I could see a hand clutching a short, lightly curved sword. The dull metal was slick with blood.
I found myself coming clumsily to my feet, the green-cushioned chair sliding back across the smooth floor. “What was . . . I mean . . .”
All motion on the image suddenly stopped, the waves frozen as they curled above the sand. “That was first contact,” said George. “Or a first contact, anyway. This one was Eleuthera, 1498.”
I just kept staring at the still image. If I looked carefully, I could still see one of the young woman’s legs vanishing into the dense greenery and drops of her blood on their way to the sand. “Is that, or was that, some kind of simulation?”
“No. It was a recording.”
“How can you possibly have a recording of something from over five hundred years ago?” I asked. “Even if you were watching us, how can you have been in just the right place to record that?”
“Sixteen billion cameras,” said George.
“What?”
“Sixteen billion high-capacity recording devices, each one about the size of a grain of dust, scattered over your planet around eleven thousand years ago.” Another almost shrug. “We don’t see everything, but we do see quite a lot.”
For a good thirty seconds, I just stood there and thought about this. The aliens not only knew human history, they knew it better than we did. Better than the most informed human scholar. Cameras scattered around the world with such density that one might be present on a remote beach, with such capacity that they could record centuries of information. It was mind-boggling. They might not know everything, but they would certainly be able to answer questions that had baffled historians since . . . history. In fact, they knew—
“Hey, if you’ve got all this recorded, then you must know what really happened when . . .”
George cut me off with a wave of a big hand. “You know that thing I said about answering any question?”
“Yes.”
“I lied,” it said. “Because I’m not answering that one.”
“You don’t even know what I’m going to ask.”
“Does it involve guys wearing sandals and living some time ago? Say in the Middle East?”
“No,” I said. Then after a moment: “All right, yes. It does.”
“Not answering,” George repeated. “At least, not now.”
“Okay.” I looked around for my chair, turned it toward George, and sat down again. “But the thing before, that horror show on the beach, you understand why that kind of thing has me scared.”
“Of course.”
“It always goes like that,” I said. “Or, something like that. Even when it’s less bloody.”
“You are not wrong. Contact situations have uniformly resulted in nearly complete destruction of the technologically disadvantaged society.” The edge of humor that had seemed to tint George’s voice since it first spoke out of the darkness had abruptly disappeared. “This one will be no different. When we leave, you will be irrevocably changed. Even if we do nothing more, even if you never see us again, the . . . waves from this day will almost certainly help to rip apart your society.” It gestured to the side, and I saw that the image of the beach was there again. This time, there were two small ships on the horizon, crossing slowly in front of a furiously blue sky. “You’ve seen the sails,” said George. “You know the others are there. That alone is a blow that few civilizations can survive. Even if we don’t shoot you. Or enslave you. Or take all your land. Or eat you . . . this is going to be hard on you.”
I ran a hand over my face, and to my surprise, it came away wet. “Then . . . you are here to destroy us. Only you did it without firing a shot.”
George rose slowly to its big flat feet and took a step away from its chair. “You’re not wrong,” it said. “But you’re also not completely right. Our coming here will almost certainly destroy you, but we came here to save you.”
As the alien took another step forward, I couldn’t