“Is that a hurricane,” asked Julia, pointing at the screen.
“Yes,” said Cobus. “They seem to be fairly common.”
“Have you chosen a landing site?” asked Arlette.
“We have several candidates in the southern hemisphere, where it is now early summer,” replied Cobus. “We’ll refine them when we get into orbit.”
“What’s the day/night cycle?” Henri asked.
“It’s only fourteen hours in total,” said Cobus, “but there are three moons so the nights are usually going to be lit by at least one of them.”
“Still, that’s a pretty narrow operations window,” went on Henri. “Let’s hope we don’t have to deal with the insect mentality and can work at night. Have you seen any wildlife yet?”
“Not yet,” said Cobus. “We’re going to have to wait until we’re in orbit.”
* * *
“She’s back on board and spitting fire about General Lee’s decision to build military ships at the expense of providing us with more immigrants and equipment,” Hannah was telling Jafar. “She’s taking Prometheus on a mission to explore the other rocky planet in this solar system and I really wonder how much further she may go. I have been talking to her and she’s seeing her mission more as extending the presence of humanity in the Milky Way galaxy than finding a bolthole for the human race. I think she is convinced that this is the correct thing to do in the broader context, but she’s anxious for reassurance that she’s not appearing to be manipulated by some inscrutable alien influence. All I could do was compare her to the great explorers in history and point out that they all did what they thought they had to do, without knowing what the ultimate consequences would be.
“She’s in great shape, physically and mentally, but very deeply touched by the bravery of Clayton. She had made an incredibly courageous commitment to him and her judgement was vindicated. She misses him and there’s no other male around who comes up to her expectations. We have become very close and we talk about everything – love, sex, fear, jealousy – everything.
“Ceres has become really lovely now that the Orange House is finished. I think I’d like to grow old with you there. Love you, Jafar.”
Jafar sighed when he got her message, and for the first time began to think that he might never see his beloved Hannah-le again. He looked at the notes he had prepared, sighed again, and threw them away. There was nothing he could tell her that wasn’t about pain, death, destruction and fear. The fabric of human civilisation was coming unravelled, civil order was breaking down, and no news that put a positive spin on the future carried the slightest credibility. He talked instead about Shan and Shiv, how they were learning English and Maths, how bright and charming they both were, and the joy he had in coming home to them after a trip away. He tried to be positive about General Lee’s decision, pointing out that there was still a lot of support for fresh emigration to Ceres and that his apparent militaristic preoccupations would evaporate in due course. “Be patient, my love,” he concluded, “our time will come.”
* * *
Prometheus was held in orbit around Ceres for another two days so as to achieve an optimum transit time, then the boosters were deployed and she headed into space for her rendezvous with planet 16-4. The damage done to the external cameras during the combat with Dark Shadow had now been repaired and the crew could once more enjoy an uninterrupted panorama of the universe outside. For a while Ceres, its blue oceans, grey-green land masses and white cloud formations, dominated the view, then attention turned to the speck that was to become planet 16-4, and, on the ship’s telescope, the first views of the grey-brown planet with its distinctive three moons.
The first signs that their rendezvous with planet 16-4 would not be a smooth one occurred while they were still more than a day away from entering orbit. Cobus Vermeulen reported an exceptionally violent field of electromagnetic activity in the vicinity of two of the planet’s moons as their paths crossed. “I don’t get it,” he said. “There seems to be some intense radiation out there but it’s not coming from Omega 16.”
“Haven’t you seen this before from the satellite we have in place there?” queried Arlette.
“No,” replied Cobus. “We’ve seen nothing like this and it looks as though it has knocked out our communications satellite – I can’t get it to respond.”
“Well, keep a close eye on it and let me know if it’s a threat to the ship.”
Cobus did so and it appeared to him that the disturbance, whatever it was, had subsided as Prometheus approached the nearest moon and began its preparation to enter orbit.
Nothing prepared them for the sight that greeted them as they broached the starlit horizon of the moon, for there, dead ahead of them, was the unmistakable fine blue trace of an LDST trumpet, and they were heading straight into it.
36
Omnipotence Theory
“Sanam! Get me out of this!” yelled Arlette to the pilot.
But Sanam wasn’t moving, she was just nodding her head and staring at the blue trace in space as they approached it.
“Arun! Take control and get us off this course!”
Arun turned his head half towards her and then seemed to hesitate. A quizzical expression passed across his face, then his hands dropped away from the controls.
“Merde alors! What’s got into you?” But before she had finished uttering the words she knew the answer.
Bjorn Johannsson had meanwhile scrambled across the control centre and yanked Sanam bodily out of her couch. He lurched forward, the left-side boosters roared into life and the ship jerked to the right in response. Almost instantaneously Arun reached out and exactly corrected the manoeuvre, then he turned towards Johannsson disapprovingly, as if challenging him to try something else.
But there was no longer anything else to try. Prometheus was now accelerating into the wormhole to an unknown fate in the vastness of space.
Arlette watched the speed and location data flashing up on the screen before her, powerless as the point of no return came and went. Her head fell into her hands for a moment, but then her despair suddenly evaporated, to be replaced by a sense of exhilaration. She sat back and consciously controlled her breathing, then she called Cobus Vermeulen.
“Cobus, get me a fix on the location of the exit of this LDST,” she said calmly.
“Ja, well,” said Cobus, “I’m going to have to get into the archives and look at a lot of sky to match the profile we’re getting from down the LDST. It would have been easier if you had asked me before we entered…”
“Yes, yes,” said Arlette. “Just get to it.” Then she left her couch and hurried to her quarters, summoning Julia and Henri along the way.
The three of them sat to watch the video record of Sanam and Arun as they piloted the ship into the LDST. They saw the surprise on their faces as the LDST came into view, heard Arlette’s command to change course and saw Sanam’s eyes widen for an instant before she appeared to let go of the controls. Arun was looking at her in amazement; he appeared to react to Arlette’s command, turning towards her for confirmation, then his head moved forward with a look of concentration, as if he was trying to hear something, there was a moment of recognition and then his hands dropped away. A second or two later Sanam was yanked out of her seat and replaced by Bjorn Johannsson. He fired the left-hand booster without hesitation and looked confused when the manoeuvre was almost instantly reversed. He reached again for the booster control but obviously saw Arun was going to counter his move, so he looked around for help. By that time Prometheus was already entering the wormhole.
They watched the video in slo-mo three times without comment.
“Well?” said Arlette finally.
“They were being manipulated”, said Henri flatly, “by an earphone message straight into the auditory cortex. We have no way of recovering that input.”
“How do you know the input came through an earphone?” Julia asked.
“They were both wearing them a
nd that’s the only way I know how to get a message directly into the brain,” replied Henri.
“OK. So who do you suppose is giving this input, and to what end?” persisted Julia.
Henri turned to Arlette. “Can you answer that?” he asked.
Arlette looked at him, deep in thought. Then she said, “Let’s ask them.”
Julia was charged with the interrogations. She welcomed Sanam warmly into her office. “Hell of a thing to find ourselves in someone else’s wormhole!” she said with a big smile.
“It seems to be our destiny,” replied Sanam, not looking at her.
“Are you unhappy about it?”
Sanam gave her a wistful look. “No,” she said, some conditionality in her voice.
“Did you hear Commander Piccard’s command? Was it clear to you what she wanted?” asked Julia.
“Yes, it was clear, but then it wasn’t.”
Julia waited for her to elaborate.
“Something in my head said ‘Enter’, just that, ‘Enter’, and it seemed completely right to do so.”
“Was it a distinct CTT message, a voice, or just a feeling?” asked Julia carefully.
“Not as personal as a CTT message. It was a voice, a command.”
“Male or female?”
“I don’t know. It was … neutral.”
“Why did you obey it?” asked Julia, her tone soft.
“It wasn’t something external. It was part of me. There was no judgement I could make. My mind decided.” Sanam shrugged.
“Did it occur to you that you had disobeyed your Commander?”
“No. I’m sure I did the right thing.”
“Even if your Commander wanted you to do something else?” asked Julia.
“I suppose I assumed that she was scared of something unknown. My mind told me there was nothing to be afraid of.”
“Nothing to be afraid of? That was a bit rash considering Clayton’s conspiracy, wasn’t it?” persisted Julia. “Didn’t you think about that kind of malevolent mental manipulation? Did the voice tell you we would be safe?”
“No, not explicitly; it’s just something that felt certain to me. It still does. You might just as well ask me ‘do I want to be a woman?’ or ‘do I want to be happy?’ These questions only have one answer.”
“But, surely Sanam, there was a choice?”
“No, at that moment there was no choice. My brain did not perceive a choice. The choice process was inoperative. I’m sorry, I don’t know how else to express it.”
Julia sat back, chin in hand. “OK,” she said. “But do you think in retrospect that this was your personal intuition, or was it an external input?”
Sanam stared at the ceiling for a while. “It was initially an external input, but it took charge of my intuition,” she said finally.
“OK, Sanam, thank you,” said Julia, and she leaned forward and squeezed her hand. “Thank you.”
Arun arrived five minutes later, obviously in a great state of consternation. He sat before Julia, wringing his hands and shaking his head.
“Please,” he said. “Please don’t ask me to explain my actions. I can’t.”
“Arun, have you ever taken hallucinogenic drugs?”
He stared at her, a look of horror on his face. “Of course not! I’m a pilot!”
“Well, pot then?” asked Julia.
Arun’s eyes darted left and right. He put on a slightly impish expression. “Once or twice recreationally,” he said with a tilt of his head, then seriously. “But never less than a day before going on duty!”
“OK,” said Julia. “Did it affect your judgement? Did you do things you would not have done otherwise?”
“Yes, but they were silly things, things that you regret the next day.”
“Do you regret not changing the course of Prometheus?”
“No,” replied Arun.
“No? Didn’t you understand the Commander’s instruction?”
“Yes, but I received another instruction.”
“A CTT message? From whom?”
“No, it wasn’t a CTT message. It wasn’t from a person,” Arun said. “Something in my head said ‘Enter’. We were doing that so I did not act until Bjorn interfered. That could have been very dangerous. I corrected it immediately.”
“Did you receive another instruction?” asked Julia.
“No,” said Arun. “I already had my instruction. I acted accordingly.”
“What was it about this instruction that made you think you could override the Commander’s orders?”
“It felt like a command from the almighty,” replied Arun. “I knew it was right.”
“The almighty? Do you believe in God?” Julia was astonished.
“No, but that’s how it felt. It was a split-second decision. You can’t ask yourself questions in that situation. You do what you know is right, and safe.”
“Safe?! We are going down a wormhole to God knows where! You call that safe?”
Arun thought for a moment. “Yes,” he said finally. “I believe we are safe. I think … I think someone is watching over us.”
“Really? Do you really believe that?”
“Yes,” came the response. “And it’s not a belief, it’s just a confidence that I’ve had since that moment.” He was calm, and he was unshakable. Julia let him go.
“There’s a pattern here,” Julia was telling her colleagues, who now included Hannah, “and it’s the same pattern as we’ve seen before. They are both emphatic that their input did not come from a CTT message, and quite sure that what they did was right. Was there anything in their blood, Hannah?”
“No” said Hannah. “All their reactions and their blood chemistry were normal. Whatever caused this behaviour was circumstantial.”
“So, do we have a conclusion?” Arlette wanted to know.
“Yes,” said Julia. “You, Commander, Cobus, Sanam, Arun, and probably Genes as well, have had your actions manipulated at a cerebral level by a power that is using that capacity to protect us from disaster. Omnipotence has a purpose for us that goes beyond our own plans.”
“Right,” said Arlette. “The question in my mind now is ‘for what purpose are we being sent down this LDST?’”
“We might have a better chance to answer that if we knew where we were going to,” said Henri. “Hasn’t Cobus come up with anything yet?”
“Let me check,” said Arlette, and she called Cobus. They engaged for a few minutes in soundless CTT communication, then Arlette turned back to the group. “Ladies and gentleman,” she announced, “I’m told that we are on our way to a very large binary star system in the Milky Way about 50,000 light years from Earth known as Theta 7 and it contains at least two Earth-like rocky planets. Does that help?”
“The obvious conclusion is that our next task is to secure one or both of them for human habitation,” said Henri.
“But we can’t just hop from one solar system to the next, populating planets and defending them against alien invaders!” said Julia. “There are 200 billion stars in the Milky Way. It’s really difficult to believe that we could have a role to play in such vastness.” She sighed.
“Really, Julia,” put in Hannah. “There’s no need to be melodramatic. Humankind has been listening for a sign of intelligent life from somewhere else in the universe for more than a hundred years and we’ve heard nothing. The evidence, or lack of it, suggests that we are a lot more special than you think. I really don’t find it so hard to believe that we are being used by some powerful entity in our galaxy to defend it against external threats. The history of warfare on Earth is full of stories like that.”
“I don’t like the sound of that, Hannah; it suggests we are expendable,” said Julia.
“Very possibly we are, but it’s a fact that the only life we have lost in defending ourselves, and possibly this part of the Milky Way as well, against those aliens, was that of a confessed murderer.”
“Oh please, Hannah, you’re not suggesting tha
t Omnipotence has a moral conscience as well?”
“Probably just enlightened self-interest,” said Henri. “Why would … it … put the only tool readily at its disposal – us – at risk? It doesn’t need morality.”
“I don’t like arguing this space much,” said Hannah, “but if our Omnipotence was only interested in exploiting us as a military tool, why not save Genes as well? He was a significant military asset as it turned out, if you ignored his treachery.”
“Just a minute,” said Arlette, “do we need to go into this morality stuff? We are accelerating down an LDST towards two more habitable planets. Might we not have a role here to apply our initiative and intelligence to, rather than just our reproductive powers?”
“My militarily incentivised Omnipotence would be saying, ‘job done in Omega 16, move proven asset to deal with next potential threat’,” suggested Henri.
“Oh God!” said Julia. “I can’t take any more of these snowball fights with mystery alien spaceships. Supposing you’re right? We get to Theta 7 and there’s this alien ship bristling with armaments, waiting for us. This is not a military ship! We don’t have anything more than a modest defence capability. Shouldn’t we make a quick turn around and head back to Omega 16 the same way we came?”
“Perhaps we’ll be a lot safer in Theta 7 than in Omega 16,” suggested Hannah quietly.
“The promised land! Of course!”
“Shut up, Julia,” said Arlette, “and let’s apply the Omnipotence theory. What other purpose could we have that would be of benefit to the Milky Way galaxy, apart from defending it against incursions from Andromeda? Why did we go to Omega 16 in the first place?”
“Who knows?” said Hannah. “And why are we preoccupied with this question? The fact is we are going there at the behest of a vastly superior power, which has taken extraordinary care to preserve us to get us to this point, to do something which we set out to do in the first place, and love doing. What else do you want?”
There was a silence.
“There you go,” said Arlette finally. “Now the collision with Andromeda is not due for about four billion years. That’s plenty of time to go forth and multiply to secure the galaxy. Wouldn’t we be willing to go along with that plan?”
Omnipotence: Book I: Odyssey Page 31