Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams (11 page)

The friendship between Captain Gabe and Freedom Maxwell continues to develop. Will they ever consummate the relationship? Can pretty, young Sara Mravinsky survive the terrible pressures of space-travel and still find time to discover herself? Does Andre Passant know more than he’s saying, or was the mysterious disappearance of insulation wrap from Storage Bay 14 really just an innocent mistake? Myrion Hemmelling holds in her hands the life of everyone aboard the
Wandering Jew,
many of whom she does not like; does this account for her bitterness, or is it related somehow to her hidden past? What if, as Steve Jefferssen fears, something terrible goes wrong with the engines? Will the crew be stranded in deep space, beyond all hope of rescue?

The Mission itself remains as always the focus of this episode: the ongoing plot to which everything else is pinned. What new discoveries await the
Jew?
What unforeseen dangers? Will the attempt to maintain morale fail? The pressure on the crew is enormous. They have approximately six weeks in which to study an entire solar system. Given that scientists have been studying the home system for two thousand years and still haven’t finished, is this task humanly possible ...?

And so on.

Each ‘episode’ consisted of about three hours of footage, interspersed with panoramic views of the particular system. In the case of O-Boötis, there was more than enough material to fill the pauses: turbulent gas giants, cloud-covered moons, tumultuous asteroid belts,
et cetera.
Where I couldn’t find enough dramatic footage to manufacture a satisfactory plot, I narrated bridging material. A couple of crew members - Andre in particular - resented this dramatisation of reality, but reluctantly went along with it. If he was so often cast as the villain of the piece, then didn’t that represent some aspect of him that needed to be dealt with?

Three systems later, at Kappa Corona Borealis, a white AO ninety light years from home, we received our fourth reply capsule. High Command was ecstatic. They forwarded the final cut of the O-Boötis episode for our enjoyment, including the commercials. One of the leading composers of the day had written a theme, and there were credits featuring footage of our training, transfer to orbit and final launch. Someone had touched-up the odd scene or two, overlaying the bad acting with computer-generated expressions, but it was otherwise pretty much as I had put it together. Gabe looked a little more dapper than usual, but that might have been my imagination.

Viewed from a distance (it had been ten weeks since I had put it together), Episode Four was dramatic, inspiring, personal and very human. Here were a handful of people (it was hard to think of them as
us)
trapped in a metal and plastic coffin trillions of kilometres from home. The citizens of Earth couldn’t help but care about us, which in turn meant that they cared about the deep-space exploration program. And that was a Good Thing for all involved.

It turned out that the re-edited versions of my reports had been bought by five of the multinational broadcast networks. Advertised as the ‘human face of space exploration’, the Adventures of the
Wandering Jew
were reaching seventy-five per cent of the population.

We were stars. The idea took a lot of getting used to. And it meant that my role as Soap Operator became yet more central to the day-today running of the ship. What had started as a game had become the means of saving the space program, and maybe our sanities along with it - all thanks to a flair for the dramatic that I had never before realised I had. Who would have believed it?

But weirdest of all was the fan mail...

So, when the alien ship buzzed us at Mu Boötis, our sixteenth stop and eleventh episode, my first thought was: how does this affect the series? I could hardly edit the Event from the episode; it was too good a scene to leave on the cutting-room floor, quite apart from its historical significance, but it was too ridiculous to be believed. A flying saucer, in
space?

As the survey of Mu Boötis rolled on and the deadline rapidly approached, I sought opinions from the rest of the crew.

‘I don’t know what to think,’ said Steve Jefferssen, the first I approached. ‘I saw what I saw, but what I saw doesn’t make sense. Best to ignore it and see what happens when, or
if,
it comes back. What else can we do? There’s no point dwelling on it.’

‘Really, Steve?’ I had expected more from this pragmatic pillar of a man. ‘Don’t you even wonder - ?’

‘Sure, Alek. Sure I wonder. I wonder if we’ve all gone crazy.’

‘The timing is what bothers me,’ confessed Myrion. ‘We’re a third of the way through the mission - less than that, actually - and there have been few in the way of major discoveries. I guess we were all hoping for at least some sign of alien life by now, but, apart from the false alarm at Beta Serpens, everything’s dead, dead, dead! Maybe we’re externalising our expectations. The flying saucer is a common enough archetype, after the hysteria of the twentieth century. Did you ever read about the abductions that supposedly took place in the eighties and nineties?’

‘Yes.’

‘They stopped when SETI folded. The pressure on the communal psyche shifted back to the internal and we started seeing ghosts again. Maybe we’re experiencing the re-emergence of the UFO syndrome.’

‘So we’re crazy?’ I didn’t mention that I’d had, in essence, a similar conversation with Steve.

‘No. We’re hallucinating.’

‘Same thing, isn’t it?’

‘Ask someone on LSD.’

‘I will,’ I promised, ‘just as soon as I get home.’

She smiled. She was always more cheerful when she thought she’d won an argument.

‘Jiggery-pokery,’ was Andre’s opinion. ‘Some idiot’s playing a trick on us.’

‘How?’

‘By seeding the AI network with incumbent viruses programmed to activate at a specified time in the mission. When they trigger, we see images through the screens of things that aren’t really there: electronic ghosts, if you like. You’ll have to ask Freedom exactly how they did it, but I’ll bet it’s something like that. After all, we found no evidence that the saucer ever existed, did we? No wreckage, no radiation, no particulate wake - nothing. Therefore it wasn’t real; therefore it was a stunt. It’ll be ghost-writing in the sky next. Some sort of propaganda, or a message to a girlfriend.’

‘“Remember that night in Paris” ...?’

He didn’t smile. ‘Something like that.’

I knew better than to ask Andre if he doubted his sanity, so instead I asked him the question that really bothered me:

‘Do you think I’m behind it? Be honest. I can take it.’

He thought for a moment before replying. ‘No, I suppose I don’t. I’m just angry at you for falling for it.’

Now
that
was a sobering thought.

‘I guess it all boils down to the fact that someone is really out there,’ said Freedom, next on my list. ‘Their motives may seem mysterious, perhaps even nonsensical, but they’re
there
all the same. And that’s what counts.’

‘So you don’t think it was a prank, or some sort of glitch?’

‘Absolutely not. I helped design half the information systems on this ship. I’d know if they were malfunctioning, or if someone had tampered with them. Same with my brain. Anybody who says otherwise is evading the issue.’

‘But why only one ship? If they’re as advanced as they appear to be, why aren’t there hundreds of them out here?’

‘Well, the Galaxy is a big place, right? The old SETI system - aiming an antenna at the sky and waiting - simply won’t work. It takes centuries for signals from one civilisation to reach another, even if they’re relative neighbours; by the time you’d know they were there, they might not be any more.’

‘Yes, but -’

‘The only way to find life, therefore, is to go out and look for it, system by system. This applies for any civilisation anywhere in the Galaxy, and especially out here in the Rim. Thus, the sort of aliens we’ll be likely to meet will be wanderers like us. The odds are that we won’t stumble across anybody’s home system. It’ll be just one ship, all on its own.’

I thought about it, nodded slowly. ‘That makes sense, I guess.’ And it did, although I’ll bet she only thought of it
after
we met the saucer. ‘But, if they’re looking for life as well, then why won’t they talk to us?’

‘They might well have tried.’ Freedom smiled wryly. ‘You never know what life will be like until you find it.’

‘Do you know what
really
scares me?’ asked Sara. It was late one ship’s-night and we were sharing a coffee in her quarters. I hadn’t actually approached her for her thoughts on the matter, but she offered them anyway. Word had obviously spread.

‘No. What?’

‘That it might be real.’

‘Which?’

‘The, you know, the flying saucer. The aliens.’

‘What’s so horrible about that?’

‘Everything. They’re obviously so much better than we are. They make us look like savages in comparison.’

‘I know.’ I didn’t like to see her so worried. ‘But think of all the things we can learn from them -’

‘That’s not what I mean.’ She leaned intoxicatingly closer. ‘Maybe they’re
toying
with us ... ‘

Jake laughed when I sought his opinion.

‘Does it really matter, either way? If it’s a prank, then whoever infiltrated the system is better than we are. If not, and the aliens are real, then they’re also better than we are. We’re helpless to do anything no matter how you look at it, so we might as well sit back and enjoy what happens next.’

‘And if it’s us? If we’re losing it?’

‘As I said: we sit back and enjoy the show.’

Gabe said much the same, in a round-about way.

‘I’m going to sit on the fence for a while, Alek. Sorry.’

‘A three-sided fence,’ I said, ‘between aliens, sabotage and madness.

A bit uncomfortable, isn’t it?’

Gabe smiled. ‘Yes, but I’m used to it. It goes with the job.’

‘And you’re welcome to it. Can I ask one last question, then, just for the record?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘We’re not armed, are we?’

‘Why would we be?’

‘And we have no escape capsules?’

‘Where would we escape
to?
That’s two questions, by the way.’

‘I know. But don’t you think we’re dangerously vulnerable out here, all alone and with no means of defending ourselves?’

‘Of course we are.’ His smile broadened. ‘That’s half the fun, isn’t it?’

As Honorary Soap Operator, I could only agree.

So, opinion was divided. Only two members of the senior crew were prepared to admit that they believed in the existence of the aliens; three were undecided, and two thought the saucer was an illusion. Had I been looking for a consensus, I would have been disappointed.

As for me, I had my own theory - a different one again. Like Myrion, the timing was what bothered me. It was too dramatic, too contrived. Months of editing had taught me that the universe didn’t naturally work that way; it had to be nudged before it would perform. Like Andre, I thought it was someone human doing the nudging, not an alien - but, unlike him, I had both a motive and a suspect.

The saucer had appeared not long after our last package from Earth. That was the crucial clue. If our AIs had been corrupted by some sort of virus, then it must have arrived in that package; maybe hidden in Episode Four, dormant until we played the recording. If that was the case, then only one person, or group of people, could have been behind it.

Every package is checked and rechecked for aberrations before leaving Earth orbit; a virus, no matter how dormant, would have shown up eventually. If High Command had been infiltrated by a traitor, then that person could never have been certain the time bomb would reach its destination. Only one organisation could be sure of that - the same one that had the resources and the know-how to build a virus capable of getting past Freedom. Only this organisation knew the AI system aboard the
Jew
better than she did.

And that was High Command itself.

The motive was a little more complex. For what possible reason would HC want to sabotage its own investment? The only answer I could think of was to redirect our pooled hostility outwards, towards an imaginary alien, instead of inwards at each other. Even with the success of the soap opera, they still had eleven failures on their hands. Maybe they could see signs of stress that I had missed. Perhaps they thought the risk of pulling a stunt like this was less than the risk of doing nothing at all.

Or perhaps I was being paranoid. At the very least, it was a plausible theory.

The only problem was, I couldn’t tell anyone. If my guess was right, then HC would look poorly on the person who gave the game away - and made
them
the enemy.

So, like Gabe, I had to play the impartial observer and let everyone have their say, half-hoping someone else would guess. Only time would tell if I was right. Until then, all I could do was watch and, as Jake advised, enjoy the show.

And that was how I eventually worked the saucer into the episode. On other occasions, Gabe had been the star, or Myrion, or Jake. One of the reasons why I had cast myself as narrator, apart from convenience, was because I hate the look of my own face. But I had no choice this time. My turn had come. There was no other way to present what had happened.