He clicked on the computer pad and the Western Hemisphere changed color. All of North America and South America were overlaid with a nasty yellow. So were much of Europe and parts of Africa.
Only the far northern or southern regions seemed immune. China, India, and Australia were the only areas clear of this yellow.
“We knew this,” Xavier said, “or we could guess it. But what does it mean? What’s happening there?
“Well,” Taj said, “that’s a good question.”
Rectangular video images appeared around the border of the giant map. As Taj spoke, he highlighted each one so that it filled half the screen for a moment. (The images had superimposed identification, which was helpfuclass="underline" Yahvi could recognize most major Earth landmarks and a lot of terrain, but only that.)
What she saw:
A field in Kansas . . . the blue bowl of the sky, golden wheat and a giant tractor-combine rolling past, a human farmer visible in the cab . . . with an angular Reiver “mantis” type riding outside the cab behind him.
The canyons of downtown Manhattan, marvelously dressed people crossing sunny streets . . . with a cluster of Reiver “anteaters” in a crosswalk.
A seaside café in San Francisco—Golden Gate Bridge to the left, seascape to the right—and another cluster of anteaters posing like tourists at a café!
“If that’s alien domination,” Xavier said, “sign me up.” No one laughed—no one but Yahvi. She earned a sharp glance from her father; no response at all from her mother.
Then the images changed.
She saw a lake bottom in Minnesota, dying fish flopping in the mud, the only visible water a small puddle . . . and a strange-looking machine chewing up the shore, as if dredging a new course for a river.
A refugee camp in Louisiana. It looked like refugee camps all through history, she imagined: emaciated people, eyes staring out of dirty faces.
What should have been a beautiful mountain in Montana . . . its top sliced off by a machine that appeared to be a giant cousin of the mud dredger. An avalanche of slag was pouring down one side, spilling onto the landscape.
Downtown Cleveland, leveled as if hit by a nuclear weapon.
Then a factory in El Paso, Texas, row on row of some kind of vehicles. Yahvi realized there were hundreds, and they looked a bit like the military tanks she knew from history class, but bulging with nasty-looking weapons, not just a single cannon barrel. Their turrets were transparent on top and showed that each was driven by a Reiver.
The last . . . a desert landscape, likely Arizona or Nevada . . . and a row of squat, newly built (well, they were shiny and a couple looked unfinished) towers stretching far into the distance, where a mound of some kind rested.
“We have thousands of such images, of course,” Taj said. “These are merely samples.”
“We’ve seen similar,” Rachel said. “But what is it like? This is the middle of the twenty-first century . . . with radio, TV, Internet, nations just can’t be . . . isolated.”
“Of course they can!” Pav said. “When I was a kid, there was North Korea. Albania before that.”
“But this is North America!” Rachel said.
“And South America, too.” Xavier was indicating several videos they hadn’t gotten to yet.
“Here is the situation,” Taj said. “On the surface, the Aggregate Nations look and act much as they did before.
“Internet access to the Americas and much of Europe is firewalled. It sort of works—but you never know what’s not going through or coming out.”
Pav was shaking his head. “How did this happen? Didn’t we fight?”
Taj shrugged. “Yes. There are still outbreaks, revolts against the Aggregates . . . and places where their control is far from absolute.
“But you probably know their advantages better than I. They aren’t susceptible to most weapons—only to vast amounts of heat, electricity, or chemical-biological attack, which is incredibly difficult to field outside a laboratory or a small battlefield.
“And their initial arrival, eighteen years ago, was not immediately detected.”
“No one tracked their vesicle?” Rachel said. She knew that NASA had tracked the hell out of the Houston version.
“It landed in the South Atlantic, entering over the Antarctic, just like you. There were almost no detectors looking that way, and those that did judged it to be a big meteoroid.”
Since no one knew, the Aggregates had time to establish themselves and launched their own strikes.
“It started with plagues—from serious influenza right up to substantially more deadly things resembling SARS and Ebola.
“Countries wanted to close their borders, and did. Immigration and travel were restricted—and the barriers remain.
“It stretched to cyberwarfare, doing to data networks what they did to human beings. It’s simplistic to say, that’s all it took . . . but in truth, that’s all it took.”
Rachel lowered her head for a moment, a gesture Yahvi recognized. It meant she was getting to serious matters. “How difficult would it be for the six of us”—Yahvi was happy she was still including Sanjay—“to travel to the United States?”
“Openly? As voyagers from Keanu?”
“Let’s say yes.”
“Possible. I’m sure you’d be officially welcome everywhere on the planet, even in Free Nation U.S.” He smiled, not pleasantly. “And totally restricted in anything you heard or saw or did, or tried to do.”
“What if we traveled less openly?”
“That would be quite difficult,” he said. He actually glanced left and right, as if being watched, lowering his voice. “And the first trick would be getting out of India.”
Now Rachel stood. “Then it’s time we took those steps. Did you say our media agent was waiting?”
“Agents. And I’ll get them in here as soon as possible. But first it would be helpful to take some questions from the press.”
Yahvi wanted to run. But a look from Rachel caused her to freeze where she was.
She was beginning to wish she had never come to Earth.
QUESTION: For General Radhakrishnan—
TAJ: I am not part of this press conference.
RACHEL: Oh, please—if we have to do this, you do, too.
(laughter)
QUESTION: What are your thoughts, seeing your son for the first time in twenty years—and learning that you have a daughter-in-law and a granddaughter!
TAJ: It’s been a great pleasure.
QUESTION: Would you like them to remain on Earth?
TAJ: I haven’t considered that.
INTERVIEW AT YELAHANKA,
APRIL 14, 2040
TAJ
Bangalore and the Committee had been in careful communication with Keanu for months prior to Adventure’s landing. Careful for the obvious reasons—the NEO’s return was apparent to anyone with a telescope. Taj had seen rumors online before any official word reached him, and he was close to the top of the list of those who would be informed.
It was mutually decided that ISRO would acknowledge the “apparent return” of the Near-Earth Object Keanu, and the “hope” that its presumed human inhabitants were alive and well . . . but with no disclosure of the fact of direct contact, nor of the content of any messages.
Some information was exchanged, of course, but the continuing conflicts between India and China on the one side, and the so-called Free Nations of the Americas and Europe on the other, distracted most people from the Keanu story.
There were those in the astronomy community, not to mention various fringe groups around the world, who kept the matter alive. But they had little hard information—at least as far as Taj and the Committee knew. (He had learned early in his military career to never make the mistake of assuming that you had the only intelligence!)