‘Thanks, Thomas. I’m good for now. I’ll go for a walk, then be in my room.’
‘And tonight? If you are free, my wife and I were hoping you might come over for dinner. My son won’t be home but I would like the two of you to meet later in the week.’
‘That would be delightful, Thomas. Thank you.’
‘We’re on a ranch thirty minutes out. I’ll collect you, seven thirty.’
They stood up and shook hands, just as a uniformed deputy approached from the main entrance.
‘Richard. This is Deputy Frank. He’ll be taking first watch and coordinating the rest. Deputy, meet your charge, Dr Worse.’ They also shook hands. ‘Deputy, room five-one-two is confirmed. Thank you.’
Deputy Frank excused himself, heading to the lift station. Thomas gave Worse his business card, and also left.
Worse sat down for a few minutes before following Thomas through the main entrance and out to the concourse. He had an address to find and a parcel to collect, organized by Spoiling.
Five-one-two was an end room, and Deputy Frank had set up a small office space in the hallway, with a good view of the elevators. He turned down the volume of a radio programme when he saw Worse.
… was for Beatrice from Duran who says, ‘Come back, baby …’
Worse greeted him as he unlocked his door.
Once inside, he opened Spoiling’s parcel. Then he unpacked his bags, removing a business suit from its carrier and hanging it in the room closet. Worse disliked formality, but accepted that he needed to conform on occasions, and this occasion was Walter’s.
There were still several hours before he was to be collected for dinner, and Worse felt an overwhelming need for thinking time. This was always best spent lying down. He set a clock alarm in case he fell asleep, leaving time for a shower before being ready by 7.30.
Worse was confident of giving satisfactory testimony at the hearing; he had names, communications and surveillance. But he hadn’t comprehensively solved the science, the technology, going on at Area Pi. Terencium was important, but he didn’t know why, and the incompleteness of his understanding was troubling. He fell asleep worrying about it. When the alarm wakened him, he was dreaming about the medallion gallery in the Joseph Plateau cave.
Early the next morning, Thomas again collected Worse in the lobby to drive to the police department sector at the airport.
‘Thank you both again for last night, Thomas,’ said Worse when they were in the car. ‘I enjoyed it very much. It was lovely to see your place, how you live, and to meet Rebecca.’
‘It was our pleasure, Richard.’
Thomas manoeuvred between vehicles congested at the hotel entry.
‘It seems busy today,’ said Worse.
‘The action’s picking up for tomorrow. Walter Reckles has a national profile, air safety always gets reported, and putting the mysterious Area Pi into the mix gives you a guaranteed segment on the news. And, as I say, some will have heard about a surprise witness. They’ll be very curious about you.’
‘Area Pi is a mysterious entity,’ said Worse, removing himself from the subject line. ‘But only because they’re secretive. When it’s uncovered, we’ll just find science and criminality, I’m sure.’
He fell silent, not for thinking about Area Pi, but about the previous evening at Thomas’s ranch. To have been invited into his family life was a privilege for Worse. Every so often, after an experience like that, he confronted what was lacking in his own world. He looked at Thomas and admired his good fortune.
Thomas introduced Worse to their pilot, Bernice Brales, at the dispatch desk. Worse provided their destination coordinates. They had deliberately left filing a flight plan till the last moment in case informants alerted Area Pi security.
Worse’s expectation was that the recovery mission for the downed drone would have prioritized speed over thoroughness, on the basis that detection of the search party was a far higher risk than discovery of any missed fragments so distant from the Condor crash site. If the drone search went unobserved, investigators would have no idea where to concentrate their effort, and that is exactly how events transpired. What Mortiss couldn’t have foreseen was that Worse would discover, to within half a metre, where to bring that search.
Bernie landed forty metres off point, and powered down. She passed water bottles to Worse and Thomas, and the three alighted. The Bleacher was still sandy here but a little more stony, with some withered grasses that were burnt near the primary crash site.
Thomas unloaded two metal detectors from the stowage bay, and handed one to Worse. They had planned a concentric grid search centred on the impact point and using their aircraft as a reference. Bernie was lookout; they didn’t want to be surprised by any response from Area Pi.
Worse and Thomas walked the site systematically for an hour before taking a break, sitting out of the sun in the helicopter.
‘Either there was no fragmentation, or they checked the ground very thoroughly indeed,’ said Thomas, drinking from his water bottle.
Worse was staring at the search centre when he abruptly reached for his laptop and opened a file, copying some data into his smartphone.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ he announced as he stepped to the ground, picked up his metal detector, and walked across the site while looking at his phone.
Thomas followed with the other detector. Worse stopped at a point some way beyond their earlier search perimeter.
‘Here,’ he said, waving his arm around. ‘The one place they might not have looked was under their aircraft, and this is exactly where it put down.’
Worse had read the location from a satellite image.
Thomas smiled. Two minutes later, Worse had a find. He bent down and brushed aside sand, picking up a twenty-bytwo-centimetre strip with fine rivet holes. One surface was raw metal, the other had a slightly iridescent black coating. Thomas held out an evidence bag.
‘What would you say it is?’ he asked, sealing the top.
‘A cowling tie, something like that,’ said Worse. ‘It was probably covered by their sand blow when they landed.’
Worse returned to the BHEH at 11.00, acknowledging the deputy on duty as he entered his room. While out, he had received some emails but delayed opening them until now.
Dear Dr Worse
Re: Position of Housekeeper (Ref 3589)
We are pleased to inform you that we have identified five suitable candidates for the above position. All are able to commence on or before the date you have specified. Interviews will be held in our offices as indicated in the attached schedule. Please inform us if you intend to be present at these or elect to have a representative attend in your place. Following selection at interview we will call up references and, if they are satisfactory, implement a contract of engagement. As agreed, this will be for a probationary term of three months in the first instance.
Assuring you of our most diligent attention at all times,
Ralph Plinco-Brown, for RPB Personnel Search
Dear Mr Plinco-Brown
Thank you for your letter. I will not be in Perth on the day of interviews; nor will I have a representative present. I look forward to learning the outcome.
Yours sincerely
R Worse
A message from Nicholas was far more interesting.
Dear Worse
I tried the old SNR trick of averaging out noise. This image is 25 superpositions aligned and scaled on my best estimates of pupillary centres. What do you think?
Nicholas
Worse opened the attachment. His screen filled with a monochrome portrait, unmistakeably a human face. It was not, of course, that of an individual, but a composite of twenty-five. Nevertheless, it was a likeness of their people, and Worse felt moved to be seeing it. He studied it for a long time before replying to Nicholas.
Worse lay on his bed, looking at the portrait until the screen shut down. He was thinking about Area Pi again. Somehow, they had found a way to fully absorb radar e
nergy and dissipate it, probably as heat. From their materials orders, he knew that graphene was important. So too, it appeared, was terencium. Perhaps it served as a dopant in some novel silicon–graphene semiconductor physics. He returned to his comment made to Nicholas and Paulo: We don’t know much about terencium. Either he needed to go back in electronically and do a thorough clean-out of their research records, or he had to work it out for himself. He fell asleep thinking about it.
He was woken by a call from Thomas saying that he and Walter were in the lobby. Worse went downstairs. He wanted to meet Walter but not particularly interact with him before the hearing. After introductions and a mention that they both knew Edvard and Anna and the LDI team, Worse asked what Walter thought was expected of him the following day.
‘They want me on in the morning,’ Walter replied. ‘Basically to confirm the evidence I gave last time, as I understand it.’
‘Has anything changed in that respect?’
Worse wanted no surprises before giving his own testimony.
‘No.’
‘Are you still convinced you caught sight of a drone?’ asked Worse.
‘Absolutely.’
‘What colour do you think it was?’
‘You know, it’s funny. They didn’t ask me that at the hearing. They were so convinced it didn’t exist.’
‘What colour was it?’
‘It was black, Worse. Black as Hades.’
Worse had dozed off thinking about the radar problem, and woken up still thinking about it. Even while talking to Walter, it was foremost in his mind. By the time he returned to his room, he had grasped the notion of what technologists at Area Pi had achieved.
And he knew whom to thank for the idea. Satroit, for colour latency and brilliant fragments. And someone else: Worse opened Nicholas’s composite medallion portrait and looked at it admiringly. Neolithic they might be, but modern too. Ridiculously modern.
Worse guessed that the Mortiss enterprise had discovered a new photochemical transduction method based on reduction of terencium in halides at radar energies, rather as occurs with silver salts in the visible and ultraviolet spectrum. Almost certainly, they had developed a silicon–graphene wafer substrate to optimize electromagnetic absorption, dissipate heat, and facilitate high-frequency terencium ion regeneration using a suitably modulated EMF.
26 AMICUS CURIAE
[Chair] Your name is Dr Richard M Worse. Your permanent address is in Perth, Western Australia. You appear before this enquiry voluntarily in the role of amicus curiae. You declare yourself a disinterested party in relation to the Flight Control Corporation, any associated business entity, any product of that Corporation including the FC100 airplane, and any director, owner or employee of that Corporation including Dr Walter Reckles. Is all that correct?
[Richard M Worse] All that is correct.
[Chair] Are you represented by counsel?
[Worse] I am not, Mr Chairman.
[Chair] Are you willing to answer questions under oath at the conclusion of your testimony?
[Worse] I am, Mr Chairman.
[Chair] Please state for the board your purpose in summary.
[Worse] My purpose is to provide information to this investigation that would not otherwise be available for your consideration.
I am confident that this information will materially affect the board’s determination of the cause of the FC100 Condor crash.
I am further confident that the information to be provided will be seen to constitute evidence of criminal wrongdoing, in respect of which at least one responsible person is now present in this room.
[Uproar. Chair calls for order]
[Chair] I remind those present that this sitting of the board has the legal standing of a grand jury. I will not tolerate interruptions. I will not hesitate to apply sanctions or to employ the bailiffs. I will not hesitate to clear the gallery. You have been warned. Proceed, Dr Worse. Perhaps less tendentiously, if you find that possible.
[Worse] Thank you, Mr Chairman. The issue to resolve is the cause of the Condor crash. The proposition is that the Condor collided with an unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, that was not legitimately in that airspace. The evidence in support is that the pilot, Dr Walter Reckles, briefly sighted the drone in the moment before impact, and that traces of foreign material, stated to be exotic to the Condor’s composition, were detected on Condor parts salvaged from the crash site. Under this proposition, the said foreign material is taken as belonging to a drone that was not otherwise recovered in wreckage, and is prima facie evidence of the drone’s existence and its party to a collision. I foreshadow to the board that the nature of that foreign material is significant.
The counterproposition, most forcefully advanced by the member of the board to your left, Mr Chairman, is that there was no collision with a drone. I note for your interest that the line of argument in this case is curiously neglectful of determining the actual cause of the crash, instead being concerned with persuading the board that a drone was not part of that cause and, indeed, that no drone exists.
The facts put forward as evidence that no drone exists include the lack of a regulation-mandated transponder signal, the lack of a radar presence in either the Condor system or the Dante tracking sector records from that date, and the lack of wreckage of a drone, all notwithstanding the contradicting facts in support of the original proposition, namely that the drone was sighted and that foreign material was obtained from the Condor wreckage.
I will shortly remind the board of an interesting truth, that a given set of facts may be judged evidence in support of many different hypotheses, and sometimes two such hypotheses are mutually contradictory on other grounds. The facts to examine here relate to the transponder, radar, and wreckage, and I will deal with all. The board will be convinced that the very same facts, transponder, radar and wreckage, are consistent with, and evidence of, an alternative hypothesis. And the board will be convinced that this alternative hypothesis is the very same proposition first advanced, that the cause of the Condor crash was collision with a drone.
[Chair] Dr Worse. Could you please indicate to the board how long your submission will take?
[Worse] I expect twenty minutes, Mr Chairman.
[Chair] Continue, Dr Worse.
[Worse] This alternative hypothesis is that some seventy-five minutes prior to the Condor entering Dante Control airspace, an experimental jet-engined drone was illegally launched from a facility northwest of Dante. This drone was guided to an altitude of thirty-five thousand feet while certain tests were conducted, then instructed to return to its point of launch, during which descent it collided with the Condor.
Its transponder was inactive for the very reason that the flight was illegal and part of an extensive, secret research program.
Now I come to the absence of a radar signal. There are several explanations for this. One is that there was no drone, as enthusiastically put, Mr Chairman, by the member of the board to your left. Another is that there was a malfunction of radar systems, or failure of operator performance. The requirement of a joint failure, that is, both within Dante Control and in the Condor, makes this highly improbable. A third possibility is that the illegal drone was blind to radar. Indeed, the hypothesis posits that the illegal drone was undergoing trials to prove that very capability, its invisibility to Dante radar.
What is the state of science pertaining to low radar reflectance of objects in flight? Of course, this technology is closely guarded and shrouded in government and defence contractor secrecy. But it is known that four factors obtain: evasion—as in terrain-hugging navigation, electronic countermeasures, aircraft shape, and surface. Here, we are concerned with surface. And what more serendipitous sampling of this surface radar-absorbing coating could we engineer than a scraping deposited on another aircraft in the course of an accidental midair collision? So we return to the nature of the foreign material recovered from the Condor wreckage.
I now invite members of the bo
ard to view their screens.
[Excision 1. Appendix A]
Where did this hypothetical drone take off, and where did it go? Let me re-familiarize members of the board with a curious facility in the northwest neighbourhood of Dante. It has long been known to Dante residents as Area Pi. The reason for this designation is not reliably recorded, and I will not speculate, except to draw attention to the mathematical fact that the area of a unit circle, that is a circle of radius one unit, is pi square units.
Area Pi is a very mysterious place. In fact its mystery, its isolation, is virtually celebrated by the people of Dante in the manner of a horror folkloric tradition. But how can one visit Area Pi? How can one find out what happens there? There are three ways. First, visit in person. That won’t get you in, because of an intensely patrolled security perimeter. Second, electronically, via internet portals. And third, by aerial or space-based reconnaissance.
Page four on your screens is an image obtained from a low Earth orbit commercial satellite service. You can see several buildings and a runway. I point out that this runway is only twenty nautical miles from the Condor crash site. Note the rail structure running for about one thousand yards along its west side. I am now moving the cursor over a number of aircraft parked at the southern end of the runway. These two are large transport helicopters. The building is a hangar. I will next show a video of the area obtained by a United States military reconnaissance satellite. The date and approximate time are those of the Condor crash. You will see considerable activity on the ground, but the resolution is not sufficient to interpret events with certainty.
[Video. 1 min]
I must now inform members of the board, particularly those with a connection to the military of this country, that sadly there exists a reconnaissance resource superior to that belonging to the United States. It is perhaps not surprising that a foreign power should look down on the US with greater scrutiny than the US looks at itself. We might expect the converse to apply over that nation.
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