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"Where are they going?" asked Lem.
"To their transport, sir. They then climb inside and fly southeast."
"So?"
"So every Formic on Earth is doing this. They'll all returning to the landers. I have dozens of vids coming in every minute, all showing the same behavior." Twenty vids began playing on the tech's terminals. Formics in skimmers, foot soldiers, harvesters, transports. As Lem watched, the Formics all abandoned their attack, or turned their harvester, or changed direction midair.
"How do you know they're returning to the landers?" asked Lem.
The vids all disappeared, replaced with two new ones. Each showed one of the remaining Formic landers still entrenched in southeast China. The giant circular structures were half buried in the earth, each larger than the world's biggest athletic stadium. The center of the lander had opened at the top, like the middle of a doughnut, and now every class of Formic ship was flying inside and docking--like a hive sucking in all its bees.
"What are they doing?" asked Lem. "Are they retreating and hunkering down? Why withdraw?"
"I don't know, sir."
"Go back to the first vid you showed me. From Chenzhou. Play that again."
The tech brought that vid forward and hit play. They watched again as the Formics stopped spraying, turned, and ran back to their transport.
"Go back," said Lem, "back to the moment when they stopped spraying."
The tech obeyed and rewound again.
"What time did that happen? Note the time code. Down to the second."
The tech clicked back frame by frame. "About 4:32 p.m. and 53 seconds."
"Now do the same to one of the other feeds you've received," said Lem "I want to know the precise instant when the Formics made for the landers. The exact time."
"Yes, sir."
He watched as the technician worked, choosing one of the other vids at random. There wasn't a time code on this one, but the data was stored in the file. After the tech had bookmarked the instant on the vid, he dug into the file and found the answer. "4:32 p.m. and 53 seconds."
"The same exact moment," said Lem. "It's as if they were all told to return to the landers at precisely the same time. How is that possible? None of them is wearing any communication devices. Did the military intercept any message? A transmission of sorts? A sound in the air? Any communication whatsoever?"
"Not from the Formics, sir. Not that's been reported. No one ever has."
Lem didn't like this. Victor had theorized that the Formics communicated mind to mind, but Lem had dismissed the idea. It was completely unscientific.
And yet he couldn't deny that Formics always seemed to move as one, as if they were communicating.
"Check the other vids," said Lem. "Make sure the time is the same."
But even as the technician went back to work, Lem knew what the answer would be. They had all received a message at the exact same instant.
The notion frightened him. When Victor had said that the Formics communicated mind to mind Lem had assumed he meant two Formics beside each other, in the same room perhaps, sending a message across the short distance between them. Even that had seemed preposterous, but this, this was something else, something wholly inexplicable. The Formics were scattered all across southern China, hundreds of kilometers apart--on the ground, in the air, in valleys, in mountains. And yet the voice they had heard, the voice of authority that had given them a command--and which they had all obeyed without hesitation--was a voice strong enough to reach them all. Instantly.
Lem felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. It was as if he had suddenly peeled back a layer of the Formics and discovered something far more sinister underneath. That voice belonged to someone. And Lem got the sense that it was more dangerous and more powerful than anything he had seen so far.
Another one of the technicians leaned back and got his attention. "Mr. Jukes. You better come see this."
Lem joined him at his console.
"Not all of the transports are returning to the landers, sir. Some of them are lifting up into the atmosphere."
"Show me."
Two video feeds appeared on the terminal screen in front of the tech. They were both taken from people's personal cameras. In each, the transports shot up into the clouds.
