"So, what happened?" Don asked.

Sarah came up to the living room, and they shared a kiss. "We started with an inventory of the unauthorized messages that we know have already been sent to Sigma Draconis."

"Like what?"

"There’s a group that says it managed to render the opening of Genesis in the language the Dracons provided."

"Christ," said Don.

"No," she said. "He doesn’t show up until the sequel. Anyway, another group has sent up a library of digitized Islamic art. Somebody else says he’s sent a list of the serial numbers of all of the U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. Another person sent a version of the Mensa admissions test. He said instead of us worrying about passing the aliens’ test, they should be worrying about passing one of ours; maybe they’re not good enough to join our club."

"Huh," said Don.

"And there’s been lots of music sent." Sarah moved over to the couch and lay down. He motioned for her to lift her legs so he could sit down at the far end. She did so, then she lowered her feet into his lap, and he began rubbing them for her.

"Mmmmm," she said. "That’s nice. Anyway, Fraser Gunn was there — remember him? He argued that sending music was a mistake."

"Why?" asked Don. "Afraid of being sued by the copyright holders?"

"No, no. But, as he said, the only thing we’ve got to trade with aliens is our culture; that’s the only thing you might want from another civilization. And if we give away the best stuff — Bach, Beethoven, the Beatles — we’ll have nothing good to offer when the aliens say, hey, what have you got to swap for our best work?"

Don knew all about scraping the bottom of the cultural barrel. He was a DVD addict — more so as a collector than as an actual watcher. He’d been thrilled when all the great television of his childhood and teenage years had been released on DVD, and he’d snapped up the boxed sets: Thunderbirds, All in the Family, M*A*S*H, Roots, Kolchak, The Night Stalker, and, of course, the original Star Trek. But the last time he’d been in Future Shop, all he’d seen in the new-releases section was forgotten crap like Sugar Time!, a seventies sitcom starring Barbi Benton, and The Ropers, a spinoff from Three’s Company whose only virtue was that it proved the original wasn’t the worst TV show ever made. The studios had gone through their good stuff at a breakneck pace, and were now desperately trying to find anything at all worth releasing.

"Well," he said, "maybe Fraser’s right. I mean, the only thing SETI is good for is sending information of one sort or another, no?"

"Oh, I’m sure he is right," said Sarah. "But there’s nothing we can do about it.

People are going to send whatever they want to. It’s turned Carl Sagan’s old saying on its ear. He used to ask, ‘Who speaks for the Earth?’ The question really is, ‘Who doesn’t speak for the Earth?"

"That’s our number-one product these days, isn’t it?" said Don. "Spam."

He saw her nod ruefully. SETI, as he’d often heard Sarah say, was a mid-twentieth-century idea, given birth to by Morrison and Cocconi’s famous paper, and, as such, it carried a lot of quaint baggage. The notion that governments, hopefully cooperating internationally, would control the sending and receiving of signals was a fossil of an earlier age, before cheap, mass-produced satellite dishes became common, allowing everyone everywhere to watch ESPN and the Playboy channel.

No, these days anybody who wanted to cobble together the equipment from off-the-shelf parts could build their own radio-telescope array. Using home-computer astronomy software to drive them, consumer satellite dishes could easily track Sigma Draconis across the sky. Such dishes separated by wide distances could be linked via the Internet, and with the aid of error-correcting and noise-canceling software, groups of them effectively formed much bigger dishes.

The phrase "SETI@home" had taken on an all-new meaning.

Of course, the American FCC, and comparable bodies in other jurisdictions, had the authority to limit private radio broadcasting. At the urging of the SETI community, the FCC was trying to prosecute many of the individuals and groups that were beaming unofficial replies to Sigma Draconis. But those cases were almost certainly all going to be lost because of First Amendment challenges. No matter how powerful they were, tight-beam transmissions aimed at one tiny point in the sky had no impact on the normal use of the airwaves, and attempts to ban such narrowcasts were therefore an unwarranted infringement of free speech.

Don knew that some religious organizations, including a few new cults that had sprung up, had already built their own vast dishes, dedicated to beaming signals to Sigma Draconis. Some did it twenty-four hours a day; Sigma Drac never set in the sky for anyone whose latitude was greater than twenty degrees north.

And for those who just wanted to send one or two messages — crackpot theories, execrable poetry, political tracts — there were private-sector firms that had built dishes and offered various transmission plans. One of the best-known was Dracon Express, whose slogan was "When it absolutely, positively has to be there 18.8 years from now."

Nine-year-old Emily appeared, having come up from the basement. "Hi, sweetheart,"

Don said. "Just a few minutes to dinner. Set the table, will you?"

Emily looked petulant. "Do I have to?"

"Yes, dear, you do," he said.

She let out a theatrical sigh. "I have to do everything!"

"Yes, you do," Don said. "After dinner, you have to go out and plow the fields for a few hours. And when you’re done with that, you’ll need to sweep all the streets from here to Finch Avenue."

"Oh, Daddy!" But she was grinning now as she headed off into the kitchen. He turned back to his wife, who was visibly trying not to wince every time Emily banged the plates together.

"So," he said, "did your group figure out precisely why the aliens are interested in our morality?"

She shook her head. "Some paranoid types think we’re being tested, and, if found wanting, will be subject to retribution. Someone from France went so far as to suggest we were undergoing an evaluation by the Sigma Draconian equivalent of PETA, wanting to determine, before they came to eat us, whether we had the higher moral and cognitive standing of true intelligences, or were just dumb cattle."

"I thought it was an article of faith in SETI circles that aliens only communicated; they never actually go places."

"Apparently they didn’t get that memo in Paris," said Sarah. "Anyway, someone else suggested that we’re just one data point in some wider survey, the kind that would be summarized in multicolor pie charts in the Dracon counterpart of USA Today."

A timer sounded in the kitchen. Don patted her legs, indicating she should let him up. She did so, and he headed in. He rinsed his hands, then opened the stove, feeling a rush of hot air pouring out. "And what about orchestrating the replies?" he called out. "What did you guys decide about that?"

Sarah called back, "Hang on, I’m going to wash up."

He got the oven mitts and removed the pot, placing it on the stove top.

"Where are the napkins?" Emily asked.

"In that cupboard," he said, indicating it with a movement of his head. "Just like yesterday. And the day before."

"Stacie said she saw Mommy on TV," Emily said.

"That’s pretty cool, isn’t it?" he said, opening the pot and stirring the vegetables surrounding the meat.

"Yeah," said Emily.

Sarah appeared in the doorway. "Something smells good."

"Thanks," said Don, then, shouting, "Carl! Dinner!"

It took a few minutes to get everyone seated and served, and then Don said, "So, what are you going to send the aliens?"