And then his own message:
Rae, when I did see you depart, literally, I didn’t know it was you, and it deepened the mystery.
If you have to disappear, that’s your decision. But you know that if there’s anyone on this world you can trust, it’s me.
I know I don’t know you, but I love you. Come hack in whatever guise.
There was a box for “affinities,” words that would draw a searcher, or surfer, to the site. He typed in “Poseidon,” “Apia,” “artifact,” “alien,” and so forth, ending with “Rae Archer” and “Russell Sutton.” He knew that the first people drawn to the site would probably be the CIA and their ilk, but there was no way to get around that. He assumed that Rae would be canny enough to anticipate them, too.
The Rainforest Cafe was nostalgic nineties funk in a jungle setting. Bamboo and palms and elephant ears under blue lights and mist nozzles, quaintly angry rap whispering in the background.
Russell felt a little underdressed in cutoffs and an island shirt. It was the weekend, but Sharon had come from work, wearing suit and tie. She loosened the tie and patted her brow with a tissue, prettily.
“I should have suggested an air-conditioned place.”
“Glad you didn’t. I was freezing in the office.” She shrugged out of her jacket.
“You’ve always lived in the tropics?”
“In the heat, anyhow. You?”
“As soon as I could choose.” Russell told her about growing up in the Dakotas. He’d gone to college in Florida, and never had to live through another winter. “Most of my experience with being cold now is underwater, working in a wetsuit.”
“Been there.” She covered her mouth, laughing. “When you don’t have enough pee to warm it up.”
He poured her some iced tea. “You dive a lot?”
“When I was in school, a little. Now I mostly snorkel. A guy at work took me out to the reef at Palolo last week—all those giant clams, I couldn’t believe my eyes!”
“They’re something.” He served himself. “Was it your major, marine science?”
“No, I did business administration. Minor in oceanography— that was my real cold-water experience. A summer course diving in the Peru current.” She’d actually been there as professor, not student, but the university records would confirm she’d taken the course and made an A.
“We used to be out there,” he said. “My company, Poseidon. We did marine engineering out of Baja California.”
“Until you found the alien thingie.”
“Well, we didn’t know what it was, at the time.” He broke open a roll and buttered one half carefully with healthy spread. “We pinged it with sonar and registered it for later salvage. It was a while before we actually went down and took a look.” He gestured down the road with the roll. “Then this happened.”
“It must be exciting.”
“Exciting and frustrating in about equal measures. We’re not getting anywhere.” He drew a shape on the tablecloth with his fingernail. “What do you do for excitement? Or frustration.”
“I don’t know. Come out here, run, fall down.” They laughed. “I’ve been kind of drifting. Both my parents died when I was in college, like ten years ago, eleven.”
“I’m sorry…”
She dipped her head. “Yeah. They left me some money, and I sort of wandered around Europe, then Japan. Now that the money’s gone, I wish I’d stayed in school. Not much you can do with a B.B.A.”
“You’re still young. You could go back.”
“I guess thirty-one’s young.” She stared into her tea. “Maybe not to graduate school admission committees.”
“You’d go back to business?”
She shook her head. “Maybe macroeconomics. Pacific Rim economics. But I’ve been thinking more oceanography. I could get a B.S. in a year, maybe three semesters.” She smiled. “Come out here and work for you.”
“Not with a bachelor’s,” he said seriously. “Take a couple of years and get a doctorate. The artifact’s not going anywhere.”
“But you don’t know that,” she said. “It might decide to go back to Alpha Centauri.”
Their sandwiches came. Russell discarded the top piece of bread and carefully sliced the remainder into one-inch strips, then rotated the plate 90 degrees and cut the strips into thirds. The changeling remembered the habit and smiled.
“Saves me a hundred calories,” he said. “The media all think the thing’s from another star. That’s the easiest explanation. We’re trying to come up with something less obvious.”
“Like what? Secret government project?”
“Or that it’s always been here. You know what hell this has been for physicists and chemists.”
“I can imagine.”
He took a bite and then salted everything, as the changeling expected. “That’s no different whether the thing is local or from another galaxy. It means there are very basic laws we don’t understand about… the nature of matter.” He speared a square of sandwich and gestured with it. “It’s chaos. Nothing we know is true anymore.”
“Can you really say that?” the changeling said, carving its own sandwich into quarters. “Like we learned in school, Galileo’s physics was an approximation of Newton’s; Newton got swallowed by Einstein; then Einstein by Holling.”
“Hawking, then Holling, to be technical. But this is different. It’s like everything worked, down to eight decimal places, and then somebody says, ‘Hold it. You forgot about magic’ That’s what this damned thing is.” He laughed. “I love it! But then I’m not a physicist.”
“They must be going crazy.” She picked up one quarter and nibbled on it.
“You should see my e-mail. Actually, I should see my e-mail. This indispensable woman, Michelle, throws out nine-tenths of it before I come to work.”
“She knows physics?”
“Well, like you—she’s an accountant with some course work in various sciences. But she reads everything, knows more about general science than I do.”
“She doesn’t really throw them away,” the changeling asked. “You at least glance at them?”
“Oh, yeah. At least the ones that have some entertainment value— we call them the X-files. I get together with Jan, our space scientist, every Friday to run through them. Kind of fun, actually.” He speared another square. “Pleasant nutlike flavor.”
“Did you ever get anything useful?”
“Not yet.” He turned serious. “The whole game is going to change soon. We’re going public with … an aspect we’ve kept secret. Wish I could tell you.”
The changeling was glad he couldn’t. Knowing about the message gave it an edge for Michelle’s job. Those credits in Math 471 and 472, advanced statistics. “Oh, come on. Pretty please?”
He smiled. “Your womanly wiles will get you nowhere. I’ll tell you on Monday, though, if you’d like to have lunch again.”
“Okay. Can I bring my pal from the Weekly World News’?”
“He might already be down at the office. We’re making the announcement at nine o’clock.”
“You really think you’ll be free for lunch, then?”
“I’m telling you too much.” He looked left and right. “That’s why we chose Monday. No planes till Tuesday morning. Gives us, what, some measure of spin control.”
He did look a little worried. The changeling reached over and patted his hand. “Mum’s the word.”
’” Mum’s the word’?” He chuckled. “I haven’t heard that since I was a kid.”
Oops. “My mother used to say it. Where does it come from?”