Eventually, he turned his head and peaked an eyebrow, looking at Master Chief Edwards, his old, trusted shipmate. Edwards’ own expression was blank. “I know that look, Nathan. You sure you want to kick on this? There ain’t no goin’ back once you do.”
Nathan nodded. “I think it’s better we know for sure now, rather than find out too late. So give it to me honestly. Don’t hold back.”
Edwards frowned and shook his head. He said simply, “Past tense, boss. Every one of ‘em.”
Nathan nodded and glanced over to Kris. Her eyes were still lined with red, though her tears for Christopher Wright and all the others had either dried or faded away. Her mouth was set in a firm line until she answered his unspoken question. “Universal truths, Nathan. The artist’s paintings aren’t worth diddly until after he’s dead.”
“Yep,” Nathan answered, “I figured the same thing.”
She smiled. “I love you.”
He returned it. “I know you do. Me too.”
Nathan turned back toward the avatar. “On behalf of the US government, and as a representative of all the rest of humanity … fuck you. You are hereby directed to alter course to skirt our solar system. If your intentions are benign, we can establish a dialog and an exchange after you come to a stable orbit well outside of our Kuiper Belt. However, if you insist on closing with our solar system, we will tear you apart. You will come up against the massed might of every nation on Earth, most notably that of my own country, the United States of America. We will release wave upon wave of hell on you, until not even the atoms of this ship remain. Your collections will be reduced to ash and plasma. You won’t take so much as a single postcard from our world, and you by God won’t harm a single person on the whole face of the planet.”
The statue’s eyes narrowed. “Why? Why would you be so belligerent and defiant after we have apologized and explained ourselves?”
Nathan smiled again, this time more broadly. “Because—We. Don’t. Believe. You. You just told us about three of your collections, the Keltara, Nnnnek, and the Ixki … whatever—but you spoke about every single one of the races in the past tense. Now maybe that was just an oversight, a translation error, but between damn near a century of our television and radio broadcasts and whatever you stole from my XO’s brain when you cut him up, you’ve shown a pretty decent command of the language. What I don’t think you quite got was nuance and subtlety, just like you don’t quite get how we express emotion verbally. I think you used the past tense to describe those races because it was the correct thing to do—since they only exist in the past.”
The statue was stock still, not reacting at all. Nathan continued. “You might take every work of art from our planet, every last trinket and use it however you use it in whatever economy or society there is out there in the greater galaxy—though how that interaction works on interstellar timescales, I have no idea—but you’ll use it to gain power. That power, that wealth only retains its value if there are no other human artifacts. If anyone else drops by and picks some up—or if we start bartering for ourselves—your collection is devalued. The only way your collection keeps its worth is if there’s no more human stuff being produced for other entities, other patrons to acquire.
“Maybe you’d act in good faith right up to the end, playing nice so we won’t damage the goods fighting against you, but in the end you’ll torch the planet. You’ll make us ‘past tense’ because that’s the only way that particular universal truth works out. Well, forget it. We’re not going to help you sneak up on mankind unaware. And without us making the introductions, you can plan on every nasty trick our human culture can devise being thrown at you. You’re not indestructible. We’ve proven that, and now we’re going to make you pay for even thinking about raping our planet.”
The avatar stood frozen, stone-faced. In the hatchway, the Patron itself entered the mess, maneuvering nimbly in microgravity with its mass of tentacles. Nathan and the others all stiffened as it came closer and raised the same device with which it had destroyed Wright.
Nathan forced himself to remain still, to not retreat as the creature pointed the weapon at him.
The avatar shook its head, its expression sincerely saddened, even if its voice was as articulate and monotone as ever.
“We thought it probable that you would defy us, but we had to make the attempt. There is always some damage incurred when a species resists. Plus, it is always difficult to catalog and describe the various works when the artisans and historians are dead, but we will deal with it. We always have.
“What will happen is this: when we arrive in your solar system, we will sweep aside whatever primitive resistance you have cobbled together, and then we will take station at one of your planet’s LaGrange points. The drive will be turned upon your planet and the resulting disruption of your ionosphere and the cascades of radiation will, within a few days, sterilize the Earth. Humanity will be dead, and your works will remain, hardly the worse for wear. Do not doubt us. It is not the first time we have done it.”
Nathan glared at the weapon in the Patron’s tentacle, his jaw set in anger. “And what about us? Are you going to break us all down with that thing like you did our XO?”
The statue smiled. “No. You may yet have an opportunity to survive, to serve. A human perspective will be necessary to properly catalog and classify the collection. So you will go into stasis as others have. And when you emerge from the white field, your planet will be dead, your artifacts will be in a dazzling new collection, and the wider galaxy will be presented the whole exhibition to the accompaniment of the last humans’ anguished cries—your own anguished, bitter cries.”
Nathan snarled, and his wordless, angry command spoke to most of the crew. En mass, they all surged forward, hands stretched out like claws toward the alien—
<discontinuity>
a sea of white
filled the mess
nathan cried out
in frustration
at the vanished patron
18: “WELCOMING COMMITTEE”
December 10, 2055; Patron Collection Fleet, outside the orbit of Jupiter, 6.5 degrees below the ecliptic and approaching Earth
For nine uninterrupted years, CDR Nathan Kelly floated transfixed—caught mid-leap, his face frozen in a mask of hatred and rage, stuck like a fly in amber. He and the others were locked in place by dim golden light, the barest hint of illumination, awash in the glow of quantum fluctuations slowed and softened to visibility by the step-function transition of stasis, separating normal spacetime from the region where they lay, where time’s arrow was stunted and light itself barely crawled along.
The Sword’s crew was trapped, impotent prisoners of a single moment, unable to affect the course of their captors in any way. Had thought and reflection been possible, Nathan would have seethed and put his mind and their collective will to thoughts of escape. But there was no thought. His mind was still fixed upon nothing but murder—hot, mindless revenge against the one nameless Patron they had seen, the Patron who had frozen them in time and then moved on without sparing them another thought.
They—and all humans, all other species—were but petty annoyances, minor obstacles to deal with en route to their latest acquisition.
Moving out from the captured captain and crew of the late USS Sword of Liberty, the living statue of Christopher Wright—avatar of the Patrons—stood motionless as well. In its case, however, it was as empty of volition and will as a mere statue. Even if it were not in stasis, it would not move. The alien that had given it life had gone on to other, more important things.