Oh, the fracking mess.
I’m supposed to be careful what I say. As a public mouthpiece for Freedom Club, I should keep my distance from “illegal activity.” One rule for revolutionary movements, going all the way back to Bakunin, is strict separation of the political and action wings.
But hell, I’m fed up. What have we accomplished since that glorious event the dumbass peasants call Awfulday? When it seemed, for one magnificent moment, that the whole corrupt edifice of greed and bureaucracy and technology would come crashing down? Since then, what disappointment! Great Ted, working in his little mountain cabin, rattled the modernists’ cage. Why can’t we?
Failures pile up. Did that nuke in the Pyrenees accomplish anything? Rumors claim the abomination-the Basque Chimera-escaped. Worse, there’s a whole herd of resurrected mammoths grazing in Canada now, and a million acres of gene-designed perennial wheat! And the goddamn robot minds get smarter daily! And against all that, what have the bold followers of Kaczynski and McVey and Fu-Wayne accomplished lately?
The dolts can’t even blow up a damned zeppelin that’s full to bursting with explosive gas! So that alien crystal thing survived and who knows how many horrid new technologies the geeks will squeeze out of it?
A time of decision is coming! YOU passive supporters of the Better Way must choose. You can go join the peaceful Renunciation Movement, like sniveling gits, and follow that “prophet” of theirs, working within the corrupt system…
… or else take arms! Offer your skills and your lives to the Action Wing and help topple this teetering so-called civilization!
How to join? Just speak up. They’ll find you.
31.
Lacey’s generation was to blame, of course.
They were the ones who invented “continuous partial attention,” after all. Who were proud of jumping from one topic to another, spreading themselves as thin as the wrapper on a Sniffaire gelglobe. Or as narrow as the lived-in moment called now.
But never before had Lacey been forced to stretch her regard among so many vital topics, all of them demanding intense focus. In fact, she knew that the organic human brain can divert itself only so much, before returning, elastically, to whatever thought seems most intense. Most demanding. The elephant in the room.
I am a terrible mother.
Out of the maelstrom-attending to matters in Switzerland and Africa, here in Washington and in outer space, that one core fact was clear. By the moral standards of any human culture, she should have simply dropped everything else, in order to participate in the search for her missing son.
Never mind that it would do Hacker no good at all. She had hired the best professionals and offered rewards plentiful enough to divert every yacht and fishing smack and surfer, between here and Surinam, to join the search… or the fact that Mark was down there now, coordinating the quest to find his brother… or that all she’d accomplish, by hurrying down to the Caribbean, would be to get in the way.
Never mind any of that. It’s simply what a mom would do.
Only maybe not the mother of Hacker Sander.
The last thing in the world he would want from me, would be to show panic… or even much concern.
That one brief burst of telemetry-too short and static-ridden to localize-had reported the reentry capsule to be intact and its passenger healthy, just after it struck the sea. The tiny compartment was designed to float and to sustain life almost indefinitely. Moreover, even if all the electronics aboard had been fried, the shell itself would reflect radar and sonar in uniquely identifiable ways, just as soon as any seekers passed closely enough. A pair of nasty storms had hampered crews from reaching a few search areas, especially those farthest from the likely impact zone. But supposedly it was only a matter of time.
Anyway, she knew how furious the boy would get if he found out that she had rushed south, forsaking and spoiling her once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness history firsthand-the very moment of human-alien First Contact. Why? Just to go pace and fret and interfere in the efforts of skilled people?
So, Lacey, is that your rationalization? That you are staying at the Artifact Conference to honor Hacker? In order to do as he would wish-and as Jason would have wished?
Good one.
Next to her sat Professor Noozone. The scientist-popstar was happily engaged, grunting and clicking and subvocally mumbling as he interacted with his avid fan community-now numbering over a hundred million, in part because of where he sat right now. In a VIP seat, no less. The signature draidlocks floated around his head, tipped with lenses and sniffers that turned and pointed in every direction, while wafting aromas of ganja-frankincense shampoo. Occasionally she had to bat one of the strands of overly curious cybactive hair out of her space, but she hadn’t the heart to chide him-the man was so puppy-dog grateful to Lacey for getting him into the Observer’s Gallery as her adviser, separated by just a thick sheet of glass from the quarantine chamber and the white-coated figures-including Gerald Livingstone himself-who were examining the Havana Artifact.
In a nearby holistube, she saw an animated Noozone replica, chattering and gesticulating away, while concept-blimps hovered all around its head. The voice was tuned down, in order not to disturb other members of the Advisory Panel-experts, international dignitaries and representatives of all ten Estates. But when Lacey’s gaze settled in that direction, some computer measured her pupil dilation and responded to her interest, by sending a narrow-collimated beam of sound toward one ear.
“So which t’eories have we eliminated so faar?” The Professor’s animated holvatar drawled in a satin-toned Jamaican accent, as it swept one arm to point at a multidimensional comparison chart hovering nearby.
“Almost none! Till dem Contact Team manages to overcome dem humano-centric bias enough to understand the Artifact entities on their own terms, we are left with only that marvelously enticing ‘join us’ come-yah invitation as a very-major clue to the purpose of the Livingstone Object… or Havana Artifact, or any of the other names for this truly-wondrous thing. Rhaatid.
“And yet, on that sole-basis alone, futures market probabilities have shifted so-dramatically. Wager-contracts based upon alien invasion, for example, plummeted to mere-millicents on the dollar. Bets that pree-dict a true-friendly galactic bredren-federation skyrocketed in value, an’ then split, as interest focused on what kind of federated society the aliens might be part of.
“Of course, here is where we try a little smoky-ingenuity to piece together clues based upon the behavior of the strange beings-within-the-stone…”
Lacey pulled her gaze away and the volume of Profnoo’s vaice tapered off, as she looked beyond the glass at the focus of all this worldwide attention. The Artifact, an oblong-tapered, opalescent cylinder, lay in its cradle under a cloth canopy that staved off most of the room light, keeping it in shade. With just a modest supply of photon energy flowing into the stone, only faint and blurry images of drifting clouds could be seen playing across its surface.
Workmen were attaching hoses to the underside of the table while others erected a new illumination system under the direction of the latest member of the Contact Team-a tall, slender African with dark, almost-purple skin, who was said to be an expert at animal training, of all things. Meanwhile, the original discoverer, the astronaut Gerald Livingstone, conferred with General Hideoshi and several colleagues. One of them was a computer-generated holvatar-a full-size, human-scale aintity image, half woman and half tiger-whose feral, carnivorous expression hardly seemed in keeping with the peaceful mission of the team.