The Lure

by Bill Napier

  Ogorodnikov acknowledged the cautious response with a slight smile. ‘I would like you to call me Mikhail.’

  Edgeworth returned the half-smile but didn’t reciprocate the offer of familiarity. ‘In the short term this will be a major shock, Mikhail. Learning that out there is at least one intelligence probably millions of years in advance of ours.’

  The Prime Minister sensed, rather than saw, his translator at his side freezing up, and remembered that the FO man had been given no inkling of the purpose of the meeeting. The man recovered quickly and delivered Ogorodnikov’s reply, struggling to keep the astonishment out of his voice: ‘An intelligence which wishes to communicate with us, and which is prepared to give us knowledge thousands of years ahead of our time.’

  Edgeworth turned to the man seated at the far end of the table. There would be no keeping him out of it. ‘What can Professor Velikhov tell us about this matter?’

  Georgi Velikhov cleared his throat. There was a brief, three-way exchange in Russian between Ogorodnikov, his translator and the Academician. Then Velikhov was speaking in good English with a hint of Harvard American. ‘Gentlemen, the idea of searching for alien life is centuries old. In 1822 the mathematician Gauss thought there were people on the Moon, and they could be contacted using a system of mirrors. Others thought to signal Martians or lunar dwellers by digging geometric ditches in the Sahara, filling them with oil and setting them on fire.’

  ‘Can we skip a century or two?’ Edgeworth asked impatiently.

  Velikhov continued: ‘The radio astronomers have been looking for extraterrestrial signals for almost fifty years. The pioneering work was carried out by an American called Frank Drake. He used a small radio telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia. Now, all the world’s radio telescopes routinely look for meaningful chirps – signals in amongst the hiss of the galaxies and the echo of the Big Bang. Today’s equipment is ten trillion times more sensitive than Drake’s Project Ozma. And the Americans are using the world’s largest radio telescope, the Arecibo in Puerto Rico, to examine a thousand nearby star systems. But all this effort has produced nothing. We have heard only a great silence.’

  ‘The people inside the mountain weren’t using radio,’ Edgeworth pointed out.

  Velikhov nodded. ‘Perhaps we have been foolish. Perhaps we should have realised that the aliens might have discovered more advanced methods of communication than anything we could imagine. All this time we have been looking for smoke signals.’

  The FO man translated Ogorodnikov’s words. ‘Are people prepared for this news? Will there be panic in the streets?’

  ‘No. People see Captain Kirk fighting aliens on TV every day. And I suppose you know as well as I do, Mikhail, that there are ways of putting a message over to the public.’

  ‘Aha! Your famous spin doctors! I too have my “propagandisty”. But the matter goes much deeper than spin, Prime Minister. Look what happened to the American Indians when Europe invaded North America. Look what happened to the Mayan civilisation when the Spaniards arrived. Whenever a strong culture comes into contact with a weak one, the weak is exterminated.’

  ‘But we’re talking about the transmission of information, surely not the prospect of physical invasion.’

  Velikhov cleared his throat again. ‘The distances involved in interstellar travel are huge. The technical problems even for an advanced civilisation…’

  ‘How can you put limits on the capabilities of an advanced civilisation?’ Ogorodnikov wanted to know.

  Velikhov continued to speak English, while Lenin muttered into Ogorodnikov’s ear: ‘I don’t, Nature does. Nature has set up a speed limit: nothing can travel faster than light. No civilisation, however advanced, can break that limit. Mother Nature has also arranged for the Galaxy to be immense. Given these factors, colonisation by aliens would take an immense span of time. Our species could be extinct by the time they arrived in their starships. But the real question is, why would they want to conquer us? Do we want to conquer an ant heap? We have nothing to offer and are of no conceivable importance to them.’

  ‘This confirms my opinion,’ Edgeworth said. ‘There will be no panic. Intense interest, yes, but no blood in the streets. The Mayan and Native American civilisations were wiped out by physical contact. Disease and genocide did for them. What we have here is something different, a transmission of knowledge. Could that destroy our civilisation – mere knowledge?’

  Ogorodnikov said, ‘It came close, Prime Minister, in the age of the Bomb.’

  Edgeworth showed a polite scepticism. ‘Suppose that, in the time of Moses, there was a single telephone line, and that it connected him to our century. What would that have done to the pastoral societies of the day? Most of the knowledge would be so incomprehensible to them that they couldn’t have used it.’

  Ogorodnikov was studying Edgeworth closely. The FO man translated his words. ‘So, what are you saying? That you agree with my Academician, here? That these aliens pose no threat?’

  Edgeworth leaned forward across the table. ‘The threat of new knowledge doesn’t worry me. The threat of invasion doesn’t worry me.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘It’s the threat of extermination.’

  The room fell silent.

  Edgeworth said, ‘Mikhail, if we’re of no importance to them, why are they signalling us?’

  Ogorodnikov nodded grimly. ‘Precisely. You and I have been thinking the same thoughts. The signal may be a lure. If we reply, they have a measure of our state of scientific literacy.’

  ‘And are we still thinking the same thought, Mikhail? That if we reply, the next message from them might be our obliteration?’

  Ogorodnikov clasped his hands together on the table. He nodded.

  Velikhov interrupted in English. ‘That is nonsense. I am sorry but I must protest. We are ants. We pose no conceivable threat to them. An advanced civilisation will long have climbed out of the mire of barbarism and warfare.’

  Ogorodnikov spoke sharply. The FO man translated verbatim: ‘You are here as a scientific adviser, not a policymaker.’

  Velikhov ignored the rebuke. His voice was animated. ‘Advanced societies will be altruistic. They are simply trying to contact young technological societies such as our own. They judge that we have reached a stage where we can be helped. Look at the information they have sent us already.’

  Edgeworth said, ‘We may be no threat now. When better to stop us, before we become one?’

  There was an edge to Ogorodnikov’s smile. ‘A lure. A delicious bait. Perhaps the extermination requires no death rays on their part.’ He turned to Edgeworth. ‘The English have an author, Mary Shelley.’

  ‘Had. She’s a nineteenth-century figure.’

  ‘She created the Frankenstein monster.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ogorodnikov’s translator imitated the caution in Edgeworth’s voice.

  ‘We are being invited, are we not, to turn ourselves into monsters, for an unknown purpose, with a molecular code supplied to us by creatures about which we know nothing. What is this, Prime Minister, but a modern Frankenstein story?’

  Velikhov interrupted his boss. ‘Forgive me, President, but as your scientific adviser I must protest against such nonsense. Improving our minds and bodies doesn’t turn us into monsters, it lifts us out of barbarism.’

  ‘You miss my point, Professor. What time bombs may be hidden in these codes? What sort of monster will they yield?’

  Edgeworth said, ‘These are weighty issues, President Ogorodnikov. They’re matters for extensive discussions by the whole international community, perhaps extending over many years. It needs input from philosophers, scientists, even religious leaders. How can you and I decide these things in a few hours in a log cabin?’

  Ogorodnikov’s brow wrinkled. ‘If the genie is to be kept in the bottle – and I said if – then we dare not access the wisdom of our philosophers. Someone would talk.’

  ‘Are you seriously suggesting that you and I reach a
n instant decision on a matter which needs to be thrashed out by—’

  Ogorodnikov interrupted the translator forcefully, spreading his arms wide as he spoke. ‘Prime Minister, don’t you see? That is the tragedy of our situation. We have no choice. The scientists in the mountain will soon be dispersing and when they do, they will open Pandora’s box.’

  Edgeworth dabbed at the sweat on his brow. He wondered if some subtle psychology was at play; at any rate Ogorodnikov seemed unperturbed by the heat. The PM looked over at Velikhov. ‘Suppose the home planet of the signallers was public knowledge. And suppose someone wanted to send a reply. Could it be done?’

  ‘If the extraterrestrials have receivers no better than ours, a ten-kilowatt signal from us could reach anything out to a hundred light years from here. There must be hundreds of radar stations capable of firing off a reply. Yes, it could be done. It’s not even difficult.’

  ‘You see?’ Ogorodnikov glared at Edgeworth. ‘Once the knowledge is out, the situation is beyond our control. Someone in Cuba or South Africa or Baffin Island could decide to reply. There would be a race for the honour of being the first human to make contact with extraterrestrials.’

  Velikhov said, ‘In 1974 the Americans used the Arecibo telescope to send a message to a star cluster with over a hundred thousand members. If one of the stars happens to have a planet, and if someone on that planet happens to be pointing a powerful receiver at us for a few critical minutes in the future, they will know that we are here.’

  Ogorodnikov spoke angrily. ‘What right did these Americans have to do that on behalf of all mankind, without first consulting mankind about the possible consequences?’

  ‘Mikhail Isayevich, the globular cluster is about twenty-five thousand light years away and it will be fifty thousand years before we receive a reply, if we do. They have handed the problem not to us but to our distant descendants.’

  ‘And are these new signallers fifty thousand years away? Fifty years? Or five?’

  Velikhov said, ‘As of Wednesday the scientists in the castle did not know the location of the home planet. But you can be sure they are moving mountains to find out.’

  ‘And what then?’ Edgeworth asked.

  ‘I believe that as soon as they know, they will shout their discovery from the rooftops. The news will be round the globe by e-mail in minutes. The public will see it on CNN within an hour. Every telescope in existence will point at whatever star system this signal comes from.’

  Edgeworth said, ‘You are telling us, Professor Velikhov, that the scientists in the castle will not willingly be muzzled.’

  ‘Prime Minister, I guarantee it.’

  Edgeworth said, ‘And so, as you say, Mikhail, opening Pandora’s box.’

  The two leaders looked into each other’s eyes across the table. Ogorodnikov voiced their thoughts quietly. ‘This presents us with an interesting problem.’

  ‘You mean…’

  The Russian President said, ‘What are we going to do about them?’

  Edgeworth broke the shocked silence. He turned to his PPS. ‘Joe, I’d like you to leave us for a few minutes.’

  Pembroke, looking stunned, collected his hat without a word. There was a gust of icy air as he left. Edgeworth noted that the darkness outside had been replaced by a dull grey light; through the open door he had seen every detail of the trees and the lake.

  Ogorodnikov, at last acknowledging the heat in the cabin, pulled off his heavy sweater. ‘Prime Minister, I have a confession to make. Two days ago I asked our Slovakian friends to place a ring of steel around the castle where these scientists are working. They are not yet aware of this. I realise that I have illegally encroached on the rights of two British citizens.’

  Edgeworth acknowledged the confession with a nod.

  Ogorodnikov added, ‘And I have a team of specialists standing by. They can fly there, without fear of detection, at a moment’s notice.’

  ‘Specialists?’

  ‘Should we decide to suppress the secret permanently.’

  Edgeworth sighed. ‘They’re not necessary. I’ve had a man inside the castle since yesterday. He will carry out any special tasks we decide on.’

  ‘Whatever we decide, Prime Minister, we must at all costs keep the Americans out of this. That will not be easy.’

  Edgeworth took a deep breath. ‘Meantime, you and I have to make some hard decisions.’

  25

  CIA

  For this one, Sullivan himself was carrying out the morning briefing. The CIA Director was flanked by McLarty and Melanie Moore, and the trio faced President Bull across a coffee-table. A Marine unpadlocked the briefcase on the table and left smartly. Sullivan pulled out a buff folder.

  Sullivan had bags under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept. ‘Mr President, I want to make you aware of some very unusual movements by Prime Minister Edgeworth over the last day or so. It may be relevant to the other matter which I brought to your attention yesterday evening.’

  The other matter. Melanie wondered about that.

  ‘Ms Moore here is one of my bright young analysts and I think I should just let her tell the story.’

  Melanie Moore had never been inside the White House, let alone sat in the Oval Office in the company of such powerful men.

  After the embarrassing memory of her tennis outfit, she had dressed in a well-cut, dark-grey suit, touched her eyelashes with mascara, used a little bronze eye-shadow and a muted plum lipstick which went well, she believed, with her black skin. Her hair was straightened and sleek. She finished the effect with small, plain pearl earrings and she was wearing spectacles with the heaviest frames she could find.

  But still none of it was quite obliterating that embarrassing memory.

  Melanie Moore

  Should be demure.

  The stupid rhyme, having popped into her head in the Lincoln on the way over, would not go away. She opened the folder Sullivan had laid on the coffee-table. ‘Mr President, Prime Minister Edgeworth left Chequers on Thursday evening on a domestic flight, having abruptly cancelled his appearance at the Kohl funeral in Germany and a weekend social engagement. There’s no comment on it by the British press. We know, or think we know, he was driven to RAF Northolt which isn’t too far from Chequers. Now Edgeworth normally uses a VC-10 on domestic flights and one took off from Northolt soon after his ETA there. This was at twenty-two hundred hours Greenwich Mean Time.’

  ‘So far so good,’ Bull said encouragingly.

  ‘Now we don’t monitor Royal Air Force communications.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘But there are people who do that sort of thing for a hobby. Enthusiastic amateurs.’

  ‘Like trainspotters?’ Bull suggested.

  ‘Exactly like trainspotters, except that these people use VHF and UHF scanners, HF radio and so on which are able to pick up military communications. They cover Western Europe and they swap “sightings” on the Net. It’s murder on military security, especially if there’s, say, a Middle East operation on the boil, but there’s nothing any of us can do about it. Anyway, all we had to do was log into their records to find where the Prime Minister’s aircraft landed. Here’s their record of arrivals at RAF Lossiemouth on the evening in question.’ Melanie passed over a sheet of paper with a shaky hand.

  Bull’s eyes skimmed over the sheet. ‘The VC-10?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It’s based in Brize Norton as you see, but it stopped off at Northolt. Unquestionably the Prime Minister was picked up there and taken on to Lossiemouth.’

  ‘Lossiemouth … the name rings a bell.’

  ‘You landed there last summer, sir. The British have a strong strike/attack Tornado complement up there, and it’s also where the Royal Family sometimes land when they want to go to Balmoral Castle. That’s the Queen’s summer house. You’ve been there too, at the Queen’s invitation, that’s why you flew to Lossiemouth.’

  ‘I remember the damned castle. Nothing but tartan carpets.’

  ‘But the
Prime Minister didn’t go to Balmoral. First off, the Queen is in the Bahamas at present. Secondly, the castle just has a few caretakers in it at this time of year.’ Melanie passed over a couple of DSP photographs. ‘No security, as you see.’

  Bull nodded. ‘So? Where did he go?’

  There was a hint of satisfaction in Melanie’s voice. ‘Lossiemouth also has two Search and Rescue helicopters.’ She passed over another cluster of photographs. ‘And this is one of them. This particular reconnaissance satellite works in the infrared, Mr President, and the resolution’s not too good. But if you look at the second picture – that one – you’ll see one of the two Lossiemouth choppers, a Sea King HAR3.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  ‘We’ve put it through image enhancement, sir. It’s a Sea King, all right. Fifty-six feet long, a hundred and forty miles an hour at sea level, normally a crew of four. This was taken halfway between Scotland and Norway.’

  ‘And you say the British Prime Minister was in this helicopter?’

  ‘There were no ships or aircraft in distress in the area at that time. There was no recorded radio traffic between the Sea King and Lossiemouth. It was flying late at night, almost at sea level, without navigation lights. Why would it be doing this? It has to be connected with the Prime Minister’s arrival at Lossiemouth. My analysis to this point is that Edgeworth was heading for some secret destination.’

  ‘Okay, I buy it so far,’ said Bull. ‘You say it was halfway to Norway?’

  ‘The Sea King’s radius of action is just under three hundred miles. That’s barely enough to get it to southern Norway and back from north-east Scotland.’

  ‘What’s in Norway, Ms Moore?’

  Melanie passed over another batch of satellite reconnaissance pictures, each about a foot square. ‘We lost coverage for nearly three hours, but here we’ve picked it up again.’ A helicopter, bright in the infrared, was flying over a white background. ‘Sir, this is a Sea King. It has to be the same one; there are no others in this part of the world. That being so, it’s flown beyond its maximum range. It must have stopped to refuel somewhere in Norway.’