“The clouds.”

“What’s that? How do you mean? The clouds blow up?”

“We don’t really know yet, Michael. But I think it’s something like that. I think you get a special kind of explosion.”

“How many kinds of explosions are there?”

She sat down and tried to get the conversation onto a level at which she could handle it. “The reason they’re important,” she said, “is that if these things turn out to be what they seem to be, they may give us a way to get rid of the clouds.”

“By blowing them up.”

“Yes. Maybe. We don’t know.” She felt good this morning. Had in fact felt pretty good for the last few days. “We need to find out.”

“So what precisely do you propose?

“We need to run a test.”

He nodded. “Do it.”

“Okay.”

“But not with the cloud.” The local one.

“We won’t go near it.”

“Good.” He took a deep breath. “I’d be grateful if it worked.”

“As would I, Michael.”

“I guess you’ve noticed the Goompahs have been getting popular.” His tone suggested that was a problem.

Of course she’d noticed. Everywhere she looked there were Goompah dolls, Goompah games, Goompah bedding. People loved them. Kids especially loved them. “Why is that bad news?” she asked innocently. But she knew the reason.

“There’s a growing body of opinion that the government hasn’t done enough to help them.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“They’d like to keep the media away. In case things go badly.”

“They being the president and the Council.”

He nodded. Who else? “They’re afraid there’ll be graphic pictures of Goompahs getting killed in large numbers.”

“Too bad they’re not insects.”

He didn’t pick up the sarcasm. “Anything but these terminally cute rollover critters.”

“The media say they’ll be there.”

He made a sound in his throat that resembled a gargle going awry. “I know. But there’s no way to stop them. If our little experiment works out, though, the problem will be solved.” He looked happy. As if the sun had come out in the office. “Make it happen, Hutch.”

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Michael, I think we’ve had a communication breakdown. Even if it works, we aren’t going to be able to use the technique to help the Goompahs.”

Shock and dismay. “Why not? I thought that was the whole point.”

“The whole point is to get control of the clouds. To forge a weapon.” She tried to sound reassuring. “I’m sorry I misled you. But the cloud at Lookout is too close.”

“How do you mean?”

“If we get the result we expect, we’re going to learn how to destroy the damned things. But we expect a very big bang. Trigger the cloud at Lookout, and you’d fry them all.”

“How can you know that before you’ve run the test?”

“Because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen other clouds explode. I know what kind of energy they put out.”

And suddenly he understood. “The tewks.”

“Yes.” She’d put it all in the reports, but it was becoming clear he didn’t read the reports.

“All right,” he said. He was still disappointed and he let her see it. “Let me know how it turns out.”

“Okay.” She started to get up, but he waved her back down. Not finished with you yet.

“Listen, Hutch. I’ve gone along with everything you’ve wanted to do. We sent out Collingdale and his people. We sent out the kite. And we’re sending meals, for God’s sake. We’ll be broke for three years after this. Now you owe me something.

“We’ve gotten some help from the Council on this. So we need to play ball with them. I’m going to tell Tony we’ll go all out to save the poor bastards. That’s what they want, by the way. Save them. Divert the goddam cloud. If you can’t blow it up, make your kite work. Make it happen.

“If you don’t, if the cloud hammers them, we’ll all be in the soup.”

Hutch kept her voice level. “Michael,” she said, “we’ve had thirty years to figure out how to do something about the omegas. The Council felt safe because the danger seemed so far away. It didn’t occur to them that political fallout might come from a different direction. I personally don’t care if they all get voted out. But we are trying to save the Goompahs. We were trying to do it before it became politically popular.”

She was at the door, on her way out, when he called her back. “You’re right, Hutch,” he said. “I know that. Everybody knows it. Which is why the Academy will look so good if we can pull these fat little guys out of the fire.”

“Right,” she said, and let it drop.

ARCHIVE

“Senator, we’ve all seen the pictures of the cloud at Moonlight. Is there anything at all we can do for the Goompahs?”

“Janet, we are moving heaven and earth to help. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet learned how to turn these things aside. The first shipload of supplies will be leaving day after tomorrow. We’re doing everything we can.”

— Senator Cass Barker,

Press Conference, April 4

On board the al-Jahani, in hyperflight.

Wednesday, April 23.

THERE WERE TOO many people on the mission. Collingdale had heard that the entire scientific community had wanted to go, despite the distance to Lookout. And Hutch had accommodated as many as she possibly could. That was a mistake. They were going to have to work as a team, and he had the unenviable task of trying to organize, mollify, control, and entertain a task force that included some of the biggest egos on the planet. There were historians and xenologists and mathematicians and specialists in other lines of inquiry of which he’d never heard. Every one of whom thought of him/herself as a leading light in his or her field. And they were going to be locked up together until late November.

Frank Bergen was a good example of the problem. Frank expected everyone to take notes whenever he spoke. Melinda Park looked stunned if anyone took issue with any of her opinions, even those outside her area of expertise. Walfred Glassner (“Wally” behind his back) thought everyone else in the world was a moron. Peggy Malachy never let anyone else finish a sentence. The others, save Judy Sternberg’s linguists, were no better. Before it was over he was convinced there’d be a murder.

They comprised the Upper Strata, the scientific heavyweights.

Bergen was, in his view, the only one of them who really mattered. After everybody else had debarked onto the Jenkins, he would make the flight with Kellie Collier to try to distract the omega. Bergen, who was short, dumpy, arrogant, was sure the plan would succeed if only because anything he touched always succeeded. They had at their disposal visual projections, and if those didn’t do the job, they had the kite. One way or the other, he assured anybody who would listen, they’d get rid of the thing. He sounded as if he thought the cloud wouldn’t dare defy him.

In fact, it seemed to Collingdale that the only other ones crucial to the mission were the linguists. They were all kids, all graduate students or postdocs, save for their boss, Judy Sternberg.

They were already at work with the data forwarded by the Jenkins, trying to decipher and familiarize themselves with basic Goompah. He’d have preferred to double their number and get rid of the giants-in-their-field. But he understood about politics. And Hutch had maintained that it was impossible to find, in a few days’ time, an adequate supply of people, no more than five and a half feet tall, with the kind of specialized skill they needed, who were willing to leave home for two years. She had done the best she could and he’d have to make do.

They were indeed of minimal stature. Not one of the twelve, male or female, rose above his collarbone.

It had been an ugly scene, those last few days before departure. He’d never seen Hutch lose her temper before, but it was obvious she was under pressure. You have to understand the reality, he’d told her, and she’d fired back that politics was the reality.

Nonetheless, they were doing as well as could be expected. The Upper Strata had settled in and seemed to have achieved an amicable standoff with each other. And the linguists were hard at work on the daily flow of recordings. They were both enthusiastic and talented, and he expected that, by the time they arrived on-station, he’d have people able to speak with the natives.

He’d been trying to master the language himself but had already fallen far behind the young guns. His lack of proficiency surprised him. He spoke German and Russian fluently and, despite his fifty-six years, had thought he’d be able to pace the help. Within the first two weeks he’d seen it wasn’t going to happen. But maybe it was just as well. Staying ahead of the old man provided an incentive for them.

The incoming data consisted of audiovisual recordings. The pictures weren’t very good. Sometimes the conversations took place entirely out of view of the imager. On other occasions, the Goompahs walked out of visual range while they talked. Even when the subjects stayed still, the angles were usually less than ideal. At this early stage, in order to have a reasonable chance to understand, the linguists needed to be able to see what was happening. But they were getting enough to match actions with talk and, still more important, with gestures.

Most of the Upper Strata were looking forward to putting on lightbenders and walking unseen among the population. They would try to do what they’d done on Nok, penetrate the libraries, eavesdrop on conversations, observe political and religious activities. But Nok was a long time ago. They’d all been young then. And Collingdale had already noticed a reluctance among them to learn the language. He knew what would happen: They’d put it off, finding one pretext or another to avoid the effort. And when they got to Lookout they’d be asking to borrow one of the linguists, somebody to go down and interpret.

It was clear that whatever was to be accomplished on this mission would be done by Judy’s team.

When he’d heard the conditions under which he would be making the flight, he’d almost changed his mind about going. But he had asked Hutch for the assignment, and he didn’t feel he could back away. Moreover, he hoped that Bergen was right, that the cloud would be turned aside, and that they would beat the thing. He desperately wanted to be there if it happened.

THEY WERE MAKING some progress in figuring out the syntax, and they had already begun to compile a vocabulary. They had words for hello and good-bye, near and far, ground and sky, come and go. They could sometimes differentiate among the tenses. They knew how to ask for a bolt of cloth, or to request directions for Mandigol. (Nobody had any clue where that was.)