by Nancy Kress
“The Gift Givers told us that they come from a distant galaxy. They say they have important business here in our galaxy. They’re waiting for somebody...or something...and while they’re waiting, they decided to help the boon phylums―”
“The what?” Jason said.
The Santa look-alike smiled. “The boon phylums are a number of younger races like humanity, who have been stuck in their own solar systems—trapped by the speed of light restrictions of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity—until the GGs helped them out. Just like us. And here is the ‘thing’ as you’d put it: they gave interstellar teleportation to all of the candidate races—the boon phylums—at the same time.”
“Whoa,” Jason Ramsey said. “That’s set off a… a mad rush for the stars. Kind of like the Wild West, huh?”
“Or the Oklahoma Land Rush,” Sharon cut in before falling silent, surprised at her nerve at speaking up. Jason didn’t glare at her for interrupting. Instead, he rewarded Sharon with an encouraging smile—that rather embarrassed her.
“Very good historical parallels,” answered the buff Santa. “The GGs told us we’d soon meet other alien races in our galaxy. And we did. Shortly afterward, some of those alien races started arriving in our own solar system through sally-ports. From them, we learned a little more about the Gift Givers. They―”
Suddenly da Vinci appeared in one of the empty chairs around the table. Just appeared there. Wasn’t he supposed to be taking care of Tara? But, no, it wasn’t da Vinci after all. It was a transparent three-dimensional image of da Vinci―what Dr. Cee had called a “PP.” It was here to listen and communicate while da Vinci was someplace else.
Dr. Santa Claus didn’t miss a beat because da Vinci’s PP had materialized. “―help alien races to become super-races, with powers we only dreamed of before now. Powers―”
“Dreams are powerful omens,” Jofrid said unexpectedly. “A good dreamsayer can give advice of gold.”
“Indeed.” Dr. Cee smiled.
Jason said, “Powers? The Gift Givers promised to give humans powers? Like what? What are we talking here, flying faster than a speeding bullet? X-ray vision? Getting invisible? What could be bigger than Interstellar travel and the ability to roam the stars?”
Dr. Orgel said. “Telepathy. Self-healing. The secrets of immortality.”
“Good heavens!” Sharon said aloud despite herself.
Jason said, “So what’s the problem? Sounds good to me. These Gift Givers show up, hand out the goodies like Christmas morning, and―”
“No,” Dr. Orgel said. “We have to earn the gifts.”
“Well, okay,” Jason said reasonably. “That’s fair. No pain, no gain, right? So what do you got to do to get the goodies?”
“That’s just it,” Dr. Cee said. “We don’t know. The Gift Givers won’t tell us.”
“They won’t tell you?” Jason said. “An exam where the teacher won’t tell you the questions?”
“Our best philosophers think that’s part of the test. Da Vinci, give them the background data. Short version, please.”
The robot―or the transparent representative of the robot―spoke. It was weird to see the wall through him while he answered.
“The Gift Givers are pretty vague, but we’re reasonably sure that there are Nine Steps a new race must achieve before it gets to move on to the next level.”
“Next level?” Jason said.
“Races on that level get the super-technologies I mentioned before. Plus, maybe they get the right to take part in whatever the Gift Givers themselves are waiting for. Maybe.”
It didn’t seem to Jason that Dr. Orgel knew very much for sure. Still, Jason nodded. “Okay, when we get through all Nine Steps, it’s like Graduation Day. So, what are these Nine Steps?”
“The human race has fulfilled the First Step: We have colonized our own solar system. In other words, we graduated from our nursery―Earth―without blowing ourselves up. Our reward was to get the sally ports to the stars…and then a human genius figured out how to use them to grab selected individuals out of the past for brief visits to our time.”
“Yanking. Huh. That’s almost as big as interstellar travel…but we’ll get back to that later. Go on, please.”
Sharon stared at Jason, who seemed to be engaged in a subtle process of taking over this meeting called by adults of the twenty-fourth century.
“Our best philosophers think the Second Step is demonstrating the initiative in advancement. In other words, the Second Step is going after the Third Step without waiting for it to be handed to us.”
“No standing on the sidelines and whining,” Jason said. “Yeah, good. Sounds like my basketball coach.”
Sor said politely, “He sounds like a wonderful man.”
Jason said playfully, “You brown-nosing, Sor?” Sharon knew it was the kind of thing guys said to each other when they were buddies, but Sor just looked confused.
Da Vinci continued. “Humans therefore have made every effort to find out for ourselves what the Third Step is. So far, we’ve failed, but then a complication occurred. The Gift Givers, you see, are also allowing other alien races to proceed through the Nine Steps. And while humanity would like to cooperate with the aliens, sharing whatever we discover, not all the alien races feel the same. In fact, two races in particular have turned out to be quite threatening.”
“Here it comes,” Robbie spoke up. “The barmy rivals.”
Jason nodded. “Competition time.”
“Yes,” da Vinci said. “These two races are the… Sharon, may I give the baby a chofflin?”
Sharon, startled, asked, “A what?”
Dr. Orgel looked at Dr. Oa. “I told you there were still some bugs in the translation devices!”
Sor looked at Sharon and said kindly, “A chofflin is a sweet sugar-based edible with no nutritional value but of considerable pleasure.”
“Candy?”
“Data bank search, arcane languages. Yes. Candy. A ‘lollipop.’”
“Sure,” Sharon said.
“Thank you,” da Vinci said. “Now, as I was saying, the two races who regard themselves as unfriendly rivals of humanity are the Devlin and the Panurish. The Panurish won’t talk to us. Not even one word. But when a human ship moved close to a Panurish ship out beyond the solar system, they vaporized it. No warning, no discussion. They just vaporized it.
“And that was that.”
Chapter Five
“Vaporized the ship?” Jason asked after a stunned silence. “Like, fried it? Killed everybody on board?”
“Yes.”
Jason tried to imagine what it would be like to be vaporized in a single moment―to just no longer exist. Gone. Nada. Zilch.
Jofrid said quietly, “Very bad magic. The first law is hospitality. No stranger who comes to the homestead must be turned away.”
“To the Icelandic in 987, yes,” Dr. Cee said. “But obviously not to the Panurish now.”
“Dangerous dudes,” Jason said. “They the problem now?”
“Yes,” da Vinci said. “But first a bit more background, please. When the Gift Givers first gave us sally ports and t-ports, it was a very confused time. For one thing, the Oort cloud of comets, which surrounds the solar system, was badly disturbed. Many comets fell on the planetary, lunar, and asteroidal cities of the United Solar System, causing widespread damage. Also, humanity didn’t understand the new technology very well, and the Gift Givers don’t explain. That’s not their way. Some foolish things were done. For instance, humanity tried to send whole spaceships through to colonize new planets.”
Jason said, “So what’s wrong with that? A ship won’t go through a sally port?”
Dr. Cee said somberly, “A ship will go through a sally port just fine, but adults cannot.”
Sharon gasped. “You mean the ships went through the port to another planet, but everybody died?”
“Everybody over about age sixteen,” Dr. Cee said, which fit with what da Vinci had already told
Jason. Something else didn’t fit, though. Sor looked extremely upset about what Dr. Cee was saying, even though he must have known all this before. Not good, Jason thought. He didn’t need an oversensitive wimp on his mission.
“The children of the colony ships probably survived,” da Vinci said, “but of course, none of them had been trained to operate ship equipment. They hadn’t even finished their level eta studies. So we lost contact with those ships. We―”
“How many ships of kids are there out there someplace?” Jason interrupted. “Or―what did you call them? Lost colonies. How many shipfuls of kids on planets you can’t contact?”
“Nine. We’ve restored contact with two, so far. Now we think we can reach one of the others.”
Jason suddenly stood up. “I’m feeling like I need to stretch before I take in any more. The rest of you feel like that?”
One by one, all the kids stood and stretched as Jason did. It did feel good, but what Jason really wanted was time to absorb all this stuff. After all, three hundred fifty years had gone by! Even in school, the history book chapters only asked you to take in a couple of decades at a time. Three hundred fifty years was a stretch.
“Okay,” he said when they sat down again. “Let’s wrap this up. Da Vinci, how are the Panurish connected to the lost colony? Give me the short form. You got seventy-five words, my man.”
Da Vinci was silent for a minute. Then he spoke.
“Friendly aliens called Silb’anhurteara trade with us. They traded a communication cube that was shot into space by the colony ship to planet Jump just before the captain died. The Silb’anhurteara found the cube. The message said the information about Step Three was on Jump, but now we’ve learned that Panurish just t-ported to Jump. We need to get that second communication cube with the Step Three explanation before the Panurish do.”
“Seventy-four words,” Sor said. Jason was less interested in the exact word count than in the stupendous meaning.
“You want to send us to Jump,” Jason said. “To bring back this cube-thing with the Step Three play code on it, right?”
“Yes,” Dr. Cee said. “If there were any other way, we wouldn’t put you Yanks at risk. But there isn’t any other way. And we must have that communication cube before the Panurish get it!”
“And I take it you’re under special time pressures. Why don’t you just use your time machine—“
Sor interrupted. “It isn’t a ‘time machine.” We can ‘yank’ individuals out of the past and put them back. We cannot go back in time ourselves.” The twenty-fourth-century boy sighed. “Right now, the issue is that there is a window to port over to Jump only for ten minutes every twenty hours or so. We face one window in less than seventy minutes and must decide…do we try for it and forego almost all your training, or wait a day and teach you a cram course of vital information, but arrive possibly…probably…too late.”
Jason rubbed his jaw. “Hm, I get your hurry now. All right.” He glanced at the other ancient teens, who nodded one by one. Better a rushed chance of success than no chance.
“Still, we’ve got an hour. Before we take off for Jump, can we listen to the other communication cube? From that ship captain who kicked the bucket?”
Dr. Cee hesitated. Dr. Oa said, “It’s a little upsetting to watch. People dying in front of your eyes...”
Robbie said suddenly, “I seen three hangings. The last one was Black Jack Allen. Highwayman. His face turned purple and he bit off his tongue, lollin’ out of his mouth like it was, black as bear’s blood.”
Sor turned pale. Robbie sat there grinning and casually scratching his head. Dr. Orgel said, “Bring the cube.”
Da Vinci did, taking the cube right out of the solid wall it seemed to Jason. How did these people do that?
Da Vinci set the communications cube in the middle of the table. It was small, only about four inches on a side, and bright silver. How could anybody see any detail on such a small TV screen? Jason wondered.
He needn’t have worried. The moment da Vinci said “Activate,” a large transparent figure leapt out of the cube. Jofrid gasped and made a sign to ward off evil spirits. Robbie threw up one arm to shield his eyes and ducked under the table. But after a moment, Jason saw it was only more light projections, like the PP’s. No―more like some high-tech three-dimensional movie where you could view the action from all sides.
Robbie came out from under the table.
The projected figure was a man in some sort of uniform. His face was mottled with red marks, and he spoke as if he were in great pain.
“Cycle six, day eight, year 2331. This is Captain Lej Cho Kenara of the United Solar System ship Discovery, bound for the potential colony world Jump. I am dying. I send this cube into space back along our orbit parameters in the hope it will go back through the sally port and reach Earth. We landed a few minutes ago. All adults aboard have died or are dying. Only our children seem unaffected. Listen carefully: apparently, adults cannot use sally ports! I continue to be conscious only because my medical implants are firing like mad to keep me…”
Captain Kenara winced as if under attack by savage agony. He shook his head.
“But there is something else.
“A Gift Giver ship…met us just beyond the sally port. A Gift Giver came aboard. He―she, it, I don’t know―said they will land this ship on Jump so our kids will have a chance to live, but they will not stay or return the kids to Earth. They said that’s...not their way.”
The man was growing visibly weaker. His eyes rolled back in his head. Jason had never seen anybody die except on TV, but this was no actor. This was the real thing.
“No time,” Captain Kenara gasped, his facial muscles twitching as if spurred by electric shocks, yet he kept on. “But Giver told...me...what the Third Step is. In order to ‘right the balance for the young.’ I recorded Step Three. Just...finished. Won’t send with this...too dangerous. Please come to…”
With a sudden cry of sheer agony, Kenara’s body arched and twisted. Then he slumped to the floor.
Suddenly the perspective widened. Jason saw a huge room with dead adults sprawled over chairs and on the floor. A small child tugged at a corpse and cried, “Mommy! Please, Mommy!”
Then the image disappeared and the small communications cube sat, silent and shiny, in the middle of the conference table at Edge Station.
Nobody spoke for a long time.
Finally, da Vinci said, “That was six years ago.”
Jason said, “Okay, we got it. Our job is to find this second cube with Step Three on it before the Panurish find it and get powers before humanity, ‘cause then they might fry us globally. Let’s go.”
“Wait!” Dr. Cee said. “I know time is of the essence, but―”
“You bet your sweet point spread it is,” Jason said. “Let’s sally.”
“―but we still need a formal decision from each of you about whether you accept this mission! We don’t want to force anybody!”
“Fair enough,” Jason said. “I’m revved to go. What about the rest of you? Anybody want to bail? Sor?”
“I accept the mission,” Sor said. He still looked pale from viewing the deaths aboard the Discovery.
“Jofrid?”
“It was foreseen that I would go on a noble and dangerous quest. I dreamed it. You all claim you are not gods, but men. In that case, I will proudly help you.”
That must have been some dream, Jason thought. Aloud he said, “Sharon?”
“Yes. We…I’m going.”
“Robbie?”
“Ain’t nothing cow-hearted about Robbie, guv’nor.”
“Da Vinci?”
Da Vinci said, “I am programmed to accompany this team.” The robot sounded startled to be asked. “There are other matters…more details—“
“Sor can fill us in, while we’re on the move, right Sor? You’re our ‘present-day’ expert?”
When the twenty-fourth-century youth nodded, Jason stood up. “That’s it, th
en. We’re all in. Lead us to the sally port, Dr. Cee. It’s tip-off time.”
Sharon was stunned. Not by the overall situation. It was amazing how well she had adapted to all that from the very instant the tunnel “yanked” her into this far-forward time. These people claim to know a lot about me that I don’t know. That I have…talents and this “grit” stuff I never saw in myself before. Well, what teenager really knows what she’s capable of over the long haul? I guess I can see it…and it’s good to know.
Of course, that meant that Rose-of-Sharon must have done something later in life to merit respect from people, even three centuries downstream. Maybe not something hugely famous, but worth recording and remembering. And so must Jofrid…and Robbie…and Jason.
She wasn’t at all surprised by that! Jason was like a force of nature. Confident and take-charge to a degree Sharon found both exciting and…well…kind of offensive. There are all sorts of questions we could have asked…should have asked…even if it delayed departure by half an hour.
Oh, these future folk certainly seemed trustworthy, or else Sharon would never be leaving her little niece in their care. Frankly, they seemed to have a better civilization than any of the popular movies of her time even imagined, in a future that was worth fighting for. And if I can help, sure. I can find that worth fighting—maybe dying?—for. As long as they take care of Tara.
Still, her mind roiled with worries and fretful angles that could be important.
Like how are they gonna put us back in our own time when it’s all done? Won’t we know too much about the future?
And I still don’t get why they needed us! Us primitive ancestors. Why they need me.
And now all those questions would have to wait. Maybe for good reason! Maybe they couldn’t even spare another hour. Sure. Jason was big, charismatic, brilliant, confident…a clear leader, and Sharon felt determined to not let him down.