“Shit, how did you ever wind up in this business?”
“I was made for it,” Hugh said, which he apparently found hilarious.
Tim gave him a bewildered glance. Then his neural nanonics reported his communications block was receiving a priority call from the Fort Forward studio chief. It was the news that the Confederation Navy had attacked Arnstat.
“Holy shit,” Tim muttered. All around him, marines and mercenaries were cheering and calling out to each other. Trucks and jeeps sounded their horns in continual blasts.
“That’s not good,” Hugh said. “They knew what the effect would be.”
“Damnit, yes,” Tim said. “We’ve lost the story.”
“An entire planet snatched away to another realm, and all that concerns you is the story?”
“Don’t you see?” Tim swept his arms round extravagantly, encompassing the occupation station in one gesture. “This was the story, the only one: we were on the front line against the possessed. What we saw and said mattered. Now it doesn’t. Just like that.” His neural nanonics astronomy program found him the section of dark azure sky where Avon’s star shone unseen. He glared at it in frustration. “Someone up there is changing Confederation policy, and I’m stuck down here. I can’t find out why.”
Cochrane saw it first. Naturally, he called it Tinkerbell.
Not quite limber enough to stay in a full lotus position for hours on end, the hippie was sprawled bonelessly on a leather beanbag, facing the direction Ketton island was flying in. With a Jack Daniels in one hand and his purple sunglasses in place he possibly wasn’t as alert as he should have been. But then, none of the other ten people sharing the top of the headland with him saw it.
They were, as McPhee complained later, looking out for something massive, a planet or a moon, or perhaps even Valisk. An object that would appear as a small dark patch amid the vanishing-point glare and slowly swell in size as the island drew closer.
The last thing anyone expected was a pebble-sized crystal with a splinter of sunlight entombed at its centre arrowing in out of the bright void ahead. But that’s what they got.
“Holy mamma, hey you cats, look at this,” Cochrane whooped. He tried to point, sending Jack Daniels sloshing across his flares.
The crystal was sliding over the cliff edge, its multifaceted surface stabbing out thin beams of pure white light in every direction. It swooped in towards Cochrane and his fellow watchers, keeping a level four metres off the ground. By then Cochrane was on his feet dancing and waving at it. “Over here, man. We’re here. Here boy, come on, come to your big old buddy.”
The crystal curved tightly, circling over their heads to their gasps and excited shouts.
“Yes!” Cochrane yelled. “It knows we’re here. It’s alive, gotta be, man; look at the way it’s buzzing about, like some kind of inter-cosmic fairy.” Slivers of light from the crystal flashed across his sunglasses. “Yoww, that’s bright. Hey, Tinkerbell, tone it down, baby.”
Delvan stared at their visitor in absolute awe, a hand held in front of his face to shield him from the dazzling light. “Is it an angel?”
“Naw,” Cochrane chortled. “Too small. Angels are huge great mothers with flaming swords. Tinkerbell, that’s who we’ve got here.” He cupped his hands round his mouth. “Yo, Tinks, how’s it hanging?”
Choma’s dark, weighty hand tapped Cochrane’s shoulder. The hippie flinched.
“I don’t wish to be churlish,” the serjeant said. “But I believe there are more appropriate methods with which to open communications with an unknown xenoc species.”
“Oh yeah?” Cochrane sneered. “Then how come you’re already boring her away?”
The crystal changed direction, speeding away to fly over the main headland camp. Cochrane started running after it, yelling and waving.
Sinon, like every other serjeant on the island, had turned to look at the strange pursuit as soon as Choma informed them of the crystal’s arrival. “We have an encounter situation,” he announced to the humans around him.
Stephanie stared at the brilliant grain of crystal leading Cochrane on a merry chase and let out a small groan of dismay. They really shouldn’t have let the old hippie join the forward watching group.
“What’s happening?” Moyo asked.
“Some kind of flying xenoc,” she explained.
“Or probe,” Sinon said. “We are attempting to communicate with affinity.”
The serjeants combined their mental voice into a collective hail. As well as clear ringing words of greeting, mathematical symbols, and pictographics, they produced a spectrum of pure emotional tones. None of it provoked any kind of discernible answer.
The crystal slowed again, drifting over the headland group. There were over sixty humans camping out together now; Stephanie’s initial group had been joined by a steady stream of deserters from Ekelund’s army. They’d broken away over the past week, sometimes in groups, sometimes individually; all of them rejecting her authority and growing intolerance. The word they brought from the old town wasn’t good. Martial law was strictly enforced, turning the whole place into a virtual prison. At the moment, her efforts were focused on recovering as many rifles as possible from the ruins and mounds of loose soil. Apparently she still hadn’t abandoned her plan to rid the island of serjeants and disloyal possessed.
Stephanie stood looking up at the twinkling crystal as it traced a meandering course overhead. Cochrane was still lumbering along thirty metres behind. His annoyed cries carried faintly through the air. “Any reply yet?” she asked.
“None,” the serjeant told them.
People had risen to their feet, gawping at the tiny point of light. It seemed oblivious to all of them. Stephanie concentrated on the folds of iridescent shadow which her mind’s senses were revealing. Human and serjeant minds glowed within it, easily recognizable; the crystal existed as a sharply defined teardrop-filigree of sapphire. It was almost like a computer graphic, a total contrast to everything else she could perceive this way. As it grew closer its composition jumped up to perfect clarity; in a dimension-defying twist the inner threads of sapphire were longer than its diameter.
She’d stopped being amazed by wonders since Ketton left Mortonridge. Now she was simply curious.
“That can’t be natural,” she insisted.
Sinon spoke for the mini-consensus of serjeants. “We concur. Its behaviour and structure is indicative of a high-order entity.”
“I can’t make out any kind of thoughts.”
“Not like ours. That is inevitable. It seems well adjusted to this realm. Commonality would therefore be unlikely.”
“You think it’s a native?”
“If not an actual aboriginal, then something equivalent to their AI. It does seem to be self-determining, a good indicator of independence.”
“Or good programming,” Moyo said. “Our reconnaissance drones would have this much awareness.”
“Another possibility,” Sinon agreed.
“None of that matters,” Stephanie said. “It proves there’s some kind of sentience here. We have to make contact and ask for help.”
“That’s if they understand the concept,” Franklin said.
This speculation is irrelevant,choma said. What it is does not matter, what it is capable of does. Communication has to be established.
It will not respond to any of our attempts,sinon said. If it does not sense affinity or atmospheric compression then we have little chance of initiating contact.
Mimic it,choma said. the mini-consensus queried him.
It can obviously sense us,he explained. Therefore we must demonstrate we are equally aware of it. Once it knows this, it will logically begin seeking communication channels. The surest demonstration possible is to use our energistic power to assemble a simulacrum.
They focused their minds on a stone lying at Sinon’s feet, fourteen thousand serjeants conceiving it as a small clear diamond with a flame of cold light burning bright at its centre. It rose into the air, shedding crumbs of mud as it went.