The Lure

by Bill Napier

  ‘Came in the pouch weeks ago. But we can’t bust it. Neither us nor the NSA.’

  ‘If I give you the password you could decrypt the message, use the knowledge for your own national advantage and keep the knowledge of the signallers to yourselves.’

  ‘But if they did that they’d have to silence us, Tom,’ Freya said.

  ‘Seen the car following us?’

  She glanced nervously out of the rear window.

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ Hazel was smiling, but the smile had an edge.

  Petrie said, ‘How do we even know you are who you say you are?’

  Freya attempted a light tone. ‘It’s the castle. It had an effect on everyone in it. We all ended up paranoid.’

  Nobody smiled. She turned to Petrie. ‘Tom, if they want the knowledge of the signallers suppressed they’ll bump us off with or without the password. We’re in their hands.’

  The even chance. ‘It kills me to say this, Freya, but we have to focus on getting the signal out. That matters more than us.’

  Sullivan closed his eyes. ‘Young man, there are people at the Farm who’d have the password out of you before the day’s end.’

  Petrie remained silent. Yes, the duress one, the one that would wipe the disk clean. Beside him, Freya had frozen, and suddenly the air was thick with hostility.

  Hazel tried to break the tension. ‘It must be the jet lag, Tom. May I call you Tom? You have to trust someone.’

  It’s not going well. Not the devastating game that Vash demanded. Petrie tried to unclench his fists, think carefully. The car was stuffy and he felt sweat down his back.

  Freya broke the long silence. ‘I trust you. You’re nice people.’

  There was a mystified silence. ‘But before I knew you were such nice people, I made several copies of the disk when I was in Prague and sent them around to colleagues and friends, with instructions. If there was an accident, everything would go out, including the exact location of the signallers. To sub-arcsecond accuracy, if you understand that. Do you know how many backyard radio telescopes there are in the States alone? Hundreds! All convertible to answering devices.’

  There was a brief silence as they assimilated Freya’s bombshell. Hazel broke it; she threw back her head and laughed. The driver glanced in the mirror.

  ‘There’s another condition,’ said Sullivan. ‘A little rewriting of history. No mention must ever be made of the attempts to muzzle you people and suppress this discovery. The British and the Russians insist.’

  Hazel said, ‘And we’re happy to agree. What else are friends for?’

  Petrie asked, ‘But what about our colleagues, Svetlana, Charlie and Vashislav? How will you explain their deaths?’

  Hazel said, ‘They’re alive.’

  Freya raised clenched fists, squealed with delight. ‘Fantastisk! Hvordan ei all verden…?’

  ‘All in due course, Dr Størmer,’ Hazel said.

  Sullivan spoke quietly. ‘The password?’

  Petrie looked out of the window. The facts were in and he had them analysed in a second. Freya, probably, was lying in her teeth. He glanced over at her. She nodded, almost imperceptibly; it was little more than a slight narrowing of her eyes. But Vashislav alive was like the Bismarck loose on the high seas; the genie practically out of the bottle; membership of the club all but guaranteed. This thing was beyond stopping.

  He turned again to the window. ‘Origin of Species, chapter three, paragraph three, first sentence. “We will now discuss in a little more detail the struggle for existence.” Join the words up and write the sentence backwards.’

  The DCI scowled. ‘This guy Darwin has a lot to answer for.’

  50

  Afterglow

  His small fat wife was mouthing some words, but he couldn’t make them out. Slightly irritated – he’d reached the climax of the thriller – the President of UCLA put down the book and took the proffered receiver.

  ‘Professor Goldsmith? Would you wait for a call from the President’s Science Adviser?’

  He tried to keep the surprise out of his voice. He’d met the woman a few times, but a call at home, at eight in the evening, California time, which made it eleven at night in Washington …

  ‘Professor Goldsmith? Hazel Baxendale here.’ Her voice was coming over a background of chatter and clattering plates, like a dinner party or something. Goldsmith thought she was using a mobile phone.

  ‘I have a favour to ask,’ continued the Science Adviser. ‘We’d be grateful if the University could take on board two young people – a British man and a Norwegian lady – for a few years. It would have to be in the Berkeley campus. Not to put too fine a point on it, the country owes them a favour.’

  Wisdom and experience had taught Goldsmith that a White House whim was a University President’s command. He didn’t hesitate. ‘Of course. Delighted to do so. What exactly do you have in mind?’

  ‘Perhaps scholarships of some sort. She has a doctorate in planetary science and I understand he’s a first-rate mathematician. Work permits and the like won’t be a problem.’

  ‘I’ll arrange five-year appointments and fund them through the University. Have them call into my office whenever they’re ready.’

  ‘We appreciate it. Also, in confidence, we anticipate a little seed funding – maybe fifty million dollars to be going on with – to look into the ET question which I dare say you’ve been seeing ad nauseam on the box.’

  Fifty million dollars. To be going on with. Goldsmith felt a light sweat developing on his brow. ‘Ah, yes.’

  ‘Would Berkeley be able to contemplate administering this money? It still needs Congressional approval but I’m told that this will be forthcoming.’

  ‘I’m sure the University could manage.’

  ‘Good. Good.’

  The Science Adviser rang off. A young Norwegian planetary scientist. A British mathematician. The country owes them a favour. The clues could hardly be more direct. He opened a diary, skimmed over the telephone pages, and dialled a number. ‘Dorothy? Henry Goldsmith here. I’d appreciate it if your Faculty could take on board two young people…’

  * * *

  The morning papers were waiting for them when they giggled their way into the Willard penthouse at midnight. A bunch of red roses on a dressing-table was accompanied by a handwritten card: In appreciation. Seth Bull, President of the United States. Freya slipped out of her new shoes while Petrie disappeared to the bathroom. By the time he returned she was under the sheets of the king-size bed.

  They fell asleep with the newspapers untouched, the champagne in the bucket and the lights still on.

  * * *

  ‘Tom! Are you awake?’

  Petrie drags himself up from subterranean depths.

  ‘I know how Charlie and Vash and Svetlana escaped. They set the castle alight.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes.’ Freya laughs. ‘That Melanie girl told me. The flames were a hundred metres high. Anyway, when the local fire brigade appeared, Svetlana was unconscious ha-ha and Charlie and Vash insisted on going with her in the ambulance to the nearest town, which is a place called Trnava, it seems. They had a police escort all the way.’

  Petrie struggles into a sitting position. ‘That would confuse the soldiers.’

  ‘Most of whom were away chasing us over the Tatras. It seems one of the ambulancemen had a mobile phone. Vash borrowed it and got through to the American Embassy. Trnava’s halfway between Bratislava and the castle, and people from the Embassy got there as soon as they arrived, and spirited them away. Like you, Tom, they were kept safe. “On ice”, Melanie said.’

  ‘That had to be Vashislav. Sometimes I think our Russian friend comes from outer space.’

  Freya pulls a face. ‘All that beautiful Hapsburg furniture.’

  ‘I expect they spared the library.’

  ‘Tom, why didn’t he let us in on his plan?’

  ‘In case we were caught, stupid. The less we knew the better. By the w
ay, his temporal lobe stuff. It won’t get worse, and it can be controlled by drugs.’

  She rolls over on to her stomach. ‘Actually, I think Vashislav enjoys being on a permanent high.’

  ‘He and I intend to meet up for a game of chess.’

  ‘In Moscow?’

  ‘In Stockholm.’

  ‘What about you?’ Freya asks. ‘How did you get away after Roland’s Café?’

  ‘The American Embassy again. Vashislav and I must have gone through the same chain of reasoning. They kept me in a flat in Lodz for three weeks.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Two Americans, Amos and Obadiah. I never knew their real names, never knew whether they’d turn out to be my friends or my executioners.’

  ‘That must have been like waiting on Death Row.’

  Petrie nods. ‘It seems they’re experts in exfiltration, that’s to say, getting people like me out of hostile countries. And that, Dr Freya Størmer, leaves you. I loved your phony e-mails.’

  Freya tickles Petrie’s nipple with a strand of her hair. ‘You knew they were phony? I wondered if you’d pick up my subtext. My message inside the message.’

  ‘It was obvious just as soon as you said you were heading for Svalbard. Vashislav’s friend is in Murmansk. Don’t do that. Where were you actually?’

  ‘Prague. Unur has a friend who has a cousin. I just stayed put for two weeks, looking up the internet for bad places to lead them and firing off false e-mails to you. Melanie told me I even fooled the CIA. They chased my electronic shadow over half of Europe. Then the real me flew to Paris with Unur’s money while my virtual self was somewhere around Trondheim. After that it was Mexico City, then here.’ Freya throws off the bedcovers and unwraps the wire round the champagne cork. The ice in the bucket has melted. She says, ‘Vashislav and Svetlana are in Moscow, briefing everyone.’

  ‘I heard. And Charlie’s in London. They’re holding a Guildhall reception for him around now.’

  Freya smiles. ‘Charlie Gibson, hero of science. The man who picked up the alien signal. I can feel his glow all the way from London.’

  The cork pops gently.

  Petrie asks, casually, ‘By the way, Freya, did you really spread copies of the disks around?’

  She gives Petrie a sly grin. ‘That’s for me to know and you to ponder.’

  The last time Petrie had stared at a ceiling, it had swarmed with patterns which almost drove him mad. And now, almost against his will, the patterns are beginning to re-form. ‘The bulk of the signal defeated me. Remember you asked about their poetry? Their art? Could it be there’s nothing analytical in there? That it’s some form of art – digital art, maybe, affecting them in a way we couldn’t connect with, any more than a dog could understand jazz?’

  ‘But what if the machines have replaced organic life? Could a machine enjoy jazz? Or poetry? Or sex?’ Freya asks mischievously.

  But already Petrie’s restless mind is elsewhere. He is fantasising about his resignation letter. Something along the lines of Dear Professor Kavanagh, The Institute has become something remote and unreal to me, like Ruritania. Your Department is provincial and your preoccupations are petty. My office is cramped, dismal and dull, much like you. I believe it’s time for me to acquire a larger office, wherein I can deal with large affairs and high concepts. Time to become a high priest, an interpreter of the sacred text. My resignation is immediate and I will not require a reference. Yours, Petrie.

  In the distance, the faint wail of a police siren, just reaching the top floor of the Willard and penetrating the double glazing.

  ‘Freya, I’m staying here. They’ve asked me to join the Mountain View team.’ Casually: ‘I don’t suppose you…’

  ‘Tom, I’d love to. But Olaf will have to join me.’

  ‘Olaf?’

  ‘My best and closest friend. Surely I’ve told you about him? On cold Arctic nights he’s better than an electric blanket.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Petrie experiences a dreadful sinking feeling.

  Freya bursts out laughing. ‘My dog, stupid!’

  She fills the thin glasses and wriggles back into bed, holding them. Some of the champagne overflows and fizzes down a breast. She giggles and looks at Petrie expectantly, eyebrows raised.

  Petrie sighs. He has read somewhere that Eskimos do this sort of thing all winter.

  * * *

  In the SETI Institute in California, jubilation over the announcement that an ET signal had been received was mixed in with a very natural human reaction: glumness that others had got there first. But government funding, long denied it by a myopic Congress, suddenly began to flow in. A cryptanalysis team was set up with links to parallel groups in Washington, Moscow, two centres in Europe and the United Kingdom.

  There was a debate as to whether the long-running radio search should continue. One group argued that the Galactic club saw radio as too primitive. Presumably somewhere down the line humanity would, with help, develop the science and technology needed to make the return phone call. A second group argued that there were too many imponderables in that argument. There was also an unspoken consideration: too much had been invested in the radio search to stop now. The second group prevailed, and the radio search continued. But there was a pervasive, depressing feeling that it was all a waste of time.

  Once the United Nations had sent its answering message, through the huge Jodrell Bank paraboloid in the Cheshire countryside, the location of the signal became public domain. Nobody expected a reply for years, perhaps centuries: only crazy people believed Petrie’s idea about the Oort cloud.

  Four months later, on a balmy summer’s evening in California, the receivers at the Institute were flooded with microwave signals of incredible power. They spanned a broad range of frequencies and the computers were quickly saturated. Almost as astonishing as the signal was the fact that it was coming from a totally unexpected point in the sky, near the nucleus of the Andromeda galaxy.

  Humanity had joined the club, and the SETI Institute got its reward after all.

  From the New York Times, 12 January:

  We Are Not Alone

  SIGNAL FROM ALIENS

  Scientists huddled behind closed doors in a secret location in the former Czechoslovakia have received a message from aliens. This sensational announcement was made to a packed plenary session of the United Nations by David Garcia Alvarez, the Secretary General, who opened the proceedings with the historic words ‘We are not alone.’

  A BRITISH TRIUMPH

  A brief burst of high-energy atomic particles, detected on 3 January in an underground, British-run laboratory in a secret cave in a remote mountain range known as the Tatras in Eastern Europe, was found to contain an intelligent pattern. Decipherment of the pattern revealed that complex information, centuries ahead of present-day science, was being transmitted to Earth. Until this momentous event the laboratory had operated for twelve years without detecting a single exotic particle.

  President Bull interrupted a vacation weekend in Camp David to telephone his congratulations to the scientists and invite them to the States. He has called for a full discussion between politicians, academics, scientists and the general public on the implications of this event. The signal, recorded on an ordinary CD, is at present with the National Security Agency and is being deciphered with the aid of specialists in many disciplines. A similar effort is underway at the British GCHQ and, reportedly, in Moscow. Tightlipped officials at NSA Headquarters revealed nothing about whether progress has been made in decipherment, and if so, what the message contains.

  ‘We are delighted that this fantastic discovery was made by a British facility,’ said Prime Minister Alan Edgeworth in the House of Commons this morning. Lord Sangster, Minister for Science, said, ‘Our warmest congratulations go to the team. Of course this finding, while made with a British facility, is made on behalf of all mankind, in keeping with agreed protocols and in the traditional spirit of scientific openness.’

  A
sour note was struck by Congressman Dan Shulman. ‘This is the greatest scientific discovery of all time. And I think the American people are entitled to know why, with the billions of dollars which this country pours into its scientific community, we were second fiddle to a shoestring outfit in Eastern Europe,’ said the 50-year-old Representative from Ohio.

  But according to Professor Chris McCracken of Berkeley, ‘We can’t rule out that signals have already been sent to us and not recognised as intelligent. We laced a cubic kilometre of Arctic ice with light detectors five years ago and the experiment has been operating continuously since then. Many particles of uncertain origin have passed through the big ice cube. Some of them could have been from the aliens.’ McCracken admitted, however, that this was just speculation at the moment. ‘We will be re-analysing our data…’

  NASA VINDICATED

  ‘The finding is an amazing event, but it had to happen sooner or later,’ said NASA Director Dan Tellman. ‘Put water and organics together and you have life. Planetary systems are extremely common and most of these, in the so-called habitable zone around stars, will have water. In these circumstances we expect life to evolve, and intelligence to develop, throughout the Galaxy. This is why NASA has directed so much energy into the exploration of Europa and Mars. NASA’s Origins program was designed specifically…’

  RELIGIOUS LEADERS WELCOME FINDING

  Religious leaders everywhere have welcomed the discovery. Speaking from his home in North Carolina, veteran evangelist Seth Logie said, ‘This illustrates the bountiful nature of God. How can we imagine that He would create a vast Universe and yet limit life to one small planet?’ Pope John declared …

  SECRET LOCATION

  A baffling feature of the signal is that it seems to have come from an empty region of sky. ‘This needn’t surprise us too much,’ said a spokesman from the Baltimore Space Telescope Institute. ‘Many stars are faint and distant. The Hubble telescope is already staring at one of the two possible celestial patches of sky from which the signal may have originated.’