Ensign damned himself for not seeing the implication earlier. The Bach Choir was new to this cloud band, their ways were somewhat alien and they needed to augment their number. No matter what their singing abilities they still lacked the prestige of an established pod. Like any intelligent species the High Folk understood rumors, tall tales, and downright lies, and like most intelligent species they were more likely to consign something completely outside their experience to one of those three causes than to accept it outright.
And there was no proof. The Sky Seed was gone into Jupiter’s murky depths and no others had been close enough to see their encounter. They had their memories and the word pictures they could draw, but that was all. And neither words nor memories encoded the theory they had developed.
“We don’t have to tell anyone,” Melody ventured at last.
They didn’t like that either. Among the High Folk information was for sharing. Withholding it was like withholding food.
“Perhaps someone else saw the Sky Seed,” Snow ventured.
“There was no one else close enough.”
“Then perhaps there will be another one soon.”
Melody snorted. “Have you ever seen one before? Do you even know of any songs about them?”
“Maybe we can call one to us,” Snow suggested.
“If they communicate by tingle sense perhaps we can talk to them,” The Geek said.
“How strong is your tingle sense?” Ensign asked. “That Sky Seed was easily as powerful as hundreds of High Folk.”
“So we get hundreds of High Folk to sing to the Second Wanderer with our tingle sense.”
“And how do we do that when we don’t tell them what we suspect?” Melody retorted. “We either tell them and damage ourselves—and perhaps still don’t convince enough High Folk to sing loudly enough—or we don’t tell and no one will see any sense in trying to sing with the tingle sense.”
No one said anything else. Ensign realized the entire pod was looking at him, waiting for his decision. Sky above, he thought bitterly, I love being pod leader!
Then the realization grew and finally burst in on him like full dawn on a clear day. There was a way!
“Let’s not be too hasty to broadcast the news.”
“So we do not speak of this thing, then.” There were overtones of disgust in The Geek’s voice.
“No,” Ensign thrummed slowly. “We don’t speak of it.”
“Associated Press, Collins.”
“What the bloody hell,” bellowed a familiar voice in his ear, “is this nonsense?”
Larry didn’t need clues to identify either the voice or the “ ‘nonsense.’ ” “Hi, Gary. Hey, I didn’t write it.”
“I can read a byline,” Rhine growled in his ear.
“Yeah, well he’s got this odd notion that if you don’t find what you expect to find the experiment is a failure.”
“Doesn’t know John F. Feces about research, does he?”
“I think his degree’s in sociology,” Collins agreed. “He’s got a master’s in journalism—which makes it worse because he won’t listen to anyone.”
“When the hell are you going to get some science reporters who know something about science? An ‘expensive failure,’ my ass!”
Collins leaned back in his swivel chair. “Well, you gotta admit you didn’t get the data you expected out of the probe.”
“We got data, dammit!”
“You mean you got a signal back that doesn’t tell you anything.”
“Wrong. It tells us a hell of a lot. It tells us Jupiter isn’t like what we thought it is.”
“You mean it’s got hurricanes blowing straight up?”
“I mean it’s got something.”
Collins pounced. “So the hurricane story isn’t completely accepted at JPL?”
“Only by the ones who can’t find their asses with both hands. I’ll grant you that’s a lot of them, but not everyone by a long shot.”
“OK Gary, what’s the alternative theory?”
“There are a bunch of them,” Rhine’s voice dropped almost to a mumble.
“Name three.”
“Later, Larry. When I get them sorted out.”
“Which one do you think is the most likely?”
There was an uncharacteristic pause on the other end of the line. “Larry,” the Rhino said at last, “you remember that saying about ‘not only is the universe stranger than we imagine it’s stranger than we can imagine’?”
Larry leaned forward eagerly. “Yeah?”
“Well,” Rhine drawled, “it’s even stranger than that.” With that he hung up.
All over Jupiter, High Folk were arranging themselves along the track of the eclipse, guided by the ancient songs of prediction. An eclipse, a Gathering at moonshadow, a place for pods to meet and celebrate their world as they knew it. Every place the moon’s shadow touched there would be High Folk beneath it to sing songs of welcome and praise. The inhabitants of Jupiter’s cloud tops couldn’t be said to worship the eclipse, but the mood came close.
Even from as high as he could comfortably fly, Ensign saw an endless river of High Folk, stretching from horizon to horizon along the path the moon’s shadow would take across the tops of the clouds. Though widely separated, they were tightly packed by the standards of the free-living High Folk. There were pods and family groups, and here and there a lone yearling or two cavorting above the clouds, temporarily safe from sharks.
Just like home, Ensign thought to himself, and then sobered when he realized that this cloud band was his home now.
He turned his attention back to his guests—senior pod leaders—older, puffier, and ill at ease this high. In the anarchic society of the High Folk this was as close to a government as you got, and right now they wanted his assurance.
“This is most unusual,” the central old one hummed out for perhaps the twentieth time. “Most unusual indeed.”
“I agree it is different,” Ensign said, “but I’m sure you will find it most satisfactory.”
That was putting it mildly. Ensign, Melody, The Geek, and even Snow had labored through the months since the Sky Seed—composing, arranging, polishing, testing new harmonies, tearing out part of what they had so painstakingly crafted and recomposing to produce what might be the Bach Choir’s master work.
“Has everyone received the song?” he asked.
“The remoras have been traded all through the band,” wheezed the oldster on the left. He was ancient enough that he had trouble controlling his gas cells and hence his shape. It could not be comfortable for him to be this high and Ensign was sure his membranes, inelastic with age, were being stretched painfully.
“Then it waits only the eclipse to begin,” Ensign told them. With his rear eyes he checked out the rest of his pod, clustered tightly and ready to begin their chase across the sky.
“Still,” the central oldster went on, “this is so, so different. Is this some Southern fashion?”
Ensign rippled his trailing edge in a manner that indicated non-specific agreement. “Somewhat.”
Snow bobbed to look skyward with her main eyes. wWe have perhaps one more day-tenth,” she sang out, “a little less perhaps.”
Ensign rippled agreement. In the weeks since she had joined them Snow had become surprisingly adept at the songs of prediction. That had been an important factor in the honor accorded them of leading all the pods in their new Song of Gathering.
All of the pods. Unlike most performance pieces this one had a chorus for all the celebrants at the gathering to join in. A most unusual chorus.