“How would she have done that?” Conn asked.
“May I inspect the palm of her right hand?”
Conn was becoming more bewildered, not less. “If you feel you must—”
“What?” Mandy said. “You’re just going to let that...thing... molest me?”
“Mandy, calm down.”
“No! No, you may not examine the palm of my right hand. This is ridiculous!”
“Conn Garrow,” Excelling said, “we have been aware for some time that this Mandy Jarvis conspires against you. We thought Glenn Bowman would welcome a documentary showing us in our monster forms. Apparently, he has decided not. Tell me: is it usual, bringing people who work for PR firms in Sausalito to the Arctic Circle like this?”
In point of fact, Mandy had wrangled her way into the trip, over Conn’s initial objections. “She...”
“It does not matter. Even now, you are unaware of the threat to you and to my people in your midst. You bring this woman with you. You give her access to avatars. What mischief might she have wrought in our home? You are an irresponsible girl, Conn Garrow.” Conn made an indignant noise. “You are no longer welcome on Wrangel Island. Please go back where you came from.” Marie Curie turned and walked back to the shuttle.
Conn rounded on Mandy. “I swear to God, Mandy—”
“Don’t you dare swear to God, you evil little girl. You’ve picked a side, and it isn’t His!”
Conn was getting sick and tired of people calling her a girl. “Did you do that?” she growled, indicating Honestly.
“It’s a construct. It’s not real. It’s not alive!”
Conn spun one way, then the other. The NewsAmerica crew and the pilot watched with stunned looks on their faces. “We’re leaving,” Conn said. “Not you, Mandy. You find your own ride home.”
FORTY-SIX
The Debate
March–April, 2035
Conn was on the outside. Persisting initiated no further contact, and her attempts were not fruitful. She made her peace with it: she had the pressure field tech, and she still believed the avatar tech was forthcoming. If the Pelorians didn’t want her as a vendor anymore, that wasn’t her problem. She was ready, able, and willing to perform her end of the bargain. She couldn’t if they wouldn’t let her. She wouldn’t have rejected an apology for the rude way Excelling had spoken to her, but that was a trifle in the grand scheme of things. And besides, not being on the hook for PR for the Pelorians was the best way she could think of to get Glenn Bowman off her back.
Except it didn’t work out that way.
Bowman had been successful enough smearing Conn and her company that “Dyna-Tech” had become feed shorthand for complicity with the Pelorians in their evil machinations. If there was a global conspiracy to deliver humanity to the clutches of the aliens, as an increasing percentage of Americans believed, Dyna-Tech was at the forefront of it.
Conn tried to ride it out. She believed that if she engaged Bowman, or fought back some other way, the slanders and libels would persist. Trouble was, they were persisting without her fighting back.
She tried to put the focus elsewhere. A small, niche segment of the feeds was following the communications with Grant and the Saturn crew, which were taking longer and longer to receive as the spacecraft sped toward Saturn. Conn tasked her new PR firm with getting the crew more exposure. It helped: America’s long-dormant pioneering/exploring itch had been scratched with the moon missions, and the public was in a receptive mood when it came to the Saturn crew.
Conn hired Jody as a project manager. He would work out of Chicago. She brought him out to California to meet his coworkers and have a celebratory dinner. Pritam came with him, taking a couple days off from his new job as a professor of engineering at DePaul University. It was good to spend time with both of them. She hadn’t seen Pritam since Peo’s funeral, Jody since before that.
And she hadn’t really seen, or heard or felt, anything in the weeks surrounding Peo’s funeral. Her dominant memory was of everybody expecting her to pick up where Peo left off. To replace Peo. She resented it, when she wasn’t angry enough about it to scream. For all she knew, Jody might have been there. She might have screamed at him.
“You need to take this jerk on,” Jody told her. “Get an elbow in his ribs. Ignoring him isn’t working. It doesn’t make you look strong, it makes you look like you have something to hide. And anyway, why take it on the chin for those guys?” The Pelorians, he meant. “They don’t want anything to do with you. Cut ’em loose.”
“If I cut them any looser, they’ll blow away in the breeze,” Conn said.
“Aren’t you curious what they’re doing?” Pritam said. “The Pelorians. On the moon.”
“Pritam, I swear, if you’re a Bowman follower—”
“No! No, I am on your side,” he said. “One hundred percent. I’m just speaking as a scientist—an inquisitive mind.”
“You certainly have one of those,” Jody said.
“Yeah, I’d like to know,” Conn said. “The Russians are sending up three probes next month. Maybe we’ll find out then.”
“Maybe we’ll find out something else, if the Pelorians destroy the probes before they can see anything,” Jody said.
“You don’t really think that will happen, do you?” Pritam said.
“At this point, yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what I expect to happen. You should go back to the moon yourself,” Jody told Conn. “Go have a look.”
“I’m tapped out,” Conn said. “No mas dinero. Not for a mission to the moon.”
After they were gone, Conn thought about Jody’s suggestions. Both of them: that she should take on Glenn Bowman and that she should return to the moon. The moon wasn’t going to happen: she could technically afford to send herself or someone else, but it would be hugely expensive and leave her without flexibility to do other things. Once the fifth-dimensional computers and the prototype spacecraft were ready for use, she would be sending people to other star systems. She wanted to have cash to make that happen when the time came.
Taking on Glenn Bowman was another story. She was already doing it obliquely. She had given the green light for Dyna-Tech to sponsor a second reiteration of the Cosmos miniseries. The more people she educated about science, the fewer people would be willing to follow Bowman down his narrow-minded, destructive path. NASA was paying Dyna-Tech to build a couple of new underwater simulators, and to provide virtual reality support in astronaut training. NASA wasn’t letting the moon get away from them again. Conn was thrilled to be part of it. And once Grant and the crew reached Saturn’s orbit, there would be a ton of dramatic opportunities to impress people with the wonders of nature and science. All of these things weakened Bowman and those like him in the long run.
The long run part was the problem. By the time Cosmos came out, or NASA sent somebody else to the moon, or the crew reached Saturn, Bowman might have succeeded in marginalizing her enough that it wouldn’t make any difference. She decided that Jody had the right idea. She needed to put Bowman in his place.
She owed NewsAmerica after the Wrangel Island disaster; she called them first. They were happy to schedule a live debate between her and Bowman. She half-expected him not to accept, but he did.
On the appointed day, Conn and Glenn Bowman were featured on the NewsAmerica feed Science and Technology with a live stream. The venue was a win for Conn—if NewsAmerica had used its dedicated Pelorians: Boon or Bust? feed, hugely popular with Bowman’s followers, it would have been decidedly unfriendly.
Conn flew to New York to appear in person with the host. Bowman chose to remain in Jacksonville, Florida and participate remotely. It would be run like any other news segment: the host would ask questions and solicit answers from them both. But this host, Hayley Brigham, was mindful of the genuine enmity between her two guests. Conn trusted her to strike a balance between a good show and civil discourse.
Hayley Brigham had movie-star looks: flawless skin, great hair, smoulde
ring eyes. She had disarmed many an interview subject, to his detriment, if he was trying to hide something. Conn, always secure in her looks, was nevertheless a little intimidated. She put extra effort into her appearance, and hoped the “natural beauty” she’d always heard she had would show through.
The studio was spartan, two chairs separated by a large display area, all in front of a “green screen” which would be turned graphically into the skyline of New York on the feed.
More than forty million people watched worldwide. Most either wanted to see Bowman expose the evil of the aliens once and for all, or they wanted to see Conn put him in his place. It would be a good show either way.
Hayley’s first question was the one on everybody’s mind: “Pelorians—benevolent or malevolent?”
“I’ve shaken hands with their avatars,” Conn said. “I’ve spoken with them. They saved my life. They’ve given me a ride home when I didn’t have one. I know them to be kind, gentle, and generous. To those who consider them a threat, I ask: they’ve been here since before the moon shower in 2024. Why haven’t we been conquered, or wiped out?”
Bowman replied, “I wasn’t taught about a devil who turns up one day and subjugates you. I was taught about one that tempts you. Entices you. Who wants your mind and heart, not just your body. The devil I was taught about would appear kind and generous.”
“Mr. Bowman, how do you respond to the technology the Pelorians have shared with humankind?” Hayley asked. “Should we refuse it?”
“To the extent it might benefit us, we should utilize it. What I caution against is being beholden to the Pelorians for it. Let’s not forget, Hayley—they also gave Russia and China proprietary technology, which no one doubts might be used against America.”
Conn said, “They struck bargains. Why didn’t they just take what they wanted, if that’s what they’re here to do?”
“Ms. Garrow,” Bowman said, “it’s as though you and I and a party of modern Americans happened across an insular native tribe deep in the Amazon. They fish with spears. They have something we want, so we trade one of our fishing poles for it. We’re not going to miss one pole, and if we do, it’s cheaply replaced, but it revolutionizes this tribe’s way of life. Would we trade our Amazon tribe a helicopter? Of course we wouldn’t, if we could get away with only trading a fishing pole. There’s no benevolence here.”
“We wouldn’t trade them a helicopter because they wouldn’t know what to do with it. It’s not because we’re evil. Or are we, in your hypothetical?”
“Mr. Bowman,” Hayley Brigham said, “isn’t it true that the Pelorians have gone about their business peacefully since September, and nothing has happened to us other than we have revolutionary new technology to exploit?” Conn loved the question, and was confident, as she had suspected before the interview, that Hayley Brigham was on her side.
“How do we know what business they’re going about? We can’t see it. We can’t even visit their home island in the Arctic—”
“Because your agent sabotaged our attempt.”
“If their business was benevolent, they would conduct it in the sunshine, as it were—not on the dark side of the moon.”
“What about your business, Mr. Bowman?” Conn said. “You hijack the Pelorians’ avatars...and do what? Dissect them? What for?”
“That is a fantastic accusation, in the literal meaning of the word. One of their so-called avatars broke down, and Ms. Garrow thinks the bogeyman did it.”
“I know who did it,” Conn nearly growled. “She confessed.”
“Now hold on a minute,” Bowman said. “Do you know, Ms. Garrow—do you know, Hayley—do your viewers know, just how many so-called avatars there are among us? That have been here for years?”
“That’s a fantasy,” Conn said.
“Then you’ll love this part, Ms. Garrow. Round up any random hundred people off the street there where you are. There will be at least one so-called avatar among them.”
“I don’t even know how to respond to that. You’re alleging that there are almost four million avatars running around the US pretending to be people.”
“That is what I’m saying.”
“It’s ridiculous. Avatars are hugely complicated—we know, we have the tech.” Some of it. Still not enough—but enough to know how complicated and expensive it was going to be to make them. “They haven’t built and deployed literally millions of them—”
“Here, in the United States, they most certainly have. Didn’t you wonder why Scott Daniels didn’t ask for any technology on the moon? The US government has been fighting this infestation for ten years.”
Conn frowned, but rallied quickly. “Mr. Bowman, who believes in the bogeyman now?”
“I don’t see any point in debating someone who’s not even acquainted with the most basic facts.”
“This is a Science feed. Because I say so doesn’t establish facts, basic or otherwise.”
Hayley said smoothly, “If I could get us refocused for the next question—”
“Excuse me!” said a young man with headphones on and a clipboard in hand, emerging from backstage. Julian...somebody, the assistant producer, who Conn had met an hour earlier. Hayley looked alarmed—Conn bet she had never had an assistant producer interrupt her in the middle of a segment. The young man took his headphones off and tossed them back where he’d come from. “If I may, I think I can shed some light on all this.”
“Julian, our assistant segment producer,” Hayley said to the camera. “Folks, we apologize—”
“I’m an avatar controlled by a so-called Pelorian. May I participate?”
FORTY-SEVEN
Another Shot
April–August, 2035
Bowman’s numbers were way off, according to Julian the assistant producer. It may have been the case that the Pelorians had infiltrated Bowman’s own life with many avatars, because of his following and potential power. But where it seemed to him that there was one avatar for every hundred humans, the real number was about 150,000 total in the United States—about one out of every 2,500 people.
“What about the rest of the world?”
“This is a...situation unique to the US, Hayley,” Julian said.
Hayley seemed startled. She recovered quickly: “why target the US?”
“I’m not privy to the logic behind it,” Julian said. “Just that there are few if any avatars living outside the US.”
“You need Social Security numbers,” Hayley said. Julian nodded. “School records.” Another nod. Julian could not be provoked into talking in detail about all the presumably forged documentation an avatar would need.
“Are you speaking here today officially for your people?”
“No,” Julian said. “Relatedly, I don’t know if I’ll be in tomorrow.”
Needless to say, Conn and Bowman had been effectively shut out of the rest of the conversation, as Hayley Brigham landed the first interview with a Pelorian whose avatar lived among the US population.
The Pelorian behind the avatar was named Believing. He revealed that avatars had been part of the population for more than ten years, as his race studied ours. But he was maddeningly coy: “That’s a question for the machinists,” he repeated, or “I don’t have detailed knowledge.” What he did say was that his overall impression of human beings was favorable. Most of them, he and his 150,000 comrades, had avatars back home as well—alter egos that were more attractive, healthier, in better shape. So no, it wasn’t a huge sacrifice to come to Earth to do the same thing. It was exciting, and a thrill to learn so much about a different culture.
Had Hayley Brigham been prepared for having such an opportunity dropped in her lap, she would probably have come up with better, more provocative questions. But in a way it didn’t matter: the takeaway was that one’s neighbor, classmate, colleague, or cousin might be an avatar. The revelation cost the national economy three days’ productivity while everyone obsessed about how many people in their lives were not h
uman.
Some who had tuned in expressly for the debate (within ten minutes of Believing’s appearance, viewership had quintupled) were convinced that Bowman had won. After all, he’d been right. There were avatars among us. And for what benevolent purpose would the Pelorians secretly infiltrate American society?
The Pelorians were quick to deny everything, but obviously without consulting their PR people first. They officially called Julian’s accusations “at best, misleading.” There was enough daylight between “at best, misleading” and a categorical denial that the official statement hurt more than it helped.
People were frightened. Curious. Angry. Bewildered. And so was Conn. The next day, like most employers, she ordered a more comprehensive background check of her key officers. Owing to demand, it was said that it would be weeks before there were any results. Conn bought herself to the front of the line, and all her key people were cleared: they had living direct relatives who were interviewed, or they had left such a trail of evidence throughout their lives—middle school yearbooks, items in church newsletters, employee of the month awards—that it was inconceivable that all of it was phony.
(NewsAmerica gravely reported that a thorough investigation into the background of Julian the assistant producer came up with almost none of that kind of minutiae from what should have been his early life. However, they quickly added, he had all the important stuff—everything he would need to get hired and be employed.)
Conn didn’t want to think about the possibility, raised almost gleefully by Bowman supporters, that the Pelorians were body snatchers, “replacing” people. The beings she met on the moon were not capable of such an atrocity. But like most people, she got lost in the middle of wondering who might be an avatar.
When her head was clearer, she was frustrated that the debate had turned out the way it did. Particularly the part where people thought she’d lost. She had to stanch her company’s bleeding from the million cuts Bowman and his followers delivered.
Girl on the Moon Page 23
