Alex Benedict 9 - Village in the Sky, page 7
“Or a bad science fiction novel,” said Alex. He was concentrating on Sally. “Is there something else?”
A shadow crossed her face. “No,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“You look as if something’s wrong.”
“No. It’s no big deal.”
“What isn’t?”
She was looking at the doorway. Biting her lower lip. “This is just an opinion. And I don’t want anyone quoting me.”
“That’s okay. Is there something we don’t know about these guys that we should?”
“I think they’re smarter than we are.”
“What? Because of Zon Ockle?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then what?”
“You know Doc, the Skydeck AI, taught Neo how to play chess.”
“And—?”
“It took a while, but lately Doc can’t win a game.”
“You’re kidding,” I said.
She shook her head. “No.”
“Well,” said Alex, “has Doc been turned up to full throttle?”
“As far as I know.”
“Okay. So we have an alien who’s spent her life reading and it turns out she’s unusually smart.”
“It’s not just Neo. They’ve all picked up the game.” She was smiling like someone caught telling a dumb joke. “The AI here is Jacob, right?”
“Yes.”
“Does he play chess?”
“Yes.”
“Anybody ever beaten him?”
According to Sally, the Ulakans had shown interest in coming down to Andiquar, or possibly another city, if that was the recommendation of the authorities. But there was concern about their safety on the ground. There had been some animosity toward them, but it wasn’t widespread. Nevertheless, one nitwit with a blaster could do a lot of damage. The problem led to a revival of the old debate about citizens’ rights to own hyperweapons. We could have provided security, but the aliens wanted to visit public places, meet people, and generally enjoy public attention. There was no way we could take the risk. Consequently, it never happened.
I couldn’t resist asking whether anyone had inquired of the Ulakans about the question that had haunted everybody. “No,” she said. “We never went near it.”
We exchanged a few messages with them after they were gone. But we still have no idea whether they spin webs.
* * *
The Harbinger team had no knowledge of the Ulakans. There hadn’t been time for our HV transmissions to catch up with them. The program we watched on the day the Ulakans left depicted the Harbinger team getting close to the target star. But almost two weeks had passed since that signal had left the ship. They might have made contact, shaken hands, thrown a party with the aliens, and been on their way back.
That two-week-old program was set in the passenger cabin, where Lester Wilkinson talked with Vince Reddington about what lay ahead. They were still submerged. Lester was asking Vince how it could have happened that they were able to orbit the target world for a couple of days and see only one village. “Were you even looking?”
“Of course we were. We had the scopes locked in. There were no lights anywhere. And nothing out of the ordinary showed up in the sunlight.”
“You must have wondered how that could be. A world with one village?”
“Well, sure, Lester. Nobody had any explanation for it.”
“What did you think, Vince?”
“I just assumed we were missing them. That the villages turned out the lights when it got dark.”
“Does that make any sense to you?”
“They’re aliens,” he said. “Who knows how they think?”
Henry Cassell signaled that he wanted to speak. “Vince is right,” he said. “We need to just be patient. We should be able to figure out what’s going on this time.”
Vince nodded. “The village was on the edge of a lake, surrounded by forest. If it’s really a world with primitives, my guess would be that’s exactly the kind of place where they’d want to settle. They’d be less visible than out on a plain somewhere. And they’d probably get more life support from the woods. And there have to be other places. One village on a planet just doesn’t work.”
Wilkinson looked as if he was in full agreement. “Is that why you signed on to come back, Vince? To find the other towns? I mean, this is a long ride.”
“Sure. I was never looking forward to another couple months submerged in Armstrong space. But yes. It’s a primitive culture, but they’re here. Someone is.”
“You could have waited for the Harbinger to come back. Get the answers then.”
“Henry needed a pilot. Either me or Robbi Jo.”
Henry smiled. “I wanted something better than a set of directions. One village on a planet the size of Rimway. With electrical power. You can’t manage that if you’re completely alone. They are probably a colony. From somewhere else.”
“Another world?”
“Yes.” He grinned at Vince. “That’s why we needed you. Somebody who knew where the damned place was. If it’s really the only settlement on the planet, we could spend a lot of time wandering around.”
“I hate to bring this up,” said Vince, “but there’s a good chance we won’t be able to find out what’s going on unless we go down and talk to them. Whatever, we’ll get it settled.” An exchange of glances suggested that he and Henry had already discussed and probably failed to agree on whether they would put people on the ground.
I asked Alex if it was true that primitives generally hid their villages among trees.
“I’ve no idea, Chase. I’ve never really thought about it.” He looked at the time and sighed. “These programs are a waste of time. We should stay clear of them until they get where they’re going.”
The network apparently agreed. They canceled all the Harbinger shows the following day, although they informed us that the Harbinger was expected to return to normal space during the approaching weekend. They promised to deliver complete coverage.
* * *
We knew they’d probably make their transition from Armstrong space and still arrive at a substantial distance from Korella IV. But of course they had a telescope, so even though it would probably be a few more days before they reached the planet, they should still be able to get a decent look at it. We’d already seen pictures, of course, so we knew it was a routine terrestrial world. It had a couple of big oceans, lots of mountain chains, large green forests, and wide plains filled with a variety of animals.
* * *
The network canceled everything connected with the Harbinger over the next two days, until the ship was ready to surface. That program was titled “Arrival.”
Wilkinson opened the show by informing us that they’d received a shock. “We got a transmission earlier today from home reporting that aliens have arrived at Skydeck. With books. And speaking Standard. Magnificent.” He was seated on the bridge with Vince. “I guess we should all have stayed home. But welcome back to the Harbinger. We’re about to surface.” He looked over at the pilot, who signaled they were ready to go.
Vince went through the routine of notifying everyone on board that they were returning to normal space in three minutes. They’d have known about it earlier, of course, but the three-minute warning provided some suspense.
Everybody checked in, and eventually they went to a thirty-second countdown. Tension mounted. Vince took the countdown through the last few seconds: “Three, two, one, zero.” The camera was pointed at the wraparound and the absolute blackness outside.
Then it was gone and the sky was full of stars. We heard some commotion in the passenger cabin, people shouting, “Yay!” and someone pounding on the arm of a chair. It took a while, but the AI was eventually able to point out a star, or what appeared to be one, and explain they were looking at Korella IV. That they could get that close made it obvious they’d come out of Armstrong space earlier, located the planet, and submerged again, and gave us some excitement surfacing so close to the target.
* * *
It had a moon. It was small and gray, with obviously no atmosphere. No sign of any structures. They were approaching the planet on its sunlit side. “Two days to orbit,” said the AI. Korella IV was green, covered with forests separated by mountain ranges and occasional prairies. Its moon drifted through the sky.
“Vince,” said Wilkinson, “you know where this place is, right? The village?”
“Yes, Lester. It’ll be easy to find.”
“Great.” He looked out at his audience. “We’ll be back tomorrow with another report. Stay with us. You’ll want to be there when we connect with the aliens. This has been The Harbinger Show.”
They were back a day later. Korella IV had of course increased in size. Other than that, nothing had changed. The only memorable moment about the broadcast was a comment by Wilkinson: “Other than the green skin, the villagers have a fairly close resemblance to us. I have to say I’m glad they don’t look anything like those spiders.”
I saw Alex a few minutes later. He hadn’t been watching, and when I mentioned the remark, he rolled his eyes. “I hope Ollie and Neo didn’t pick up the transmission.”
* * *
I quit early and wandered out to Chad’s bookstore. It was about four o’clock when I got there, usually a quiet time for sales, but the place was full of customers. He told me it had been like that all day. Business was still cranking along at a high rate. Customers literally filled the store. Chad was gloriously happy. “They aren’t just buying the alien books,” he said. “They’re picking up other stuff as well, especially the books that were made available to them. To the aliens. The only ancient-world material we used to sell was a few copies of Greek plays to people working on degrees. Now we’re selling Beowulf, The Iliad, The Divine Comedy, and On the Road. There was a woman in here today trying to find something by Sophocles. Anything by Sophocles. Chase, we’ve never experienced anything like this.”
“Were you able to help her? With Sophocles?”
“Not much. The only one of his plays that’s survived is Electra. That’s in Kramer’s book, one of the ones we gave the Ulakans. She already has that.”
“That’s a pity,” I said. “How many plays did Sophocles write?”
“More than a hundred.” Chad closed his eyes. “Most of them were lost long before we got the printing press. You and Alex want to give us a serious breakthrough: find one of them.”
“We’d need a time machine.”
“I wish somebody would invent one.” He almost got teary. “People have been telling me for the last few days how they’ve started reading Kramer’s book. They love it.” He stopped to answer a customer’s question about Dickens, and then smiled. “You and Alex are in the right business. There’s a lot of stuff in the past that we should have held on to. It’s unfortunate that so much of it just doesn’t exist anymore.”
I hesitated. Then: “Technically, we have a time machine.”
He looked at me and sighed. He was in no mood for kidding.
“If Henry Cassell had a giant telescope on the Harbinger and he turned it on us, what would he see?”
Chad needed a moment to think about it. “I get it,” he said. “They’re about nine hundred light-years out, so they’d see us during the Metropolitan Age. Whatever was going on here nine hundred years ago.”
“Okay. Now take them farther away. Maybe a third of the way out toward the center of the Milky Way.”
“That would be, what, about twelve thousand light-years?” He smiled. “If they timed it right, they’d be able to watch Oedipus the King playing onstage in Athens.” One of the lost plays. Credited as Sophocles’s masterpiece. “But they’d need a pretty big scope.”
* * *
We heard nothing more from the Harbinger until close to midnight, when Carmen’s voice woke me up. “You there, Chase?”
“I think so.”
“Announcement coming.” She activated the HV. One of the Hochman anchors, Grey Whitlock, was seated in a studio. Carmen started the program.
Whitlock was frowning in his standard majestic manner, which removed any question whether the mission had arrived at a critical moment. “We’ve received an announcement from the Harbinger. They’ve made contact. No details have been provided yet, but we’ll be joining them in a few minutes.”
The news got me excited until we joined the interstellar and it became clear they hadn’t actually connected with anyone. In fact, according to Wilkinson, they were “entering” orbit, although that was hours away. Whitlock apparently didn’t understand the meaning of “contact.”
I didn’t expect to stay with them long. It would take a while to get to the site where the village had been. It was located on the only continent that reached almost from the south pole to the north, falling short by only a few hundred kilometers. It was on the east coast, about two hundred kilometers above the equator, near a small lake about the same distance from the ocean. It would still be a while before they arrived. I was thinking about turning it back over to Carmen but decided instead to call Alex. “You watching?” I asked. There was no visual exchange, since he was probably in pajamas too.
“Yes,” he said.
A couple of the network commentators were talking about how it was the second time this month that we were making history. “Who’d have believed it?” Alex said. “I wonder if it might really turn out to be the Ulakans.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
“It’s just too much of a coincidence. I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. But there’s a decent chance they followed the Columbia mission. I know the aliens don’t resemble each other. But who knows? Maybe they were looking for a way to have fun with us. They might be the explanation for a village with electric power on a world where there’s nothing else.”
“Alex,” I said, “your imagination’s running away with you.”
* * *
We didn’t hear any more through the early morning, other than that the Harbinger was still entering orbit. I was enjoying brunch with Chad in Ellie’s Café. He was describing how popular Dickens had become since the alien visit. It was not only The Old Curiosity Shop, but everything else he’d written as well. With the problem of course that only two other books, David Copperfield and Barnaby Rudge, still existed. Even Ebenezer Scrooge had been lost, although everybody knew who he was. His name had become part of the language. Chad had been trying to persuade me to write a novel in which an archeologist “like Alex” is closing in on a copy of A Christmas Carol.
“And of course,” he added, “it should be in the hands of deranged aliens.”
The monitors came to life. Wilkinson was sitting up front on the bridge of the Harbinger. We had a view through the wraparound of the planet. “Do you know where we are, Vince?” Wilkinson asked.
“Yeah. We’re close.”
“Really?”
The globe below was mostly ocean. A coastline lay on the right. “We’re headed south,” Vince said. “We’ll cross the polar region in about ten minutes and keep going. That’ll take us north. We should be at the village in about a half hour.” Vince bent over the control board and pressed his fingertips against his earbuds. “That’s interesting.”
“What?” asked Wilkinson. “You hearing something?”
Vince ignored the question and spoke into the mike: “Henry, you there?”
“Sure.” Henry’s voice sounded interested. “You got something?”
“Radio signal.”
There was some commotion. Then the camera swung around and we watched Henry coming onto the bridge. “Where’s it from?”
There was a momentary silence. Then Yara said, “I’m not sure yet.” She was the AI.
Wilkinson surrendered the right-hand seat to Henry. “So I guess that settles the electricity issue.”
“There never was an issue,” said Vince.
“Yara,” said Henry, “you getting a location?”
“Not yet.”
Vince shook his head. “We’ll need to give it a little time, Henry.”
“I can tell you,” said the AI, “the signal is not coming from the ground.”
“You reading a spacecraft out there somewhere?” Vince asked.
“Don’t know. Something.”
Henry put on a pair of earbuds and both men sat, heads bent, listening. “It’s a repetitive signal.”
We heard Wilkinson’s voice. “The same signal, over and over?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the point of that?”
Vince was looking happy. “To get attention,” he said.
Yara again: “It’s probably coming from a satellite.”
“That’s a surprise,” said Henry. “Do we know where it is yet?”
“In orbit,” Vince said. “Where else would it be?”
“I mean, can we get close to it? Get a good look at it?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s talk to it,” said Wilkinson.
Vince passed the question to Henry. “Do it,” he said.
They waited a minute or two. Then Yara said, “Getting no response.”
“Okay,” said Henry, “let’s do what we have to. Go find it.”
“If you want,” Vince said. “But keep in mind it could be a manned station.”
Somebody—it sounded like Sam’s voice—said, “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? To talk to these people?”
“Not officially.” Henry sounded annoyed. “We have to do what we can to figure out what happened here.”
That could require some time. Chad said he had to get back to work. We both did. I rode the skimmer back to the country house. It was likely to be nothing more than an automated satellite. But of course even that was going to be a big deal. Shortly after I arrived and walked back in through the front door, Jacob informed me that was what they’d found.
The satellite appeared as I entered my office. It was drifting over near one of the windows of the Harbinger, shaped like a cube with rounded edges. A couple of solar panels were inserted on almost opposite sides. And an antenna.
