"Don!” she called, her voice dry. “Don, come here!"
He had gone into the kitchen to make coffee—decaf, of course; it was all Dr. Bonhoff would let either of them have these days. He shuffled into the living room, wearing a teal cardigan over an untucked red shirt. “What?"
She gestured at the monitor. “My ... goodness,” he said softly. “How'd it get here?"
She pointed at the screen. Partially visible behind the strange head was their driveway, which Carl had shoveled before leaving yesterday. An expensive-looking green car was sitting on it. “In that, I guess."
The doorbell rang once more. She doubted the being pushing the button was actually getting impatient. Rather, she suspected, some dispassionate timer told it to try again.
"Do you want me to let it in?” asked Don, still looking at the picture of the round, blue face, with its unblinking eyes.
"Um, sure,” Sarah said. “I guess."
She watched as he made his way to the little staircase leading to the entryway, and began the slow pilgrimage down, one painful step at a time. She followed him and stood at the top of the stairs—and noted that one of her grandkids had forgotten a colorful scarf here. By the time Don reached the door, the bell had sounded a third time, which was the maximum number it was programmed to allow. He undid the deadbolt and the chain, and swung the heavy oak door inward, revealing—
It had been weeks since Sarah had seen one in the flesh—not that “in the flesh” was the right phrase.
Standing before them, gleaming in the sunlight, was a robot, one of the very latest models, she guessed; it looked more sophisticated and sleeker than any she'd seen before.
"Hello,” the robot said to Don, in a perfectly normal male voice. It was about five-foot-six: tall enough to function well in the world, but not so tall as to be intimidating. “Is Dr. Sarah Halifax in?"
"I'm Sarah Halifax,” she said. The robot's head swiveled to look up at her. Sarah suspected it was analyzing both her face and her voice to make sure it was really her.
"Hello, Dr. Halifax,” the robot said. “You haven't been answering your household phone, so I've brought you a replacement. Someone would like to talk to you.” The robot raised its right hand, and in it Sarah could just make out a clamshell datacom.
"And who might that be?” she asked.
The robot tilted its head slightly, giving the impression that it was listening to someone somewhere else. “Cody McGavin,” it said. Sarah felt her heart skip a beat; she wished she'd actually been on the staircase, instead of just above it, so she could have grabbed the bannister for support. “Will you take his call?"
Don turned to look at Sarah, his eyes wide, jaw hanging slack.
"Yes,” she said.
The word had come out very softly, but the robot apparently had no trouble hearing her. “May I?” it asked.
Don nodded and stepped aside. The robot came into the entryway, and, to Sarah's astonishment, she saw it was wearing simple, stylized galoshes, which, in a fluid motion, it bent over and removed, exposing blue metal feet. The machine walked across the vestibule, its heels clicking against the old, much-scuffed hardwood there, and it easily went up the first two steps, which was as far as it had to go to be able to proffer the datacom to Sarah. She took it.
"Flip it open,” the robot said helpfully.
She did so, then heard a ringing through the small speaker. She quickly brought the device to her ear.
"Hello, Dr. Halifax,” said a crisp female voice. It was a little hard for Sarah to make out; she wished she knew how to adjust the volume. “Please hold for Mr. McGavin."
Sarah looked at her husband. She'd repeatedly told him how much she hated people who made her wait like this. It was almost always some self-important jackass who felt his time was more valuable than anyone else's. But in this case, Sarah supposed, that was actually true. Oh, there might be a few people on Earth who made more per hour than Cody McGavin, but, offhand, she couldn't name any of them.
As Sarah often said, SETI is the Blanche Dubois of scientific undertakings: it has always depended on the kindness of strangers. Whether it was Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen donating 13.5 million dollars in 2004 to fund an array of radio telescopes, or the hundreds of thousands of private computer users who gave up their spare processing cycles to the SETI@home project, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence had managed to struggle on decade after decade through the largesse of those who believed, first, that we might not be alone, and, later, that it actually mattered that we were not alone.
Cody McGavin had made billions by the time he was forty, developing robotic technology. His proprioceptive sensor webs were behind every sophisticated robot on the planet. Born in 1985, he'd been fascinated by astronomy, science fiction, and space travel all his life. His collection of artifacts from the Apollo program, an endeavor that had come and gone long before he was born, was the largest in the world. And, after the passing of Paul Allen, he'd become by far SETI's biggest single benefactor.
As soon as Sarah had been put on hold, music started playing. She recognized it as Bach—and got the joke; she was probably one of the few people left alive who would. Years ago, long before the first Draconis signal had been received, during a discussion of what message should be beamed to the stars, Carl Sagan had vetoed the suggestion of Bach, because, he'd said, “That would be bragging."
In the middle of the concerto, the famous voice came on; McGavin spoke with one of those Boston accents that managed to say “Harvard” with no discernible R sound. “Hello, Dr. Halifax. Sorry to keep you waiting."
She found her voice cracking in a way that had nothing to do with age. “That's all right."
"Well, they did it, didn't they?” he said, with relish. “They replied."
"It seems so, sir.” There weren't many people an eighty-seven-year-old felt inclined to call “sir,” but it had come spontaneously to her lips.
"I knew they would,” said McGavin. “I just knew it. We've got us a dialogue going here."
She smiled. “And now it's our turn to reply again—once we figure out how to decrypt the message.” Don had been moving across the little entryway, and now was climbing the six stairs. When he was all the way up, she held the datacom at an angle to her face so he could hear McGavin, too. The robot, meanwhile, had taken up a position just inside the front door.
"Exactly, exactly,” said McGavin. “We've got to keep the conversation going. And that's what I'm calling about, Sarah—you don't mind if I call you Sarah, do you?"
She actually quite liked it when younger people called her by her first name; it made her feel more alive. “Not at all."
"Sarah, I've got a—call it a proposition for you."
Sarah couldn't help herself. “My husband is standing right here."
McGavin chuckled. “A proposal, then."
"Still here,” said Don.
"Hee hee,” said McGavin. “Let's call it an offer, then. An offer I don't think you'll want to refuse."
Don used to do a good Brando in his youth. He puffed out his cheeks, frowned, and moved his head as if shaking jowls, but said nothing. Sarah laughed silently and swatted his arm affectionately. “Yes?” she said, into the datacom.
"I'd like to discuss it with you face to face. You're in Toronto, right?"
"Yes."
"Would you mind coming down here, to Cambridge? I'd have one of my planes bring you down."
"I ... I wouldn't want to travel without my husband."
"Of course not; of course not. This affects him, too, in a way. Won't you both come down?"
"Um, ah, give us a moment to discuss it."
"Of course,” said McGavin.
She covered the mike and looked at Don with raised eyebrows.
"Back in high school,” he said, “we had to make a list of twenty things we wanted to do before we die. I came across mine a while ago. One of the ones I haven't checked off yet is, ‘Take a ride in a private jet.’”
&
nbsp; "All right,” she said, into the datacom. “Sure. Why not?"
"Terrific, terrific,” said McGavin. “We'll have a limo pick you up and take you to Trudeau in the morning, if that's okay."
Trudeau was in Montreal; the Toronto airport was Pearson—but Sarah knew what he meant. “Fine, yes."
"Wonderful. I'll have my assistant come on, and he'll look after all the details. We'll see you in time for lunch tomorrow."
And the Bach started up again.
* * * *
Chapter 4
It was ironic, now that Don thought back on it, how often he and Sarah had talked about SETI's failure prior to its success. He'd come home one day, around—let's see; they'd been in their mid-forties, so it must have been something like 2005—to find her sitting in their just-bought La-Z-Boy, listening to her iPod. Don could tell she wasn't playing music; she couldn't resist tapping her fingers or toes whenever she was doing that.
"What are you listening to?” he asked.
"It's a lecture,” shouted Sarah.
"Oh, really!” he shouted back, grinning.
She took out the little white earbuds, looking sheepish. “Sorry,” she said, in a normal volume. “It's a lecture Jill did for The Long Now Foundation."
SETI, Don often thought, was like Hollywood, with its stars. In Tinsel Town, having to use last names marked you as an outsider, and the same was true in Sarah's circles, where Frank was always Frank Drake, Paul was Paul Shuch, Seth was Seth Shostak, Sarah was indeed Sarah Halifax, and Jill was Jill Tarter.
"The long what?” Don said.
"The Long Now,” repeated Sarah. “They're a group that tries to encourage long-term thinking, thinking about now as an epoch rather than a point in time. They're building a giant clock—the Clock of the Long Now—that ticks once a year, chimes once a century, and has a cuckoo that comes out every millennium."
"Good work if you can get it,” he said. “Say, where are the kids?” Carl had been twelve then; Emily, six.
"Carl's downstairs watching TV. And I sent Emily to her room for drawing on the wall again."
He nodded. “So what's Jill talking about?” He'd never met Jill, although Sarah had.
"Why SETI is, by necessity, a long-term proposition,” Sarah said. “Except she's skirting the issue."
"You and she are practically the only SETI researchers who can do that."
"What? Oh."
"I'm here all week."
"Lucky me. Anyway, she doesn't seem to be getting to the point, which is that SETI is something that must be a multigenerational activity, like building a great cathedral. It's a trust, something we hand down to our children, and they hand down to their children."
"We don't have a good track record with things like that,” he said, perching now on the La-Z-Boy's broad, padded arm. “I mean, you know, the environment is something we hold in trust and pass on to Carl and Emily's generation, too. And look at how little our generation has done to combat global warming."
She sighed. “I know. But Kyoto's a step forward."
"It'll hardly make a dent."
"Yeah, well."
"But, you know,” said Don, “we're not cut out for this—what did you call it?—this ‘Long Now’ sort of thinking. It's anti-Darwinian. We're hardwired against it."
She sounded surprised. “What?"
"We did something about kin selection on Quirks and Quarks last month; I spent forever editing the interview.” Don was an audio engineer at CBC Radio. “We had Richard Dawkins on again, by satellite through the Beeb. He said that in a competitive situation, you automatically favor your own son over your brother's son, right? Of course: your son has half your DNA, and your brother's son only has a quarter of it. But if things got tough between your brother's son and your cousin, well, you'd favor your brother's son—that is, your nephew—because your cousin only has an eighth of your DNA."
"That's right,” Sarah said. She was scratching his back. It felt very nice.
He went on. “And a second cousin only has one thirty-second of your DNA. And a second cousin once removed has just one sixty-fourth of your DNA. Well, when was the last time you heard of somebody volunteering a kidney to save a second cousin once removed? Not only do most people have no clue who their second cousins once removed are, but they also, quite bluntly, couldn't give a crap what happens to them. They just don't share enough DNA with them to care."
"I love it when you talk math,” she teased. Fractions were about as good as Don's math got.
"And over time,” he said, “the DNA share gets cut down, like cheap coke.” He grinned, delighted by his simile, although she knew full well that the only coke he had experience with came in silver-and-red cans. “You only have to go six generations to get to your own descendants being as distantly related to you as a second cousin once removed—and six generations is less than two centuries."
"I can name my second cousins once removed. There's Helena, and Dillon, and—"
"But you're special. That's why you are interested in SETI. For the rest of the world, they just don't have a vested Darwinian interest. Evolution has shaped us so that we don't care about anything that's not going to manifest soon, because no close relative of ours will be around then. Jill's probably tap-dancing around that, because it's a point she doesn't want to make: that, for the general public, SETI doesn't make sense. Hell, didn't Frank"—whom he'd also never met—"send a signal somewhere thousands of light-years away?"
He looked at Sarah, and saw her nod. “The Arecibo message, sent in 1974. It was aimed at M13, a globular cluster."
"And how far away is M13?"
"Twenty-five thousand light-years,” she said.
"So it'll be fifty thousand years before we could get a reply. Who has the patience for something like that? Hell, I got an email today with a PDF attachment, and I thought, geez, I wonder if this thing is going to be worth reading, ‘cause, you know, it's going to take, like, ten whole seconds for the attachment to download and open. We want instant gratification; we find any delay intolerable. How can SETI fit into a world with that mindset? Send a message and wait decades or centuries for a reply?” He shook his head. “Who the hell would want to play that game? Who's got the time for it?"
* * * *
Chapter 5
As the luxury jet landed, Don Halifax mentally checked off that to-do list item. The few remaining ones, including “sleep with a supermodel” and “meet the Dalai Lama,” seemed out of the question at this point, not to mention of no current interest.
It was bitterly cold going down the little metal staircase onto the tarmac. The flight attendant helped Don every step of the way, while the pilot helped Sarah. Downside of a private plane: it didn't use a Jetway. Like so many of the things on Don's list, this one was turning out to be less wonderful than he'd hoped.
A white limo was waiting for them. The robot driver wore one of those caps that limo drivers are supposed to wear, but nothing else. It did an expert job of getting them to McGavin Robotics, all the while providing a running commentary, in a voice loud enough for them to hear clearly, on the sights and history of the area.
The McGavin Robotics corporate campus consisted of seven sprawling buildings separated by wide snow-covered expanses; the company had lots of ties to the artificial-intelligence lab at nearby MIT. The limo was able to go straight into an underground garage, so Don and Sarah didn't have to brave the cold again. The robot driver escorted them as they walked slowly over to an immaculate elevator, which brought them up to the lobby. Human beings took over there, taking their coats, making them welcome, and bringing them up another elevator to the fourth floor of the main building.
Cody McGavin's office was long and narrow, covering one whole side of the building, with windows looking out over the rest of the campus. His desk was made of polished granite, and a matching conference table with a fleet of fancy chairs docked at it was off to the left, while a long, well-stocked bar, with a robot bartender, stretched off in the o
ther direction.
"Sarah Halifax!” said McGavin, rising from his high-backed leather chair.
"Hello, sir,” said Sarah.
McGavin quickly closed the distance between them. “This is an honor,” he said. “A real honor.” He was wearing what Don supposed was the current fashion for executives: a lapel-less dark-green sports jacket and a lighter green shirt with a vertical splash of color down the front taking the place of a tie. No one wore ties anymore.
"And this must be your husband,” said McGavin.
"Don Halifax,” said Don. He offered his hand—something he disliked doing these days. Too many younger people squeezed too hard, causing him real pain. But McGavin's grip was gentle, and released after only a moment.
"A pleasure to meet you, Don. Please, won't you have a seat?” He gestured back toward his desk and, to Don's astonishment, two luxurious leather-upholstered chairs were rising up through hatches in the carpeted floor. McGavin helped Sarah across the room, offering her his arm, and got her seated. Don shuffled across the carpet and lowered himself into the remaining chair, which seemed solidly anchored now.
"Coffee?” said McGavin. “A drink?"
"Just water,” said Sarah. “Please."
"The same,” said Don.
The rich man nodded at the robot behind the bar, and the machine set about filling glasses. McGavin perched his bottom on the edge of the granite desk and faced Don and Sarah. He was not a particularly good-looking man, thought Don. He had doughy features and a small, receding chin that made his already large forehead seem even bigger. Still, he'd doubtless had some cosmetic work done. Don knew he was sixty-something, but he didn't look a day over twenty-five.
The robot was suddenly there, handing Don a beautiful crystal tumbler full of water, with two ice cubes bobbing in it. The machine handed a similar glass to Sarah, and one to McGavin, and then silently withdrew to behind the bar.
"Now,” said McGavin, “let's talk turkey. I said I've got a"—he paused, and gave the word a special weight, recalling the banter of the day before—"proposition for you.” He was looking at Sarah exclusively, Don noted. “And I do."
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