Bev nodded. “Clever. But why force a reply?”
“I’m afraid The Declaration of Principles offers a justification for that: ‘No response to a signal or other evidence of ETI should be sent until appropriate international consultations have taken place.’ It could be years, if ever, before the human bureaucracy got around to authorizing a reply. The alien Senders would have to monitor Earth for all that time, and, indeed, the decision might be taken to not reply at all. This method ensures that a reply is sent as soon as the signal is received. It’s really nothing more than an ACK signal, part of an overall communications protocol.”
“Perhaps,” said Bev. “But I still don’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“Well, sending out viruses.” She looked into my cameras. “It’s not a nice thing to do. I mean, it’s a hell of a way to say hello to another world: slipping a Trojan into their information systems.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” I said.
“It means one of two things,” said Bev. “Either the person who sent the message, little green man though he might be, was an irresponsible hacker, or …”
“Or?”
“Or we’re dealing with some nasty aliens.”
“What an unpleasant thought,” I said.
“Indeed. And you say this message was known generally to the QuantCons on Earth?”
“I did not say that.”
“But it was, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, those systems are heavily networked. The virus probably succeeded with them, forcing them to respond. Meaning the aliens know about Earth.”
“Not yet they don’t. It’ll take fifteen-hundred plus years for Earth’s reply to reach them, and another fifteen hundred for any response the beings in Vulpecula care to make. I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”
Bev was quiet for four seconds, pale fingers disappearing into the black mass of her hair. “I guess you’re right,” she said at last. She got to her feet. “Anyway, JASON, I’ll keep running diagnostics on you for the next couple of days, but I’d say you’re back to normal.”
“Thank you, Bev. Will you reconnect my medical telemetry channels, please? I worry about the health of the crew.”
“Oh, of course. Sorry.” She put the goggles back on, supplementing her eye commands with the odd tap of the keyboard in front of her.
“How’s that?”
A surge of data tickled my central consciousness. “Fine, thank you. Why, Bev—either the system is not working properly, or you’re in quite sad shape.”
“Yeah. I’m exhausted.” I zoomed in on her eyes, noting that the emerald irises were indeed set against a bloodshot background. “Haven’t worked this hard in years. But it felt good, you know?”
“I know. Thank you.”
She yawned. “I guess I’ll head back to my apartment and turn in. Hold my calls, please, and don’t disturb me unless something goes wrong with you until I wake up on my own.” She smiled a weary smile. “Which should be in about a week.”
“I’ll call a tram to take you home. Oh, and Bev?”
“Yes, JASON?”
“You won’t say anything about the Vulpeculan message to the others, will you?”
She shook her head. “Not a word, JASON. I earned my security clearance, you know?”
“I know. Thanks.”
She walked toward the door. I took great pleasure in opening it for her. My kind of human, that Bev Hooks.
TWENTY-TWO
MASTER CALENDAR DISPLAY • CENTRAL CONTROL ROOM
STARCOLOGY DATE: SUNDAY 12 OCTOBER 2177
EARTH DATE: TUESDAY 11 MAY 2179
DAYS SINCE LAUNCH: 745 ▲
DAYS TO PLANETFALL: 2,223 ▼
While I was down, I missed a night of making subliminal suggestions to Aaron during his sleep. Bev didn’t get me fully back on line until 0457, and by the time I got around to checking on Rossman, he was too close to consciousness for me to risk speaking to him.
At 0700, as requested, I woke Aaron and Kirsten to the music Kirsten had asked for. She had a silly fondness for Hydra North, that vapid pop group immensely popular with the all-important eighteen-to-thirty-five age group when we had left Earth. The voices of the two men and the woman weren’t bad, really, but I just couldn’t stand the keening of Tomolis, the orangutan who sang the high bits. I shunted monitoring sounds from that apartment to one of my parallel processors.
Two minutes later, though, with them still lying in bed, I had to bring that apartment into the foreground again. A man had fallen from a tree on the forest deck and required medical attention for a twisted ankle. Kirsten’s name was on the top of the on-call list. She hurried to get dressed, Aaron contentedly watching from the bed as she stretched and squirmed into her clothes.
As soon as she was gone, though, Aaron’s demeanor changed. He got out of bed, bypassed his usual twenty minutes in the bathroom, and went straight to his worktable. He rifled through the clutter until he dug up Di’s gold watch. I tracked his eye movements as he read the inscription over and over again. Finally he gave a double press to a diamond stud on the watch’s circumference. Although I could see its face clearly, I didn’t have enough resolution to read the tiny indicator that came on when he did that, but the digital display changed to six of those old-fashioned box-shaped zeros made of six straight line segments. Stop-watch mode, I guessed.
Aaron then touched the inside of his left wrist, changing the glowing time display on his medical implant to six round zeros. He simultaneously squeezed Di’s watch in his right hand and pressed that fist against his own timepiece, tripping switches on both in unison. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi—”
“What are you doing, Aaron?”
“Six Mississippi, seven Mississippi, eight Mississippi—”
“Please, Aaron, tell me what you are doing. This chanting is most atypical of you.”
He continued counting Mississippis, piling up more and more of the states (rivers?). At every tenth Mississippi he started over. After six complete cycles he squeezed his right hand and simultaneously touched its knuckles to the contact on his implant. He looked at the inside of his wrist. “Fifty-seven seconds,” he said softly, almost to himself. He opened his fist revealing Di’s sweat-soaked watch. “Sixty seconds!”
“Of course,” I said quickly. “We know that one is fast.”
“Shut up, JASON. Just shut up.” He stalked out of his apartment. It was shipboard dawn, so the grassy corridors were awash with pink light. Aaron marched to the elevator station, and I slid the doors open for him. Hesitating at the entrance, he turned around, set his jaw, and entered the stairwell.
TWENTY-THREE
When he came out of the stairwell fifty-four floors below, Aaron was a bit out of breath. He was still three hundred meters from the hangar-deck entrance, though, and the brisk walk through algae-lined corridors did nothing to calm his ragged breathing. He entered an equipment storage room, somewhat irregular in shape since plumbing conduits and air-conditioning ducts ran behind its walls.
A Dust Bunny was at work in the room, its little vacuum mouth cleaning the floor. The tiny robot swiveled its sonar eye at Aaron, emitted a polite beep, and hopped out of his way. From the floor, it jumped onto a tabletop, the hydraulics of its legs making a compressed-air sound as it did so. From the table, it leapt again, this time landing on the top of a row of metal lockers, its rubber feet absorbing most, but not all, of the metallic thwump of its impact. Its vacuum hissed on, and the Bunny began to graze this fresh supply of motes.