Alex Benedict 9 - Village in the Sky by Jack McDevitt

Author:Jack McDevitt [McDevitt, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery / Saga Press
Published: 2023-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

I was eating breakfast in the passenger cabin when Robbi Jo came in, carrying an open notebook. She ordered toast and grapes from the generator. The notebook had caught my attention. “What are you reading?”

“Clarence Dingle’s Brilliant Performance and Other Disasters. It’s by Horace Brandon. A collection of short stories.”

“I don’t know him.”

“I wouldn’t have either, probably, except that Chris introduced me to him. He discovered him when he was a kid. Brandon did radio broadcasts in North America thirty years ago. Chris got connected through recordings that an uncle had and became a fan. He’s one of the funniest guys I’ve ever read. Or heard. He does a lot of material about growing up. How when he was a teen, he was scared to ask one of the girls in his class for a date. Anytime he got near her, he froze. Then one day he saw an ad in a kids’ magazine for an electronic hypnotizer that would chase away all fears. A young teen boy’s dream come true, I guess. Anyhow, it didn’t work.”

“I like the title. Is he still broadcasting?”

“No. He was lost on an interstellar flight years ago. The thing broke down and left him stranded. By the time they found him…” She held out her hands.

“Sorry to hear it.”

“I’ve been thinking a bit lately about the real reasons we should probably not be doing things like this.”

“You mean looking for aliens?”

“Yes. And, Chase, I’m not talking about having them follow us home and blow up Rimway. The real dangers are more likely to rise out of ways in which we are seriously different. In which they are better than us.”

“What, for example?”

“How about if they’re substantially smarter we are?”

“That may already have happened.”

“You’re talking about the Ulakans?”

“Yes, Robbi Jo. We got a quick demonstration when they started beating everybody at chess. It’s not so easy to pick that up from books. But I’d be interested in getting a better look at their technology. Or maybe we run into a species with a life span of a thousand years. Or who are virtually immortal. I don’t know about you, but I’d find that annoying.”

“It would cause some jealousy.”

“Or we could find aliens who look like us, only a lot better. A race of people who all look like Gary Landis and Jean Raymond.” Movie stars.

Robbi Jo smiled. “Maybe if we encountered anything like that, we’d learn how mature we are.”

“You think that would be our reaction?”

“I can’t imagine a race that could produce a guy who looks better than Chris. Or a woman who’d leave you and me behind.” She couldn’t resist laughing. “I guess we wouldn’t need to worry about finding anyone more modest than we are. But seriously, suppose we found a species that had simply been around a lot longer than we have, and who have solved all the scientific issues? And they are inclined to hand everything over to us?”

“That would be a problem?” I asked.

“What happens to us when we

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