troglodyte. What hedidn’t have was a working car.
He took out his phone and called a cab.
August in Minnesota was not cold, but Kim Mao Xun, the Chinese client, was well wrapped in layers of silk and thin wool. He looked very old, which meant that he was probably even older. Obviously no genemods for appearance, Mal thought, whatever else Mr. Kim might have. O, they did things differently in China! When you survived the Collapse on nothing but sheer numbers, you started your long climb back with essentials, nothing else.
“I am so excited to see the Alien Craft,” he said in excellent English. “It is famous in China, you know.”
Abby4 smiled. “Here, I’m afraid, it’s mostly a curiosity. Very few people even know it exists, although the government has authenticated from written records that it landed in October 2007, an event widely recorded by the best scientific instruments of the age.”
“So much better than what we have now,” Mr. Kim murmured, and Abby4 frowned.
“O, yes, I suppose…but then, they didn’t have a world to clean up, did they?”
“And we do. Mr. Goldstone tells me you can help us do this in Shanghai.”
“Yes, we can,” Abby4 said, and the meeting began to replicate in earnest.
Mal listened intently, taking notes, but said nothing. Meeting brokers didn’t get involved in details.
Matching, arranging, follow-through, impartial evaluation, and, if necessary, arbitration. Then disappear until the next time. But Mal was interested; this was his biggest client so far.
And the biggest problem: Shanghai. The city and the harbor, which must add up to hundreds of different pollutants, each needing a different genetically designed organism to attack it. Plus, Shanghai had been viral- bombed during the war with Japan. Those viruses would be much mutated by now, especially if they had jumped hosts, which they probably had. Mal could see that even Abby4 was excited by the scope of the job, although she was trying to conceal it.
“What is Shanghai’s current population, Mr. Kim?”
“Zero.” Mr. Kim smiled wryly. “Officially, anyway. The city is quarantined. Of course, there are the usual stoopers and renegades, but we will do our best to relocate them before you begin, and those who will not go may be ignored by your operators.”
Something chilling in that. Although did the US do any better? Mal had heard stories-everyone had heard stories-of families who’d stayed in the most contaminated areas for generations, becoming increasingly deformed and increasingly frightening. There were even people still living in places like New York City, which had taken the triple blow of pollutants, bioweapons, and radiation. Theoretically, the population of New York City was zero. In reality, nobody would go in to count, nor even send in the doggerels, biosolutioned canines with magnitude-one immunity and selectively enhanced intelligence. A doggerel was too expensive to risk in New York. Whoever-or whatever-couldn’t be counted by robots (and American robots were so inadequate compared to the Asian product), stayed uncounted.
“I understand,” Abby4 said to Mr. Kim. “And the time-frame?”
“We would like to have Shanghai totally clean ten years from now.”
Abby4’s face didn’t change. “That is very soon.”
“Yes. Can you do it?”
“I need to consult with my scientists,” she said, and Mal felt his chest fill with lightness. She hadn’t said no, and when Abby4 didn’t say no, the answer was likely to be yes. The ten-year deadline-only ten years!-would make the fee enormous, and Mal’s company’s small percentage of it would rise accordingly. A promotion, a bonus, a new car…
“Then until I hear back from you, we can go no farther,” Mr. Kim said. “Shall we take my car to the Alien Craft?”
“Certainly,” Abby4 said. “Mr. Goldstone? Can you accompany us? I’m told you know exactly where this curious object is.”As a busy and important Biomensa executive like me would not, was the unstated message, but Mal didn’t mind. He was too happy.
The Alien Craft, as Mr. Kim persisted in calling it, was not easy to find. Northern Minnesota had all been cleaned up, of course; as valuable farm and dairy land, it had had priority, and anyway, the damage hadn’t been too bad. But, once cleaned, the agrisolution companies wanted the place for farming, free of outside interference. The government, the weak partner in all that biotech corporations did, reluctantly agreed. The Alien Craft lay under an inconspicuous foamcast dome at the end of an obscure road, with no identifying signs of any kind.
Mal saw immediately why Mr. Kim had suggested going in his car, which had come with him from China.
The Chinese were forced to buy all their biosolutions from others. In compensation, they had created the finest engineering and hard-goods manufactories in the world. Mr. Kim’s car was silent, fast, and computer-driven, technology unknown in the United States. Mal could see that even Abby4 was unwillingly impressed.
He leaned back against the contoured seats, which molded themselves to his body, and watched farmland flash past at an incredible rate. There were government officials and university professors who said that the United States should fear Chinese technology, even if it wasn’t based on biology. Maybe they were right.
In contrast, the computer-based security at the Alien Craft looked primitive. Mal had arranged for entry, and they passed through the locks into the dome, which was only ten feet wider on all sides than the Alien Craft itself. Mal had never seen it before, and despite himself, he was impressed.
The Craft was dull silver, as big as a small bedroom, a slightly irregular oval. In the artificial light of the dome, it shimmered. When Mal put out a hand to touch it, his hand stopped almost a foot away.
“A force field of some unknown kind, unknown even before the Collapse,” Abby4 said, with such authority you’d think she’d done field tests herself. “The shield extends completely around the Craft, even below ground, where it is also impenetrable. The Craft was very carefully monitored in the decades between its landing and the Collapse, and never once did any detectable signal of any kind go out from it.
No outgoing signals, no aliens disembarking, no outside markings to decode…no communication of any kind. One wonders why the aliens bothered to send it at all.”
Mr. Kim quoted, “‘The wordless teaching, the profit in not doing-not many people understand it.’”
“Ah,” Abby4 said, too smart to either agree or disagree with a philosophy-Taoist? Buddhist?-she patently didn’t share.
Mal walked completely around the Craft, wondering himself why anybody would bother with such a tremendous undertaking without any follow-up. Of course, maybe it hadn’t been tremendous to thealiens . Maybe they sent interstellar silvery metal ovals to other planets all the time without follow-up. Butwhy?
When Mal reached his starting point in the circular dome, Mr. Kim was removing an instrument from his leather bag.
Mal had never seen an instrument like it, but then, he’d hardly seen any scientific instruments at all. This one looked like a flat television, with a glass screen on one side, metal on the other five. Only the “glass” clearlywasn’t, since it seemed to shift as Mr. Kim lifted it, as if it were a field of its own. As Mal watched, Mr. Kim applied the field side of the device onto the side of the Craft, where it stayed even as he stepped back.
Mal said uncertainly, “I don’t think you should-”
Abby4 said, “O, it doesn’t matter, Mr. Goldstone. Nothing anyone has ever done has penetrated the Craft’s force field, even before the Collapse.”
Mr. Kim just smiled.
Mal said, “You don’t understand. The clearance I arranged with the State Department…it doesn’t include taking any readings or…or whatever that device is doing. Mr. Kim?”
“Just taking some readings,” Mr. Kim said blandly.
Mal’s unease grew. “Please stop. As I say, I didn’t obtain clearances for this!”
Abby4 scowled at him fiercely. Mr. Kim said, “Of course, Mr. Goldstone,” and detached his device. “I am sorry to alarm you. Just some readings. Shall we go now? A most interesting object, but rather monotonous.”
On the way back to St. Paul, Mr. Kim and Abby4 discussed the historic cleanups of Boston, Paris, and Lisbon, as if nothing had happened.
What had?
AbbyWorks got the Shanghai contract. Mal got his promotion, his bonus, and his new car. Someone else handled the follow-up for the contract while Mal went on to new projects, but every so often, he checked to see how the clean-up of Shanghai was proceeding. Two years into the agreement, the job was actually ahead of
