He stood inside the door, surveying, his mood easing. His baby. He was cooperating with the Global Science Council closely now, of course, feeding them the data as soon as Project Search confirmed. And he had had to resist a lot of very tempting offers of help—too much help, much of it actually disguised efforts to get on his bandwagon. But Search was still his and his alone—with a little help from a very bright woman named Foix and some loyal, hard-working ComLink top techs and translators.
Dian noticed him and waved. She didn’t come over to greet him. She was busy doing some language cross-checks with Beth Isaacs. Todd didn’t feel neglected, well aware he was an interloper here. He was a capable translator and top tech, but not up to the team’s abilities. It was enough they acknowledged his leadership and let him look over their shoulders.
The staff had grown quite a bit in the last two weeks. The old-timers needed help, had needed it for weeks, though they had been reluctant to open up the ranks. They had developed a Goddard Colony closed-circuit possessiveness about Project Search and disliked sharing. But the furor resulting from the presentation to the Council drew eager would-be recruits by the hundreds. Anticipating that, Todd and Dian had their pre-selected possibilities already spotted, so when the people applied to them, the clearance checks had already been run. They had started right in. There were over thirty ComLink translator techs and interpretive specialists involved now, splitting the work into round-the-clock eight-hour shifts, leaving Todd in their wake.
He found an empty terminal and cued up the available data, knowing his action wouldn’t interrupt anything currently in progress. Translation was discouragingly slow. He had anticipated it would be, but that didn’t soften his impatience. Todd cushioned his chin on the heel of his hand, gazing at the moving letters. Two weeks’ intense effort, high gear, new staff to assist. And so far Project Search had broken down a grand total of three symbols, and
those
weren’t yet guarantee-confirmed. Dian kept telling Todd what he already knew—that until certain vital keys were translated, they weren’t going to pick up much beyond the messenger’s ident signals, its rearrangement of their words, its pattern for “repeat,” and another for “ready to run.”
The signals continued to adapt and adjust to Earth’s signals. They had fed it some very intricate sequences, and it had handled all of them. Todd’s estimates of the intelligence of the machine—and the species which made it—kept escalating. So did his hope.
They
couldn’t
be hostile!
Yet did he really have anything but faith to assure that? He didn’t know. No one did. Yet.
But the point had been made—better the possible devil we know than not knowing at all. The trouble was, thanks to Pat’s rabble-rousing, that too few humans felt that way. The day of judgment was approaching, and they seemed determined to make Earth into a living hell even before it arrived.
Todd was getting a mild headache, staring at the screen. He rested his eyes a moment, putting the monitor on hold, looking around the room. Heads bent over other monitors. People reading old language books.
That
was a strange sight! Young techs reading paper books. But nobody illiterate in print media could be recruited for Project Search. There was simply too much invaluable information stored in places the worldwide telecom ed systems didn’t touch. Thanks to Todd’s Science Council connections, Search had been able to raid university and institutional back files and musty libraries everywhere. He had achieved a malicious triumph when Pat’s military connections discovered to their consternation that their frenzy to update and computerize everything worked against them in this translation job. Todd suspected Pat’s staff had hired its own bunch of translators and that they were trying to twist what little data was available to back up Pat’s paranoia theme. They had issued two releases, and the media science commentators had managed to reduce them both to jokes, explaining the silliness of Pat’s scientists even to the layman.
But the paranoia continued. Most of the public didn’t really care what the alien messenger was saying. The mere fact that it was there was the trigger. Fear happened without the higher brain areas ever becoming involved.
I’m not sure you’ll want to deal with a species as emotional and fear-oriented as we are, alien people. I hope you’re tolerant. We’ll grow up. Eventually. I hope.
The last two weeks had gone from nervous to tense. How long would it take for things to settle?
Would
they settle?
He cued the monitor again. The screen split. Nine miniature frames showed him the progress, distilled into basics. Updates on the orbiter’s input and outgo. They were getting some relays from the lunar backside telescopes and transmitters, too. Todd hadn’t expected that much cooperation from Lunar Base Copernicus, not after Mariette’s performance. Goddard was still maintaining virtual com silence, and the military was making noises about relieving the entire command of the Lunar Base. In theory, that meant Kevin would be posted back planetside, too. Todd wasn’t going to hold his breath waiting for that to happen, though.
They had some now-recognizable key phrases. Correction,
probable
phrases. Dian insisted on qualifiers until she could hold a language in her hand and read it in three dimensions.
1. Hello. I am Alien Messenger.
2. Please repeat your last message.
3. Do you copy?
And there were pictures. Nothing like a holo-mode or even a distinct two-dimensional image. But there were visuals, hampered by the enormous gulf between the two stations, yet coherent. One of them, when Todd had displayed it for the Science Council, had caused pandemonium and fierce debate. One faction insisted it was an alien interpretation of a plaque Earth had sent into space decades earlier, and that therefore the alien had encountered the plaque, learned from it, and was returning Earth’s message as a form of greeting. A large faction disagreed violently. To them the images represented the alien species itself, and in
that
form it was indeed a greeting.
Todd had liked the first interpretation, but he wasn’t sure he believed it. Things would be so much simpler if the alien could speak a human language, had learned one years before it had contacted Project Search. But Todd wasn’t convinced. The concept made him shiver.
If it had happened that way, the aliens were so far ahead of them in knowing about
Homo sapiens
that Project Search could never catch up.
And if the second interpretation were correct . . .
The image, static broken, filtered through twenty-eight A.U.s of space, seemed to depict two bipedal figures. Humanoid. If it was what it appeared to be, the image was showing them the rough outlines of its makers.
The figure image hadn’t come through the orbiter’s scanners until the day after Todd and Dian left Saunderhome. Beth Isaacs had greeted them at the door of the Science Council conference with the news, relayed to her fellow techs stationed at the conference. They had all been very excited and had debated on the spot whether to include the new data, knowing in advance they wouldn’t be able to keep it back. It was the most startling thing yet found.
What would Pat and lad have done at the birthday memorial if I’d shown them that? Maybe it’s just as well they had time to adjust to the shock before that got sprung on them, too. Humanoid? Definitely smarter than we are, to have built that vehicle. And who’s teaching whom the other language?
Project Search was turning out to be a rather humbling experience.
Beth Isaacs’ training with the dolphin-human teams of Sea-Search Rescue was serving them well. Five of the new recruits came from the same background. They had all had practice talking to an alien species, though that intelligent beast was a native of Earth. Beth had observed with a smile that it was just a slightly bigger step to communicating with an intelligent alien from somewhere else.
Todd could see her working over a monitor, her dark, short curls and sharp profile eerily lit by the screen’s glow. Other Search workers leaned over her shoulder. One was scribbling on some paper, not wanting to leave the readout in order to record what he was thinking on another monitor. They could read, write, and translate. The cream of humanity’s ability to reason, and they worked for Todd Saunder.
Dian finished what she had been doing and left her station, coming over to sit beside Todd. “Read any good monitors lately?” she inquired with a smile.
“Everything you and the team put into them. I feel like sitting in front of the screen day and night so I won’t miss a single exciting development.”
“You’ll get a sore ass and tired eyes, doing that.”
“Should I set up shorter team hours?” Todd asked, concerned.
Dian shook her head. “No, we’re just as eager as you are. It’s fatiguing, but we all hate to see our duty rotations end. Just when we think we might have something, another team takes over. But it’s a friendly rivalry. We’re afraid it’ll be the other one to break the key instead of us.” She paused and stared at him, and a tingle of anticipation worked along Todd’s gut. He felt what she was going to say before she spoke. “Like now.”
He held his breath a moment, wanting to savor the news. “Close?”
“Very, very close. Things starting to fit. Still a hell of a lot we have to put together, even with the comps doing the work. But it’s there, Todd. I can damned near taste it. A week, maybe. I may be wrong, but I don’t think I am. Beth doesn’t think so, either. We’re practically there. It’ll be baby talk, pidgin English—but it’ll be genuine communication.”
“And we can touch them, prove they’re friendly, end this damned paranoia and talk of invasion,” Todd said almost prayerfully.
She looked at him anxiously, reaching a deeper part of the emotions. “Was it worth it? What’s happening between you and your family . . .”
“It was worth it,” Todd replied without hesitation.
“Are you sure?” She was as adept at breaking down his code as she was at deciphering the alien messenger’s signals.
“Not entirely. It hurts. But we can’t go back. I knew that from the start.”
“Are you getting enough sleep?” Dian asked abruptly.
“With you spending most of your time here and knocked out completely when you’re not on duty station? Of course I am,” Todd said, giving a lewd smirk; Dian rolled her eyes.
“Todd . . .” He heard the change in her tone and eyed her intently. “I think maybe we should hire some extra security.”
He turned her statement over in his mind, feeling cold. “Why?”
“We’re starting to get some threats, calls from the outside. Someone apparently tapped into our circuits to the Science Council reference files. I don’t care if they listen in when we call to get some obscure datum, but the tap lets them call us . . . and they have.”
Todd knew such problems had existed in the Twentieth Century, before feedback com private lines were instituted and anonymous calls eliminated. “I’ll tell CNAU Enforcement . . .”
“Won’t do any good. They’re using some kind of scrambler lock.”
Todd was shaken. “Military? Spies? Spying on Project Search? That’s crazy! We’re handing data out to the media as fast as we get it!”
“I don’t think that’s what they’re after. They’re not trying to steal the data. They want us to shut down. The last call came to Beth. The guy told her she’d better get out of the project while she was still alive. Huh! That one rattled us pretty badly.”
“When did this happen?”
“That one? About an hour ago, while you were at the meeting. That’s why I didn’t call you to tell you about it. The earlier calls were just annoying. This one sounded mean,” Dian explained.
Todd stood up, his anger building. “I’ll get some military specialist techs on the case right away, maybe borrow some from Mari’s sources. Dammit, this is a private corporation. Scrambler locks! What right have they got to spy on us? Nobody’s going to tap into my lines anonymously. I’ll take it to the top in P.O.E. if I have to.” He added with some chagrin, “This is galling—ComLink, circuit-tapped. But I’ll take care of it. Rely on it.”
Dian stood up, too, reaching on tiptoe to kiss him. “I always do.”
Todd gave her a confident smile and left her to her work. But once outside Project Search, a wave of doubt rose. Muscle. More muscle, and heavy tech counterdeterrents. Damn. He had to get his people some protection, yet he hated the idea of still more armed guards and outsiders poking around his property. Clutter, getting in the way of his people. Jael and Pat traveled everywhere with squads of sharpshooters, muscle, and rough-tactics specialists. Did that mean the entire family would have to?
He gazed around the reception area. Iris, busy filtering calls and answering dumb queries, she and her staff efficiently fielding the more obvious nuisance communications for ComLink’s New Washington HQ. If someone was threatening the people in Project Search, adjacent to this reception area, were Iris and the others safe? Troops, outside. But what if the voice behind the calls had an unknown force to override those troops? Inside the building, there was only old Charlie, who had never had to do more than oust an obstreperous salesman. The new shutters and the enforcement police ought to handle trouble, but . . .
He would have to hire a security adviser, he supposed. More ident checks. Heavier com locks. Insulting Todd’s people. Maybe if he removed Project Search from the line of fire . . . but the data feeds were here. And would that eliminate the problem? Remove them to where? The new recruits weren’t space-oriented. And no planetside location would be any safer than this one, probably less so. As far as that went, space side wasn’t safe, either, not after what had happened at Goddard.
“Mr. Saunder?” Todd came up out of his bleak speculations, glancing toward Iris. She indicated her desk monitor. “Call for you, but they say it’s personal, want you to take it in your private office.”
Todd sighed and walked over to her desk. On the big display screen behind her, a paid-for political speech by Pat was droning away. More paranoia. More anti-Spacer propaganda. Things like that tempted Todd. He could pull the plug. Pat would have hard going without ComLink’s outlets. Riccardi’s Incorporated Network and Nakamura’s Worldwide TeleCom facilities weren’t nearly as good, and they would cost Pat ten times what he was paying into Todd’s accounts. If the rest of the family wanted to play rough, he could, too. How would big brother talk to the world without SE ComLink’s translator-splitter and all those lovely global systems?
He knew what that would bring. Suits and countersuits within the family structure, tearing them apart even more. The gaps were getting pretty large, anyway. Maybe there wasn’t much more to lose.
“Did you get a name?”
Iris bit her lip. “They used your private line number, boss.”
Then it had to be Pat or Jael, or maybe Carissa. Todd wouldn’t allow himself to hope it might be Mariette. “Okay. Hold any other incoming. You can transfer and say I’ll be there in a minute.”
Deep in thought, he took the elevator, moving almost by reflex. He realized he had been immobilized inside the cage at the fourth level for at least a minute with the door open, the elevator waiting patiently for him to get off at his destination. Todd roused himself and stepped off, walking into his office.
“Okay, Iris,” he said, then waited. The screen flipped, green dead space. The lower light indicator showed him Iris was off the line and had safety-locked the incoming call, so the circuit was clear. Where was the important other end of the communication?
Maybe it was Carissa. She was going to have to stay in New York-Philly quite a long while, maybe until she gave birth. Pat had taken her to an obstetrical specialist after Ward’s anniversary memorial, and the doctor’s orders had confined ‘Rissa to the family’s residence there. Complete bed rest. She had com and monitor contact with her family and friends and the outside world, of course. Yet it was bound to be a situation to try the spirit. Everyone felt sorry for her. Todd tried to rein in his impatience, reminding himself of ‘Rissa’s problems.
Seven, maybe six months to go and she would be free again. And if all went well, at its present rate of acceleration, the alien messenger might be approaching Jupiter’s orbit by then, or perhaps be even farther along on its course toward Earth. Two new arrivals—the little third-generation Saunder and the alien messenger.
“Carissa . . . hey? Are you there?” Todd said, punching the override to assure the connection was responding at the other end. Maybe ‘Rissa was handling two calls simultaneously and hadn’t noticed he was ready.
‘Rissa’s baby. And Jael acting possessive of it. How would she have felt if it had been Mariette who was pregnant, or Dian? Those babies would be out of Jael’s chance of controlling—Spacer-oriented parents and children . . .
The screen went blank momentarily.
Then the room shook all around Todd. Adrenaline raced along his veins before his mind could focus on what was happening. He gripped the edges of the console as the temblor faded.
Earthquake? In New Washington? There had been a few quakes in this region over the centuries, and some bad ones in the Carolinas, but . . .
The room shook again. The screen jittered, came on,
Iris Halevy’s frightened face peered out at him. “Rioters! Mr. Saunder, we . . .”
She was falling away from him, screaming, bodies shoving between her and the screen. Todd heard other people screaming, glass breaking, and loud, crackling noises.
Shadows and light, flickering across the confusion—fire! Right below him! On the first floor of ComLink.
Todd bolted out, skidded to a stop in front of the closed elevator doors, remembering. The circuits wouldn’t let him, and he shouldn’t go that way, anyway. Not in a fire!
Stairs!
He wheeled and ran to the end of the corridor. The automatic opener didn’t function, but the fire regulations, reinforced throughout CNAU after six thousand or more people had died in a United Theocracies prayer meeting, demanded that the door operate manually. It did, though Todd had to throw his entire weight against it to force the heavy door open.
He ran down the plasticrete-lined stairs, ricocheting off the walls and using the rail to keep himself from falling headlong. Todd winged breathless gratitude to the Spirit of Humanity that he hadn’t been in space for several weeks. He was fully readapted to Earth gravity. Panting, his heart thundering from the adrenaline jolt, he was still able to move, and move fast. The strength was there, now when he needed it.
Todd exploded through the main-level rear stairwell door, loping down the hall. He could see the flames licking through the front window-wall—or the space where the window-wall had been. The whole front of the first-floor opening to the street looked smashed, a cavernous door torn through the structure, the protective steel shutters blown apart. Gunfire sounded from the street.
As he tried to stop his rush, the old security guard met him at the reception gate. The man was bleeding profusely from a head cut. Iris was supporting him. She, too, was bleeding, her clothes torn, hair falling in her face.
“Too many of ‘em, boss . . . tried to . . .” The elderly guard groaned and slumped against a wall as Todd and Iris eased him down to the floor.
Todd looked around in rage, wanting something to hit, someone to pay back. “Where are they?”
“In Search!” Iris wailed, pointing.
As she did, the door of the translation rooms burst outward. Noise pounded Todd’s eardrums. Dust and fire billowed through the new-made doorway. The screams were starting again, louder, from inside the room.
“Dian . . .”
Todd paused only to tell Iris to call for more police, then ran for Project Search, leaping over monitor consoles and the wreckage of Iris’s reception desk. His staffers were lying everywhere, some dazed and hurt, others simply cowering in shock. He didn’t see anyone who didn’t belong there, but there were people outside, standing beyond the broken window and throwing things through the fire burning the frame, fighting enforcement officers.
A man crashed into him at the doorway. Todd staggered, giving as good as he got, and threw the intruder off balance. No one he knew, and the man had a club. Todd wrenched it away and raised it, and the stranger bolted for the outer office.
Clutching the weapon, Todd spun around, roaring into a melee. “Dian? Dian! Where are you?”
“Here . . . !”
Project Search was in shambles, fires blazing in a dozen points around the large room. Other men were toppling files, kicking in monitor screens, hitting Todd’s people.
He charged them, heedless of the odds, unthinking. “Hey! Get out! Let’s go . . .”
They ran over him, not even stopping to hit him. Feet brushed his head and body, and someone kicked his legs and belly in passing. Not deliberately. He was merely an obstacle to their escape.
Todd rolled over, coughing in the rapidly accumulating smoke. He couldn’t get his breath for a moment, his brain refusing to operate properly. “Di . . .”
“Help!”
The systems went into gear again, shakily, but functioning. He half crawled between the wreckage, coughing harder. A blast furnace heat poured over him from the main storage banks of the translator files.
Todd pulled himself upright, using an overturned console as a support. Dian was flailing at something up ahead, the fire a deadly, wavering bright curtain at her back. People were clawing their way past Todd, some of them helping others.
“Get out!” he ordered unnecessarily. “Get everybody out! Stay away from the front windows!”