For some it’s a painful, limited life, that only fools would envy. Still, tens of thousands of normal, undamaged homosaps climb into hook-in tanks and risk body-atrophy, trying to follow us “pioneers” down the path of the living holvatar.
I hope none of you are such fools. Just one person in a hundred manages to make the transition as well as I have-swooping about the datalanes, veering from hunch to correlation to corroboration. Links that used to require a laborious eyeblink or tooth-click now happen by sheer will… or whim… quickly submerging to the level of reflex…
All right, I just made it sound attractive, didn’t I? Well, don’t go there, any of you. It still hurts! And there are puzzling itches, in the way data often seems to stroke my skin and tingle up the spine. None of the docs can explain. Then there’s the creepy sensation that someone’s calling my name. Not this moniker I use in the news biz. Not what my mother called me, but some kind of secret name, like in stories about magic spells and such.
Okay, it’s clearly a lingering wash of escapism/slash/self-pity… and so let’s push that aside with the balm of work! Smart-mob time. Like a swarm of T cells, let’s swoop onto something in the news!
What? You want to make the space Artifact our topic? All of you? Isn’t everybody else on the planet obsessing…
No, you’re right. Most of the reporting is stodgy. The insights stale. I share the group hunch. We can do better.
41.
Peng Xiang Bin tried hard to follow the conversation-partly out of fascination. But also because he felt desperate to please.
If I prove useful to them-more than a mere on-off switch for the worldstone-it could mean my life. I might even get to see Mei Ling and Xiao En again.
That goal wasn’t coming easy. The others kept talking way over his head. Nor could he blame them. After all, who was he? What was he, but another piece of driftwood-trash, washed up on a beach, who happened to pick up a pretty rock? Should he demand they explain everything? Dui niu tanqin… it would be like playing a lute to a cow.
Except they needed his ongoing service as communicator-ambassador to the entity within that rock-and he seemed to be performing that task well enough. At least according to Dr. Nguyen, who was always friendly to Bin.
The tech-search experts-Anna Arroyo and Paul Menelaua-clearly were dubious about this ill-educated Huangpu shoresteader with his weathered skin and rough diction, who kept taking up valuable time with foolish questions. Those two would be happier, he knew, if the honor of direct contact with the Courier entity were taken over by someone else.
Only, can the role be passed along at all? If I died, would it transfer to another? Surely they had mulled that tempting thought.
Or do I have some special trait-something that goes beyond being the first man in decades to lay eyes on the worldstone? Without me, might there be a long search before they found another? That possibility was one he must foster. At some point it might keep him breathing.
Anyway, I do not have to prove myself their equal, Bin reminded himself. My role is like the first performer in a Chinese opera, who does not have to sing especially well. Just dance around a little and help warm up the audience. Be useful, not the star.
“Clearly, this mechanism in our possession was dispatched across interstellar space by different people, with different motives, than those who sent the Havana Artifact,” commented Yang Shenxiu, the scholar from New Beijing, who rested one hand on the worldstone without causing more than a ripple under its cloudy surface-giving Bin a moment of satisfaction. It reacts a lot more actively to my touch!
With his other hand, Yang motioned toward a large placard-image screen for comparison. In lustrous threevee, it showed the alien object under study in Maryland, America, surrounded by researchers from around the world-a bustle of activity watched by billions and supervised by Gerald Livingstone, the astronaut who discovered and collected that “herald egg” from orbit.
To most of the world, that is the sole one in existence. Only a few suspect that such things have been encountered before, across the centuries. And even fewer have certain knowledge of another active stone, held in secret, here in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean.
Bin contemplated the three-dimensional image of his counterpart, a clever and educated man, a scientist and space traveler and probably the world’s most famous person right now. In other words, different from poor little Peng Xiang Bin in every conceivable way. Except that he looks as tired and worried as I feel.
Watching Livingstone, Bin felt a connection, as if with another chosen one. The keeper-guardian of a frightening oracle from space. Even if they found themselves on opposite sides of an ancient struggle.
Paul Menelaua answered Yang Shenxiu by describing a long list of physical differences in excruciating detail-the Havana Artifact was larger, longer, and more knobby at one end, for example. And, clearly, less damaged. Well, it never had to suffer the indignities of fiery passage through Earth’s atmosphere, or pummeling impact with a mountain glacier, or centuries of being poked at by curious or reverential or terrified tribal humans… not to mention a couple of thousand years buried in a debris pit, then decades soaking in polluted waters underneath a drowned mansion. Bin found himself reacting defensively on behalf of “his” worldstone.
I’d like to see Livingstone’s famous Havana Artifact come through all that, and still be capable of telling vague, mysterious stories.
Of course, that was the chief trait both ovoids had in common.
“… so, yes, there are evident physical differences. Still, anyone can tell at a glance that they use the same underlying technologies. Capacious and possibly unlimited holographic memory storage. Surface sonic transduction at the wider end… but with most communications handled visually, both in pictorial representation and through symbol manipulation. Some surface tactile sensitivity. And, of course an utter absence of moving parts.”
“Yes, there are those commonalities,” Anna Arroyo put in. “Still, the Havana Artifact projects across a wider spectrum than this one-and it portrays a whole community of simulated alien species, while ours depicts only one.”
Dr. Nguyen nodded, his elegantly decorated braids rattling. “It would be a good guess to imagine that one species or civilization sent out waves of these things, and the technology was copied by others-”
“Who proceeded to cast forth modified stones of their own, incorporating representatives of all the diverse members of their growing civilization,” concluded Anna. “Until one of those races decided to break the tradition, by offering a dissenting point of view.”
Bin took advantage of this turn in the conversation-away from technical matters and back to the general story their own worldstone had been telling.
“Isn’t… is it not… clear who came second? Courier warns us not to pay attention to liars. It seems… I mean, is it not clear that he refers to the creatures who dwell within the Havana Artifact?”
Of course they were amused by his stumbling attempts to speak a higher grade of Beijing dialect, with classier grammar and less Huangpu accent or slang. But he also knew there were many types of amusement. And, while Anna and Paul might feel the contemptuous variety, it was the indulgent smile of Dr. Nguyen that mattered. He seemed approving of Bin’s earnest efforts.