in0 (26 page)

“Even if there
are
aliens, what you ask is beyond our power to grant.”

“Then take me to someone with the power. Otherwise, I will call a press conference tomorrow morning and announce what I know.”

Mark looked at Lisa for a moment, and then turned back. “I think you had better come back to Al-Hoceima with us.”

“Precisely the thing I hoped you would say.”

#

The lights of Toronto shimmered out to the horizon as Nadine Halstrom gazed down at the world from the ninetieth floor of the World Secretariat. Her office was on the south side of the building, facing away from the equally tall World Parliament building to the north. She had chosen the office for that very reason. Instead of having her view blocked by her putative masters, she could look out over the tops of lesser skyscrapers to the distant greenbelt that surrounded the city. It was a vista she had studied for countless hours as she stood at her window and worried through some knotty problem.

She sighed as she returned to her desk and sat in the high-backed chair. As impressive as it was, the view from her office window had begun to take on the aspects of a prison wall. More often than not, she watched the sunset from this chair, and occasionally, the sunrise, as well. How had she ever allowed herself to be trapped into this thankless job? Would the world fall apart if she managed to get home to her husband and children in daylight just once? Perhaps next week she would try the experiment.

Naturally, this week was much too busy to contemplate any such foolishness. There was the breaking Nielson scandal to
spindoctor
(why couldn’t men learn to keep their flies sealed?), the fish harvesting act was in trouble in Parliament, and, of course, there was always that damned alien at PoleStar to worry about! For months, she had devoted an ever-larger percentage of her time to the problem of Sar-Say.

As though she did not have enough on her mind already--

The call from Morocco came through precisely on schedule. As soon as she keyed for acceptance, she spoke the command that transformed her work screen into a secure commlink. Anton Bartok’s face appeared on the screen. The director of the Stellar Survey looked as though he had not slept much either. She felt a moment of irrational satisfaction at the thought.

“All right, Anton, who talked?”

Nadine noticed a slight deepening of the frown lines around the corners of his mouth as tired eyes stared back at her from the screen. “I don’t know that anyone did, Madame Coordinator.”

“Your flash message said that Mikhail Vasloff knows about the alien. Were you in error?”

“No. He keeps asking to see them.”

“
Them
? More than one?”

“Yes.”

“That, at least, tells us that his spy is on the project’s periphery, not in its heart. God grants us a small boon, at least. How the hell did Vasloff get wind of this anyway?”

“He had something to do with that damned fool stunt Rykand used to get aboard PoleStar.”

Nadine sat straight up in her chair. When she spoke, her voice had lost all of its cultivated friendliness.

“Why haven’t we heard this before today, Mr. Director?”

“No excuse.”

She sighed and relaxed once more. “At least you are honest, Anton. Where is Vasloff now?”

“Here. I have him in a suite under guard.”

“Recommendations?”

“We could deny everything.”

“And have him talk to the newsers? Hardly.”

“I agree,” Bartok said, nodding. “The conference here is on the verge of recommending an expedition to go in search of this Zzumer that Dr. Bendagar has located. Perhaps we can buy time with Vasloff until that expedition is underway.”

“An expedition? That hasn’t been in any of your reports.”

“It is a recent development, Coordinator.”

“It is not a welcome one, Mr. Director. I let you talk me into returning to New Eden against my better judgment. Now you want to barge into the heart of this nest of paranoid aliens Sar-Say has warned us about?”

“It may be the only way to find out whether he is telling the truth.”

“Then knowing the truth is a luxury we cannot afford. Let me make my position clear, Mr. Director. I will not risk the safety of the human race to satisfy the curiosity of a few scientists. Barging into the Broan sovereignty strikes me as foolhardy. While I am coordinator, we will take no unnecessary risks
whatsoever
! Do we understand one another?”

“Message received, Coordinator, loud and clear.”

“Good. Please deliver it to your deep thinkers. Tell them that it is up to them, using whatever gray matter God gave them, to answer the question as best they are able. If this group of scientists is unable to do the job, we will find others who will.”

Bartok sighed. He had seen the coordinator in this mood before. Once she had her back up, there was no reasoning with her. Oh well, Captain Landon would soon arrive with reams of new data for the scientists to quibble over. Perhaps the unambiguous clue for which they searched would be included in the new data. The thought nearly made him miss Nadine Halstrom’s next comment.

“Now then, we were speaking of buying time with Vasloff.”

“He wants to see the ‘aliens.’ I propose that we let him, but only on the same terms we gave Mark Rykand. He will join the project staff and agree to full secrecy before we tell him a damned thing. I’ll see to the penalty clause in his employment contract myself.”

“A monetary penalty won’t stop him if he is determined to get the news out.”

“It will at least give him pause.”

Nadine considered Bartok’s suggestion for a moment, and then nodded. “Very well. Talk to Vasloff and call me back. I will be here for several more hours.”

#

Mikhail Vasloff paced the floor in his suite. It had been hours since they had looked in on him and he was becoming impatient. His sense of euphoria had long since subsided. Now the worry had begun.

That day in his canal house when he had stumbled onto the truth had been one of the most painful of his life. If there was one human failing with which Vasloff was intimately familiar, it was the public’s thirst for new forms of excitement. The source did not much matter. Be it fire, flood, or famine, the newsers would swarm to any event that promised to hold their viewers’ attentions for even a few hours.

The search for alien intelligence was a story that had held their interest for decades. In fact, it had been a staple of journalism and holomovies since the fabled SETI project of the late Twentieth Century. Now that aliens had actually been discovered, the public would go wild over them. He could see the images clearly: millions of tiny toddlers clutching adorable little alien dolls, holovision comics making jokes about beings with bulging craniums, people clamoring for an expedition to the alien home world. Vasloff could even predict the names of the expedition’s ships - the
Nina
, the
Pinta
, and the
Santa Maria
.

In such a climate, the cautionary voice of
Terra Nostra
would go completely unheard and he, Vasloff, would see a lifetime of fighting to keep humanity at home rendered irrelevant overnight. If he followed his natural inclination and spoke out in opposition, he risked being branded a crackpot. That did not bother him. He had been called “crackpot” before. It was the impotency that would accompany the charge that he hated.

No, the discovery of intelligent beings beyond Earth required him to be both clever and subtle ... and more than a little dishonest. His opponents might have been surprised to learn that last necessity bothered him to the depths of his soul. Still, as a legendary actor had once observed, “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do!”

There was a quiet knock on his door. He opened it to find a young woman standing there. She wore the survey uniform.

“Mr. Vasloff, Director Bartok would like to see you if that is convenient.”

“Most convenient,” he replied. Years of practice in masking his emotions stood him in good stead. None of the seething feelings was evident in his tone or manner as he slipped from his posh prison and followed the young woman at a staid pace.

Bartok occupied an office-bedroom suite much like the one in which they had imprisoned him, Vasloff observed. The director received him at the door, then ushered him to a couch before taking his own place on the opposite end.

“Coffee or tea?”

“No thank you.”

“Something stronger, perhaps?”

“Nothing.”

“Very well. Merilee, you may excuse yourself.”

The woman guide bowed slightly, then turned, and left the suite, closing the door behind her. Vasloff did not need to hear the lock snick into place to know that it had. The air within the room had that dead quality that signifies an anti-eavesdropping field in full operation.

Bartok stared for a long moment, perhaps hoping that Vasloff would speak first. When the older man failed to comply, the director sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Mr. Vasloff, I have been an admirer of your work for many years. I am pleased to finally meet you.”

“An
admirer
, Mr. Director? I hardly think so.”

“It’s true. One must admire the skill of a worthy adversary even if you cannot agree with his position. I only wish we had you on our side instead of against us. Frankly, I confess to having difficulty understanding your objections to our starships.”

“I think I’ve made that clear enough over the years. I object to you people wasting our species’ scarce resources pursuing that which does not exist, namely other Earthlike worlds.”

“How do we know they don’t exist unless we go look for them?”

“The improbability of our form of life coming into being somewhere else in the universe is well known in scientific circles, Mr. Director.”

“What would you say if I told you that we’ve recently found a truly terrestrial world?”

“Is that where you found the aliens?”

“No comment,” Bartok said. “I understand that you might be willing to cooperate on the matter of our, shall we say, guests? What do you propose, sir?”

Vasloff repeated the offer that he had made to Mark Rykand and Lisa Arden.

“And your status in this affair?

“My status will be whatever you wish, Director Bartok. You hold the more powerful hand in this game.”

“How do I know that your people on Earth won’t make trouble once we’ve allowed you into our little group?”

“You have my word, sir.”

“That hardly seems enough.”

Vasloff shrugged. “Nevertheless, it is the only guarantee that I have to give.

Bartok chewed his lower lip for a moment, and then said, “Very well. Here are our terms--”

Mikhail listened carefully as the director laid out his conditions. They were harsh, but not unexpectedly so. He, Vasloff, was to be formally employed by the project aboard PoleStar and under their authority.

He would be held effectively incommunicado and would be given no opportunity to pass a message to his people on the ground unless approved by the project director. Finally, he would be forced to sign a secrecy agreement with monetary penalties equivalent to three lifetimes’ earnings should he break his oath. In exchange, Vasloff would be given access to all data concerning “the specimens being studied and reasonable access to said specimens to conduct his own investigations.”

“What do you say?” Bartok asked after finishing his litany.

“If I agree, when do I get to meet the aliens?”

“As soon as you sign the contract, you will depart for Sahara Spaceport with Mr. Rykand and Miss Arden. They will accompany you to PoleStar where all of your questions will be answered.

“Very well. I accept your terms. You have the contract, I presume.”

Bartok’s response was to stand, walk to the desk across the room, and pull a voluminous stack of plastic sheets from the drawer. They were, Vasloff noted, very official looking.

Anton Bartok stood at the podium and watched people stream into the main ballroom of the Al-Hoceima resort. As each person entered, he or she would halt, sweep the room with their gaze, and then stride directly for whichever empty seat was closest to the dais. Long years spent arranging public hearings had taught Bartok that people usually fill churches and auditoriums from the rear - the “back pew effect.” The fact that they were not doing so today indicated their interest in this special plenipotentiary session. He, too, was looking forward to Captain Landon’s presentation. It would be his first opportunity to learn the details of the latest expedition to the New Eden system.

Bartok watched as the last few stragglers made their way through the guarded door. Virtually every one of the conference’s sixty-five scientists had asked to attend this session. The guard officer flashed the count to the director using two quick hand signals, then snapped to attention and saluted. A moment later, he was gone through the double doors, which closed behind him.

Bartok glanced down in time to see a row of icons change shape and color on the screen inset into the sloping surface of the podium. The readouts indicated that several security systems had just come online.

When all indicators showed good, he reached out and tapped the small tympanic surface built into the podium. From unseen speakers in the ceiling came the amplified sound of a gavel pounding wood.

“All right, let’s get this session going,” he announced as he waited for them to come to order. The conversations halted with gratifying swiftness. When the scientists were silent, Bartok cleared his throat and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, without further delay, I give you Captain Daniel Landon, commanding officer of Survey Ship
Magellan
.”

Dan Landon rose from his seat and moved to stand behind the podium. He noted sixty or so faces wearing various expressions of impatience.

“Screen, please.”

A holoscreen descended from the ceiling to his left. Occasional sparkles of light in the interior showed that the screen was energized, but not yet displaying any picture. A moment later, the overhead lights dimmed and the screen lighted to show the
Ruptured Whale
silhouetted against a black backdrop with a sprinkling of stars surrounding it.