Missile Gap

by Charles Stross

  "Get sore feet." He grins lopsidedly. "Did you do any lab time? Field work?" Maddy nods hesitantly so he drags her meager college experiences out of her before he continues. "I've got a whole continent to explore and only one set of hands: we're spread thin out here. Luckily NSF budgeted to hire me an assistant. The assistant's job is to be my Man Friday; to help me cart equipment about, take samples, help with basic lab work — very basic — and so on. Oh, and if they're interested in entomology, botany, or anything else remotely relevant that's a plus. There aren't many unemployed life sciences people around here, funnily enough: have you had any chemistry?"

  "Some," Maddy says cautiously; "I'm no biochemist." She glances round the crowded office curiously. "What are you meant to be doing?"

  He sighs. "A primary survey of an entire continent. Nobody, but nobody, even bothered looking into the local insect ecology here. There're virtually no vertebrates, birds, lizards, what have you — but back home there are more species of beetle than everything else put together, and this place is no different. Did you know nobody has even sampled the outback fifty miles inland of here? We're doing nothing but throw up shacks along the coastline and open-cast quarries a few miles inland. There could be anything in the interior, absolutely anything." When he gets excited he starts gesticulating, Maddy notices, waving his hands around enthusiastically. She nods and smiles, trying to encourage him.

  "A lot of what I'm doing is the sort of thing they were doing in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Take samples, draw them, log their habitat and dietary habits, see if I can figure out their life cycle, try and work out who's kissing-cousins with what. Build a family tree. Oh, I also need to do the same with the vegetation, you know? And they want me to keep close watch on the other disks around Lucifer. 'Keep an eye out for signs of sapience,' whatever that means: I figure there's a bunch of leftovers in the astronomical community who feel downright insulted that whoever built this disk and brought us here didn't land on the White House lawn and introduce themselves. I'd better tell you right now, there's enough work here to occupy an army of zoologists and botanists for a century; you can get started on a PhD right here and now if you want. I'm only here for five years, but my successor should be okay about taking on an experienced RA…the hard bit is going to be maintaining focus. Uh, I can sort you out a subsistence grant from the governor-general's discretionary fund and get NSF to reimburse him, but it won't be huge. Would twenty Truman dollars a week be enough?"

  Maddy thinks for a moment. Truman dollars — the local scrip — aren't worth a whole lot, but there's not much to spend them on. And Rob's earning for both of them anyway. And a PhD…that could be my ticket back to civilization, couldn't it? "I guess so," she says, feeling a sense of vast relief: so there's something she's useful for besides raising the next generation, after all. She tries to set aside the visions of herself, distinguished and not too much older, gratefully accepting a professor's chair at an ivy league university. "When do I start?"

  Chapter Nine: On the Beach

  Misha's first impressions of the disturbingly familiar alien continent are of an oppressively humid heat, and the stench of decaying jellyfish.

  The Sergei Korolev floats at anchor in the river estuary, a huge streamlined visitor from another world. Stubby fins stick out near the waterline, like a seaplane with clipped wings: gigantic Kuznetsov atomic turbines in pods ride on booms to either side of its high-ridged back, either side of the launch/recovery catapults for its parasite MiG fighter-bombers, aft of the broad curve of the ekranoplan's bridge. Near the waterline, a boat bay is open: a naval spetsnaz team is busy loading their kit into the landing craft that will ferry them to the small camp on the beach. Misha, who stands just above the waterline, turns away from the giant ground effect ship and watches his commander, who is staring inland with a faint expression of worry. "Those trees — awfully close, aren't they?" Gagarin says, with the carefully studied stupidity that saw him through the first dangerous years after his patron Khrushchev's fall.

  "That is indeed what captain Kirov is taking care of," replies Gorodin, playing his role of foil to the colonel-general's sardonic humor. And indeed shadowy figures in olive-green battle dress are stalking in and out of the trees, carefully laying tripwires and screamers in an arc around the beachhead. He glances to the left, where a couple of sailors with assault rifles stand guard, eyes scanning the jungle. "I wouldn't worry unduly sir."

  "I'll still be happier when the outer perimeter is secure. And when I've got a sane explanation of this for the comrade General Secretary." Gagarin's humor evaporates: he turns and walks along the beach, towards the large tent that's already gone up to provide shelter from the heat of noon. The bar of solid sunlight — what passes for sunlight here — is already at maximum length, glaring like a rod of white-hot steel that impales the disk. (Some of the more superstitious call it the axle of heaven. Part of Gorodin's job is to discourage such non-materialist backsliding.)

  The tent awning is pegged back: inside it, Gagarin and Misha find Major Suvurov and Academician Borisovitch leaning over a map. Already the scientific film crew — a bunch of dubious civilians from the TASS agency — are busy in a corner, preparing cans for shooting. "Ah, Oleg, Mikhail." Gagarin summons up a professionally photogenic smile. "Getting anywhere?"

  Borisovitch, a slight, stoop-shouldered type who looks more like a janitor than a world-famous scientist, shrugs. "We were just talking about going along to the archaeological site, General. Perhaps you'd like to come, too?"

  Misha looks over his shoulder at the map: it's drawn in pencil, and there's an awful lot of white space on it, but what they've surveyed so far is disturbingly familiar in outline — familiar enough to have given them all a number of sleepless nights even before they came ashore. Someone has scribbled a dragon coiling in a particularly empty corner of the void.

  "How large is the site?" asks Yuri.

  "Don't know, sir." Major Suvurov grumps audibly, as if the lack of concrete intelligence on the alien ruins is a personal affront. "We haven't found the end of it yet. But it matches what we know already."

  "The aerial survey—" Mikhail coughs, delicately. "If you'd let me have another flight I could tell you more, General. I believe it may be possible to define the city limits narrowly, but the trees make it hard to tell."

  "I'd give you the flight if only I had the aviation fuel," Gagarin explains patiently. "A chopper can burn its own weight in fuel in a day of surveying, and we have to haul everything out here from Archangel. In fact, when we go home we're leaving most of our flight-ready aircraft behind, just so that on the next trip out we can carry more fuel."

  "I understand." Mikhail doesn't look happy. "As Oleg Ivanovitch says, we don't know how far it reaches. But I think when you see the ruins you'll understand why we need to come back here. Nobody's found anything like this before."

  "Old Capitalist Man. " Misha smiles thinly. "I suppose."

  "Presumably." Borisovitch shrugs. "Whatever, we need to bring archaeologists. And a mass spectroscope for carbon dating. And other stuff." His face wrinkles unhappily. "They were here back when we would still have been living in caves!"

  "Except we weren't," Gagarin says under his breath. Misha pretends not to notice.

  By the time they leave the tent, the marines have got the Korolev's two BRDMs ashore. The big balloon-tired armored cars sit on the beach like monstrous amphibians freshly emerged from some primeval sea. Gagarin and Gorodin sit in the back of the second vehicle with the academician and the film crew: the lead BRDM carries their spetsnaz escort team. They maintain a dignified silence as the convoy rumbles and squeaks across the beach, up the gently sloping hillside, and then down towards the valley with the ruins.

  The armored cars stop and doors open. Everyone is relieved by the faint breeze that cracks the oven-heat of the interior. Gagarin walks over to the nearest ruin — remnants of a wall, waist-high — and stands, hands on hips, looking across the wasteland.

 
"Concrete," says Borisovitch, holding up a lump of crumbled not-stone from the foot of the wall for Yuri to see.

  "Indeed." Gagarin nods. "Any idea what this was?"

  "Not yet." The camera crew is already filming, heading down a broad boulevard between rows of crumbling foundations. "Only the concrete has survived, and it's mostly turned to limestone. This is old."

  "Hmm." The First Cosmonaut walks round the stump of wall and steps down to the foundation layer behind it, looking around with interest. "Interior column here, four walls — they're worn down, aren't they? This stuff that looks like a red stain. Rebar? Found any intact ones?"

  "Again, not yet sir," says Borisovitch. "We haven't looked everywhere yet, but…"

  "Indeed." Gagarin scratches his chin idly. "Am I imagining it or are the walls all lower on that side?" He points north, deeper into the sprawling maze of overgrown rubble.

  "You're right sir. No theory for it, though."

  "You don't say." Gagarin walks north from the five-sided building's ruin, looks around. "This was a road?"

  "Once, sir. It was nine meters wide — there seems to have been derelict ground between the houses, if that's what they were, and the road itself. "

  "Nine meters, you say." Gorodin and the academician hurry to follow him as he strikes off, up the road. "Interesting stonework here, don't you think, Misha?"

  "Yessir. Interesting stonework."

  Gagarin stops abruptly and kneels. "Why is it cracked like this? Hey, there's sand down there. And, um. Glass? Looks like it's melted. Ah, trinitite."

  "Sir?"

  Borisovitch leans forward. "That's odd."

  "What is?" asks Misha, but before he gets a reply both Gagarin and the researcher are up again and off towards another building.

  "Look. The north wall." Gagarin's found another chunk of wall, this one a worn stump that's more than a meter high: he looks unhappy.

  "Sir? Are you alright?" Misha stares at him. Then he notices the academician is also silent, and looking deeply perturbed. "What's wrong?"

  Gagarin extends a finger, points at the wall. "You can just see him if you look close enough. How long would it take to fade, Mikhail? How many years have we missed them by?"

  The academician licks his lips: "At least two thousand years, sir. Concrete cures over time, but it takes a very long time indeed to turn all the way to limestone. and then there's the weathering process to take account of. But the surface erosion…yes, that could fix the image from the flash. Perhaps. I'd need to ask a few colleagues back home."

  "What's wrong?" the political officer repeats, puzzled.

  The first cosmonaut grins humorlessly. "Better get your Geiger counter, Misha, and see if the ruins are still hot. Looks like we're not the only people on the disk with a geopolitical problem…"

  Chapter Ten: Been Here Before

  Brundle has finally taken the time to pull Gregor aside and explain what's going on; Gregor is not amused.

  "Sorry you walked into it cold," says Brundle. "But I figured it would be best for you to see for yourself." He speaks with a Midwestern twang, and a flatness of affect that his colleagues sometimes mistake for signs of an underlying psychopathology.

  "See what, in particular?" Gregor asks sharply. "What, in particular?" Gregor tends to repeat himself, changing only the intonation, when he's disturbed. He's human enough to recognize it as a bad habit but still finds it difficult to suppress the reflex.

  Brundle pauses on the footpath, looks around to make sure there's nobody within earshot. The Mall is nearly empty today, and only a humid breeze stirs the waters on the pool. "Tell me what you think."

  Gregor thinks for a moment, then summons up his full command of the local language: it's good practice. "The boys in the big house are asking for a CAB. It means someone's pulled his head out of his ass for long enough to realize they've got worse things to worry about than being shafted by the Soviets. Something's happened to make them realize they need a policy for dealing with the abductors. This is against doctrine, we need to do something about it fast before they start asking the right questions. Something's shaken them up, something secret, some HUMINT source from the wrong side of the curtain, perhaps. Could it be that man Gordievsky? But they haven't quite figured out what being here means. Sagan — does his presence mean what I think it does?"

  "Yes," Brundle says tersely.

  "Oh dear." A reflex trips and Gregor takes off his spectacles and polishes them nervously on his tie before replacing them. "Is it just him, or does it go further?" He leaves the rest of the sentence unspoken by convention — is it just him you think we'll have to silence?

  "Further." Brundle tends to talk out of the side of his mouth when he's agitated, and from his current expression Gregor figures he's really upset. "Sagan and his friends at Cornell have been using the Arecibo dish to listen to the neighbors. This wasn't anticipated. Now they're asking for permission to beam a signal at the nearest of the other disks. Straight up, more or less; 'talk to us.' Unfortunately Sagan is well-known, which is why he caught the attention of our nominal superiors. Meanwhile, the Soviets have found something that scared them. CIA didn't hear about it through the usual assets — they contacted the State Department via the embassy, they're that scared." Brundle pauses a moment. "Sagan and his buddies don't know about that, of course."

  "Why has nobody shot them already?" Gregor asks coldly.

  Brundle shrugs. "We pulled the plug on their funding just in time. If we shot them as well someone might notice. Everything could go nonlinear while we were trying to cover it up. You know the problem; this is a semi-open society, inadequately controlled. A bunch of astronomers get together on their own initiative — academic conference, whatever — and decide to spend a couple of thousand bucks of research grant money from NIST to establish communications with the nearest disk. How are we supposed to police that kind of thing?"

  "Shut down all their radio telescopes. At gunpoint, if necessary, but I figure a power cut or a congressional committee would be just as effective as leverage."

  "Perhaps, but we don't have the Soviets' resources to work with. Anyway, that's why I dragged Sagan in for the CAB. It's a Potemkin village, you understand, to convince everybody he contacted that something is being done, but we're going to have to figure out how to shut him up."

  "Sagan is the leader of the 'talk-to-us, alien gods' crowd, I take it."

  "Yes."

  "Well." Gregor considers his next words carefully. "Assuming he's still clean and uncontaminated, we can turn him or we can ice him. If we're going to turn him we need to do it convincingly — full Tellerization — and we'll need to come up with a convincing rationale. Use him to evangelize the astronomical community into shutting up or haring off in the wrong direction. Like Heisenberg and the Nazi nuclear weapons program." He snaps his fingers. "Why don't we tell him the truth? At least, something close enough to it to confuse the issue completely?"

  "Because he's a member of the Federation of American Scientists and he won't believe anything we tell him without independent confirmation," Brundle mutters through one side of his mouth. "That's the trouble with using a government agency as our cover story."

  They walk in silence for a minute. "I think it would be very dangerous to underestimate him," says Gregor. "He could be a real asset to us, but uncontrolled he's very dangerous. If we can't silence him we may have to resort to physical violence. And with the number of colonies they've already seeded, we can't be sure of getting them all."

  "Itemize the state of their understanding," Brundle says abruptly. "I want a reality check. I'll tell you what's new after you run down the checklist."

  "Okay." Gregor thinks for a minute. "Let us see. What everyone knows is that between zero three fifteen and twelve seconds and thirteen seconds Zulu time, on October second, sixty two, all the clocks stopped, the satellites went away, the star map changed, nineteen airliners and forty six ships in transit ended up in terminal trouble, and they found themselves
transferred from a globe in the Milky Way galaxy to a disk which we figure is somewhere in the lesser Magellanic cloud. Meanwhile the Milky Way galaxy — we assume that's what it is — has changed visibly. Lots of metal-depleted stars, signs of macroscopic cosmic engineering, that sort of thing. The public explanation is that the visitors froze time, skinned the earth, and plated it over the disk. Luckily they're still bickering over whether the explanation is Minsky's copying, uh, hypothesis, or that guy Moravec with his digital simulation theory."

  "Indeed." Brundle kicks at a paving stone idly. "Now. What is your forward analysis?"

  "Well, sooner or later they're going to turn dangerous. They have the historic predisposition towards teleological errors, to belief in a giant omnipotent creator and a purpose to their existence. If they start speculating about the intentions of a transcendent intelligence, it's likely they'll eventually ask whether their presence here is symptomatic of God's desire to probe the circumstances of its own birth. After all, we have evidence of how many technological species on the disk, ten million, twelve? Replicated many times, in some cases. They might put it together with their concept of manifest destiny and conclude that they are, in fact, doomed to give birth to God. Which is an entirely undesirable conclusion for them to reach from our point of view. Teleologists being bad neighbors, so to speak."

  "Yes indeed," Brundle says thoughtfully, then titters quietly to himself for a moment.

  "This isn't the first time they've avoided throwing around H-bombs in bulk. That's unusual for primate civilizations. If they keep doing it, they could be dangerous."

  "Dangerous is relative," says Brundle. He titters again. Things move inside his mouth.