Analog SFF, April 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “What's got you so introspective all of a sudden?” Trevor asked.

  “Woman problems,” David answered.

  “Ah, right. Now there's a consensual reality issue for you."

  * * * *

  She wanted him to blow his talk, no doubt so he wouldn't receive collider time for the dark energy experiment, but he wasn't about to kill his career over a mysterious conversation with a person—alien or no—who wouldn't stick around to prove her point. If she wanted life-changing concessions from him, then she had better offer life-changing compensation.

  As soon as he thought that, he realized that he couldn't be bought. Even if she gave him the secret to her stardrive, he would still want to perform the dark energy experiment. Understanding the moment of creation—and all that came afterward—was bigger than anything she could possibly give him.

  He slept fitfully that night, twitching at every sound, expecting his mysterious visitor to show up again to finish her argument, but she never showed. He showered and shaved and dressed in his suit and then rescued his notes from under the mattress before he headed out for the conference.

  His talk wasn't until mid afternoon. He attended two others, but had a hard time concentrating on what the speakers were saying. He kept eyeing people in the audience, wondering if any of them were aliens in disguise. He wondered if the people giving their presentations had received visits like he had. Were they twisting their own words at the aliens’ request?

  He briefly met with Arnold Wittstein, the new director of CERN, who ran the Large Hadron Collider that would provide the energy for David's experiment if they approved his request. Arnold seemed a little aloof, but David couldn't tell if it was just his normal reserve after being pumped for collider time by every physicist at the conference or if the aliens had gotten to him, too.

  There was no way to ask. That was the agony of this whole situation: knowing for sure that aliens existed—that the universe harbored life other than humanity!—and not being able to say a thing about it to anyone. Oh sure, he could now phone up Whitley Streiber and have a dandy conversation with him and blow his scientific credibility in the process.

  The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. Who did these aliens think they were, anyway, skulking around in the shadows and meddling in people's business? Why didn't they just come out and greet humanity openly like decent neighbors?

  By the time for his presentation, he had worked up enough righteous indignation to power him through the jitters he usually felt in front of a crowd, and he dived into his speech with a fervor that surprised even him. He saw several people get up and move forward to closer seats, and someone else got up and hustled outside, to return moments later with half a dozen more people in tow. People kept trickling in as word spread that this was a talk not to miss.

  David had seen this happen before to other people. It was often the turning point of their careers. The eye of the entire scientific community was focused on them for a moment, and if they managed to make their point, they were golden for years.

  And David was making his point. He had explained the physics of what he intended to do, and why measuring the dark energy density during the conditions at the beginning of time would tell them how the universe would evolve. All that was left was to prove it.

  “So now comes the time to trot out the charts and graphs,” he said, sliding his DVD into the computer connected to the projector. He felt a strange calm descend over him. He had tested the DVD beforehand and the images on it had displayed fine. He had pulled the wireless connection from the computer so nobody could hack into it from outside. He had a backup DVD and a backup computer in his briefcase just in case. If the aliens were going to stop him, it was going to take a fire in the lobby.

  The first slide flashed up on the screen, a wide oval of mottled greens and reds and blues. David said, “Most of you are familiar with the cosmic background radiation as measured by the WMAP probe. That measurement established once and for all the validity of the Big Bang model of the universe. It even established some fairly rigorous parameters for the—"

  The lights went out. There wasn't even a flicker, just instant darkness. Someone in the audience called out, “It's the big crunch!” and there was a ripple of laughter.

  It's the goddamned aliens, David thought. Aloud he said, “It's FermiLab. They want to be first with this measurement.” That got another round of laughter, probably at the thought of the American lab still trying to compete with CERN after decades of stingy funding.

  Points of light flared up in the audience as people pulled keychain lights out of their pockets. David said, “While we wait for the power to come back on, let me tell you a little about the experiment itself.” He began to describe the apparatus and how it would use standing waves to multiply a particle beam's density for the femtosecond needed to take his measurement. He had to speak loudly to be heard without a microphone. He imagined himself speaking to an alien in the basement, a little gremlin by the circuit breaker who would soon be nabbed by hotel security, and his voice carried like a Broadway actor's.

  Emergency lighting flickered on after a few minutes, but the projector remained dark. It eventually became apparent that the main power wasn't coming back on any time soon. Someone entered the room and interrupted David to say, “Looks like the whole city is out. Oakland, too."

  “All right, then,” David said. “Let's call it a day here. I'll be happy to finish my presentation whenever the conference committee can reschedule it.” He knew his moment in the spotlight was over, though. Rescheduled talks were always sparsely attended, and a rescheduled fragment of a talk would be lucky to draw the speaker's own mother.

  Even so, Arnold Wittstein came up to him as everyone else was filing out of the room and said, “That was an excellent presentation. I want you to meet the rest of the scheduling committee."

  They arranged to meet for dinner. David fidgeted the hour and a half beforehand, hanging out in the bar rather than going up to his room. He felt safer in a crowd. If the aliens would shut down the power to the entire city, who knew what they would do to him if they could get him alone.

  He met the CERN people in the lobby. Trevor had wangled an invitation, so with David, there were five; too many for a regular taxi. Arnold introduced the two David didn't know—Michelle and Bernard—while they waited for the doorman to hail a van.

  When it arrived, they piled in and headed for Chinatown, making small talk about the power outage, which had been traced to a transfer station malfunction twenty miles away. David wished he could tell his companions what had really happened, but he knew how that would go over.

  Then the van shuddered, and the interior lit up bright as day. The driver shouted something in Farsi and stomped on the brakes, but the van only slowed for a second before its tires left the ground and it continued on—and upward as well.

  “Those bastards!” David said.

  Everyone turned to him, but there was no time to explain. He leaned across Michelle and yanked open the sliding door. “It's me they want. Quick, bail out while you still have the chance."

  Michelle looked at the rapidly receding pavement, lit up like a concert stage. Cars were swerving left and right and smashing into one another. “I think I'll take my chances in here,” she said.

  Trevor was on the left side; he craned his head to get a look upward. “Flying saucer,” he said. “Ring of lights around the rim. Big opening in the middle where the brightest light's coming from. So these are friends of yours?"

  “I wouldn't say ‘friends,’ exactly,” David said. “One of them accosted me in the elevator yesterday. She was in my room when you came by, trying to talk me out of doing my dark energy experiment. Said I could accidentally determine the wrong constant and blow up the universe."

  “Ah,” said Trevor.

  “You can understand why I didn't say anything then."

  “Yes, well, this rather changes the picture now, doesn't it?"

 
“It does,” David said, amazed at how relieved he felt. Here he was being abducted by aliens, and he was just happy that he could finally talk about it openly. “I don't think they'll hurt us,” he said.

  “Speak for yourself,” Trevor said. “They'll fiddle with our memories, if there's anything to the reports of other abductions. And I'm not particularly keen on being buggered by medical probes, either."

  Bernard said, “They want to keep you from taking your measurement?"

  “That's right."

  “And if we promise them this, they will let us go?"

  “Probably."

  “Then we will promise."

  “You'd just give in to them like that?"

  He laughed. “In the face of this technology, I would be a fool not to.” He turned in the seat and winked at David.

  “You're ... right,” David said loudly, for the benefit of whoever else was listening. “In the face of this, we would be fools not to agree to whatever they want."

  The flying saucer began to move while the van was still rising into its body. They were already over the ocean and moving west by the time the van rose into the interior and the floor irised closed beneath them.

  The chamber they arrived in was festooned with equipment. Trevor and Michelle pulled out their cell phones and snapped pictures like mad until a door slid aside in the wall and an alien stepped through, and Trevor even got a couple of shots of her. It might have been the one from yesterday; David couldn't tell. This one was female, too, but she was in her own element this time, dressed in a white bodysuit that left no doubt just what she looked like. Her limbs were supermodel thin, and so was her body. Only her head was larger than normal, but without the wig and sunglasses it looked right on her. It looked better than right. Here, in context, she was as right as a lioness on the veldt.

  She carried no weapons, but she wore an aura of total control. She walked up to the side of the van and crossed her arms over her chest. “You don't listen very well,” she said.

  “You weren't very convincing,” David said.

  “How about now?"

  “You've got our attention."

  “So I do.” She blinked her big eyes a couple of times, then said, “Come on out of there. I might as well give you the tour."

  David looked at the others. Nobody moved. The cab's dispatch radio hissed softly with static. Then the cabbie reached out and turned off the meter. “No charge for waiting,” he said.

  What followed was any scientist's dream, and several scientists’ nightmare. The alien showed them gadgetry that boggled their minds: antigravity generators and reactionless thrusters and time-distorting fields and more. It was exhilarating to know that such things were possible, yet frustrating to realize that they had already been invented.

  “Are we always going to be following in your footsteps?” Trevor asked.

  “Why do you think we keep our distance?” the alien answered. “We don't want to ruin your fun any more than we have to."

  “But you think you have to in David's case."

  “That's right."

  “So what will you do now?"

  She wiggled her head in a quick shiver. “We could wipe your brains back to infancy if we wanted to. The five of you are pretty much the whole source of the problem. However, that seems a little extreme. We're trying a more subtle approach."

  “Subtle,” Trevor said with a laugh. “Like abducting us right out of the middle of a crowded street."

  “You forced the issue,” she said. “Don't force it further if you know what's good for you. Now it's time for you to go.” She had been walking while she talked, leading them back into the chamber where their van waited. The cabbie was leaning against the driver's door, smoking a cigarette.

  Arnold said, “What? You're giving us a glimpse of all this and just sending us on our way?"

  “That's right. We're letting you off with a warning. Be careful what you look for when you tinker with the fundamental constants of the universe."

  “Come on,” Arnold said. “We must be one of billions of species in the universe, any one of which could be defining universal constants at any moment. You yourselves must have defined practically everything eons ago."

  “We did quite a bit, yes,” the alien said. “Until we realized how dangerous it was. We've never forgiven ourselves for pi. But you're quite wrong about the number of civilizations in the universe. Intelligence is rare, and technology is even rarer. And societies that survive technology long enough to probe the secrets of the Big Bang, well, if there are any others besides you and us, we haven't found them.” She nodded toward the van. “It's time to go,” she said again.

  “How do we get in touch with you?” David asked.

  “You don't,” said the alien. “Not if you know what's good for you. Now get in the van."

  David thought about rushing her and trying to take over the flying saucer. She kept saying “we,” but she was the only alien they had seen on board. On the other hand, even if she were alone, she must have been protected somehow. He wouldn't have let a caveman in his car without restraints.

  The others got back in the taxi, and he reluctantly followed. He had barely closed the door when the bottom irised out from under them and they dropped—thankfully no faster than an elevator—to the ground. A moment later the light winked out and the flying saucer slid away into the night.

  They were on a two-lane road, empty at the moment save for them. Just over the horizon was the skyglow of a major city.

  “Now what?” said Trevor.

  Michelle was thumbing buttons on her phone. “My photos are still there,” she said.

  “This doesn't make sense,” Arnold said. “They abduct us in the middle of the city, with hundreds of witnesses, leave our memories intact, let us take photos, and leave those intact; it's like they want to be exposed."

  “They want us to try,” David said. “But what do you think would really happen?"

  “If five internationally renowned scientists came out to say we'd met ... aliens?” Arnold's voice lost its excitement. “Ah, right. Five or fifty, they'd still think we were loony."

  “And that would be the end of our careers."

  There was silence in the car for the space of a few breaths. It was the cabbie who finally broke it. “You are seriously? Not talk about this to anyone?"

  “Not us,” said Trevor. He flipped open his phone and checked his photos, then handed the phone to the cabbie. “You're welcome to do whatever you want. Say you dropped us off before you were abducted, and I left this on the seat. Say whatever you want, as long as you leave us out of it."

  The cabbie looked at the phone, then slowly shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not for all the riches in the world."

  “Smart man,” said Trevor. He snapped the phone shut. “Okay, then. This never happened.” He turned to David. “How about you? Are you still going to do your dark energy measurement?"

  David thought about it. The alien woman had gone to considerable trouble to scare him out of it, but she hadn't stopped him. She had only warned him. Warned him that he could destroy the universe if he looked for the wrong thing. But in that warning was the implication that he could preserve the universe forever if he found the right thing. If the dark energy constant was just exactly right, the universe could expand forever, empty space regenerating new matter at just the perfect rate to keep galaxies and stars and planets forming for all of eternity.

  “I'm, uh, I'm going to do some more calculations first,” he said. “Maybe ask for some collaborators to make sure I know what I'm looking for. Then, yeah, I'll do it. It's going to happen eventually somewhere. Let's make sure it gets done right."

  Copyright (c) 2008 Jerry Oltion

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Serial: MARSBOUND

  by Joe Haldeman

  "The tip of the iceberg” is what you see. Where is the rest? “Underwater” may be a gross oversimplification....

  P
arts I & II synopsis

  Mars needed families, or so some thought. Carmen Dula, nineteen and with no special training, was part of the experiment that allowed married scientists to bring children to the planet's “colony.” if you can call a hundred scientists and engineers that. (Most of them were in favor of it, but a strong minority, including the chief administrator Dargo Solingen, thought it was a waste of time and a distraction.)

  In the course of flagrantly disobeying orders, Carmen had an accident and was rescued by strange Martians—who were evidently no better adapted to martian conditions than humans were. They had lived for thousands of years in an underground colony of their own, in an environment similar to a high mountain on Earth.

  They didn't look like anything from Earth, though, with four arms and four legs and a head resembling an old potato, including eyes.

  Ignorant of science, they nevertheless lived in a pocket of high technology, with self-repairing machines that kept out the martian cold and near-vacuum. The technology came from the ones that brought them or sent them to Mars, millennia ago, the almost mythical Others.

  The machines around them had begun to receive radio signals from Earth in the late nineteenth century, television in the twentieth, and cube in the twenty-first. They absorbed human language from those, and something of human learning.

  Carmen was the unofficial ambassador to the Martians, through their leader Red, who had rescued her and was therefore responsible for her. Unfortunately, she also became a disease vector, passing on the martian “pulmonary cyst,” which to them was just a normal part of growing up, to the colony's children. It was a gruesome and apparently life-threatening disease, which the Martians cured easily.

  It made no sense; it was like a human catching a disease from a trout. Whatever the explanation, it was obvious that humans who had been near the Martians would have to be isolated from contact with other people, and all of Mars quarantined.

  To study the creatures, an orbiting facility called Little Mars was built near Earth's Space Elevator, where a few Martians and a few humans, presumably infected, could be studied like coddled bugs. Carmen and Red were among the first.