“Yeah. Forget about neutrons for a moment,” she whispers, repeating her motion. “Let’s talk about water. Two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Come on. H2O. You’re made out of water. You must understand it as a molecule.”
The transparent watery figure copies her. It crouches, scoops up some water, and lets it drip from its fingers. Then it holds up one finger on each hand.
“That’s it,” Adrianna whispers. “Two hydrogen atoms. Now oxygen. Show me oxygen.”
Rather than tucking in its transparent thumbs, they disappear. The four fingers on each hand become eight, which is jarring to behold. The watery man holds his hands together, displaying sixteen fingers in all.
“Oh, that’s cheating,” she says. “But yes. Eight protons, eight neutrons. Okay, smarty pants. I couldn’t do that, but yep, that’s a water molecule.”
“So we’re speaking the same language?” Jazz asks, getting excited.
“Yes.”
The watery hands return to normal, and the creature repeats its earlier motion, holding up a single finger and bringing two fingers on the other hand up next to it. Again, one finger is pulled away from the others.
“Okay, so we’ve got one proton and two neutrons,” Adrianna says.
“That’s hydrogen, right?” Nick asks.
“Tritium,” Adrianna says. “It’s an isotope of hydrogen. He’s telling us they use tritium to power their spacecraft. They must run that thing on fusion. That’s what they need. He’s asking us for tritium.”
“And they can’t just get that down here?” Jazz asks.
“No,” Adrianna says. “Tritium is rare. And it doesn’t last long. Its half-life is something ridiculously short, like ten or twelve years. I’m pretty sure it’s only made high in the atmosphere or in outer space. They must be starved of it down here.”
Jazz changes the tone of the discussion.
“We need to get out of here—now!”
“But we’ve only just started talking,” Adrianna says.
“You don’t understand. We have tritium.”
“What? Here in Antarctica?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t get it?” Adrianna says. “Why would we have tritium at Vincennes?”
Jazz looks her in the eye, saying, “It’s in the bomb.”
Jury Duty
The storm is getting worse.
The wind howls across the frozen plateau.
Snow races past the windows, being caught in the spotlights for a moment before disappearing into the darkness.
After descending through the ice, wading through a flooded research center, and then creeping along a darkened cavern next to a subterranean lake, it’s strange to be back up top. For Nick, it’s as though he’s teleported between worlds. Reality is a blur. He longs to return to the Earth he never left. Antarctica is a helluva long way from South Carolina. He might as well be on Mars. Or Hoth.
Outside, someone crosses from the maintenance building. They’re tethered to a guide wire, but they’re struggling to make any headway against the wind. Whoever it is, they’ve got their hood down. Ski goggles hide their eyes. Gloved hands pull on the wire. With each step, their legs disappear into the haze of snow and ice whipping past low to the ground. Nick doesn’t want to go back out there any time soon. It’s depressing to think spring is still months away. Even with heavy over-trousers and thick gloves, the hurricane-like winds pick up loose shards of ice, hurling them at arms and legs. Even a glancing blow stings.
Air circulates from floor grates within the building. Initially, it’s warm, but that doesn’t last. Most of the jury have their down-filled vests on.
“Look, I get it,” Nick says, walking to the front of the room. “No one wants to be here.”
There’s plenty of latitude as to what he means by here.
Here in Antarctica. Here at Vincennes. Here in the auditorium as part of the jury. Here as in having escaped death beneath the ice and wondering if it’s all about to happen again.
Nick flicks through his orientation binder. Hundreds of pages pass beneath his fingertips. He’s looking for the biographical outline of the jurors. From memory, it’s an appendix. His hand rests on a page full of photographs. He looks around, trying to match faces with names.
Someone says, “I just want to sleep.”
Jazz says, “There’ll be time for sleep later. Right now, we have a problem—and I’m not talking about an alien spacecraft stuck beneath the ice. Your responsibility has changed.”
“How so?”
“Father, explain the purpose of Vincennes.”
From the speakers in the ceiling, a disembodied electronic voice speaks.
“Vincennes was established on the principle of maritime law to avoid jurisdictional conflicts arising between member states of the United Nations Security Council. The extraterrestrial vessel was declared a derelict. Recovery was governed by the agreed laws of oceanic salvage.”
Jazz asks, “Why is that no longer the case, Father?”
“The presence of an intelligent life-form indicates ownership. In such a case, salvage rights extend over cargo but not the vessel itself. This also changes the status of the operation from recovery to rescue.”
“No fucking way,” the Frenchman Jacques Lamar says.
“I say we nuke it,” Bradley Hoggard says, but he’s British. He can’t pull off an American accent. He’s being a smartass. Everyone’s seen the movie Aliens. Oh, yeah, that’s funny, Brad. Dust off and nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure, right? Julia might nod in agreement, but no one else is impressed.
Nick scans the profile page. Each of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council has two representatives on the jury. Nick matches faces to names as he reviews each background.
China
* Bao Xi, an English Teacher at Hubei Central High School.
* Anni Azizi, a villager from the Uyghur region in north west China.
Russia
* Petrovich Andrey Vavilov, a railway engineer from Moscow.
* Kalai Noyan, a goat farmer from Lake Baikai (Siberia/Mongolia).
France
* Jacques Lamar, a dentist from Riems.
* Samira Ayoub, a shop assistant from Toulouse (Moroccan descent).
United Kingdom
* Bradley Hoggard, an accountant from Milton Keynes.
* Julia Duffie, a barmaid from Armagh in Northern Ireland.
United States of America
* Chad Smith, a television producer from Atlanta, Georgia. Deceased.
* Ebony Chambers, a fitness instructor from Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Deceased.
Chad Smith died from a pulmonary embolism a day before the blackout. Ebony died in the subsurface base. She was one of the bodies shoved into an empty room. That leaves only one juror representing the US—Nick. America only gets one vote.
Jazz says, “That storm out there isn’t likely to subside for months. With the main antenna down, we’re cut off from the outside world. We can get messages out through the Russians over at Vostok, but it’s basic stuff. There’s no way to transmit scientific data.”
Julia asks, “What about the spacecraft?”
“With confirmation of an active extraterrestrial intelligence, Father has instructed Mikhail to lock down the main shaft. Any decision to continue has to be endorsed by the jury.”
“You want to go back down there?” Bao Xi says, pointing at the snow and ice whipping past the window. “Are you mad?”
“We need to help them,” Adrianna says. “We have no right to plunder their spacecraft.”
“You have no right to be in here,” Bao replies, indignant. “You’re a scientist, not a juror. You must leave.”
“She’s not going anywhere,” Nick says, holding out his hands and appealing for calm.
“Who put you in charge?” Bao asks, pointing at him.
“No one.”
“Then why should we listen to you?”
“You shouldn
’t,” Nick says. “You should listen to her.” He points at the frail, elderly woman sitting beside Bao.
Anni Azizi shrinks in her seat. She really doesn’t want to be here, regardless of how here is defined.
Nick is blunt.
“If it wasn’t for Anni, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. We’d all be dead.”
Nick stares directly at Brad. There’s no time for subtlety. “If it wasn’t for Anni, you’d have got your precious thermonuclear explosion, and the world would have one helluva mess on its hands.”
Jazz says, “We don’t even know if a nuke would damage this thing. Hell, it can fly between stars. It’s survived under a mile of ice for hundreds of thousands of years. Would one of our nukes even scratch the paintwork?”
Bao turns to Anni and speaks rapidly in Chinese.
“No,” Jazz says, marching up the aisle toward them. She has one hand on her sidearm and the other outstretched toward Bao, signaling for him to stop. “There will be no private discussions. This is a jury setting. If you have something to say, say it to everyone.”
Anni looks at Jazz with tears in her eyes.
“Whatever he said, it’s not true. Do you understand?” Jazz beckons for Anni to join her. “You’re safe. We’re going to make it out of here alive, okay? You did the right thing down there. Keep doing what you think is right.”
Anni takes her hand. Jazz leads the frail old woman to a seat at the front of the room. Bao is fuming, but he remains silent. His eyes speak of murderous rage.
Nick looks down at the profile page. Anni is eighty-four. She comes from a family of twelve and has nine children, forty-seven grandchildren, twenty-nine great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren. What the hell is she doing in Antarctica?
Anni is wearing a traditional, ornate, Muslim headscarf, hiding her hair from sight. Her skin is dark and wrinkled.
She smiles at Nick, appreciating his support. Anni adjusts her headscarf, making sure any stray strands of hair are tucked away. That seems to antagonize Bao.
“You want us to listen to her?” Bao asks. “Look at her. She’s a peasant. She’s a religious old fool. She knows nothing of spaceships and aliens.”
“She’s the only one that kept her mind intact down there,” Adrianna says. “You might think she’s weak, but she was the strongest among us.”
Bao folds his hands across his chest, smarting at that remark. He tucks his chin down. He’s a volcano caught between eruptions.
Nick laughs.
Staring at the list, he finally understands. The whole damn thing is a joke.
“What’s so funny?” Bao asks through gritted teeth.
“The jury.”
Jazz looks worried. She stares at Nick with a furrowed brow. If she could, she’d say something, but it seems she doesn’t want to be too vocal in front of everyone else.
“What do you find funny?” Jacques asks.
“Don’t you get it?” Nick says. “It’s been staring you in the face all this time—the jury itself!”
Brad says, “We’re here to represent our countries.”
“Are we?” Nick asks, raising an eyebrow. “I thought we were here to represent all of humanity. Or is all this just a show?”
No one speaks.
“It’s the list that gives it away.” He taps the thick pages in his binder. “Do you know what I think?”
Bao is acidic in his reply. He snarls. “No one wants to know what you think.”
“Exactly,” Nick says, pointing at him. “And yet, here I am—on the jury along with you.”
Bao is quiet, but it’s apparent Nick’s comment stung. Bao gets it. Whether he likes it or not, they’re in this for the same damn reason.
Nick sets down the binder. “I think the jury started out as a good idea. When news of this discovery first broke, someone somewhere was sent scrambling trying to figure out how the hell this could be managed on a global stage. They knew nations would bicker. Damn, are we good at that. They knew the small guy would be ignored. Again, we are so fucking good at stepping on the little guy. That insight was a no-brainer.
“They debated who they could trust. Governments? Hah! They’re driven by too many conflicting ideologies. What about the military? Hell, no. They’re lapdogs. They’ll do whatever they’re told. How about religious leaders? Nope. There are too many of them and they never agree. What about scientists? Meh. Too sterile. No heart. No emotion.”
Adrianna glares at him with a raised eyebrow. Hey, this isn’t his logic. He’s trying to walk through someone else’s reasoning.
“Every combination they came up with revolved around an elite group. Class systems have done us no favors over the centuries, so they settled on the idea of an impartial jury of peers. With the best of intentions, they wanted to give the everyday man and woman a say in these decisions.
“It sounds good in theory, right? But there are lots of problems with this concept. How big should the jury be? How are jurors selected? At random? From a pool? Who has the right to challenge selection?
"The biggest problem was, how could the jury be structured so decisions could actually be reached. The last thing anyone wanted was to drown this discovery in a quagmire of indecision.
“Although the idea of a jury was embraced, I bet the initial recommendation was ignored. How do I know that? Simple. There’s no way two people could ever represent an entire country. But then could ten? Twenty? A hundred? Ten thousand? It seems the jury was a great idea destined to fail.
“And then there’s the countries involved. It makes sense to limit this to the permanent members of the UN Security Council as that follows historical precedence. It also keeps the jury manageable. At least, that’s what they told themselves. The reality is, it makes the whole notion of a jury a farce. What about India or Indonesia? Or, I dunno, Somalia? Do they not count? Are their voices not to be heard?”
No one speaks.
“But what sealed it for me was seeing the mix of jurors.”
Nick tears a page from his binder. He holds it aloft, crumpled in his fist.
“From the start, the decision-making process confused me. If the nations involved down here agreed on something, decisions were made without the jury. If there’s no argument, there’s no need for deliberation, right? It was only when there was contention that issues were brought to the jury. If everyone agreed, they just did whatever the hell they wanted. The jury was only ever here to settle arguments.
“Doesn’t that strike you as a flaw? It’s one helluva loophole. Let’s say France is the only dissenter. Okay, so America and China bribe the French to keep an issue away from the jury. In this way, substantial issues can be railroaded through. I suspect the really thorny problems were always going to be resolved by horse-trading behind the scenes.
“The jury provides the UN with plausible deniability. It allows the Security Council to appear open and transparent while the real decisions are being made behind closed doors.
“Looking at the history of judgments reached by the jury, America and the UK almost always side together. Russia and China formed another voting block. Split decisions came down to France.”
Samira Ayoub lowers her head. She knows.
Nick says, “Often, it came down to a shop assistant from Toulouse, born in Morocco. No offense, but doesn’t that strike you as bizarre?”
Samira nods.
Jazz leans against the wall with her arms folded across her chest. She’s relaxed. Nick can see she’s fascinated by the dynamic forming within the room.
“Oh, there were a few jury decisions where the Russians broke ranks, or the Americans shifted their priorities, but it’s only ever the women that dissented. It’s only ever Ebony, Samira, Anni, or Kalai that swayed the vote. Why?”
Nick unfolds the crumpled paper, stretching it out on the desk in front of Anni. He taps the page, asking, “What do you notice about your fellow jurors? In particular, the women.”
“This is bullshit,” Bao sa
ys. “Why are we listening to him? He knows nothing. He’s only just arrived. He’s never sat in deliberation.”
Anni, though, remains focused. She examines the sheet of paper.
“We have simple jobs. No education.”
“Yes,” Nick says, raising the page so everyone can see it. No one can read it from more than a few feet away, but they all know what’s on it.
“Anni is a villager. Ebony taught yoga. Kalia is a goat farmer. Samira worked in a grocery store. Julia’s a barmaid.”
“Stripper,” Julia says, correcting him.
“But this is representative,” Brad says, holding his hands out in exasperation. “I’m an accountant. Bao is a teacher. Petrovich is an engineer. Jacques is a dentist. We come from a broad cross-section of society.”
“Is that what they told you?” Nick asks. He opens his arms wide, mimicking Brad. He wants to make sure the dried bloodstains on his shirt are apparent. “Because I was told something else.”
Petrovich says, “Duty — Я выполняю свой долг.”
“I do my duty,” Kalia says, translating for him. “He understands English, but it is difficult for him to speak.”
This is the first time the stocky Russian has spoken at all. He’s balding but has a full beard reaching halfway down his chest. Petrovich looks as though he could benchpress a Lada.
“What is your duty if not to do what’s right?” Nick asks. “Think about it. Why did they pick Anni and Kalia, or Samira and Julia?”
Kalia knows. She turns sideways in her seat, looking at her Russian companion as she says, “So they could push us around.”
She’s not intimidated by Petrovich, regardless of his scowl.
“Yes,” Samira says. “They pressure us. They tell us what we should say.”
Nick says, “You were chosen because they knew you could be steamrolled into decisions.”
Anni nods. She keeps her head facing forward, but she makes sure the others notice her agreement, loudly saying, “Mm-hmm.”
“But they were wrong,” Nick says.
Anni sits up straight and proud. She has her feet flat on the floor and her hands on her thighs. Her body language screams, Finally!
Jury Duty (First Contact) Page 27
