A rescue ship arrived just ten days after the Message was sent.
It entered orbit four thousand kilometers up — a giant cylinder that rolled swiftly around its long axis. Mirrorlike, it reflected the glitter of starlight, and vastly dwarfed the International Space Station, orbiting far below.
“In that orbit,” one scientist commented, “they’re just cruising through the Van Allen radiation belts. Either they and their equipment are far less prone to radiation damage … or else they have really great shielding. Either way, they’re showing off.”
“Yes, well, either way,” added another NASA official, stating the obvious, “it makes sure we won’t be coming up there to knock on their door. They’ll be coming to us.”
Communications from the star-galleon were brusque at first, consisting of a simple statement in the Garubis tongue, demanding to speak with Na-bistaka. When that connection was made, linking directly to the alien’s habitat near Twenty-Nine Palms, a whirl of chuttering conversation ensued, so rapid that it taxed the new translation programs. However, one exchange came through perfectly clear.
How did the natives treat you?
The world waited tensely, then sighed in relief at Na-bistaka’s reply.
After some initial discomfort … better than expected.
What followed seemed harder to decipher. One expert thought there was a tone of disappointment in the starship’s reply. Something that might be translated as — too bad. Other linguists dismissed this guess as pure imagination, and illogical to boot. After all, how could such a reaction even make sense?
Anyway, public attention soon shifted to a brief spat between the U.S. State Department and the U.N. Contact Commission, bickering over where to invite the Garubis to land. They finally agreed that, even though the Americans had proved worthy of continuing their leading role, Washington D.C. was too much of a national symbol. And the California desert was too isolated.
When the visitors affirmed that they could touch down a lander with high accuracy and only slight disruption, a bold but popular decision was reached. For the reception to take place near United Nation headquarters, right inside the world’s densely-packed “downtown.” During some terse back-and-forth, the ship-master curtly insisted on one perfect site.
In forty-eight hours the Garubis would bring their rescue vehicle to Memorial Park, on lower Manhattan Island, in the City of New York.
* * *
It happened on a Saturday, so they made a party of the event in the Bamford living room. Dad worked at the kitchen table, poring over recent photos of the orbiting spacecraft, while Mark and his friends scarfed popcorn and soda in front of a media array featuring several borrowed screen-sets made of pixelated cloth and assorted holo-links.
Twenty-Nine Palms seemed a ghost town. Pizza delivery places were the only businesses at work, and they had a three-hour backlog. Even the swarm of TV vans that had staked out the nearby air base for months finally dispersed that morning, when Na-bistaka’s plane departed under escort by a squadron of Marine Corps fighter jets. For a while, reporters prowled the desert community like hungry wolves, stopping occasionally by the Bamford house in hope of a bite. Mark never emerged. Alex and Barry had avoided the reporters by the simple expedient of parking their bikes in the next street and then vaulting over the Fortinis’ back fence. (Well, Alex vaulted. Barry grunted and slithered.)
Anyway, it seemed logical to meet here. Alex’s parents were out of town, having gone ahead to help prepare the way for Na-bistaka in New York. And the Tang family, for some reason that Mark never fathomed, did not own a pixelvee, or even an old fashioned TV.
So they settled in to watch as humanity’s important moment unfolded.
But not right away. At first, all the webs and cables and satellite dishes conveyed was wave after wave of talk. Conjecture and groundless speculation. What kind of law reigned out there on the vast star-lanes? Was there a Galactic Federation of some sort? Na-bistaka had affirmed that the Garubis weren’t alone out there. He even mentioned a few species names and sketched a few strange faces … then stopped providing any further information, saying that such things weren’t in his area of expertise.
We never did find out what his job really is, Mark pondered. Or why he came all this way to Earth. The xeno-visitor was very good at keeping things close to the chest.
“Well, after all,” one pundit ventured. “If you were accidentally thrown into a first contact situation, wouldn’t you find it wise to keep quiet, till specialists could be called in? To do otherwise might be irresponsible!” The expert blabbed on that way for quite some time, apparently unaware of any irony.
While professional talkers kept the waiting world distracted, New York prepared, once again, to take center stage as World Party Headquarters. Bridges and tunnels groaned as crowds of the timid left town …
… and replacement throngs poured in, eager to help celebrate the dawn of a new era. Clearly, it was a matter of temperament, and humanity had all kinds. “Diversity is strength,” commented one of the onscreen pundits. But Mark recalled something else that his biology teacher had said, a year ago.
Diversity is the grist of evolution.
* * *
Berthed at the waterfront next to Memorial Park, two giant cruise liners were being frantically readied to host visiting star-emissaries, in case they wanted more room than a mere landing craft could provide. Ocean liners seemed ideal because they were already relatively self-contained, almost like a spaceship, down to storing waste products aboard sealed tanks. Even the atmosphere could be altered to some extent, through sealed air conditioning systems. Anything the visitors found distasteful could be removed and whatever they liked could be swiftly brought aboard. Helicopters and barges were already rushing in every kind of food that Na-bistaka had found pleasant during his stay.
Meanwhile, on Manhattan’s East Side a short distance uptown, the U. N. dropped all other business as presidents, royalty and other dignitaries arrived to take part in the most important meeting ever.
Nor were ‘just people’ to be left out. Along vacated First Avenue, a series of giant canopies served the world’s raucous special interest groups — from environmental and religious associations to industrial and labor organizations. From scientific academies to bickering ethnicities. Huge banners spread open, offering greetings in many tongues, or else appealing for miraculous intervention. Anyone with a special problem seemed to be there, and the Big Apple stretched to accommodate them all.
Instead of panic – people who felt that way had already left town – the mood seemed to say, this belongs to everyone. Welcoming honored guests. Keeping them safe. Handling a million sober details and preparing for ten times as many contingencies. Listening to all concerns … while giving free rein to celebration. Sure, it was impossible. But this city could manage it.
Besides, who knew yet which of humanity’s nagging troubles might be solved by Contact? Some enthusiasts were bound to be disappointed while others might have their wildest dreams come true. Immortality? Warp drive? Teleportation? Realistic ‘holodecks’ that offered experience better than real life?
Wiser heads cautioned: some problems might have no easy answer. Others could fall into the disappointing category of ‘later, when you’re ready.’
“They may be almost as confused by us as we are by them,” mused one sage. “We can’t assume, for example, that they’ll give us a magic formula for world peace. We’ve been slowly learning how to do that all by ourselves, for several generations, with actual per capita rates of violence falling steeply ever since the Second World War. What we lacked, in finishing the job, has been the will.”
Others disagreed.
“Imagine asking the Garubis to serve as neutral arbitrators,” a competing commentator gushed. “They’d have nothing to gain by one side winning unfairly over another. We could settle so many ancient disputes — Palestine, Kashmir, Korea, Carolina, the Congo!”
The ensuing argument grew so heated that Mark changed channels.
Scientists appeared to care more about what could be learned about nature’s laws.
“Of course, I have mixed feelings,” said one Nobel Prize winner. “I spent my whole life becoming a top expert in my field. Here on Earth and — so far as we once knew — in the whole universe.”
He laughed. “Now I must go back to school. Elementary school, perhaps!”
Mark noted that the graying researcher didn’t look all that chagrined by the prospect of losing his ‘expert’ status, or even returning to basics. In fact, it seemed to delight him. Some people are just wiser and more flexible than I’ll ever be, he thought with a sigh.
On one thing every commentator seemed to agree.
“We’d know by now, if the Garubis were outright hostile,” one of them summed-up. “I doubt we’d have been able to fight off a humungous ship like that. So, at worst, the universe is about to open up to humanity. Maybe a lot.”
One historian then arched her eyebrow, adding — “We may soon have new tools, helping us become a whole lot richer, while at the same time making us feel much poorer, in comparison to others out there. Keeping some perspective may be crucial. Let’s learn from the mistakes made by both sides during past episodes of first contact — between Earthling cultures a few centuries ago. We must be bold and dynamic, while at the same time keeping our feet firmly planted in reality. On Mother Earth.”
* * *
Around two in the afternoon, even as Na-bistaka’s plane arrived at Newark Airport, amateur astronomers reported visually sighting the Lander. A disk had peeled off one end of the great, orbiting cylinder and was now dropping through Earth’s atmosphere like a frisbee, spinning as it threw off gouts of friction heat.
“Dang, it’s big!” Barry said as reports poured in from along the vessel’s glide path. “Maybe five city blocks.”
Mark glanced at the cleared area in Memorial Park, wedged between the two great waterfall fountains where mighty towers used to stand. National Guard troops surrounded the specified landing site, facing outward to keep back the crowds.
Some trees may not survive, he guessed, though still there should be enough room. On TV, several pundits fretted about the lander avoiding all the tall buildings nearby, a sensitive issue in that particular spot.
After making sure his friends had all they needed, Mark went to check on Dad, who still sat at the kitchen table, poring over photographs and charts. Officially, nothing was supposed to be top secret about this interstellar contact. Still, it surprised Mark that his father had brought this material home for the weekend.
On one side were pictures taken by orbital satellites of the gleaming Garubis star galleon. To the right were images of a much smaller craft — the lifeboat that brought Na-bistaka down to the Southern California desert for his initial encounter with “human larval forms” in their strange, high school tribes.
Major Bamford tapped a photo taken after the escape capsule had been unburied by an Air Force recovery team. “This still puzzles me,” he told Mark.
“What does?”
Dad shook his head.
“What doesn’t? We never learned what ‘malfunction’ forced Na-bistaka to make an emergency landing … or indeed, what happened to his ship. Was it completely destroyed? Is it stranded on the far side of the moon?”
“Maybe we’ll find out when his people go salvage it,” Mark suggested. Then he added with a grin. “I bet you hope it’s abandoned. Left behind as scrap. Then you might get sent to look it over?”
They had discussed this, of course. Dad was no astronaut, but soon there might be so much to do in space — so many urgent jobs — that even a regular old jet jockey (with high-tech intelligence background) could get the nod! Mark hoped so, for his father’s sake.
“That could be. Only —”
“Only what, Dad?”
The major chewed his lip briefly.
“Only I keep wondering about these streaks right here … along the side of the lifeboat. That hull is incredibly tough, yet some terrific heat seems to have scorched it.”
“Heat … from entering the atmosphere?”
“I don’t think so. I have a hunch that it came from some kind of weapons fire.”
Mark blinked a few times.
“But … that would mean —”
“Hey you two Bamfords!” Alex called from the living room. “Get in here and watch this! They’re about to land!”
Dad stood up and gave Mark’s shoulder a squeeze as he walked past, ready to leave the photos and just play spectator for a while, as history was made onscreen. But Mark hesitated, lingering to stare down at one picture showing tracks of burnt and melted ceramic — streaks of damage along a gleaming shell.
* * *
Columbus is rowing ashore and natives are partying on the beach, he thought, watching festive throngs gather in New York.
Not everybody was unworried. Would the big descent craft arrest its plummet atop a roaring column of rocket flames, belying their assurance of a gentle landing? Standards could differ, after all. Setting a whole city ablaze might be their idea of ‘minor damage’.
Or would they intimidate aboriginal Earthlings by hovering overhead, dauntingly silent, as portrayed in countless sci-fi films?
Antigravity is impossible, Na-bistaka had maintained, dismissing the very notion as another useless ‘larval fantasy.’
Well, okay then. Mark pondered. Let’s see what you have instead.
“We’ve got visual sighting,” said one announcer. Cameras began showing a glowing disk whose color changed as it cooled, from bright blue, hard to make out against the sky, down to a fiercely harsh green, then iridescent yellow-red. As descent brought it closer, commentators pointed out that the configuration only remotely resembled legendary ‘flying saucers’ that people claimed to have seen over generations. There were no cupolas or bulges or flashing lights, for instance. There was no tapered edge. Nor did it dart about. Progress was swift but also ponderously natural.
Above New Jersey, the space vessel dropped below the speed of sound, flying no more than a thousand feet or so overhead. Local citizens under the path reported sudden blasts of hot air, followed by manic cyclones or dust-devils. Leaves and tree-branches whirled in its wake.
“So, it stays up by thrusting air downward,” Major Bamford deduced with a nod. “Just as we thought. No magical suspensor beams or gravity pulsors. They use Newton’s Laws, as we do — though the energy source for such a system …”
Mark saw a gleam of ambition in his father’s eye. He wanted a close look at whatever powered that ship.
The Garubis vessel slowed down to a relative crawl over the Hudson, surrounded by federal helicopters that kept swarms of news-choppers and private drones at bay. Below, the river’s surface bucked and spumed, creating a low, artificial fog.
When that thing touches down, it’ll do more than just smudge the Heroes Memorial, Mark thought. On the other hand, slabs of marble can be replaced.
Then, still several hundred meters short of Manhattan, the ship halted — hovering on a column of hot, pressurized air. A large panel slid aside, revealing an opening along one flank.
Suddenly, a stream of objects spewed out, hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, all streaking toward New York!
“My God,” said Barry. “Are those missiles? Could they be attacking?”
“Don’t be silly,” responded Alex, though her voice quavered. “There must be another explanation.”
Mark winced as the horde of cylindrical-shaped objects swooped down toward the cameras and crowds near the park, raising shrieks of alarm. For several seconds he didn’t breathe …
… until abrupt order emerged out of the decelerating tubes — each of them now visibly hollow inside. Several dozen of the cylinders plummeted to the park’s hard loam between sets of trees, sinking deep. Others followed, clamping onto the tops of those that came before, as they were topped in turn, stacking upon each other, one at a time.
Rapidly, three spires began to form — equidistant from each other and surrounding one of the Memorial’s famous, square, inverted fountains. Before their eyes, the trio of columns stacked higher and higher, rising with uncanny speed.
“It’s a self-assembling platform!” Barry announced, crouching to get a better look. “With one of the big waterfall pools right in the middle!”
It took less than a minute for the cloud of darting cylinders to visibly shrink, as scores and then hundreds of automatic drones mated together, piling higher, aggregating themselves neatly into three steeples that leaned slightly inward, toward each other. The crowd below changed its tone just as rapidly, shifting from fear to awe, and then delight, watching three delicate minarets climb higher and higher, soon topping the nearest of Manhattan’s skyscrapers.
Now the great disk of the landing craft started moving in, leaving behind the fog it had kicked up from the Hudson’s waters. The spindly platform was ready, a towering tripod several hundred meters high, casting long afternoon shadows all the way past Wall Street to the East River. By the time the Lander fully settled in place, shutting down its roaring engines, Mark realized — the Garubis had not lied. They said they would come down in a densely populated Earth-city without causing any damage.
Except to our egos, he thought.
Who needs anti-gravity when you can do stuff like that?
* * *
The visitors made it clear — things were to be done in a specific order.
First, repatriate Na-bistaka. Then talk.
That seemed a little churlish, by human standards. It might have been more reassuring to share greetings and pleasantries along the way. Have a little ceremony. Exchange some gifts. Offer them keys to the city.
(“No!” one expert objected. “They might take the ‘key’ symbolism literally!”)
The Jersey subway tunnel had been closed all day, in order to bring the xeno guest-castaway from the airport by a safe route — one terminating in a secure zone just beneath the titanic landing tower. Much of the world’s population watched as Na-bistaka, in his enveloping scarlet gown, rode a train underneath the Hudson with a dozen escorting dignitaries from the highest levels of human society. Then escalators carried the group upward through the vacant commuter station, all the way to the surface plaza — whereupon his appearance triggered noisy cheers from the surrounding throng, and thousands more peering from buildings on all sides.
I can see why they chose this site, Mark pondered. Quick access from the river, so their jet blast didn’t hit any major buildings. Perfect security access by underground rail. And this perch, above one of the big memorial pools, will let water absorb more heat when they take off. Sure, some trees got squished and there’ll be repairs, but nothing huge.
Still, looking at the two square, inverse fountains, he pictured the great towers that once stood there… and couldn’t help wishing the star-guests had chosen someplace else. There on the expansive tiled piazza, the Heroes Memorial – and even the nearby Freedom Tower skyscraper — seemed dwarfed underneath the towering Garubis tripod. Spindly legs flexed as individual tubes adjusted to the tug and push of wind. (Technical experts calculated, breathlessly, that each of the hollow pillars might weigh less than a city bus!)
The overall effect was to make the quivering tripod look alive, as if ready to advance on legs over a thousand feet high.
“The Martians in H.G. Wells used tall tripods, to stomp about and crush humanity’s mightiest works —” commented Barry, and he seemed about to add more, but Alex hushed him.
Na-bistaka and Earth’s accompanying emissaries now approached one of these towering limbs. The crowd murmured as an opening appeared, a door in the bottommost cylinder at the plaza level, revealing a dimly-lit elevator car.
Nobody emerged. No one could be glimpsed inside.
Quickening his stride with apparent eagerness, Na-bistaka moved ahead of his human escorts, who followed nervously. Without pausing, the scarlet-clad alien then entered the waiting lift without a word.
He did not even turn around as the doors closed behind him, leaving the Mayor of New York, the Vice-President of the United States, the Secretary General of the United Nations, and Imam Suleiman — representative of the Ecumenical Council of Faiths — all just standing there.
For several stunned minutes, none of them moved. Nobody seemed willing to be first. But as twilight began to fall, the disappointed luminaries turned, one by one, and began drifting away — robbed of their former dignity.
“Well,” summed up Alexandra Behr, tossing up a piece of popcorn to catch in her mouth. “That was rude.”
As the initial shock wore off, some TV commentators tried to make excuses for the Garubis, repeating the aphorism — Do not judge others by your own values. Their ways may be different. We must allow for aliens having unique and possibly strange notions of courtesy.
That refrain continued for a while, on every broadcast and cable channel … till one person finally dared to speak up with a dissenting point of view. It was the woman college professor Mark had seen earlier, who had urged that humanity stay both bold and well-grounded.
“Hogwash!” she muttered now.
“Clearly and logically, it’s up to any visitor to learn and adjust to native customs, and we’re the natives, here! They’re supposed to be the smart, sophisticated ones, right? Experienced at contact? Yet we took care of all the language translation difficulties. We took pains to learn the Xeno’s needs. We transmitted the Message, rolled out the red carpet and offered every hospitality …”
She had to stop, half-choked with anger, taking a moment before resuming.
“They’re guests in our home, and one should accommodate guests — even bend over backwards. But we’ve done all that, and more!
“Let’s not bend over so far now that we can’t see the obvious, right in front of our faces.
“Friends and fellow Earthlings … I’m afraid our guests have just peed on our carpet.”
* * *
No one was especially surprised, then, to hear the engines of the landing craft start to warm up. National Guardsmen pushed and the crowd backed away as hot wind blasted down from the tripod, kicking up a fog from the fountain directly below and sending billows of dust whipping down the handmade canyons of Manhattan.
“We should have insisted on a trade,” Barry Tang said. “Demanded rent. A rescue fee! Kept ahold of the little jerk till they paid some of that old quid pro quo.”
“I guess so,” Mark sighed. It was obvious now, in retrospect.
And yet, generosity had felt so right. To offer hospitality and kindness without any overt sign of greed. For a month or so, the whole world had seemed astonished and rather pleased with its own new, altruistic attitude. Defying all the cynics who routinely despised human nature, most people took the high road out of a sense of …
Well, maybe it was pride.
We may be poor natives. But we have honor. Honor that we either ignored or horribly abused among ourselves, for all of recorded time. Still, it existed. All cultures shared the core notions.
Underneath everything, when we decide to pay attention, that honor may be stronger than we ever suspected.
Only now, was that turning out to be a mistake, after all?
The disk lifted from its perch atop the towering tripod, and at once the three-legged platform started dissolving, from the top down, into countless small, hollow drones that swirled to join a spinning cloud. Like a genie re-entering its lamp, the swarm drew inward, converging and funneling to the belly of the hovering craft. When every last one had been recovered, the vessel turned over the Hudson, then southeast to cruise over the Statue of Liberty, blasting the giant sculpture with hot effluent as it climbed and accelerated over the Atlantic.
People in Manhattan — and on all continents — watched in sour disappointment. There would be no speeches today. No welcoming ceremonies. No negotiations.
No party.
Then came a final surprise.
Even as the lander passed out of sight, a chuttering sound abruptly surged from every radio and television set, evidently broadcast by the giant Garubis star galleon, high overhead. Caught by surprise, most networks needed a few moments to seek help with translation. A group of amateur linguists from Manila beat all the universities and government agencies by several seconds, providing a first English-language version of the aliens’ announcement.
We acknowledge that you have done us a service.
We acknowledge that we are in your debt.
The pause that followed might have been deliberate. Or simply punctuation. For emphasis.
Only, then came the kicker.
We hate being indebted to vermin.
Mark’s jaw dropped. Nor was he alone. There had to be something wrong with the translation! Perhaps it was somebody’s idea of a joke.
Only then alternate versions began appearing on different channels — from the U.S. government, the Beijing Institute for Advanced Science, and from academics who had worked directly with Na-bistaka. All paraphrasings of the Garubis broadcast converged on the same general meaning.
We shall discharge this debt as soon as possible.
We shall repay you with something of high value
from a List of Traditional Restitutions
For The Young and Hungry.
We shall do this before your planet spins another six times.
Then, in gladness, we will depart.
Trying to expunge
memory of your noxious odors.
For the longest time, not a single pundit or commentator spoke. The airwaves of Planet Earth were more quiet than they had been in generations. Perhaps since the days of Marconi.
Oh, this wasn’t the very worst possible kind of alien contact. But, almost without any doubt, it was the most insulting.
Of course, not everybody saw things the same way. Barry Tang finally broke the silence in the Bamford home with a chortle of eagerness.
“Cool!” he said, rubbing his hands avariciously.
“I wonder what they’re gonna give us.”