David Gerrold - A Matter for Men

It didn't work. The noise of the conversations only increased as each speaker shouted to make himself heard over the public address system. I could see that this was going to take a while.

"Delegates? If you please-?" He tried again. "I'd like to call this session to order."

No one paid attention. Each and every one of them had something so important to say that it superseded every other event in the auditorium.

The unhappy man tried one more time, then picked up a tiny mallet and started striking an old-style ship's bell that was perched on top of the podium. He hit it four quick times, then four times more, then again and again. He kept on striking it, over and over, a steady rhythmic dinging that could not be ignored. I saw him looking at his watch while he did it. Apparently he'd been through this before.

The groups began to break up. The various conversations splintered and broke off-they couldn't compete any longer-and the participants began drifting into their separate seats. The only conversation still going full bore was one between three deaf women--or maybe they were interpreters-in Ameslan.

"Thank you!" the unhappy man said at last. He touched some buttons on the podium in front of him and the screen behind him lit up with an official-looking announcement. It repeated itself every fifteen seconds, each time shifting to a different language: French, Russian, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Swahili, Arabic-I couldn't identify the rest. The English version said: "English interpretations of foreign language speakers may be heard on channel fifteen. Thank you."

He waited while the various delegates inserted earpieces or put on headphones. They rustled and gobbled among themselves, each one taking an impossibly long time.

Something on the right caught my eye-Lizard! Major Tirelli! She was on the arm of a tall black colonel; they were laughing and chatting together as they found seats three rows forward. I wondered if I should call hello, then decided against it. It would probably only annoy her, and besides the auditorium was filling up now and it would be conspicuous, and probably embarrassing. I wondered if I should save a couple of seats for Ted and Dinnie-except I didn't want to-until finally the question was answered for me when a dark, handsome woman sat down on my right, and a second later, a pair of lieutenants took two of the three seats on my left. The handsome woman was in a lab coat and was carrying a clipboard. She switched it on while she waited and began reading through some notes.

I took my recorder out of my pocket to turn it on, and she touched my arm. "Not a good idea," she said. "Some of this may be classified."

"Oh," I said. "Thanks." And dropped it back into my pocket, thumbing it on anyway as I did so. I don't think she saw.

The unhappy man began banging his bell again. "I think we can begin now. For those of you who don't know, I'm Dr. Olmstead, Dr. Edward K. Olmstead, and I am the acting director of the Extraterrestrial Studies Group of the National Science Center here in Denver. I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome all of you to this special session of the Continuing International Conference on Extraterrestrial Affairs.

"I am required by the rules of this conference to remind you that much of the material that we will be presenting here is generally classified on a need-to-know basis. While that includes all of our registered attendees and their respective staffs, we still want to stress that the material is for your use only and should be treated as confidential. We are not yet prepared to release some of this information to the general public. The reasons for this will be discussed in tomorrow's session on culture shock. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

"This special Saturday session is being held for the convenience of those delegates who will not be here for the full conference schedule. As always, this session is going out live on channel two. If you need more information on any specific subject, that access is available through the project network, of course. Please feel free to tap in. If you don't already have a clearance number, check with the desk.

"As you can see by your schedules, we're going to try to present all of the scientific material in the first two and a half hours, and follow up with the more important questions of contact and containment procedures this afternoon-after a reasonable break for lunch, of course. As I'm sure most of you have already discovered, the hotel here has an excellent buffet. Tomorrow we will spend the morning session on the cultural and psychological questions, and the afternoon meeting will deal with the economic sphere. We do apologize for presuming on so much of your time, and we thank you in advance for your cooperation. This is, of course, a working weekend, so at this time I'd like to turn the microphone over to our conference chairperson, Dr. Moyra Zymph."

There was a spattering of polite applause as Dr. Zymph came up to the dais. She was a stout woman, slightly disheveled, and she moved like a truck driver. When she spoke, it was with a gravelly, I-mean-business voice. "All right, let's get to it." She slapped her clipboard down onto the podium. "I know that most of you are more interested in finding out the answers than in listening to the questions. Unfortunately, all we have right now are questions. We have lots of questions . . ." She paused for effect . . . "and a few educated guesses, which I will share with you.

"I want you to think of a jigsaw puzzle-with most of the pieces missing and no picture on the cover of the box to guide you. Now think of a warehouse full of similar incomplete jigsaw puzzles. Now mix them all up. Now find someone who's never seen a jigsaw puzzle before in his life, and put him in the middle of this pile of mixed-up pieces and ask him to figure out what's going on here. At the point he realizes what a jigsaw puzzle is, he's won the game. He's solved the hardest part of the problem. "I want you to hold that picture in mind, because that's what we're up to here. We've got a warehouse full of pieces. We know what individual pieces look like, but we don't know what the pictures look like-we do know for sure that this is a warehouse full of incomplete puzzles. We've solved the hard part. And we'll tell you about that.

"Now, some of you are not going to like what you hear. You are especially not going to like the implications. Some of you may be so disturbed by the material presented that you'll want to question its validity. You'll want to dismiss our conclusions because you can't accept the facts. Please do not make that mistake.

"I want you to know that it's all right to be uncomfortable with the material. We certainly are ... and we've been living with it for a while. Just don't use that discomfort as an excuse to hide from the urgency of the situation." She paused long enough to let that sink in, looking around the auditorium as if daring anyone to object.

No one did. Not yet. Dr. Zymph nodded and continued. "Good. So what we're going to do here today is show you some of the pieces that we are certain about and then go from there to the larger pattern. I will not be showing you all of our puzzle pieces-we don't have the time-but I will be showing you those items which you most need to know about."

She switched her clipboard on and began referring to it. "First off, we can tell you this. The Earth, this planet that we live on, is experiencing an ecological infestation. The source of the infestation is presumed to be extraterrestrial." She touched a hidden control on the podium and the screen behind her came back to life, showing two views of the Earth, front and back. There were red splotches blinking across the larger land areas. It looked like a case of measles. She continued:

"The infestation has appeared on all five major continents: Asia, Africa, both of the Americas and to a lesser extent-although we don't know why yetEurope. We have not yet confirmed any signs of infestation in Australia or Antarctica. So far, the evidence suggests that it is generally limited to the temperate zones of the planet, the same areas in which the bulk of our human population is established. That is, the remaining human population." She stopped and looked out at the room. "The-uh, population crisis will be discussed at tomorrow's session. I urge all of you to be there. We do have some specific recommendations, but they have to be implemented immediately. And I want to point out that our primary concern is not just saving our human resources, but putting them to work in ways that contribute to the larger effort." She looked uncomfortable. She bent back to the security of the notes on her clipboard.