He asked Julie whether a lightbender would be made available to him when they got to Lookout because he wanted to go down to the surface and actually see the Goompahs. He was even working with some of the people on the al-Jahani, trying to familiarize himself with their language, but he confessed he wasn’t having much luck picking it up. “Too old,” he said.
He had turned out to be a dear. He did not assume a superior attitude, as she’d expected when she first saw his name on the manifest. He was already taking notes, not on what was happening on the Hawksbill, but on his own reaction to learning that an intelligent species was at risk. At Julie’s request, he’d shown her some of his work, and had even gotten into the habit of asking for her comments. She doubted he really needed her editorial input, but it was a nice gesture, and she had quickly learned he wanted her to tell him what she really thought. “Doesn’t do any good to have you just pat me on the head and say the work is great,” he’d said. “I need to know how you really react, whether it makes sense. If I’m going to make a fool of myself, I’d prefer to keep the fact in the ship’s company rather than spread it around the world.”
He had a habit of referring to humans as smart monkeys. They were basically decent, he told her one evening in the common room when they were talking about the long bloodbath that human history had been. “But their great deficiency is that they’re too easily programmed. Get them when they’re reasonably young, say five or six, and you can make them believe almost anything. Not only that, but once it’s done, the majority of them will fight to the death to maintain the illusion. That’s why you get Nazis, racists, homophobes, fanatics of all types.”
Marge Conway’s assignment was to assume the cloud would arrive over the isthmus precisely on schedule, and to find a way to hide the cities. She would do so by generating rain clouds. If a blizzard had concealed a city on Moonlight, there was no reason to think storm clouds wouldn’t have the same effect on Lookout.
If the mission to shoo the cloud away succeeded, her job would become unnecessary. Marge was one of those rare persons who was primarily concerned with overall success, and didn’t much care who got the credit. In this case, though, she couldn’t conceal that she longed to see her manufactured clouds in action.
Marge admitted that she’d gotten the appointment not because she was particularly well thought of in her field, but because of her connection with Hutchins. She’d worked on a number of projects for the Academy, but had never before been on a superluminal. She didn’t even like aircraft. “The ride up to the station,” she told Julie, “was the scariest experience of my life.” Julie wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not because the woman didn’t look as if anything could scare her.
“We have one major advantage,” Marge commented. “Nobody expects us to get the job done.”
“Hutch does,” said Julie.
Marge didn’t think so. “Hutch puts on a good show. She knows that Moonlight might have been an anomaly. She’s seen the clouds in action, and I doubt she thinks anything can turn them aside.”
“Then why are we being sent out?”
“You want the truth?” said Whit.
“Please.”
“Because the politicians want to be able to say they made a serious effort. If we don’t try this, and a lot of Goompahs die, which they almost certainly will, the public’s going to be looking for whose fault it is.”
Whit’s statement cast a pall over things because he was usually so optimistic.
Marge asked him why he thought the decoy wouldn’t work.
“Because somebody else tried it. We don’t really know who, although we suspect it was the Monument-Makers. Somebody tried to save Quraqua at one time by building a simulated, and very square, city on its moon. At Nok, they put four cube-shaped satellites, each about two kilometers wide, in orbit. Both places got hit anyhow.”
“Sounds definitive to me,” said Marge.
“Maybe they waited too long,” said Julie.
“How do you mean?” asked Whit.
“At both places, the decoys were too close to the targets. By the time the cloud picked them up, it would already have been locked on its objectives. Lots of cities on both worlds.”
Whit considered it. “You may be right,” he said. “But we’ll be showing up at the last minute, too. It’s not as if we’re getting there with a year to spare.”
Dead and buried, she thought. He must have seen her disappointment because he smiled. “But don’t give up, Julie. There’s a decent chance the rain makers will work.”
WHIT WANTED TO look at the cloud-making equipment, so in the morning Julie took them down to the cargo bay, which required everyone to get into an e-suit because it was in vacuum.
The bay itself looked like a large warehouse. Marge and Whit had not been off A Deck, which was the only area of the ship maintaining life support. It had therefore been easy for them to forget how big the Hawksbill was until they stood gazing from prow to stern, down the length of an enclosure filled with four landers, an AV3 heavy-duty hauler, and an antique helicopter. The rainmakers were attached to the hull. Julie took them into the airlock and opened up so they could see them. They resembled large coils.
“They’re actually chimneys,” Marge said. “When they’re deployed, they’ll be three kilometers long. Each of them.”
“That’s pretty big.”
“As big as we could make them.”
Avery Whitlock’s Notebooks
One of the unfortunate side effects of organized religion is that it seeks to persuade us that we are inherently evil. Damaged goods.
I’ve watched volunteers work with kids injured in accidents; I’ve seen sons and daughters give over their time to taking care of elderly parents. There are a thousand stories out there about people who have given their lives for their children, for their friends, and sometimes for total strangers. We go down to the beach to try to push a stranded whale back into the ocean.
Now we are trying to help an intelligent species that cannot help itself. Whether we will pull it off, no one knows. But of one thing I am certain: If we ever start to believe those who think God made a race of deformed children, then that is what we will become.
And who then would help the Goompahs?
chapter 17
On board the Heffernan, near Iota Pictoris, 120 light-years from Earth.
Monday, April 28.
SKY STAYED WELL clear of the hedgehog. Since he’d watched the one at Alpha Pictoris explode, he’d gained a lot of respect for the damned things.
Emma was beside him, enjoying a mug of beef stew. The aroma filled the bridge. “Bill,” he said, “send the packages.”
He sensed, rather than heard, the launch. “Packages away,” said Bill.
The hedgehog was forty-four thousand kilometers in front of the cloud.
“Withdraw to five thousand kilometers.”
Bill swung the Heffernan around and retreated as directed.
“Keep the engines running.”
The AI smiled. He was on-screen, seated in his armchair. “We are ready to accelerate away, should it become necessary.” He looked off to his left. “Sky,” he said, “we are receiving a transmission from the Academy. From the DO.”