We sat down on the floor next to each other, alternating between the wine, the cheese and an occasional kiss. Neither of us found it necessary to speak. Slowly, my nervousness dwindled as my excitement grew.
After some time, I have no idea how long, I put my glass down, took a deep breath and said, "Are you ready for your surprise?"
"There's more?" she asked.
I nodded. Suddenly, I couldn't breath. The nervousness returned. This was the moment. What if I had been wrong? What if she thought my idea stupid or weird or obscene? A hundred strange thoughts flew through my mind, a mind awakened to a new world of sensations and not just by the nano-agents.
I pointed upstairs. I couldn't speak, my mouth suddenly dry beyond belief. Pamela, apparently sensing my discomfort, smiled, gave me a brief kiss on the cheek and stood up.
"Show me my surprise."
We walked upstairs hand in hand. I led Pamela past my room to the guest room where I had everything set up. As I opened the door, the laser lights flashed on, highlighting the king-size bed but leaving the rest of the room in semi-darkness, where row upon row of "art supplies" lay. Pamela giggled, as her eyes adjusted to the light allowing her to make out what was in the bags.
"My artist. My dear sweet artist."
"Will you be a part of my art?" I asked.
"No question about it. I'd love it," she said. As she turned towards me, she slipped first one then the other arm out of the gown and, letting it drop to the floor, stood before me in the nude. She kicked the gown to the side, then bent down to one of the grocery bags and pulled out the first can of whipped cream. As she did so, her left arm momentarily passed through the wedge of light coming from the hall.
"What's that?" I asked, pointing to a mark on her arm just in front of her elbow.
She touched the spot I was pointing to then removed the band of artificial skin. "Nano-agents, as I'm sure you're aware of by now, are useful for a wide range of things," she said. "I figured you weren't the only one who deserved a special sensualistic evening."
She stepped a little closer and started pulling my t-shirt over my head. "Did you find fresh strawberries?" she asked.
“Mmm-hmm, and dark chocolate sauce, honey, fresh cut flowers, shredded coconut, yogurt, banana pudding . . . ." The art supply list was quite long but we managed to find a use for them all.
A Gift That Keeps On Giving
Three weeks. Three tumultuous weeks. Three weeks since the signal had arrived from Tau Ceti and ever since, Webster Strovall's life had been a living hell.
What was the old saying? Be careful what you wish for because you may get it. The thought brought a wiry smile to Webster's face that quickly twisted to a look of anguish as the helicopter he was flying in took an unexpected dip sending them dangerously close to the green North Carolina mountains over which they skimmed. God, how he hated helicopters. The most uncomfortable way to travel since the cover wagon. And in his thirty year career of searching, waiting and hoping for some sign of life from the stars, he'd spent more than his share of time in the damn contraptions.
Now, with the arrival of the message from Tau Ceti, life as director of NASA-SETI was a swirl of reporters demanding more information, constant phone calls to deny inaccurate stories and rumor after rumor carrying as far as Capitol Hill and back.
All the way to the honorable Senator Lumley. How could one senior senator from South Carolina be such a pain? The next thing you know, Lumley will be questioning the very existence of stars. He'll claim they're small holes in the celestial dome overhead and some wet-behind-the-ear reporter will pick up the story and report it as fact.
It had been three weeks of aggravation, culminating with this roller coaster ride to meet a strange duck of a scientist who hated to be called doctor even though he had at least two Ph.D.s, was rumored to live off of junk food and had personal hygiene habits that would put a pig to shame.
Malcolm Mallory—scientist turned multi-millionaire entrepreneur, reclusive founder of GodPlay, Inc. So arrogant, he initially refused Webster's invitation to meet and only after numerous phone calls reluctantly agreed to allow Webster to come to him. And on his terms. Thus the helicopter ride at 5 a.m. What a pain in the ass.
Webster's grip tightened as the helicopter took a second dip and he felt a searing pain in his chest. Heartburn or angina? Sometimes it was difficult to tell which. He reached into his coat pocket, removed the pill bottle and slipped one of the tiny pills under his tongue. Better play it safe. His ol' mitral valve was fluttering like a hummingbird's wing. As the pill slowly dissolved, the sour expression etched itself deeper into the contours of his face. This Mallory character better be worth it, he thought. He better have some answers for me, or I'll choke him to death with a carton of Twinkies.
****
"No question about it," Mallory said. He leaned back in his chair but continued to study the computer screen in front of him. "It's a nanopee." His long blonde hair flowing over the collar of his light blue lab coat was, in Webster's estimation, at least three days overdue for a wash. In fact, the CEO of GodPlay, Inc. could use a good bath, not to mention having his torn jeans and T-shirt taken out back and incinerated.
"A what?" Webster asked. Watching Mallory made him want to scratch his own head but it had been fifteen years since he'd had anywhere close to enough hair to worry about washing it.
"A nanopee," Mallory repeated. "It's my nickname for a set of instructions for a piece of nanotechnology." Mallory turned and smiled at Webster as he chomped on a peanut butter sandwich on white bread. "So, this is a sample of the message from space?"
Webster nodded.
"Interesting," Mallory said.
"What's interesting about it?" Webster asked, his pulse quickened. "What can you tell from it?"
"Oh, not much from the message itself. Too small a sample, but I can tell something about whoever sent the message and I find that interesting."
"What?” Webster asked.
"Well, it's apparent whoever sent the message has mastered English. It's not coded in the real sense of the word. It's simply the kind of scientific code you might expect from any advanced technology that knows a lot more about micromachinery than just about anyone else here on Earth."
"Anyone else but you, is that what you're saying?” Webster asked, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice.
"Yes, that's right," Mallory replied, apparently unperturbed by Webster's tone, "although I'll admit, it's a pretty good stretch even for me." Mallory finished the sandwich and started licking his fingers clean, eventually resorting to wiping them on his lab coat, a common habit by the looks of the coat.
Webster had to hand it to Mallory. It had taken his team of radio astronomers almost a week to arrive at the same conclusion. Whoever had sent the message had been studying Earth's radio signals for many years. Even so, they'd had to do a great deal of extrapolating to come up with the configuration of the message. Tau Ceti was less than twelve light years away, so they'd probably been receiving radio and television signals for years. His team also theorized the message senders had probably been avoiding detection until recently, since Tau Ceti had been monitored many times in the past with no result.
Mallory, his hands mostly clean of the sticky peanut butter and jam, scrolled down the rest of the sample Webster had brought as bait. It had been impossible to bring the whole message. Security had howled intolerably as it was and would have refused to allow even this small sample off the premises if it hadn't been Webster who'd made the request. It didn't matter much to Webster anyway. He didn't expect Mallory to be able to do anything with what was on the disk. It was only meant to entice him into wanting to see more. And to see more, he'd have to join Webster's team. Apparently, the bait was working. Webster let his fish continue to nibble.
After a few more minutes, Webster started to reel his fish in. "If you were to conjecture what the message is a recipe of, what would be your guess?" he asked as innocently as possible.
&nb
sp; Mallory didn't answer at first but continued to scroll down the screen, his eyes flitting from side to side. Could he really be reading the hieroglyphics so fast or was it all a big fake, Webster wondered.
Finally, Mallory rose from his chair and started towards the refrigerator in the corner of the office. "Want a beer?" he asked.
Webster shook his head.
Mallory shrugged then opened the refrigerator door and pulled one out for himself. He popped the top and took a deep guzzle, walking over to the picture window which gave a breathtaking view of the surrounding mountains. He stared out the window for several minutes, sipping slowly on the beer, apparently unconscious to Webster's question.
Finally without turning around he replied, "No question about it — it's an assembler."
"An assembler?" Webster repeated, an edge to his voice despite his attempts to keep it flat.
"Yeah, follow those instructions and what you'll have, if you follow them correctly, no small feat, is an assembler unit that will be capable of building something molecule by molecule."
"Build what?" Webster asked the obvious question.
Mallory shrugged, downed the last swallow of beer and crushed the can. "You'd have to ask the originators of the recipe."
"But they're twelve light years away," Webster said.
Mallory turned on his heels to face Webster and smiled. "There's the rub."
The scientists continued staring at each other. Finally Webster asked, "Could you build the assembler from those plans?"
Without hesitating, Mallory nodded. "But are you willing to be responsible for what it builds?"
Webster pondered the question. Thirty years he'd been looking for some signal from another life form in space. Any message. This one was far more than he'd ever hoped for. To receive the message and not act on it? Absurd.
"Yeah, I'll be responsible."
The two scientists stared at each other for several more seconds before Webster continued. "You'll need to travel to our facilities to work on the project. Will you come?"
Mallory chuckled as he walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out another beer. "Oh, I think for the chance to work on this little erector set, I won't mind traveling." He tossed the beer to Webster. "Careful opening it. It might be fizzy."
****
Six weeks later, the two scientists sat across from each other, a battered desk pulled out of storage for Mallory's use between them, two Styrofoam cups of coffee making new rings on its surface.
Do I tell him about Lumley? Webster wondered. He'd made it a point to shelter Mallory from the controversy raging on Capitol Hill. He didn't want anything to distract the young scientist from working on the project. Still, didn't he have a right to know what had been on the morning newscast?
"NASA-SETI's not telling us everything," the five foot four inch southern senator, who always wore white linen suits even in the winter time, had said. He waved his arms for effect. "They're not telling the American public what the message they picked up from the heavens said. They're not telling Congress about where the ten million dollars of taxpayer money has been spent and they're not responding to my allegation that what they're doing is against God and nature."
But that hadn't been the worse of it. The bombshell came at the end of the report.
"The American public has a right to know what the devil's worker, Dr. Malcolm Mallory, is doing with the NASA-SETI project. . . ."
He doesn't like to be called doctor, Webster had thought as he turned off the television, deciding he at least owed the young scientist a visit. Since joining the team, Mallory had immersed himself in the project like few other members. Driven, focused and intense was the only way to describe the man. It started to make sense to Webster why Mallory had such disregard for his appearance. He simply didn't have time for it.
"Sorry to disturb your work," Webster started, still uncertain how much to tell Mallory. "I was just wondering how it's going down here."
"No problem," Mallory replied. "It was time for a short break." He pulled a pack of Twinkees from his lab coat pocket and offered one to Webster.
Webster declined, baffled at how the man could stay alive and in apparently good health on such a diet.
"It's going well," Mallory said in a voice muffled by a mouthful of sponge cake. "Of course, we won't know for sure until the entire assembler is complete. It's like we're building a high performance race car, but we won't know whether it'll run or not until it's completed and we turn the key. Except, in this case it’s, worse because we've never seen what we're building. It looks like it should run but, who knows?"
Webster nodded, a bit distracted by his own thoughts. Just keep building it and I'll keep fending off the wolves.
"How's it going at your end?" Mallory asked.
"What do you mean?" Webster responded, immediately on the defensive.
"I mean with Lumley," Mallory said between gulps of chasing down his snack with the black coffee.
Webster tried to keep a deadpan expression on his face but could feel a nervous twitch at the corner of his mouth giving him away. "You know about Lumley?"
"Sure," Mallory replied. He picked up the two Styrofoam cups and carried them over to the coffee brewer for a refill. "You've done a nice job of shielding me from the distractions and I appreciate it. I really do. But from time to time, I'm curious to know what's happening out there so I access my computer."
Great, Webster thought. I wonder how many more leaks the security team has missed. If Mallory was able to get information in so easily, it was no surprise news was leaking out just as fast.
"Well, how's it going?" Mallory repeated, setting Webster's refreshed cup in front of him.
"The latest news," Webster said, deciding to come clean, "Lumley knows you're on the project."
Mallory whistled, a impish smile running across his face. "I bet that has things hopping."
Webster nodded. "The phones haven't stopped ringing all morning."
"I bet the newspapers will be calling for an inquisition the size of the Salem witch trials within a couple of days."
"I think Lumley has already ordered the wood for the bonfires," Webster agreed. He blew across the hot surface of his coffee. "It's only going to get hotter. We need to keep moving on the project as fast as possible without jeopardizing quality."
Mallory nodded. "What do you think will happen if Lumley gets his way?"
Webster sipped on the coffee, finding the burning sensation on his tongue strangely invigorating. Without looking up he said, "He'll shut us down, pure and simple. If he does, it might be three lifetimes before we get another shot at building our gift from the gods.”
"Then I better get back to the erector set," Mallory replied, pushing away from the desk. As the two men rose, Mallory continued, "If it turns bad, how about giving me a little notice to clean out my room. You know me, I'm not much into a high public profile."
Webster nodded. "I'll give you what notice I can."
Two days later, Webster received a call from Washington to appear before a Senate committee investigation. "Be prepared to respond to allegations about misappropriation of federal funds," the voice on the other end of the phone instructed. The witch hunt is about to begin, Webster thought as he hung up the phone.
****
Lumley didn't waste any time, diving immediately into allegations of misappropriation of federal funds. For three days, Webster, with his attorney on one side and his CPA on the other, deftly handled each question. The almost sleepless weekend of study and drill had paid off.
Mid-morning of the third day into the proceedings, Webster leaned back in his chair, relaxed and confident. Then, Lumley changed tactics.
"I'll come back to the 10 million dollars that has mysteriously disappeared from your budget, Doctor. Tell me something, Dr. Strovall," Lumley said as he dropped the papers he had been reading on the table in front of him. He leaned forward, eyeing Webster like a hunter scoping down on an innocent deer. "What exactly
is in the message you received?"
Caught off guard by the sudden change in questioning, Webster opened his mouth to speak, hesitated for a moment, then closed it. A sudden flood of perspiration flowed from his armpits.
"I don't see what the content of the message could possibly have to do . . ."
"Just answer the question," the senator from Illinois who was chairing the investigation said.
Webster glanced first to his CPA and then to his attorney. The two men, obviously caught off guard as well, stared back at him and shrugged. Great advice, Webster thought as he turned his gaze back to Lumley.
"I'm afraid it's classified information . . ."
"Classified from the Senate Subcommittee that represents the interests of the fine people of the United States?" Lumley said. Webster half expected the southern redneck to stand up and salute the flag but instead, Lumley continued the questioning.
"Isn't it true the message is from a distant planet over eleven light years away?"
"Well yes, we presume so. We know it's emanating from a star system by the name of Tau Ceti and we presume it's from one of the star's planets."
"And what does this message from the distant cosmos say?" Lumley repeated the question.
"As I said, it's classified info. . ."
"Why did you bring Dr. Malcolm Mallory on your team?" Lumley barked out the question.
"We felt he would be useful in deciphering the message," Webster replied, fighting the urge to glance to either side where his attorney and CPA sat with blanks stares on their faces. "Really, Senator, I don't see what this . . "
"Just answer the question," the Illinois senator repeated like a broken record.
"And how is it going with Dr. Mallory?" Lumley asked, then without waiting for a reply, added, "Isn't he the CEO of a company by the name of GodPlay, Inc.?"
"Yes, that's correct."
"GodPlay," Lumley paused for effect, glancing down the table at his colleagues. "An interesting name for a company, don't you think? Are you two playing God, Doctor?"
Hunt Along the Iron River and Other Timeless Tales Page 5