While twisting into the seat, Bin hears the jaw of the mechanical beast close with a thump. There follows backward movement, undulating, shaking, like a worm wriggling out of a hole. By some tech-wizardry, the small space around him begins emptying of water. Soon, a hiss of air.
Bin spits out the mouthpiece-a gasp of shuddering relief. The breather had gone foul. He gratefully rubs his eyes.
A patch of wall near his head is transparent-a window! How considerate. Really. It makes him feel ever-so- slightly less a prisoner-or a meal. Pressing his face, he peers outside. The palace ruins are a jumble, collapsed further by the fighting, now lit by slanting moonlight.
While the robot backs up, Bin spots his former attic shelter. Briefly, before the machine can accelerate forward, he glimpses the opening-and perhaps a shadowy silhouette. At least, he thinks so.
Enough to hope.
58.
“They aren’t just battling it out with lasers anymore,” Gennady reported. “Now, many of the space attacks appear to involve kinetic energy weapons.”
“You mean pellet guns?” Akana asked. “Wouldn’t those be slower? Harder to aim, with all those asteroids jumbling about, on different orbits? And your target might get a chance to duck.”
“How does a lump of crystal duck?” asked Emily Tang.
“Evidently,” replied Haihong Ming, “there are things out there with more… physical capability… than mere lumps of passive crystal.”
That had been obvious for a while. Still it felt like a milestone for someone to say aloud what everyone was thinking.
“Exactly! So…” Akana blinked. “Oh, I see. If you fire a high-velocity pellet and it takes a while to intersect the orbit of its target, that gives
“Depends on whether anyone’s using radar…” Gennady started to quibble, then shook his head and let it go.
“But why fight at all?” asked Dr. Tshombe. “What is this all about?”
“You mean other than scaring the bejeesus out of several billion Earthlings?” Emily asked, with a crack in her voice.
Ben Flannery, their Hawaiian anthropologist, gestured toward the object Gerald recovered from space-what seemed ages ago-now covered by a thick black cloth. The recording technicians had been sent away and all light cut off. The commission members had come to realize it was still necessary to teach the Artifact a lesson, now and then.
“We already knew there were factions. Machines that are
“And that brought retaliation. A truce that may have lasted eons came to a sudden end.”
“In order to achieve what?” Emily asked.
“To claim the most valuable commodity in the solar system-human attention.”
Gerald felt sympathy for Ben, a man of peace, reluctantly dragged into analysis of deadly war. One that apparently spanned millions of years, without a single living participant. But that didn’t make it any less violent.
Akana had gone quiet for a while, as her tru-vus went opaque. Her teeth were clicking like mad, and among her subvocal grunts Gerald thought he heard one that signaled “Yes, sir,” repeated several times.
“You know, there is an alternative theory,” Gennady mused, oblivious to Akana’s distraction. “We already decided these crystal artifacts are a lot like viruses. Well, in that case, consider a biological analogy. One explanation for the machines that are shooting at these space viruses may be some kind of immune-”
Akana’s specs abruptly cleared and she sat up, with the petite but commanding erect posture of a woman who had recently been promoted to the rank of major general in the United States Aerospace Force. Her bearing brought silence better than any spoken order.
“That was the White House. All plans for another sample-recovery mission have been put on hold. Nobody feels prepared to send a crew, or even robots, into that mess out there. And I’m told that similar orders have been issued by Great China.”
She paused while Haihong Ming checked with his government. In seconds, he nodded.
“That is so. But there appears to be more. Will you all kindly give me a moment?” Then it was his turn to disappear behind interspectacles that went totally opaque.
Gerald and the others looked at each other. Way back in olden times, it used to take weeks or months for an envoy to consult with his government, back home. Now, a couple of minutes seemed to stretch forever as Haihong Ming grunted in apparent surprise… then seeming protest… and finally evident submission.
At last, he flipped back his eye hoods decisively and took a few seconds to scan those seated around the table, before resuming.
“It would seem we now have sufficient reason for a
“Um, I thought that was what we were doing already,” Gennady commented. But Gerald shook his head. “I think our esteemed colleague from the Reborn Central Kingdom has something specific in mind. Something that he was forced-until now-to conceal.”
Haihong Ming agreed with a short, sharp nod. This admission clearly caused some pain. “My sincere apologies for that. But now I can reveal that we long suspected the existence of at least one more emissary artifact, here on Earth.”
“You mean other than those shattered remnants people have been digging up, in recent weeks?”
“I mean that certain elements within our venerable society have long believed in speaking-stones that fall from heaven. Some tales were thought more credible than others. There once was, for example, a specimen held in the Imperial Summer Palace, until it was sacked by European troops during the Second Opium War. That object was said to induce vivid dreams. Another-a carved egg made from especially pale jade, with purported ‘magical properties’-was taken from the National Museum by Chiang Kai-shek, when he fled to Taiwan. Neither piece was ever publicly seen again.”
“Did those items exhibit any of the properties we’ve seen here?” Tshombe waved toward the cloth-covered Havana Artifact. “Clear and explicit images? Animated beings who respond to questions?”
“Not in modern times, or witnessed by reliable chroniclers,” the Chinese representative conceded. “But they may have been rendered inactive by superstitious meddling or artistic… elaborations. Our mandarins and craftsmen were often too eager to cut and embellish naturally beautiful things,” he admitted, ruefully. “Or else, they may have been damaged amid centuries of warfare and looting.
“Ancient accounts do at least suggest they would be good targets of study. Perhaps even now they are under scrutiny by cryptic groups.”
That implication was unpleasant to consider. Some secret coven of elite power, gaining an advantage by comparing their own private source to the flood of public information emerging from the Havana Artifact.
“Then there are even older legends, or vague hints that magical stones were buried in royal graves. And-”
Refusing to be distracted, Ben Flannery sighed. “Is that all you mean to tell us? That some museum pieces may
