Nodding, Payne began tapping notes into his recorder.
Chang talked, and primarily Payne just listened, and much of what he heard sounded a lot like what he had heard a couple of weeks ago from Gerschak. This time he heard about it in more detail, and with a quiet, but somehow greater, vehemence.
Chang talked nonstop for nearly an hour.
* * *
Payne looked thoughtfully at his notes. He looked back up at Chang. "You could endanger your security clearance by simply inquiring too closely into a subject's classification? Is that what you're saying?"
"Yes."
"That sounds like a rather effective form of censorship."
Chang frowned in affirmation. She ran her fingers back through her hair. Silence hung restlessly in the air, broken only by voices outside, down the corridor.
"Would you say that it is dangerous to science, and to the public's interest?" Payne asked.
"Indeed it is."
Payne grunted and made a note. "Up against the wall," he murmured, half to himself.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Up against the wall,"
Payne said. "A phrase that was popular in the last century. It referred to people backed up against their principles, forced to extreme measures by intolerable situations. People with nothing to lose by fighting. It just came into my mind." He smiled and shook his head, as though to clear an extraneous thought.
"I see," she said softly.
She wants to talk, he thought. She's close. Very close. Don't scare her off. He rubbed his forehead. "It almost seems—" He paused. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as though people would be forced to join together in small groups, or cabals, to quietly share information."
She gazed at him, not blinking.
"How else," he continued, "could the scientific community, or anyone else, keep tabs on what was being done in the name of science? People must be exchanging information outside of the regular channels. Am I right?"
Chang lifted a paper, dropped it. It had gotten dark outside, and she had switched on a desk lamp. With her head averted, her eyes were in shadow. After a moment, she rose and walked to the door and gently swung it closed, cutting off sounds from the corridor. She returned to her seat and faced him. "We must have an understanding," she said softly.
He felt a release in his chest. "Yes?"
"Everything that I'm going to tell you is for background use only." She spoke so softly now that he had to lean forward to catch her words. "Is that the phrase you newsmen use? I will not name my sources, and you will not name me as a source. You will not use my name in your stories, or refer to my work."
He gestured vaguely. "Those are pretty strict limits. After all, much of your work is published—"
"And much of it isn't. What you want to know about, isn't." She sat back. "Those are my conditions."
"Background, then," Payne said. "Unless you change your mind—"
"I won't. I could endanger several other people, who have stuck their necks out a lot farther than I have mine."
"I understand," he said.
She nodded. "I asked a few people about you. You seem well regarded in your field. I . . . think perhaps I can trust you."
Payne held his breath.
"Are we agreed?"
He nodded, letting his breath go. "Agreed."
She held his eyes for a moment, then looked away. "There are ways of gathering information," she said quietly. "It must be done delicately, and with consideration for the positions of the people who are helping you. Personal contacts must be used carefully and sparingly." She gazed out the darkened window, meditatively. "People can be hurt. Good people can be hurt." She glanced at him. "Do you understand?"
Payne nodded. His fingers rested motionless on the keypad of his note recorder. Her fear was contagious.
Chang sat back. "Communications with the
Father Sky
mission are relayed through an orbital laboratory known as Tachylab. There's a group at Tachylab who feel that certain information should be more widely disseminated than it is."
Payne's fingers tapped on the keypad.
Chang swiveled her chair toward the window, as she spoke in a low monotone. "I think they would approve of my giving you this information. They want it made public. The only question has been how. It concerns who controls
Father Sky
, and the reason it was sent out in the first place." She paused for another moment. "There
were
signals received from space. Intelligent signals, we believe."
Payne's fingers tapped more quickly.
It was a locked, windowless meeting room on the thirty-fourth floor of the Defense Intelligence building, in New Washington. The room was dominated by a large, oiled walnut table surrounded by ten seats. Against one wall was a sideboard intended for coffee service, and over it hung several framed portraiture prints. All of the seats around the table, except one, were empty.
Leonard Hathorne touched several keys on his communication console at the end of the table. "Gentlemen," he said, his voice echoing flatly in the room. He paused, imagining the reek of tobacco smoke, the hazy blue cloud rising to the ceiling.
The projectors clicked on, one after another. Nine ghostly holographic images appeared, nine figures of men occupying the empty spaces around the table, nine faces turning to look at him. They looked, if not quite real as life, still almost solid enough to touch. Hathorne spoke again. "Gentlemen, may I ask you all to confirm, please?" He waited until the verification windows on his console glowed green, indicating secure channels to all the members of the Oversight Committee, as far away as Paris, Mexico City, and the Space Lab at GEO-Four, and as close as five blocks away. "Thank you," he said. "Now, to bring you up to date on the
Father Sky
mission—"
As he spoke, Hathorne directed the appropriate data to the members' console screens. He glanced up from time to time to see the projected images of the members looking from him to what appeared to be imaginary screens in front of them. There was a certain amount of soft, staticky throat-clearing as he talked. By the time he was finished, he faced a circle of scowling faces. One or two, perhaps, merely looked bored. He opened his mouth to take up the next item, but one of the ghostly figures turned, signaling that he wanted to speak. "Yes, General," Hathorne said, frowning slightly.
The faces turned, as each member looked toward the general, or toward whatever image of the general was visible at each location. Several of the gazes were skewed a little from the general that Hathorne saw.
"Yes, General?" he repeated.
The general raised his chin. "One gets the sense that this mission is in trouble," he said. His voice, as always, was a growl.
Hathorne allowed himself a measured turn of the head, as he looked first at the general, and then at the other members. He refrained from displaying his irritation. "Well, General, as I said—it looks like a software problem, and they're working on it. For now, the Kadin prog-, Kadin and Mozelle, are overriding the problem successfully, and keeping the craft on course. I remain hopeful—"
"But aren't we dependent on the cooperation of—well. Let us say, the personality of a rebellious, post-adolescent—?"
Hathorne interrupted brusquely. "I think that's an exaggeration, and needlessly pessimistic. It's true that we need cooperation, but on the other hand, we're getting it. Meanwhile, the people at Sandaran-Choharis are confident that they can resolve the problem, given a little more time."
"Time is in short supply," said the general. "Rendezvous is approaching."
"We're all aware of that, General. What specifically are you driving at?"
The general's chin went higher. "Just this. What will you do if it turns out that the problem isn't just related to, but is
caused by
this Mozelle personality? I venture to say that you can't risk trying to erase her—
it
—again."
Hathorne thought a moment. "That's true enough. Obviously she has means of protecting herself, and if we tried again, we would certainly make an enemy of her. And then we
would
probably have to terminate the mission."
"Well, then." The general cleared his throat noisily, and his eyes shifted as he looked around at the Committee members, or their images. "Gentlemen. I hate to be the one to say this—"
Untrue, Hathorne thought. You've opposed it from the start.
"—but I think perhaps it's time to suggest that this mission
be
terminated. By us. Before it approaches the target, and some further degradation puts it out of our control, and we find ourselves in worse shape than we'd be in with no spacecraft out there at all."
"You're assuming problems that may not occur," Hathorne said. "Even without a software solution—if we can work effectively with Kadin and Mozelle, then I believe our chances are still good." He met the general's stare evenly. If it had once seemed odd to refer to the Mozelle personality as though it, or she, were a real person, it no longer caused him qualms. He was willing to concede that the Mozelle programming probably closely resembled, and behaved like, the personality of Mozelle Moi, and he would certainly make use of those qualities in dealing with her. That did not mean, however, that he regarded her as being equivalent to a living human being, with attendant rights. Realism demanded his recognition that the mission was far more important than the existence of a "personlike" computer program.
"But if this personality
fails
to cooperate, we could be making a tremendously important first contact—" and the general gestured with one hand "—with a failing machine. Now, I'm not sure that the benefits are such—and considering what we might do with a
manned
mission—"
"General, may I interrupt you?" Hathorne held up a hand.
He was met with silence—and a glare.
"Forgive me, but with your permission—" Hathorne addressed the entire Committee. "May I ask, before discussing this issue, that we review the rest of the agenda? I have more information that bears on the question." He touched several keys, bringing up a display. "Please refer to your consoles again."
"Here is the translation team's report on the latest signals from Tachylab. First the analysis." He touched a key, and the security warnings disappeared, to be replaced by a screenful of text. "You'll note that our confidence in translation is still low—less than sixty percent on major comprehension, and only about twenty-three percent on detail. It's getting better, though."
He paused to let them read. The text discussed translation methodology, and showed the actual tracings of the tachyon signals. The translation followed, in English. It began:
LIFE OF THIRD WORLD . . . PEOPLE/CITIZENS OF THIRD WORLD . . . ATTENTION . . . ATTENTION FROM DISTANT WORLDS. OUR APPROACH IS . . . [NO TRANSLATION]. WE PREDICT THAT THE MEETING . . . WILL BE . . . [TRANSLATION UNCERTAIN: FRUITFUL? PRODUCTIVE? DYNAMIC?] . . .
WE ARE PREPARED WITH GREAT . . . [TRANSLATION UNCERTAIN: EXCITEMENT? ANTICIPATION? FORCE?] WE PREDICT THAT WE SHALL ACHIEVE [TRANSLATION UNCERTAIN: COMMUNICATION? DOMINATION?] UPON OUR ARRIVAL . . .
The transcript ran about three pages. Like those before it, it was rife with ambiguities and tentative translations, many of which bore heavily on the overall content. A number of verselike lines had been rendered as riddles. Hathorne privately felt that the linguistics team was stretching matters in claiming a sixty percent certainty, even in broad meaning. They had far too little to go on. The primary keys consisted of references to universal physical constants, such as absorption and emission lines in stellar spectra, and correlations between graphic images and words. The team did well to produce
any
translation, he realized. But they were a long way from real communication.
"It's not precisely alarming, nor reassuring, either," said a European representative.
"Which means," another member said, "that we must regard it as alarming—until we know more."
Someone else brought up the subject of preparations for defense.
Hathorne steered the discussion back. "It seems clearer than ever to me that
Father Sky
must continue," he said. "Right now we know almost nothing about our visitors. The earlier we learn something of what—or whom—we're dealing with, the better equipped we can be when they arrive. Why else have we gone to such lengths to reach them while they're still outside the solar system? Why else push our artificial intelligence program to the very limit?"
He paused to let his gaze roam among the Committee members. "Let's not forget. We're projecting their arrival less than a year from now. It could be sooner. If
Father Sky
fails, or if we abort, we won't reach them, as even the general tells us, until they're inside the orbit of Mars. Not with a manned mission."
The general was scowling. "As you know, I've favored a manned mission from the beginning," he said deliberately. "I didn't trust the artificial intelligence, and I still don't. Obviously, we would all like to have an early look at the object. Hell, we could have done that if you'd given me the green light a year and a half ago. But even without
Father Sky
, we could get a look with a high-boost flyby, and then concentrate on getting a manned mission out there as soon as possible."
The representative from GEO-Four stirred, with a ghostly shimmer. "No point in dredging up the past. The decision was made not to send someone on a one-way trip, and that's done with now. But look. We're counting on
Father Sky
's detailed information to help us determine the makeup of the manned follow-on. How can we know whether the manned mission should be armed—and if so, how—without good data, preferably from a solid prior contact?"
"You're missing my point," said the general. "If
Father Sky
fails, we will have gained
no
useful information, and will have demonstrated weakness to a potential adversary. I suggest that we go with the follow-on mission
now
, and go prepared for possible conflict. Prepared to establish a defense at some distance from Earth, in case the intruder proves hostile."