The Cassandra Project

by Jack McDevitt

  They scanned the content descriptions and again found nothing of immediate interest, and no indication of inaccuracy. “Damn!” said Jerry. “I thought we had it! But I just don’t see anything.” “Don’t be so sure,” said Bucky. “What are we looking for?”

  Jerry looked blank. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “Neither do I. So let’s look for what doesn’t belong.”

  They stayed in the Walker cubicle and began a methodical search. After another ten minutes, Jerry uncovered a rectangular cardboard box at the bottom of a black trunk that was supposed to contain exclusively navigation equipment. A paper label marked CASSEGRAIN was attached to the lid. It was about the size of a coffee-table book. “Bingo!” he whispered.

  Bucky immediately joined him.

  “I wonder what it is,” mused Jerry. It was taped shut.

  “We might as well take a look at it right here,” said Bucky. “They’re never going to let us walk out with it.” “Keep an eye out for the guards,” said Jerry. He opened one end of the box carefully while Bucky turned his back to him and tried to conceal what he was doing from any hidden security cameras.

  “What have you got?” asked Bucky after a moment.

  “I don’t know,” said Jerry. “It looks for all the world like an antique plate.” Bucky frowned. “Like a dinner plate?”

  “No, it’s rectangular, and a lot longer. And there’s writing on it.” Bucky reached into his pocket and pulled out his state-of-the-art cell phone. “Use this,” he said, holding it behind him until Jerry grabbed it. “It’s got to be better than whatever you’ve got. At least, for what it cost, it damned well better be.” “Nothing on the back,” muttered Jerry. “I’ll take one shot of that, and six or seven of the face with the writing.” “Face? There’s a face?”

  “I meant the front of the plate,” said Jerry. And, after a moment: “Okay, done. Let me slip it back in its box . . . Putting the box back. All right, let’s get the hell out of here.” “Give me back my phone,” said Bucky, holding out a hand.

  Jerry handed it to him.

  “Okay, let’s hit the men’s room.”

  “Can’t it wait?” said Jerry.

  “No.”

  They found a men’s room and entered, and Bucky immediately took off his left shoe.

  Jerry stared and frowned. “You’re a big man. Why the devil are you wearing lifts?” “Everyone has a use for falsies,” replied Bucky with a grin. He manipulated the sole, and suddenly a compartment opened in the sole and heel, and he inserted the thin cell phone. Then he closed the secret compartment. “You wouldn’t believe how handy that’s been on my trips around the world.” He walked to the door. “Okay, let’s go.” Jerry kept expecting to be stopped with almost every step he took, but they made it out of the building, and a moment later a government chauffeur brought their car around. They were at the Huntsville airfield in a matter of minutes, and three hours later they were in Jerry’s office at Blackstone Enterprises with Gloria Marcos, Jason Brent, and Sabina Marinova, awaiting the results from the linguistics experts Bucky had hired to decipher the inscription on the plate.

  Finally, the wizened little man who was in charge of the analysis effort entered the room, with blown-up copies of the photographs in his hand.

  “Well, Peter?” said Bucky. “Couldn’t do a damned thing with it, could you?” “We translated it,” he said.

  Bucky frowned. “You translated a totally alien language in just a few hours? Why do I have some difficulty believing that?” “It’s not an alien language,” replied Peter. “I wish I could have gotten my hands on that plate.” “For what it’s worth, there were no marks on it,” offered Jerry. “To tell you the truth, it looked, well, almost new.” “It would. No air up there. Nothing ages.” He handed a sheet of paper to Bucky. “Here you go, with a copy.” “What language is it?” asked Bucky, staring at the paper. “It’s all Greek to me.” The man smiled. “To me, too.”

  Bucky frowned. “What are you saying?”

  “It’s Greek. A form that was used about two millennia ago, maybe two and a half.” “Greek,” repeated Bucky.

  The man nodded. “Yes.”

  “You’re absolutely sure?”

  “There’s no mistake, sir.”

  “Thanks, Peter. There’ll be a bonus added to your fee.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Blackstone.”

  “The bonus is 50 percent for your work, and 50 percent for your silence. You never saw this inscription, never heard of it, until I say otherwise.” The man nodded. “Is that all?”

  “Yeah. Good job.”

  The man turned and left the office.

  “Jerry, buy me some airtime,” said Bucky.

  “When and how much?” asked Jerry.

  “As soon as you can, and all that you can.”

  “I’ll get working on it,” said Jerry, without moving.

  “I assume you want to know what it says?”

  “Yes. That would be nice.”

  Gloria was trying to get a look at the translation.

  “Okay,” said Bucky. He moved away from Gloria and looked again at the translation. “It seems to be a warning. It says that no civilization, anywhere—and I assume that means anywhere in the galaxy, or maybe the universe—has been known to survive the advance of technology.” He read further, frowning. “They all collapse. They fight wars. Or they abolish individual death.” “Individual death?” repeated Sabina. “That’s a bad thing?” “Evidently it guarantees stagnation. I’m not sure. It’s a short message. It doesn’t specify.” He paused. “Anyway, it says that no technological civilization, anywhere, has ever grown old.” “Gracefully?” asked Sabina.

  Bucky shook his head. “At all. They say the oldest known high-tech society was extinct within a thousand years.” “That doesn’t make any sense,” said Sabina. “They survived. They did more than survive. They obviously had an interstellar ship of some kind.” “That’s the end of the message,” replied Bucky, staring at it. “They say they were looking for a place to start over again, that the world they came from is a shambles.” Jerry headed for the door. “That’s enough bad news for one day,” he said.

  When he was gone, they were silent for a minute. Then Bucky, who had been sitting on the edge of his desk, laid the papers down and stood up. “Do you realize what that means?” “That we’ve lived so long, we’ve beaten the odds?” suggested Jason.

  Bucky shook his head impatiently. “Sabina? Gloria?”

  He received two blank expressions.

  “It means at least one of them visited the Earth,” he said. “How the hell else would they learn ancient Greek?” “That’s right!” exclaimed Gloria.

  “I’ll be damned!” said Jason.

  “We were too primitive for the message to have any meaning back then,” continued Bucky. “I mean, hell, Moses or Caesar might have been walking around in those days. So they left it on the Moon. If we never reached the Moon, we weren’t high-tech enough for the message to have any meaning. But if we found it . . .” He let his voice trail off.

  “What happened to them, I wonder?” said Sabina.

  Bucky shrugged. “Probably they found a more hospitable world. Better climate, better atmosphere, fewer germs and viruses that could wipe them out. I won’t say we’ll never know, but we won’t know until we can reach the stars and find them.” “It’s fascinating, isn’t it?” said Sabina.

  “Yes, it is.” Bucky picked up the translation and handed it to Gloria. “Put this in the safe—the one in my suite.” “Right.” She took it from him and headed off.

  “Damn!” said Bucky excitedly. “Greek! Who’d have thought it?”

  “We were actually visited,” said Sabina. “Isn’t that remarkable?”

  “It’s going to be more remarkable when I go on television and tell the world,” said Bucky. “And prove to them that the White House is still lying to them!” He went behind his desk, sat down in his leather chair, opened a drawer, and pulled out
a cigar.

  “Do you have to do that?” asked Sabina, making a face.

  “I have a victory cigar about once every six or seven years,” said Bucky, taking a puff. “And this is my biggest victory of all.” “Most people take victory drinks,” she suggested hopefully.

  “I want my head to be totally clear when I address the public,” he answered.

  Jerry entered the office, looking pleased with himself.

  “Well?” asked Bucky.

  “Nine o’clock tonight, Eastern time,” said Jerry. “I bought you time on ABC; the other two majors won’t change their schedules to accommodate you.” “They’re going to wish they had,” replied Bucky confidently. “This speech will demote them to the minors.” “Every cable network is covering it as a news event,” continued Jerry. He flashed a sudden grin. “Even the SyFy Network wants to cover it. They have no idea what you’ll be talking about—none of them do—but they’re sure it’s about the Moon.

  “Sign ’em up,” said Bucky. “Hell, they’ve always believed in this stuff. The rest of the world hasn’t—but they will after tonight.” Gloria returned from Bucky’s suite. “Okay, it’s locked away,” she announced.

  “Good,” said Bucky. “I don’t figure to lose it between here and the studio down on the second floor, but I feel better with a copy of it there. I don’t know who our secret benefactor was, but I’d bet half my fortune that if we went back to the Archives tomorrow, it wouldn’t be there.” “What makes you say that?” asked Sabina.

  “It wasn’t that difficult to find once we doped out where to look,” answered Bucky. “It couldn’t have gone unnoticed all these years. My guess is that it’s back where it came from, some attic or underground vault that maybe three people in the world know about.” “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” admitted Jerry. “But now that you say it, it makes sense.” “That’s because you’re not quite the devious bastard that I am,” said Bucky with a chuckle.

  “Thank goodness.” Jerry returned his smile.

  “Well,” said Gloria, “I’d better make sure the studio’s spic and span and ready for the press.” “No press,” said Jerry. “This is going out on the airwaves. It’s a speech, not an interview or a press conference.” He turned to Bucky. “At least, I think that’s what it is. You didn’t say anything about wanting questions.” “That’s fine. This announcement speaks for itself.” Bucky frowned. “I’ll show photos of the plate, of course—we’ll have the lab make ’em even bigger before the speech—but I wish I had the plate as well.” “You know what would have happened if we’d tried to walk off with it,” said Jerry.

  “Yeah,” acknowledged Bucky. “Everyone could visit us on Sundays for the next fifty years.” “The plate is secondary,” said Sabina. “The important thing is the message.” “Yeah, of course it is,” said Bucky. He smiled. “At least I’m not announcing their pending conquest of the Earth.” “Or that the Sun is going nova,” added Gloria.

  “Or that there really are four-armed green swordsmen on Mars,” said Jason.

  “Yeah, there are worse messages to read,” agreed Bucky.

  Then, suddenly, he froze.

  “Bucky,” said Jerry, “are you okay?”

  “Leave him alone,” said Gloria quickly. “I’ve seen him like this a couple of times before.” “He looks like he’s having a stroke,” said Sabina, also worried.

  “He’s all right, believe me,” insisted Gloria.

  “Damn!” snapped Bucky, coming back to life.

  “Are you okay?” asked Jerry solicitously.

  “I am definitely not okay,” growled Bucky, starting to pace back and forth across the office. Suddenly, he stopped and turned to Jerry. “Cancel the telecast.” “Are you crazy?”

  “You heard me. Cancel it. If ABC won’t return our money, let ’em keep it.” “But—”

  “Just do it! Gloria, contact my pilot. Have him meet me at the corporate jet in an hour. Then you’ll have to make a very private phone call; I’ll be here so I can cut in and vouch for who you are if necessary.” “Where are we going, Boss?” asked Jason.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” said Bucky. “This is something I have to do alone.”

  41

  “So what do you think, George? We should have heard something by now.”

  Cunningham sat back. He’d just finished a conference with the Pentagon people. The brass were unhappy. Tired of congressmen trying to force weapons they didn’t need down their throats to keep the armaments people in their home states happy. “We need better detection equipment,” General Maybury had complained. “For roadside bombs. Nelson tells us sure, they’re getting to it, but let’s concentrate for now on that new upgraded jet CRY has developed.” He was referring to Brig Nelson, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

  Maybury and his people knew Cunningham had limited control over the situation, but they needed to vent. So they brought it to him. One more advantage of divided government.

  The president looked across the desk at Ray. “We’ll be okay,” he said. “Blackstone bought time on ABC tonight. So they’re obviously on board.”

  “But he canceled.”

  “He’s trying to make up his mind what he wants to say. Relax.”

  “Not till I’m sure we’re clear of this.”

  “Hey, Ray, take it easy. You know, you tend to be a bit pessimistic. You didn’t even think they’d bite.” They’d just finished watching security-camera images of Jerry and Blackstone going through the archives. Taking pictures of the Greek plate. It was perfect.

  Ray had a worried look in his eyes. “I knew we’d be able to manage Jerry okay. He tends to think well of everybody. I just had my doubts about getting it past Blackstone. That son of a bitch trusts no one. And I’m still surprised they figured out the Holmes reference. I wouldn’t have had any idea what Lou was talking about.”

  Lou, of course, was the staff member who’d made the call. And the president couldn’t resist gloating. “We couldn’t just phone and tell him where to look. Too simple. It would likely have aroused their suspicions. I wanted Blackstone to lock onto something else rather than asking himself whether the call was genuine.”

  “I know all that, George. But what made you think he’d understand?”

  “Bucky was once a member of the Tuscaloosa Baker Street Irregulars. No way he could miss it.”

  Ray sighed. “Well, you were obviously right. I’ll tell you, I feel a lot better than I did this morning when we came in. I think we got lucky. I wasn’t sure what we’d have done if he hadn’t known what we were talking about. Or, worse, hadn’t bought the story. If he came after us.”

  Cunningham didn’t even like to think about it. This was not a good time. He was surrounded by problems. The deteriorating state of public education. The blowback from shutting down large chunks of military spending. Global epidemics. Widespread hunger. Problems with fresh water. Continuing climate deterioration. Still, for one day, this day, he could celebrate.

  He looked across the office at the ancient VHS unit that had been brought in to play the videotape. The tape itself was now locked in the bottom drawer of his desk, along with the second plate. “He’ll spread the story because he believed it. Because it’ll make him look good. Proves he was right, and we were wrong. That’s all he cares about. He doesn’t give a damn about collapsing civilizations, or whether that knowledge might have had a deleterious effect on the nation. Whether it might have discouraged people already struggling with an apparently endless war, or whether right now it will have a negative effect on a nation still trying to get clear of this god-awful economy.”

  “Well, you were right, George. I just didn’t think they’d buy it. The average guy in the street hears that worlds are falling apart everywhere, and he says it’s a shame, but by the way, how’d the Giants make out last night? That’s the way we are. And that’s what I don’t understand. If Nixon was going to make up a story, why didn’t he do something that would shake everybody
up? Like maybe a warning against an impending alien invasion?”

  “Simple enough, Ray. He wanted to scare the Russians into keeping quiet. Alien invaders wouldn’t have accomplished that.”

  “I still can’t believe he thought it would work. But I guess it did.”

  “I doubt it would have worked with ordinary Russians, who would probably have responded the same way we would. But the leaders bought into it. Hell, Ray, Brezhnev and Kosygin were Communists. Materialists. Not politicians, like Tricky Dick. They’d come to power in a different way, and they apparently didn’t know their own people very well. Anyhow, they wouldn’t have liked the idea that we were on the Moon already, so sure, they had every reason to join in the cover-up. And nothing to lose.”

  The president stared at the ancient VHS unit.

  Nixon had been seated at a desk in front of an open window. Palm trees were visible, and birds sang. Despite the placid environment, he was clearly troubled.

  “Mr. President,” he’d said, looking out of the screen, “I hope I haven’t caused any undue difficulty for you, but I was forced to take action.” He picked up a pen and put it back down. “As you may be aware, we learned from probes toward the end of the Johnson administration that there was a structure, a dome, on the far side of the Moon.

  “I was informed by President Johnson during a conference in December 1968, during his final weeks in office. At that time, he indicated that he had been uncertain how to respond, that they knew there’d been no Soviet missions to the Moon, and that consequently there was only one explanation for the dome. We’d been visited.

  “President Johnson had classified the information on the highest level and set in motion a secret lunar mission to determine the nature of the object. He did not know whether it could be made to work. And he was leaving office. Ultimately it would be my responsibility. Whatever my decision, whether I proceeded with it, or canceled it, he told me, I should feel free to consult with him. He said he would render any assistance he could. And he would support whatever decision I made.”