A Name is revealed, and a Mystery endures

In any case, before they could blink, they were standing in the middle of a huge intersection, surrounded by tall buildings covered in luminous signs. The air was thick with strange smells—exhaust fumes, hot pretzels, something that might have been roasted nuts—and noise. So much noise. Horns honking. Engines rumbling. People shouting. A constant, overwhelming assault on the senses.

The Disruptors in their hands were silent. Not a peep.

Ham Duo shook his. "Hello? Did we break them?"

"Maybe they're sulking," Bill offered. He wasn't complaining. After the Disruptor's constant chatter during their last trip, the silence was almost peaceful. It gave him a chance to look around.

He'd never seen anything like this.

The buildings stretched impossibly high, their surfaces covered in bright colors and moving images—pictures that changed, words that flashed, lights that blinked in patterns he couldn't follow. Giant screens showed people selling things, people dancing, people looking happy in ways that seemed vaguely threatening. Below them, thousands of humans moved in every direction, dodging wheeled vehicles that honked and growled and belched fumes.

The city immediately appealed to him.

The stink in the streets was incredible—a complex mixture of garbage, exhaust, and something sweet he couldn't identify—but after the recycled air of spaceships and the artificial scents of computer simulations, it felt almost honest. Real. People here lived in their own filth and didn't pretend otherwise. He respected that.

What he didn't like were the numerous little piles left by dogs. He discovered this approximately three seconds after stepping in one. He spent a full minute scraping his boot against a concrete edge, muttering things that made a nearby woman cover her child's ears.

What he did like was how people dressed. Nothing flashy. No one-piece elasticized jumpsuits in avocado and cocoa. Just simple fabrics, dull colors, practical designs. And the hats! Men in fedoras, women in things he couldn't name but admired anyway. A nice retro style. Very sensible.

The bars, though. The bars were the best part. He could see at least four from where he stood, their neon signs flickering invitations. After months of military rations and simulated food, the promise of real alcohol from an actual bar was almost enough to make him forget why they'd come.

He might have forgotten, except that Chewgumma chose that moment to be noticed.

The Kookie stood seven feet tall, covered in thick brown fur, with small red eyes and a face that no amount of anthropological training could make look human. He was, in every possible way, the wrong creature to materialize in the middle of Times Square.

A woman saw him first. She screamed. Her groceries—actual physical groceries, in paper bags—hit the sidewalk with a sound like hope dying. Apples rolled everywhere.

Then a man shouted, "Holy shit, it's a bear! A bear! Run!"

"Bear!" someone else echoed. "Bear in the city!"

Chewgumma looked at Bill. "Kookie is not bear. Kookie is Kookie. These humans are stupid."

"Just—" Bill started, but Chewgumma was already moving. Not toward the humans, thankfully, but away from them. The Kookie bolted down a side street, his furry form disappearing between two buildings with surprising speed for something his size.

Bill took a step to follow.

Splock's hand on his arm stopped him. "No."

"But—"

"Look." Splock gestured at the crowd. People were pointing, shouting, pulling out devices and pointing them at the alley where Chewgumma had vanished. More were gathering. A few had already produced rectangular objects and were speaking into them urgently.

"We've attracted sufficient attention," Splock observed. "Following would only compound the error."

Bill wanted to argue, but Splock was already doing something else. He'd produced a thin, flexible tablet from somewhere inside his jumpsuit—a device Bill had never seen before—and was holding it up, his long fingers moving across its surface.

"Local electromagnetic spectrum," Splock murmured. "Fascinating. So much noise. Radio waves, television signals, early digital data streams—primitive, but abundant."

The tablet crackled. Through its tiny speaker, a sound emerged. A rhythmic pulse, accompanied by electronic tones and a voice:

"Well I know five years is a long time and that times change. But I think that you'll find people are basically the same."

Bill stared. "What in the nine hells is that?"

Ham Duo cupped a hand to his ear. "Music? Maybe? Or a drunk spacer fell asleep on a transmitter keyboard. Hard to tell with primitive cultures."

Splock's ears twitched. "The rhythm is consistent. The harmonic structure suggests intentional composition. It could be—" He paused, listening. "—a code. Or an attempt at art. I cannot determine which."

The music continued, oblivious to their confusion. More people were staring now, attracted by Chewgumma's appearance and the three strangely dressed figures in their midst. Bill noticed that their jumpsuits, so normal on a spaceship, were attracting exactly the wrong kind of attention. A man in a blue uniform was pushing through the crowd, one hand on a weird device at his belt.

The device made a noise. A high, piercing wail that cut through everything.

"Move," Bill said. He'd been in enough military situations to recognize an alarm when he heard one. He grabbed Splock's arm and pulled him toward a set of stairs leading down, where a stream of people was disappearing into a brightly lit hole in the ground.

The subway.

Duo followed, muttering something about how this was not how he'd imagined his first visit to twentieth-century Earth.

Behind them, the policeman's whistle shrilled again, and more shouts joined the chaos.

They clattered down the stairs into the underground cavern, following the flow of people. The noise from the surface faded, replaced by echoes and the rumble of unseen machinery. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting everything in a sickly yellow glow.