Those were quite impressive, when you added them up. It seemed that her personal screen never darkened, with messages of congratulations from basically everyone she knew, as well as a very large number of people she didn’t. The presidents of Russia, China, and the United States were among her well-wishers, not to mention the leaders of nearly every other country in the United Nations. And Dr. Dhatusena Bandara on behalf of Pax per Fidem, and just about every one of her old teachers and friends, and parents of friends. And the ones she really cared about, too, such as Beatrix Vorhulst and her whole domestic staff. And that is without mentioning the ones who wanted something from her—news programs seeking interviews, representatives of several dozen movements and charities begging for an endorsement. Not least, the International Olympic Committee itself was promising their new champion a place in the planned solar-sail spacecraft race, to be held as soon as enough viable solar-sail spaceships existed in LEO and could be spared from the urgent work of settling the solar system. “Now, that’s because they’re getting more pressure from the big three, I’ll bet,” Myra informed her family. “They want to get everything going at once for their own purposes.”
Her husband patted her shoulder. “And what purposes are those?” he asked tolerantly. “According to you, they already own just about everything.”
Myra wrinkled her nose at him. “You’ll see,” she said, though what it was he would see she did not say.
They were nearly to the upper Van Allen before the volume of calls dropped low enough for their traveling companions to catch up on some of their own neglected calls home. This time there were sixteen others sharing their capsule, two wealthy Bulgarian families, though what their wealth came from Ranjit had not been quite able to identify, and a handful of almost as wealthy Canadians. (In their case, the cash cow was petroleum from the Athabascan tar sands.) Ranjit felt an obligation to apologize to their fellow passengers for Natasha’s hogging of the communications circuits. They were having none of that, though. “Bless her,” said the oldest of the Canadian women. “Things like this don’t come often in a young girl’s life. Anyway, the news channels stayed open. Mostly that rash of new flying saucer stories, but did you hear about Egypt and Kenya?”
The Subramanians had not, and when they did, they were as delighted as any other. Kenya and Egypt had not only agreed on fairly sharing Nile water, but both countries, by a suddenly called plebiscite, had voted to join the transparency compact voluntarily.
“But that’s very good!” Ranjit said.
However, just then the shrill radiation warnings sounded and it was time for them to get into the shelter once more.
Ranjit sighed and led the way, followed by Natasha in conversation with one of the Canadian girls, and his wife, with Robert by the hand.
It took several minutes for all twenty of them to check out their bunks, with the warning whistle sounding all the time. And while Myra was fluffing up their pitiful excuse for a pillow, she stopped, looked around, and then demanded, “Where’s Robert?”
The answer came from one of the Canadians. “He was standing by the door a minute ago,” she said.
She didn’t have to say anything more. Ranjit was already out of that door himself, shouting Robert’s name above the screeching warnings. It didn’t take him long to find his son, interestedly gazing out of the window at the polychrome blur that was the Van Allen belt, and not even that long to drag him back inside the shelter, slamming the door behind them. “He’s all right,” he reassured his family—and the others, all worriedly gathered around the door together as well. “I asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, and he just said ‘fish.’”
Among all the sounds of amused relief it was the Canadian grandmother who pursed her lips. “Was he saying he thought he saw a fish?” she asked. “Because it was on the news that other people have seen things from the Skyhook—metallic sorts of things, kind of pointy at both ends. I guess you could say that might look like a fish.”
“The same things they’ve been claiming people saw all over,” her son-in-law confirmed. “I thought it was all just another of those crazy things people get themselves into, but I don’t know. I guess it’s possible they could be real.”
And at that same time those quite real Nine-Limbeds in their little canoe-shaped craft were having a great debate.
The decision to turn off the vision-deflecting shields so these Earth primitives could actually see them had seemed like a good idea at the time. Having done it, the Nine-Limbeds were all trying to talk at once over the tight-beam network that allowed them to communicate without being overheard by the humans on the ground. And there was only one subject for discussion: Had they done the right thing?
In order to try to answer that, the standing orders were refreshed and restored to visibility, and studied by all. The experts in communications between the Nine-Limbeds and the Grand Galactics meditated for prolonged periods before issuing an opinion. Since they had been trained from whelping to understand every nuance of every instruction ever handed down by the Grand Galactics, their opinions were listened to attentively, and their findings were nearly unanimous.
Expressed in the sort of terms a human lawyer might use, they were these: The Grand Galactics had flatly forbidden the Nine-Limbeds to enter into communication with the rogue race of humans. They had not, however, ordered them to take any care to see that humans didn’t suspect their presence.
Accordingly, the experts reasoned that the Grand Galactics could not in justice punish the Nine-Limbeds very severely for what they had done. And, the experts concurred, the record was clear that the Grand Galactics did have some concept of justice, or of something somewhat like it. So they might reprimand. They might even punish. But it was highly unlikely that they would respond by exterminating the entire Nine-Limbed race.
Other client races of the Grand Galactics wouldn’t ever have taken that sort of chance in the first place. The One Point Fives wouldn’t have. Neither would the Machine-Stored. Not one of the Grand Galactics’ subject races had that keen a sense of humor, nor had ever dared such a transgression. Up until that point, that is.
33
PRIVATE PAIN IN A REJOICING WORLD
The Nile waters might never threaten the world’s peace again, because both Egypt and Kenya passed the Pax per Fidem vote with resounding margins. Even before Pax’s peacekeepers were in place, teams of Kenyan hydrologists had begun setting up shop in the control buildings around the Aswân High Dam, and both countries had opened their (rather puny) missile sites to international control. Transparency of their heavy industry, such as it was, followed quickly.
They were not the last, either. The four countries in sub-Saharan Africa that had been contesting the waters of one medium-size lake saw what became of the one of their number that had sent a force to drive the other three away. When that one—properly warned, heedless of the warning—tasted Silent Thunder for itself, all three of the others joined the first in the contract.
And then there was a major breakthrough.
The Republic of Germany debated and argued and finally held a giant plebiscite of its own. Their terrible national memories of huge and violent lost battles trumped that sometimes troublesome German sense of destiny. They, too, signed up. They threw their borders open to the United Nations, disbanded the token armed forces they had retained, and signed on to Pax per Fidem’s draft constitution for the world.
Those were times for rejoicing for the people of planet Earth.
There were only two things that dampened the joys of, say, the Subramanian family. The first was the one they shared with the whole human race, namely, those pesky little apparitions that kept showing themselves—in cities at night, in the air above seagoing vessels in broad daylight, even—perhaps like young Robert’s “fish”—in space. Some people called them “bronzed bananas,” some “flying midget submarines,” some by names a lot less printable. What no one knew was exactly what they were. The devout UFO-ologists called them the final proof that flying saucers were real. The hardened skeptics suspected that one or more of Earth’s sovereign states was developing a mystery weapon unlike anything that had gone before.