By Other Means Read online

“Well, sir—it’s you who commissioned it.”

  “Yes, but the concept—and the handiwork—is yours, Ms. Clare. I trust you’ll explain its content to both of us,”—he gestured diffidently toward Ms. Hoon—”when you are finished?”

  “Of course, Mr. Simovic. Although it’s neither abstract, nor highly stylized. I think you’ll see right away that—”

  “Yes, yes: that’s wonderful, Ms. Clare, wonderful. Just make sure that it radiates the humanitarian side of the Indi Group, would you?”

  Oh, yes, I’ll be sure to represent the way it exploits workers, and gives us just enough pay to struggle on from one day to the next. I’ll depict how, after the xenovirus incapacitated me, you made me your corporate nanny, and then, when I couldn’t do that any longer, you met your minimum employment requirement by commissioning this frieze. Dirt pay for me, but a tax dodge for you, and a great PR op to demonstrate how the Indi Group encourages the remaining abilities of even its most severely handicapped employees. But Elnessa’s only reply was, “I’ll explain the frieze to you when I’ve completed it, Mr. Simovic.”

  “Excellent!” Simovic actually clapped his hands once in histrionic gratification and pleasure, nodded his thanks, and then drew closer to Hoon. For a moment their voices were too low to hear, but then, evidently reassured by Elnessa’s near-deafness, they resumed the discussion her entrance had interrupted.

  “So you see,” Simovic said in the voice of a smug tutor, “our visitors—I should say, our ‘new clients’—have good reason to be interested in our commodity.”

  “And our cooperation, along with it.”

  “Well, this goes without saying, Ms. Hoon. But the children will be out of our hands and out of our files, as soon as they take possession.”

  “When and where, exactly, will that occur?”

  “We are uncertain, Ms. Hoon. But we do know this: the commodity must be delivered to the client in pristine condition. The client’s, ah, research program, would be ruined by any damage to the goods.”

  Research? On the children? On Vas?

  “‘Research’?” Hoon echoed. “With respect, sir, all these euphemisms are getting a bit ridiculous.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean that our new customers certainly aren’t scientists, sir. Corporate wards without identicodes are not going to be interred in laboratories; they’re bound for pirate ships, brothels, snuff producers, maybe a few rich pederasts, but not—”

  El thought she was about to lose her breakfast, and then something all at once calming—yet more chilling—insinuated itself into Simovic’s calm-toned interruption: “Oh, no, Ms. Hoon. You really don’t understand, after all. These wards are going to a lab, which is why their utter lack of a traceable background makes them so optimal for this particular trade. Because it is imperative for both us, and our clients, that they receive humans who, insofar as the nations know, never existed.”

  Hoon was quiet for a moment. “Director Simovic, I find your change of label somewhat...confusing. Why are you referring to our commodity as ‘humans,’ now, instead of ‘children?’”

  “Because that is our client’s primary interest in our commodity: not so much because they are children—although it has been intimated that this is the ideal age group for their researches—but because they are healthy, paperless specimens of homo sapiens.”

  In the pause that ensued, Elnessa lifted a long, slightly convex, copper sheet from the floor, and, with a couple of touches of an exothermic chemical welder, affixed it to the naked wall of the room.

  Hoon’s voice sounded raspy, as if her throat had suddenly become dry. “Sir,...I don’t understand. The client wants them just because they’re...humans?”

  Lifting a thin layer of protective gauze from the copper sheet, Elnessa unveiled what would soon occupy the top third of the friezes’s center: a cityscape cluttered by the various architectures of antiquity. And she reminded herself to breathe, despite what she was hearing.

  “Oh, I think you are starting to understand after all, Ms. Hoon. Rest assured; this exchange is not being conducted without adequate planning. Indeed, we had contingency directives sent out to us from Earth more than half a year ago—shortly after the Parthenon Dialogues became public knowledge.”

  Elnessa removed six sizable blocks of clay from her studio box, and compared them to the virtual assembly plan on her grid-plotter. She then unsheathed her matte knife, and carefully shaved an inch from the rear of the five smaller blocks.

  Hoon had paused again, but not for as long. “Are you telling me that the contingency plans governing this, this—exchange—were crafted in response to the Parthenon Dialogues?”

  “Let us rather say that the revelations of the Parthenon Dialogues prompted some of CoDevCo’s more speculative thinkers to provide us with guidelines to handle a situation such as this one.”

  Even in the grid-plotter’s illuminated screen, Elnessa could make out the profound scowl of doubt on Hoon’s face. “But the evidence presented at Parthenon only proved past events: that—ages and ages ago—this area of space had been visited by aliens—”

  “‘Exosapients,’” Simovic corrected.

  “‘Exosapients,’” Hoon parroted peevishly, “But there was no evidence of a more recent presence.”

  Simovic smiled, smug and satisfied. “Yes, that’s the story that was released to the public.”

  Elnessa forced herself to keep working, which made it easier not to imagine little Vas spread-eagled on an operating table, surrounded by hideous extraterrestrial vivisectionists. She mentally slapped herself, and mounted the five modified clay blocks on studs protruding from the copper plate. She stood back, admiring the effect: the blocks now seemed to be the stony slabs of an ancient fortress wall that curved out from the faintly raised cityscape directly over it—a metropolis which, by virtue of the oblique perspective, now seemed to be sheltered behind the wall.

  Hoon had recovered enough to continue. “And so the full truth of the Parthenon Dialogues was—?”

  “—Was not shared in detail outside the meeting itself. However, let us say that while the evidence certainly established that exosapients did exist 20,000 years ago on Delta Pavonis Three, it did not go on to assert that there were none left in existence.”

  “So you suspect that actual contact has been made in the recent—?”

  “No, there’s been no contact that we know of or suspect.” Simovic smiled. “Not until now, that is.”

  “So you really think that the unidentified ship up there is, is—?”

  “Ms. Hoon, the persons we are currently negotiating with are not human, of that you may rest assured. The communications challenges have been proof positive of that.”

  Elnessa felt as though she might swallow her tongue, but instead, she picked up the last, and the largest, of the six clay blocks. She carefully carved the top to resemble the peak-roofed gallery at the pinnacle of a watchtower. Then she bored a small tube up through the center of the block, making sure that it was wide enough to fit the wires for its small beacon light.

  Hoon hadn’t stopped. “So how did these—exosapients—know to contact us, and that we’d have this particular—’item’ that they needed?”

  “An excellent question, but those kinds of details are not even shared with regional managers, Ms. Hoon. However, I conjecture that there must have been some contact between our chief executives and some—representatives—of theirs.”

  “And you suspect this because—?”

  “Because they arrived knowing and inquiring about the commodity we have in our possession. And because they knew our communications protocols, our location here instead of on Tigua, and a reasonable amount of our language. Although that latter knowledge has been decidedly—imperfect.”

  Elnessa ran the wiring leads up through the tube in the watchtower: the slim copper alligator clips poked their noses out the top of the hole. Deciding to finish the sculpting and wiring later, she mounted the watchtower on
its own copper stud, thereby completing the wall around the Brazen City. Then she ran the other end of the leads to a junction box mounted on the bottom of the copper plate, just beneath and behind the lower edge of the frieze. She then covered the wires—and the lower half of the copper plate—with strips of clay that she started sculpting into a semblance of furrowed farmland. Beneath those, she left just enough room for the band of blue-white acrylic that lay ready at hand: a stylized river, frozen in mid-tumult.

  Hoon still hadn’t stopped. “So what we’re doing now is—”

  “—Is working out the particulars of the exchange, while we wait for Tigua to send us word on the outcome of the official first contact.”

  “Which we expect to be—unsuccessful.”

  Simovic shrugged. “It is most unlikely that Bloc-controlled Tigua will concede to our clients’ military superiority—”

  You mean, will refuse to surrender without a fight—

  “—whereas we have already assured them of our complete and immediate cooperation.”

  You mean, traitorous collaboration offered up to them on a silver platter.

  Hoon was smiling now. “How very...convenient. For us.”

  “Yes, rather a nice reward for patiently enduring the pomposity of the nation-states, don’t you think? Always nattering on about social contracts, and consent of the governed, and the greatest good for the greatest number. I can hardly believe they don’t laugh themselves to death as they spout all that antediluvian rubbish.”

  Hoon’s contempt for these same concepts was obviously so great that it exceeded polite articulation: she merely expelled a derisive snort. Then she added, “Well, good riddance to Bloc sanctions and anti-trust restrictions.”

  Elnessa delicately swept her wire brush up, up, up, all along the first furrowed row of clay she had set before the city walls, imparting to it an impression of young wheat or corn, just as it sprang from the ground toward the sun. And as she did so, she listened to the unfolding plans for the cool, calculated, and above all, profitable betrayal of her species.

  Once again responding to the gum wrapper Elnessa had inserted into the dead-drop crevice, Reuben approached her hurriedly. He had his mouth open to ask something—

  Elnessa preempted him. “Have you heard?”

  “You mean, about the aliens?”

  “Exosapients,” Elnessa corrected him.

  “Whatever. Yeah, I heard. It’s got to be the worst-kept secret there’s ever been. No one seems to be able to shut up about it, even in the military. The word has been leaking out of navy comshacks, out of the commercial transmission offices, everywhere.”

  “And you know they’re planning on coming here, evidently?”

  Reuben frowned. “Well, amidst all the rest of the panic talk, I’ve heard that rumor, too. But the evidence for it seems pretty vague, pretty much hearsay.”

  “Well, it’s not. These ‘exosapients’ are apparently Indi Group’s newest preferred customers. And they want the kids. For ‘research.’”

  She thought Reuben would goggle as she had. But, again, like her, his capacity for shock was almost exhausted. All Reuben did was shrug: “Figures. Which makes our mission all the more imperative.” His expression became eager, more focused. “So, how did it go when you went in today? Is everything there, ready and waiting?”

  Elnessa shook her head. “I got the payload in, but nothing else.”

  Reuben’s jaw dropped open. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that they wouldn’t let me take anything electronic into the office: no independent power supply, and no remote activators of any kind. Like I told you. But even so, I think I’ve found a way to—”

  But Reuben was shaking his head. “No, El. It’s finished. Our guy on the inside is strip-searched every day: they’ve got all the usual means of access covered. Without power and a way to trigger the device, it’s no good.”

  “I understand your problem. But actually, there’s a pretty simple alternative: you can—”

  Reuben stood abruptly. “No, El: I don’t want to know. The less I know, the less I can tell if they eventually root up some pieces of this plot and then try to discover who was involved. I’ve got—we’ve got—to forget about this. Right now. As if it never happened.”

  Elnessa looked up at him. “I’m not sure I can forget it, Reuben. Particularly not with what’s at stake, now.”

  Reuben looked at her. “Don’t make trouble, El. And don’t make me warn you about coming near the kids again. Vas told me.”

  “Told you what?”

  “That you made him dinner last night, let him stay until it was way too late—”

  “Feeling guilty you didn’t even notice he was missing, ‘Daddy’?’” The moment she said it, Elnessa was sorry: no one knew better than she how hard it was to keep track of almost a dozen kids between the ages of five and thirteen. “Look, Reuben; I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

  “El, just—just leave it alone. Leave it all alone. And I mean both the mission and Vas. And that’s an order.” His utterance of the word ‘order’ was, laughably, a half-whining appeal, rather than a command.

  “Sure,” El answered. “Whatever.”

  Reuben turned and walked stiffly into the deepening gloom. About ten meters away, he reached down into a cluster of bushes and gently extracted its hidden occupant—Vas—before resuming his steady march away from Elnessa. Vas looked back, eyes troubled. He waved and was gone.

  Elnessa waved, sighed, wiped her eyes, and went home in the dark.

  It was only midmorning of January 2, 2120, when Elnessa stepped back to examine the frieze, in all its finished glory. All that remained now was to put in the prism-projecting Cheops eye, just over the watchtower light, and complete the light fixture itself. Behind her, Simovic and Hoon continued their plotting, as though they had been at it ever since she had left yesterday. And who knew? Maybe they had.

  Hoon continued with her seemingly inexhaustible list of questions: “Our personnel—the ones who will gather the children, and the ones who will convey them to the rendezvous point—do any of them, well...‘know?’”

  Simovic shook his head. “No. They have the necessary timetable, coordinates, and orders, but no knowledge of who our clients are or why we are engaging in this trade.”

  “Which is scheduled for when?”

  Simovic looked at the digital timecode embedded in the ticker bar of his media-monitoring flatscreen. “Two hours.”

  “Short notice,” Hoon commented.

  “True. But it’s really quite logical. Even if they trusted us—which they have no reason to do at this point—they have no way of knowing if our communications are secure. Maybe Bloc naval forces have hacked our cipher, know when and where to expect our clients, and will set up an ambush. No, our clients’ prudence is a good sign; it means they are not rash—and after all, we will need these new partners to be very discreet indeed.”

  Elnessa looked over toward the two of them. “Mr. Simovic,” she called.

  “Yes, Ms. Clare?”

  “Could you please have your security people pull the fuse for the power conduits all along this wall?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I need to finish wiring the lights.”

  “Can’t you leave the power on while you do it?”

  “Only if I want to take the risk of electrocuting myself.”

  Elnessa noted Simovic’s hesitation. It didn’t arise from any sense of suspicion—that was manifestly clear—but rather from the inconvenience of her request. Her safety was almost beneath his concern, especially at this particular moment. However, he ultimately signaled his annoyed acquiescence to the guard at the rear of the room, who left to comply with the request.

  A moment later, the lights glaring down upon the frieze, along with the rest of the devices which drew their power from outlets along that wall, shut down.

  Elnessa nodded her thanks, and limped over to the watchtower, the Cheops eye in hand. She emp
laced the round, vaguely Pharaohic piece of multi-hued crystal just above the pointed roof of the watchtower.

  Then, picking up the bulb that was to be the watchtower’s lamp, she set it down on the section of the clay ‘wall’ next to the tower, and inspected the two small alligator clips grinning toothily up at her from just beneath the rim of the passage she had bored lengthwise in the tower. She stuck her finger in between the leads, widening the hole slightly, and then buried the two clips side by side into the dense matter surrounding them.

  She went to check the switch that provided the manual control for all the lights in the frieze. It was, as she had left it, in the “off” position.

  She turned to face Simovic. “It is finished,” she announced.

  “Hmmmm…what?”

  “I said, ‘it is finished.’ Can you please have the power restored to this wall?”

  Simovic and Hoon looked up: he surprised, she bored and impatient. He nodded for the guard to go restore the power, and then stood straighter, scanning the length of the frieze. Elnessa detected surprise and gratification: despite the fact that she had spent the last two months crafting it literally under his nose, he had never truly examined it until now. Simovic cleared his throat. “That is really...”

  “...really quite good,” Hoon finished, with an approving nod-and-pout, and a tone of voice that sounded like a grudging concession. Then she was turning back to her documents and data-feeds.

  “But you have not seen it all,” Elnessa said.

  Hoon looked back up, Simovic smiled faintly. “No?” he asked.

  “No. Several elements light up, and can be set to show different times of the day. The sun light is here, and small spotlights are embedded here and here to make the city roofs gleam during the day mode. These other lights—inside the blue acrylic—make the water seem to ripple and churn.”

  “And at night?”

  Elnessa turned on the switch. “The city’s watchtower burns a faint, but steady amber, guiding lost travellers to shelter on dark nights and in dark times. And all the while, the great prismatic eye of Cheops judges the worthiness of those within the city, and without.”