Insistence of Vision (23 page)

Word spread quickly among humans, too. While a majority of citizens kept back in fear, there was no shortage of bold drivers, suddenly eager to pull over.

Hitchhiking Martians paid well for rides.

And for information – always seeking some person listed on one of those scrolls. Despite a rising sense of public unease, it wasn’t hard for each alien to find someone – a shopkeeper or some passerby with a wireless link – willing to do a quick internet name-and-address search and then point the right way, often with a printed map.

Well, those diamonds were top quality.

Anyway, the government was loathe at first to interfere. This offered one way to find out why they had come and who they were looking for. No Martian asked for secrecy. So most of the information providers cashed-in twice by swiftly telling everything to the news media.

In a matter of hours we knew more than forty names.

What would
you
do, if you heard on TV that a Martian was looking for you?

After what we all witnessed at Cape Canaveral, acute interest focused on those who were asked-for. A diverse group, they shared one common trait – a passion for spaceflight. Only a few were scientists or engineers or NASA officials... some were school teachers, or accountants, or mechanics. But all believed in human expansion and adventure in the cosmos.

Not much to go on... though I began to wonder.

Any normal person, upon hearing that an alien was coming, would prudently stay away from home. Especially after what happened to Bill Nye. But as I said, those being sought weren’t exactly normal. Most of them had dreamed of
first contact
from an early age, cutting their teeth on science fiction tales. Several, in fact, reacted to the news with excitement, hurrying
toward
their aliens, eager to meet them halfway.

By coincidence, the first two of these zealots reached their rendezvous within minutes of each other – thirty-one and a half hours after the ship from Mars arrived – several hundred miles apart.

“Are you Frank Martin?” A green visitor asked, near Gary, North Carolina.

“Yes I am,” answered a well-known space engineer, grinning and holding out his hand.

Whereupon the creature shot him dead.

“I seek another individual,” it then said, turning toward the appalled journalists while their cameras beamed a gruesome scene across the world. Nervous marshals and guardsmen drew their weapons while frantically consulting Washington. But the Martian just ignored them.

“I will pay for information leading me to a human named Danny Hillis.”

Meanwhile, at almost the same moment in Gainesville, standing over the smoldering corpse of a fiction author named Joe Haldeman, another alien said:

“I will now pay for information leading to Penelope Boston.”

ᚖ

There was no more ambiguity. No hope that Bill Nye’s death was a fluke.

We now had a general idea why the Martians had come – with a narrowly focused sense of purpose. One by one, they aimed to hunt down and kill every person whose name appeared on a list.

But what list?

All of those mentioned so far were Americans, a fact that offered strange reassurance elsewhere. Across the globe, near-panic ebbed away, replaced with a rising sense of this-doesn’t-directly-threaten-us interest... accompanied perhaps by a kind of spectator
schadenfreude
at seeing the planet’s Top Dog face its long-deserved come-uppance from dauntingly advanced extraterrestrials. Those who had been loudly demanding establishment of an International Contact Agency became less shrill. World leaders now urged patience – an attitude of watching, waiting.

That was fine for them. Within the borders of the United States, tension fizzed and nearly frothed-over. By now, forty-seven alien creatures had dispersed from coast to coast, with nine of them unaccounted-for, having vanished into some confusion of either traffic or countryside. We discovered the hard way that those photo-active wings of theirs had multiple uses. Wrapped around the body, they could suddenly go into a mode that mimicked the environs, turning a Martian almost invisible.

Army special forces augmented the marshals now, trying to keep a wide cordon around each alien, using bullhorns, warning people to stay back. It didn’t always work, though. The creatures moved
fast
. Without notice, one of them might veer toward anyone in sight, offering a handful of treasure for information or a ride.

Most people ran away, but so what? Roughly one in a hundred consented. That was enough.

The third, fourth and fifth deaths occurred before two full days had passed. A dozen more of the targeted people barely left their homes in time. But always, some neighbor was willing to point helpfully in the direction they had fled. Others might shout “collaborator!” – but diamonds can help overcome hurt feelings. And no one could legally stop it. Or at least, nobody in authority could cite a law that fit a case like this.

People – even governments – are capable of acting quickly in an emergency. A special session of Congress was called, aimed at passing a quick national security bill to close the loopholes, outlawing cooperation with the Martians and confiscating whatever payments they made. Anyone who helped guide them to a victim could be prosecuted as an accessory. Instant polls showed huge public support, driven by disgust toward that self-serving minority among us who would cooperate in this alien death-hunt, betraying their neighbors for riches.

The President promised to sign the bill within twenty-four hours. She sent Secret Service agents to protect every person known to be a target.

That’s when I phoned up Dan Jensen, in Senator Green’s office.

“Dan, you’ve got to get me into the hearing tomorrow.”

“I dunno,” he answered. “It’s crazy up here on the Hill. We’re on war footing. The hearing is supposed to last just the morning, then we rush the bill to the floor. What’s wrong? Not urgent enough?”

“Maybe too urgent. There’s something they have to know, before passing that law. Something I think I figured out.”

“You
think
? Buddy boy, you better –”

“I better get down there and talk to you in person tonight. Lay it out. Just do me - do us all - a favor. Set aside fifteen minutes for me to speak tomorrow morning. You can cancel if I don’t convince you tonight.”

It took some persuading. But I had that much pull.

I wound up getting ten minutes. I just prayed I’d be in time.

ᚖ

“The names,” I said, after being sworn-in, “are all included on a disk that was carried to the Martian surface aboard
Spirit
and
Opportunity
... the Mars Exploration Rover spacecraft, or MER... way back in January of 2003.”

“On a disk?” one member of the committee asked. “For what purpose?”

“Public relations, Senator. Arranged by The Planetary Society, in collaboration with the LEGO Company. A mini-DVD, so small and light that it could be added without affecting mission performance or cost. It contained educational material, plus a
list
of space program supporters – people who signed on for the honor of having their names carried all the way to Mars.”

“Some honor. But I don’t get it. None of the footage from those rover-robots showed signs of intelligent life. Or any life at all.”

“The Martians appear to be – well – extremely adaptable, Senator. As you might expect for beings that evolved in such a challenging environment. We witnessed them change shape before our eyes, just after arriving. And those cape-like
wings
, that they spread to absorb sunlight, can shift from perfect black to green to intricate patterns mimicking any background. There may have been Martians in plain sight, for all I know, or dwelling nearby underground. Certainly close enough to be offended by one of the MER machines, in some way we don’t yet understand.”

“And you think this disk filled with names... it covers everybody that the aliens have asked for?”

“So far. It’s the only trait that every one of them has in common. It also explains how the Martians would have such a list in hand, the moment they arrived. They must have gotten it directly from the disk.”

“Interesting. That’s one mystery solved... and about a hundred still unexplained. Like
why
they seem determined to go around
killing
people on the list! Do you have any ideas about that, doctor?”

“Some possibilities come to mind. Perhaps they did not like the idea of machines landing to spy on their planet – though a dozen earlier probes never triggered such response. Perhaps they are angry over
where
the two probes landed. Or something bad happened when they did. Anyway, the truth should be easy enough to find out.”

“Oh, how’s that?”

“
Ask them.
They are traders, above all else. For the right price, I’m sure one of the Martians will explain it all, in detail.”

The committee’s chief counsel spoke up.

“We’ve tried to ask! They ignore our representatives.”

“True enough. And yet they speak to private citizens.”

“In order to bribe them! To hitch rides from traitors, or else buy directions that will help them hunt down some American! The same kind of nasty, treasonous help that we’re going to outlaw.”

“Right. Exactly. And I’m here to warn you... that could be a terrible mistake.”

ᚖ

Silence filled the conference room, until the chief counsel spoke again.

“You...
oppose
the bill currently before this committee?” He sounded perplexed, so unanimous had been the support up till now.

“I must oppose it, since the consequences of passing such a bill could be disastrous.”

The senior senator from Oklahoma leaned forward, speaking softly.

“Could you please explain, doctor? So far, we’ve been careful not to shoot back at the creatures – though a public majority now wants massive retaliation next time another citizen is killed. This restraint is overwhelmingly difficult to maintain. “

“Indeed, Senator. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the administration’s wisdom in that regard. History warns that a weaker tribe
should
be cautious during first contact, especially not to let itself be provoked. Pride can be fatally expensive. So can revenge. We may have to absorb pain... a lot of it, stoically... before we’re ready to demand respect.”

“Is
that
why you oppose the bill, doctor? But this proposed legislation has nothing to do with fighting back! All it will do is impose penalties on a few greedy humans, to deter them from helping the aliens. If we arrest the collaborators and seize all those little piles of gold and diamonds, so nobody profits... then who will step forward to help the aliens with information? It could take the creatures ages, wandering around, to find their victims. We’d have time to set up protection programs, offer new identities, and hide everybody on this list you told us about... how many people did you say are on it?”

“I didn’t say, Senator.”

A look of puzzled exasperation crossed the politician’s face. “Well, could you please tell us, now? How many names were on those disks that
Spirit
and
Opportunity
carried to Mars?”

I coughed, feeling a sudden and powerful reluctance to speak. But then, the news media were probably looking it up already, on the web.

“How many? Um, senator, the disks held four million names.”

ᚖ

It took a while for the Sergeant at Arms to restore order. I fretted as the clock finished ticking out my allotted ten minutes. Would they stop me before I got around to my real point?

I needn’t have worried. Nobody tried to usher me out of the room. All were attentive when Senator Green spoke for the first time.

“Four million? Why that’s... more than one percent of our population.”

Or ten percent of those who vote,
I pondered during another long silence that finally broke when Senator Long distilled the general mood.

“Then this may
not
be a matter of just a few scientists and space aficionados. It could go on and on.”

“So it seems,” I answered. “Though let me correct one false impression that’s going around. Only by a quirk of chance have the targets so far all been Americans. There are plenty of Europeans, Russians, Japanese and other nationalities represented on the list, just a little further down.”

That brought a small murmur of satisfaction, amid the gloom. It can be comforting, when in pain, not to be alone.

“Still,
four million
. Could they really mean to hunt them
all
down, one by one?”

“I have no reason to think otherwise.”

“Then appeasement is out of the question. The die is cast. We are at war.”

I disagreed emphatically.

“No senator, we aren’t
at war.

“In fact, I doubt our Martian visitors know the true meaning of that word.

“But we could teach it to them, if you pass this bill.”

ᚖ

I didn’t succeed at getting the legislation killed. But they agreed to wait twenty-four hours.

It was enough.

Late that afternoon – on the third day after the landing at Cape Canaveral – another of the Martians caught up with the person it was seeking, in the suburbs of Lawrence, Kansas. Someone along the way, jumping at a chance for a little extra profit, had sold this creature a nifty little PDA with map feature and Global Positioning System, supplementing its already uncanny direction sense with good old human technical ingenuity.

Still, it wasn’t exactly a surprise when the alien reached its destination. Forewarned, the news media were already there.

Though he had been alerted with plenty of time, the human quarry tried to be clever. He wasn’t home when the alien showed up, but he did stay to watch from a neighbor’s rooftop as a tall, green creature knocked at his front door, then broke the lock and bent over to step inside. There followed some brief crashing sounds – not exactly a rampage but an efficient search for hiding places. (All evidence so far showed that these creatures learned very fast.)