‘Yalta?’ Jane shrugged and looked at the wall images.

  Mel said, ‘So we accept we are doing both. The space projects. Both Zhi’s dark energy warship—’

  Jane opened her eyes wide. ‘A warship? Cool.’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate, Mel,’ Tash said, her smile a little forced. ‘I deal with the press and the media every day. I have to fend off language like that all the time.’

  Mel nodded. ‘OK. Sorry. But actually, as Charlie Marlowe points out, and I agree with her I think, with the Pioneer mission anyhow, we are probably responding to Galaxias in the right way, on one level. Responding with actions, not words, just as the Blink was an action, a communication in concrete form. As opposed to the symbolism of other tokens on the Moon, around the lurker. But on the other hand by allowing the two national rivals to go ahead with their parallel efforts we are sending out muddled signals, to say the least.’

  ‘Then again,’ said a voice from the TV, ‘we are a muddled species, aren’t we?’

  They all turned, startled.

  Wu Zhi, dressed in a blue coverall, was grinning out of a corner of the screen, while muted news images scrolled around him. All against the background of a huge Jones swoosh-and-spaceship logo.

  Jane jumped and waved. ‘Can you see me? Hi, Uncle Zhi!’

  ‘Hi, Jane. Happy birthday, belatedly.’

  ‘You sent me a message on the day.’

  ‘You got that – good. Loving the chocolate moustache look. Is that in at the moment?’

  She laughed, blushed, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  ‘Sorry to bother you. And sorry to hack into your system. You did once give me a key code in case of emergencies, Tash—’

  Tash waved back. ‘Don’t apologise, you idiot. You know you were invited. How’s California?’

  ‘Well, it’s still the middle of Christmas Day here. Dull. Cold. Not as cold as you are. People in this state are saying they miss the Wildfire Years.

  ‘Anyhow, as I was saying, we’re muddled. We aren’t even a single, umm, political bloc, which for all we know may have been a stage of Galaxias’s own evolution into the, the unified entity it seems to be now. We aren’t a unity, like it is. So maybe it’s appropriate that the gestures we make are somewhat contradictory too.’

  Tash shook her head. ‘Zhi. Zhi!’

  ‘At least it’s honest – oh, sorry. What? There’s just enough time delay to be awkward, isn’t there?’

  ‘It’s typical of you, Zhi – we don’t hear from you for months, then you just launch into a lecture on galactic diplomacy. How are you? You, not the Galaxy.’

  A grin, again slightly time-delayed. ‘I’m sorry. You’re quite right. I do get immersed, don’t I? Although you will understand that all this is very personal for me. Which is why my mother encourages me to keep in touch with you guys. You keep me grounded, she says. Sane, in some ways, I would say. Even if we may disagree half the time.’

  Tash grinned. ‘You and us, or you and your mother?’

  ‘I’m not keeping score.’

  Mel said. ‘How is your mother?’

  ‘Busy, I imagine. We don’t have a lot of contact.’

  Mel said, ‘Well, that’s a pity. Sometimes it feels like we’ve all spent the whole year since the Blink just trying to get the Americans and Chinese to talk about it.’

  Zhi grunted. ‘Mostly through me and my mother, in fact.’

  ‘You work with what you’ve got,’ Tash said. ‘I’m sorry if we were manipulative, though.’

  Zhi shrugged. ‘OK. Well, there’s no rush. The deadline is eleven years away. I guess there’s plenty of time to sort it out.’

  That left Tash baffled. Deadline? Eleven years?

  Mel, a veteran of this kind of confrontation, winked at Jane, and silently mouthed, Three, two, one—

  Tash snapped. ‘All right, damn you! You know me too well. What happens in eleven years?’

  ‘We get Galaxias’s response. Possibly.’

  He left that hanging in the air.

  Tash asked at last, ‘Response to what?’

  ‘To our actions since the Blink. Especially our immediate response. You see, we believe that Galaxias and its tech is limited to lightspeed. Remember that? And we also believe from the exoplanet astronomy results that its nearest communications node is at Barnard’s Star. Which is—’

  ‘Five point nine six light years away,’ Jane said briskly. ‘Everybody knows that.’ Then her mouth dropped open. ‘Oh, I see. I think I know what you’re getting at.’

  ‘Right,’ Zhi said. ‘Right. So a message from the Moon lurker will take a bit less than six years to get out there; any response can come no sooner than a further a bit less than six years beyond that. Starting back at the Blink itself, in January, takes us to the end of 2068. A bit less than twelve years after the Blink. So anyhow we have a period of grace before Galaxias can intervene again, at least in terms of responding to anything we’ve done. Makes sense?’

  ‘Makes perfect sense,’ Tash said. ‘While the cat’s light years away—’

  ‘Serena Jones has rounded it down to a decade – like Apollo’s decade to get to the Moon. But she’s planning to get our space shot up and running long before the time is up . . .’ He glanced at something out of shot. ‘Hey, it’s nearly eclipse time. Then I’ll have to run, I’m sorry. Back to work.’

  Jane snorted. ‘At Christmas?’

  ‘We famous astronauts have deadlines to meet. Although they did put a sprig of mistletoe into one of the simulators.’

  Jane frowned. ‘What’s mistletoe?’

  ‘Tell you later,’ Tash said. ‘Zhi . . . Keep in touch. Don’t wait for Easter. Whenever the hell they work out Easter should be. We miss you.’

  Mel murmured confirmation.

  ‘I . . . know. I’m sorry. I guess I’ve been self-absorbed. I did have one hell of a year. Well, we all did. And now I’m hellish busy. But I don’t mean to shut you out. I’ll stay on the line for the eclipse. A minute to go, right?’

  Tash glanced at a clock on the smart wall – it read not quite one fifteen – a screen that was filling up with images of the southern sky now, as the deadline for first contact approached: the moment when the Moon’s edge, seen from the Earth, touched the Sun. Or should have.

  Tash was distracted by glimpses of Antarctica itself. Camera pans, establishing shots, mostly blue sky over white ground, but in some of the images there were bare, rocky stretches where the ice had receded during the climate-crisis summer, and had yet to advance again in the Galaxias winter. There were even patches of green – lichen, maybe?

  Mel murmured, ‘This is a rare event – two total eclipses in a year. Or would have been. The last was 1889, the next will be 2252.’

  ‘“Or would have been,”’ Jane chanted.

  ‘Right.’ Mel smiled. ‘Charlie is down there, you know. On Skythrust, like in January. Over Antarctica. Watching in comfort.’

  Tash grinned. ‘Wouldn’t you sooner be there, rather than shivering in this government-issue hovel?’

  ‘Well, it would have topped and tailed a year that has been – utterly bizarre.’ She reached out for Jane’s and Tash’s hands. ‘No, I’d rather be with you all . . .’

  Jane was watching the timings carried by the straplines under the various copies of the Sun image. ‘Nearly there. A countdown. Three, two, one . . .’

  The Sun’s disc, seen through filtered lenses, was of course unblemished.

  A moment of silence.

  ‘. . . Two, three, four . . .’

  ‘Now I’m wondering why we’re all doing this,’ Mel said. ‘Half the planet losing sleep, waiting for an eclipse that we knew was never going to happen.’

  Jane shrugged. ‘We knew what the scientists were saying. About Earth’s new orbit and all. We just had to see if it was real, that’s all.’

  Zhi just nodded. ‘Exactly, kid. It’s real, all right. I love you all. I have to go.’

  And his image winked out.

  DECADE

  2058–2067

  31

  March AD 2058: Year 2, Winter (English Regularised Calendar) (retrospective dating)

  Tash was enough of a space buff, at second hand anyhow, through her acquaintance with Zhi and Mel, to know what JPL was. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Even where it was, vaguely: somewhere in the hills above Pasadena.

  But she was surprised when she, Mel and Jane got there on a bright March day, and stepped out of their smart bus into a deep, bitter cold that sank into her bones. In California. Jane huddled close to Mel, wrapping her arms around her mother’s torso theatrically.

  Zhi himself was waiting for them, on the inside of the security barrier at the entrance gateway. Evidently self-conscious in face mask, gloves, and NASA-blue astronaut’s jumpsuit – the blue fabric plastered with Jones, Inc. corporate logos – he herded them through the barrier quickly.

  It turned out it wasn’t just good manners that Zhi should come out to meet them in person. As they were put through retinal, fingerprint and DNA scans, he told them brusquely that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, like many government, military and science facilities, had come under random attacks from a variety of post-Blink crazies. It didn’t help, Tash often thought, that both of the world’s leading players, America and China, actually were conducting secretive space projects in response.

  ‘Which is why,’ Zhi said, ‘I have had to come out to validate you in person, in spite of all my other duties. One last human-eyeball verification, dumb as it sounds . . .’

  He led them through a final set of gates, and JPL opened out before them.

  Tash found herself distracted by the sheer oddity of the place. Built around a rough avenue ahead, the site was a jumble of buildings of all apparent ages from rough concrete shacks to sleek modern smartwood. A big steel and glass tower, elderly itself, dominated the site. And the place was busy, busy, drones zipping through the air, people coming and going – though from the look of their city clothes, not to mention their age, she guessed that most were guests for the day rather than workers here.

  Zhi hurried them on. ‘Come on, you’re late. But the President is running late too, so the whole schedule is slipping.’

  Mel and Tash complied obediently.

  But Jane said now as she walked, ‘I can’t believe you lot. The way you’re behaving. Running past all these old – sheds. Here’s Zhi, who is like your oldest friend, and who is going to be shot off into space again – why aren’t you hugging?’

  Mel frowned. ‘Now, Jane. What have I told you about psychoanalysing the adults?’

  Zhi grinned behind his mask. ‘You’re quite right, Jane. But – no hugs today! We’re in lockdown, we astronauts. We are planning at least one deep-space test flight of the technology before the main mission. A crewed flight, I mean. I’m slated for the big job, which might not be for years yet, but you never know – they are only training up a handful of us crew, and assignments can get moved around. They think it’s healthy enough for me to run around in the sunshine like this – the gear I’m wearing is smarter than it looks – but I’m not supposed to come into physical contact with anybody. Even second hand; I couldn’t take a gift off you, for instance.’

  Jane said bluntly, ‘We didn’t bring any gifts.’

  ‘Well, that’s typical. But they are being cautious.’

  Mel smiled. ‘I guess Serena Jones regards all this formality as an unwelcome distraction—’

  ‘Actually not at all,’ Zhi said. ‘I’ve seen her working close up for some months now, remember. And, along with her many other talents, I’m learning she is a master of PR. And she knows its importance.’

  Jane scowled. ‘I know what PR is. Telling people stuff so you can sell them other stuff.’

  Tash had to laugh. ‘Good enough. But what has she got to sell today? I mean, announce. Everybody knows she’s sending off a spaceship at solar escape velocity. And everybody knows you will be on it, Zhi, with the Mars astronauts. She’s said all that already.’

  ‘True enough,’ Zhi said. ‘And I don’t know what she’s got left to say today. She does hold stuff back, so as to grab a little more press attention when she does the reveal. But Serena will have goals she wants to accomplish today – management goals, even political, if not technical. What I do know is that if Serena didn’t think it necessary, this circus wouldn’t be happening at all. But it is a chance for me to smuggle you lot in . . .’

  ‘Show-off,’ murmured Tash. But she was pleased he still felt close enough to have invited them in the first place.

  They walked on, deeper into the compound, but slower. Mel in particular was staring around, increasingly distracted.

  Jane took her mother’s hand. ‘Are you OK?’

  Mel looked down at her. ‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine, honey. It’s just this place. I was always a space buff. I feel like I’ve walked into a movie set.’

  Zhi eyed Jane. ‘So, do you know about this place? There are layers of history here. Do you even know what JPL—’

  ‘Jet Propulsion Laboratory,’ Jane said stiffly, pronouncing the words carefully.

  ‘Right. This used to be a military laboratory, which is why it was set up in the hills out of town – or it was out of town then – in the Arroyo Seco, a dry valley. But times changed. The city spread up the hillside, and this remote location became a select suburb. And then JPL took on the management of early uncrewed space missions for NASA – including the first Pioneers, built at Ames, run out of here. So you have generations of buildings cluttered in here, all different. And then the climate changed and the dry valley wasn’t always so seco any more—’

  Mel said, ‘And here we are just hurrying past it all.’

  Zhi grinned, kindly enough. ‘I’ll take you through the gift shop on the way out. Come on, come on . . .’

  They reached one of the larger modern buildings, a big pillbox with huge clearwood panels, subtly tinted to exclude the still bright California sunlight. A lot of the guest types seemed to be filing in here, Tash saw, passing through more security barriers, watched by a sparse cloud of drones overhead.

  Security agents soon spotted Zhi. They formed a loose escort around him and his party, and walked them.

  And Tash found herself in a kind of welcome lounge, where coffee dispensers crowded for space with displays, evidently of triumphs from JPL’s illustrious past. Spindly spacecraft, like dragonflies, were suspended from the ceiling. And beyond, through open doors, she spotted an auditorium, already filling up.

  Mel pointed out groups of students, mostly mid to late teens, some in school uniforms, looking around, listening to group leaders, or soaking up the displays. ‘For a change, something good Galaxias has done for us,’ Mel said. ‘An upsurge in science studies. These kids are growing up in a new intellectual environment, where we know there is life beyond the Earth, we even think we know it’s intelligent, and think we know its motivation . . . It might be malevolent, but it answers a lot of age-old questions. The Fermi Paradox is resolved, for one. Maybe the next generations are going to be a lot calmer than we are. More rational, like the universe.’

  Tash felt more cynical. ‘Maybe. If that rational agent doesn’t kill us all. Or all the crazies in their response to Galaxias don’t bring everything crashing down . . .’

  Jane, ignoring the models, was drawn to a more prosaic display on one of the tables: heaps of yellowed paper and oddly shaped cards. ‘What’s all this stuff, Mum? These cards with holes in?’

  Mel smiled. ‘Well, that’s what they used to program computers, back in the day. Maybe a hundred years ago. Even computers that controlled spacecraft. One command at a time coded into these little holes, which they would shine light through . . .’

  ‘On cards? . . .’

  ‘Yes, cards!’

  Lee Yamanaka, the President’s science adviser, came gliding across the room, in a bright Hawaiian-pattern blouse, grinning hugely. ‘Good to see you all.’ She shook Tash’s hand. ‘Please send my best regards to Fred Bowles.’

  Tash grinned back. ‘He’ll be watching all this back in Gateshead.’

  Yamanaka glanced over at Jane, almost fondly. ‘Interested in the punch cards, eh? Actually I do often find that in displays like this the young are oddly drawn to the more primitive artefacts. Stuff you can imagine making by hand almost, and yet which enabled us to reach the planets.’

  Zhi nodded. ‘Serena says that. It was how she started herself, making stuff, toy planes and rockets . . .’

  Yamanaka held up a hand, touched an earpiece. ‘The President is scheduled to hook in soon. I’d better take you in. Your seats are reserved, down front. Stay close.’

  She led the way towards the auditorium entrance. Zhi’s party followed, Jane tugging her mother’s hand.

  Near the doors, they merged into a gathering crowd, and had to slow.

  Yamanaka walked with Tash. She said softly, ‘I must say it feels like it’s been a long journey since Blink Day to this. The presentation, at last, of a reasonably constructive response to the event. It has been long for the President herself. I happened to be with her that morning, you know. President Cox. On Blink Day.’

  Tash glanced at her. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’

  ‘One for the memoirs, I suppose. It was before dawn for us, remember. I’d been sleeping over, we were in the middle of routine annual budget-allocation meetings. A secret service agent woke me up and said I was called down to the bunker – which is a situation room in the basement. We were in the Winter White House, in Anchorage.

  ‘President Cox was already there, in a dressing gown. Her Chief of Staff was with her in person, and on the line she had the National Security Adviser, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defence, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Further down the line there were links to the directors of the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security. Oh, and military aides with the Emergency Satchel. The nuclear football. Links to people like some of the big media outlets, the power companies and other utilities. All of that . . .