The Gift (26 page)

“I met him at the community center in Pueblo. He started coming in a couple of years ago. I could tell he didn’t want to be there at first, but after a while we became friends.” Jim answered.

“Is that where you two met?” Lisa asked Esther.

“Sort of.” Esther answered with a smile.

“It sounds like there’s a story there. Let’s hear it.” Lisa prompted.

Esther glanced at Jim. He reached across the table and placed his hand over hers as if to tell her she was safe. Taking his cue, Esther elaborated. “You saw the pictures they had me bring, the ones taken of me not long before I joined with Haya, right?”

“Yes. I wouldn’t have believed it was you, but now this,” she said, gesturing toward her own rejuvenated body, “and look at my dad!”

“I am, Honey. I just hope he doesn’t notice too much.”
 

“I’m too busy looking back.” Jim interjected.

“You two are acting like teenagers! Finish your story. You’ve got me curious.”

“Well, like I said, you saw the pictures. I wasn’t much to look at and I was on a lot of medication. Sometimes, I didn’t know what day it was. I guess I was just waiting to die; pretty sure I was going to be alone when it happened. I didn’t have many bright spots in my life, but your dad was one of them. Oh, I never told him that. I figured he’d think I was a fool.” Jim started to say something, but Esther wouldn’t let him. “No, Jim, it wasn’t your fault I was a coward. Anyway, we did speak from time to time. So the center is technically where we met, but I think we really met for the first time when he offered me a gift. He asked me to trust him.” She paused a moment and looked from Lisa to Jim, keeping her eyes on his as she finished. “I already did.”

Jim raised Esther’s hand from the table to his lips and kissed it gently.

“That’s beautiful,” Lisa said, wiping a tear from her eyes.

“I wish that I had known,” Jim said.

“Doesn’t matter now. What matters now is getting back together with Sam and Matt and finishing what we started.” Esther said.

Lisa got up from the table, took a couple of steps to the makeshift kitchen and grabbed the coffee pot. “Would anyone else like a refill?”

“I’ll take one, Angel,” Jim answered. Esther shook her head.

Lisa refilled Jim’s cup before topping off her own. She set the pot back down on the stove and then retook her seat. “I heard from Matt. He said two of Sam’s friends arrived this morning and that with their help the new facilities should be ready enough for us to join them tonight.”

“That’ll be good. This place isn’t bad, but I feel exposed,” Jim replied.

The three of them sat in amiable silence for a while before Lisa asked, “Have either of you spoken with your gifts about what they want?”

“You mean besides helping humanity survive and building a new ship so we can try to do the same for another species?” Jim asked with a grin.

Lisa tried to give him a stern look, but failed utterly. His good humor was contagious. “Yeah, besides saving humanity. No, I’m trying to be serious. When I recovered, I was so grateful I asked Althia how I could thank her. At first she gave me the same answer you just did. I listened to her and it made sense, but it seemed entirely altruistic to me. It just doesn’t seem to me that any form of life can be entirely altruistic and survive. So, I kept asking. It took a while and some probing questions, but I finally got an answer. The gifts want to reproduce. They have the same drive to propagate as any other form of life I’m familiar with. Think about it. What will the gift ship become when it gets to the next planet? Gifts! The gifts’ makers were thorough in implementing their intent to help as many species with individual intelligence as possible. Our incentive is to save our species, which requires us to be altruistic toward a species we know nothing about. The gifts incentive to be altruistic toward us is to propagate!”

Esther was the first to respond. “That’s brilliant. The Makers weren’t just beyond us technically, they appear to have been beyond us ethically.”

“I think I’ve learned a little bit about that, as well. I wanted to understand what the Makers got out of the deal. We wouldn’t expend scarce resources on possibly saving an unknown alien species if we were being hunted to extinction. So, why did they? Althia doesn’t know. I have a few theories that I’m working on. I’m not ready to share them yet, but I did learn something else about the Makers.” Lisa stopped for effect.

This time Jim was the first to speak. “Stop teasing us, Little Bit.”

Lisa smiled. She hadn’t had many interesting adult conversations in the last few years and she was enjoying herself. “The Makers had three genders. For want of better labels, I call them plus, minus and dual. In order for them to reproduce, it required three sets of three. One set had to be a dual, a plus and a minus. One set had to be a dual and two plusses. The last set had to be a dual and two minuses. That’s why their numerical base is nine and I believe it is also why they were not aggressive. To require such a large number to collaborate, and love one another, in order to reproduce necessitated a more cooperative society.”

Jim stared at his daughter appraisingly before he said, “I’d forgotten how smart you are. Must have gotten that from your mother. Good work, Angel! Be sure to tell Sam what you’ve learned. I don’t know how it could help, but I bet he will.”

Captain Johnson finished briefing third platoon, 512th MP Company and the three other members of Web’s gifted team in the early afternoon. The target was two miles south of their rally point. The plan was straightforward. Humvee teams would cover every potential wheeled vehicle route away from the cabin while two squads surrounded the house on foot and establish a perimeter. The four members of Web’s team would then approach the cabin with a little surprise for it’s occupants. Later, they’d get a chance to explain why the cabin looked like it had been abandoned years ago but somehow showed up hot in infrared.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

After feeding Jing-Wei as much as she could eat and encouraging her to drink all the water she could hold, Sam built her a pallet on the tunnel floor while she talked quietly with Chang just out of Sam’s range of hearing. Sam and Chang both knew that Sam could augment his hearing in order to eavesdrop on the conversation, just as they both knew he would not do so. When the couple finished talking, they approached Sam. He held out the gift. Jing-Wei placed both of her hands beneath his. Her hands were shaking slightly. Sam didn’t believe it was from the cold. He carefully placed the gift in her hands. The way she held it reminded him of something, though exactly what eluded him.

“Thank you, Sam. Thank you so much. You don’t know what this means to us,” Jing-Wei said.

Not quite understanding what was going on, Sam settled for, “You’re welcome.”

Chang helped Jing-Wei get settled on the pallet, finally covering her with one of the blankets from Sam’s truck. He remained kneeling by her, his left hand on her head, his right where Sam guessed her covered hand would be. Moments later, when she appeared to fall asleep, Chang stood and turned to Sam. “I thank you too, Sam.”

“Forgive me if it’s personal, but why do you both seem so grateful for her to receive a gift?”

Chang smiled slightly, “I sometimes wonder my friend, how you can be so prescient about some things and so obtuse about others. Can you imagine what a marriage would be like if only one partner had merged with a gift? I can speak with you or any other gifted person on the planet who choses to speak with me just by desiring to do so. If we wish, we can share emotions or memories with greater clarity and precision than would be possible with any non-gifted human. How could I have that with friends, even strangers and not have it with my wife? How would that make her feel over time? But, there is another reason, one that you could not have known. Jing-Wei wants nothing more in life than to be a mother. Until now, she could not have children.”

“I’m sorry, Chang. I had no idea you two couldn’t have kids, and you’re right, I can be obtuse.”

“No need to be sorry. I wasn’t being insulting, or at least that wasn’t my intent. It’s just that sometimes you see so far forward that you lack peripheral vision.”

Sam thought about that before responding, “You may just have found a very polite way to describe one of my greatest flaws.”

“And one of your greatest strengths. Do you understand now why Jing-Wei was so grateful?”

“Yes…but you couldn’t have known I’d have a gift for her. So, why was your decision to come the only logical thing for you to do?”

“I did consider the possibility that your control over the Worldnet could convey some advantage in finding a gift for Jing-Wei, but that was only a pleasant potential. There were two teams I could potentially be a member of, yours or the government’s. The government’s team needed your help to solve the first puzzle put before us, and without your pressure to run the program we would not have been at the landing site in time to communicate with whatever it was that we found there.”

“Wait, what communication are you talking about?”

“As I told you, we have much to discuss. Please allow me to continue explaining my reasons for joining you. I will elaborate on the events at the landing site afterwards.” Chang waited for a response before continuing. Sam nodded. “As I was saying, we would almost certainly not have been at the landing site in time to communicate with what we found there. Without that, we would not have learned of the EG. Without your help, we would not have known what we did not know. In building and running the program, you demonstrated that you understood the need to be bold, to take risks in return for the potential rewards. If such understanding had been present at the landing site, it is possible, perhaps even likely, that a member of our team would have been the first. When I learned that we had squandered that opportunity, I was livid. Not long after that, we learned that you had taken control of the Worldnet. Again, bold, decisive action. There was only one conclusion I could draw: your team was making the right decisions and the team I was on was not. Learning that you are the first just confirms my analysis.”

“Honestly, Chang, I think you’re giving me too much credit. It’s not like I planned all this.”

“You may not have planned it all, but you were willing to quickly accept rational risk. In dealing with these circumstances, that appears to be a winning strategy.”

“We haven’t won yet. Tell me about what happened at the landing site.”

Chang did just that, in great detail. When he finished, Sam said, “It must have been incredible. I would say I wish I’d been there, but then I wouldn’t be here, doing what we’re doing. Speaking of which, I have a problem I’m hoping you can help solve. Of the nine people we need to build the ship, we have seven. I’d like you to think about a man and a woman you could get to join us. We need them as soon as possible and I’m tapped out.”

“I know many people who would love to have this opportunity,” Chang responded.

“While you’re developing your short list, I’d like to hear more about the EG. You said they were working to gain access to it. What does that mean?”

“The program you decoded produced two more videos after you left. I should say, it produced two more after you left and before I did.
 
For all I know, it has produced more since.
 
The second one was brief, and of primary interest to Rui. It explained the change in mass of the arriving gift ships. Because of your actions with the Worldnet, I suspect you already know about that.”

“I do.”

Chang nodded. “But you don’t know anything other than what I’ve told you about the EG?”

Sam shook his head. “No, I don’t. Why?”

 
“I’m just trying to understand the Makers as much as possible.
 
Their actions appear very well thought out, which implies there is benefit to be gained by understanding the constraints they placed on the information made available to different groups within the contacted species.
 
Everything I know about them appears to indicate they placed a very high value on cooperation. Compartmentalizing critical information, keeping some such information even from the first, would seem to make cooperating more difficult.”

“If there’s anything I’ve learned about the Makers so far, it’s that it was not their intent that any of this be easy. They are testing us. I haven’t figured out how that benefits them, but I’m sure it must in some way,” Sam said.

“Agreed.” Chang stood silently for so long Sam almost prompted him to continue. “I’m sorry. Got lost in my thoughts a bit there. As I was saying, there were three videos.
 
The third first showed a crude interface to the EG. It was like a dumbed down Internet search page. The results of a search were not connected to related information. It was, I believe, a tease. We could find the information related to most of the topics we entered, but the results were extremely narrow in scope and the topic had to be precise. We attempted to ask general questions, like “Where is the Maker’s home planet?” but received no response.

“The latter portion of the video first showed a human merging with a gift. It then showed nine merged humans interconnected in some fashion with each other and the analysis cluster. We assumed that represented a superior way to interact with the EG. There was a great deal of excitement. It appeared we had only to gather together the requisite nine merged individuals and we would gain access to the wonders of the universe. Of course, it wasn’t that simple.

“We asked our gifts what we had to do in order to make it work. At first they had no answers. So, we started asking them questions in ways more similar to the way we could retrieve information from the EG in its basic form. That was when we discovered that we and our gifts must learn together. I assume you know what I’m talking about?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.
 
When I first started learning from Adia, it felt like I was becoming a new man. It wasn’t like learning had ever been for me before. It was more like creating a new me, a me with more knowledge, but also a greater understanding of how to use that knowledge. It’s been like that since, though it doesn’t feel quite as astonishing.”