Dark as Day

by Charles Sheffield

  “When I came here I was willing to devote my life to this, too. But I almost quit in the first few weeks. You’ve been running the place for too long, Jack Beston. It’s your money, and it’s your project, and Argus Station is your station.”

  “Well?” He seemed bewildered. “Who else would you have run it?”

  “That’s not the point. You feel that because you’re the boss you’re entitled to treat everyone like dirt. And maybe you are—while you are here. But if you were to go with me to Ganymede, and it’s a big if, I wouldn’t take your bullying anymore.”

  “Have I bullied you?”

  “What! Of course you have. You’ve bullied everybody. People only stay because they’re in love with the work. Did you know that when we were over at Odin Station, Philip Beston asked me to come and work with him?”

  “My brother? The bastard!”

  “That’s right, the Bastard. And I have to tell you, I was tempted.”

  “But you told him no.”

  “That’s right. I told him no.” Milly would never mention what else she had told Philip Beston—that Jack was worth ten of him. “Now I’m telling you no. No more treating me like a child. No cussing me out or cutting me down in front of other people. And not just me. Try giving all your staff the respect they deserve. They are competent, they are hardworking, and they have earned your respect.”

  A month ago, those words would surely have been followed by Milly’s instant dismissal. Now she sensed that the dynamics had changed. Jack Beston needed her more than she needed the Ogre.

  She knew she was right when he leaned forward to rest his chin on his forearms, crossed along the back of the chair. His green eyes gazed up at her through bushy red eyebrows, and he said, “I’ll tell you one person who’s certainly competent, and that’s Hannah Krauss. She read through your entire background, and she told me: ‘I recommend that we make an offer, only don’t kid yourself about what you’re getting when you hire this one. She’s young, but she’s a tiger. She’ll cause you trouble.”

  “I’m not a tiger.” Milly remembered Uncle Edgar’s words. Let them think you’re a mouse, girl. Just don’t tell them what those black and yellow stripes are, and keep your mouth closed when you smile.”

  “Fine.” Jack stood up. “You’re not a tiger. I’ll remind you of that when we get to Ganymede.”

  “You’re not going to fire me?”

  “I guess I’m not.” Jack had an unreadable little smile on his face. “Not today, at any rate. I may not be as smart as Philip—”

  “The Bastard.”

  “The Bastard. But I do know when to keep quiet. Meanwhile, there is other excitement this morning. The clean-up team worked all night, and first thing this morning they called to tell me they have the final signal as tight and tidy as it will come. Want to take a look?”

  “Yes! My God, yes.”

  “I thought you would say that.” He was studying her face. “Before we go over there, though, I have another suggestion. You have the look of a starving woman. You and I should go and hunt up some breakfast. While we eat you can tell me everything else that I’m doing wrong. There’s no better way to begin the working week.”

  * * *

  The final signal was a string of twenty-one billion binary digits. It had been received over and over, until two weeks ago it had finally ceased. Now that direction in the sky offered nothing but the random white-noise hiss of the interstellar background.

  The signal was still not ready for analysis. First, it needed correction. A more sophisticated version of the Bellman’s rule—“What I tell you three times is true”—was applied to find and correct dropped, added, or errant digits. The repeated strings were compared, digit by digit, and rare discrepancies corrected by majority rule. Arnold Rudolph, looking even more ancient and tiny than ever, had reviewed the final output, and given it his seal of approval. The sequence was error-free.

  “But as to what that means …” Rudolph stared at the others in the room. “You now pass into an area in which I claim no expertise. I will say only this, which I am sure has already occurred to all of you: a sequence of twenty-one billion binary digits could encode the entire human genome, three times over.”

  In addition to Milly and the Ogre, Pat Tankard and Simon Bitters were also present. No one laughed. Arnold Rudolph was referring to a suggestion almost as old as SETI itself: the notion that the first message from the stars might be the prescription not for a universal encyclopedia, nor a complex series of machines, but the information needed to build a living organism. That made the major assumption that alien life, like life in the solar system, would be built around a four-letter molecular code. Assign binary digit pairs to nucleotide bases; say, (0,0) ≡ adenine, (0,1) ≡ cytosine, (1,0) ≡ guanine, and (1,1) ≡ thymine; then any sequence containing an even number of binary digits was equivalent to a segment of a DNA molecule. You would make that DNA molecule, put it into a suitable environment for replication, and see what developed.

  No one on Argus Station laughed at Arnold Rudolph’s comment; on the other hand, no one took it too seriously. The idea would be checked—a billion possibilities would be checked during the interpretation effort—but the general feeling was, the game couldn’t possibly be that easy. The search for a signal had taken a century and a half. The search for meaning might take as long.

  There was another argument against the idea of the signal being biological. Turn the situation around and ask, how valuable would it be to send off to the stars the genetic description of a human? Even if some alien group were able to decipher the signal and provide an appropriate environment in which an embryo might grow, at the end of all that effort they would have a newborn baby. The aliens would know how a human lived and functioned, but nothing at all about what humans as a species had learned. Far better to send information about science and the technologies which aliens might find valuable.

  Jack Beston stared at the screen, where the first infinitesimal section of the signal sequence was displayed. It appeared like a totally random string of 0’s and 1’s. “We’ll try the biological approach, of course, even if we all think it’s an unlikely answer. We can’t afford to overlook something just because it resembles the way we developed. But I suspect we’re more likely to make progress with physics or mathematics.”

  That too was standard orthodoxy. Biological organisms would tend to be specific to their planetary origins. Physics and mathematics should be the same all over the universe.

  The others looked at Jack Beston, waiting for more direction. When he offered none, Pat Tankard said hesitantly, “We already know that the total sequence length has a moderate number of factors—it’s certainly not prime, and it’s not highly composite. I was thinking of taking a look at partition theory and prime factorization of parts of the array. See if any of the two-dimensional arrays look anything like a picture.”

  Jack nodded. “That’s very good, Pat, but maybe we shouldn’t stick with two-D. For all we know, our unknown signaller comes from avian stock, and thinks naturally in three dimensions. Or one dimension.”

  After another brief silence, Simon Bitters, who had been wandering around the room in his usual restless way, returned to the rest of the group, put his index finger on the end of his nose, and said, “The whole signal repeats with twenty-one billion periodicity, but I was thinking that maybe not all of it is information. There may be marker sub-sequences, things like stop-start codons that indicate where something with meaning begins and ends. We need to look for short repeat sequences, patterns that don’t actually mean anything but that repeat over and over. I thought I would go through and examine local entropy, then see if that leads me to repeat markers.”

  “Very logical.” Beston stared again at the maze of digits on the screen, and shook his head. “Good luck. But all of you, I wouldn’t start on any of this until you’ve had some rest. Chance favors the prepared mind, but discovery favors the rested one. And remember, we’re in this for the long hau
l. We may get lucky in a few months, but chances are we’re years away from knowing what you’ve got there.” He turned to Milly. “Anything else, before we let these hard-working people get some sleep? They’ve been up all night.”

  Milly shook her head and allowed Beston to lead her outside. Once the door to the room was closed, he stopped right in front of Milly.

  “There, see that? Nice as pie, not a harsh word from me to anybody. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Milly hesitated. “You were polite, and agreeable. But I’m not sure that they are all right. I mean, I know they’re short of sleep, but their behavior seemed kind of odd. They’ve just finished something important. You’d never know it from their attitudes. They acted flat.”

  “As if something was wrong?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very perceptive. Something was wrong.”

  “But I couldn’t tell what it was.”

  “I know absolutely what it was.”

  “Was it me? Do they resent me, and the fact that I was the one who first found the anomaly?”

  Jack laughed. “No, it wasn’t you, Milly. You are very smart, probably the smartest person who has ever worked at Argus Station, but they don’t resent that. Also, you have lots of dedication and drive to go with your brains. But there are still things you don’t know.”

  He leaned against the wall of the corridor, stared down at Milly’s puzzled face, and went on, “You said it very clearly before we went in there. I’m an Ogre, and a monster, and I insult my staff and bully my staff and drive my staff. Now let me tell you a story. Back in the days when humans were just moving into space, there was a race between two countries to see who could be first to get human beings to the Moon.”

  “I know about that. I’ve read a lot of history about America and Russia.”

  “I’ll bet you don’t know what I’m going to tell you, because it was never in the official history books—just passed down by word-of-mouth. In the beginning, the Russians seemed to be well ahead. They had the first satellite, and the first man in space, and the first woman in space. Then the man who was running the American space program at the time made a decision. He chose a foreigner—a German, who had fought against the Americans in a recent war—and gave him the main responsibility for getting men to the Moon and back. He was asked, privately, ‘My God, why did you pick him? If he fails, you will be criticized by everyone in the country.’ The administrator said, “Do you think I don’t know that? But he won’t fail—he’s too arrogant to let himself fail.’ You see, Milly, the job we have here is a bit like the job they had. It’s difficult, it needs technology that’s right at the edge, and we’re in a hurry. Most people at Argus Station don’t have your self-confidence, or so much confidence in the project itself. They need somebody who shows in everything he says or does that we can’t fail—and in this game, coming in second is failing.

  “Now I want to ask you a question, Milly. You heard Pat Tankard’s suggestion of examining two-D representations of the signal. What do you think of it?”

  “To be honest, not very much. You can send information as images, but it’s terribly inefficient. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a high-resolution one costs you a million. Mostly you send messages as words and numbers, or their equivalent. And they are both one-dimensional data strings.”

  “Exactly. So one of us—you or me—ought to have pointed out that fact to Pat. We didn’t, did we? Do you think that was doing her a service?”

  “It wasn’t. But she just might be onto something.”

  “Just might. In this game, though, you play the odds. For Pat Tankard’s sake, I ought to have cut her down or at the very least warned her. A bit later I probably will, but now I have another question for you. You’ve heard me rant and rave, you’ve heard me cuss out my people, you’ve heard me be an absolute tyrant. So here’s my question: when I’m not around, have you ever heard anyone on the staff say anything negative about me?”

  Milly thought. The odd thing was, she hadn’t. She could hardly count Hannah Krauss’s warning that Jack Beston had a lot of sexual interest in the female staff members. And even there, Hannah had made it clear that she’d had her own experience with Jack Beston, and still held him in high regard.

  “No one has ever said anything bad about you. Not to me, at any rate.”

  “But if I go on being wishy-washy, the way I was back in there, they’ll soon start to. They’ll begin to wonder if I’m losing it. Milly, in private with you I will be as nice as you want—as nice as you will let me be. But in our staff meetings, I have to be the same rip-roaring Ogre that people are used to. I’m going to push, and hassle, and never let anybody imagine for one moment that we won’t come out of this as the team who found and cracked the first message from the stars.” He nodded to Milly. “That’s all I have to say. Contact your friends in the Puzzle Network, see if you can finagle your way onto that team. If you do, remember I want to go with you. And yes, if I have to I’ll carry your bags.”

  He headed away along the corridor, quickly, so that Milly had no chance to reply. She stood for awhile, thinking. She was not even sure what her reply would have been. Half an hour ago she had felt in full command of the situation. She was the one with the contacts, the one with the clout, the one in control. Jack Beston had no choice. He would treat her in her way, as she wanted to be treated, or she would quit and leave Argus Station.

  Now she was not sure what she would do. She was sure of only one thing: Jack Beston—still an Ogre, but apparently Ogre-by-choice—was a more complex person than she had ever suspected. And because of that, all Milly’s own decisions had become more difficult.

  24

  On the trip from Pandora to Ganymede, Alex sent one short message and then turned off his communications unit. Only a general System emergency would be able to get through to him.

  He had two reasons for taking that step, and in a sense Bat was responsible for both. At their second meal together, Alex had described the sequence of events leading to his trip to Pandora. Bat listened in silence, and at the end said, “It would seem that all the major actions in your life are entirely dictated by women.”

  That rankled. Alex was all set to disagree until he gave it a moment’s thought. Kate, his mother, Magrit Knudsen, Lucy-Maria Mobarak: they had all pushed him around. He loved to be with Kate, but the rest he could do very well without. He knew that once his mother realized he had concluded his meeting with Bat and was on the way home, she would be all over him with a million questions.

  There was only one way to avoid being pestered. He posted his ship’s arrival time at Ganymede and stated when he would be present at the Ligon Corporate offices. Then he turned off the communication system. He knew his family. They would all be there at the meeting, eager to hear what he had done and tell him why it was stupid.

  This time he would surprise them. Not only had he met with Bat, but despite Hector’s mad and ill-timed assault Alex had half-persuaded Bat to give Ligon Industries the access to Pandora that they needed. And Bat had agreed to a future meeting—on Ganymede. Alex had accomplished far more than anyone could have expected. True, he had nothing to do with Bat’s new activities with the Puzzle Network—that was just a piece of luck. But why not take credit for it? Some family credit was long overdue.

  Bat’s second remark had been made during their review of Alex’s predictive model, as they turned the basic assumptions inside out in search of a reason why results should be different on computers run inside the Keep, versus using the Seine’s capabilities. Alex said, of one suggestion, “Well, we can be certain that isn’t causing the problem.” Bat had replied, with great solemnity, “I have learned that there is no such thing as certainty. There are merely different degrees of uncertainty.”

  On the flight home, Alex had taken every one of the “certainties” that underpinned his model and subjected them to intense scrutiny. He discovered no great revelations, but he did find himself agr
eeing more and more with Bat. The Seine, the very tool which permitted the predictive models to run with a sufficient degree of detail, might be introducing variations that Alex had never intended. The thousand—or million—new databases now on-line could contain wrong facts or unreasonable assumptions. Alex needed to modify the predictive models to screen all data provided by the Seine, using new programs that he himself would have to develop. It was out of the question for any human to perform all the necessary checks.

  He had the modifications half done when his ship docked on Ganymede. Normally he hated to interrupt his work before it was finished. Today was a bit different. Today he had something to tell the family—something that would impress them, and make it clear that his life was not “entirely dictated by women.”

  Entry delays at Ganymede docking held him up for a few minutes, so he was hurrying when he descended to the Ligon Corporate offices and waited impatiently for recognition by the Fax on duty in the outer chamber. As soon as he was cleared he marched right on into the conference room—and skidded to a halt.

  Prosper Ligon sat at the end of the long conference table. Alone.

  Alex gestured to the empty seats. “Didn’t you get my message?”

  “Indeed we did.” Prosper Ligon seemed far from happy. “Every relevant family member was notified. As to where they are …” His long donkey head showed his mortification. “On occasion, Alex, I wonder what has happened to the long tradition of family service. I would never have thought it, but perhaps you are the only person who can be counted on.”

  That was a back-handed compliment, if ever Alex had heard one. But before he could reply there was a commotion in the outer office. Uncle Karolus came barging in, grinning widely.