“You’re going to be an uncle, kid. How about that?” Pat said.
Marietta’s congratulations were less than wholehearted. “Good work. When’s the baby due?”
“Late July or early August,” Carissa replied, sighing happily.
Dian frowned, aware of some of the family history. “You’re not going surrogate route at all, then? With your small frame, I’d think . . .”
The other woman looked apprehensively at Jael. “Oh, no. I’m going to carry it to term myself. Besides, it’s too late for surrogate implantation. I don’t really like that idea, anyway. It seems rather . . . unnatural.”
“It’s a proven technique for women who have trouble conceiving or carrying to term,” Mariette began.
“Carissa won’t have any trouble,” Jael said firmly. “That technique’s a fad, anyway. Kills more fetuses than it saves. There’s absolutely no reason why Carissa won’t have a full-term normal, healthy child. Lord! I went into labor at a board meeting while I was carrying you, Mariette. I barely had time to get to an infirmary. Thought I was going to drop you on the floor of the flier ambulance—like some peasant woman! I was back at the board meeting, finishing up, twenty-four hours later. There’s really too much fuss made about the whole thing . . .”
“But ‘Rissa isn’t you, Mother,” Mari objected in a heavy tone.
Pat was looking anxiously from his mother to his sister. Carissa rushed in with a cheery “Oh, I’m sure everything will be fine. Dr. Ganz says I’ll have to take it easy, lots of nutri-supplements and so forth.”
“Dr. Ganz is right. You’ll see. A perfect baby,” Jael predicted smugly. “Just as I said: Ward lives on through you children and his grandchildren . . .”
“You live through us, too,” Mari put in.
Jael shifted gears, looking startled. “Well, that’s true, of course. Genetically speaking, that is. You know, I never think of myself as Jael Hartman any more. I’m Jael Saunder. So it all amounts to the same thing. Ward and me, and all of you. You’ll have to pick a good name, Pat, one suitable for Ward’s grandchild. I have some in mind . . .”
“We’ll pick one out,” Pat said. Like Marietta’s comments, his had a bite.
“Are you going to live here at Saunderhome after the kid’s born?” Mari asked. Todd felt the trouble starting. He knew the reunion had been going too well. Carissa’s long-hoped-for pregnancy would provide the excuse Mari had been itching to find.
“We haven’t thought that far ahead yet. The campaign’s been taking up time,” Pat replied. He had been moving in subtly, edging Jael aside, taking her place nearest Carissa’s chair. Carissa leaned back against his arm, basking in his protectiveness. Todd had seen the three of them in poses like this every time he had come home. Tonight he saw something new. Pat and Jael, and ‘Rissa between them, and ‘Rissa quietly enjoying the situation.
“Well, you have a while to make up your minds,” Dian broke in, trying to lighten the mood. “You can live anywhere. And the baby can be anything he or she wants to be when he or she grows up, and can live anywhere . . .”
“Even in space.” Mari wouldn’t leave well enough alone. “When that baby’s grown, Goddard will still be recruiting.”
Worse, Pat couldn’t resist the bait. “Not again! Do you have to drag that fantasy in the sky into everything? When my kid’s grown up, that oversized cartwheel will just be a notation in the history tapes, and we’ll be settling up the
real
concerns of mankind!”
“You narrow-minded political hack! Who the hell . . .?”
“Drop it!” Todd thundered at them. “What’s wrong with you two? We were just agreeing what a wonderful event this is going to be, how great it is that the kid won’t go hungry or be cold or need to fight for a place to sleep, how proud Ward would have been to know he was going to have a grandkid—and you start clawing at each other! Back off! Both of you! Give each other a choice and a right to an opinion!”
“We’d be glad to, if the Earth First Party would leave Goddard alone.”
“What are you talking about?” Pat flared. Carissa began tugging at his arm, trying to calm him down, to no avail. “If you mean that funding vote . . .”
“I mean economic strangulation and missile attacks. Over a hundred Colonists injured, fifty-eight of them dead. The last time, Todd could have been one of the casualties, too!”
A profound, shocked silence followed. Pat cleared his throat several times. Yet when he spoke, his voice broke. “Wh . . . what? What are you . . . I don’t understand . . .”
“Don’t you?” Mariette gazed at her older brother suspiciously. “What don’t you understand? Dead? Injured? Todd almost being a casualty? A missile shadowed his ship in when he was heading for the Colony. They damned near took him out.”
“Hold it!” Pat closed his eyes in pain. Carissa was huddling in her chair. Jael’s mouth hung open. She seemed stunned, unable to grasp Mariette’s revelations.
Dian swayed back and forth, her arms crossed under her breasts, her manner angry. “You didn’t tell me it came that close to you,” she snapped at Todd.
“I didn’t want you to worry.” Dian’s fiery glare made Todd regret he had said anything at all. Pat was pulling himself together, looking at his brother pleadingly. With a weary sigh, Todd nodded. “It happened. I’ve seen the tapes, interviewed some of the victims while I was there. And I’ve seen the damage inflicted on the torus. Somebody took Earth First’s platform, about Goddard’s ability to fire down into our gravity well, seriously and hit back.”
Todd half expected Mariette to go into detail, bragging about Goddard’s so-far successful defense. But apparently her suspicions wouldn’t let her. She didn’t reveal the illegal weapons and Lunar Base fighters, said nothing about the plan to collect the missile debris in the mass driver nets and puzzle the pieces together as evidence.
“Who?” Pat asked suddenly. “You have somebody to accuse? Are you going to take it to P.O.E. court?”
“We’re pretty damned certain it isn’t the World Expansionists or Fairchild’s party. They’re Spacers,” Mari replied bitterly.
“You’re saying you don’t
have
any proof, no names to same,” Pat said, a debater making his point.
“Only killed, injured, and damaged property. Not much to you, of course. Try translating that to a direct missile hit on New Washington and see how it sits. Actually, I don’t imagine our enemies really care how many of us they kill. They’re more interested in crippling Goddard Power Sats. If they do that, and kill me and a lot of other people in the bargain, my share of Ward’s inheritance will be wiped out, won’t it? Not that it matters. Not now that the famous Patrick Saunder is assured of his immortality through progeny!”
“Mari . . .” She heard the warning and the pain in Pat’s voice and quieted. “Whatever our philosophical differences about the Colony’s worth, I’ve never advocated war. Never!”
“No?” Maniette wouldn’t look at him. “We’ve heard you say, many times, that Goddard is, and I quote, ‘stealing the lifeblood of Earth, draining away her irreplaceable treasures, and it must be stopped.’ ”
“Campaign rhetoric, for God’s sake,” Pat exclaimed desperately. “That’s not a declaration of war. Missiles. My God!” He seemed aghast Mari could believe him capable of such an act.
“Apparently somebody didn’t dismiss your speeches so lightly. They were listening very carefully and took their cues from you. So much for rhetoric. You’re Earth First Party, Pat, all by yourself, the master of the ‘why don’t we take all those funds we’re wasting in space and . . .’ tactic. If you’re not responsible for my people dying, who is?”
“Why . . . why hasn’t any of this been released? How long . . .”
“A couple of months,” Todd supplied. He took pity on Pat’s horror and bewilderment. “They’re a closed society, Pat. They clamped a total news blackout on themselves. Those who were supposed to rotate planetside postponed their yearly leaves. They choose to stay, no matter what happens. Lunar Base knows, but they agreed to hold it, even from their superiors.”
“Should have seen . . . can’t we see it?”
His brother was a highly intelligent man, literate, well informed about a vast number of things. But in matters of space, he had never gone past the most rudimentary knowledge. “No, Pat. You couldn’t see it, even with the orbiting telescopes. There’s too much distance involved. Mari’s hammering it because she’s mad. But she’s also right. Goddard didn’t tell me and didn’t tell its planetside allies, either.”
“We have now,” Mariette announced. “We gave it to Fairchild this afternoon. Dabrowski, too.”
Pat was stricken at the betrayal. “Do you know what they’ll do with that information? I can hear their speeches now!”
“Is that all you can think about? Your campaign?”
Todd found himself watching Jael. Why wouldn’t she say anything? She had promised they would work together to keep Pat and Mari from each other’s throats. Dian wasn’t a family member, and Todd didn’t blame her a bit for not charging in on this. Carissa was useless when things got noisy. But Jael had knocked all their heads together often enough, physically and with words. Instead of backing him up, she was holding Carissa’s hand, patting it, reassuring the expectant mother that everything was going to be all right. Possessing Carissa’s attention and trust the way she intended to possess that grandchild. One more little Saunder mind and personality to mold the way she thought they ought to go. Was she thinking that the
next
time she would get everything perfect?
Todd felt as if he were looking into Jael’s brain, disliking the sensation. The logic fit, though. She could step in if she wanted to. She didn’t want to. Let poor Todd flounder around and play referee. Divide and conquer. It served Jael’s interest, perhaps, her interest in her grandchild.
“Do you know how you look and sound?” Todd asked, ripping across the on-going harangue on either side of him. Pat and Mari stopped, staring at him. Dian nodded, ready. Modulating his tone only slightly, Todd went on. “Listen to yourselves. Look at yourselves. Yes, you, too, Mother, Carissa. How would all this infantile bickering—with Mother and Carissa playing audience—look to an impartial observer?”
There were four utterly blank expressions. Dian had picked up the case from Todd’s chair. She quietly made her way to the holo-mode projector Roy Paige had left empty.
Jael was the first to find her voice. “Todd, what on Earth are you talking about?”
He couldn’t repress a derisive laugh. “Earth? That’s too limited. Far too limited. When I say impartial observer, that’s exactly what I mean. Completely impartial. Looking at us from a distance, sizing us up. What would such an observer make of what’s been going on here tonight? The almighty Saunder family, a quasi-nation, autonomous, wealthier than most existing countries on this planet, powerful . . . and we’re pulling out one another’s hair and backbiting like squabbling apes, or an even lower species on the evolutionary scale.”
Dian was adjusting the dimensional balance and color and lining up the messenger data units. Jael glanced at the black woman, scowling, beginning to smell a rat. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re driving at.”
“You will, Mother. All of you will. I thought the memories of Dad would have a healing effect. But obviously that doesn’t last. Maybe what Dian and I are going to show you will wake you up for now and the foreseeable future. Wake up you and the world—before it’s too late.”
CHAPTER NINE
ooooooooo
“SYSTEMS green,” Dian said. She leaned lightly on the holo-console, taking long, deep breaths.
Jael’s expression hardened. “You seem to have forgotten where you are, Todd,” she said with heavy authority. “This is a ceremonial occasion devoted to your father’s memory.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” Todd spoke gently, but he didn’t retreat. “This concerns one of Dad’s dreams, one that was very important to him. He was never able to pursue it to its conclusion. When he deeded ComLink to me, he gave me his dream as well. You might say it was a legacy. Does that put it into proper perspective?”
Jael groped toward her chair, sinking into it, wide-eyed and worried. She covered her mouth nervously for a moment, a rare gesture Todd remembered from his childhood. She was extremely upset when she did that. “What dream?”
“Project Search.”
“That . . . that fantasy? It was never going to amount to anything, any more than the space station will.” Mari rolled her eyes, seething, and Todd gestured urgently to keep her from butting in. “It was never a new field. Your father had lots of predecessors. All those other people who’d hoped to contact alien intelligence . . . something called Ozma, and another one was, I think, SETI. The scientists were to be commended for all that hard work—”
“And money,” Todd added before Jael could.
She didn’t like having her words put in his mouth, “Yes, money! A great deal of money, and for no results. I always thought it was a waste for Ward to putter around with the same idea that had been tried and found wanting. Telescopes and scanners, simply duplicating those failures . . .”
“Who were looking along the wrong frequencies.” Dian didn’t speak loudly, but they all heard her. “The prior searches were mostly along one or two gigahertz. And they scanned areas like M-Thirteen in Hercules. Pretty shrewd guessing, but, as it happens, wrong. We have much more sophisticated gear than they had, or than Ward Saunder had. Faster and wider scans and much sharper ears, if you care to put it that way.”
Jael glared daggers at the black woman. No doubt she knew as much as Todd and Dian did about Ward’s original project. But her data were old. Todd had kept things very low key when he revived the search three years ago. Jael had been undercut, shut out, and she was demonstrating it. She drew herself up. “I’m not the greedy harpy some people think I am. It wasn’t the money . . .”
“Of course not,” Carissa defended her.
“What’s the point, Todd?” Pat asked. “I sort of remember the project. It wasn’t my pet, but I did drop in on you and Dad now and then. Interesting stuff, but not very relevant to what was going on right then. The whole damned world was coming unglued—problems that make today’s almost petty by comparison. Humanity needed Dad’s brains working on something important, not playing around listening to star static. We needed him. We still do. Some of his inventions were the difference between life and death for millions. The viral inhibitor filter, the syntha-food accelerator process, the mass driver adaptation that finally made surface transport work, the cryo medicine—all the spinoffs. Without his brainstorms, Earth would be a wasteland.”
“And you think it isn’t?” Mari had remained quiet as long as she could.
“No!” Pat wouldn’t let her talk, overriding her with his orator’s carrying voice. “Jael’s right. It was a hobby Dad enjoyed, but we couldn’t afford that dream, then or now.”
“Are you through making speeches?” Pat blinked at Todd, who pushed on. “If you are, we can get on with it. Project Search never was frivolous. It was just a trifle ahead of time. It has finally paid off. Right now, mankind’s standing at a crossroads, the most important one since we learned to talk and use tools. And we’d damned well better be equal to making the right choice about which way to go.”
Whatever Pat saw in Todd’s face made him change his tone. “What have you got, kid?” Mari pointed at him, but Pat took her hand, holding it fast. “Mari, hey! Whatever this is, I think maybe we ought to hear Todd out.” Mari debated with herself, suspecting collusion. But she finally acquiesced somewhat grudgingly.
Todd moved around briskly, not wasting the chance. “If you would, I’d like you all to sit down again, just where you were for Ward’s memorial. Mari, would you please sit next to Pat? Dian and I will be standing back here by the projector.”
Grumbling and sour, Mari obeyed. At the other side of the room, Jael sat sullenly, barely tolerant of her second son’s whims. Carissa reached across the space between their chairs and held Pat’s hand. Todd stood between Mari and Pat, pressing their shoulders, trying to communicate his excitement with the touch. Dian cued the halo-mode systems, and the room lights dimmed once more. But she left the bubble dome exposed. Scattered starlight seemed to leap closer when the interior lights were down.
She waited. Todd prepared himself emotionally, looking up. Starlight overhead. That was fitting. “Okay, Dian, let’s start. What you’re going to see is a preview, a special showing just for the family. This package and some extensive corroborating material will be presented at the Global Science Council conference in a few days. I wanted you to know about it first, though, the same way Dad always showed his new inventions to us before he called in the press. This is preliminary, but it’s solid. This demo works.”
In the focus point facing the arc of chairs, a deep blackness formed. Opaque. Space. A blue-green-white bloated curve of Earth appeared at the lower left of the image, giving the viewers an idea of their relative position. An orbiter floated in the center of the image. Metal reflected direct solar radiation. Surfaces looked solid and edges hard and sharp. Todd was proud of the holographic quality. He had taken this one himself while closing in with his shuttle. Like many high-vacuum constructs, this satellite was a fragile-looking thing.
“This is Project Search Orbiter Four,” Todd said. An insert holographic image formed on the lower right of the main projection. A monitor screen. It appeared to rest on the floor, contrasting strangely with the orbiter hanging in space. The orbiter image was revealed in harsh, unfiltered sunlight. The monitor had been photographed in an ordinary office by artificial light. Dian zoomed on the insert until nothing but the little screen showed. The readout was available at that extremely close angle.
Data jittered and froze on the screen, sketching out the orbiter’s dimensions and raw specs, then hurrying on to other details. Mari forgot her anger. She perched on the edge of her chair, reading rapidly Jael, as well as Pat, absorbed the material just as fast. Carissa could read a moderate rate feed, but this was designed for the use of techs and trained scientists—or for the wife and children of Ward Saunder.
Carissa whispered, “It’s too . . .”
“Shh,” Pat soothed her, concentrating on the holomode. “I’ll spell it out later.” Carissa smiled trustingly, her face and hair ghostly in the dim light.
“No immediate profit.” Jael had pounced on a significant datum. She interpreted the facts as she saw them. Todd sighed. It would take her a while to absorb the rest of what he was going to tell her. Her mind was different from Ward’s, but just as spectacular. Her gifts had brought the family through all the crises. She weighed value in terms of what sort of security it could buy for her family. That security had given Todd the wealth and freedom to bring Project Search out of storage. It would be hypocrisy for him to sneer at Jael’s absorption with profits.
Security first. Dreams second.
Yet dreams could come true. This one had.
In the holo-mode theater, the little orbiter went through a dizzying series of changes, displaying earlier models of Search vehicles, progressing forward to its own design. The monitor distilled time and expense. Jael muttered something Todd couldn’t quite hear, probably another acid comment about needless waste.
“We started with these orbiters about three years ago, but it took two tries before we got a really satisfactory model. It was bootleg research, and there was a lot of turnover and a very small working staff at any given period. Eventually we culled the staff down to a few dedicated people. About two years ago Dian hired on with ComLink, and I approached her about Project Search. She was working with the translator department, not space scans, but she was very interested. We both thought that if we actually found something, her background and training would be invaluable. We were right.” Todd turned to Dian, wishing he could find a stronger compliment to thank her for her unflagging loyalty. “Beth Isaacs and Techs Anatole Duchamp and Wu Min stayed with it all the way.”
Fabric rustled as his audience stirred. There was whispering. Their reactions were unformed as yet, just as the earliest data from Project Search were erratic and uncertain. The image-orbiter delivered information then, on command, sent out fresh signals, turning, hunting, fine-tuning, always seeking a target that might not exist.
The insert vied with the orbiter for attention. In the holo-mode image, a second Todd and a second Dian appeared. They were leaning over the monitor but carefully not blocking its screen, giving the camera lens a clear shot. The scenes flickered in rapid sequence, showing them and the Project Search team, poring over the readouts, discussing them, their elation growing. They reset, reprogrammed, calling for repeat scans, repeat signals, backups, and reconfirms. They tried to eliminate all element of chance, They compared their data and pictures with those from Global Astro Science’s files, and from those of the orbiter telescopes and those on the Moon. They analyzed the data again and again, afraid to get their hopes up.
Jael swiveled, and Todd sensed her scrutiny in the semi-darkness. “Before you ask, every bit of funding came out of my own pocket. I didn’t take a thing from any of my stockholders.”
The orbiter’s image disappeared. A distant star field took over its part of the projection. It wasn’t as realistic as the orbiter had been. The range was long and the image looked like what it was—a grainy blowup of an astronomical photograph. The monitor scene enlarged, the human figures becoming life-size, twins of the real Todd and Dian. Sound now accompanied the busy whirl of numerals and graphs on the screen in the holograph. The techs’ conversations had been edited down to bare essentials, incisive comments to point up events and discoveries.
“We decided to broaden the base Ward and the earlier seekers had been using. We could, with our improvements on Ward’s scan patents. The first researchers would have sold themselves for life to get such equipment.”
Men and women who had donated years, searching, hoping. They were right. There was intelligent life beyond the Solar System. It had just needed more time for the collective human brain to produce the necessary equipment and find the exact path. Thanks to their groundwork, Todd’s people had pinpointed the dream and made it real.
Dian took up the explanation. “You’re now looking at a scanning sector designated nine cee jay, mid-screen, to your left. If you wish, we’ll supply you with complete catalog data. We had to develop some of our own as we went along.”
“What did you find?” Mari asked excitedly. “Come on! Have pity!”
The deep-space photo jumped, the image refocusing instantly. The new apparent angle was a great deal closer, zeroing in on a particular area of space. A machine-sketched bracket formed around an empty patch in the enlarged shot.
In the monitor insert, Todd and Dian cued comps and got a response. Earth’s technology reached beyond Earth and lunar orbit, far beyond, spanning an empty gulf. The answer was slow. It took a while for the signal to reach its destination, be considered, and be returned. Finally, the screens put up the data. In cold, comp-abbreviated English, the letters stated:
Cnfrm. Ptrn rpt. RQ Dcrypt.
An odd series of tones and staticky bursts came from the monitor. A playback relayed from space.
“Request what?” Carissa wondered aloud. Todd was startled. She was sharper than he had realized. Obviously she could follow most comp shorthand.
“Decryption,” Dian explained, “is a term borrowed from the military lexicons. Usually it refers to some general asking for a breakdown of a code. And this
is
a code, in a way. But because it’s not in any human language, the comp couldn’t convert it. This process is going to take considerable time to complete, but not too long, we hope.”
Carissa glanced back at Dian gratefully and mouthed a thank-you. She accepted all this, unbothered by the cosmic implications. Pat and Jael were sitting like stones, but Todd knew their minds were racing. Mari would be his ally. She was anticipating, leaning forward, eager.
Good girl. Back me up. Help me get through to them. They’ve got to realize that the whole history of our species will undergo a radical change.
Mari was the first to notice the pattern in the static. The monitor’s electronic tone was repetitive, but so was the static, coming in seemingly random waves. Mariette, familiar with sunspot interference and other space noise, penetrated the scratchy sounds. “That’s coherent.”
“A . . . a message?” Jael’s voice sounded very far away. “Are you saying that’s an intelligent message?”
The curving half row of chairs drew Todd’s eyes away from the now-familiar holo-mode re-enactment.
My mother. My brother. My sister. Carissa, and the child in her body. Saunders, all. Kevin’s a Saunder, too, bound by his love for Mari. What Mari sees here, Kevin will see, and he’ll understand. Dian . . . Dian already knows.
Todd answered Jael’s fearful query. “Yes, Mother, it’s intelligent. It came from outside the Solar System, but we don’t know exactly where from yet. We’ve checked, blind-tested, worked it in every human language, in clear, in code, in computerese, to every degree. We made sure. It’s not natural, and it’s not merely mimicking our signals. Whatever it is creates. It listens. It interprets. And it responds.”
Pat was on his feet, silhouetted between the projector and the image. At Mari’s yelp of protest, he moved out of the way, standing to one side. There was barely leashed terror in his hoarse voice. “Intelligent? Let me get this straight. That orbiter of yours is getting a reply? What reply? What’s it saying? Where is the damned thing?”