by Bill Napier
‘What about this star?’ Gibson pointed to the little dot near the edge of Freya’s pencilled circle.
‘Nu Phoenicis. A late F dwarf, F8 V to be exact, fifty light years from us.’
‘That’s close. Can you rule it out?’
‘Not absolutely. But it’s unlikely.’
‘Excuse me,’ Hanning interrupted, ‘but what’s a late F dwarf?’
‘A Sun-like star,’ said Freya. ‘Just slightly hotter. It’s likely to have planets around it. But as I say, it’s just outside the error circle.’
Gibson sighed and leaned back. ‘So what do I tell the world’s press? And the Prime Minister and the Secretary General of the United Nations? That the signal came from empty space?’
‘No,’ Freya said, ‘you tell them that it came from the Whirlpool galaxy.’
Hanning said, ‘Forgive me, but I thought Lord Sangster had made it clear. You don’t tell anyone about this without his clearance.’
Gibson didn’t bother to conceal his hostility. ‘You’re here to observe, not lay down the law.’
Hanning bristled, but said nothing.
Shtyrkov said, ‘It has to be the Whirlpool.’
Gibson shook his head. ‘No. It’s clearly the F star. I take your point about the error circle, Freya, but it’s not that far beyond the edge. The star’s a dwarf, Sun-like. It’s practically our next-door neighbour. And another thing: it’s at the right distance. Think about it. The first radio signals were leaked from the Earth a hundred years ago. As soon as the first radio waves from us reached them, fifty years ago, they knew we were here, knew we were technological. They immediately fired off their signal and it has just reached us now. It fits like a glove.’
Shtyrkov said, ‘Two intelligence-bearing systems that we know of, us and them, a mere fifty light years apart? The Galaxy would have to be crawling with life.’
Gibson’s thin lips crimped in annoyance. ‘If that’s what it takes.’
Hanning cleared his throat. ‘I have a little experience in these matters and I must say I agree with Dr Gibson. In politics, you can’t approach a minister with ifs and buts. An air of certainty counts. You need to present a united front.’
‘Why?’ Petrie asked. ‘Why not properly reflect the scientific uncertainties?’
‘It looks bad. It conveys an air of dithering, even incompetence. Given the bizarre nature of your claim, it might suggest to some that you are – forgive me – the victims of delusion or, worse, perpetrators of fraud.’
‘That is outrageous.’
Hanning gave a cold smile. ‘Welcome to the big bad world, Dr Petrie.’
Gibson said, ‘That’s what I’ve been saying all along. We’d lose the drama, and we could even lose credibility. We must agree on the source of the signal.’
‘And if we can’t?’
‘Hell, Tom, we can at least look as if we do. We’re about to enter a political arena and sniping at the margins will just cause damage. We need a united front for the announcement, even if you have to put on an act for the occasion, okay? As team leader I expect you all to back me up.’
‘What, on the F star?’ Dismay and scorn mingled in Shtyrkov’s voice.
‘It seems to me the evidence is crystal clear on this. The signallers are on a small, Earth-like planet orbiting the star. It’s either that, or the signal was sent to us thirty million years before we existed.’
‘We can’t go public with the F star, Charlee. It’s outside the error circle. You’ll wreck our credibility.’
‘What else is there? The Whirlpool? Do you expect me to face the press and tell them it’s the Whirlpool galaxy thirty million light years away?’
Svetlana, who had been sitting quietly throughout the discussion, finally broke her silence. Hesitantly, she said, ‘I’m sorry if this is a dumb question, but how could an alien civilisation possibly know about our underground lake?’
17
We Have a Problem
‘I can explain that.’ Gibson’s voice had a triumphant edge to it. ‘Vashislav said it himself. Two civilisations so close together can’t be a coincidence. Well, let’s follow the logic. If he’s right – if I’m right about the F star – there must be a Galactic club out there. Millions, maybe billions, of civilisations talking to each other. That means a gigantic telephone network to go with it, particle flows crisscrossing everywhere. We just happened to drift across one of their lines of communication. The signal was just a lucky intercept.’
Shtyrkov put his hands on top of his head and frowned in concentration for some seconds. Then, ‘Charlee, here are two experiments for you. Number one: let a fly loose in a cathedral, blindfold yourself, and fire a pistol in any direction, preferably not at your head. Number two: put Lake Tatras out there somewhere in the Galaxy, even just halfway to the nearest star, and fire a signal in a random direction. Let me tell you this: you’d stand a better chance of hitting the fly in the cathedral than the lake in the Galaxy.’
Petrie was scribbling on paper. He looked up and said, ‘Vashislav is right. The chances of a random interception, even with a big galactic club, everyone chattering to everyone else, are too slim for words.’
Gibson said, ‘Use your common sense. How can aliens know about an experiment in an underground lake?’
Freya said, ‘I can prove that they do.’
The physicist gave Freya the floor with an ironic flourish.
She unconsciously flicked hair back over a shoulder and then itemised the points with her fingers. ‘First. At the latitude of Lake Tatras we’re spinning at fourteen hundred kilometres an hour round the Earth’s axis. Second. The Earth’s orbiting the Sun at thirty kilometres a second. Three. The Sun’s drifting at thirteen kilometres a second through our neighbouring stars, us along with it. And Four. Our neighbourhood, millions of stars in it, is orbiting the centre of our Galaxy at two hundred kilometres a second.’
Shtyrkov said, ‘Of course, Freya. Seen from even a light year away, the lake isn’t just a tiny target, it’s a fast-moving one.’
Freya nodded. ‘And the signal corrected for all these movements. It matched the lake’s speed through space with great precision.’
‘What’s your point?’ Gibson asked curtly.
Freya tapped her calculations. ‘Admit to error, Charlie. Whoever fired that signal knew about your underground cave and targeted it.’
‘Oh yes, of course they did,’ Gibson said, his face flushing. ‘Naturally they have telescopes that detect underground lakes from light years away and they even know we’ve set up an experiment under the water waiting for a signal. In fact, they knew we were going to set it up before we knew it ourselves – and if you believe this M51 rubbish, they knew we were going to do that before we even existed!’
‘I don’t claim to have any sort of background in science,’ said the Science Minister’s envoy, ‘but that would seem to be a problem.’
‘Indeed, Jeremy. And here’s another problem. How do I face the world’s press on Monday and sell them a garbage tale like that without being carted off screaming to the nearest paddy wagon by men in white coats?’
* * *
‘Jeremy?’
Petrie, in quiet conversation with Freya on a sofa, caught the unctuous tone of Gibson’s voice. He glanced across. The physicist was leaning over Hanning, charm oozing out of his face and looking like a benevolent frog.
Hanning looked up from his scribbled notes in surprise. ‘Yes, ah, Charlie?’
‘Time is short.’ The computer clocks were reading just after three o’clock. ‘I thought you might lend us a hand.’
Hanning glanced down at his notes. ‘Sangster is looking for a situation report at nine p.m. Still, I can spare some time. But be warned, I have no specialised knowledge, at least not in science.’
‘We need help with Svetlana’s viruses, if that’s what they are.’
‘There are thousands of them,’ Svetlana said without looking up from her screen.
Gibson pushed his
spectacles back to the bridge of his nose. ‘There are also thousands of terrestrial viruses. I was wondering if you might like to try to match them up. There are pictures of them on websites.’
‘It’s a big job,’ Svetlana said. ‘For instance, there are things called pico-rna-viridae, and they’re divided into five genera – entero-, rhino-, aphto-, cardio- and unassignedo-viruses. If you take the rhinovirus it’s divided into human and bovine, and if you take the human it has a hundred serotypes. And these are just the small RNA viruses; there are thousands more.’
Hanning looked blank. ‘RNA viruses?’
‘Forget them,’ Shtyrkov called over. ‘They change by the year. Any signal representing them would refer to viruses which have evolved beyond recognition. In fact, this is a big problem, people. Any picture beamed to us from far away and long ago should refer to microorganisms which no longer exist. E. coli reproduces so fast it can mutate as much in a day as humanity does in a thousand years.’
Svetlana sighed. ‘There’s another problem. We’re all desperately ignorant about this and we’re running out of time.’
Charlie said, ‘So work harder. I want us to learn as much as we possibly can about this signal before we go public with it.’
‘I’ve told you about going public without authorisation, Charlie.’
‘I know.’ Gibson’s cheek twitched nervously. ‘You’re just being asked to match pictures. Any idiot could do it.’
Hanning said, ‘Have you ever thought about a career in the Diplomatic Service?’
‘I’m sorry, I—’
Hanning laughed. ‘Of course I’ll help. Let’s see if these things are earthly.’
Gibson sighed with relief, and promptly exited from his unctuous mode. ‘Svetlana, you still haven’t told me if that thing is human.’ He turned to Shtyrkov, who was lying back on another sofa, staring at the ceiling. ‘Vashislav, are you a waste of space or what?’
The Russian waved a dismissive arm in the air. ‘I’m meditating.’
‘What the hell use is that? And what about you two?’ Gibson wanted to know. Freya and Petrie were heading for the door. ‘Don’t tell me you people are meditating too?’
‘I’ll be in the theological library,’ Petrie said.
‘Good, good. More decoding, Tom?’
‘No, I’ll be looking for a Bible. I expect the theological library has one.’
Gibson’s face showed bafflement. ‘What in God’s name has the Bible got to do with anything?’
18
Visions of God
Petrie heard the footsteps hurrying behind him in the broad corridor. Freya. She caught him by the arm and sat him firmly down on the velvet sofa. ‘Don’t be so secretive, Tom. What are you up to?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s too embarrassing to say.’
‘Tell me anyway.’
‘Look, it’s too silly, Freya. Let’s just say I’m off on some eccentric tangent and leave it at that.’
She nipped his thigh viciously. Petrie, taken by surprise, yelped.
‘Tom!’
Petrie hesitated, then: ‘Okay, okay. Look at the position. There’s no way for others to confirm this signal – it’s a one-off. Hanning’s right, credibility is an issue. And if we make a wrong identification we’ll lose it.’
Freya nodded impatiently. ‘But we’re all agreed on that.’
‘Charlie’s fixated on the F star. The timing’s right, like he says.’
‘But Tom, it lies outside the two-sigma error circle. There’s only one chance in twenty that he’s right.’
‘You know that and I know that, Freya, but Charlie’s an idiot and he’s going to blow it.’
‘So, what is this silly idea?’
Petrie hesitated again. Freya looked threatening, and he said, ‘I might be able to disprove his timing argument. Suppose they’ve been probing us for centuries. Say they’ve been firing at us routinely, maybe even for thousands of years, to see if we’ve reached a level where we can understand and reply with our sticks and stones, like radio or lasers.’
Freya nodded.
‘In that case there might be evidence in historical records.’
Another encouraging nod.
In a burst of bravado he added, ‘Maybe even pre-history or mythology. Lights in the sky, things like that.’
Freya pursed her lips. ‘That is embarrassing. It’s unprofessional, like looking for flying saucers or something.’
Petrie flushed.
She grinned. ‘But brilliant. History should have a record of glowing patterns in water, maybe even in heavy clouds. I’ll join you.’
In the theological library, Freya made straight for the computer terminal and fired it up. Petrie started with an illuminated Bible on a lectern, its pages laboriously written in calligraphic script in some past century. Its preface began with an enormous letter, made up of little fantasy animals with a swastika-like cross in the middle. He could just recognise it as an uncial D, and barely make out the ornate lettering: Dominus Deus noster Jesus Christus …
He blew out his cheeks. This was going to take years. More prowling the shelves revealed more Bibles, all in Latin. His hopes rose with an illustrated book on Mirabili. Perusal showed that the book described miracles indeed, if two-headed babies, statues weeping blood and winged basilisks could be believed.
He clattered up the spiral staircase. After some minutes, tucked in a corner, he found a shelf of modest-sized Bibles, in assorted vulgar tongues including English. He guessed this was the modern collection, grudgingly acknowledging the existence of the last three centuries or so. He pulled out a St James edition; its leather binding, he thought, was less than a century old, but the font and the feel of the pages told of something printed maybe three hundred years ago. It had a musty smell and he playfully wondered if the plague bacillus could survive for three hundred years.
Apart from the one at Heathrow chapel, Petrie hadn’t looked at a Bible since his school days and had no more than the vaguest memory of the contents. He was dismayed to find that there were a thousand pages. He clattered down the staircase, sat himself at a table, and started on them systematically, speed-reading.
Two hours later, bleary-eyed and head spinning, he was practically through the Bible, and was beginning to think his memory had played tricks, when he came across the first nugget.
* * *
I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet.
Revelation 1:10
And immediately I was in the spirit: and behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.
Revelation 4:2–3
So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
Revelation 17:3
* * *
‘What are you getting at, Tom?’
‘Don’t you see? The prophet is describing celestial visions, weird things in the sky. Okay, it’s overlaid with imagery but he sees them “in the spirit”. What does it mean, in the spirit? He repeats it all the way through the Book of Revelation. Was he in some sort of trance? An altered state of consciousness?’
‘High on Ecstasy?’ Freya suggested.
Petrie ignored the interruption. ‘And look at what he’s raving about. Bright things, shiny things, glittering things like emeralds. What does he mean, a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald?’ Petrie was still flicking through the pages. ‘Here’s another one. Listen to this:
And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God. Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal.
Revelation 21:10–11
‘More shiny precious stones, more “in the spirit”. This guy’s describing Shtyrkov’s syndrome. Temporal lobe damage. The signal makes you mad.’
Freya made a sceptical face. ‘That is a monstrous speculation.’ Her voice deepened by an octave at the word ‘monstrous’.
But Petrie’s eyes were shining with enthusiasm. ‘No, it fits perfectly. The writer’s an astral prophet. He has a cast of thousands, the Beast rising over the sea, the Dragon, the throne in the sky, the plague of celestial locusts, falling stars, centaurs, the abyss, the temple in the sky…’
‘Tom…’
‘The seventh seal marks the return of seven comets, trumpet-shaped. The four horsemen of the apocalypse are comets, streaming their manes across the sky. Don’t you see? He’s describing the sky and things that have taken place in the sky. And if that’s right, Freya, if they’re all celestial phenomena, then they include a glowing sky, complete with the temporal lobe stuff. You must see that!’
‘No, Tom, I don’t see it, not even remotely. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if you’ve had a touch of the magnetic fields yourself.’
Petrie blinked in frustration. ‘They’ve been sending us signals at least since the time of pastoral societies. They’ve been probing us for at least two thousand years.’
‘Ruling out Charlie’s F star?’
‘Yes. But more than that, anyone watching the Earth would know there was no technological civilisation capable of understanding the message. Sending sub-nuclear particle messages to sheep-farming societies is not the behaviour of an intelligence.’
‘What, then?’ Freya’s brow was furrowed.
‘A probe. An automated probe. Something set up to run by itself. Something waiting for a response, maybe for thousands of years.’
‘You keep talking about probes, probing us.’
‘Charlie and you are both wrong. It’s not the M51 galaxy and it’s not the F star. I think it’s empty space. Only the space isn’t empty – it has a machine, something orbiting the Sun. Something that fires off bursts at us from time to time. It has to be close because it knows our geography and our rotation and all the rest. But it’ll stay dormant until we send it a reply.’
