Mozy could not breathe.
Before either of them could say another word, there was a rippling of crimson light around the room, and Mother Program's voice informed them: (START OF TRANSMISSION. YOU HAVE A VISITOR ON THE BRIDGE.)
Chapter 29
The electric motors hummed, the tires sizzled on the pavement as Jonders drove through the light evening rain. Marie pointed the way, and he pulled into the university's west parking lot.
In the auditorium lobby, they shook the rain off their coats. "Half the faculty's here," Marie murmured, waving to various friends. Jonders nodded, uncomfortably aware of how much Marie's faculty friends seemed like strangers to him now. This was his first real night out in months. He wasn't sure what to expect; it was to be a performance of a symphony called Pale Century, by the twentieth-century composer Moonglow. It felt odd to be standing in the lobby of a concert hall in jacket and tie, listening to people make conversation. He hoped he hadn't forgotten how to enjoy himself.
They found their seats in the center section. Jonders smiled dutifully to the people on either side, and tried not to think too much. That was easier said than done.
The auditorium darkened finally. Timpani rumbled, and the stage above the orchestra exploded with crimson light. French horns called out the opening of the symphony, and the rest of the orchestra joined. The fan lasers bathed the audience, stage, and orchestra pit with changing colors. The opening theme crescendoed, diminished, and the laser light collapsed into an enormous hologram.
Jonders blinked. It was an image of old New York City, a skyline in monochrome red light. As the music began to build again, the image of the city slowly rotated; and as he relaxed against his headrest, the hypnosensorium effects began to take hold, and he felt himself floating. Soon it was not the city turning, but the audience, orbiting over the city as it was a half century ago. His nostrils caught the reek of smog rising into the sky. Rainbow colors rippled across the skyline as the music gathered energy, and he felt himself being transported into a dream.
The first movement of the symphony trumpeted the magnificence of human works; but in the second movement, a theme of destruction emerged, a reminder of the impermanence of those creations. The kettledrums rumbled and the violins scatted, and the holo of the city shivered and caved in upon itself . . . and in its place came an image of the Grand Canyon under a setting sun, and the audience floated over the canyon into the sunset. Gradually, by subtle shifts, the sun grew small and pale and pink . . . and it was a canyon of Mars, not Earth, to which the orchestra sang. Jonders felt the achingly thin air in his nostrils and smelled the dust—and saw, crossing the magnificent desolation, the tiny figure of a man.
The next movement swept in with such energy that he momentarily forgot the human figure. But something drew his eye back to it. There was something odd about that figure, stumbling across an empty chasm, in the air, half a mile over the canyon floor. It was a lost, confused-looking man, out of sync with the harmonies and the rhythms, and it was such a strange sight that he could not take his attention from it, despite the power of the music. The image shifted beneath the figure, and then Jonders lost the thread of the music altogether, because the man did not change with the rest of the image, and there was something terribly familiar about him.
Dizzily, Jonders lifted his head from the headrest, and the sensorium effect subsided. The floating sensation was replaced by the weight of his body in the seat; in front of him now, not beneath him, was a tilted hologram of a Martian landscape; the air in his nostrils was the familiar stuffy air of the concert hall. The music rose and fell, powerful and rhythmical. Jonders squinted, trying to see who the figure was.
Recognition hit him like a sour apple in the stomach. It was Hoshi Aronson up on the stage—and something was wrong.
Jonders glanced around. People on all sides were totally absorbed in the program. He bent and hissed in Marie's ear, "Have to go out! Meet you afterward!" Marie blinked, half dreaming, and her eyes drifted to glance at him. He rose from his seat and made his way to the aisle. No one seemed to notice his passing.
From the aisle, he scanned the stage. Hoshi was no longer visible. The hologram had changed; now there was a mountain scene in full color, with swiftly tumbling streams. Anxiously, Jonders searched the wild landscape. He spotted Hoshi up to his waist in shrubbery, moving jerkily with the music. Jonders hurried to the edge of the orchestra pit and crouched, trying to see the physical stage under the holographic explosion. He spotted steps to one side and mounted them cautiously, keeping low, wary of the lightbeams crossing his face. The fan lasers were ghostly bright, and he prayed that they wouldn't injure his eyes. He kept his back to the projectors, aware that, like Hoshi, he was now a part of the program.
When he reached Hoshi, the bewildered man was stumbling away in complete disorientation. "Hoshi," he hissed. His words were washed away by the music. He seized Hoshi's arm and pulled him toward the edge of the stage. All he could see was a fog of blazing lights, and the ghost of a mountainside. Hoshi showed no sign of recognition, but stumbled along beside him. They passed through a waterfall—and a curtain caught them full in the face. Beating his way along the curtain, Jonders found his way off the stage into darkness, and then felt the frame of a door. Behind him, the symphony thundered. He struggled to push the door open and dragged Hoshi after him into a hallway.
The hallway lights were cold and bright. The door slammed closed behind them, muting the music. "Hoshi, are you all right?" he murmured, steadying the young man against the wall.
Hoshi stared at him with a face tight with pain. His eyes were jerking from side to side. He seemed to be having trouble focusing. "Hoshi, it's Bill Jonders! Can you see me? What's wrong?"
Hoshi shook his head, grimacing, like a dog with an irritation in its ear. There was something wrong with Hoshi's visual implants, Jonders realized, kicking himself for not catching on sooner. No wonder he was stumbling around. The sonic medallion was missing from his chest, so his depth perception was gone, as well. He needed the help of a neurosurgeon, and quickly. Jonders could not even guess what this might be doing to Hoshi's neuronal system.
He reached into his jacket pocket for his phone. He thumbed it on and first called for an ambulance. Then he started to call Sandaran Link Security, hesitated, and instead called Joe Kelly, the security chief, at home. Once assured that Kelly was on his way over, he spoke to Hoshi again. "Can you describe to me what's wrong, Hoshi?"
"What?" Hoshi gasped.
"Hoshi! It's Bill."
"I—can't see—hear—concert—something ringing—buzzing." Hoshi staggered forward, then slid sideways, crumpling to the floor before Jonders could catch him.
Jonders helped him sit up with his back to the wall. "The concert's over, Hoshi," he said, crouching over him protectively. "We can help you now. It's over."
Chapter 30
Jet Propulsion Laboratory was a quiet place, shabby in a distinguished sort of way. The building's last refurbishment had occurred just before the turn of the century, and the intervening years showed in the tarnish and dirt, and in the unfilled cracks in the walls and ceilings. Still, Payne discovered, the place was not without pride. Display cases commemorated JPL's place in the history of space exploration, with models and photos of Surveyor's journey to the Moon, Viking's to Mars, Voyager's and Galileo's to Jupiter and the other gas planets, Argonaut's to Pluto/Charon, and others. JPL was now primarily an educational facility; most major exploratory spacecraft were controlled from the labs at GEO-Three and GEO-Four.
Payne had time to get a feel of the place while he waited for Dr. Ellen Chang to finish with her student appointments. He poked about, reading plaques, thinking about the history this place had seen. Eventually the receptionist pointed the way to Dr. Chang's office, down the corridor. He found her door open, and rapped on the jamb. Chang turned in her chair. She was a stocky woman, with dusty black hair and Asian features. She brushed back a lock of hair and said, "Have a seat, Mr. Pay
ne."
"I appreciate your seeing me," he said, shaking her hand.
"After your coming all the way out here, I could hardly say no," Chang answered. "You're a determined man."
Payne shrugged with a smile, opened his briefcase, and took out both a voice and note recorder. Chang leaned forward at once, raising a hand in objection. "Please. No recordings."
Payne looked up in surprise. "I won't use them without your permission. They're only for accuracy—"
She shook her head vigorously. Her voice was strained. "No. I'm sorry. I'll have to end the interview right now, if you insist."
He gazed at her, startled by the intensity of her protest. "Okay," he said, with a self-conscious shrug. He put the voice recorder away. "May I take notes?" She nodded, relaxing a little, and he settled back with the note recorder on his lap.
"Now what can I do for you, Mr. Payne?" she said, her composure restored.
You could tell me what it is that's made you afraid to talk, he thought; but what he said was, "What can you tell me about the Father Sky space mission?"
She hesitated, and seemed to be reflecting. "What exactly would you like to know about it?"
"Anything you can tell me. The mission's purpose, what it's discovered so far, what new technologies are involved, who's responsible for its operation. That sort of thing."
"You can get all that from the Space Agency," she said. "I'm sure you already have."
"Yes," he said. "But their descriptive packets seem . . . incomplete, in view of other, unofficial information that I've received." He paused, waiting for a reaction. There was none, so he proceeded to sketch the suspicions he had gathered from Alvarest and Gerschak. He took care to dissociate Gerschak from his obtaining of her name.
Chang listened politely, but impassively. When he finished, she said, "I'm not sure what I can do for you. As I told you before, I can't give you much information." She gazed at him as she might at a student who had just asked an unanswerable question.
"Could you deny what I've just described?" Payne asked.
"I can't deny it. Nor can I confirm it."
"Because you don't know? Or because you can't say?"
She stared at him silently for a moment. "Because I'm not at liberty to talk about it," she said finally.
A twinge of nervousness was creeping into her voice, Payne realized. Was there something she wanted to tell him, but was afraid to tell? He had to be very careful not to push too hard. He cleared his throat. "Suppose we were to talk about the kinds of restrictions that exist on what you can say. Could you explain that to me—what you can or can't talk about—and why?"
"That's a large subject," Chang said. Her eyes seemed to soften somewhat. "I suppose I could, in general terms. Would that help you? I don't really know what you want."
Payne turned his palms up. "Hard to say. My report is far from complete, at this point. In view of the subject matter, anything you can tell me might be helpful."
"Very well." Chang sat back, placing an index finger to one corner of her mouth. She immediately appeared more relaxed, as she settled into the role of a teacher. Her voice quickened. "Let's talk about secrecy, then. Secrecy in government, and in the scientific community. This is something that any graduate student could tell you about."
Nodding, Payne began tapping notes into his recorder.
Chang talked, and primarily Payne just listened, and much of what he heard sounded a lot like what he had heard a couple of weeks ago from Gerschak. This time he heard about it in more detail, and with a quiet, but somehow greater, vehemence.
Chang talked nonstop for nearly an hour.
* * *
Payne looked thoughtfully at his notes. He looked back up at Chang. "You could endanger your security clearance by simply inquiring too closely into a subject's classification? Is that what you're saying?"
"Yes."
"That sounds like a rather effective form of censorship."
Chang frowned in affirmation. She ran her fingers back through her hair. Silence hung restlessly in the air, broken only by voices outside, down the corridor.
"Would you say that it is dangerous to science, and to the public's interest?" Payne asked.
"Indeed it is."
Payne grunted and made a note. "Up against the wall," he murmured, half to himself.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Up against the wall," Payne said. "A phrase that was popular in the last century. It referred to people backed up against their principles, forced to extreme measures by intolerable situations. People with nothing to lose by fighting. It just came into my mind." He smiled and shook his head, as though to clear an extraneous thought.
"I see," she said softly.
She wants to talk, he thought. She's close. Very close. Don't scare her off. He rubbed his forehead. "It almost seems—" He paused. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as though people would be forced to join together in small groups, or cabals, to quietly share information."
She gazed at him, not blinking.
"How else," he continued, "could the scientific community, or anyone else, keep tabs on what was being done in the name of science? People must be exchanging information outside of the regular channels. Am I right?"
Chang lifted a paper, dropped it. It had gotten dark outside, and she had switched on a desk lamp. With her head averted, her eyes were in shadow. After a moment, she rose and walked to the door and gently swung it closed, cutting off sounds from the corridor. She returned to her seat and faced him. "We must have an understanding," she said softly.
He felt a release in his chest. "Yes?"
"Everything that I'm going to tell you is for background use only." She spoke so softly now that he had to lean forward to catch her words. "Is that the phrase you newsmen use? I will not name my sources, and you will not name me as a source. You will not use my name in your stories, or refer to my work."
He gestured vaguely. "Those are pretty strict limits. After all, much of your work is published—"
"And much of it isn't. What you want to know about, isn't." She sat back. "Those are my conditions."
"Background, then," Payne said. "Unless you change your mind—"
"I won't. I could endanger several other people, who have stuck their necks out a lot farther than I have mine."
"I understand," he said.
She nodded. "I asked a few people about you. You seem well regarded in your field. I . . . think perhaps I can trust you."
Payne held his breath.
"Are we agreed?"
He nodded, letting his breath go. "Agreed."
She held his eyes for a moment, then looked away. "There are ways of gathering information," she said quietly. "It must be done delicately, and with consideration for the positions of the people who are helping you. Personal contacts must be used carefully and sparingly." She gazed out the darkened window, meditatively. "People can be hurt. Good people can be hurt." She glanced at him. "Do you understand?"
Payne nodded. His fingers rested motionless on the keypad of his note recorder. Her fear was contagious.
Chang sat back. "Communications with the Father Sky mission are relayed through an orbital laboratory known as Tachylab. There's a group at Tachylab who feel that certain information should be more widely disseminated than it is."
Payne's fingers tapped on the keypad.
Chang swiveled her chair toward the window, as she spoke in a low monotone. "I think they would approve of my giving you this information. They want it made public. The only question has been how. It concerns who controls Father Sky, and the reason it was sent out in the first place." She paused for another moment. "There were signals received from space. Intelligent signals, we believe."
Payne's fingers tapped more quickly.
Chapter 31
It was a locked, windowless meeting room on the thirty-fourth floor of the Defense Intelligence building, in New Washington. The room was dominated by a large, oiled walnut table surrounded by ten
seats. Against one wall was a sideboard intended for coffee service, and over it hung several framed portraiture prints. All of the seats around the table, except one, were empty.
Leonard Hathorne touched several keys on his communication console at the end of the table. "Gentlemen," he said, his voice echoing flatly in the room. He paused, imagining the reek of tobacco smoke, the hazy blue cloud rising to the ceiling.
The projectors clicked on, one after another. Nine ghostly holographic images appeared, nine figures of men occupying the empty spaces around the table, nine faces turning to look at him. They looked, if not quite real as life, still almost solid enough to touch. Hathorne spoke again. "Gentlemen, may I ask you all to confirm, please?" He waited until the verification windows on his console glowed green, indicating secure channels to all the members of the Oversight Committee, as far away as Paris, Mexico City, and the Space Lab at GEO-Four, and as close as five blocks away. "Thank you," he said. "Now, to bring you up to date on the Father Sky mission—"
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