Digger was a good man. Pretty creative, wouldn’t you say? Saved tens of thousands of lives.
The porch was big and enclosed, and it turned into a party. Season’s best. Happy Hannukah. Merry Christmas. To us and to the Goompahs. To the Korbs.
“By the way,” asked the UNN representative, “have we figured out yet what those clouds are? Any idea at all?”
“We’re working on it,” she said. They shook their heads and rolled their eyes.
Later, when everyone had gone home, she relaxed with a drink and watched Tor and Maureen trying to get a kite into the air. They weren’t having much luck. Tor, who seemed to have no idea how it was done, charged about the lawn while the kite whipped in circles behind him. Maureen trailed along with all due seriousness, only to break out giggling every time the thing crashed.
In his way, Tor possessed the same innocence as the child. It was part of his charm, his sense that the world was essentially a good place, that if you worked hard and paid attention to business, everything would work out. He’d explained to her that he’d grown up with two ambitions: to become a professional golfer, and to create art for a living. He liked golf because it was leisurely, and you always went to summery places to participate. But the truth was that she had a better swing than he did.
Art, though, was a different matter altogether. Give him a brush, and put him near a passing comet, and he was a genius. When you aim high, she decided, one out of two wasn’t bad.
Actually, he was luckier than most people, and not because he had talent. What he really possessed was an ability to enjoy life on its most basic levels. He loved having Maureen chase him around the lawn, enjoyed slapstick comedy, talked endlessly about his camping experiences with the local Boy Scout troop (where he was an assistant scoutmaster), and he could never get enough ice cream. He was a big kid.
He pretended to be modest about his work, to look surprised when he was nominated for the Delmar Award, or the Fitzgibbon. And when one of the media did a piece on him, he was thrilled.
She watched the kite arc high. It had gotten dark, and the Christmas lights were coming on. A virtual stable blinked into existence on the lawn at the Harbisons. Complete with kneeling shepherds, camels, and a blazing star a few meters overhead.
Projectors came on all over the neighborhood. Santa and his sleigh were just landing on Jerry Adams’s roof. A river of soft blue-and-white stars floated past the Proctors’ place. No red or orange or green for Hal Proctor, who claimed to believe in the power of understatement. At the far end of the lane, three camels were approaching with wise men in the saddle.
It was all a bit much, but Hutch never said anything, knowing she’d be perceived as having no spirit. Still, she wondered what invisible aliens, had they been there somewhere, would have made of it all.
“By the way, have we figured out yet what those clouds are? Any idea at all?”
A group of carolers were wandering from door to door.
Tor gave the kite more string and a quick pull, probably a mistake. It turned over in midflight and crashed. Maureen exploded with giggles.
She pleaded for a chance to try, and Tor let her have the string. She raced off, still screaming with laughter, dragging the kite behind her.
Tor joined Hutch on the porch. “You’re woolgathering again,” he said.
She laughed. “You really look good out there.”
“One of my many talents.” Maureen charged by, squealing with delight. “You okay?”
“Oh, yes. I’m fine. Couldn’t be better.” An elf turned methodical somersaults on her lawn. And a blue lantern glowed in a window. They were her sole concessions to the lighting frenzy.
“It’s over,” he said gently.
“We still have a supply problem. I’ll feel safer after Judy gets there. When we’ve begun to get some help to the Goompahs.”
“You think?”
“What else?”
“I don’t know. You seem restless.”
“I wish Harold were here.”
Tor rocked back and forth a few times. “He may not have known anything.”
“It’s not that. I’d just like to see him again.”
What had he known?
They talked about inconsequentials. Then Tor asked whether Charlie Wilson had gotten any closer to a solution.
Charlie was a good guy, but he wasn’t the right person to figure it out. Charlie was an analysis guy. Here’s the data. Here’s what it tells us. But he was not equipped to make the kind of imaginative leap that Harold might have done. “No. I think Charlie feels we don’t have enough information yet. He’s like you. Doesn’t believe Harold really had anything.” She shook her head. “Maybe that’s right. Maybe Harold was going to say that the omegas are a gigantic research project of some sort, probably gone wrong but maybe not, and that would have been it. No big secret. That’s, by the way, pretty much what Charlie thinks. But as to what sort of research, he says there’s no way to know.”
The reindeer atop the Adams house appeared to be gamboling, enjoying themselves, anxious to get to their next stop.
“Everything’s showbiz,” she said.
Tor’s eyes darkened momentarily. “Sometimes you’re a bit hard on people. Showbiz is what life is about.”
Lights appeared in George Brauschwitz’s array of hedges, green and white and gold, and began to ripple in waves through the gathering twilight.
Green and white and gold.
A myriad of color, hypnotic in its effect. It was hard to draw her eyes away. “I wonder,” she said. “Maybe there’s a connection with the Georgetown Gallery after all.” A possibility had occurred to her. But it was so outrageous that it seemed impossible. Yet right from the beginning they’d noted that the tewks showed up in clusters.
Tor watched her while she surveyed the stable, the camels, the hedge, Santa.
“We’ve assumed all along,” she said, “that, in some way, the clouds were connected with research. Or that they were a weapons system run amok, or a slum clearance project run amok. These were things we could understand.”
“Okay.”
“Were they performing light experiments? Testing weapons?” She pushed back in her chair. Maureen tumbled over, scrambled back to her feet, looked puzzled, and began to cry. Hutch hurried to her side. “Skinned your knee,” she told the child. “Does it hurt?”
Maureen couldn’t get an answer past the sobs.
Hutch took her into the house, repaired the damage, got her some ice cream, and took a little for herself. She read to the child for a while. Lobo Louie. As she did, she considered the possibility that had occurred to her, and began to wonder if she might have the answer.
Tor came in and built a fire. “So what are they?” he asked.
She smiled at him. The house smelled of pine.
“Showbiz,” she said.
He laughed.
“I’m serious. The arts are all about perspective, right? Angle of light. Point of view. What the artist chooses to put in the foreground. Or in shadow.”
“I’m sorry, Hutch,” he said. “I don’t think I see where this is leading.”
“Do you remember how Maureen reacted to the tewks?”
“She liked them. Thought they were attractive.”
“ ‘They’re pretty,’ she said.”
“So—?” Maureen was arranging her dolls, seating them on the floor, their backs against a chair, positioning them so they could see the tree.
“We’ve been watching them from God’s point of view.”
“How do you mean?”
“By eliminating distance, we’ve looked at them as they actually exploded—if that’s the right term—to try to get a perspective on what was really happening. We ruled out the possibility that time and distance might be part of the equation.”
Tor tilted his head. “Plain English, please.”
“Think about the art gallery.”
“What about it?”
“I missed the point. It didn’t affect Harold because of something he saw inside it—”
Tor’s brow creased. “—But because it was there.”
“Yes.”
“So what does that tell us?”
SHE SLIPPED THE disk into the reader, and a cross section of the Orion Arm blinked on.
“I’ve always believed,” said Tor, “that the whole thing was a project by some sort of cosmic megalomaniac who just wanted to blow things up.” He had mixed two white tigers for them. “But you don’t think that?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“The method’s too inefficient. There are a lot of omegas out there. Thousands, maybe. And only a handful that will actually destroy anything.” She tried the drink. It was warm and sweet and made with a bit more lemon than the recipe called for. Just the way she liked it. “Tor, it doesn’t feel malicious.”
“It feels dumb.”
“Yes.” She gathered up Maureen, and they threaded their way through the constellations to the sofa. “Exactly what I’ve thought from the very beginning.”
“Like Santa’s sleigh over at the Adams house.”
“Well, okay. It feels showy. Pretentious.” She drew her legs up, tucked them under, and turned off the tree lights. A log crashed into the fire. Sparks flew and mixed with the stars. Maureen wanted to know what was happening.
“We’re going to watch the sim for a few minutes, Love.” And to the AI: “George, run the patterns. Fast forward.”
Among the stars, tewks blinked on and off. A few here, a couple there, a few more over by the window. A half dozen or so by the tree. A cluster near the bookcase, a group by the curtains. Some on this side, some on the far side. Altogether, there were now 117 recorded tewk events.
“What are we looking for?”
“Bear with me a bit. George, change the viewing angle. Pick a site at the galactic core. More or less where the clouds would be originating.”
The stars shifted. The familiar constellations vanished.
“Run them again, George.”
They sat and watched. Lights blinked on and off. Some here, some there, a few over near the clock.
“There’s a pattern,” she said.
“I don’t see it.” Tor’s hand touched hers. “What sort of pattern?”