Sure. We use it all the time to send messages to friends.
Good. Find me China, please. They are in Sichuan. I have got an attachment with me that will code the message.
Remember we can only send if China is facing us.
Oh curses! But that will happen within the next twelve hours at most, right?
The two prospectors looked at each other, then peered up at Earth. If we just missed it, it could be more like twenty hours, Xuanzang said. We need to resupply pretty soon. We need battery charges, fuel, air, and food. Pretty much everything.
What I need to do will not take long. I want to tell my people to strike. In case they are waiting on me, which I hope they are not.
The two men stared at her. You are sure it is the time?
Yes! I just hope they are not waiting on my word!
Xuanzang said, Dear cousin, the billion is certainly waiting on you.
No! she cried. Why?
They think you are Mao, dear cousin.
Or the Maitreya, Ah Q added. Or the latest version of the Dalai Lama. You are the newest reincarnation, they say.
No!
Yes.
No! I hate that bad feces.
Xuanzang waved a hand in front of her face. Cousin! Please! No matter Ah Q’s mystical tomfoolery, the point is, if people believe you are an important leader, then you are. And leaders lead. So now is the time.
“That’s Australia,” Fred guessed, pointing at the blue ball. “Australia upside down. How weird is that. So but China must be facing us too?”
“Yes. Good.”
Qi consulted her wristpad. My people will make a daily check in an hour or so. I can catch their laser and get a point-to-point aimed.
Unless it is cloudy over your people, Ah Q said.
Why? What then?
Then lasers do not work.
Curses.
Have faith, dear cousin. Fusion efforts have rendered strong lasers. We should be good to go, except in very worst weather.
The prospectors got to work. They often had encrypted laser conversations with their investors and allies on Earth, they said, so they knew the drill and could make the contact. Qi had the data for her code in a small hard drive in her daypack, which she took out and plugged into a port in their rover’s computer. The laser projector was mounted on the roof of their rover. It looked just like a beer keg, the prospectors said.
The three of them worked on getting all that prepped while Fred looked into the eyepiece of their telescope, adjusting the focus until the Earth’s edge curved across his view screen. A thin band of vivid turquoise, arcing over the dark cobalt of the Pacific: that was Earth’s atmosphere, terrifyingly thin. The gorgeous pair of blues stuck Fred like a pin to the heart. He wanted off this dead satellite, he wanted to go home.
No chance of that now. Qi was absorbed in her wristpad and the devices on top of the rover. She bossed the prospectors around and they ate it up. They were happy to oblige, because… because why? Because they were part of her movement. Because she was a star. They did what she said because she expected them to. She had charisma. Charisma: whatever it was, it was definitely real. Fred felt it as much as anyone, no doubt about it. Although right now he was a little tired of her charisma.
“What are you telling them down there?” he asked her.
She grimaced as if to say Don’t distract me, I’m working. Yes, by now he was in full possession of an internal set of translation glasses that shifted her facial expressions into English sentences. She was eloquent in that language. He had no trouble understanding her, even though this ability was not at all typical for him. He could do it with his parents and brother, however, so maybe it was just a matter of giving the ability some data to work with. Looking at people helped. Right now he was understanding her so well he might have laughed, or on the other hand made that little snick of disapproval that his father used to emit by pulling his tongue fast off the roof of his mouth, but he couldn’t decide how he felt and so kept silent. At least for a while; after which the feeling in him clarified and he said, “Come on, tell me! What are you telling them down there?”
She rolled her eyes, which really did not need translation glasses, being an exclamation in a universal language, and indeed one Fred had seen too many times in his life.
“Tell me!” he insisted.
“I’m telling them that I’m okay.”
“That’s it?”
“And I’m telling them that they should proceed with the plan.”
“What plan?”
“It’s a secret plan,” she said curtly, casting a glance at the two prospectors, who were listening and nodding as they worked on aiming the laser.
“If you really want to change things,” Fred said, still irritated at her eye roll, “you can’t do it with a secret plan.”
“How would you know?”
“Because everyone knows that. You have to share the plan. That’s what makes it something that might actually happen.”
“Maybe so. But now I’m sharing the plan. And before I couldn’t.”
“Or else what?”
“Or else we would have gotten arrested and jailed before anything could happen! Which is what is happening down there right now. So we have to act fast.”
“Just how illegal is this plan?”
“Anything that tries to change China without the Party initiating it is as illegal as things can get. You cross certain lines and they can do anything to you.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning a quick trial in a fake court and then they kill you! Or no trial and you just disappear forever! Is that illegal enough for you?”
She was more upset than usual. Xuanzang and Ah Q were regarding her thoughtfully. Fred, seeing her mouth so tight, said, “Yes. I get it. Sorry.”
She nodded unhappily. She typed on her wristpad. She glanced at Xuanzang. “Okay, we’re locked in. I’ll need to tap your batteries for this.”
“We don’t have that much power left, I have to warn you.”
“I need all you have to spare.”
“I don’t know how much that is.”
“Leave enough to get to Petrov, of course. Give me the rest of it. I need to power this message for about ten minutes, if we have that.”
Xuanzang tapped away at his consoles, reading closely. “Okay. We’re keeping enough to get to Petrov. Do it and then let’s get going. We’ll be cutting it close.”
She nodded and studied her wristpad. She typed for a while, then read. If this was Lenin on the train to Russia, Fred thought, it was also much like everything else in the cloud: tapping on screens; things then appearing on other screens; then later, perhaps, things happening in the physical world. But what was the relationship between cloud and world, between tap and act? This was always the question no one could answer. Maybe, Fred thought, the two were the same now. Maybe the question itself was simply wrong. Maybe they had always been the same. Words were acts, words were always acts; that was why he was always so hesitant to speak. He remembered a phrase that someone trying to help him had once said: If you don’t act on it, it wasn’t a true feeling. That was a thought that made him uneasy every time he remembered it, so mostly he didn’t; but it kept cropping up, usually at precisely those times when he saw he wasn’t going to act, even though he was feeling something pretty strongly.