Food, blankets, and other supplies sent forward by the Academy arrived at the critical moment. They were landed by night in remote sites, and distributed by Judy Sternberg and her linguists. The recipients were told that the supplies were donated by the Korbikkan Relief Association, which was true enough, and it seemed to satisfy the natives’ curiosity.
In recognition of their efforts, Sternberg’s likeness has been enshrined in the Museum Humana in Berlin, and a Shironi Kulp plaza will be opened next year in Pentagon Park.
The real coordinator behind the bulk of the contributions was, of course, Dr. Alva Emerson, who tried unsuccessfully to deflect the credit by awarding a medal to Priscilla Hutchins. Hutchins accepted, but it may have meant more to her when Dr. Alva took her aside and confessed that, whatever impression she might have had originally, she had concluded Hutchins to be “rather a decent human being after all.”
Tor drew up a formal certificate, citing the phrase. Although the certificate is confined to her bedroom, she owns no document of which she is more proud.
The round-the-world mission, stranded on the eastern continent, needed almost a year to build new ships. But they completed the task and, as of this writing, are on their way back to the Intigo.
Marge, Digger, Kellie, and Julie Carson received formal recognition for their accomplishments not only from the Academy, but from the media at large. Jack Markover was posthumously awarded the Legion of Honor from the French government, and David Collingdale received the President’s Medal.
On the anniversary of the omega strike, a memorial ceremony was held on the Academy grounds at Arlington to honor the memory of Collingdale and Markover. Markover’s brother James and Collingdale’s former fiancée, Mary Clank, were brought in for the event, and they helped dedicate the new Korbikkan wing to their memory.
AFTER THE MARKOVER-COLLINGDALE ceremony, Digger asked Hutch whether the Academy was now ready to put some serious effort into doing research on the omegas, so that, as he put it, “what we went through at Lookout won’t happen again.”
“I think we’ve learned, Digger,” she said. “I surely hope so.”
HUTCH’S NOTION THAT the tewk events were actually an effort to create a kind of cosmic symphony has not been generally accepted, although it’s difficult to explain in any other way the visual results if one happens to be seated at the proper place above the Orion Arm.
Whatever the official view, however, a synthetic hedgehog is on its way to the local cloud, and by the time this is published, will have, one hopes, already ignited it and disposed of the thing. Hutchins is pushing for mass production of hedgehogs, which she would like to see used wherever possible to explode the omegas. To get rid of them. And, she added recently in an interview with UNN: “To ruin the show for the idiots who sent them. To point out that there are women and children here.”
There are even some who are arguing that, since we know where the omega engineers live, we should send them more pointed sentiments.
Avery Whitlock’s Notebooks
But I wonder what we would have done had they been barbarians. Or looked like insects.
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Omega к-4 Page 52
