Part 11 (1/2)
”We may need them closer to home.” This blunt possibility sent a ripple of concern through the auditorium.
”The intruder has not announced any plans to come closer. Its present trajectory shall carry it through the Jovian system. Amy?”
Perhaps emboldened by Benjamin, she had held up her hand. ”Well, it only said this once, in the middle of another subject entirely, but...” Benjamin could see a sudden bout of stage fright seize her, a mere postdoc in such company, but then she plunged ahead. ”It said it was going to 'acquire ma.s.s and momentum' at Jupiter.”
”Quite possibly to gain the velocity it needs to escape the solar system,” Kingsley said with a confidence Benjamin found unsettling. ”It is a rover among the stars, after all.”
”That's an a.s.sumption,” Benjamin shot back.
”Of course, of course.” Kingsley gave him an odd look, as though asking him to go along.
The h.e.l.l with that. ”We lack any understanding of what it wants to do.”
Kingsley said sternly, ”But lack of evidence is not evidence of lack.”
Arno said, ”I believe our business here is finished.”
On this awkward note, the meeting broke up. Benjamin cornered Kingsley backstage and demanded, ”Why'd you do that?”
The angular face clouded. ”They are rattled enough already, d.a.m.n it.”
”They need to be prepared for the possibility that it's not an innocent explorer.”
”We cannot prepare for everything.”
”We can at least think-”
”You think for a moment. Do you seriously believe that what we say doesn't go outside the room?” think for a moment. Do you seriously believe that what we say doesn't go outside the room?”
”No, of course not.” Here Benjamin knew he was on shaky ground. ”The White House hears, plus no doubt Congress and various allies. Not my turf, but-”
”Decidedly not. I do not have the luxury of merely keeping my nose buried in the astrophysics.”
”It doesn't do this discussion any good for you to keep referring to your mysterious higher knowledge. I know you move in bigger circles, sure, but-”
”Being aware of the problem on different levels is precisely what's needed, I should think.” Kingsley bristled, his shoulders squaring off in a gesture Benjamin remembered seeing long ago, back in that seminar where they met. Not much has changed Not much has changed.
”Look, I don't want you throwing your weight around with my people-”
”I don't delve into any such matters,” Kingsley shot back, eyes narrowing.
”I see you in there talking to Amy a lot.”
”We enjoy working together. There is a lot of interesting astro-”
”Just remember you're a guest here.”
”I should think such distinctions are largely moot by now.”
”Not to me.”
”If you believe you can keep the usual methods of working, you are being naive.”
Bristling at ”naive,” Benjamin jutted his chin forward. ”There's got to be a role for the science in this thing, not just politics.”
To Benjamin's surprise, Kingsley nodded and gave him a tilted look of newfound respect. ”I fear, old friend, that the two are now quite inseparable.”
5.
In the press of events, she was getting so disorganized that she ended up using an ancient panty hose as a coffee filter when she couldn't find towel paper. As her energy had ebbed, she had adopted rougher rules: if you need to vacuum the bed, it's time to change the sheets. Rugs did have to be beaten now and then, not just threatened. Finally she gave up and found a cleaning lady.
Still, sloppiness seemed within the broad parameters allowed on the Big Island, where salty beach types rubbed shoulders with a.n.a.l-retentive ”cybrarians” at the Data Retention Center just over the hill. For the last year of gathering illness, she had tended more toward the style of her neighbors in the opposite direction, people just down the road whose car had a rag as a gas cap.
Channing had hidden her gathering fatigue as well as possible. Her years at NASA had taught her to give no sign of weakness, or else lose your spot in the mission rotation. After the s.p.a.ce station and the Mars adventure, there were plenty of surplus astronauts, each a model of compet.i.tive connivance.
Even in crisis, the Center was not nearly so bad, and having a husband who just happened to run its scientific wing helped, but still-best to look vigorous. Falling asleep in a crucial discussion, then fainting-not good, girl. So she planned her forays to work carefully, not letting the dark-rimmed eyes show, sipping coffee to stay up. She had learned to let Benjamin drive her home when she started to ebb; he was getting good at spotting the cusp, down to the exact moment.
But she had to admit that probably most people just weren't paying attention, thank G.o.d. Benjamin had persuaded her to sit in on a panel reviewing ”Semiotics of Contact,” a topic that swiftly came to cover a hodgepodge of issues-but mostly, anything the astronomers didn't want to deal with.
She went in late in the morning and today saw a van with a HONK IF YOU LOVE PEACE AND QUIET b.u.mper sticker. So she honked; she loved paradoxes. Such as her gathering feeling for Kingsley. Who would have thought that that still smoldered? A smelly bone, best buried in the backyard of her life. She had written him off to his wife, a cla.s.sic type: big eyes, big hips, dark curly hair you could bury your hand in up to the wrist. How pleasant, to know that even such a G.o.ddess could lose out in the romance wars! still smoldered? A smelly bone, best buried in the backyard of her life. She had written him off to his wife, a cla.s.sic type: big eyes, big hips, dark curly hair you could bury your hand in up to the wrist. How pleasant, to know that even such a G.o.ddess could lose out in the romance wars!
She arrived at the Center after threading the multilayered checkpoints. The TV platform set up in the foreyard had guards around it, big-shouldered types carrying automatic weapons. A bit overdone A bit overdone, she thought, then realized that the weaponry was not for real use, but display. Arno's way of saying, We're being serious here We're being serious here.
Already the media mavens had taken off from the news, CNN with twenty-four-hour coverage. Within months there would be spinoff movies, no doubt, thoughtful magazine pieces and books, the Eater finally entering the media hereafter as videos or the inspiration for toys.
She came late into the Semiotics Working Group, as Arno had labeled it, hoping n.o.body noticed, so of course it was at a pause in speakers and everyone looked her way. Still, it was fun to just sit and listen to the flood of informed speculation that poured from the visiting experts.
The astronomers had quickly been revealed as the Peter Pans of humanity. They never truly grew up and kept their curiosity like a members.h.i.+p card. Most believed the Saganesque doctrine that aliens would be peaceful, ruled by curiosity, eager for high-minded discourse. Carl Sagan had been a conventional antimilitary liberal, and so a.s.sumed that a radio message from s.p.a.ce would shock humanity, damping down wars and ushering in a cosmic sense of cooperation between nations.
Humanists were made of tougher stuff. Nonsense, they said, but more politely. Why hadn't the Europeans' discovery of the Americas halted warfare in Europe? Instead, they fought over the spoils. Would the Eater somehow become fodder for our ancient primate aggressions?
Another Saganesque doctrine was that contact with aliens would yield a bounty of science and technology. Half credit on this one: plenty of science, so far only astronomy, but no technology. The Eater had none. It seemed to be a magnetic construction, first made by some ancient alien race. Its origins were still blurry because of its coyly obtuse phrasing. It had said: I CAME INTO BEING BY ARTIFICE OF ANCIENT BIOLOGICAL BEINGS. AFTER THAT I VOYAGED AND BECAME LARGER IN SELF AND IN PURPOSE.
Whole squads of semioticists and linguists now labored over such sentences, mining with their contextual and semantic matrices, but little glittering ore appeared beyond the obvious. The extreme humanists argued instead that, beyond the pretty pictures it seemed so eager to send, we probably could learn little from the Eater of All Things. Science simply gave us the very best chimpanzee view of the universe. Our vision was shaped by evolution, sharpened to find edible roots or tasty, easy prey on a flat plain. Our sense of beauty came from throwing honed rocks along the beautifully simple arc of a parabola to strike herbivores with cutting edges.
The Eater's technology used magnetic induction, control of hot plasmas, advanced electromagnetics, and probably much else we could not guess. ”Face it,” one panelist said, ”unless an alien is a lot like us, we can't learn much from it. Even with goodwill-and we don't have really good evidence of that, so far-we can't can't harvest technology from a creature so different.” harvest technology from a creature so different.”
This deflated Arno's adjutants. They were easy to pick out, because in the status-shuffling of personnel here a person's authority was inversely proportional to the number of pens in their s.h.i.+rt pocket.
Her pager beeped her. Reluctantly she left the room as a decoding expert began drawing conclusions about the Eater's habits in encoding information. It had been steadily getting better at understanding human computers and methods, so the bit stream coming down from it carried an ever-higher density content-mostly astronomical pictures in wavelengths ranging from the low radio to the high gamma ray. One of the tidbits that intrigued her was that the Eater had spent much time between the stars, taking centuries to cross those abysses. Very low frequency electromagnetic waves were reflected by the higher density in the solar system, so could never penetrate. The Eater had pictures of the galaxy made by receiving these waves, a whole field of astronomy impossible from Earth.
The call was from Benjamin and she found him in the Big Screen Room. ”How's the semiotics?” he whispered.
”They're impressive, I suppose, in their way.” She studied the screen, which showed a beautiful view of the solar system seen from the Eater's present location.