“But these ‘ally aliens’ as Cliff calls them, the Sil—they had scavenged around in the blimp thing. Got some Folk comm gear they’d never seen before. Those Sil are smart. They got it running, broke the encryption barriers on the Folk message center, pried out all sorts of stuff they can use—and something bigger than that. Lots bigger, that we can use. The Folk had a message, just came in recently, the tags said—” Redwing leaned across the desk, laced his hands together on it, spoke directly at her. “—from Glory.”

Beth had been in sympathetic mode, trying not to think about Cliff’s wounds, Howard being fried, and all the rest—but this made her snap out of it. “Earthside never picked up a peep from Glory. No leakage, no ordinary surface EM traffic—”

“I know. This is plainly different, directed at Earth.”

“How do you know?”

“Here.” He thumped his desk, and the wall turned from sliding perspectives of a tan grassland swept by waves the size of continents—and became … a cartoon.

Line drawings, vibrant color. Purple background. Traceries of yellow on the edges, twisting like snakes. A strange red-skinned asymmetric being with what looked like three arms stood alone, facing the viewer. It began a rhythmic move, arms rotating in their sockets in big, broad sweeps—except the third, which somehow lashed up and down, then made a wide circular arc with a sharp snap at the end. Athletics? Beth thought. Or some diplomatic pose? Ritual? Kabuki theater among the stars?

The thing wore tight blue green sheath-clothes that showed muscles everywhere, bulging and pulsing. The covering seemed sprayed on, showing a big cluster of tubular—genitalia? If so, male—not between the legs but above them, where a human’s belly button would be. They, too, bulged as she watched.

The skintight covering ran all over the body, including the wide gripping feet. But the arms and its head were exposed; the head was triangular and oddly ribbed. Two large black eyes. No discernible nose, but three big holes in the middle of the face, echoing the face’s triangle, with big hairy black coronas around each hole like a weird round mustache. A large mouth with two rows of evenly spaced gray teeth.

For a moment the viewpoint closed in on the head, which looked like an Egyptian pyramid upside down—ferocious, with mouth twisting, thin lips rippling with intricate fine muscles around the gray teeth, which kept clashing together. The front three teeth in both rows were pointed—evil-looking things—and the mouth had puffed-out lips to accommodate them.

“So far, just an introductory picture, looks like,” Redwing said. “No sound. But then we get action.”

Beth was still blinking in pure astonishment. Her father had centuries ago called this a whatthehell moment.… She had met uncountable aliens, fled from some, killed some, eaten many—but this …

The viewing angle expanded, and walking in from the right was a … human. Beth gasped.

The man wore a blue skintight suit with a red cape, big head, black hair—clearly a man, yes. Muscled, striding forward proudly—and the alien third arm struck out, caught the human in the face. A nasty slap. The man staggered back. The alien made a half turn and thrashed the man, slamming him away and then grabbing him by his right shoulder, twisting him into full view. There was a large red S on the man’s deep blue chest.

“Superman!” Beth did not know whether to laugh or just gape. She did both.

The alien leaped, twisting in air, kicking Superman in the gut. He went down hard on the rocky ground. The graphics were good—Beth could see Superman’s shock, surprise, pain. Dust puffed up where he fell. Vigorously the alien leaped high, paused while it made more mouth-gestures directly toward the viewer—and came down hard on top of Superman with obvious relish, slamming down with both big feet. Superman’s mouth opened in shock and surprise, eyes bulging, showing white. The alien fanned its two arms, whipped the third one that seemed slim and sharp—and brought it down on Superman’s head. The lash brought blood streaming from Superman’s left ear and—incredibly, splashed big red gobbets on an imaginary window between the scene and the viewer. The blood ran down in rivulets while the alien raised all three arms into the air, head back.

The effect made Beth rock back, as if the blood had flown in her face. She gasped.

Prancing, whip arm twirling, the alien proceeded to dance on Superman. It sent more kicks to the head and gut as the opportunity arose. The alien looked full at the viewer as it pranced, eyes even bigger. Its image swelled to fill the screen, and the eyes glowered at the viewer.

Stop.

A long silence.

“Pretty clear message, I’d say,” Redwing clasped hands across his belt and leaned back in his flex chair.

Beth could not take her eyes from the alien head, its threatening expression frozen. “They eavesdropped on something, TV I guess, or…”

“And chose to send a message a child could understand: Stay away.”

SIXTEEN

Cliff had handed him a problem from hell. How to stop the Folk from killing a lot more of an alien species, to intervene with big things Redwing had never seen, minds unknown … or else do nothing. “Nothing” looked like the right answer, but he didn’t have to like it.

He had the shipmind call up readings on this from the ancients available on the ship’s database of all human cultures. These long-dead voices had never confronted any remotely similar problem, but came as close as humans could: Saint Augustine, Spinoza, Churchill, Lao Tzu, Kant, Aristotle, Niebuhr, Gandhi, King, Singh. Interesting, thick reading—but it made him think about his life in perspective. Maybe he could use that if he survived this whole huge thing. But for now, alas … No help there.

The best solution was to get Cliff’s team out of that place. Then the Folk would stop trying to capture or kill them. Bargaining could begin.

The brief comm burst Cliff had managed to get through to SunSeeker, fighting through the electromagnetic haze-screen the Folk had put up, gave the cartoon files and some optical spectral data that fit Glory exactly. No question where it came from.

It couldn’t be a coincidence. The Glorians were sending the Bowl a threat. But it used imagery of Superman, of all things—an antique “superhero” (he had to look the term up) from the expansionist phase of the Anglo-Saxon era. Technically, of course, that era was not over. It had merged with the larger economic unification of Earthside. English was the obvious unifying language—larger, richer, with simple introductory grammar. Irregular verbs galore, of course, but by the time the interplanetary phase of economic expansion was well under way, there was no competition. Mandarin, Cantonese—they came from a productive society, as did Hindi—but nobody could write them well, and they didn’t work simply with digital culture anyway. Plus the Chinese culture didn’t have the flexibility of the Anglo structure. The other Asian cultures did a bit better, but English was as set into the world culture as the qwerty keyboard. History ruled.

So a comic book figure like Superman, his Pedia base said, fit with the modern social structure, too. Other archetypes like Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein had clear roles, but fit uncomfortably with the world culture. The other superheroes of the twencen were modeled on men like animals—bats, spiders, apes. Superman, tellingly, was an alien. Yet he fit into human society seamlessly.

Superman’s key assumption was that his disguise was just to put on glasses and business clothes and be an everyman. Then nobody, even Lois Lane—a character that reminded Redwing of his ex-wife—could spot him. Every man a Superman. What could be more obvious? Do your job, toe the line, the daily grind—but all the time you are free to imagine yourself leaping over buildings, flying through the air, flattening the baddies. Maybe even getting a date with Lois.