Existence (27 page)

Contact, yes, but with what? With whom?

Gradually over several days, more depth developed. Hands led to arms or tentacles that receded
inward,
as if the Artifact were tens of meters deep, perhaps much more, instead of a few dozen centimeters. Then, torsos or bodies appeared at the ends of those arms, moving closer, though always distorted, as if viewed through a thick ball of milky glass.

And finally came heads … sometimes faces … equipped with eyes or sensing organs that pressed up to the inner surface, seeming to peer outward, even as Gerald and his colleagues stared back.

After gaping long enough, your mind played tricks. You even found it possible to imagine that
you
were
inside,
while those alien figures scrutinized your cramped, little prison-world from the outside, as if through some kind of lens.

Maybe they’re doing just that
. One theory called the Artifact a transmitter. An interstellar communication device offering instant hookup across the light-years, to aliens now living on some other world.

While others think it has to be a hoax.

Some of the best experts in display technology—from Hollywood to Bombay to Kinshasa—had flown in to examine the thing. Many of its behaviors and functions could be duplicated with known technology, they decreed. But not all. In fact, some were downright astonishing. Especially the way three-dimensional images might loom outward in any direction—or all directions at once—from deep within a solid object. Or the unknown manner that it sensed nearby people and things. Or the mysterious and unconventional means by which it drew power from ambient lighting. Still, none of those enigmas guaranteed against a fake. Fraudulent alien artifacts had been tried before, by spoof artists with deep pockets and plenty of creativity. An Interpol team had been assigned to trawl the vir and real worlds, seeking to profile a certain kind of prankster—one with fantastic ingenuity and extravagant resources.

Likewise, the symbols that kept floating upward through that inner murk, to plaster themselves against its translucent shell, like insects wriggling and trying to escape. Were they proof of alien provenance? More words had formed, that went beyond the initial greeting, and yet all meaning remained frustrating. Ambiguous. It wasn’t just a strangeness of syntax and grammar. Rather, the sheer
number
of symbologies seemed startling. Just when one linguistic system was starting to make sense, it would get jostled aside, forced to make way for another. So far, there had been at least fifty, spanning a range greater than all human languages.

This very complexity helped convince the advisory committee against any likelihood of fraud. One or two eerie grammars might be counterfeited. But why would hoaxers go to so much effort, creating scores of them, apparently bickering and competing with each other for attention? Pranksters would want to convey authority and confidence—not an impression of inner squabbling.

Oh, it seemed likely this was real, all right. Some kind of emissary
artifact
, representing a menagerie of sapient races, a blizzard of dialects, and a panoply of shining planets, depicted in varied colors and living textures, from pure water worlds to hazy desert globes. That very diversity seemed reassuring, in a way. For, if so many races shared some kind of community, out there, then surely humanity had little to fear?

Without willing it to, Gerald found his left hand creeping closer to the ovoid, as if drawn by habit, or a mind of its own. And soon, the Artifact reacted. Vague, cloudy patches clarified into more distinct swirls that gathered and clustered in the area closest to him. That sense of depth returned. Again, he seemed to be looking inward …
downward …

… and soon, a clump of minuscule shadows appeared, as if they were figures viewed at a great distance, through a shimmering mirage-haze. Starting small and indistinct, these tiny black shapes began rising, growing larger with each passing moment, as if approaching through banks of polychromatic fog.

Physical contact with my hand doesn’t seem to be required, anymore,
he pondered with bemusement.
Just proximity.

And there was another difference, this time.

There are several of them, at the same time.

Always, before, there had been a jostling sense of exclusivity. Just one hand met his. One alien alphabet lingered for a while, before being pushed aside by another.

Now, he counted four … no, five … figures that seemed to be striding forward together, side by side, gaining color and detail as they approached. Two of them were murky bipedal shadows, accompanied by what seemed to be some kind of a four-legged centauroid, a crablike being and—well—something like a cross between a fish and a squid, propelling along with tentacular pulsations, easily keeping pace beside the walkers.

Apparently, reality operated under different rules, in there.

“What the devil are you doing?” Akana hissed, beside him. “We agreed not to trigger a response till the president said so!”

“I’m not doing anything,” Gerald grunted back at her, partly lying. His hand wasn’t touching the Artifact. But nor was he drawing it back. Indeed, clearly, the approaching figures seemed to be moving toward him, drawn by his attention.

Speaking of attention, Gerald could sense the dignitaries nearby, halting their private conversations and turning to look at the big screen, amid a rising babble of excitement. Those nearby clustered close behind Gerald to look at the real thing. He felt warm breath and smelled somebody’s curry lunch.

“You … really ought to…” Akana began. But he could tell she was as transfixed as the others. Something important was happening. More so than a lapse in protocol.

At that moment, while the alien figures were still some “distance” away through that inner haze, somebody pushed a switch and the stage curtains spread apart, exposing the dais and the big screen to a thousand people in the auditorium … and several hundred millions of viewers around the globe.

Some interval later, while a babble filled the hall, a fanfare played through the public address system. Gerald guessed, with a small part of his mind, that it must be for the president coming on stage. Just in time to be ignored.

The five figures loomed, their forms beginning to fill one side of the Artifact boundary, facing Gerald. He recognized the centauroid and one of the bipeds, from earlier, brief encounters. The first had a hawkish face, with two extremely large eyes on both sides of a fierce-looking beak. A nocturnal creature, perhaps, yet apparently unbothered by bright light. The other strode on two legs that moved like stilts, swinging to the side in order to move forward. Its head seemed a mass of wormlike tendrils, without any breaks or apparent openings.

The crablike being closely resembled—well—Gerald’s dinner, two nights ago, while the aquatic seemed something of a nightmare. At least, those were his vague impressions. To be honest, Gerald had little attention to spare. For the moment, despite all his previous experience with the alien object, he felt as pinned and fascinated as any of those watching from their homes, across the planet.

Gerald abruptly realized there were
more
entities now, emerging from the distance, hurrying forward—at least dozen or more of them, propelling themselves with haste, as if eager to catch up with the first ones.

Those five alien figures stopped, crowding together at the lens-like boundary between the ovoid and Gerald’s world. He sensed them looking outward, not just at him, but at Akana and others within view. He could no longer hear or feel hot breath on his neck. For a few seconds, no one exhaled.

Then, from each of the five aliens, there emerged a single dot. A black form that grew and fluttered as it took shape. A symbol or glyph, each quite different than the others. One was sharply angular. Another manifested as all slants and intersections. A third looked like a crude pie chart … and so on. The signs plastered themselves in a row, along the curved surface where the Artifact’s interior met the outside world of humans.

Is that it? Another set of enigmas? Well, at least a few of them are working together, for a change. Maybe we can start the long process …

The symbols began to mutate again. Each transformed, and Gerald had an intuition—they were turning into blocklike letters of the Roman alphabet, just like that day during reentry.

If it just says “greeting” again, I may scream,
he thought.

Fortunately, it didn’t. Not exactly.

This time, instead of one word, there were two.

JOIN US.

PART FOUR

NOBLER IN THE MIND

We need not marvel at extinction; if we must marvel, let it be at our presumption in imagining for a moment that we understand the many complex contingencies, on which the existence of each species depends.

—Charles Darwin

SPECIES

autie murphy verifies
+ + +
he found the basque chimera

+
!
+
the child lives
+
!
+
and is safe, for now.

safe from the normalpeople who would treasure
+
/- persecute -/
+
or study himherit -/- perhaps to death

born in a year that would have been the square of the number of birthdays that jesus would have had —- if jesus had lived twelve more years -
+
- and had an extra leap day every year
+ + +
and if the primate avoided prime numbers
+
/- what more proof could anybody need?/-

+ + +
good going murph
+ + +

only now, what do we do with this knowledge? the autie thing? dance with it a while
+
then pack it away

+
/- all facts are created equal. -/
+
the number of dollars in your bank account -/- the number of holes in your socks … all the same, right? pragmatism is for poorparents -/- those who are distraught over the “autism plague”

—- pragmatism doesn’t come easily to us —-

+ + +
but it must
+ + +

if we lack the passion & drive of homosaps—their cro magnon attention-allocation genius—then can we use something else?
+ + +
something we are good at
+ + +

!/! if we super-autistics really are more like animals … or even maybe like Neanderthals … then might the chimera teach us something valuable?/?

maybe we should do something with this knowledge

possibly go talk to himherit

perhaps even care

25.

DEPARTURE

The journey of three thousand
li
began with a bribe and a little air.

And a penguinlike robot, standing on the low dining table that Peng Xiang Bin had salvaged from a flooded mansion. A mechanical creature that stayed punctiliously polite, while issuing commands that would forever disrupt the lives of Xiang Bin and Mei Ling and their infant son.

“There is very little time,” it said, gravely, in a Beijing-accented voice that emanated somewhere on its glossy chest, well below the sharply pointed beak. “Others have sniffed the same suspicions that brought me here, drawn by your indiscreet queries about selling a gleaming, egglike stone, with moving shapes within.”

To illustrate what it meant by
others,
the bird-thing scraped one metallic talon along the scaly flank of a large, robotic
snake
—the other interloper, that had climbed the crumbling walls and slithered across the roof of this once-lavish beachfront house, slipping into the shorestead shelter and terrifying Mei Ling, while Bin was away on his ill-fated expedition to Shanghai East. Fortunately, the penguin-machine arrived soon after that. A brief, terrible battle ensued, leaving the false serpent torn and ruined, just before Bin returned home.

The reason for that fracas lay on the same table, shimmering with light energy that it had absorbed earlier, from sunshine. An ovoid shape, almost half a meter from tip to tip, opalescent and mesmerizing. Clearly, Bin should have been more cautious—
far
more cautious—making queries about this thing on the Mesh.

The penguin-shaped robot took a step toward Bin.

“Those who sent the snake-creature are just as eager as my owners are, to acquire the worldstone. I assure you they’ll be less considerate than I have been, if we are still here when they send reinforcements. And
my
consideration has limits.”

Though a poor man, with meager education, Bin had enough sense to recognize a veiled threat. Still, he felt reluctant to go charging off with his family, into a fading afternoon, with this entity … leaving behind, possibly forever, the little shorestead home that he and Mei Ling had built by hand, on the ruins of a seaside mansion.

“You said that the … worldstone … picks only one person to speak to.” He gestured at the elongated egg. Now that his hands weren’t in contact, it no longer depicted the clear image of a demon … or space alien. (There was a difference?) Still, the lopsided orb remained transfixing. Swirling shapes, like storm-driven clouds, seemed to roil beneath its scarred and pitted surface, shining by their own light—as if the object were a lens into another world.

“Wouldn’t your rivals have to talk to it
through me
?” he finished. “Just as you must?”

One rule of commerce, that even a poor man understood—you can get a better deal when more than one customer is bidding.

“Perhaps, Peng Xiang Bin,” the bird-thing replied, shifting its weight in what seemed a gesture of impatience. “On the other hand, you should not overestimate your value, or underestimate the ferocity of my adversaries. This is not a market situation, but akin to ruthless
war.

“Furthermore, while very little is known about these worldstones, it is unlikely that you are indispensable. Legends suggest that it will simply pick
another
human counterpart—if the current one dies.”