“Have you heard enough, Admiral?”
“Yes,” is the distant reply. “And I don’t like it. I don’t for one minute think little green men are on their way to invade Earth, but I agree with his reasoning. The Russians are spooked. They believe it. We need to figure out why.”
Cooper says, “I’m in touch with Langley and Fort Meade. They’re aware of a communications blackout in Russia following the recall. Whatever the Russians are doing, they’re being awfully quiet about it.”
“The President is not happy,” the admiral says. “The Europeans are turning up the heat on us. They get damn nervous whenever Russia starts looking unhinged.”
“We’ll keep working the problem,” the general replies.
“I need Landis in Washington,” the admiral says. “We’ve got to stay ahead of this thing.”
General Cooper looks Nolan in the eye as he replies, saying, “I’ll make it happen.”
Nolan’s shaking. It’s involuntary and barely noticeable, or at least he hopes so. He doesn’t want to react like this, but his palms are sweaty. His arms tremble. He breathes deeply, trying to shake the anxiety of the moment. It’s strange. Mentally, he’s settled, or at least he thinks he is, but some part of his brain is not convinced. He grabs the back of his hand, rubbing it with his thumb to break the cycle.
The admiral says, “Until we figure this out, this discussion goes no further.”
“Understood,” the general replies.
“Landis, Nolan,” the admiral says with undue formality. “Who do you need on your team?”
“Team?”
“Who or what do you need to stay on top of this? Are we talking about military assets? Commercial? Civilian? University research centers? Observatories? Whatever you need, it’s yours. We’ve got to figure out what the Russians know. Give me names.”
Nolan is speechless.
“We’ll come back to you with a list,” General Cooper says.
Kath
Kath puts her phone on the counter beside the bathroom sink. She draws the curtains across frosted glass windows. Steam rises from the tub as she undresses, leaving her clothing crumpled on the floor.
“Ow, a little hot,” she says to herself as she steps into the bath.
Although it’s autumn, she should have mixed in more cold water.
She lowers herself slowly, holding on to the rim of the tub and easing into the water. Bubbles rise from a scented bath bomb resting at the bottom of the tub. A candle flickers in the low light. The water level rises around her. Finally, she’s resting on the bottom of the tub with her arms draped over the edge.
Somewhere high above Los Angeles, a helicopter is flying around. LAPD, no doubt.
Living in Pasadena, not more than two miles from where Ventura Freeway joins the interstate, there are always sirens.
The joy of modern astronomy is that data can be transmitted around the world. This allows researchers to work from home and avoid being confined to a lonely observatory on some remote mountain top. The curse is the converse. As much as Kath enjoys the convenience, she hates living in a noisy city. Somewhere out there, someone’s sitting in quiet solitude, watching the stars from a darkened dome.
Kath tunes out the chopper.
An obligatory, “Ahhhhh,” escapes from her lips. She closes her eyes and rests her head on the cool porcelain enamel.
Kath lies there feeling content, soaking in the heat. This is the one time of day she can switch off her mind. Most people prefer showers to get clean—they’re quick and efficient. Baths are therapeutic, especially for Kath. Her thoughts usually travel at close to the speed of light. She loves nothing more than zipping between nearby stars, probing the secrets of the universe within the confines of her own mind. Baths are different. Baths are time spent on Earth.
“What are you?” she whispers. So much for hopping into a bath and disconnecting for a while. Somewhere out there, a splinter of iron is racing through the eternal night of deep space. She imagines it blotting out distant stars, leaving Saturn and her magnificent rings far behind.
Rather than romanticizing about the possibility of an alien spacecraft, Kath’s mind rummages through such mundane things as the binding energy of iron. She tries to understand how An̆duru survived its encounter with a gas giant. Iron combines with elements such as nickel and carbon to form dense crystal matrices. Some of these molecules can be as rigid as reinforced concrete. Perhaps, she dares think.
Kath wonders how much mass An̆duru lost to abrasion. She imagines An̆duru has been worn smooth on at least two surfaces by its collision with Saturn. If it’s made of iron, the leading edge must look like a melting glacier. Given the amount of energy released during that glancing blow, An̆duru must have lost a significant portion of its original mass. Its shape would have changed.
Kath’s seen plenty of iron meteorites. Most have regular pitting, making them quite distinct. To the untrained eye, they look as though they’re made from some obscure black clay that’s been squished and molded before being fired in a kiln. They’re covered in smooth, elongated dimples. Oh, if only NASA had a probe that could intercept An̆duru, but the comet is hundreds of millions of miles from Earth.
“Relax,” she says to herself.
Kath breathes deeply, feeling the water swell around her. She exhales and the water recedes. Clear your mind. Let it go. Breathe. Relax. Just—
Her cell phone rings.
Kath pinches her eyes shut, wanting to block out the sound of bongo drums beating within her bathroom. Worst ringtone ever. If anything, it sounds like she’s being pulled into a game of Jumanji. It’s great for getting her attention in a busy office, but at home, it’s overkill. The wireless speaker in her bathroom stops playing classical music, picking up the call instead. Drums echo off the tiles. She grits her teeth in annoyance. Not now. I don’t want to know.
Kath takes a deep breath, holds her nose and slips beneath the water. She slides down the porcelain, letting her knees protrude above the waterline as she rests on the bottom of the tub with her eyes shut.
The phone stops ringing.
With a slight push of her feet, she slides back up, rising out of the water. Soap suds wash over her hair. She wipes her eyes and takes another breath.
The phone rings again.
Damn it. She hoped the call would go to voicemail, but it didn’t ring long enough to switch. Yet again, she pinches her nose and slides under the water. No sooner has she disappeared beneath the suds than the phone stops.
Kath lies there, letting tiny bubbles escape from her lips as she waits. The empirical scientist within her is intensely curious. She relaxes. No one calls back.
After almost a minute, she surfaces. Immediately, the phone rings. Kath wipes loose strands of hair from her face and laughs.
“Hey, Siri. Answer the phone.”
A stranger’s voice comes through the speaker. There’s a hum in the background, like the drone of someone on a plane.
“Dr. McKenzie? Dr. Kathleen McKenzie?”
“Kath,” she replies. “Only my mom calls me Kathleen, and you’re definitely not her.”
“Dr. McKenzie. I’m sorry to call you at home—”
“Who the hell is this, and how did you get my number?”
“This is Lieutenant Colonel Nolan Landis from the North American Aerospace Def—”
“NORAD?” she asks, cutting off any possible reply with, “Bullshit!”
Water ripples around her.
He says, “I need your help.”
“What the hell does NORAD want with—wait a minute, you rando perv? How do I know you are who you say you are?”
“I—ah.”
“Where is this going?” she asks, not letting him finish. “What’s next? Friends on Facebook? Swapping photos at night? Titties and dick pics?”
“No, I—”
Kath’s taken him off-guard, which is precisely what she intended. She can hear the stress in his voice. Her use of vulgar terms is
deliberate. They’re well-placed disruptors, allowing her to take control of a conversation she never wanted and didn’t initiate. Nobody walks over Kathleen McKenzie. Being a science communicator on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram has given her a thick skin. Kath eats trolls for breakfast, preferably with a side of hash browns.
“The timing,” Kath says. “How did you know the exact timing of each call?”
As she speaks, she notices red and blue lights outside, flashing across her bathroom window. The colors are out of sync. There has to be several police cruisers out there, but they don’t have their sirens on. She pulls the curtain aside. Although Kath can’t see through the frosted glass, it gives her an idea where the lights are coming from. Police cars have blocked off either end of the street outside her apartment.
“FLIR,” the voice on the phone says. “Forward-Looking Infrared Radar.”
“You’re spying on me?” Kath says in alarm, grabbing her towel from the countertop and pulling it to her chest. A helicopter flies low over the roof but quickly pulls away.
“We can’t see anything,” the stranger says. “Just a block of white when you slip beneath the water.”
“What the hell is going on?” she asks.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “This isn’t the way I wanted this to go down. I asked for something low-key. I told them there’s no rush, but the President is anxious to get on top of this. When her request got passed down the chain, it somehow became a command.”
Kath gets out of the tub, wrapping herself in the towel.
“An̆duru?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Kath tucks in her towel and grabs another one, rubbing her hair briskly.
“The helicopter,” she says. “Could you?”
“Already gone,” the lieutenant colonel replies. The thumping of the rotors grows more distant.
“Am I under arrest?” Kath asks, wondering if her front door is about to be broken down.
“No. The cars outside are to escort you to the airport.”
“Where’s the plane going?”
“Washington.”
Kath says, “It’s not aliens, you know that, right?”
“It’s never aliens,” the lieutenant colonel replies.
Kath laughs, knowing he took that from her very public discussion. That particular portion of her online chat has gone viral. A number of celebrities and influencers have picked up on the exchange, promoting it as rumors abound about An̆duru. If the speed with which capitalism moves is any indication of sentiment, the public’s given up on An̆duru being a comet. Kath’s even seen t-shirts for sale on Instagram with the wording:
It’s not aliens
It’s never aliens
Until it is
Hell, Kath’s tempted to get one herself. She stops and thinks for a moment before saying, “I could refuse, right?”
“Yes,” he replies. “But you won’t.”
“Why?” she asks, feeling a little miffed at the implication he knows her better than she does herself.
He says, “Because you’re being given a front-row seat to the most significant event in human history, if not life on this planet as a whole over the last 3.8 billion years.”
Kath nods in agreement but doesn’t reply.
As an afterthought, he adds, “I thought you’d be incensed if a scientist wasn’t at the forefront of this.”
“Oh, I would.”
“Then you’ll come?”
“No funny business, right?” Kath says. “With the exception of genuinely classified information, I need to be free to talk about this with my team and with the public on socials.”
“Understood.”
“And I keep my cell phone. And my tablet. And my laptop.”
“Agreed.”
“And I have unrestricted access to the internet at all times. No blackouts.”
He hesitates. “There may be places where that isn’t possible.”
There’s silence on the line. This time, it’s her opportunity to say, “Understood.”
“One more thing,” the lieutenant colonel says. “Where was An̆duru before this?”
“I’m sorry,” she says, not grasping his question. “You mean, where did it come from?”
“No. Before it grazed Saturn. Is there any chance this wasn’t the first encounter?”
“Oh,” she says, surprised and excited by the notion. “You mean with Neptune or Uranus?”
“Yes. Can you backtrack it? Can you tell if the same thing happened to either of those planets?”
“That’s an interesting idea,” she replies. “Yes, I can work backward from data collected before the impact. Why?”
“I’m sorry, doc. I can’t discuss that over an insecure line.”
And with that, Kath feels a chill beyond the cold seeping through her bathroom tiles.
Nolan asks, “Can you run the numbers on that and get back to me?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he says, bringing the conversation to a close. “The car’s outside. See you in Washington.”
Trust
“I don’t trust them,” Andy says, leaning forward. He gets close to his gold-plated microphone, lowering his voice so the sound doesn’t distort.
There’s an art to the hypnotic stream of consciousness he weaves into his online video shows. It takes highs and lows to work. To shout all the time would be to lose the effectiveness of shouting. No, Andy understands the need for changes in pitch and rhythm. Like a snake charmer, it’s not the music that hypnotizes the cobra. It’s the motion, the sway, the beat. It takes skill to hold an audience captive. Andy knows how to ply his craft.
“I don’t,” he pauses for dramatic effect. “You might, but I don’t.”
Andy takes his time, making as though he’s carefully considering his next point. His lips tighten. He’s about to impart a secret, something intended only for the initiated.
“They call us ignorant. Why is that? Is it because all this stuff is complicated? Or is it another means of control? Is it a way to sideline us? To stop us from asking the difficult questions?”
Andy sits back, working his unseen audience. Timing is everything. With a flick of his wrist and a slight nod, he draws in his audience, knowing how they will respond.
“They say, ‘Oh, I have a Ph.D. You couldn’t possibly understand this without years of study. I’ve spent decades working on this. You need to listen to me…’
“Why? Why can’t I understand? I’m not dumb. Why do I need you to be my high priest? I don’t. Do you think I’m stupid? What the hell is so complicated you can’t explain the basics to me in an hour? A day? Or even a week? How about a month? Are you serious? Do you expect me to believe this bullshit is so complicated I can’t understand it myself?”
Andy points at one of the cameras off to his right. His computerized video system picks up the gesture and selects that camera as the lead point of view.
“If you can’t explain it to a child, you don’t understand it yourself.”
He throws his arms wide, knowing another camera change will follow.
“You know who said that?
“Einstein.
“That’s right. Albert Einstein told Louis de Broglie, and I quote, ‘All physical theories… ought to lend themselves to so simple a description that even a child could understand them.’
“But you and me?
“No.
“We’re told to trust the experts. Don’t think. Don’t ask. Don’t question. They’re right. You’re wrong. End of story. Well, I call bullshit!”
He picks up a sheet of paper. It’s blank, but no one will know that. It’s a prop. It helps with pacing. He holds it up as though it were an exhibit in court. His audience will think they’re seeing the back of something important.
“It’s the liberal elite. If you don’t have a degree, you’re not worthy.
“In their minds, you’re no better than an animal. And that’s the way they treat us, like dogs
. Strays. If they could, they’d take the vote from us. But not here. Not in America. Because you and I—we won’t let them, goddamn it!”
Andy slams his hand on the desk. It’s time to cool things down. He needs to appeal to reason. He’s got to bring the viewer around to his opinion. Andy lowers his voice, pointing at the sheet of paper in front of him.
“It’s dumb. They mistake degrees for intelligence, but the two are not synonymous. You can be smart without a piece of paper telling you so. And you can be a goddamn fool with a degree.”
An appeal to religion is one of the best ways for Andy to cement a point in someone’s mind, not that he believes in anything beyond himself. Church is for the needy, but that won’t stop him from invoking the Bible.
“Saint Paul. He knew. He understood.
“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools!
“Don’t you see, it’s the arrogance, the ego that dumbs us down.”
Andy sips from an empty mug. To anyone watching, it’s convincing, but he never swallows. It’s a ploy. Simple things make him relatable. He rests the cup in front of him, placing it carefully to one side, just off-camera. The stand below the primary camera contains a teleprompter and a broadcast screen, allowing him to see the active image. The words displayed there act as a reminder, keeping him on track.
“They’re coming,” he says. “The lizards. Don’t doubt it, my friends. That alien spaceship. The dark prince. It’s not heading to Jupiter. Mark my words. I’m telling you now, it’s coming to Earth.
“And when that happens, you’re going to have to make a decision. You’ll have to decide, who do you believe?
“Do you believe all the experts? Because I don’t. Do you believe the government? I don’t. Do you believe scientists? I don’t, because I know, they’re as human and fallible as I am. Don’t be fooled by their lies, my friends.”
Wherever Seeds May Fall (First Contact) Page 5
