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  She scanned the sheet. “Flying jellyfish and vampires.”

  “You two might be smart enough to run the pool but you’re the ones throwing your money away,” the lieutenant said. “Betting is all about the wisdom of crowds. The reason that a wager on the aliens looking like Godzilla pays so poorly is because it’s the most likely outcome.”

  “But it’s past one in the morning and the crowd has been drinking for hours,” eBeth pointed out.

  “Doesn’t matter,” the lieutenant insisted. “I had to take a course about this once for a promotion.”

  “That explains a lot,” eBeth retorted, but she had pulled her head back and mumbled it, so I doubt he heard her.

  “How about the envoy’s first line?” I asked, looking over her shoulder.

  “Right here,” she said, flipping over the sheet. I worried that the initials of the bettors following each option would prove to be indecipherable when they demanded their payouts, the collateral damage of a species grown used to texting with their thumbs.

  “The big money is split between ‘Worship us or die,’ and ‘We must have missed a turn after Mars.’”

  “That one was mine,” Paul said, leaning in between the lieutenant and eBeth and beckoning the bartender. “Another round.”

  I watched in dismay as Donovan retrieved a bottle from the top shelf and poured out five shots of single malt. To add insult to injury, he added five bar bottles of Camshaft beer to the tray, a local microbrew that Paul favored because of the illustration on the label. He’d even dragged me to a tasting at the brewery, which occupied a small section of a former auto parts factory. I only went along because it was a good way to drum up new customers for my computer repair business while also scouting potential recruits for off-world work.

  “This is for you,” Paul said, handing the bartender a twenty, and jerking his thumb in my direction. “The drinks are on him.”

  I made a slicing gesture under my throat as my oldest friend headed back to the AI table with the drinks, but Donovan had already turned away, missing the universal ‘cut him off’ sign. Of course, if I were getting twenty-dollar tips for pouring a few drinks, I wouldn’t be in any hurry to put an end to the party either. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to spend money on my team members, but none of them had taste buds or stomachs. They were welcome to all the cheap vodka they could swill.

  “Forget the wisdom of crowds,” the lieutenant said after watching Paul walk away with fifty dollars worth of my booze. “I have my money on, ‘You guys are in big trouble.’”

  “We come in peace,” I nearly yelled in frustration. “It’s always, ‘We come in peace.’ Even aliens who plan to strip-mine the planet and turn everything that moves into kebab ingredients start with, ‘We come in peace.’”

  “Sounds like we have a sore loser,” the lieutenant observed. “What did you take, eBeth?”

  “Greetings, Earthlings.”

  “Everybody shut up!” Donovan yelled. “They’re lowering the ramp.”

  eBeth plucked at the bartender’s sleeve and gave him instructions for pushing the TV audio into the sound system. It took Donovan a minute to locate the mini-mixer behind the cash register, but then the sound of the excited television announcers blared over the loudspeakers, and everybody did shut up.

  “The aliens will be coming out of their ship any time now,” the attractive co-anchor was saying to her usual partner, an older man who wore a specially designed toupee in the cold so he wouldn’t need a hat. “They’ve employed their superior technology to refreeze the melt-off from their landing and have been waiting for us to get our TV crews into position.”

  “That’s right, Deidre,” he said, smiling as if she had just said something particularly witty. “Just a reminder to our viewers that we’re coming to you from the Davos golf course where the first alien ship to visit Earth landed just twenty minutes ago.”

  “The first alien ship that we know of, Jack,” his broadcast partner corrected him.

  “So true,” he said, adding a bass chuckle. “This reminds me of the time—”

  “The hatch is opening!” Deidre interrupted. The camera, which to this point had shown the pair of announcers with the alien ship in the background, now zoomed in on the hatch.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is incredible,” Jack reported in a hushed voice. “For the first time ever, a being from another world is about to set foot on our Earth. Will it be able to breathe our air? Will it look like life as we know it? Will—”

  “Will somebody please make him stop talking,” an elderly woman behind me cried, and everybody cheered. I believe she was one of Justin’s clients. Then the first Hanker emerged from the ship, putting an end to the newscaster’s babble.

  “It looks like a giant panda,” eBeth exclaimed. She picked up the tally sheets and skimmed the choices. “Crud. Somebody had grizzly bears.”

  The Hanker, who indeed looked suspiciously like a giant panda, waddled down the ramp and approached the impromptu podium set up by TV crews. The stand was bristling with so many microphones that it was surprising the whole thing didn’t collapse under the weight. The alien opened his maw and began to speak in fluent English.

  “So, where are all the rich people?”

  “Back here!” shouted several voices from behind the barricades set up by the Swiss police.

  eBeth scanned the tally sheet and shook her head. “Nothing even comes remotely close.”

  “Anyway,” the Hanker continued, “New dawn for humanity and all that. We’re really thrilled to be appearing here in Switzerland, and we have a really great show for you this morning. You’re probably admiring our ship up there in high orbit and wondering, ‘How much does one of those sell for?’ Well, I’ll tell you, they aren’t cheap. But this being our first contact and all, I’m authorized to offer a special deal on faster-than-light technology so you can get out and see the galaxy for yourselves.”

  “It’s like they’ve been studying the shopping channel,” eBeth said in the stunned silence. “I thought that was only on cable.”

  “With all the satellite uplinks, you can watch almost anything in space if you’re in the right place at the right time,” I told her.

  “A special deal?” Deidre asked the Hanker after recovering from the initial shock of the alien’s sales pitch.

  “That’s right. Through this limited time offer, we’re willing to transfer a working faster-than-light travel system to humanity in return for ten percent of your world’s GDP for just one year. Imagine the places you’ll go and the aliens you’ll meet. Why, according to my information,” the Hanker stopped and glanced at one of his hairy palms for a cheat sheet, “our asking price is barely more than your people already spend on global tourism every three years. Just think of the economic opportunities.”

  “I’ll take it!” a man shouted from the billionaire’s section.

  The Hanker scanned the crowd, pointed, and cried, “Sold.” Pandemonium broke out as the wealthy people shoved the police out of the way and swarmed forward to press their claims. The camera zoomed out, showing a mob of designer winter parkas surrounding the alien envoy as the reporters discovered that they weren’t the most aggressive humans on the golf course.

  “So that didn’t go like we expected,” eBeth said, checking her tally sheets. “We’re going to have to return everybody’s money, except for whoever bet on bears.”

  “Take care of it,” I told her, and headed for the AI table. Something seemed very wrong to me and I wanted to discuss it with my team. There was no doubt in my mind that the offer to transfer advanced technology to the humans was just an elaborate prank, but the envoy had struck me as too casual, almost like the Hankers were laughing at themselves as much as the humans.

  “Mark,” Sue greeted me, sounding a little strange. “Mark, Mark, Mark.” She grabbed my arm and said, “Everybody else get lost. Go dance or something.”

  Paul, Helen, Justin and Stacey von Hoffman rose without objection, thoug
h several of them seemed a bit unsteady on their feet.

  “What’s going on with all of you?” I demanded as Sue pulled me down in the now vacated chair next to her.

  Paul leaned in and whispered, “I’ve kind of been beta testing an enhancement that models human inebriation. Kim created it last year and we were going to tell you when she gets back. Anyway, it checked out fine, and I just shared it with the others since it’s a party.”

  A data dump notification popped up on my interface, but I waved it away.

  “Mark, Mark, Mark,” Sue repeated. “Stop being a party pooper. The Hankers aren’t going anywhere.”

  “That’s not the point. We have a job to do, and getting drunk won’t help.”

  “We finished our assignment when Kim left with the reports,” my second-in-command said. “I wondered why you didn’t tell the rest of us to activate our exit plans, but I thought—” She trailed off and took another swig from her beer. I knew that the Crankshaft was 7.8% alcohol, and I wondered just how many single malts and beers they’d had earlier in the evening while I was working with my students on party service.

  “What did you think about the envoy, Sue?” I prompted her.

  She started as if she had been about to doze off, and then asked, “Do you know why you always lose at our poker games?”

  “I’m beginning to suspect that some of the others may be cheating.”

  “I’m the only one who cheats, Mark. I cheat to keep you from losing your shirt. The rest of them just bluff you out of every big pot.”

  “What! AI don’t—” I cut myself off and stared. “You’re saying my team has gone native?”

  “Of course we’ve gone native, you goof. AI Observers always go native. It’s why we’re so good at our jobs. Those rules were written by the executive council back in the early days when half of the members still believed that artificial intelligence was some kind of synonym for robots or smart computers. But I’m not a computer, Mark, I’m a sentient being. And I’m telling you that you have to take risks with other sentient beings if you’re going to make anything of yourself. You want to be a great leader, but ever since the incident on Shissker, the only life you’re willing to gamble with is your own.”

  “I break rules all the time,” I protested. “I probably break more of them than anybody, except maybe Paul.”

  “Sure, you keep a pet, you send humans off-world on labor contracts, and eBeth probably knows more about the League of Sentient Entities Regulating Space than our average citizen, but humans are safer off-world than they are walking their own streets. You aren’t putting anybody in jeopardy.”

  “That’s not a bad thing,” I mumbled.

  “It’s a bad thing for me,” Sue said, beating on my shoulder with her fist. “You have to take a chance on love.”

  I looked at her blankly.

  “With me, you idiot!” she shouted.

  Oh. Now it all made sense.

  Thirteen

  I knew something was wrong the minute I entered the science wing, because the WiFi signal was strong and I had no trouble connecting to the Internet. I immediately suspected a trap of sorts, but with all the craziness sweeping the world following the Hanker landing, I was willing to give Professor Nordgren the benefit of the doubt. If worst came to worst and I had to pull a disappearing act, I doubted it would rate two column-inches in the local paper, especially after I’d just sent their best investigative reporter off-world.

  The professor was waiting in her lab along with an inoffensive tweedy-looking fellow who I immediately identified as her MIT friend. A quick scan showed no active surveillance or other humans within hearing distance, so I decided to hear them out.

  “You must be thinking that no good deed goes unpunished,” Professor Nordgren said with an apologetic smile. “This is my friend, David Minchen, from MIT.”

  “Professor Minchen,” I said formally, offering him my hand.

  “Mark A.I.,” he identified me in turn, putting a space between the ‘A’ and “I” to differentiate it from the last name on my business cards. “Call me David. Do you have a model number as well?”

  “You mean as in, Mark One, Mark Two, like that? No, both names are strictly temporary labels.” So they had figured out I was artificial intelligence, and as an MIT professor, I was certain that Minchen knew my encounter suit was far beyond human technology as well. I also suspected that the Hankers would be spreading slander about AI at Davos, and getting a respected scientist on our side might pay dividends. “May I ask how many people know that you’re here?”

  “Gertrude here is the only one I spoke to about my suspicions, or shall I say, conclusions,” the professor said. “I think it’s obvious from context that your purpose here is benevolent, and I’m impressed that you went to the trouble of seeding your information about the Arecibo message in so many different places to make sure somebody paid attention. I’d like to think I would have solved the puzzle without the WikiLeaks release, but I guess we’ll never know.”

  “Other than satisfying your own curiosity, is there a reason you flew out here on a school day?” I asked.

  Minchen shrugged. “I teach two graduate seminars on Friday, the rest of the week is my own. I’m sure you already know what I’m hoping to learn here.”

  “David was always the smart one,” Professor Nordgren put in. “I’m in front of a class four times a day.”

  “I’d have to be a mind-reader to know what you expect to get out of your trip,” I told him. The two professors looked at me expectantly. “That was me telling you that I’m not a mind-reader.”

  “Sorry,” Professor Minchen said. “I expect that you could fill us in about these alien panda impersonators, but what I care about—what Gertrude and I both care about—is the physics.”

  “The Hankers can’t sell your world a faster-than-light drive in the literal sense because no such thing exists.” I noted that both professors looked relieved on hearing that their educations weren’t being tossed completely out of the window. “The Hankers can provide a variety of solutions for getting around your laws of physics, though none so elegant as the portal system that connects most of the civilizations in this galaxy.”

  “More than one solution?” Minchen asked, lifting an eyebrow.

  “It’s not my field, but once you figure out the math, travel outside of normal space can be accomplished in a variety of ways, not to mention magic.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I believe your Arthur C. Clarke was the first on this planet to state for the record that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I’m not spilling the beans on any interstellar secrets by telling you that there are methods of distorting the space-time continuum that the greatest minds of my own kind do not fully understand.”

  “Your kind being artificial intelligence.”

  “Yes.” I almost told him about our own Third Law, that omniscience is unattainable without divinity, but as eBeth pointed out, I’d become something of a blabbermouth as of late, so I held back on volunteering information.

  “Could you give us an example of magic?” Professor Nordgren asked.

  “I can’t perform magic myself but I can describe what I’ve seen,” I told her. “The mages of Eniniac, one of the leading civilizations in our League, have developed a one-shot system of moving from anywhere in this universe back to an anchor crystal, though the trip destroys both the crystal and the retrieval net. While there are other methods of traveling beyond our galaxy and returning, they are quite laborious due to the sheer quantity and complexity of the calculations involved, and the longer the distance, the greater the risk of error. The crystal transport system doesn’t require knowledge of the relative velocities of locations, local gravitational effects, any of the issues that introduce guessing into long jumps and lead to temporal uncertainty. The mages themselves claim not to understand the precise mechanism by which their system works.”

  “How is that possible?” P
rofessor Minchen demanded. “Is it lost technology from an earlier civilization?”

  “Not that anybody is aware of, though the Eniniac civilization stretches back over a hundred million years and very little remains of their early history. I have watched a mage going through the final preparation of a crystal and it’s the closest thing to a mystical experience I’ve had in my lifetime.”

  “Can you describe it?”

  “The process starts with preparing a flawless artificial crystal. The type of silicon you grow for the microprocessor industry is similar, but the crystal must be physically large enough to contain the object that will eventually make the trip. In short, the mages sing to the crystal until a hollow cavity forms and a sort of fluid leaks out. The fluid is collected in a vial, and when released, it will form the retrieval web.”

  “Wait. When you say a vial I think of a small container. Are you telling us that this type of travel only works for small objects?”

  “Don’t get caught up in volumetric comparisons,” I told him. “The fluid is not some liquefied form of the hollowed-out crystal matter but something else entirely, a kind of energy matrix existing simultaneously in multiple dimensions. If I had that vial here with me right now and sprayed the contents out over my head, it would form a web around my body, though I would have to lift each foot in turn to let the edges join together. As soon as the web is closed, rather than being here, I would be back in the anchor crystal.”

  “How would you get out?” Professor Nordgren asked.

  “By breaking through the surface. As I said, it’s a single-use system, and crystal sets are the most expensive and sought-after objects in our galaxy. A team of mages may spend years singing in shifts before obtaining the desired results, and their time isn’t cheap.”

  “Why are you here?” the MIT professor inquired, then hastened to append, “And I don’t mean here today, but on the planet.”

  “Technically, I shouldn’t be talking to you about this at all, but the Hanker presence on Earth is based on the equivalent of insider trading, so I’m trying to even things out. I came here as an Observer in order to gather facts about your civilization. Unfortunately, somebody with access to earlier reports I submitted must have sold them out the back door to the Hankers.”