He touched a control surface in the table, calling up a two-dimensional image that floated in the air between us. It showed a recent aerial view of the Hypothetical machines as they inched their way across the Antarctic desert: three featureless boxes accompanied by a half dozen smaller rectangles, objects as bluntly simple as drawings in a high school geometry text. “Over the course of the last week,” he said, “they changed direction. The path they’re now following intersects precisely with our current location.”

The pride he took in this apparent confirmation of Voxish prophecy wasn’t just his own. I had seen the same knowing smile on other faces today.

“These machines, or devices similar to them, have crossed and recrossed all the continents of Earth. Now that we know what to look for we can recognize and analyze their tracks. Evidence suggests they may even have traveled across the ocean floors—that’s not impossible. Our scholars believe they’re mapping the topography of the Earth to a very close approximation.”

“Why would they want to do that?”

“Any answer would be speculative. But think of it, Mr. Findley. These machines are the local incarnation of a system of intelligence that literally spans the galaxy, and they’re coming for us!”

If so, they weren’t in any hurry. The Hypothetical machines were traveling at two or three kilometers per hour over flat land. And they were still more than a thousand kilometers away, out in the windswept Wilkes Basin, with the Transarctic Mountains between us and them. “For that reason,” Oscar said, “we’ve decided to send an expedition to meet them.”

He seemed to expect me to share his delight at this news, as if his enthusiasm was contagious—as it would have been, I guessed, had I been wired into the Network. When I didn’t respond he continued: “Our unmanned aircraft consistently fail to function if they come within a certain distance of the machines. The same may be true of manned vehicles. Therefore we propose to travel to a point outside that radius and proceed on foot.”

“Why, Oscar? What do you expect to happen?”

“If nothing else, we can conduct a passive reconnaissance. Or some sort of interaction with the machines might take place.”

One of the cousins brought us glasses of juice and left us alone again. The evening breeze moved through the open architecture of the house. A window looked aft, and I could see rain falling over distant regions of the tier, gossamer banners of it, far away.

“In any case,” Oscar said cautiously, “we think it would be desirable to have one of the Uptaken on the expedition.”