by David Brin
As for the benefits of membership, these include a potential for vastly extended existence, far beyond normal possibility. In effect—life everlasting.
Gerald blinked.
Okay … that last bit got everyone’s attention.
For the second time in a few minutes, everyone in the vast contact chamber and connected Advisers’ Gallery went silent. Gerald could imagine the condition settling in, around the world. Indeed, the planet might be at its quietest since the dawn of the Industrial Age.
I guess … people will want me to follow up on this, in particular.
But the Buddha-like being simply went on, answering Flannery’s list of queries in the order given.
To explain this probe’s point of origin and method of travel, I will defer to Low-Swooping Fishkiller, whose people made and dispatched the particular contact-maker that you see before you.
The creature who Gerald had likened to a bat with helicopter wings, flutter-hopped forward a short distance to alight next to Oldest Surviving Member. Grimacing with carnivore teeth, it brought together two antennalike manipulator appendages and spread them apart again. A patch of blackness expanded outward, to coat the entire left side of the Artifact.
A scene coalesced before all the human observers, soon revealing a planet in the foreground that turned slowly in space. Seas that rainbow-glistened like oil slicks lapped against corkscrew continents where patches of green threaded between gray peaks and dun-colored plains. The nightside was ablaze with brightly illuminated cities, laid out in near perfect concentric circles that brusquely ignored the dictates of mere geography.
Along with billions of others, Gerald found the scene transfixing. Though Ramesh complained, expressing his own unique priority. “I’m trying to record as many stars as I can, to get a location and time fix. If only the damn ugly planet weren’t in the way.…”
Pulling backward, the portrayed point of view soon took in a large foreground object—a structure of girders and struts, of vacuum warehouses and flaring torches, all connected together in apparent orbit above the planet. An edifice far more vast than any space station Gerald had ever conceived. Zooming in upon this giant workshop, the story image cruised past bat-creatures wearing puffy, transparent, globelike space suits, who were supervising a production line where glittering, translucent eggs could now be seen emerging from a luminous factory shed, one at a time.
The story image zoomed in vertiginously, arriving next to one of the lambent, rounded cylinders, now revealed to have a boxy contraption attached to one end. Along with all the other recently produced probes, this one rode upon a prodigiously lengthy conveyor belt toward the base of a huge, elongated machine—a kind of gun, Gerald realized—that swiveled to aim at a chosen point in space … and then fired something that sparkled and quickly vanished into starry night.
Then the long, narrow artillery tube turned its open-sided muzzle slightly, facing a new spot in the sky, and fired again.
Ramesh decreed the consensus opinion of his own advisers and ais.
It’s great big mass accelerator. Prelimestimate … it might hurl these pellets up to maybe 3 percent of lightspeed. Impressive, though not enough to do the full job.
Gerald had a feeling that time was being compressed. The ride up the conveyor belt took only a few seconds, then he was looking backward, past the newly minted Artifact, at the factory and planet as the accelerator throbbed, preparing to shoot this probe into the great beyond.
Fascinated, Gerald saw a pack of glowing objects start to converge from several directions, approaching the place where the Artifact had been made. Bat-beings turned also to look behind them toward the planet.
Time was up. When the moment came—and even a bit before—the mighty industrial works and the nearest patch of planetary atmosphere seemed to flare, accompanying a fierce intensity of released energy as the great gun fired …
… and, in an instant, the homeworld of the bat-creatures fell away behind, diminishing to a bright speck … to nothing.
Now the simulated camera view turned and depicted the box at the front of the pellet opening up, unrolling an array of what looked like wires, that spread out like an unfolding net.
Huh. I was expecting a photon sail. Perhaps pushed by a laser beam sent by the home system. It’s the obvious way to boost speed at this point for a cheap, efficient interstellar craft. But that’s no sail it deployed. And look, the sun that we’re heading away from doesn’t seem to be sending any help. No pushing beam of light.
Judging from stellar movements, some years have passed already. A decade maybe, and so far there’s no …
Ah! Here we go!
Suddenly, the home star seemed to brighten, many times over, though in a strangely speckled coloration. The array of wires, which had been floating loosely, now billowed outward, tautening. And there came—Gerald could feel it—a sense of acceleration!
Okay. It’s not a laser, but a particle beam of some sort. Electrons, possibly. Or protons. Maybe even heavy ions, targeted exactly to pass through the wire array in order to transfer momentum via magnetic induction. How about that. More complicated than a light sail, but maybe they also use the wires to leverage against the galactic magnetic field over long distances. One way to steer …
In fact, I wonder if you can actually use the particles that have passed you by, when you later catch up with them.…
Gerald felt a hand on his shoulder and almost jumped out of his chair.
It was General Akana Hideoshi. The petite officer motioned for him to get up and follow her.
“But—”
Akana’s expression was adamant. “This show is being recorded. You can see it all later. Meanwhile, there are developments.”
Reluctantly, Gerald stood up, only to realize that he badly needed to stretch. Body crackling propelled a sudden, overpowering desire to move about. Still, the Artifact’s tale spoke directly to the space traveler in him. It was hard to tear away.
Over in a corner of the contact arena, behind a partial privacy screen, the two of them joined Emily Tang and Genady Gorosumov. “What is it?” he asked, while extending his legs onto tiptoe and relieving tension by leaning, left and right.
Emily held up a finger.
“First, it’s confirmed—those micro-quakes that proliferated during the last day or so are from long-ago fallen pellet probes.”
“Really? Confirmed already? How could they—”
She pointed to a screen. There he saw a panorama of humans and assisting robots dredging through a muddy river estuary. Another showed men toiling amid boulders, freshly tumbled from a layered cliff of sedimentary stone. Emily sped through the work, arriving at a similar climax in four separate cases—shouts and the recovery of something that reacted to human touch by emitting a brief but excited glow.
Washed of muck and debris, or chipped free of eons-old rocky casings, what the workers revealed was never smooth or intact, like the Havana Artifact. But even in fragments, a family resemblance was clear. And, in two of the recovered specimens, one could see a definite effect as the surface felt its first sunlight in … a very long time. Ripples of cloudy gray. Flickers of color. Hints of pattern, struggling to emerge.
“Apparently, the detonations weren’t only to get attention. A few of them actually managed to explosively free themselves from the strata they were trapped in, thus making it much easier to find them. Of course, it was pure luck for those that happened to be near the surface, or next to a cliff edge. A vast majority simply blew up chunks of their own material for nothing, buried under a million years of muck or sediment. We’ll never find most of the relics, no matter how hard we—”
“Tell him the second thing,” Akana ordered.
“Yeah, right.” Emily click-commanded the screens and holos to show something new. This time—starry vistas. Gerald briefly expected to be back inside the Artifact’s storytelling vid. But no. He recognized Scorpio … the Southern Cross … Libra … These were views from Earth. O
r relatively near.
“See that pulsation?” Emily pointed at a “star” that couldn’t be a star. Too green. Too regular in its flickering.
“Parallax?” he asked.
“Most of these seem to be located in the inner asteroid belt,” Genady replied. “A couple of hundred, so far. Though some have been spotted as near as L-3 and several on the surface of the Moon.”
“Jesus and the Maya. Hundreds? When—?”
“All in the last hour or so. Numbers are still rising.”
“But,” his mind was a whirl, “but how could these things know that it’s time to start yelling for attention? Sure, some may be close enough to pick up broadcasts of our interview with the Artifact. But way out there? Or deep underground?”
Emily and Genady glanced at each other. Clearly all this was happening too quickly, almost at the limit of human ability to process information.
“Has any of this been released to the public?”
Akana shrugged. “How can we hold it back? Look at Haihong Ming, over in that corner with a privacy hood over his head, consulting with his government. What else would they be discussing at a time like this? Obviously they already know. Indications are that five more nations and three guilds do as well. And the amsci clubs are sniffing like bloodhounds. Many of them have optics that can spot the phenomena … and surely will.
“For that matter, I’m not sure how anybody will benefit from secrecy at this point. The earthquake correlation first came from a citizen posse. Aren’t we better off having as many minds thinking about this as possible? In parallel?”
It wasn’t the attitude one typically associated with a government bureaucrat, especially a military flag officer. On the other hand, clearly, Akana knew these weren’t typical times.
Gerald inhaled and exhaled repeatedly, trying to clear his head. He had become a historical figure by grabbing out of space something that seemed utterly unique and epochal. Now to find out that the thing was only one of thousands, possibly millions … perhaps as common as any other kind of large gemstone … well, it was humbling, daunting, and ignited the question—Why haven’t we stumbled across these things before?
And he realized. I bet we have. Here and there, across centuries. Maybe some did call for attention during other eras. Only now’s the time, the opportunity they were all built for. When we’re ripe for contact. When we’re technologically able to “join” … whatever it is they want us to join.
It all made weird, dizzying sense. A plethora of cheap probes, sent from many locations across wide stretches of time could be far more efficient than a few very expensive ones, capable of their own propulsion. Cheaper than keeping up a blaring “tutorial beacon” on the off chance that one star out of a hundred million might happen to engender radio astronomers that year.
Yet, one mystery still stood apart from all the others.
Why are the pellets all programmed to be so frantically competitive with one another? How can it matter which of them introduces us to galactic civilization? Do they earn some kind of recruiting commission?
He glanced over his shoulder in time to see something that gave him a strange thrill. The Havana Artifact was finishing the tale of its origin and journey across space. Planet Earth now filled the big screen—destination in sight.
Gerald put aside curiosity over the parts of the tale he had missed. Akana was right. He could call up a replay, any time, along with gloss annotations by experts in every field.
Only now, with the cloud-flecked Panamanian Isthmus in background, there loomed upward a slender, impossibly long object, resembling a rope or snake with a claw gaping at one end. As they all watched, the jaw opened wide, with fingers that were meshed together like a baseball fielder’s glove. Gerald felt his right hand flex and stretch, remembering how this moment felt—was it less than a month ago?—when he and his little monkey sidekick piloted the tether-grabber toward this fateful rendezvous. Only now he was watching from the other side—the perspective of an interstellar wanderer.
One that happened to be far, far luckier than most, to arrive at just the right place and time, when a human astronaut happened to be ready … and had the tools.
Would I have been so cool and professional, during the grab, if I had known what I was reaching for?
Still, he couldn’t help wincing, as the claw closed all around …
… and suddenly the story was over. The scene cleared, leaving Low-Swooping Fishkiller, the bat-helicopter being, standing next to the Oldest Surviving Member, whose Buddha smile now left Gerald entirely unassuaged.
“Thanks for telling me all this,” he said to Akana and the others. “But now it’s time to get some real answers.”
He knew that the grimness he felt in his jaw and flexing hands could also be seen in his eyes.
MASS INTERROGATION
Questions for the Artifact aliens, distilled from over thirty-five million submitted by the public, ranked according to popularity and relevance by Deep Purple analytical engine. The Contact Commission has promised to get to some of these concerns—just as soon as “basic issues” with the visitor entities are resolved.
Are you here to teach us better ways? How can I start? (#1 for 3 days)
Are you here to conquer or kill us? And can we talk you out of it? (#2 for 13 days)
How do we get that “life everlasting” you promised? (Up from zero during the last two hours and rising fast)
What will it take to get you to like us? (Still in 4th position after 5 days)
Are you on speaking terms with God? (Up from #12 during the last hour)
Got a spare warp drive? (Up from #16 during the last 36 hours)*
Are you a hoax? (Down from 5th place 1 hour ago)
What will it take to get you to leave us alone? (Down from 3rd place two hours ago)
Have you got any new cuisine? (Up from #46 during the last 10 hours)
46.
A SMILING FACE
Of course they should be able to track her every movement. The men who were pursuing Mei Ling obviously knew their way around the Mesh. It would take little effort or expense to assign software agents—pattern sifters and face-recognizers—to go hopping among the countless minilenses stuck on every doorpost, lintel, and street sign, searching for a poorly dressed young woman with a baby, dragged through prosperous Pudong by a strange little boy.
From the start, she expected them to catch up at any moment.
Only … what will they do if they corner us on a busy street? Grab me in front of hundreds of witnesses? Perhaps that is why I’ve been free to run for a while. They are only awaiting the right moment.
At first, while fleeing, she kept turning her head and darting her eyes, scanning for pursuers or suspicious-looking men … till the child told her to stop in his oddly flat and rhythmic voice. Instead, he recommended looking in shop windows in order to keep her face averted from the street full of ais. Sensible—but she knew that wouldn’t help for long.
Vidramas were always portraying manic pursuit scenes through urban avenues. Sometimes the fugitive would be chased by tiny robots, flitting from wall to wall like insects. Or else by real insects, programmed to home in on a certain person’s smell. Spy satellites and strato-zeps were called upon using telescopic cams to zoom from high above, while sewer-otters spied below, scrambling along the storm drains to stick out twitching muzzles, reporting on the hapless runaway.
That ottodog, over there, routinely sniffing for illicit drugs … might he turn suddenly and nip your ankle, injecting it with anesthetic from a pointy, hollow tooth? She had seen that happen in a recent holo-ainime. There were no limits to the schemes concocted by fantasists—millions of them—equipped with 3-D rendering tools, free time, and lots of paranoia. Anyway, technologies kept changing so fast that Mei Ling had no idea where the borderline was between realistic tools and science fiction.
While the child seemed confident, pulling her along through back alleys, she still couldn’t help glancing le
ft and right, scanning reflections in shop windows, looking for bugs, wary of all the eyes that she could spot … and those she couldn’t.
Early in the chase, she thought about simply calling for help. That nice Inspector Wu had been both sympathetic and professional when her police unit came to interview Mei Ling at the little shorestead, asking about Xiang Bin and his mysterious, glowing stone. The same stone that these other men probably wanted as well.
Making that call seemed a good idea … only then Mei Ling realized she had no easy means to do so! The child had thrown away her new pair of overlay spectacles—they were identified and trackable, after all—just before tugging her on this zigzag chase through the back streets, ducking under one store awning after another. But weren’t there other ways to phone authorities? Couldn’t she just stop any passerby, and ask that person to do it for her?
Or … she realized later, when it was too late … shouldn’t it be possible to just stand in front of any city traffic light or utility pole and say, “I have a matter of state security to report?”
But no. Mei Ling didn’t want to come between powerful groups. What if this was all a fight between two factions of the government or aristocracy? Such things happened all the time, and when dragons battle each other, peasants are better off ducking out of the way.
Which was exactly what the child with the shifting eyes seemed to know how to do.
First, he led her to the back door of a tourist restaurant and through the steamy, aromatic kitchen. Most of the cooks ignored them, though one shouted a question as they darted through a pantry that led to a storeroom that led past a bustling loading dock to a set of stairs that continued to a makeshift bridge over an alley into the next block where they then scurried through a fab-factory that was churning out Grow-Your-Own-Goofy kits for sale at the nearby theme park.
One vast loft, filled with busy people, confused Mei Ling. All the workers stood about, plugged into action suits, moving and pantomiming some kind of aggressive activity that was mirrored on nearby holoscreens. From their actions—reaching out, grabbing at midair and clutching nonobjects, or nobjects—she could tell that these people were clearly building something. But what? Only after crossing most of the chamber, hurrying after her guide, did she glance at some big displays and realize, They are constructing molecules! Atom by atom.
