she wasn’t. Then she was, again: she was flown to Florida, where it was very hot. Then she wasn’t: Norodom Chantaraingsey was to take
her
place.
Ange was flown to New York, and had four days downtime, which she spent vagrantishly, wandering the streets and squares. New York was as crowded as ever—could not, in truth, grow any
more
crowded, the space having long since reached saturation point. But the composition of the crowds seemed different to her. No more than one in three of the conversations she overheard was in English. The manmade canyons echoed and reverberated. At a café she decided to respect the e-acute and ordered herself a latté. She eavesdropped on a woman trying to impress a man with her traveller’s tales. Mars est renommée par ses falaises. Et ses rouges, bien sûr. Silence is the name of the sea. The frontage of St Marks was swarmed-upon by roosting pigeons, to the point where you could no longer see the stone, like an underwater escarpment covered with silver-grey-blue mussels. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you ten thousand times. A
hundred
thousand.
Everywhere she looked she saw people abasing themselves before her: men bending forward to tie their shoes, women leaning over to rest laden shopping bags on the floor. Bowing down. An illusion, though. There was nothing special about
her
. She was as perfectly ordinary as anybody else in the world. And the world itself was perfectly unexceptional, ordinary, banal, in cosmic terms a Copernican un-wonder. She saw rain scorching the river. She imagined sound propagating through space from a pinprick, as through a pinhole. She saw girders speckled with strawberry-coloured rust.
A message came through on her phone: she was on again. So she packed up at the hotel, and went to the airport. But as she waited for the flight back to Florida she got another message: apologies for earlier confusion, in fact she was off again, it was definitely
not
going to be her. She might as well go home.
She went home.
Months followed, and they were summer months. But anticipation made her a stranger in her own house. Looking past the table, on which sat a bowl of unstoned olives, like sloes. Through the window, the garden was pristine. Sunlight possessed it. A cutlass-shaped fir-tree was green as emerald. Like everybody else she watched the
Leibniz
on TV, crewed by twenty people including Chantaraingsey but
not
including her. The extrasolar intelligence, or intelligences, or—who knew
what
they were, or what they wanted—they had approached as close as the Oort cloud, and there they waited, patiently as far as anybody could see, for the
Leibniz
to trawl slowly, slowly, slowly out to the rendezvous. Communication had been intermittent, although the aliens’ command of English was fluent and idiomatic. But most of the questions beamed out at them had been returned with non sequiturs. What do you look like? Where are you from? By what political system do you organise your society? Are you an ancient race of beings? How do you travel faster than light? Do you come in peace? How did you find out about us? Where are you
from
? What do you
look
like?
Fingers are a mode of madness—and toes! Toes? Toes!
What do you mean? Do you mean you don’t
possess
fingers and toes? That the sight of them distresses you? Do you have flippers, or tentacles, or do you manipulate your environment with forcefields directly manoeuvred by your minds? We can wear mittens, if you like. If it distresses you. We can wear shoes on our feet and boxing-gloves on our hands! Not that we wish to box with you ... we have no belligerent feelings towards you at all!
We
love
your fingers and toes! They are adorable! Adorable! But mad.
We don’t understand. We don’t understand! Are we missing some nuance? Can you explain?
We count these ice pieces by the billion, and all of it inert! Every shard.
How far have you come? Have you come very far? Our observations indicate you’ve come at least
her
place.
Ange was flown to New York, and had four days downtime, which she spent vagrantishly, wandering the streets and squares. New York was as crowded as ever—could not, in truth, grow any
more
crowded, the space having long since reached saturation point. But the composition of the crowds seemed different to her. No more than one in three of the conversations she overheard was in English. The manmade canyons echoed and reverberated. At a café she decided to respect the e-acute and ordered herself a latté. She eavesdropped on a woman trying to impress a man with her traveller’s tales. Mars est renommée par ses falaises. Et ses rouges, bien sûr. Silence is the name of the sea. The frontage of St Marks was swarmed-upon by roosting pigeons, to the point where you could no longer see the stone, like an underwater escarpment covered with silver-grey-blue mussels. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you ten thousand times. A
hundred
thousand.
Everywhere she looked she saw people abasing themselves before her: men bending forward to tie their shoes, women leaning over to rest laden shopping bags on the floor. Bowing down. An illusion, though. There was nothing special about
her
. She was as perfectly ordinary as anybody else in the world. And the world itself was perfectly unexceptional, ordinary, banal, in cosmic terms a Copernican un-wonder. She saw rain scorching the river. She imagined sound propagating through space from a pinprick, as through a pinhole. She saw girders speckled with strawberry-coloured rust.
A message came through on her phone: she was on again. So she packed up at the hotel, and went to the airport. But as she waited for the flight back to Florida she got another message: apologies for earlier confusion, in fact she was off again, it was definitely
not
going to be her. She might as well go home.
She went home.
Months followed, and they were summer months. But anticipation made her a stranger in her own house. Looking past the table, on which sat a bowl of unstoned olives, like sloes. Through the window, the garden was pristine. Sunlight possessed it. A cutlass-shaped fir-tree was green as emerald. Like everybody else she watched the
Leibniz
on TV, crewed by twenty people including Chantaraingsey but
not
including her. The extrasolar intelligence, or intelligences, or—who knew
what
they were, or what they wanted—they had approached as close as the Oort cloud, and there they waited, patiently as far as anybody could see, for the
Leibniz
to trawl slowly, slowly, slowly out to the rendezvous. Communication had been intermittent, although the aliens’ command of English was fluent and idiomatic. But most of the questions beamed out at them had been returned with non sequiturs. What do you look like? Where are you from? By what political system do you organise your society? Are you an ancient race of beings? How do you travel faster than light? Do you come in peace? How did you find out about us? Where are you
from
? What do you
look
like?
Fingers are a mode of madness—and toes! Toes? Toes!
What do you mean? Do you mean you don’t
possess
fingers and toes? That the sight of them distresses you? Do you have flippers, or tentacles, or do you manipulate your environment with forcefields directly manoeuvred by your minds? We can wear mittens, if you like. If it distresses you. We can wear shoes on our feet and boxing-gloves on our hands! Not that we wish to box with you ... we have no belligerent feelings towards you at all!
We
love
your fingers and toes! They are adorable! Adorable! But mad.
We don’t understand. We don’t understand! Are we missing some nuance? Can you explain?
We count these ice pieces by the billion, and all of it inert! Every shard.
How far have you come? Have you come very far? Our observations indicate you’ve come at least
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