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-
And he realized
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.
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.
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.
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?
Are you here to conquer or kill us? And can we talk you out of it?
How do we get that “life everlasting” you promised?
What will it take to get you to like us?
Are you on speaking terms with God?
Got a spare warp drive?
Are you a hoax?
What will it take to get you to leave us alone?
Have you got any new cuisine?
46.
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.
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
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.
