They were talking about Paxon Carbury’s latest novel, Morley Park. It had gotten strong reviews, and Tor had liked it, but Mac was consigning it to the unwashed. “It’s just more adultery in the suburbs,” he said.
And that seemed to settle it. Tor made a few objections, tried to explain what he had liked about the book, then backed off. Mac asked Hutch whether she’d read it.
“No,” she said. “I’ve been a little pressed lately.”
In the background, the commlink chimed. Hutch excused herself and went into the dining room. “Who is it, George?”
“Academy watch officer,” said the AI.
She was beginning to hate these calls. A screen lit up. Actually it was Charlie. “I hate to bother you at home,” he said.
“Yes, Charlie, what have you got?”
“You wanted to hear anything that came in on the hedgehogs.”
“What happened?”
“They found another one.”
“Who?”
“The Santiago. We don’t have any details yet. But it’s beginning to look as if they all have them. All the clouds, I mean.”
“Yes, Charlie, I think you’re right. Thanks. Let me know if you hear anything else.”
“There is something else.”
“Yes?”
“We don’t think the hedgehogs and the clouds are actually running at the same velocity.”
“Oh? I didn’t think any questions had been raised about that.”
“They hadn’t. The difference is so slight, it’s hard to detect. Even now, we’re not really certain. But it looks as if the hedgehogs are moving a bit slower.”
“How much?”
“Almost too little difference to measure. It’s why we didn’t pick it up at first. I mean, a cloud’s not a solid object, so you don’t really get—”
“How much difference, Charlie?”
“The escorts are slower by between four and five meters an hour.”
“All of them?”
“Two of them. We’re still trying to get measurements on the others.”
SHE DIDN’T KNOW what to make of it. It didn’t sound especially important until she found herself telling Tor and Mac about it. And suddenly the lights went on and a chill ran through the room. “Dumb,” she said, breaking into the middle of a sentence.
“What is?” asked Tor.
“Me. I am.”
“In what way, Priscilla?” said Mac.
“You know about the tewks. We think they all happen where there are clouds.”
“And—?”
“If each cloud has a hedgehog, and each hedgehog is running at a slightly slower speed so that the cloud eventually overtakes it—”
“Oh,” said Mac.
“The escorts are exactly the sort of things that the clouds seem to want to attack. Lots of right angles. Couple hundred of them.”
Tor was nodding. “They’re designated targets.”
“I think so,” she said. “Has to be.”
Mac couldn’t accept the idea. “Not at those rates of closure. You’re talking a couple of thousand years before the clouds catch the damned things.”
“But what’s the point?” asked Tor. “I don’t get it.”
She reactivated her link. “Charlie?”
“Yes, Hutch?”
“Contact Serenity. Tell Audrey the hedgehogs may be triggers.”
“Triggers?”
“Right. They go boom. And they initiate something.”
“Like what?”
“Like a tewk. Listen, I’ll be in touch with her tomorrow. Meantime, I want her to start looking at sending a mission to push one of the damned things into a cloud. See what happens.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“Explain that we’ll want the whole thing done by robot. Nobody is to go anywhere near any part of the operation. Okay?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll pass it on.”
She switched off. “When you talk to her tomorrow—” said Tor.
“Yes—?”
“Tell her to pick a cloud that’s well away from anybody’s neighborhood.”
LIBRARY ENTRY
The stores are filling up with Goompah dolls, and we are becoming increasingly aware of the existence of these terminally cute off-world wobblies. Children cannot resist them. They are showing up in games and books. There is already an activist society devoted to their welfare. Yet they face possible extinction.
It may be necessary to lay the Noninterference Protocol aside. Indeed, it’s hard to see how we can go to their rescue without doing so. But it would help if we defined the exception as a one-time only affair. Make it clear that we are not setting a precedent, and draw a line across which interested manufacturers, religious groups, charitable organizations, trading companies, and everybody else who’d like to use these creatures to play out their own fantasies and ambitions, may not venture.
— Gregory MacAllister
“How’s the Jihad Going?”
Lost on Earth Interview, Monday, March 17
chapter 11
On board the Jenkins, in orbit around Lookout.
Tuesday, March 18.
…Be advised that your primary objective is to get the job done. If you find it necessary to set the Protocol aside, this constitutes your authority to do so…
…Collect and run analyses of food samples…
…Time is of the essence. In view of the lag between Lookout and your other points of contact, you are free to use discretion.
IN FACT, JACK didn’t like the idea of using discretion. Not in this kind of situation. It was purely political. No matter what he did, and how things turned out, he would be criticized. Any blame to be assigned would come his way, and credit would go to the Second Floor at the Academy. He’d been around too long not to know how these things worked.
After watching Hutchins’s transmission, Winnie was exasperated, too. “How,” she demanded, “do they expect us to record conversations down there? For a start, where are we going to get recording equipment?”
“We might be able to rig some pickups,” said Digger.
It had required more than two weeks for their report to cross the interstellar gulfs, and the answer to come back. And their instructions had been a surprise. They were to attempt to establish contact with the Goompahs. They were to record conversations, if in fact these creatures actually conversed, and send the results back, where a team of linguists would work to break into the language. They were to get visuals of the creatures as they spoke, so that nonverbal cues could be included in the translation effort. And they were to provide whatever additional information they could to help ferret out meaning. And they were to do all this, preferably, while respecting the Protocol.
Preferably.
Bureaucratic double-talk.
Translation: Get the job done without compromising the Protocol. If you compromise the Protocol, and things go badly, you will be asked why you found it necessary to do so.
Markover knew Hutchins, had always thought he could trust her, but he’d been around too long not to understand how these things went.
There was good news: The air sample analyses they’d transmitted to Broadside had undergone additional tests. No dangerous bioagents had been found, and no toxins. That was no surprise: So far, experience indicated that diseases from one world generally had no effect on life-forms from another. (Just as creatures operating outside their own biosystem would have a hard time finding anything digestible.) They could, if necessary, operate for a short time outside the e-suits.
Jack and Winnie both had notebooks, which were, of course, equipped with audio recorders and projectors. These could be used as pickups. Kellie said she thought the ship could contribute three more units.