The Hercules Text Read online

  Gambini’s cheeks were reddening, and a nerve quivered in his throat. He said nothing.

  “Okay,” continued Rosenbloom, “you push this business with the pulsar, create another stir, and I guarantee you it’ll be the end. All you’ve got is a goddam series of beeps.”

  “No, Quint. What we have is hard evidence of intelligent control of a pulsar.”

  “All right, I’ll buy that. You’ve got evidence.” He rose ponderously and pushed the chair away with his foot. “And that’s it. Evidence is a long way from proof. Harry’s right: if you’re going to talk about little green men, you better be prepared to march them into a press conference. This stuff is your specialty, not mine. But I looked up pulsars before I came down here this morning. If I understand my sources, they’re what’s left after a supernova blows a star apart. Isn’t that correct?”

  Gambini nodded. “More or less.”

  “Just so you can reassure me,” he continued, “what’s your answer going to be when someone asks how an alien world would have survived the explosion?”

  “There’s no way we could know that,” objected Gambini. “Well, you’ll want to have a plausible story ready for Cass Woodbury. She’s a cobra, Ed. She’ll probably also want to know how anyone could control the kind of energy a pulsar puts out.” He drew a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it with deliberate ease, and adjusted his glasses. “It says here that the power of your basic X-ray pulsar could generate about ten thousand times the luminosity of the sun. Could that be right? How could anyone control that? How, Ed? How could it be possible?”

  Gambini rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “We may be talking about a technology a million years beyond ours,” he said. “Who knows what they might be capable of?”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard all that before. And you’ll bear with me if I suggest to you that that’s a hell of a poor answer. We’d better be ready with something a little more convincing.”

  Harry sneezed his way into the conversation. “Look,” he said, wiping his nose, “I probably shouldn’t be in this at all. But I can tell you how I’d try to use the pulsar if I wanted to signal with it.”

  Rosenbloom rubbed his flat nose with fat short fingers. “How?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t try to do anything with the pulsar itself.” Harry got up, crossed the room, and looked down, not at the Director, but at Gambini. “I’d set up a blinker. Just put something in front of it.”

  A beatific smile lit up Rosenbloom’s languid features. “Good, Harry,” he said, his manner heavy with mockery. “It must come as something of a surprise to your associate to discover that there’s some imagination outside the operations group.”

  “Okay, Ed, I’m willing to concede the possibility. It might be artificial, or it might be something else entirely. I suggest we keep our minds open. And our mouths shut. At least until we know what we’re dealing with. In the meantime, no public statements. If the signal changes again, you notify me first. Clear?”

  Gambini nodded.

  Rosenbloom looked at his watch. “It’s, what, about ten and a half hours now since it started. I take it you’re assuming this is an acquisition signal of some sort.”

  “Yes,” said Gambini. “They’d want to attract our attention first. Somewhere down the line, when they think we’ve had enough time, they’ll substitute a textual transmission.”

  “You may have a long wait.” The Director’s eyes fell on Harry. “Carmichael, you get in touch with everybody who was in here last night. Tell them not a word of this to anybody. Any of this gets out, I’ll have someone’s head. Ed, if there’s anybody special you want to bring in, clear it with my office.”

  Gambini frowned. “Quint, aren’t we losing sight of our charter here a little? Goddard isn’t a defense installation.”

  “It also isn’t an installation that’s going to have people laughing at it for the next twenty years because you can’t wait a few days—”

  “I have no problem with keeping it out of the newspapers,” Gambini said, his temper visibly rising, “But a lot of people have worked on different aspects of this problem for a long time. They deserve to know what happened last night.”

  “Not yet.” Rosenbloom appeared maddeningly unconcerned. “I’ll tell you when.”

  The Director’s aura hung oppressively in the office. Gambini’s good humor had evaporated, and even Harry, who had long since learned the advantage of maintaining a clinical attitude in these squabbles, felt unnerved.

  “Damn fool,” Gambini said. “He means well, he wants to protect the Agency, but he’s a walking roadblock.” He flipped through the Cardex, found the number he wanted, and punched it into his phone. “Last night, Harry,” he said quietly, “you and I lived through the most significant moment in the history of the species. I suggest you record everything you can remember. You’ll be able to write a book on the subject soon, and people will read it a thousand years from now.” He turned to the phone. Then: “Is Father Wheeler there? This is Ed Gambini at Goddard.”

  Harry shook his head. He disapproved of turf struggles; they caused rancor and inefficiency, and he habitually regarded people who engaged in them with contempt. (Although he’d caught himself indulging on occasion.) And this one was particularly annoying, since he’d already been drawn in.

  The walls were lined with books, not the reassuring personnel manuals and federal regulations in black binders that filled Harry’s shelves, but arcane volumes with abstruse titles: Stephen Hawking’s Cosmological Perspectives, Rimford’s Molecular Foundations of Temporal Asymmetry, Smith’s Galactic Transformations. Well-thumbed copies of Physics Today, Physics Review, and other magazines had been dropped on every available surface. It vaguely upset Harry’s sense of propriety: the first requisite of a government office is order. He was surprised that Rosenbloom had not commented, had not even seemed to notice. Probably it suggested that there was not, after all, much difference between the two men.

  “I’d appreciate it if you could reach him and ask him to call me right away. It’s important.” Gambini hung up. “Wheeler’s in D.C., Harry. Lecturing at Georgetown. With luck, we can have him here this afternoon.”

  Harry got up uneasily and walked to the window. “Ed, you’re playing games with our careers. I thought Rosenbloom made himself reasonably clear. He wants approval before anyone is called in.”

  “He can’t do anything to me,” said Gambini. “I could walk out of here tomorrow, and he knows it. And he can’t touch you either. Hell, nobody else knows how to run the place. Anyway, if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll see that his office gets informed. But if we have to wait for Quinton’s okay, we might as well close up shop.”

  Harry demurred. “Why create a problem? He’d have no objection to your bringing Pete Wheeler in.” Wheeler was a Norbertine cosmologist who shared Gambini’s intense interest in the possibilities of extraterrestrial life. He’d written extensively on the subject and had predicted long before SKYNET that living worlds would be exceedingly rare. He also had a direct connection with Rosenbloom, who had been his partner in a number of area bridge tournaments. “Who else do you want?”

  “Let’s go outside,” suggested Gambini. Reluctantly, because the pollen would be worse, Harry went along. “When things begin to happen, we’re going to need Rimford. And I’d like to have Leslie Davies on hand. Eventually, if we do make contact, we should also get Cyrus Hakluyt. If you could get the paperwork started, I’d appreciate it.”

  Rimford was probably the world’s best-known cosmologist. He’d become a public figure in recent years, appearing on television specials and writing books on the architecture of the universe that were always described as “lucid accounts for the general reader,” but which Harry could never understand. In the latter years of the twentieth century, Gambini maintained, Rimford’s only peer was Stephen Hawking. His name was attached to assorted topological theorems, temporal deviations, and cosmological models. Yet he, too, found time to play bridge (he was a
ranking expert), and he had something of a reputation as an amateur actor. Harry had once watched him play, with remarkable energy, Liza Doolittle’s amoral father.

  But who were Davies and Hakluyt?

  They came out through the front doors into a bright sunlit afternoon, cool with the smell of mid-September. Gambini’s enthusiasm was returning. “Cyrus is a microbiologist from Johns Hopkins. He’s a Renaissance man, of sorts, whose specialties include evolutionary mechanics, genetics, several branches of morphology, and assorted other subdisciplines. He also writes essays.”

  “What sort of essays?” asked Harry, assuming that Gambini meant technical papers.

  “They’re more or less philosophical commentaries on natural history. He’s been published by both The Atlantic and Harper’s; and a volume of his work came out just last year. I think it was called The Place without Roads. There’s a copy of it down in my office somewhere. He got a favorable review in the Times.”

  “And Davies?”

  “A theoretical psychologist. Maybe she can do something for Rosenbloom.” It was going to be a lovely day. And Harry, noting the solid reality of a passing pickup, of the homely Personnel offices across Road 3, of lumber and sheeting stacked against one wall of the building from which they’d just come (the residue of a remodeling project that had been abandoned), wondered whether the Director wasn’t right about Gambini.

  “I understand why you want Wheeler,” he said. “And Rimford. But why these other people?”

  “Just between us, Harry, we already have all the astronomers we need. Wheeler’s in because he’s an old friend and deserves to be here. Rimford has been part of every major discovery in his field for thirty years, so we couldn’t slight him. Besides, he’s the best mathematician on the planet. If contact occurs, Harry, if it actually happens, the astronomers are going to be close to useless. We’ll need the mathematicians to read the transmission. And we’ll need Hakluyt and Davies to understand it.”

  At around seven, Harry drove home. When he got there, Julie’s car was gone. The air was filled with the smell of burning leaves, and the temperature was dropping rapidly. The trees already stood stiff and stark in the gathering dusk. The yard needed raking, and the neighborhood kids had knocked his wooden gate flat again. The damned thing had never worked right since the day he’d brought it home: you had to be careful how you opened it or it came off its hinges. He’d repaired it a couple times, but it didn’t seem to matter.

  The house was empty. He found a note propped up on a loaf of bread:

  Harry,

  We are at Ellen’s. There’s lunch meat in the fridge.

  Julie

  Momentarily, his heart froze. But she wouldn’t have done that, left so soon, with no warning. Still, it brought everything back with painful clarity.

  He cracked a beer and carried it into the living room. Several rolls of Julie’s blueprints—she was a part-time architectural assistant for a small firm in D.C.—were tucked behind the dictionary stand. They were reassuring: she would not have left them behind. Him, maybe, but not the blueprints.

  Several of Tommy’s plastic dragonmen were gathered into a shoebox fort on the hassock. They were absurd creatures with long snouts and alligator tails and clearly inadequate batwings. Yet they were nevertheless comforting, old friends from a better time, like the antique secretarial cabinet he and Julie had bought in the first year of their marriage and the birch paneling they’d struggled to put up three or four summers back.

  The beer was cold and good.

  He shook off his shoes, turned on the TV, but reduced the sound to a murmur.

  The room was pleasantly cool. He finished the beer, closed his eyes, and sank into the sofa. The house was always quiet when Tommy was out of it.

  The telephone was ringing.

  It was dark, and someone had placed a quilt over him. He groped uncertainly for the instrument. “Hello?”

  “Harry, did you get Optical for us?” It was Gambini. “Control isn’t aware of any change.”

  “Wait a minute, Ed.” The television was off, but he could hear someone moving around upstairs. He tried to get a look at his watch, but he couldn’t find his glasses. “What time is it?”

  “Almost eleven.”

  “Okay. I notified Donner that he was being preempted, and I sent a memo over to Control. I’ll call them to make sure they haven’t forgotten. You’re scheduled to pick up the system at midnight. But they tell me that Champollion won’t line up until after two.”

  “Are you coming in?”

  “Is anything going to happen?”

  “Hard to say; this’ll be our first look with the full system. Up until now, it’s been mostly radio and X-ray. The only optical photos were taken with the orbiting units.” Harry heard Julie coming down the stairs. “But, no, we’ll probably just collect some technical information. Nothing likely to be worth your making a special trip. Unless, of course,” he added mischievously, “the bastards are sending a visual signal as well.”

  “Is that possible?”

  Gambini thought a moment. “No, it wouldn’t really be very rational.”

  Harry stayed on the line, talking about nothing in particular, waiting perhaps for Julie. She paused at the bottom of the staircase, between Harry and the dining room window, silhouetted against the soft glow of the starlight in the garden. “Hello,” she said.

  Harry waved. “Ed,” he said, “I’ll be over in about an hour.” And the pleasure he got from the act, from letting Julie know that he was walking off again, surprised him. After he’d hung up, he returned her greeting, not wanting to be cold, but somehow unable to avoid it, and asked if Tommy was in bed.

  “Yes,” she said. “An hour ago. Are you all right?”

  “Fine.” She looked disappointed. Had she expected that he would put up more of a fight to keep her? His responses to her now were ruled by his instincts, which dictated that any show of weakness, any direct effort to retain her, would only earn her contempt and reduce any remaining possibility that he might still manage to hold on to her. “I’ve got to get a shower and some fresh clothes,” he said. “Things are pretty busy. I’ll probably sleep at the office again tonight.”

  “Harry,” she said, turning on a small table lamp, “you don’t have to do that.”

  “It has nothing to do with us,” Harry said, as gently as he could. But it was difficult to control his voice: everything seemed to come out either gruff or strained.

  He detected a fleeting reflection of uncertainty in her features. “I talked with Ellen,” she said. “She can make room for us, for Tommy and me, for a while.”

  “Okay,” said Harry. “Do what you think best.”

  He showered quickly and drove back to Greenbelt. It was a long ride.

  The Reverend Peter E. Wheeler, O. Praem., lifted his lime daiquiri. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I give you that excellent scientific organization, the federal government, which has, I believe, manufactured an historic moment for us.” Gambini and Harry joined the toast; Majeski also raised his glass, but he was clearly more interested in surveying the women among the clientele, many of whom were young and possessed of striking geometrical attributes. It was midnight at the Red Limit.

  Overhead, in high orbit, an array of mirrors, filters, and lenses rotated toward Hercules.

  Sandwiches arrived: a steak for Gambini, roast beef for Harry and Majeski. Wheeler contented himself by picking at a dish of peanuts. “Pete, you sure you don’t want something to eat?” asked the project manager. “It might be a long night.”

  Wheeler shook his head. His round dark eyes, receding black hair, and sharp features combined to create a distinctly Mephistophelian impression. It was a resemblance to which he was sensitive, as Harry had learned in an unfortunate moment years before when he’d thoughtlessly mentioned it and seen Pete’s defensive reaction. “I ate before I came over,” he said, with a smile that dispelled the momentary infernal image. “Nothing worse than a fat priest.” Wheeler
was relatively young, barely forty, although the last time he’d been at Greenbelt he had solemnly informed Harry that he was over the hill. “If a cosmologist hasn’t made a major contribution by the time he gets to be my age,” he’d said, “it isn’t going to happen.” Later, Harry’d asked Gambini about it, and he had agreed. Wheeler sipped his drink. “You’re not,” he asked, “expecting the textual signal in the X-ray ranges, are you?”

  “No,” said Majeski. He was gazing past the priest at a pair of young women seated near the bar. “They wouldn’t be able to get enough definition for it to be practical. Too much quantum noise, for one thing. We’re assuming they’ll switch to a wide band signal of some sort. Something they’d figure we couldn’t miss.”

  “But we’re taking no chances,” added Gambini. “Everything we have is locked on them now. Including the Multi-Channel. If they transmit anywhere at all in the EM range, we should pick it up.”

  “Good,” said Wheeler.

  “Let’s hope,” added Majeski, “they’re on the same sort of temporal dynamic we are. It would be nice to find, during our lifetimes, what they have to say for themselves.” One of the two women in his line of sight looked his way. He excused himself, took his rum and Coke, left the roast beef, and sauntered over to her table.

  “Pity you can’t deal with your aliens in so direct a manner,” Wheeler said.

  Gambini sighed. “I wonder how the twentieth century would have gone if we’d had a lascivious Einstein?”

  The priest grinned. “Possibly there’d be no atom bomb,” he said.

  They toasted those sentiments, and the three fell into good-natured banter. When the laughter subsided momentarily, several minutes later, Harry asked why Optical had suddenly become so important.