by M. G. Harris
Outside there’s only starlight, so I use the lowest running lights to stop the Muwan being too visible. Collisions are unlikely, but you don’t want to take a chance. Even if it means someone is about to sight yet another UFO. . .
El Tololo Observatory in Chile is in the middle of the desert somewhere. The Muwan’s on-board computer pulls satellite data, throws up a holographic map of the observatory and surroundings. Behind the eyepiece of my visor, the route appears. It’s low enough that I need to be vigilant, but it’s designed to avoid any military bases or low-flying commercial jets.
Kick back, pop on some tunes. My fingers can find the Muse playlist without any help from my eyes.
“Uprising”. Ideal.
Looking across at Ixchel, I grin. Just taking a relaxing ride with Ek Naab’s newest pilot.
I don’t chat; I prefer to concentrate on the systems, watching the feedback reports about windspeed, upcurrents, nearby traffic. An Aeroméxico 757 flies directly overhead, about twenty-five thousand feet above. If the captain looked out of his left window he might see us flash beneath, a trail of quicksilver.
The trip to Chile takes five hours. At first, we don’t really belt along; flying faster than the sound barrier can draw unwelcome attention. Also, I can’t see anyone being in Dr Banerjee’s research office at the telescope too early in the morning. But when I mention this to Ixchel, she reminds me of a very obvious fact that I’ve overlooked.
“What – have you lost your mind? Astronomers work AT NIGHT!”
The penny drops. “Cos they need it to be dark. The morning is when she finishes her day!”
After that little comment, we speed up.
As we get closer, the terrain becomes bleak, devoid of vegetation, brick-red dust coating wrinkled lines of mountains. Around two hundred kilometres from the hilltop observatory I start planning the landing. No cloud cover. Then again, no one to see us. The chances of the telescopes being pointed at our portion of the sky are small. No harm narrowing the odds, though: I drop us in to skim the ground at a height of a hundred metres.
I land the craft on a smooth patch of desert, about twenty metres square, underneath the low foothill. The observatory perches above, five white, domed telescopes arranged like a crown. A faint mist rises near the ground, burning away in the rays of the rising sun. The silver dome of the largest telescope glows a pale pink, reflecting the dawn sky.
Just after five in the morning, we leave the Muwan. I clip my visor on to the wall next to the pilot seat and swap it for a pair of aviator sunglasses. Ixchel and I start the walk to the El Tololo Observatory, on top of the hill.
It’s colder than I’d expected. Ixchel and I hold hands for a few minutes as we pick our way along the rocks. It reminds me of the time we climbed the volcano Mount Orizaba. What a day that was. . .
Only one telescope appears to have the observatory window open – the largest one, which, according to the Web page we checked on the way here, has a four-metre-diameter reflector.
We approach the telescope, which has a silver dome. Standing close to it we’re dwarfed in its shadow. The featureless desert makes it look almost like a toy, but standing up close, it’s impressively huge. Two white metal doors are the only way into the facility. They’re locked. No doorbell, either.
I blow on my hands. “How do people get into these places?!”
Dryly, Ixchel says, “I’m guessing that if you’re allowed to be here, you get a key.”
“Well . . . we’re going to have to wait until she leaves.”
“Hmm. Could be a couple of hours.”
“Let’s hope she’s dying to get home.”
So we wait. As the cold starts to bite, I turn to Ixchel and hug her tightly; we cling together, trying to stay warm. Thirty minutes go by.
Finally, the metal doors open. A petite woman appears, long, straight, jet-black hair falling loosely over her shoulders. She’s wearing jeans and a low-cut, exotic print blouse, with a hiking jacket thrown over her shoulders – quite a bit more casually dressed than I’d expected. I don’t suppose astronomers need to wear lab coats, but I sort of assumed.
She takes only a few paces before noticing us and stopping, rigidly, in her tracks.
“Can I help you?” Behind narrow glasses, her dark eyes blink.
“Um . . .are you Dr Banerjee?”
“Are you one of my students or something. . .?” Dr Banerjee stares at us, more bewildered by the second. “What’s going on?”
“Dr Banerjee, we need to speak to you. Really badly.”
“Ah . . . OK. I don’t know you. How did you get past the gate?” She starts to edge back towards the dome, opening a door as she retreats. I step forward.
“The gate. . .?” Ixchel and I glance at each other. I’d hoped that Dr Banerjee wouldn’t be suspicious at first; after all, the Muwan had dropped us right into the observatory grounds, well past security.
Pressing on, I say, “Please, Dr Banerjee, can we just talk for a minute? We know about your paper, the one about the supermassive black hole. The one that Jonas Kitrick rejected. There’s something really important we need to tell you about that.”
A pained expression sparks in the astronomer’s eyes when we mention Kitrick. Her tone grows cold. “Kitrick. . .? How do you know about that?”
“Can we talk inside?”
“Who are you? Oh wait . . . not possible. . .” She gasps, amazed. “You’re not that guy with the blog, Josh Garcia?!”
“Yeah, that’s right. It’s me. And this is Ixchel, my girlfriend.”
She stares at me, eyes boggling. “Jeez, man, you’re Garcia? Seriously – I’m getting old. You look about twelve! Are you some kind of child prodigy? How come I haven’t heard of you?”
I shrug, a bit disappointed. Somehow I thought that the Muwan flight jacket and aviator sunglasses might make me look much older than my almost-sixteen years. I give her what I hope is a disarming smile.
“Please, Dr Banerjee, how about we talk inside? Me and my girlfriend, we’d love to look into a telescope. We’ve never seen one like this. Maybe you could show us a real black hole.”
She frowns, obviously taken aback. “A black hole? Right. You’re not an astrophysicist . . . are you?”
“No, miss. I just read stuff on the Internet. You’d be amazed what turns up.”
I take off my sunglasses and try to look as young as possible. The child prodigy idea seems to have amused Dr Banerjee; at the very least, she’s puzzled. There’s a pause, then she says, “You can’t see black holes. Not actually.”
“So what’s with the swirling void of blackness, swallowing everything in its wake and all that?”
For the first time, a hint of a wry grin appears at the corner of her mouth.
“You’re really Josh Garcia? Man, I’ve been scratching my head about you for hours. Ever since your blog post popped up with my name on it. You should have told me that you were here in Chile!” Then she stands back, critically, sizing us up. “Kids, you’d better come in. Seems to me like you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”
We leave the rose-gold light of morning behind as we disappear into the darkness of the telescope facility. Dr Banerjee leads us to a lift, one of those old-fashioned metal cages. She pulls the doors open with a grumble about how stiff they get. A concrete wall zips by as we ascend. She opens the cage; we spill out and follow her into a control room from which an array of flat-screen monitors blink their multi-coloured streams of data, computer graphics cycle through mathematical models, and everywhere there are dazzling images taken by the telescope. For a few moments I can’t move; I’m mesmerized.
“Whoa . . . so cool . . . so seriously cool. . .”
Ixchel also seems to be blown away, gazing at each screen in turn. There are so many, all around the room, one stacked above another.
Dr Banerjee drops into a swivel chair in front of the panel and points at a couple of empty chairs. “Take a pew. Now, children . . . did you actually understand my rese
arch paper?”
Ixchel glances at me while I hide my embarrassment with a grin. “Sure! Well, mostly.”
The astronomer nods. “I see.”
“We got the gist,” I say, unconvincingly.
She casts us a sceptical look. “You got the gist. . .” she mutters, “even though you didn’t know that a telescope can’t ‘see’ a black hole.”
“Oh,” I say. Ixchel shakes her head and sighs. “I guess we’re rumbled,” I admit.
“Maybe it’s easier if I show you.” Dr Banerjee types a few commands. All the lower plasma screens instantly flick over to the same display.
It looks nothing remotely like a black hole – just a series of images of stars and dust clouds with numbers floating over some of them.
“I’ve been watching the centre of the galaxy for about five years. I noticed a weird reading from some radio telescope data so I started doing some observations here, collecting images, along with my other projects. About six months ago I thought I was spotting a pattern, so I looked back at even older data. Images from ten years ago. And when you compare something from ten years ago and now. . .”
As she speaks, the two images alternate, then align on the screen. And even I can see that there’s a difference. Some of the numbers next to the image are higher and some stars look more intense.
“So like I said, you can’t see black holes. Instead, we look for their effect on the surroundings stars. I looked at the galactic centre with infrared, saw lots of dust and cloud. The overall luminosity – it’s getting brighter. That’s because there are more X-rays, returning as the black hole’s ‘blazar’ jet moves closer. It begins to paint a picture of a wave of energy. And it’s pointing towards us.”
“X-rays – like you get when they look at your bones?”
“Those are images taken by passing X-rays through your body. Stars, pulsars; lots of things in space give off X-rays.”
Ixchel frowns. “How come no other scientists have seen this?”
“It’s not an obvious thing to look for. I only saw it by chance, really. Some weird radio telescope data got me curious. I doubt that anyone else is even looking.”
“But it will become obvious?”
Dr Banerjee shrugs. “Eventually, I guess other astronomers will start to get strange data too. They won’t necessarily put the whole picture together.”
“Especially if your research can’t be published.”
“You got that about right, yeah.” She turns from Ixchel and fixes me with a determined glare. “So, Josh. Why don’t you tell me what the heck you meant by that blog post?”
“Here’s the thing. I’ve been investigating this secret organization. The Sect of Huracan. They’re very well-connected, rich and powerful. Loads of important scientists are in it. Like Jonas Kitrick.”
She smirks. “You’ve been investigating? So who am I dealing with here; Fox Mulder?”
Ixchel says, “Who?”
“The guy from that TV show, The X-Files,” I tell her.
“Oh, that’s why your blog is called The Joshua Files. . .?”
Astonished, I say, “You didn’t know?”
Ixchel shrugs. “Josh, I keep telling you . . . I don’t watch TV.”
“Kids, I hate to interrupt such an adorable relationship, but I need answers. What is this ‘Sect of Huracan’?”
“The Sect is real,” I tell her. “But you won’t find anything on the Internet about it.”
Dr Banerjee chuckles nervously. “Secret organization. Right. Next you’ll be telling me that they want to take over the world?”
Calmly, Ixchel replies, “Yes.”
“Gee, actually that was a joke.”
“By the end of this year it won’t be so funny.”
“The world’s kind of messed up,” Dr Banerjee says, somewhat dismissive. “Who in their right mind would want to take over?”
“Look, Dr Banerjee, Ixchel is telling the truth. We don’t have proof here, but we know that Kitrick is trying to silence you.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
I say, “In your email, you said that there were other things going on, apart from Kitrick blocking that research paper. What did you mean?”
“Oh. Just a small matter of all my research proposals being turned down, is all.”
“So someone is already trying to stop you doing any more research?”
“Your cute boyfriend has it right, Ixchel. Is that, like, a Mexican name or something?”
“Mayan,” Ixchel nods.
Dr Banerjee reaches across her desk for a can of Coca Cola, pulls the tab and takes a sip. “You kids are pretty odd, you know that? Feel like I got Mulder and Scully here.”
“Scully. . . ” Ixchel murmurs, “had better not be the sidekick.”
“Hah. If this isn’t the strangest conversation I ever had with a couple of teenagers. . .”
I interrupt, “Don’t you want to know why?”
Dr Banerjee stops talking. She puts her Coke down. For the first time, I glimpse a chink in the astronomer’s easy confidence and apparent scepticism.
“Why you’re here? Why my research is blocked? Why Kitrick has a problem with my paper? You think I don’t want to know? Of course I want to know! But knowing isn’t the same as being able to do anything about it.”
There’s a brief silence. Ixchel edges her chair closer to mine.
Dr Banerjee’s voice softens. “Look, kids. I understand the implications of my paper. God knows I’ve had time to think it through. There’s a chance . . . if I’m right, and I hope I’m not . . . that towards the end of December, a gigantic wave of electromagnetic energy is going to pulse through our atmosphere. I guess Kitrick thinks I’m wrong, and he doesn’t want to instil panic. . .”
“Kitrick knows you’re right,” I insist. “That’s the point. He – and the rest of the Sect – they’re waiting for the world as we know it to end. And then they rebuild. The whole world, from scratch. With them in charge.”
She gazes at us. “Uh huh.” Dr Banerjee seems to hunt carefully for her next words. “So, the Sect is – what – some secret government agency?”
“No way. Governments are their enemy.”
“Then who’s in charge?”
“Well . . . we’re not sure. The Sect seems to have at least two leaders. One is a scientist called Melissa DiCanio. She used to be in charge of this pharmaceutical company in Switzerland called Chaldexx. Then she faked her death. I know that cos I read about it in a newspaper, but a few weeks later, I actually met her! So she’s not dead at all. And the other guy who seemed to be in charge, his name was Marius Martineau.” I stall at the memory of Martineau’s gruesome death.
“His name ‘was’ Marius Martineau. . .? Did he fake his death too?”
I gulp slightly. “Nope. He’s dead all right.”
Not that anyone will have found Martineau’s body – since he died whilst time travelling to the Mayan past.
“So, you think Kitrick has taken over from this Martineau?”
“Maybe. Or maybe DiCanio was in charge all along.”
“And you, Josh. . . Ixchel. Where do you come into it?” She points at the insignia on my flight jacket. It’s embroidered in the Ek Naab code. “What’s with the kooky paramilitary get-up?”
I take a deep breath. “We’re with the guys who are trying to save the world. When this galactic superwave hits the earth’s atmosphere, it will bring an electromagnetic pulse so powerful that it will erase the data on every hard drive on the planet. Computer networks will fail. Banking systems will crash; aircraft will fall out of the sky.”
She stares back at me. For a few seconds all I can hear are the electronic blips from the machines nearby. And my own breathing.
Dr Banerjee begins to speak, haltingly. As if she doesn’t dare to hear the words spoken out loud. “Kid, listen . . . if I’m right. . . it’s gonna be a whole lot worse than that. Dangerous criminals and zoo animals will escape. Vaults containing deadly diseas
es will be unsecure. People will die. From injuries. From disease, because drugs can’t be supplied. From hunger because supermarkets can’t get deliveries. Most of all, from violence.
“Because when you are starving, when your children are starving, you will do anything to survive. I’ve had this data for a while. For a few months now, it’s all I’ve thought about.”
She shakes her head. “Have to admit, I assumed that Kitrick was so desperate to persuade folks to fund his Futurology Institute, he didn’t want anything to scare off his investors. . . and that’s why he hexed my paper.”
“Futurology Institute. . .” Ixchel and I glance at each other. “What are you talking about?”
“Kitrick’s latest project. That’s his thing now. He spoke about it at the last conference we attended. A think tank made up of scientists and other academics, dedicated to futurology.”
“Futurology. . .?”
“The study of the way we will live in the future. He wants to put it in England somewhere. Oxford or Cambridge. Sounds a little off-the-wall, by the standards of ‘Oxbridge’. But who knows, these days.” She swings around, clicks on a Web browser on the nearest computer screen and brings up a website. “There’s not much here yet, to be honest. In fact, Kitrick’s name isn’t even on the site. That’s kind of weird, considering how much he was giving it the hard sell at the conference.”
Ixchel and I lean in and start reading the text of the Futurology Institute website. There’s mention of funding from various investors, including Chaldexx BioPharmaceuticals.
Melissa DiCanio’s company, the place where I was taken when the Sect kidnapped me and changed my DNA.
I leap out of my chair. “Dr Banerjee! That’s the Sect of Huracan! Oh no. That’s what they’re going to do. They’re already starting. . . This Futurology Institute . . . it’s going to be the headquarters of the Sect’s new world order!”
But Dr Banerjee doesn’t budge. Instead, a smile spreads across her face. She takes a long swallow from her Coke. “We’re with the guys who are trying to save the world. I can’t believe you actually said that, Mulder and Scully.”