Part 9 (2/2)
”Unbelievable,” Arno whispered.
Still, the room was convinced. Heads nodded and voices called out speculations on what some of the slender pathways might be. Plainly small dots of luminosity were moving, as the map refreshed over the next hour, showing a slow, spiraling inward, down the twin funnels.
The technical discussion went on, ebbing and flowing with restless energy. Benjamin moved over to check on Channing. She barely acknowledged his presence, or much else in the room. Instead, he was puzzled to find her regarding the Eater's image with an expression that seemed to mingle awe and longing. He reminded himself to check with Dr. Mendenham about her medication.
”I should get you home,” he whispered.
”No. I want to be here.” She did not even glance at him, keeping her eyes on the big screen's image as fresh data filled in slight details.
”One cannot but note that the justly termed 'Eater'-or more generally, 'intruder'-answered only one of the questions we put to it,” Kingsley said at a pause in the discussion.
Channing's voice filled the silence of the room as all looked at her. ”We asked where it's from, what it is, what it wants.”
Benjamin said, ”And it answered the middle question.”
”Maybe it's being coy?” Amy ventured. She spoke confidently now, her hesitancy in such powerful company now evaporated in the heat of the hunt.
”Try again. One at a time,” Channing said.
Arno authorized sending a further message: ”Where are you from?”
The reply came with the same speed, arriving three hours later. They had arranged its sentences with proper typography now. The simple code it sent did not carry a distinction between capitals and lowercase, so they left it in caps. For the Eater the implied huge voice seemed natural.
THE GALAXY. I HAVE JOURNEYED THROUGH IT SINCE THREE BILLION OF YOUR YEARS BEFORE YOUR STAR EXISTED.
”It's been wandering for 7.5 billion years?” an astronomer asked in a hollow, awed whisper.
The room was silent for a long time.
Channing had refused to go home, and instead had fallen asleep in a lounge chair in Benjamin's office. Benjamin had noticed that even when awake her right foot sloped off to the floor, as if she had forgotten she had one. She roused for the reply and came into the Big Screen Room to see the message glowing alone on the screen. ”Hmmm, it seems rather cagey about its origins.”
The Center was by now getting crowded as more people poured in under the general U Agency umbrella. Some were directly from the White House, which apparently was confused about how involved it should get. The Gang of Four met with Arno and Martinez to plan.
”This is uncharted political territory,” Kingsley observed. ”A politician's first instinct is to clamp down upon that which he or she does not understand.”
”I'd like it to stay that way,” Channing said.
”I think we all would,” Martinez said, ”but this is going to be far larger than we can manage.”
Arno looked unsure of himself, and Benjamin realized that events were spinning out of his control, an anxiety-producing turn for such a personality. It was hard to exude confidence, the crucial executive signature, when you did not feel it. He mentioned this to Kingsley at the coffee urn, and Kingsley chuckled. ”Unless one is a practiced politician, and thus an actor.”
”I'm not so impressed with his methods,” Benjamin said. ”His people are rubbing mine the wrong way.”
”I fear that was inevitable,” Kingsley said. ”In my prior experience, science is packed solid with specialists, unused to working with others.”
Channing said wryly, ”Look, for guys like Arno, the first rule of action is if at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.”
”He seems pretty agreeable so far,” Benjamin said cautiously. He had respect for her political intuition; what was she seeing that he missed?
Channing's energy had abruptly returned, probably fed by old-fas.h.i.+oned adrenaline. She summoned more by tossing a sugar packet into her coffee. ”There's no hiding from this, though-the White House has cut him enough slack to mess up.”
Kingsley nodded. ”Quite astute. He's got to work with such uncertain materials as ourselves. And clever we may be, but this problem is incredibly broad. I've already recommended that we fly out experts in semiotics, the language of signs, in case we are using too narrow a channel of conversation with this thing. They may have ideas we can use.”
Benjamin had to agree. These days, there were cell biologists unable to discuss evolutionary theory, physicists who couldn't tell a protein from a nucleic acid, chemists who did not know an ellipse from a hyperbola, geologists who could not say why the sky was blue. Worse, they didn't care. Generalized curiosity was rare and getting rarer and now they needed a lot of people who could bring in a broad range of angles of attack.
”I think you're giving Arno too much credit,” Channing insisted. ”He's been behind the curve since the Eater began talking. In situations like this, conventional wisdom won't work. He's so dense, light bends around him.”
Benjamin laid a restraining hand on her arm. ”I think you're overtired.”
The rawboned, ravaged look she gave him had a silent desperation. He did not know where her sudden moods came from, but resolved to weather them. Trying to toss off the matter lightly, she said, ”The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. We shouldn't be surprised to see it show up a lot in the next few days...that's all.”
”I'm taking you home.”
”Good idea, best of the day.” Then she fainted.
3.
Living in a female body-Channing mused, lying in the cool, slanted light of early morning-was different. She rustled in the damp sheets, cat-lazy, and watched Benjamin get ready to go back to the Center after having had less sleep than he should.
Males had low-maintenance bodies; shave, trim fingernails, haircut whenever it got too obviously long-that was it it. They were so pointed pointed in their desire to have women, a desire she remembered from adolescence as both frightening and complimentary at once. The sense of the chase lived in them, made them feel their bodies as jackets carrying their imperatives-sperm, armies, ideas, civilization-on its perilous journey. They relished their recklessness, and she had come to understand that it was not an embracing of death, as some feminists insisted, but a zesty drive to slam up against the walls of the world, test the limits. in their desire to have women, a desire she remembered from adolescence as both frightening and complimentary at once. The sense of the chase lived in them, made them feel their bodies as jackets carrying their imperatives-sperm, armies, ideas, civilization-on its perilous journey. They relished their recklessness, and she had come to understand that it was not an embracing of death, as some feminists insisted, but a zesty drive to slam up against the walls of the world, test the limits.
Even Benjamin's casual moves showed how his sense of s.p.a.ce differed, as if this crisis brought out deep responses. Men's world fixed on fly b.a.l.l.s in a summer sky, the target at the edge of reach of arrow or gun, the bowl of sky lit by beckoning pinwheel stars, the far horizon as a target. Men felt their bodies, she suspected, as taut with lines of potential. Women revolved around a more inner s.p.a.ce, orbiting their more complex innards.
And the p.e.n.i.s: willful, answering only to the unconscious. In the small hours of this morning, she had proved this theorem by explicit example, getting him erect as he slept, with artful fingers and lips in a swampy, eager mood that came over her suddenly. In their verbal love play his got a name, whereas somehow her v.a.g.i.n.a never did-until this moment, the idea had never occurred. He could not lie, erotically; erections spoke truly of what the libido willed.
”Hey, sailor, new in town?” she murmured in her cat voice.
He came rus.h.i.+ng over. ”Thought you were asleep. Wow, you were great.”
”For a kiss you get breakfast.”
”Sure. Where?”
”On the deck?”
”No, the kiss.”
That led to an extended seminar on several ready reaches of her body and delayed his departure by another half hour. In payment she demanded to go with him, and predictably he said no, she was too tired, and just as predictably, she won.
On the drive up, they had their first private conversation about the Eater since the first message had come in. ”You're more afraid than you're letting on, aren't you?” she asked quietly.
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