in the void. There was no charm, no bright sense of distant suns and constellations. The only thing he felt was distance.

“Retro fuel running low,” said Bill. “Two minutes.”

The important thing was to shut them all down simultaneously, and not let one or more run out of fuel and cause the others to push the thing off-course.

“Bill, where will we be if we shut down with thirty seconds remaining?”

“The hedgehog will have shed 30 kph.”

“Okay. That means the cloud will overtake it when?”

“In sixty days. June 27.”

“Good. Let’s do it.”

“I DON’T LIKE these things, Em.” He pushed himself out of the chair.

“Nor do I,” she said.

He gazed down at the navigation screen, which had set up a sixty-day calendar and clock, and begun ticking off the seconds.

“I’m going to turn in.”

She nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll be along in a minute.” She was looking at the cloud. It was dark and quiet. Peaceful. In the vast emptiness, it would not have been possible to realize it was racing through the heavens.

“What are you thinking, Em?”

“About my dad. I remember one night he told me how things changed when people found out about the omegas.”

“In what way?”

“Until then,” he said, “people always thought they were at the center of things. The universe was made for us. The only part of it that thinks. Our God was the universal God and He even paid a visit. We were in charge.

“I never really thought that way. I more or less grew up with the clouds.” She touched the screen, and the picture died. “I wish we could kill it,” she said.

LIBRARY ENTRY

The omegas are a footprint, a signal to us that something far greater than we is loose in the galaxy. Once we used our churches to demonstrate that we were kings of creation, the purpose for it all. Now we use them to hide.

— Gregory MacAllister

“The Flower Girl Always Steals the Show”

Editor-at-Large, 2220

chapter 18

On board the Jenkins.

Tuesday, May 6.

“NEVER SAW ANYTHING like it,” said Mark Stevens, the captain of the Cumberland, as he docked with the Jenkins. He was referring to the omega. “Damned thing’s got tentacles.”

That was the illusion. Jack explained how the braking maneuver tended to throw it around a good bit, tossed giant plumes forward as it slowed down. And more plumes out to port as it continued a long slow turn. “Gives me the chills,” said Stevens.

Jack Markover was a Kansas City product, middle-class parents, standard public school education, two siblings. He’d gotten engaged right after high school, an arrangement heartily discouraged by his parents, who had assumed all along that he’d go to medical school, succeeding where his father had failed.

Jack and the young woman, Myra Kolcheska, eventually ran off, sparking a battle between the families that ultimately erupted in full-blown lawsuits. Meantime, the subjects of the quarrel both lost their nerve at the altar. Let’s give it some time. See how it plays out. Last he’d heard, she was married to a booking agent.

Jack never got close to medicine. For one thing, he had a weak stomach. For another his mother was a hypochondriac and he always felt sorry for the doctor who had to listen to her complaints. He suspected that doctors’ offices were full of hypochondriacs. Not for him, he’d decided early on.

He’d gone to the University of Kansas, expecting to major in accounting, but had gotten bored, discovered an affinity for physics, and the rest, as they say, was history. No big prizes and no major awards. But he was a gifted teacher, good at getting the arcane out there on the table where students could either understand it or at least grasp why no human being anywhere could understand it. And now he’d acquired a place in history. He was the discoverer of the Goompahs. He could write his memoirs and toss down scotch and soda for the rest of his life if he wanted.

THE CUMBERLAND BROUGHT fuel, food, water, wine, all kinds of electronic pickups, some spare parts for the ship, and assorted trinkets that someone thought could be used as gifts to win over the natives. They consisted mostly of electronic toys that blinked and donged and walked around. Stevens smiled while he showed them to Jack. “Not exactly in the spirit of the Protocol,” he said.

Jack nodded. “We won’t be using them.”

The big item in the shipment, other than the pickups, was a set of six lightbenders. “Did you bring one for the lander?” asked Kellie.

Stevens looked blank. “For the lander? No, I don’t think so.” He opened his notebook and flipped through. “Negative,” he said. “Was there supposed to be one?”

“Yes,” said Jack. “They assured us it would be here.”

“Somebody screwed up. I’ll look around in the hold. Maybe they loaded it without making an entry, but I doubt it.”

He went back through the airlock while Jack and Digger grumbled about bureaucrats. It took less than five minutes before his voice sounded on the commlink. “Nothing here.”

“Okay,” said Jack.

“I’ll let them know. Get them to send it out right away.”

“Please.”

“Right. No point in the individual units if you can’t cover the lander.”

Stevens finished unloading and announced that he’d be starting back to Broadside that evening. Schedule’s tight, no time to screw around. And he laughed, implying that the same bureaucrats who hustled him back to Broadside in a mad rush would keep him waiting a week.

He had dinner with them, and irritated everybody by referring to the Goompahs as Goonies. Thought it was just impossibly funny. “That’s what they’re calling them back at Broadside,” he said. And then, looking around at the others, “Who’s going back with me?”

They’d talked about it at length. Two years was a long bite out of anyone’s life. It apparently never occurred to Kellie to ask to be relieved. The Jenkins was her ship, and if it was staying, she was staying. Jack saw himself as mission director and, like Kellie, felt an obligation to remain. He also expected to go back eventually as a celebrity. Books would be written about Lookout, and biographies about him. “If we handle this right,” he told Digger, “we can save a few of these critters and go back with our tickets punched.”

And Digger could imagine no conditions under which he would abandon Kellie. Or, for that matter, Jack, whose opinion of him mattered.

So only Winnie was leaving. “Family obligations,” she explained, not without a sense of guilt.

When the dinner ended, they said goodbye, companions of the past fifteen months. “Don’t get caught in the storm,” Winnie told them, as she delivered embraces to all and disappeared through the airlock.

Stevens was telling Kellie something about the hyperlink arrangements. He wished them luck, and he, too, made his exit. The hatches closed, and they heard the muffled clangs of the docking grapplers.

Then the Cumberland was drifting away. And they were alone.

TRANSMISSIONS FROM DAVID Collingdale (“Jahanigrams”) had been arriving regularly, spelling out what the linguists didn’t know, which was a lot, and what they needed Jack to do when the lightbenders arrived. More and better recordings. More pictures to provide context for the conversations. Recordings of the natives in various situations, at play, at worship, haggling over prices, and, trickiest of all, during courtship. The Jahanigrams became a major source of amusement.

They also received a transmission from the Hawksbill. A tall, dark-haired woman, just beginning to go gray, identified herself as Marge Conway. “I’m bringing some equipment with me,” she said, “to try to create a cloud cover over the cities.” She was wearing a baseball cap, which she tugged down over one eye. Digger suspected she’d been an athlete of some sort in her younger days. “The equipment will be stealth technology stuff. The Goompahs won’t be able to see it unless they get right on top of it.

“I need a favor. I’d like you to scout the area for me. Find eight places where I can lock down my gear. These places need to have a few trees, at least. The more the better, actually. They should be as remote from populated areas as possible. And preferably four on either side of the isthmus, although that’s not a necessity. They should be spread out, to the degree it’s practical. I appreciate your help. By the way, I’d also be grateful if you could have Bill do some weather scans of the isthmus and offshore waters. Get me as much climate information as you can.

“Thanks. I’m looking forward to working with you on this. With a little bit of luck, we should be able to pull off a rescue.”

“And I bet she will,” said Jack.

IN THE MORNING they tried out the lightbenders. Jack was the only one of the three who had any experience with the devices. He opened the packages, took them out, and removed several pairs of goggles. “So we can see each other,” he said, pointedly holding them up and then laying them on a table.

The lightbender consisted of a set of transparent coveralls and a wide belt. The belt buckle doubled as both control and power unit.

Jack pulled on the coveralls, added a wide-brimmed safari hat, smiled at them, and touched the buckle.

Digger watched with pleasure as Jack faded from sight. The process took about three seconds during which he became transparent, then vanished completely. Except for his eyes. They looked back at him from the middle of the chamber. More intensely blue and bigger than he’d ever noticed. And disembodied.

“My irises, to be precise,” Jack said. “The system is selective. Has to be. If it blanked out your eyes, you wouldn’t be able to see. So it isn’t perfect.”

“I’ll be damned,” Digger said. “You know, I’ve seen it in the sims, but actually standing in a room when it happens—” He started thinking about the possibilities of being invisible.

“That’s why they don’t sell them down at the mall,” said Kellie, reading his expression.

She and Digger strapped on the gear. She faded away and Digger looked down at his body, found the appropriate stud on his belt, slid it sideways, and watched himself vanish. A wave of vertigo swept through him.

“It’ll seem a little strange at first,” said Jack’s voice.

Kellie’s dark eyes were full of mischief.

“Take a pair of goggles,” said Jack, “so we can see each other.” One of them rose from the table, apparently on its own, and went over the blue eyes. The goggles vanished and the eyes came back. “Ah,” Jack said, “that’s better.” The other two pairs also levitated, and one floated over to Digger. He took it and put it on.

The light in the room dimmed, but two shimmering silhouettes appeared.

“You’ll need to be careful about walking until you get used to things. You can see the ground, but you can’t see your feet. At least not the way you’re accustomed to seeing them. Sometimes they’re not where you think they are. People have broken ankles. And worse.”

Kellie popped back into the light. “I’m ready to go,” she said.

“You know”—Digger smiled—“you could get into a lot of trouble with one of these things.”

“Try your luck, cowboy,” Kellie said.

The Cumberland had also brought a substantial supply of pickups. They looked like large coins. Wilcox Comm. Corp. was engraved on the head, with an eagle symbol, and a reproduction of their headquarters on the flip side. They were powered, like the e-suits, by vacuum energy, and consequently could be expected to perform for indefinite periods of time. The back side would adhere, according to the directions, to virtually any solid surface.

They put about thirty of them into a case and stored it in the lander. It was late evening on the Jenkins, late afternoon on the isthmus. “Let’s try to get some sleep,” said Jack. “We’ll go down first thing tomorrow.”

When everyone had retired, Digger stopped by the bridge, saw that Kellie wasn’t there, and knocked gently on her compartment door.

“Who is it?” she said.

“Me.”

The door opened slightly. She stood tying her robe. “Yes, Dig?”

“I love you, babe,” he said.

“I love you, too.” She made no move to open wider.

“You know,” he said innocently, “you never know what might happen on these surface trips.”

“They can be pretty dangerous,” she agreed.

He reached in, touched her hair, pulled her forward. She complied, and their lips brushed softly. She came forward the rest of the way on her own, crushed her mouth against his, and held on to him. He was acutely aware of her heartbeat, her breasts, her tongue, her hair. His right hand pushed against the nape of her neck, sank down her back, cupped one buttock.

And she backed away. “Enough,” she said.

“Kellie—”

“No.” She put a hand on his shoulder, restraining him. “Once it starts, you can’t get it stopped. Be patient.”

“We have been,” he said. “We just signed up for, what, another year or so out here?”

She looked at him a long moment, and he thought she was going to bring up Captain Bassett, which she often did when this topic arose. Captain Bassett had begun sleeping with one of his passengers on a run in from Pinnacle or some damned place. The other passengers had found out, the Academy had found out, and Bassett had been fired. Conduct unbecoming. Violation of policy. Once a captain engaged in that sort of behavior, he, or she, could no longer expect to be taken seriously by the other passengers.

But on this occasion, Captain Bassett didn’t surface. Instead Kellie withdrew into her room and waited for him. He followed her in and closed the door. The bed was still made; a lamp burned over her desk. A book was open. She watched him for a long moment, as if still making up her mind. Then she smiled, her eyes narrowed, and she did something to the robe.

It fell to the deck.

KELLIE TOOK THEM back to the glade they’d used on their first landing, descending through a rainstorm and arriving shortly before dawn. They packed up a supply of water and rations and got ready to move out. After they were off the lander, Kellie would take it offshore to a safe place and wait until called. Jack and Digger activated their e-suits but, at Jack’s suggestion, not the lightbenders. “Let’s wait until we’re out of the woods,” he said.

“Why?” asked Digger. “Aren’t we taking a chance on being seen?”

“It’s still dark, Dig. All you’d do is make it more difficult to walk. It’s tricky in these things until you get used to them.”

“You guys need anything,” Kellie said, “just give me a yell.”

They waved, turned on their wristlamps, and climbed out into the night. The grass was wet and slippery. Jack led the way to the edge of the trees and plunged in. Digger hesitated and looked back. The lander waited patiently in the middle of the clearing. The lights were off, of course, and the sky was dark. More rain was coming.

He knew Kellie would stay put until her passengers were safely clear. The east was beginning to brighten. Jack turned and waved him forward. He was really enjoying his role as leader and lightbender expert. The lander lifted, the treads retracted, and it rose silently into the sky.

Thirty minutes later they were out by the side of the road. Jack told him it was time to “go under,” which, it turned out, was the standard phrase for switching on the lightbender. It had a disparate ring for Digger.

He touched his belt, felt a mild tingle as the field formed around him, held out his arm, and watched it vanish. When he looked up, Jack was also gone. He activated his goggles and his partner reappeared as a luminous silhouette.

They turned south. Toward Athens.

THERE WERE ALREADY travelers abroad. Two Goompahs appeared riding fat horses. They were gray, well muscled, with snouts, and ugly as bulldogs. “Everything in this world,” said Digger, “seems uglier than at home.”

“Cultural bias?”

“No, they’re ugly.”

One of the Goompahs carried a lantern. They were engaged in a spirited conversation, which included growls and thwacking their palms together and jabbing fingers at the sky. They passed Jack and drew alongside Digger and suddenly grew quiet. To Digger’s horror, the closer of the two had raised his lantern and was looking in his direction. Staring at him.

The animals sniffed the morning breeze, but they wouldn’t be able to detect any unusual scents because the e-suits locked everything in. Still, it was a trifle unsettling, especially when one of the beasts turned its head and also looked at Digger.

“Your eyes, Dig,” said Jack. “Close your eyes.”

He put his hand in front of them and began backing away. The riders exchanged remarks, and Digger was sorry he didn’t have a recorder running because he could guess the meaning. Harry, did you see that? You mean that pair of little blue eyes over there?

Harry rode to where he’d been standing and looked in all directions. They exchanged a few more comments and the one without the lantern detached a switch from his saddle. Just in case something had to be beaten off.

Digger had to restrain a laugh at the weapon. But he actually did hear a word repeated by the second rider: Telio. The name of his companion?

Digger was tempted. Challa, Telio. But he could guess how the pair of them would react to a voice coming out of the air. He compromised by trying to memorize the features of the one who might be Telio. It was difficult because they all looked alike. But he marked down the creature’s nervous smile, a battered left ear, and the shape of nose and jaws. Maybe we’ll have a more opportune moment.

OVER THE NEXT hour, they encountered several groups and a few lone pedestrians. There were both males and females on the road, and Digger noted that one of the females was alone on foot. The area was apparently safe.

They began to see scattered dwellings. The forest gradually died away and was replaced by farms and open fields. They stopped to watch a female working just outside a small building on a mechanical device that might have been a spinning wheel. An animal, a two-legged creature that looked like a goose with an extraordinarily long bill and protruding ears, waddled out the door, looked in their direction, got its neck stroked, and nibbled at something on the ground.

Digger backed off a few steps. “You sure we’re invisible to the animals?” he asked.

The creature’s ears came up.

“Yes. But it’s not deaf. Stay still.”

He’d learned to squint, thereby reducing the amount of exposed iris.

They passed a building that might have been a school. Inside, young ones scribbled on stiff gray sheets.

The room was decorated with drawings of trees and animals. Thick sheets, covered with characters they could not read, were posted around the walls. He could imagine the messages. Square Roots Are Fun and Wash Your Hands after Going to the Bathroom.

THERE WAS NEVER a moment when you could say that you were entering the city. The fields contracted into parks, buildings became more frequent, and traffic picked up.

They were approaching a stream. It ran crosswise to the road, which narrowed and became a bridge. Jack examined the construction and took some pictures. Planks, crosspieces, bolts, beams, and a handrail. It looked sturdy. A wagon rumbled across, coming out of the city, and the bridge barely trembled.

A lone female was approaching. Jack and Dig always stopped when traffic of any kind was in the vicinity and they did so now. But she looked in their direction, and her lips formed an ’o’ the way humans do when they’re puzzled. She was looking curiously down at Jack’s legs.

And Digger saw that he’d pushed against a melon bush. The melons were bright yellow and big as balloons and maybe a trifle ripe. The problem was that Jack had backed against them and lifted one so that it seemed to be defying gravity.

“Watch the melon,” he told Jack, who eased away from it.

The melon slowly descended, the branch picked up its weight, and the plant sagged.

“Doesn’t look as if this being invisible,” said Digger, “is all it’s cracked up to be.”

The female wore wide blue leggings, a green pullover blouse, and a round hat with a feather jutting off to one side. She looked dumbfounded.

Something moved behind him. Wings flapped, and Digger turned to see a turkey-sized bird charging out of a purple bush. It raced clumsily across the ground, stumbled once or twice, and launched itself into the air.

The female watched it go and moved her lips. It wasn’t quite a smile but Jack knew it had to be. Smiles seemed to be universal among intelligent creatures. Noks did it. The Angels on Paradise did it. He’d heard somewhere that even whales did it.

She advanced on the melon, studied it, touched it, lifted it. After a moment she let it swing back down. Jaw muscles twitched. Then she casually turned and continued on her way.

“Better be more careful,” said Digger.

“How bad was it?” asked Jack.

“It was afloat.”

Ahead, the road passed through farmland, rolling fields filled with crops, plants and trees in long rows, green stalks and something that looked like bamboo. Other fields lay fallow. Occasional buildings with a slapdash appearance were scattered across the landscape. Some were barns. Others were the huge, sprawling structures in which large numbers of Goompahs lived. They appeared sometimes singly, sometimes in clusters of three and four.

It was clear that they were home to communal groups, although what divided them from other groups or bound the individuals together remained a mystery. As they continued on, this type of structure became more frequent, but occupied smaller segments of land. And there were individual homes as well. Parks began to appear. The road became busy, and eventually expanded into a thoroughfare. Shops lined both sides.

Some public buildings possessed a level of elegance almost rivaling that of the temple. But most were of a more pedestrian nature, austere and practical. All were filled with the creatures, who leaned out windows and exchanged comments with the crowds outside. Young ones played in doorways, others frolicked on rooftops. Everybody seemed to be having a good time.

“Partyville,” said Jack.

Most of the shops were flimsy structures, plaster or wood with awnings hung over them. A few were brick. The shelves were well-stocked with fabrics, fish, wine, clothing, jewelry, cushions, animal skins, and every other conceivable kind of product.

“They have money,” whispered Jack. “Coins. A medium of exchange.”

It was a chaotic scene. Merchants hawked products, customers pushed and shoved to get close to the counters. A quarrel broke out in front of what appeared to be a weapons shop. Everywhere Goompahs haggled over prices and commodities.

The coins Jack had seen were spread across the counter of a fabric shop. Hadn’t been picked up yet by a careless proprietor. Behind him were displayed woven spreads and shirts and trousers and even a few decorative wall hangings.

It occurred to Digger that a coin would make a dazzling souvenir.

He hesitated. Everybody was so tightly packed together. But therein lay safety, right? In this crowd, who’d notice getting bumped by an invisible man?

“Jack,” he said. “Wait here.”

“Wait, Dig. Where are you going?”

“I’ll be right back.”

The battle at the weapons shop had not gotten past a lot of screaming and yelling. But it had cleared an area for him to pass through. The weapons shop had bows, arrows, knives, and javelins on display. They looked mostly ornamental, something gawdy to hang on the wall and maybe claim you’d taken from a fallen enemy.

His path to the coins took him directly past the squabbling Goompahs, who were hurling threats and making gestures at each other. Digger got jostled by one of the combatants, who turned in surprise and looked for the offender. “Kay-lo,” he growled, or something very much like it.

The largest of the coins was about the size of a silver ten-dollar piece. It looked like bronze. A plant or tree was engraved on it, and a series of characters around the edge. In God We Trust. It was roughly made, the product of a primitive die, but it would be a priceless artifact to take home.

“Don’t do it, Digger.” Jack’s voice was stern.

“It won’t hurt anything.”

“No.”

“It’ll help the translators.”

Silence. Jack was thinking it over.

Digger would have liked to leave something in exchange, another coin, preferably, but he had nothing like that available. He’d think of something later. Come back tomorrow. Behind him, the combatants were drifting apart, issuing a few final threats before calling the whole thing off.

He scooped up the ten-dollar piece and turned quickly away.

The shopkeeper screeched. The sound stopped Digger cold because he thought he’d been too quick to be observed, thought the shopkeeper had been distracted by the dispute.

But he was staring directly at Digger. And beginning to babble. Others turned his way and moaned.

“Digger,” said Jack. “Your hand.”

To the Goompahs the coin must have been afloat in the air. Part of it, the part covered by his hand, would have been missing altogether. He tried to adjust his grip, but it was too big. He was about to slip it into his vest when a large green paw tried to close over it. The thing held on and he couldn’t let go. One of the creatures growled, and another barged into him. Somehow one got hold of his belt. They went down struggling and suddenly the one with his belt let go, drew back with a terrified expression, and howled. The coin got knocked away.

They were shrieking and squealing and scrambling desperately to get away from him. He realized to his horror that he was visible. They were screaming “Zhoka!” over and over, and the pitch was going high. He didn’t know what it meant but it was obviously not good.

He got his hands on his belt, turned the lightbender field back on, and was relieved to see that it still worked. He tried to scramble away from the mob. But the Goompahs were running for their lives. Jack cried out and damned him for an idiot. Digger was knocked sideways and trampled. He went down with his hands over his head, thinking how there’s no safe harbor in a stampede for an invisible man. He took kicks in the ribs and head, and something that felt like a pile of lumber fell on him.

When it was over, he staggered to his feet. The street was empty, save for a few injured Goompahs trying to drag themselves away. And Jack’s ghostly form lying quite still.

Digger hurried over to him and killed the e-suits. Jack’s head lolled to one side. He tried mouth-to-mouth. Pounded on his chest.

Nothing.

A last lingering Goompah blundered into them, fell, moaned, and got up running.

LIBRARY ENTRY

. Other people have families. I have only my work. The only thing that I really ask of this life is that I do something at some point that my colleagues consider worth remembering. If I can be reasonably assured of that, I will face my own exit, however it may come, with serenity.

— Jack Markover

Diary, March 4, 2234

(Written shortly after discovering the Goompahs)

chapter 19

On the ground at Lookout.

Tuesday, May 6.

OTHER THAN REACTIVATE the lightbenders, Digger didn’t know what to do. He told Kellie that Jack was dead, but she didn’t have to ask him how it happened because he poured it out. Damned coin. All I did was pick up a coin and they all went crazy. My fault. He’s dead, and it’s my fault.

“Take it easy, Digger,” she said. “Sometimes things just go wrong.” A long pause. “Are you sure?”

“Yes I’m sure!”

“Okay.”

“He told me not to do it.” He was sitting in the middle of the street. It was dusty and bleak. There was still a crowd of the things, and every time he moved, the dust moved, and the Goompahs groaned and pointed and backed away.

“Where is he now?”

“Right where he fell.” In broad daylight. On the street. A couple of the Goompahs had been hurt, and others were creeping cautiously closer, trying to help, probably asking what happened.

“We have to get him out of there.”

“He’s a little heavy.” Even in the slightly reduced gravity, Digger couldn’t have gone very far with him. Jack’s face was pale. The features, which had been twisted with agony when Digger first got to him, were at rest now. There was no heartbeat and his neck appeared to be broken. “I’ve tried everything I can, Kellie.”

“Okay, Digger. You have to keep calm.”

“Kellie, don’t start on me.”

She ignored the comment. “You want me to come?”

“No. Stay with the lander.”

“I mean, with the lander.”

“No. My God, you’ll panic the town.”

“Can you commandeer a cart maybe? Get him to a place where I can get to you?”

“You’re talking about a cart with no driver going down the street?”

“You’re right. I don’t guess that would work.”

“Not hardly.” The crowd was closing in again. He hoisted the body onto his back and staggered off with it toward an alley.

“Digger, I feel helpless.”

“Me too.” Digger was crushed by guilt. Actually, he told himself, they killed him. The stupid Goompahs. Who would have thought they’d react the way they did? Damned things were dumber than bricks.

The alley ran between the backs of private homes on one side and what looked like shops on the other. It was empty. He stumbled on and told Kellie what he was doing. “I’ll stay here with him until it gets dark,” he added. “Then we’ll do what we can.”

HE SET JACK down but saw immediately there was going to be too much traffic. Goompahs coming from the far end, and a couple angling off the street he’d just left. There were some fenced spaces behind the shops, and he chose one and hauled Jack inside.

“I’m okay,” he told Kellie.

He settled down to wait. Kellie would have stayed on the circuit with him, but he was in no mood for small talk, and she got the message and signed off. Digger sat wishing he could go back and change what he’d done. It was a horrible price to pay for a moment’s stupidity.

He could see past a chained door into an area that contained a couple of urns and shelves filled with pottery. Goompahs thumped around inside, but no one ever came out into the yard. For which he was grateful.

The sun crossed the midpoint overhead and slipped into the western sky. Voices drifted down the alley. Doors opened and closed, animals brayed and slurped, and once he heard someone apparently beating a rug.

Jack’s body began to stiffen.

He talked to Jack during the course of the afternoon, but quickly broke off when he found himself apologizing. No point to that. Instead he promised to do what he could to make the mission successful. That’s what Jack would have wanted, and Digger would make it happen. It was the only way he could think to ease his conscience.

The rain clouds that had been threatening the area off and on all day grew dark and ominous, but in the end there were only a few sprinkles, and they blew away.

The streets became noisier as darkness fell. The relatively subdued crowds haggling over prices were replaced by Goompahs out to enjoy the evening. Traffic in the alley stopped. For a while oil lamps burned in the shop, but they went out as the first stars appeared. Doors closed and bolts rattled home.

Kellie checked with him occasionally. He’d calmed down during the course of the day, had gone back and forth between blaming the Goompahs and himself, would have liked to pass off responsibility, but kept coming back to the warning from Jack. Don’t do it. Jack had known what would happen.

It was almost midnight before he decided the attempt could be made in relative safety. Even then a few Goompahs were still hanging about in cafés.

“On my way,” said Kellie.

They caught a break. She came in from the sea, and as far as Digger could tell, no one saw the lander descend over the rooftops. The Goompahs in the cafés were singing and laughing and having a good time, and they stayed in the cafés. Kellie hovered high, above rooftop level, and threw down a line. Digger looped it around his harness and secured it beneath Jack’s arms. When he was ready, he took a deep breath. Dangling from a lander wasn’t his idea of a good time. “Okay,” he said. “Ready to go.”

SHE FOUND A deserted beach and took it back down. When they were all on the ground she climbed out, embraced him, looked sadly at Jack, and embraced him again. “I’m sorry, Dig,” she said.

They returned him to the Jenkins and conducted a memorial service. Jack had not been affiliated, but he’d occasionally commented that he would have liked to believe in the idea of a God who so loved the world—so they read a few appropriate passages out of the Bible. And they said good-bye to him.

When it was finished Kellie told him to get a drink, and she would take care of putting the body in storage. In the light onboard gravity, that wouldn’t be a problem, so he gratefully accepted the offer.

While she was below, he opened one of the bottles that Mark had brought in the day before—it seemed like a different age now—and poured two glasses, setting one aside.

It occurred to him that he had his wish—that he was finally alone with Kellie.

HE FILED A report in the morning, accepting full responsibility. But he kept the statement general, not mentioning the coin, merely stipulating that he’d been momentarily careless and been consequently detected, and that the crowd had panicked. He added that he understood they would probably want to pull him out. If that was their decision, he would comply. But he asked that he be allowed to stay on, to finish the mission.

Meantime, there were pickups to be distributed around the isthmus. They returned to the glade, but when Digger started to leave, Kellie announced her intention to go with him.

“Too dangerous,” he said.

“That’s exactly why you need someone else along.”

They argued about it, but Digger’s heart was never in it, and after he felt he’d convinced her of his basic willingness to go it alone, he agreed, and they started out.

By midday they were back at the scene of the riot. The garment district. Life had returned to normal, and if the Goompahs were talking about the previous day’s events, it was impossible to know. The merchant from whom he’d tried to pilfer the coin was still at his stand, and seemed immersed in hawking his wares.

“Let’s get some recordings,” said Kellie, all business, and probably determined not to let him think about yesterday.

A couple of blocks west of the shopping district lay an area dominated by parks and public buildings. One of the structures had signboards outside, rather like the ones you might still see near small country churches in the southern NAU. They took pictures and went inside.

A broad hallway with a high, curving roof ran to the rear of the building. There were large doors on both sides, and a few Goompahs wandering about, lost in the sheer space. Goompah voices came from one of the side rooms.

Digger looked in and saw several gathered around a table. They might have been debating something, but it was hard to tell. Goompahs seemed to put more energy into speaking than humans did. The laughter was louder, the points were made more vociferously, the negotiation was more demonstrative. In this group, voices were raised, and tempers seemed frayed.

“Fight coming,” said Kellie.

Digger doubted it. “I think they just like to argue.”

“They don’t hide their feelings, do they?”

“Not much.” Digger walked quietly into the room and planted a pickup on a shelf that was crowded with scrolls, aiming it so it got a decent view of the table. Then they went back out into the hall.

“Bill,” Digger said. “First unit’s up. How’s reception?”

“Loud and clear. Picture’s five by. What’s the argument about?”

“One of them was cheating at poker.”

“Really? Do they play poker here?”

Digger grinned. “Bill has no sense of humor.”

Kellie squeezed his arm. “Sure he does. He did that last line deadpan.”

THEY WENT INTO other buildings and placed more pickups. They set a few around some of the shops and hid others in the parks.

The parks were everywhere. They were furnished with gorgeous purple blooming trees and cobblestone walkways and flowering plants in a stirring array of colors. There were benches, low and wide, impossible for either Digger or Kellie to use, but perfect for the locals. And there were statues, usually of Goompahs, sometimes of animals. One, depicting several winged Goompahs, formed the centerpiece among a group of walkways. The subjects were displayed in licentious poses. They wore no clothes, although genitals were discreetly hidden. The females, they could now confirm, did have breasts on the order of human mammaries.

“Incredible,” said Digger, just before a cub—what did you call a young Goompah? — crashed into him and sent them both sprawling. But none of the adults noticed anything unusual. The pup squalled and pointed at the spot where Digger had been standing and looked puzzled. A female helped him to his feet and chattered at him. Watch where you’re going, Jason.

Two teams of seven players engaged in a game that looked remarkably like soccer. On another field, riders on the fat horses careered about, chasing a ball and apparently trying to unseat each other, using paddles as swatters. Small crowds gathered to watch both events. At the swatting-match, it was hard to tell whether it was an individual sport or teams were competing. If the latter, Digger could see no way to distinguish the players. But the crowd got involved, jumped up and down, stomped their feet, and cheered loudly whenever someone fell out of his saddle.

KELLIE WAS MOVING too quickly for him. Digger had not entirely adjusted to using the lightbender. Not being able to see his own body, but only a luminous silhouette, still threw him off-balance. He hadn’t been aware that he watched his feet so much when he walked.

“You all right, Dig?” Kellie asked.

“Sure,” he said. “I’m fine.”

They were walking near the north end of the park, an area lined with fruit trees. In fact, Athens almost seemed to have been built within a huge grove. Greenery was everywhere, and edibles just hung out there waiting for someone with an appetite. No wonder these creatures seemed to have so much time for leisure.

“This place might be like some of the South Sea islands,” said Digger. “Everything you need grows on the vine, so nobody has to work.”

THEY SPENT THE afternoon trying to analyze how the city functioned. This looks like a public building, probably the seat of government. And that is maybe a courthouse or police station. (Digger had seen a uniformed functionary going in.) I’d say that’s a library over there. And look at this, a Grand Square of some sort, where the citizens probably gather to vote on issues proposed by the town council. “You think they vote here, Digger?”

“Actually,” he said, “I doubt it. Place like this will probably turn out to be run by a strongman of some sort.” Around him, the shops seemed prosperous, the Goompahs content. Other than the one uniform, there was no sign of armed guards. “Still, you never know.”

They peeked through the windows of a two-story building and saw rows of Goompahs sitting on stools, copying manuscripts.

They visited a blacksmith, watched an artisan crafting a bracelet, and got stranded in a physician’s quarters when someone unexpectedly closed a door. They tried to abide by Jack’s dictum that the natives not be allowed to see unexplainable events. So they sat down in the presence of the physician and his patient, and waited for their opportunity.

The patient was a male with a bright blue shirt. He was apparently suffering from a digestive problem. It was then that Digger first noticed the ability of the natives to bend their ears forward. While the patient answered questions, his doctor did precisely that. They left a pickup.

Later, they wandered through the markets near the waterfront. This was the same area that Digger had visited on that first night, when he’d placed the original set of pickups. The shops were decorated with brightly colored linens and tapestries. Pennants flew from rooftops. There were quarrels, beggars, some pushing and shoving, and once they saw a thief get away with what looked like a side of beef. So maybe Athens needed some policing after all.

Barter was in effect, as well as the monetary system.

Several times, Digger brushed up against the creatures. It was hard to avoid. What was significant was that the Goompahs, after they’d bounced off empty space, stared at it in surprise, moved their jaws up and down and muttered the same word. It was always the same. Kay-lo. The same thing the Goompah in the quarrel had said. He filed it away as an expletive, or as strange.

Two buildings on opposite sides of an avenue each contained a raised platform, centered among rising rows of benches. Concert halls? Places for political debate? Theaters in the round? They were empty at the moment.

“I’d like to see the show,” he told Kellie.

“We can come back this evening,” she said, “and take a look.”

IT WAS TIME to go see the temple.

It stood atop a crest of hills on the southern edge of the city, gold now in the approaching sunset. They climbed a road and finally a wide wooden staircase to get to it.

It was bigger up close than Digger had expected, round and polished, without ornamentation other than an inscription over the front entrance. Doric columns. A winged deity guarding the approaches, and watching over an ornate and lovely sundial, as though she were keeper of the seasons.

Walkways curved around the building and arced out to the highest point of the promontory, overlooking the sea. There were a goodly number of Goompahs, some simply strolling along the paths, others wandering among the columns and through the temple itself. There was no mistaking the sacred tone of the place. Voices were lowered, heads bowed, eyes distant. It was there that Digger first felt a serious kinship with the Goompahs.

A young one was being taken to task by a parent for breaking into a run and making a loud noise. A pair, male and female, approached the front entrance hand in hand, drawing closer together. Digger saw one bent with age struggle to kneel on the grass, lift a hinged piece of stone (by a ring installed for the purpose), and put something beneath it. Money, Digger thought.

An offering?

Moments later, a child who’d been with him retrieved the object. Or retrieved part of it.

“What do you think?” Digger asked.

Kellie’s hand was on his arm. “Don’t know. Passing the torch, maybe. Bury in sacred ground and recover. Pass it on beneath the eyes of the gods. Probably leave part of it for the religious establishment.”

The winged deity was about three-times life-size, and, unlike the ones in the park, this one was clothed. The wings were larger, sweeping, regal. She—there was no question it was female—carried a torch which she held straight out from her body. Save the wings, the figure shared all the physical characteristics of the natives, but Digger would never have considered calling her a Goompah.

They mounted the steps. Digger counted twelve. And he thought immediately of twelve months, twelve Olympians, twelve Apostles. Was all this stuff hardwired into sentient creatures everywhere?

The columns were wide, maybe twice as far around as he could have reached. The stone felt like marble.

The interior was a single space, a rotunda. The ceiling was high, possibly three stories, and vaulted. A stone platform, perhaps an altar, stood in the central section. Other statues gazed down at them. None had wings, but all shared a sublime majesty. They wore the same leggings and pullovers and sandals as the locals, but in the hands of the sculptors they’d become divine effects. One male divinity looked past Digger with a quiet smile, a female watched him with studied compassion. Another, more matronly, female cradled a child; a large warrior type was in the act of drawing a sword.

Not entirely without conflict, were they?

An older deity, with a lined face and weary eyes, bent over a scroll. A girl played a stringed instrument. And a male, overweight even for a Goompah, was transfixed in the act of laughing. He seemed somehow most dominant of all, and he set the mood for the place.

“Are you thinking what I am?” Kellie whispered.

That all this was going to be destroyed? That the circular shape of the temple was unlikely to save it because it was much too close to the city? “You know,” he said, “I’m beginning to get annoyed.”

The floor was constructed from ornately carved tiles. There were geometric designs, but he could also see depictions of the rays of the sun and images of branches and leaves. There were more columns in the interior. These were narrower, and they were decorated by the now-familiar symbols of the Goompah language. They moved through the temple, taking pictures of everything.

The worshipers walked quietly. No one spoke; the only sounds came from the wind and the sea and the periodic scream of a seabird. In the west, the sun was sinking toward the horizon.

An attendant passed through, lighting oil lamps. “It’s getting late,” Kellie said. “You ready to go back?”

Digger nodded. He removed a pickup from his vest, kept it carefully hidden in his hands, until he’d inserted it in the shadows between a column and a wall. “Last one,” he said.

“You think there’s much point, Dig? I don’t think anybody here says anything.”

“It’s okay. The atmosphere of this place is worth recording and sending back.”

But he knew they wouldn’t capture the atmosphere on disk. Hutchins, sitting in her office three thousand light-years away, would never understand what this place felt like.

They stood a moment between two columns and watched a ship pass. Digger tried to remember what the ocean looked like to the east. How far was the next major landfall?

“Traffic must all be up and down the isthmus,” said Kellie. “North and south.”

Not east and west. There was no evidence the Goompahs had been around the world. Strictly terra incognita out there.

The visitors to the temple were filing away; Digger and Kellie were almost alone. The lamps burned cheerfully, but their locations seemed primarily designed to accent the statuary.

Digger looked at the flickering lights, at the figure of the woman and child. What was the story behind that? The images were aspects, he knew, of the local mythology. Of the things that the Goompahs thought important. This was information that Collingdale would want to have.

The place was different in some ineffable way from houses of worship at home. Or even from pagan temples.

They paused again before the winged figure at the entrance. “Somebody here studied under Phidias,” said Kellie.

Digger nodded. Creature from another world that he was, he could still read dignity and power and compassion in those features. And the torch that she held spoke to him.

He looked back into the rotunda. At the laughing god.

THE ISTHMUS ROAD seemed unduly long on the return, and Digger was weary by the time they reached the lander. Night had fallen, and he was glad to shut off the lightbender and the e-suit and collapse into his seat.

Kellie gave a destination to Bill, and they lifted off and turned seaward. “How we doing?” she asked, reminding him that his bleak mood was still showing.

“Good,” he said. “We’re doing fine.”

For a long moment he could hear only the power flow. “You going to be all right?” she asked.

He looked out at scudding clouds, bright in the double moonlight. “Sure.” Don’t do it, Digger. He was okay. A little down, but he was okay. “Where are we going?”

“There’s an island. Safe place to spend the night.”

“Alone with Collier on an island,” he said. “Sounds like a dream.”

“You don’t sound as if you mean it.”

“I’m all right,” he insisted. “This island. Does it have a name?”

She thought a moment. “Utopia,” she said.

LIBRARY ENTRY

The great tragedy confronting us here is not that the Goompahs, to use the common terminology, face massive destruction, although that is surely cause enough for sorrow. But what makes me sad is that they may pass from existence without ever having understood the supreme joy that accompanies the life of the spirit. They have lived their lives, and they have missed the heart of the matter.

— Rev. George Christopher

The Monica Albright Show

Wednesday, May 7