End of an Era

I’d read about a similar idea years before, but on a much smaller scale. Some astronomer had suggested planting crops in giant geometric patterns across the face of Africa in hopes of signaling the presence of intelligence to anyone looking at Earth through a telescope. But this was so much more! A civilization that could arrange suns into patterns — it was mind-boggling. The rosette of lights would have been clearly visible from anywhere in Earth’s southern hemisphere, or Mars’s for that matter.

"It must have been wonderful having your society grow up with that in the sky," I said to the brachiator. "Incontrovertible proof that you weren’t alone, that there are other, more advanced civilizations out there." I shook my head, the jelly connection with the wall making a squishy sound as I did so. "God, when I think of all the soul-searching that humans go through wondering if we’re alone in the universe, if there’s anyone else out there, if it’s possible to survive technological adolescence. It must give you great comfort."

"It galls us."

"But—"

Everything went black again. The Het oozed out of my neck. We returned to the ground in silence. I thought about the rosette of lights; about the Hets; about troodons, dinosaurs that might be on the way to developing intelligence of their own. It seemed that humanity had missed the heyday of sapient life in the galaxy by 60 or so million years. It was only because the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinctions wiped out the great reptiles that the second-string team, the mammals, had an opportunity to rise to the level of conscious thought, but by the time we did, the Milky Way was a much less crowded place. How could the Hets not be thrilled by the mere knowledge of the rosette-makers being out there somewhere?

I guess I’d offended them. Without a further word, they dumped us back at our campsite, now almost completely dark, our campfire having decayed to a few glowing coals. We watched from the ground as their pulsing sphere silently made its way off to the west, then we clambered in the darkness up the crater wall and went back into the Sternberger.

The sky was completely covered with clouds. Probably just as well. Now that we’d seen the heavens from above the obscuring cloak of Earth’s atmosphere, the view from the ground — breathtaking though it had seemed last night — would pale in comparison. My only regret, though, was that the rosette would never be visible in this hemisphere. I’d love to have gotten a picture of it.

"Brandy," said Klicks, unbuttoning his shirt, "what do you know about how the Huang Effect works?"

I was gathering up my pajamas; I’d wanted to gloat a bit about the discovery that the Chicxulub crater predated the end of the dinosaurs, and wasn’t surprised that Klicks was avoiding the topic, but, now that he mentioned it…

"So you’ve been thinking about that, too?" I said. "Christ, it’s like a stupid commercial jingle. I can’t get it out of my mind either. I keep running over what little I comprehend."

"Which is?"

"Diddly, really. I’m no physicist. Something to do with the tunnel-diode effect and, uh, tachyons. I think."

"Hmm," said Klicks. "That’s more than I knew. Why do you suppose — ?"

"Oh, good Christ! I knew those Martians weren’t just being friendly neighbors. Klicks, they took us up, showed us some views of space to keep us preoccupied, then went sorting through our minds, looking for the secret of time travel."

"I bet they were disappointed when they didn’t find it."

"I’m not sure anyone besides Ching-Mei understands it completely."

"Well," said Klicks, "you can’t blame them, really. Besides, they’ll have plenty of chances to ask her face-to-face once we bring them forward."

I looked at him, standing there across the room, arms folded across his chest. "Bring them forward?" I said, disbelief in my tone. "Klicks, they tried to steal the secret of time travel from us. And you still want to bring them forward?"

"Well, you seem incapable of making a decision one way or the other. Yes, I still want to bring them forward. Hell, we’ve got to bring them forward. It’s the only reasonable thing to do."

"But they just tried to steal time travel from us! How can you trust them?"

"They also voluntarily exited our bodies. In fact, they’ve done that twice now. If they really were evil, they would have stayed in us tonight, and simply forced us to take them back to the future."

"Maybe. Maybe not. They know the Huang Effect won’t reverse states for" — I glanced at my watch — "another, ah, sixty-three hours. Maybe they couldn’t stay that long inside us even if they wanted to."

"You don’t know that that’s true," said Klicks.

"You don’t know that that’s not true." He harrumphed.

"I wish we didn’t have to make this decision," I said quietly.

"But we do," said Klicks.

My gaze shifted out the window. "Yes," I said at last. "I suppose we do."

Countdown: 7