‘Good luck, Field Agent Cardon,’ said Anyali.
‘And you,’ said Nigel. It was the first time they had ever met in person. Formally, they shook hands.
‘Put the speaker back on,’ said Nigel as the Prime Minister stood, looking grave but unable to stop his lips twitching entirely.
The computer once again started peaking, and the great cacophony of noise poured through the speakers. Pol concentrated hard. A microphone was set up in front of the Prime Minister, who thanked them quietly.
Pol typed something furiously into the computer with three screens, then held up his finger for silence. He brought it down again slowly, and made a 3-2-1 motion with his hand.
The Prime Minister moved forwards and cleared his throat.
‘Hello?’ said Luke again. He frowned and rubbed it.
‘Technology,’ said Connie sympathetically. Please let it be someone they could talk to. Somebody who would understand. Somebody they could communicate with.
‘Good evening, friends from across the stars,’ began the Prime Minister. Nigel shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably. One of the technicians was surreptitiously recording on his mobile telephone. The Prime Minister’s security gently took the phone off him without disturbing the rest of the room, and crushed it underfoot.
The car-crashing, squealing, metal noise they could hear moved up and down the dials again. And now something else: there was an odd, metallic feeling in the air; a heavy pressure, like before a static storm. People rubbed their ears.
‘This is Great Britain calling,’ said the Prime Minister. Had Connie been there, it would have reminded her of the Eurovision Song Contest.
‘We wish… to extend to you… a hand of greeting and peace…’
The great crashing noise started to thin. It was still a massive cacophony, but it no longer sounded like a symphony of cars in a tornado. On the audio files, one could clearly see one layer after another being stripped away, like a rock band stripping down to acoustics.
‘… and welcome you to our solar system, if indeed you have not sampled its delights before… please do ask before taking moon souvenirs.’
‘No jokes!’ hissed Anyali. ‘I said no bloody jokes! I swear, if the French can’t get them, God knows how an alien civilisation is going to react!’
The noise thinned out again and again, until finally something made a single noise: a tone. Then another. Then another.
‘Sixths,’ said Evelyn and Arnold simultaneously.
‘No,’ said Arnold. ‘Sixths and a half’
‘What?’ said Nigel.
‘It’s a mathematical measuring of tone. Universally consistent. But in a horrible key.’
‘Like Luke de-tempering the piano,’ said Evelyn. ‘That’s what he was trying to do.’
‘They must speak a tonal language,’ said Arnold. ‘That’s why Luke thinks garbage pickup is singing. Hang on, scale the sound frequencies. They don’t use rational harmonics: scale it by the square root of three.’
Pol nodded quickly and typed rapidly.
The tones took on a vocalisation of sorts: an ahh, and a ddd.
‘Very good!’ said the PM encouragingly. Anyali’s face was stern.
Finally, as Pol fiddled to strip out the background hissing still raining down on them from the moon meteors, they caught it. A deep, ominous noise but a recognisable sound.
‘O n e.’
The room held its breath.
‘One; one, two!’ said the PM. ‘Very good very good! Testing! One, two, three! You’re on! We can hear you!’
‘O n e,’ said the voice again. It sounded neither human nor robotic; neither male nor female: simply a sound making English noises. Evelyn couldn’t think what it reminded her of. Then she did: it spoke at the same low, dissociative timbre as the shipping forecast. And Luke, of course. Gently, as if he could never ever dream of causing harm.
And look at the harm he had caused: harm just as clear as the forecast that announced the terrible storms; the moon explosion; the peril. The voices were not responsible, but they bore witness.
‘Y o u h a v e… o n e o f u s,’ came the voice. There was a small delay.
The Prime Minister nodded.
‘It can’t see you,’ said Pol.
‘How on earth would you know, young man?’ shot back the Prime Minister off-mike.
‘Yes,’ he said back into the microphone. ‘We understand, and we wish to extend you our full resources.’
That was too much for Arnold. Francis the PhD guard was distracted watching the Prime Minister, whom he had voted for, hoping he would back up his belief in education by funding increases. This had not happened.
Arnold in any case had forgotten he was being guarded at all. Instead, he simply lurched forward and threw himself at the mike
‘YIPPIEKAYAYMOTHERFUCKER!’ he screamed ‘I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE! AND I WILL HAVE MY VENGEANCE IN THIS LIFE OR THE NEXT! LUKE!’
Luke held it up, beaming, as it glowed a little and the cacophony from Cambridge broke out.
‘Arnold?’ he said in delight. ‘Arnold, is that you?’
‘LUKE!’ screamed Evelyn, even as Arnold was wrestled to the ground by the two security men. The man who’d had his phone ground down used the opportunity to tread on the security man’s hand and pretend it was an accident.
Sé suddenly sat up.
‘Where’s Connie?’ he said. ‘Where’s Connie? Is she there?’
Immediately the feed burst into a howl of feedback, an enormous mélange of noise.
Luke, patched through, sitting in the field in Myozr, held steady.
‘No,’ he said calmly to the noise. ‘I have a new language now.’
The noise continued to rage, and Luke waited patiently for it to stop, which it did gradually, stripping away layers and layers of aggravated dissonance, until it was one voice.
‘O n e o f u s,’ came the voice.
The Prime Minister looked around the room in consternation.
‘Is this our vagabond?’
Anyali looked at Nigel, who glanced at Evelyn, who nodded.
‘Well, EXCELLENT news,’ said the PM. ‘Where are you?’
‘Don’t tell him!’ shouted Arnold, inviting another kick in the ribs, which he got. It didn’t matter. Pol was already working on a third computer screen, which was tracing the signal in double-quick time.
‘A n d y o u g i v e y o u r s e l f u p?’ came the voice.
SCIF control held its breath.
‘Can you tell me what happened?’ said Luke, still in that gentle voice. ‘After I did what I did?’
‘Is CONNIE there?’ shouted Sé desperately.
‘Yes,’ came Connie’s quiet voice. ‘I am here.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Shut up, Sé, we’re trying to do a thing, right?’
‘She hasn’t changed,’ commented Evelyn.
‘W h a t h a p p e n e d?’ repeated the alien voice slowly, as if it had misunderstood.
‘After the wall came down,’ said Luke, ‘what happened? Tell me. Did you just build another one?’
There was a long pause. Then the voice spoke, less hesitant now, as if it was getting the hang of the language.
‘No,’ said the voice. ‘We did not build another one.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because… at first. At first it was hard. With what you did. With everyone mixing up and mixing together. It is not natural to us. Just because you are a…’
It looked for the word.
‘Mutt,’ said Luke. ‘Apparently the word is “mutt”.’
‘Y e s,’ said the voice, sounding unconvinced.
‘Then what happened?’ said Connie, genuinely interested.
‘The mingling could not be avoided and, over time – it took time. But, over time… there was… there was mixing, and slowly people stopped being quite so fearful. And it was… it became good.’
In the SCIF room, Arnold punched the air. The security man kick
ed his hand. In the dark field, Luke’s face broke into a wide grin. Connie jumped on his back, kissing the back of his neck.
‘Yes!’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Yes yes yes!’
‘So there is more conflict since the wall came down? Or less?’ said Luke.
‘We are not in the way of conversing with criminals,’ said the voice.
‘Please tell us,’ said Connie, hollering into the pebble, although this was patently unnecessary and nearly deafened Pol. Which pleased Arnold. Connie went on, ‘Please. You’ve found us. We’re here. Please tell us.’
There was another pause. The voice didn’t change timbre, but Connie believed she heard a weary note in it.
‘They… there are some who have built memorials in your name and would call you a saviour.’
There was a pause after this as everybody took it in.
‘Why, this is WONDERFUL news!’ said the PM in the SCIF. ‘Shall we have a diplomatic summit? I do love those. We all take photographs, you see… you would be the guest of honour. The food is generally very good.’ He paused. ‘Out of interest, how big are you?’
‘So you don’t need him,’ said Connie urgently. ‘You don’t need him to go back with you.’
‘He is a criminal,’ said the voice. ‘We have orders to return him.’
‘What if you say you couldn’t find him?’
‘We find him.’
‘But you can’t take him away! What will you do to him if you take him?’
‘Justice.’
‘Thank God,’ said Connie, but Luke was shaking his head.
‘People of Earth. We shall not forget the service you have done for us. Then we shall go and not return, as is the mandate of all peoples of the universe: you are not discovered, you discover. When you are ready, you come to us. We do not invade and we do not contact. Except in very exceptional circumstances.’
‘Hang ON,’ said Connie. ‘These are good exceptional circumstances. You just said, like, he brought massive peace to your world.’
‘He did.’
‘And you’re going to take him away and kill him?’
‘As leader of… this world,’ interjected the PM. ‘No, hang on, I got that wrong didn’t I? Let me see. As leader of… a part of this world. Quite a small part, but we like it. ANYWAY. I think, if you’re amenable, we’d rather like to keep this chap. Have a look at him. You know. See if we can learn anything… um, from each other, you know. We could make sure he’s kept out of trouble, mind you. No problem at all.’
‘YES!’ said Connie excitedly. ‘Yes! Do that one! The locking up and experiments one!’
‘Shut up, Connie,’ said Evelyn. ‘Just shut up.’
The voice came again. There was still the faint, two second delay on the broadcast.
‘It is our job to find the criminal and bring him back.’
‘Yes,’ said the PM patiently. ‘But you have also said he has done your world a service. Therefore can he not choose his residency? After some mutually beneficial work for both our societies, perhaps? He shall be treated as a criminal here, I assure you.’
There was a long silence.
‘We shall consider this.’
Luke gently unpeeled Connie from his back, and set her down in the field. She couldn’t sit still though, and hopped up again, bouncing from foot to foot. He held up the glass once more.
‘I must tell you,’ he said. ‘I must tell you. Please pass on to the –’ And here he said something Connie did not catch. ‘– that I meant no harm to anyone. I sabotaged a construction I thought was terribly, terribly wrong. I didn’t mean anything bad to happen. I meant… I meant for the walls to come down, for people to realise they could live together. That is all I meant. I was young then, and foolish, but…’
‘Would you do it again?’ came the voice, implacable.
‘Yes.’
‘And if you find walls on this world, will you bring them down?’
Luke hesitated.
‘I do not understand these people.’
‘How can you expect to live among them?’
Connie squeezed his hand. There was a long pause.
‘The best I can,’ said Luke quietly.
There was another silence.
‘And you,’ said the voice. ‘Ruler of this world.’
‘Um, yes?’ came the PM’s voice.
‘You are agreeable to this person staying within the bounds of your environment? Knowing what he has done and what he is capable of doing?’
‘Totes,’ said the Prime Minister, delighted. ‘I mean, yes. Yes, we are. On behalf of Her Majesty the Queen, I believe I have permission to invite this personage to become – under suitable conditions of course, for his own safety – part of our world empire, to pass on his wisdom and knowledge beyond the stars and help us all become better citizens in a new interstellar democracy.’
The PM beamed around the room. Arnold, still in a choke-hold on the ground, held his breath, as did Evelyn. Sé watched intently. Ranjit bobbed up and down.
There was a long pause.
‘We shall debate this with our seniority,’ came the voice. Then the terrible cacophony came back over the speaker and Pol whipped off his headphones, and then it went quiet and people’s ears popped, and the odd static feeling was gone.
In the room, there was a terrible rabble.
Pol had plotted two things now on his computer screen: the position of Connie and Luke’s signal… and the position of where the alien signal was coming from. It was just, as far as they could see, at the very edge of the solar system.
‘Why did nobody notice this?’ barked someone at the edge of the screen. ‘They’re basically around the corner.’
Pol was shaking his head. ‘We monitor it all the time. All the time.’
‘Scanning now, sir,’ said somebody else.
In the commotion, nobody heard the doors open. In marched several distinguished, heavily medalled, middle-aged men.
‘Ah, good, I knew you were right behind us,’ said the Prime Minister, rather weakly. ‘Um, we couldn’t quite wait for you, but Anyali will debrief you immediately.’
‘You’ve communicated with the enemy?’ said a rear admiral, going rather pink in the face. ‘You didn’t wait for us?’
The Prime Minister did his patented head tilt which was meant to look boyish and adorable. It didn’t cut much ice with a rear admiral.
‘I had absolutely no choice,’ he said. ‘They started to speak, and, well, here we were. Let’s not have a coup d’état about it, old chaps.’
‘Let me talk to them now,’ said the army general, marching forwards. ‘We’ll tell them what’s what about blowing up our moon.’
‘Um, yes,’ said the Prime Minister, who didn’t mind being taken for a foolish man, but was not one. ‘Actually we’re rather in the matter of settling matters peacefully. And we’re also getting to keep an alien. So actually, so far it’s going rather well. I think we can manage the rest without you.’
The CSCs, who normally despised one another, swapped furious glances.
‘How do you know they aren’t saying that, then they’re going to blow up the world?’ said the general. ‘After all, they blew up the moon.’
‘Oh, we could blow up the moon any time we bally well liked,’ said the PM. ‘Doesn’t prove a thing. Why would you, anyway?’
The general looked at him.
‘I thought you were the classical scholar, sir. Why wouldn’t you? Planet full of minerals and cheap labour. I know what I’d do.’
The glass in Luke’s hand went opaque and he looked at it for a long moment, then looked at Connie.
‘I have never heard a justice person say that before,’ he said wonderingly.
‘He’s going to think about it!’ said Connie, throwing her arms around his neck. ‘He’s going to think about it! That always means yes! It’s what your dad says when you ask him to buy you an ice cream.’
Luke frowned.’Or what you say when you want to pass th
e decision to somebody else.’
‘Exactly!’ said Connie. ‘“Can I have a discount on this car please?”; “I’ll think about it… Oh, okay then – I just wanted you to think I was tough”.’
She flung herself around him and he held her, burying his face in her hair.
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