What could go wrong?

JACK.

We're not worried about the rocket. Just its attachment to the artifact.

RUSS.

It's the irresistible force versus the immovable object.

JACK.

We know the thing's ma.s.s; we know the properties of the sand it's resting on. The rocket generates plenty enough thrust to do the job.

RUSS.

The only problem is the attachment between the rocket and the artifact. If the collar that connects them breaks ... we'll need another approach.

MALLORY.

And the rocket goes screaming into the center of town there?

Telephoto zoom from the rocket's POV: straight into Aggie Grey's.

JACK.

No, there's an automatic shutoff if the rocket suddenly feels no resistance. It might go fifty or a hundred feet.

MALLORY.

But if it doesn't work?

JACK.

Glorious Wonder carries a lot of insurance.

RUSS.

A lot of people in Apia are off visiting relatives in the country. I think I would be, too.

A loud whistle blows.

JACK.

That's the ten-minute warning. You might want your cameraman out of there.

Mallory stands up and looks through the gla.s.s.

MALLORY.

They're gone. Just the camera attached to the booster.

RUSS.

I hope it doesn't give you anything too interesting.

MALLORY.

Have to agree, for once.... So this has to be some artifact from outer s.p.a.ce.

RUSS.

Well, you know as much about that as we do. It could possibly be the result of some natural process we've never encountered before.

JACK.

Though its density makes that unlikely.Or inexplicable.

MALLORY.

It's very ancient.

RUSS.

The coral it was embedded in was old before there were any primates resembling humans.

MALLORY.

So you don't think much of the "lost weapon" theory?

JACK.

Bulls.h.i.t.

RUSS.

You do have to wonder how it got there, if it's an old Soviet or American device. If we'd just found it lying someplace, sure, that would be the first a.s.sumption. But it was below below million-year-old coral. million-year-old coral.

MALLORY.

So maybe they hid it there?

RUSS.

You'd have to ask why. I'd want to hide it in my own country.

MALLORY.

Have the Russians or Americans contacted you?

JACK.

Sure.

RUSS.

We don't want to talk about that. Yet.

Screen changes to an aerial view with countdown superimposed. A 360-degree pan shows all the military helicopters watching. At ten seconds, it zooms in on the artifact. A laconic voice offscreen counts down.

VOICE (OFF).

Ten.

JACK.

(rising) About time.

The three of them move to the window to watch. A split screen adds an aerial view. The voice counts down to zero.

The Chinese rocket ignites, its exhaust churning billows of steam in the sea behind it. For long seconds, as the noise increases to a banshee scream, it doesn't move. Then the artifact lurches and moves slowly, then faster, up the guide rails toward the metal cradle that will be its resting place. A camera by the cradle shows it fall into place with a jarring crash, just as the rocket goes silent.

RUSS.

Textbook. Those Chinese are pretty d.a.m.n good.

JACK.

Glad they're on our side. For the time being.

- 10-.

San Quillermo, California, 1932

The Berrys had to admit that Jimmy was unmanageable, and quietly had him committed to St. Anthony's, a private insane asylum.

It was a valuable change of venue. The drugs the changeling was compelled to take by mouth or injection were metabolically insignificant. The shock treatments, where they wrapped you in wet sheets and splashed you with buckets of ice water, were gently stimulating to a creature who could live on Mercury or Pluto.

But the changeling was surrounded by extremes of human behavior, in both the patients and their attendants, that it would never have seen at the mansion. It learned more in its first week than it had in months of cossetted coddling.

The guards were brutal and stupid. If the changeling did anything outside of a certain range of behaviors, they would wrap it in a strait-jacket and throw it in the rubber room.

It came to understand coercion and confinement. It could have slipped out of the straitjacket, prefiguring Plasticman, and kicked down the door like Superman. But there would be no education in that. It submitted to beatings and rapes-rich pretty boy who can't tell on you. It learned something like sympathy for Dutch, though pain was just input to it, and humiliation was not yet in its emotional range.

It listened to the other patients when they had social time together. That it responded in monosyllables, sometimes bizarre, went unnoticed. In fact, it was getting a slow, and somewhat skewed, version of the learning process that a human child would go through. It "grew up" by observation and a.s.similation.

A large part of the puzzle was human linguistics, and the ultimately related problem of mimicking human thought processes. It took two years, but by the time "Jimmy" was twenty, no one was beating or raping him. He was moved into a clean, quiet part of St. Anthony's, and after awhile was allowed to have visitors.

His parents were so glad to see him acting "normal" that they overlooked the fact that he didn't act like Jimmy at all. He was released into their care.

The changeling had a.s.similated a wide range of behaviors, and a fairly sophisticated sense of which was appropriate at which time. To the Berrys, their son had become quiet and dignified and perhaps a little shy, which was a real advance over the brutal sodomist they'd tendered to St. Anthony's.

The changeling played piano for hours at a time, and it also spent a long time just watching the sea. It knew it was being observed and evaluated, this time by amateurs, and could deliver a nuanced performance.

It had learned how to simulate the behavior of a teenager who had been troubled, but now was on the road to recovery. It had seen that that was the only way to get out of St. Anthony's and move on to the next stage of development.

This was the most complex creature it had ever imitated. Its successes gave it a pleasure like joy.

-11-.

Apia, Samoa, 2020

Once the artifact was seated on its pad, a gang of workers paid extra for speed and overtime began building the laboratory around it. The government moved in before the drywall was up.

Halliburton and Russell had come down from their hotel lunch to take a look at the building's progress. They crossed over the moat on a makeshift bamboo bridge and let a supervisor show them around the place. He claimed they could begin moving in equipment in four days; the trim and painting would be done in five. That was better than they'd contracted for.

When they started to go back, there was a man in a white tropical suit waiting on the other side of the moat, an uncomfortable-looking guard at his side.

"Mr. Halliburton, he-"

Halliburton cut him off with a gesture. "Who are you and who are you working for?"

"Dr. Franklin Nesbitt," he said, "chief of NASA Advanced Planning." He was a tanned muscular man with close-cropped white hair who stood absolutely still, except for offering his hand.

Russell took it. "We've had correspondence."

"Of a sort," Nesbitt said. "You basically said that whatever I was selling, you weren't buying."

"That's still true," Halliburton said. "You have no jurisdiction here."

"Nor claim any. But I have an offer you might find interesting."

"No, you don't. You've come a long way for nothing."

"Jack," Russell said, "we can at least be civil." To Nesbitt: "They're serving tea at the hotel. It would be nice to talk to somebody who isn't a reporter." He called ahead while they walked to the Jeep, and by the time they got to the hotel their private dining room was set with crisp linens and heavy silver.