David Brin - Earth

I wonder what’s keeping Pedro ? She chewed on a fingernail as she looked across the rain forest. Why do I feel something’s wrong ?

If she were in a cockpit right now, there’d be instruments to check, a wealth of information. Here, she had only her senses. Even her data plaque had been packed in the luggage below.

Glancing behind her, she realized something was distinctly odd about the tour group passing by. They’re sure in a hurry to see the caves. Is their bus behind schedule, or what ?

Every one of them carried pastel shoulder bags to match their bright tourist gear. Four out of five were men, and there were no children at all. Are they with some sort of convention, maybe ?

She almost stopped one to ask, but held back. Something seemed all too familiar about these characters, as she watched them recede upslope. Their movements were too purposeful for people on holiday. Under their goggles, their jaws had been set in a way that made Teresa think of—

She gasped. “Peepers! Oh… burf it!”

Helplessly she realized what her inattentiveness might cost. Without her plaque, she had only her slim wallet to use in an attempt to warn those below ground. Teresa took it from her hip pocket and flipped it open — only to find it wouldn’t transmit! The tiny transceiver was jammed.

There was a telephone though, in the gift shop by the park entrance. Teresa backed downhill till the last “tourist” vanished round a bend, then she turned to run—

— and crashed into several more men taking up the rear. One of them seized her wrist in a ninety-kilo grip.

“Well. Captain Tikhana. Hello! But I heard you were in Queensland. My goodness. What brings you to New Zealand so unexpectedly?”

The man holding her arm actually sounded anything but surprised to meet her here. Despite Glenn Spivey’s scarred complexion, his smile seemed almost genuine, empty of any malice. Next to Spivey, making useless any thought of struggle, stood a big black man and an Asian. Despite the ethnic diversity, they all seemed cast from the same mold, with the piercing eyes of trained spies.

A fourth man, standing behind the others, seemed out of place in this tableau. His features, too, were vaguely oriental. But his stance shouted civilian . And not a very happy one, either.

“You!” Teresa told the peeper colonel, cleverly.

“I hope you weren’t planning on leaving so soon, Captain?” Spivey replied, apparently bent on using one old movie clichi after another. “I wish you’d stay. Things are just about to get interesting.”

“… warn you, George! The place is swarming with soldiers! They’ve already taken the thumper and my crew. You and Alex and the others better clear out…”

A hand reached past George Hutton to turn off the sound. The holo unit went on visually depicting an elderly man in a heavy parka, obviously worried but now speaking only mime into a portable transmitter. Behind Stan Goldman loomed a titanic, icy palisade.

“I’m afraid the warning wouldn’t have done much good, even if it had come earlier,” Colonel Spivey told Hut-ton and the assembled conspirators. “We snooped all your files, of course, before running this kind of operation. Can’t afford to be sloppy, you know.”

Teresa sat in her old chair, across from Alex Lustig and two seats from the exit, now guarded by Spivey’s ANZAC commandoes. This time, the underground meeting room was packed with everyone, even the cook. Everyone except Pedro Manella, that is.

How did he know ? She wondered. How does Pedro always seem to know ?

She was feeling numb of course. Another few hours and she’d have been on her way to Houston, back to her comfortable apartment and her loyal NASA publicity flack.

Now though?

Now I’m cooked . Teresa’s thoughts were scattered like leaves. It was only natural, of course, when you contemplated a future in federal prison.

She glanced across the table at Alex and felt ashamed. Certainly he wasn’t worried foremost about saving his own neck. This event would have effects on more than just one life. All right, then. We’re all cooked . There was little solace in the reminder.

“How long ago?”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Hutton?” Spivey asked.

George levered his heavy body to sit up at the head of the table. “How long ago did you snoop our records, Colonel?”

Teresa noticed he didn’t ask how Spivey’s team had broken the Tangoparu security screen. Obviously the great power alliances possessed better infotech than even the best Net hackers. With the deep pockets of governments, and many of the old loyalties to call upon, they could stay two, three, even four years ahead of individual users. So Spivey’s next admission took her a bit by surprise.

“You know, it’s funny about that,” the colonel answered openly. “We looked for you guys a long time. Too long. You had someone running awfully good interference for you, Hutton. We pierced your caches just three days ago, and then only thanks to some anonymous tips and help from civilian consultants like Mr. Eng here.”

Spivey nodded toward the vaguely oriental-looking man Teresa had seen on the trail, who blinked nervously when his name was mentioned. Obviously he was no peeper.

One of the Tangoparu technicians stood up to loudly protest the illegality of this invasion. Pulling a cube from his jacket, Spivey interrupted. “I have a document here, signed by the chiefs of NATO, ASEAN, and ANZAC, as well as the New Zealand national security authority, declaring this an ultimate emergency under the security sections of all three pacts and the Rio Treaty. What you people have been up to justifies that label, wouldn’t you say? If anything in human history does, a black hole eating up the Earth surely qualifies as an ‘emergency.’

“And yet you kept it to yourselves! Hiding it from the press, from the net, and from sovereign, elected governments. So please spare me your righteous indignation.”

In the holo tank, Stan Goldman’s silent image turned away as he saw someone approaching. Sighing in silent resignation, he reached for a switch and the image cut off abruptly. In its place the familiar cutaway globe rotated again — the Earth, depicted as a multilayered ball of Neapolitan ice cream.

Ah, if only it were true. An ice cream planet. What a wonderful world it would be.

Forcing aside giddiness, Teresa mentally added — Good luck, Stan. God bless you .

“Until only a little while ago we thought you people were the ones who made the damned monster!” June Morgan shouted at Spivey. “You and your secret cavitron laboratories in orbit and your cozy great power agreements. We felt we had to keep our work hidden or you’d interfere to save your own asses!”

“An interesting, perhaps even plausible, defense,” Spivey acknowledged. “But now you know it wasn’t we nasty government brutes who manufactured the…” He paused.

“The Beta singularity,” Alex Lustig prompted, his first comment of the afternoon.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Alex nodded enigmatically.

“Yes, well. A few days ago you folks seem to have decided the monster was sent this way instead by angry aliens .” He shrugged. “I’m not yet convinced by that colorful scenario. But be that as it may, once you believed that, and knew we weren’t Beta’s makers, wasn’t it your duty then to tell us? After all, aren’t we supposed to be the experts at dealing with external aggressors? We’re the ones with the resources and organizational skills to take your shoestring operation and—”

“We were arguing about just that when you and your men burst in,” George said abruptly. “In hindsight, maybe I was wrong to hold out for continued secrecy.”