The Forge of God (7 page)

"Our Guest is behind the middle window," Hall said. He spoke into an intercom mounted to the left of the middle window. "Our inspectors are here. Is Colonel Phan ready?"

"I am ready," a soft, almost feminine voice replied over a speaker.

"Then let's get started."

The shutters, mounted on their side of the window, clacked and began to rise. The first layer of glass behind was curtained in black. "This is not a one-way mirror or anything fancy," Hall said. "We're not concealing our appearance from the Guest."

"Interesting," Harry said.

"The Guest has requested a particular environment, and we've done our best to meet its requirements," Lieutenant Sanborn said. "It is most comfortable in conditions of semidarkness, at a temperature of about fifteen degrees Celsius. It seems to enjoy a dry atmosphere with approximately the same mix of gases found in our own air. We believe it exited its normal environment at about six o'clock on the morning of the twenty-ninth of September to explore… well, frankly, we don't know why it left, but it was caught by daylight and apparently succumbed to the glare and heat by about nine-thirty."

"That doesn't make sense," Harry said. "Why would it leave its… environment… without protection? Why not make all the necessary precautions and plan the first excursion carefully?"

"We don't know," Colonel Hall said. "We have not interrogated the Guest or caused it any undue strain. We supply it with whatever it requests."

"It makes its requests in English?" Arthur asked.

"Yes, in quite passable English."

Arthur shook his head in disbelief. "Has anyone called Duncan Lunan?"

"We haven't 'called' anybody but people with an immediate need to know," Hall said. "Who is Duncan Lunan?"

"A Scottish astronomer," Arthur explained. "He made a fair mess of a controversy about twenty-three years ago when he claimed to have evidence of an alien space probe orbiting near the Earth. A probe he thought might be from Epsilon Bootis. His evidence consisted of patterns of anomalous returned radio signals that seemed to have been bounced from an object in space. Like a great many pioneers, he had to face disappointment and recant, after a fashion."

"No, sir," Hall said, again with his enigmatic smile. "We haven't spoken to Mr. Lunan."

"Pity. I can think of a hundred scientists who should be here," Arthur said.

"Eventually, perhaps," Hall allowed. "Not right now."

"No. Of course not. Well?" Arthur gestured at the dark window.

"Colonel Phan will give us a direct view in a few minutes."

"Who is Colonel Phan?" Harry asked.

"He's an expert in space medicine from Colorado Springs," Hall said. "We couldn't find anyone better qualified on such short notice, although I doubt we could find a better man for the job even if we searched all year."

"You didn't ask us," Harry said. Arthur nudged him gently in the arm.

The lights in the viewing room dimmed. "I hope someone's making videotapes of our Guest," Harry whispered pointedly to Arthur as they pulled their seats close to the window.

"We have a digital recorder and three high-resolution cameras working around the clock," Lieutenant Sanborn explained.

"All right," Harry said.

Harry was obviously nervous. For his own part, Arthur felt both alert and vaguely anesthetized. He could not quite accept that an age-old question had been answered affirmatively, and that they were about to see the answer.

The black curtain drew aside. Beyond another thick pane of glass framed in stainless steel, they saw a small, dimly lighted, almost empty square room, watery green in color. In the middle of the room was a low platform draped with what appeared to be blankets. A plastic beaker of clear water sat in one corner. In the right-hand corner nearest their window was a meter-tall transparent cylinder, open at the top. Arthur took all this in before focusing on what lay under the blankets on the low table.

The Guest moved, raised a forward limb—clearly a kind of arm, with a three-fingered hand, each finger divided in two above the middle joint—and then sat up slowly, the blanket falling free of its wedge-shaped head. The long "nose" of its head pointed at them and the golden brown eyes emerged from the blunt end, withdrew, emerged. Arthur, mouth dry, tried to see the being as a whole, but for the moment could only concentrate on whether the eyes were lidded, or actually withdrew within "pools" of pale gray-green flesh.

"Can we speak to it?" Harry asked Hall over his shoulder.

"There's two-way communication with the room."

Harry sat in a seat near the window. "Hello. Can you hear us?"

"Yes," the Guest said. Its voice was sibilant and weak but clearly understandable. It lowered itself to the floor and stood uncertainly beside the low table. Its lower limbs—legs—were jointed in reverse, yet not like a dog's or horse's hind legs, where the "knee" is the analog of a human wrist. The Guest's articulation was quite original, each joint actually reversed, with the limb's lower half dropping smoothly, gracefully, to split into three thick extensions, the tip of each extension splayed into two broad "toes." The legs made up much of its height, its rhinoceros-hide "trunk" occupying only about half a meter of its full meter and a half. The end of the long head, thrust forward on a thick, short neck, dropped a few centimeters below the juncture of legs and trunk. The arms rose from each side of the trunk like the folded manipulators of a mantis.

Harry scowled and shook his head, temporarily unable to speak. He waved a hand in front of his mouth, glancing at Arthur, and coughed.

"We don't know quite what to say to you," Arthur finally managed. "We've been waiting a long time for someone to visit the Earth from space."

"Yes." The Guest's head swung back and forth, the jewel-bright, moist, sherry-colored eyes fully revealed. "I wish I could bring better words on such an important occasion."

"What… ah, what words do you bring?" Harry asked.

"Are you related?" the Guest asked in turn.

"I'm sorry—related?"

"There is a question about my communication?"

"We are not of the same family—not siblings, brother or father and son or… whatever," Arthur said.

"You have a social relationship."

"He's my boss," Harry said, pointing to Arthur. "My hierarchical superior. We're friends, also."

"And you are not the same individuals in different form as the individuals behind you?"

"No," Harry said.

"Your forms are steady."

"Yes."

"Then…" The Guest made a sharp, high-pitched whistling noise, and the long crest above the level of the shoulders appeared to inflate slightly. Arthur could not see a mouth or nose near the eyes, and surmised such openings might be on the head below the neck and facing the chest, in the area corresponding—if such correspondences were at all useful—to a long "chin."

"I will relate my bad news to you, as well. Are you placed highly in your group, your society?"

"Not the highest, but yes, we are highly placed," Harry said.

"The news I bring is not happy. It may be unhappy for all of you. This I have not spoken before in detail." Again the whistling noise. The head lifted and Arthur spotted slitlike openings on the underside. "If you have the ability to leave, you will wish to do so soon. A disease has entered your system of planets. There is little time left for your world."

Harry pulled his chair a few inches forward, and the Guest, with an awkward sidling motion, came closer to the thick glass. Then it sat on the floor, leaving only its upper arms and long head visible. The three eyes pointed steadily at Harry, as if wishing to establish some unbreakable and facile rapport, or as if commiserating…

"Our world is doomed?" Harry asked, somehow avoiding all melodrama, giving the last word a perfectly straightforward and unstrained emphasis.

"Unless I sadly misknow your abilities, yes. This is bad news."

"It does seem so," Harry said. "What is the cause of this disease? Are you part of an army of conquest?"

"Conquest… Uncertain. Army?"

"Organized group of soldiers, fighters, destroyers and occupiers. Invaders."

The Guest was silent and still for a few minutes. It might have been a statue but for the almost invisible throbbing of its upper crest. "I am a parasite, a happen-by voyager."

"Explain that, please."

"I am a flea, not a soldier or a builder. My world is dead and eaten. I travel here within a child of a machine that eats worlds."

"You've come on a spaceship?"

"Not my own. Not
ours
." The emphasis there was striking.

"Whose, then?" Harry pursued.

"Its forebears made by very distant people. It controls itself. It eats and reproduces."

Arthur trembled with confusion and fear and a deep anger he could not explain. "I don't understand," he said, blocking Harry's next words.

"It is a traveler that destroys and makes the stars safe for its builders. It gathers information, learns, and then eats worlds and makes new younger forms of itself. Is this clear?"

"Yes, but why are
you
here?" Arthur almost shouted.

"Shh," Harry said, holding up one hand. "It just said that. It's hitched a ride. It's a flea."

"You didn't build the rock, the spaceship or whatever it is, in the desert? That's not your vehicle?" Colonel Hall asked. Obviously, they had heard none of this before. Young Lieutenant Sanborn was visibly shaken.

"Not
our
vehicle," the Guest affirmed. "It is powerful enough not to fear our presence. We cannot hurt it. We sacrifice…" Again it whistled. "We survive only to warn of the death our kind has met."

"Where are the pilots, the soldiers?" Harry asked.

"The machine does not live as we do," the Guest said.

"It's a robot, automatic?"

"It is a machine."

Harry pushed his chair back and rubbed his face vigorously with both hands. The Guest appeared to observe this closely, but otherwise did not change position.

"We have a couple of names for that kind of machine," Arthur said, facing Colonel Hall. "It sounds like a von Neumann device. Self-replicating, without outside instructions. Frank Drinkwater thinks the lack of such machines proves there is no intelligent life besides our own in the galaxy."

"Playing devil's advocate, no doubt," Harry said, still massaging the bridge of his nose. "What scientist would want to
prove
intelligence was unique?"

Colonel Hall regarded the Guest with an expression of mild pain. "It's saying we should be on war alert?"

"It's saying…" Harry began angrily, and then controlled his tone, "it's saying we haven't got the chance of an ice cube in hell. Art, you read more science fiction than I do. Who was that fellow…"

"Saberhagen. Fred Saberhagen. He called them 'Berserkers.'"

"I am not being spoken with," the Guest said. "Have you become aware of the results of this information?"

"I think so," Arthur replied. They had not asked a perfectly obvious question. Perhaps they didn't want to know. He appraised the Guest in the silence that fell over them. "How long do we have?"

"I do not know. Perhaps less than an orbit."

Harry winced. Colonel Hall simply gaped.

"How long ago did your—did the ship land?" Arthur continued.

The Guest made a small hissing sound and turned away. "I do not know," it replied. "We have not been aware."

Arthur did not hesitate to ask the next question. "Did the ship stop by a planet in our solar system? Did it destroy a moon?"

"I don't know."

A short, powerfully built Asiatic man with close-trimmed black hair, dark pockmarked skin, and broad cheekbones entered the room. Arthur slapped his hands on his knees and glared at him.

"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," he said.

Sanborn cleared his throat. "This is Colonel Tuan Anh Phan." He introduced Arthur and Harry.

Phan greeted each with a reserved nod. "I've just been informed that the Australians are releasing news photos and motion pictures. I believe this is important. Their visitors are not like our own."

PERSPECTIVE

InfoNet Political News Forum, October 6, 1996, Frank Topp, commentator
: President Crockerman's rating in the World-News public opinion polls has been a rocksteady 60 to 65 percent approval since June, with no signs of change as Election Day approaches. Political pundits in Washington doubt that anything can derail the President's easy victory in November, not even the hundred-billion-dollar trade imbalance between the Eastern Pacific Rim nations and Uncle Sam… or the enigmatic situation in Australia. I, for one, am not even wearing campaign buttons. It's going to be a dull election.

QUARENS ME, SEDISTI LASSOS

Hicks, bleary-eyed, clothing rumpled, sat on the straight-backed hotel desk chair and scanned the contents of the file he had marked "Hurrah."

"Hurrah" contained the choicest bits of information from twenty-two hours and perhaps three hundred dollars' worth of accessing specialist bulletin boards around the world. He did not care about costs. He was still high.

Australia did indeed have an artifact in their Great Victoria Desert, something apparently disguised to resemble a huge chunk of red granite. The Australian government had kept the find secret for about thirty days, until leaks through investigating military and scientific agencies threatened to scoop them on the greatest story of all time. This much and more—speculation, rumors—had been repeated again and again on all the networks he had accessed. While the government had not released full details, they were expected to do so any day.

The
Regulus
bulletin board was used solely by radio astronomers belonging to the 21cm Club, of which he was an honorary member. After searching through the general and special interest messages, in a small area headlined "Irresponsible Murmurs," Hicks had found a cryptic and unsigned note: "Ham fanatic, right? Say no more about identity. Picked up unscrambled transmission to AFI"—that, Hicks decided, must be
Air Force One,
the President's plane—"concerning 'our own bogey in the Furnace.' The Man's heading west to Vandenberg. Could this be…?"