He carried a staff, and when he’d reached the spot on the road in closest proximity to the hill on which the avatar had stood, he stopped, planted the staff, leaned on it, and appeared to survey his surroundings. After a minute he looked behind, and one of the onlookers came forward. There was a conversation and some pointing.
“Looks as if Digger may have stirred something up,” Jack said.
Right. Digger did it.
A cloud drifted into the field of view.
“What do you think?” asked Kellie.
“It looks ceremonial.”
Winnie wondered whether anybody recognized any of the Goompahs.
Digger smothered a laugh. “They all look alike. Can you tell them apart?”
“I haven’t seen them up close. Not the way you have. I thought you might recognize one of the guys you talked to yesterday.” She put a slight emphasis on the verb, and she was obviously talking about the one who had been traveling alone and whom Digger now saw was indeed there, carrying a javelin.
“I have no idea,” Digger said.
“He’s saying something,” said Kellie, meaning the one in the robe.
“I think he’s singing,” said Jack. “We should have left a pickup in the area.”
The marchers spread out on either side of the black robe, forming an arc centering on him.
“It’s a chant,” said Winnie. “Look at them.” They had all begun doing a kind of coordinated swaying.
“They’re looking for me,” said Digger.
Jack leaned forward, intrigued. Digger, whose training should have produced the same curiosity, felt only a chill. “It’s a religious ceremony,” Jack said.
“Maybe we need to go back down,” said Winnie. “Explain to them it’s okay.”
Kellie’s eyes shone. “I’ll be damned,” she said. “They think they saw a god.”
“I doubt it,” said Jack.
The one in the robe shook down long sleeves and pulled a hood over his head. The javelin was held out for him to take. He made signs over it, lifted it, and waved it in a threatening gesture at the top of the hill. The chant ended.
Everyone stood quietly for another minute or so. Then he climbed the hill while the others watched with—Digger thought—no small degree of anxiety, and came finally to the spot where the avatar had stood. The one who’d been on the road, who’d carried the weapon, called out to him and he moved a couple of steps to his right. They seemed to agree that was the correct location. And without further delay, he brandished the javelin with practiced ease and plunged it into the ground.
He made more signs, drew his hands together, and looked at the sky. They all bowed their heads and closed their eyes. Their lips moved in unison. One of them crept up the hill and recovered the javelin. And they withdrew.
Down the hill and back along the road until they reached the waiting wagons. Into the wagons and headed north.
“I think,” said Digger, “we’ve just seen a declaration of war.”
Jack was still looking ecstatic. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I believe we’ve just watched an exorcism.”
THEY SPENT MUCH of the next few days watching and listening to Goompah conversations. Winnie hung a sign on the bulkhead that said It’s Greek to me. Each of the five channels allotted to the pickups had been routed in, but one had gone inactive. They’d seen a Goompah hand close over it, and then for a while all they could see was the grass. And finally the unit shut down. Somebody had probably hit it with a stick.
But they still had four links.
They listened and marked down phonetic impressions and bounced phrases off each other while Bill recorded everything, collapsed the signals into compressed transmissions, and fired them off every six hours by way of Broadside to the al-Jahani.
The language seemed straightforward enough. Some of the sounds were odd, lots of grunts and gargles, a load of aspirates and diphthongs. And nobody rolled their l’s like these guys. There was an overall harshness to the diction, but Digger didn’t hear much that a human tongue couldn’t reproduce. And they’d even deciphered a couple of words.
Challa, collanda appeared to be the universal greeting. Two Goompahs met, morning or evening, male or female, it didn’t seem to matter: “Challa, collanda,” they would say.
Hello, friend. Kellie took to greeting her passengers with it, and soon they were all using it. Challa, Jack.
Digger discovered the sheer pleasure in reproducing some of the sounds he was hearing. He could roll his l’s and grunt with the best of them. He also began to discover something he hadn’t known about himself: He had a facility for language. Next time he ran into some Goompahs he’d be ready. He wondered if things might have gone a bit differently had he been able to raise his hand and, in his jolliest demeanor, send the proper greeting: “Challa, collanda.”
But there wouldn’t be a next time. Lightbenders were on the way, so when they went back down to set up more listening posts they’d be invisible.
Well, there was nothing to be done about it now. But he knew he’d be tempted to walk up to one of the Goompahs, no more than a voice in the wind, and say hello. Just whisper it and watch him jump.
He’d never worn a lightbender. They were prohibited to private ownership. A few had gotten out and become invaluable tools for criminals. But there was a National Lightbender Association claiming that people had a constitutional right to the devices. It struck Digger that once they became generally available everyone would have to wear infrared glasses to protect himself. Even imagining himself invisible bestowed a sense of both power and recklessness.
About a week after they’d gone down to the surface, Jack announced that a message had arrived from the Academy. “We’ve got something else to look for,” he said.
Hutch’s image appeared on-screen.
“Jack,” she said, “This is a hedgehog.” The screen divided and produced a picture of an object with triangular spikes sticking out all over it. An accompanying scale indicated it was six and a half kilometers in diameter.
“To date, we have three reports of these objects. We have no idea what they are or what their purpose is. We do know that one of them exploded while it was being inspected by the Quagmor. If you can take a look around without compromising your main objectives, please do so. We’d like very much to know if your cloud has one. It’ll be directly out front, running on the same course, at the same speed. The ranges between the objects and the clouds have varied out to sixty thousand klicks.
“So far, the things are identical. They have 240 sides. Lots of right angles. If you see one, keep a respectful distance. Don’t go near it. We don’t want an inspection; we just want to know whether it’s there.” She allowed herself a smile but Digger could see she was dead serious. “Thanks,” she said. “Be careful. We don’t want to lose anybody else.”
The hedgehog remained a few seconds after Hutch’s image blanked, and then it, too, was gone, replaced by the Academy logo.
All those spines. Like stalagmites. But with flat tips. “What is it?” asked Winnie. “Do they have any idea?”
“You heard as much as I did,” said Jack.
Kellie looked thoughtful. “I’ll tell you what it might be,” she said. “It looks designed to attract the clouds. Maybe somebody’s been using them to get rid of the damn things. A cloud shows up and you give it a whatzis to chase.”
They all looked at her. “It’s possible,” said Digger. “That might be it.”
Kellie’s eyes shone. It was a pleasure to be first to solve a puzzle.
“Well,” said Jack, “let’s go see if we’ve got one.”
THE CLOUD’S SHAPE had changed during the few weeks since they’d first seen it. It had become distorted, and was throwing jets forward and to one side, blown off by gee forces as it continued to decelerate and to turn. At the rate the thing was braking, Digger had trouble understanding how it managed to hold together at all. He was not a physicist, but he knew enough to conclude that the stability of the gas and dust, in the face of those kinds of stresses, demonstrated that this was no natural phenomenon. There were widespread claims by mystics, and even some physicists, who should know better, that the omegas were an evolutionary step, a means by which the galaxy protected itself from the rise of the supercivilization, the one entity that could raise havoc, that could eventually take control and force it away from its natural development.
It was a notion very much in play these days, fitting perfectly with the idea that the present universe was simply a spark in a vast hypersky, one of countless universes, afloat in a cosmos that was perhaps itself an infinitesimal part of an ever-greater construct. Grains of sand on a beach that was a grain on a much bigger beach.
Where did it all end?
Well, however that might be, the omega clouds were too sophisticated to have developed naturally.
“How do you know?” asked Kellie, sitting quietly looking out at the monster, while Digger went on about stars and universes.
He explained. How it held together. How it had long-range sensors far better than anything the Jenkins had. How it had spotted Athens from a range of 135 billion kilometers when they couldn’t find it from orbit.
She listened, nodding occasionally, apparently agreeing. But when he’d finished, she commented that there were people around who’d argue that Digger couldn’t have happened simply as a result of natural evolution. “I think,” she said, “you’re doing the argument from design.”
“I suppose. But this is different.”
“How?”
“It’s on a bigger scale.”
“Dig, that’s only a difference in degree. Size doesn’t count.”
He couldn’t find an adequate response. “You think these things are natural objects?”
“I don’t know.” The cloud was misshapen, plumes thrown forward and to one side. It was a dark squid soaring through the night. “I’m keeping my mind open.” Neither spoke for a minute. Then she said, “I’m not sure which scares me more.”
“Which what?”
“Which explanation. Either they’re natural, which leads to the conclusion that the universe, or God, however you want to put it, doesn’t approve of intelligence. Or they’re built and set loose. That means somebody who’s very bright has gone to a lot of trouble to kill every stranger he can find.”
AT THEIR CURRENT range, Lookout’s sun was only a bright star.
The Jenkins had begun a sweep when it had approached within 12 million klicks of the cloud. They moved steadily closer over the next three days but saw nothing.