Identity Theft and other stories (collection)

“Maybe they do it on purpose,” signed Captain Curling-Sixth-Finger. Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed was grateful for the zero gravity; if they’d been on a planet’s surface, Curling-Sixth-Finger would have towered over him, just as most adult females towered over most males. But here, with them both floating freely, the difference in size was much less intimidating.

“Do what?” signed Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed.

“Maybe they cultivate their own predators,” replied Curling-Sixth-Finger, “specifically to keep their population in check. There are—what?” She peered at the binary numbers beneath the blocky drawings. “Six billion of the terrestrial forms? But only a few million of the aquatic adults.”

“So it would seem,” said Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed. “It’s interesting that their adult form returns to the water; on the world of that last star we visited, the larvae were aquatic and the adults were land-dwellers.” He paused, then pointed at the right-hand figure’s horizontally flattened tail. “They resemble the ancestral aquatic forms of our own kind from millions of years ago—even down to the horizontal tail fin.”

Curling-Sixth-Finger spread her fingers in agreement. “Interesting. But, enough chat; there are important questions we have to ask these aliens.”

* * *

Darren Hamasaki had just checked in at the Air Canada booth at the Las Vegas airport and was on his way to the Star Alliance lounge—his trip last year to see the eclipse in Europe had got him enough points to earn entry privileges—when Karyn Jones, one of Mayor Rivers’s assistants, caught up with him.

“Darren!” she wheezed, touching his arm, and buying herself a few seconds to catch her breath.

“What is it ?” said Darren, raising his eyebrows. “Did I forget something?”

“No, no, no,” said Karyn, still breathing raggedly. “There’s been a reply.”

“Already?” asked Darren. “But that’s not possible. Groombridge 1618 is 4.9 parsecs away.”

Karyn looked at him as though he were speaking a foreign language. After a moment, she simply repeated, “There’s been a reply.”

Darren glanced down at his boarding pass. Karyn must have detected his concern. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll get you another flight.” She touched his forearm again. “Come on!”

* * *

Of course, many observatories now routinely watched Groombridge 1618; it was under twenty-four hour surveillance from ground stations, and was frequently examined by Hubble, as well—not that a reply was expected soon, but there was always the possibility that the aliens would send another message of their own volition, prior to receiving a response from Earth. Even so, few in the astronomical community seriously believed the Groombridgeans would ever see the Las Vegas light show, and the United Nations was still debating whether to build a big laser to send an official reply.

And so, Darren saw the alien’s response the same way most of the world did: on CNN.

And a response it surely was, for in layout and design it precisely matched the message Mayor Rivers had arranged to be sent. The aliens were bipedal, with broad, flat tails like those of beavers; Tailiens was a word the CNN commentator was already using to describe them. Their heads sported V-shaped mouths, and arms projected from either side of the head. There was something strange about their abdomens, though: a single column of zero bits—blank pixels—ran down the length of the chest; what it signified, Darren had no idea.

CNN took away the graphic of the message and replaced it with the anchor’s face. “Do you have it on videotape?” asked Darren. “I want to examine the message in detail.”

“No,” said Karyn. “But it’s on the CNN web site.” She pointed to an iMac sitting across the room; sure enough, the graphic was displayed on its screen. Darren bounded over to it. He was still trying to take it all in, trying to discern whatever details he could. In the background, he could hear the CNN anchor talking to a female biologist: “As you can see,” the scientist said, “the aliens presumably evolved from an aquatic ancestor, not unlike our own fishy forebears. Our limbs are positioned where they are because those were the locations of the pectoral and pelvic fins of the lobe-finned fish we evolved from. This creatures ancestors presumably had its front pair of fins further forward, which is why the arms ended up growing out of the base of the head, instead of the shoulders, and …”

Darren tried to shut out the chatter. His attention was caught by the string of pixels beneath the alien figure.

The very long string of pixels …

* * *

The crew of the Ineluctable hadn’t bothered to send an image of a juvenile of their kind alongside the adult; unlike the strange beings they were now communicating with, they had no larval form—babies looked just like miniature adults.