The Lure (36 page)

‘Still a helluva time.’

‘Joe, it’s a lot less than the lifespan of a primate species. Expand your mind. Anyway the nearest signallers could be next door. We’re just four hundred years from Antares, two hundred from Betelgeuse, eight years from Sirius and four months from the Oort cloud.’

‘Let me get this right – the invaders are
ideas?
’ Callaghan asks.

‘The life forms stay nice and cosy in their own planetary system or whatever. They might be organic life forms like us, or machines or computers or molecules, but so far as the signal is concerned, life is just a storage medium. The signal is the real living entity.’

‘The
signals
have colonised the Galaxy,’ Callaghan repeats. He is still struggling with the concept.

‘Not guys in spacesuits, not even machines. The colonisers are imperialistic, all-conquering complexes of ideas and information bound together by a moral code which ensures mutual survival of life forms – organic life or machine descendants – because without life forms to transmit it, the signal itself would die.’

‘Gentle Jesus, I’m just a Trade Adviser.’

Alice asks, ‘Are we supposed to believe that this signal is a living entity or what? Is it a spiritual thing?’

‘I don’t know. It encompasses all knowledge. It evolves and reproduces itself and acts to protect itself. It inculcates its baby – life – with the moral code it needs for its own survival and that of life. It pervades the Galaxy.’

‘Maybe even beyond?’ Alice suggests. ‘Making the Universe a living thing?’

Petrie grins again. ‘You’re getting into the spirit, Alice. Maybe our Galaxy has been seeded, maybe genetic material drifts around like spores, I don’t know. Some of it takes, some of it doesn’t. But just as soon as any garbage civilisation crawls out of the caves and learns the most primitive biochemistry, the signallers fire off a blueprint for survival.’ His eyes are gleaming. ‘There’s a Galactic club out there. It’s a paradise club, it’s immortality. The signal is an invitation to join.’

*   *   *

The President put his beer can on a coffee-table, still unopened. He contemplated it for a few seconds, sighed, looked up and grinned. ‘Yep, I’ve finally heard it all.’

The CIA Director said, ‘Seth, if you were trying to beat a murder rap, would you come up with a yarn like that?’

43

The Oort Cloud

‘Now just so we can get the complete background, Tom – why the murder?’

‘It was self-defence. He was sent to kill us all.’

‘Ah yes – “they’re out to get me”. You told me that. Who is out to get you, Tom? The Slovaks? The aliens?’

‘Sneer away, Joe, but I have the evidence right here in my pocket.’ Petrie taps at his casual jacket. ‘I think my own government wants me dead, maybe the Russians too.’

‘At the risk of asking the obvious…’

‘My guess is they still have a pre-emptive strike mentality. They think we should keep our heads down. If we reply, it’s telling the signallers that we’re approaching a technological stage where we could become a risk to them maybe a few centuries down the line. They think the signal could be a lure to flush out civilisations like us in order to remove us.’

‘But you don’t believe that?’

‘If the signallers thought like that, they’d have self-destructed long ago.’

‘Tom, maybe my government will take the same line as your government. You know what I mean?’

‘I know. I’m taking that chance.’

*   *   *

Hazel said, ‘He’s keeping something back.’

Sullivan looked sharply at the Science Adviser. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Can we run it back? Go to that bit about timespans.’

Petrie’s soul-baring ran backwards, stopped, ran back again, and then settled on ‘… a helluva time.’

‘Look at his posture near the end of the sentence.’

A frame at a time; Petrie’s voice a low-pitched, robot-like drawl.
We’re-just-four-hundred-years-from-Antares-two-hundred-from-Betelgeuse-eight-years-from-Sirius-and-four-months-from-the-Oort-cloud.
The frame froze. Petrie’s mouth was half-open, intensity congealed on his face.

‘A hesitation on the last phrase?’ the DCI asked.

‘Yes. And a slight shifting back in his seat. He wasn’t sure about the Oort cloud.’

‘Maybe he wasn’t sure this damn cloud fitted his argument.’

‘No sir, that’s not what the body language is saying. Look at the way he leans back after he mentions the cloud. See how he puts his fingers over his mouth. He’s thinking,
I shouldn’t have said that.
He’s said more than he intended.’

‘What is this damned Oort cloud anyway?’

Killman said, ‘It’s a reservoir of maybe a hundred billion comets orbiting the Sun. They’re so far beyond the planets that the Sun heats them to just three degrees above absolute zero.’

‘How do we know this cloud is there? Can we see it?’

‘It’s invisible from here.’

‘So how the hell do you know it’s there?’ Bull repeated.

‘We see stray comets coming in from it.’

The President pulled a sceptical face. ‘Surely three degrees absolute is too cold for life forms?’

‘Three degrees rings a bell,’ said Baxendale.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Killman. ‘By coincidence the relict heat from the Big Bang is also at three degrees. We’re immersed in it. So when the cosmologists thought they were seeing primordial ripples in the Big Bang radiation, they were actually looking at patches of dust in the Oort cloud. Fooled them for years.’

‘Some of us don’t have degrees in astrophysics,’ Bull complained.

Killman put a fat hand to his forehead, horrified. ‘And Petrie thinks the signal came from the Oort cloud?’

Hazel was shaking her head doubtfully. ‘Does that make sense? Life on a deep freeze planet?’

‘No, ma’am, not in my opinion. But it raises another issue.’ The physicist raised a finger in the air. They gave him time, while he gathered his thoughts. Then he was speaking to himself. ‘I think I see what this guy’s getting at. He thinks there’s a relay station in the Oort cloud.’ He raised his head and seemed surprised to find that he had an audience. ‘Could be it fires signals at us from time to time.’

‘You mean they’ve been watching us?’ Bull asked Killman in alarm.

‘Maybe for a million years.’

Hazel turned to Bull. ‘Mr President, if this Oort cloud story is right, then any contact you make may not just affect our remote descendants. The cloud’s only three months away at the speed of light. If we replied to the signal, we could get a response within six months. Three or four weeks if it’s in the inner cloud, which is even more stable.’

The DCI sipped beer. ‘Maybe a response like a death ray.’

‘All information about the galactic civilisations, all knowledge, could be stored in stations like this. They could be scattered round every planetary system with life, they could get updated every millennium or two.’

Killman was beginning to look wild-eyed. ‘Dialogue with the relay station would in effect be dialogue with the Galactic club, but with a response time of weeks instead of thousands of years. If this guy’s right – it’s breathtaking!’

Bull sighed. ‘I’d like us to keep our eye on the ball here. This Iraq business is filling my diary by the hour, and what am I doing about it? I’m sitting here listening to fantasy. All we have is this lunatic’s word.’

Sullivan said, ‘We have hard evidence.’

‘Huh?’

‘A compact disk. A sampler, this Petrie says, with knowledge centuries ahead of the present time. The main information is on another disk which he has with him.’

‘Now that’s what we really need. Hard evidence. So where is this sampler disk?’

‘I have it on site,’ said Hazel. ‘At least its electronic contents. I’m having to call on outside help for analysis.’

Bull looked at Baxendale disapprovingly. ‘That’s dangerous.’

‘I’d like to call in Fort Detrick with your permission, Mr President,’ said Hazel.

‘It’s okay, Mr President,’ Sullivan said. ‘I’m handling the security angle.’

‘We could have results by tonight,’ said Baxendale.

Bull stood up, and the others got to their feet. ‘I don’t like this. Some knowledge is just too dangerous to handle. But yes, bring in Fort Detrick.’ He turned to Killman. ‘Thank you for your help, Mr MIT.’

Killman opened his mouth to say,
‘Actually, it’s Professor Killman’,
but then he caught Hazel’s look and left quietly. She’d had enough trouble getting him into Shangri-La in the first place.

When the door had closed behind the MIT Professor, the President turned to his Science Adviser and the DCI. ‘This is a helluva way to spend a day. Hazel, I’ll hear your report on the guy’s sample disk this evening. Use my helicopter to ferry in personnel. If this turns out to be kosher I’ll bring in Paley and Flood. If it’s not, I want to be back in the Oval Office tomorrow morning.’

Outside Aspen, the CIA Director glanced up at the low, heavy sky. Big snowflakes were materialising out of the amorphous grey. By tomorrow morning Camp David would be all but inaccessible by road. He turned up the collar of his windcheater to protect his neck against the freezing air and the big snowflakes, and made footprints in the pristine snow on the path.

He thought that his phrase ‘handling the security angle’ had carried just the right degree of vagueness.

There were some things with which you shouldn’t burden the President.

44

Alien Solutions

A cold, overcast late afternoon. Snowflakes still drifting down, the sky darkening.

Bull looked through the slatted blinds at his old evangelist friend, in a blue windcheater and scarf as white as his hair. Harris was sat on a bench near the pool, reading something. From this distance it looked like a Bible.

Reading outdoors, in the snow!

There was a knock on the door, and Bull turned back from the window. The man opening the door was about fifty, stockily built, with short cropped hair and light blue eyes. He was wearing the uniform of an army Colonel.

‘Colonel Rocco, have we met?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Time’s very short, let’s get down to business. Over here, please.’

They sat down on chairs set at a desk. The Colonel opened a laptop computer, and on its screen was a thing which looked like a dimpled sponge.

There was another knock. Sullivan and Baxendale crowded into the little study. Bull nodded indifferently and sat down next to the soldier. He pointed to the image on the laptop screen. ‘What’s this?’

‘Well, sir, this is on the compact disk Ms Baxendale gave me. Happens it’s one of the leukaemia RNA viruses identified only last year. Not the representation I’m used to, though.’ The Colonel’s brow wrinkled. ‘It’s not a simple C-alpha trace.’

‘Remember you’re talking to a layman.’

‘Yes, Mr President. What I mean is, whoever obtained this construction is using a novel imaging technique.’ The Colonel’s finger traversed the screen. ‘It’s two hundred angstroms end to end, and wonderfully detailed. They must have access to some heavy CPU time.’

‘Okay.’

‘Now sir, here they’ve isolated a protein from an immature white cell. Happens it’s the target of this virus. The virus gets on to that, screws up the immune response, you get an overproduction of cells, which is bad news.’

Another image replaced the sponge, this one made up of hundreds of tiny, multi-coloured balls joined by short sticks, the whole making an irregular, elongated hollow structure. It spun slowly.

‘I’m more familiar with this type of imaging. I recognise it as something called the VP1 protein.’ The Colonel pointed to a long, deep valley. ‘And there’s what we call the canyon. Dozens of research groups have been trying to find a receptor for it.’

Bull was patient. ‘Colonel, if I could have it in simple language?’

‘Sorry, Mr President. But now see what followed on the disk.’

The big protein stayed on screen, but another set of balls-and-sticks appeared, much smaller and simpler. Someone with a sense of drama had made this new image drift into view, approaching the protein like a little space ship returning to the mother station. It orbited the protein, hovered over the deep valley, distorted and stretched as it descended and clicked into place like a piece from a three-dimensional jigsaw, filling the canyon smoothly.

Now the dramatist sent in a flotilla of little ball-and-stick space ships. They swirled and orbited the mother ship and, one at a time, landed in other valleys, again filling them neatly.

The mother ship then tumbled, displaying its filled canyons. Bull glanced behind him. The CIA Director and the Science Adviser were absorbed in the image. Hazel was looking numbed.

‘Colonel?’

The soldier came back to the present. ‘My first instinct was to say that this is some sort of hoax. I mean, here we have fourteen hits, fourteen conformers to prevent receptor attachments, where
one
is a medical revolution.’

Bull was still being patient. ‘Colonel Rocco, what does all this gobbledygook mean?’

‘It means you can interrupt the lytic cycle – the virion can’t enter a human cell.’

‘Try harder, Soldier.’

‘Mr President, the material on this disk is describing the molecular basis for curing adult leukaemia. These are small molecules, as you see, so we wouldn’t have to worry about stomach enzymes. Meaning no injection, just swallow a pill. It might even be preventative. An anti-cancer pill, taken with your cornflakes every morning along with your vitamins.’

‘Colonel, what I need to know is this. What can you say about the state of advancement of this technology?’

‘Sir, it’s the stuff of fantasy. It puts our chemotherapy in the Stone Age. It must come from some protein targeting procedure a hundred years in the future, maybe more. We have a hundred doctoral scientists at Fort Detrick and we pride ourselves on being state of the art. We’re one of only two places in the States working at biosafety level four on account of we routinely deal with some mighty hazardous pathogens, and we’re pretty clued up on what’s going on elsewhere. But this – it’s way beyond anything we’ve encountered. I haven’t been told the source of this disk, but I surely wonder who has got this far.’