Suddenly the screen brightened. In a spectacular few seconds, the orange profile warped into a slender funnel, blazing brightly.

"It's ingesting," Kingsley said matter-of-factly. "I suppose it met a tasty rock."

"We knew it had some motivation."

"Note how no one seems very worried? I believe we are all simply too tired for that."

"I wondered if it was just me. I figured I was beyond being surprised anymore."

"I rather hope so."

Benjamin had stacks of work waiting in his office, but once again he gave way to the temptation of just watching. The Eater was moving at nearly a hundredth the speed of light, an incredible velocity. The plasma types had given up hope of explaining how its magnetic fields could withstand the sheer friction of encountering solid matter and ionizing it.

"Something beyond our present understanding is happening right before our eyes," Kingsley murmured. "I have almost gotten used to these routine miracles it performs."

The images coiled into a complex conduit of magnetic fields, etched out in the brilliant radiance of superheated matter. In a few moments, it had destroyed a moon, grazing it just right, so that some matter was sucked in while the majority was thrown away, adding thrust.

A keening note sounded in the room. A fresh signal, high and sharp. "It now sends us codes earmarked for audio playing, once it worked out how our hearing functions," Kingsley whispered.

"It's...weird. Ugly," Benjamin said.

"I believe a proper translation is that it is singing to 'all humanity' as part of its payment for our cultural legacy."

Benjamin studied Kingsley's lean profile in the shadows. "It's like some..."

"We should not impose our categories upon it," Kingsley said crisply.

"Sounds like you've been listening to the semiotics people again."

"Just trying to keep an open mind."

"d.a.m.n it, to me that stuff sounds like, like..."

"A deranged G.o.d, yes."

"Maybe in all that time between the stars, it's gotten crazy."

"By its own account-one we have received, but it is so complex the specialists still can't find human referents-it has endured such pa.s.sages many millions of times."

"So it says."

Kingsley nodded, a sour sigh of fatigue escaping. "And we have come to accept what it says."

The semiotics teams had been feeding it vast stores of cultural information, with some commentary to help it fathom the ma.s.ses of it. Most texts, like the Encyclopaedia Britannica-still the best all-round summary of knowledge-were already available in highly compressed styles. These flowed out and were duly digested.

Material from the sciences encountered no trouble; the intruder hardly commented upon them, except to remark obliquely on their "engaging simplicity." Benjamin took this to be an attempt at a compliment, while others seemed to see it as an insult.

The social sciences came next. These confused the Eater considerably. It asked many questions that led them back to the vocabulary lessons. The Eater did not have categories that translated readily into ethics, aesthetics, or philosophy.

The arts were even harder. It seemed unable to get beyond pictorial methods that were not nearly photographic; abstractions it either asked many puzzled questions about or ignored. In this the Eater seemed to ally with the majority of current popular taste.

"I wonder if it is telling us the truth about anything." Benjamin mused.

Kingsley's mouth tipped up on one end. "Why would it lie? It can stamp upon us as if we were insects."

Benjamin nodded and suddenly felt Kingsley as a fellow soldier in arms, worn by the same incessant pressures.

"Crazy, you said?" Kingsley said distantly. "From the long times it has spent between the stars? Remember, it has been alone all its life. Do not think of it as a social being."

"But it asks for social things, our culture."

Kingsley mused silently, watching the orange signature on the screen creep toward the rim of the gas giant planet, and then said suddenly, "Crazy? I would rather use an Americanism, spooky. spooky."

Benjamin wondered if their speculations had any less foundation than what the semiotics and social science teams said. "I heard a biologist talking at the coffee machine the other day. He pointed out that it may be the only member of its species."

"That makes no sense. We still have no idea how it came to be."

"Something tells me we're going to find out."

"From it?"

"It may not even know."

"Find out from experience, then?"

"Yeah."

The next several hours were as unsettling as anything Benjamin had ever encountered.

The black hole and its attendant blossom of magnetic flux swooped in toward the banded crescent. An air of anxious foreboding settled over the viewers at this meeting between Jupiter-the solar system's great gas giant, a world that had claimed the bulk of all the ma.s.s that orbited its star-and a hole in s.p.a.ce-time that had the ma.s.s of a moon packed into a core the size of a table.

Its trajectory arced down into the vast atmosphere. And in a long, luminous moment, the Eater drank in a thick slice of the upper layers, gulping in hydrogen with glowing magnetic talons.

The audience around Benjamin came to life. Gasps and murmurs filled the room. There were few words and he caught an undertone of uneasy dread.

The image shifted as the bristling glow followed a long, looping flyby. To study life-forms that do exist there, it said. It even sent short spurts of lectures on the forms it found. One of Kingsley's new aides brought word of these messages, printed out from the translators, as they came in.

"Look at the detail," Benjamin read at Kingsley's shoulder. "Balloon life, a thousand kilometers deep into the cloud deck."

"It is teaching us about our own neighborhood," Kingsley said.

"Yeah, along with a few remarks about our being unable to do it."

"Well, that is one rather human trait," Kingsley remarked sardonically. "Plainly it loves having an audience."

"It's been alone for longer than we've had a civilization."

In the next hour, it compared its findings with similar dives into other ma.s.sive worlds it had known.

Data swarmed in. Sliding sheets of information filled screens throughout the Center. Sighing, Kingsley remarked, "Data is not knowledge, and certainly it is not wisdom. What does this mean mean?"

As they watched through a long, laboring afternoon, the swelling magnetic blossom dove and gained ma.s.s-three times. An enormous, luminous accretion disk spread out like a circle around it.

Arno appeared before them, gray and shaken. "We have just registered fresh jets of high-energy emission from it. The atmospheric entries are over. We have a preliminary determination of its trajectory."

They all waited through a confused silence. Arno did not seem able to speak. Then he said, "The...intruder...it has again picked up speed-and is headed for Earth."

Benjamin bowed his head and realized he had known it all along. He turned toward Kingsley and in narrowed, apprehensive eyes he saw the same knowledge.

PART FOUR.

THE MAGNETIC HOURGLa.s.s.

MAY.

1.

She had hoped it was Benjamin, home early with the latest news, but instead the thrumming in the driveway was a package delivery woman. She opened the package to discover-oh, joy!-that the Right to Die Society had targeted her with an offer of a do-it-yourself home suicide kit. The four-color glossy foldout was lovingly detailed.

Their primary product was the Exit Bag, with its "st.u.r.dy clear plastic sack the size of a garbage bag, a soft elastic neckband, and Velcro fasteners to ensure a snug fit, plus detailed instructions for use." Quite a well-done brochure, especially when one realized that they were not expecting a lot of repeat business.

She made a special trip out through the garden to throw this into the trash, heaving it with a grunt of relish. Somehow, in this age of zero privacy, her illness had become a marketable trait. Sickies were usually stuck at home, so they could be targeted. She had hung a chalkboard next to the telephone for messages and when salesmen called she would run her fingernails across it until they hung up. Somehow the sound never had irritated her, so she might as well use the fact to advantage.

She paused in the garden, drawing in the sweet tropical air with real relish, and just for fun punched Benjamin's dartboard backing. The slam of her fists into it was no doubt deplorable, primitive, pointless-and oddly satisfying. The exertion left her panting, head swimming.

As her reward, the world gave her the growl of a car as it spat gravel coming down their driveway. She angled over to greet Benjamin and again it wasn't him. Kingsley unlimbered from his small sports car, one of the tiny jobs that flaunted its fuel economy. His frame was slimly elegant in gray slacks with a flowery Hawaiian shirt.

"I was going by-"

"Never mind, I haven't seen enough of you for days and days," she said with a quick fervor that surprised her. Where's that from Where's that from?

"I had hoped to catch Benjamin. I'm coming back from an emergency meeting in Hilo, held in a ma.s.sive airplane standing on the runway. It would seem that is the new technique for being security conscious, control all access." He gave her a crooked smile. "Good to see you."

"It was more Washington people?"

"And U.N., yes. Lots of frowns, shows of concern, brave speeches. No ideas, of course."

"Any concrete help?"

"They are hopelessly behind the curve. When confronted with something genuinely new, the bulk of the U.N. responds on time scales of years, not hours."

"Is the United States doing any better-really?"

"A bit, but only by standing aside and letting the U Agency operate. You may recall I had something like that in mind."

"Ah, that Brit modesty again. Most becoming."

During the worldwide panic of the last few days, she had been more happy than ever to be on the most isolated island chain in the world. The U Agency had seized access to the Big Island and was b.u.t.toning up the place. The Agency remained mysterious even in action, which kept the media mavens abuzz but information-starved. As nearly as she could judge, with some cryptic remarks from Kingsley, it had emerged as the can-do element in the U.S. government, in collaboration with various allies. Bureaucratic style favored setting up a new agency to actually do things, while the older agencies spent time in turf wars. This stood in the long tradition of the CIA, which begat the NSA, and onward during the late TwenCen into a plethora of acronymed "black technology infrastructure" groups, which then eventually demanded consolidation into the U Agency, with its larger than purely national agenda. Or so she gathered.

"How's the news?" she said with an attempt at lightness, ushering him with body language into the garden.

"We made an enormous public relations error in announcing the time of the Eater's Jupiter rendezvous. I see that now."

"Did we have a choice? Any competent astronomer could calculate it."

"True, but we could have controlled admittance to the large telescopes' images. Perhaps even prevented the visual media from getting close-ups of what it did to Jupiter."

"Don't blame yourself. It would come out-h.e.l.l, every amateur with a ten-inch telescope could see see the flares." the flares."

The later stages of the Eater's devouring had been heralded by the bright jet behind it, lancing forth like a spear pointed backward at the troubled crescent of Jupiter.

Kingsley sighed, collapsing into a lounge chair. "And now everyone wants to know what can it do to Earth."

"And the answer is?"

"As I recall, you first pointed out its ability to scorch our upper atmosphere. I opened with that and it seemed quite sufficient to induce panic among the 'advisers' on that airplane."

"Good to know I'm still useful," she said archly.

"They concluded-big surprise here-that we need to know much more about its thinking and purpose."

"How insightful."

"So the figures from the Air Force and NASA came forward with a new crash program to integrate the cla.s.sified technology with NASA's near-Earth craft."

"Antic.i.p.ating that it will come that close? I suppose we could field some potent ships within, say, the distance to the moon."

Kingsley nodded pensively and she could see him thinking, so she went inside and got some drinks together, including one for Benjamin when he showed up. When she returned, he was still staring into s.p.a.ce but stirred at her approach. He gulped the wine cooler gratefully and said, "After some years at this, I've learned that 'pilot' is a bureaucrat's way of saying two things at once: 'This is but the first,' plus 'we believe it will work, but...' Still, they committed themselves to outfitting new ships, both manned and not, ready within weeks."

"Let's hope we don't need them."

"I suspect we all are suffering from an unconscious fatalism, brought on by weariness-at least on my part. The policy people, as well."

"They aren't used to confronting something this strange?"

"That may be it. In astronomy, the new is delightful, a revelation."