The Black Cloud

by Fred Hoyle; Fred Hoyle

  ‘Parkinson, you’re not trying to tell me …’

  ‘I’m telling you that work in the U.S. and in Russia on this problem has advanced much farther than the British Government realized. We’ve only learned about it in the last day or two. We only learned of it when both the U.S. Government and the Soviets announced that they’ve fired off rockets, fired them at the Cloud.’

  ‘The incredible fools. When did this happen?’

  ‘Within the last week. Apparently there’s been an undercover competition that we knew nothing about. The U.S. has been trying to outdo the Soviets and vice versa of course. They’re reckoning to show each other what they can do, quite apart from killing the Cloud.’

  ‘We’d better get Marlowe, Leicester, and Alexandrov along and see what we can manage to salvage from the wreck.’

  McNeil happened to be talking to Marlowe, so he joined the group when they assembled. After Parkinson had gone over his story again Marlowe said:

  ‘It’s happened. This is what I feared when I blew up at you the other day, Chris.’

  ‘You mean you foresaw this?’

  ‘Oh, not this exactly, so far as the details go. I’d no idea of how far they’d got with their miserable rockets. But I felt in my bones that something of this sort would happen. You see you’re too logical, Chris. You don’t understand people.’

  ‘How many of these rockets have been sent?’ asked Leicester.

  ‘As far as our information goes, upwards of a hundred from the U.S. and perhaps fifty or so from the Russians.’

  ‘Well, I don’t see that it’s so important,’ Leicester remarked. ‘The energy in a hundred hydrogen bombs may seem a lot to us, but it’s surely only microscopic compared to the energy in the Cloud. I should have thought that this business is sillier than trying to kill a rhino with a tooth-pick.’

  Parkinson shook his head.

  ‘As I understand it, they’re not trying to blow the Cloud to pieces, they’re trying to poison it!’

  ‘Poison it! How?’

  ‘With radio-active materials. You heard the Cloud describe what could happen if radio-active materials penetrated its screen. They got all that from the Cloud’s own statements.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose a few hundred tons of highly radio-active stuff might be a different story.’

  ‘Radio-active particles start ionization in wrong place. Discharges, more ionization, and whole bloody works goes sky high,’ said Alexandrov.

  Kingsley nodded.

  ‘The point goes back to the old business of us working on D.C. and the Cloud on A.C. To work an A.C. system high voltages are necessary. We don’t have high voltages in the body, and that’s of course why we’re obliged to work on D.C. But the Cloud must have high voltages in order to operate its A.C. communication over big distances. And if there are high voltages, a few electrified particles in the wrong places among insulating material can cause a devil of a mess, as Alexis says. Incidentally, Alexis, what’s your feeling about it all?’

  The Russian was even briefer than was his usual wont.

  ‘Don’t like,’ he said.

  ‘What about the Cloud screen? Won’t that prevent the stuff going through?’ Marlowe asked.

  ‘I think that’s where the nasty part of the plan comes in,’ Kingsley answered. ‘The screen probably works on gas, not on solids, so it won’t stop the rockets. And there won’t be any radiative material until they explode, and I expect the idea is that they won’t explode until they get through the screen.’

  Parkinson confirmed this.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘They’re set to home on any substantial solid body. So they’ll go straight for the Cloud’s neurological centres. At least that’s the idea.’

  Kingsley got up and paced the room, talking as he walked.

  ‘Even so, it’s a mad-dog scheme. Consider the objections. First, it may not work, or suppose it works just enough to annoy the Cloud seriously but not to kill it. Then come the reprisals. The whole of life on the Earth might be wiped out with as little compunction as we would have in swatting a fly. The Cloud never sounded to me to have any real enthusiasm for life on planets.’

  ‘But it always sounded pretty reasonable in discussions,’ cut in Leicester.

  ‘Yes, but its outlook might be changed by a fierce headache. In any case I can’t believe that discussions with us have occupied more than a tiny fraction of the Cloud’s whole brain. It’s probably doing a thousand and one other things at the same time. No, I don’t think we’ve the slightest reason to believe that it’s going to be nice about it. And that’s only the first risk. There’ll be an equally grave risk even if they’re successful in killing the Cloud. The break-up of its neurological activity is bound to lead to the most terrifying outbursts – what we might call death throes. From a terrestrial point of view the amount of energy held at the Cloud’s disposal is simply colossal. In the event of sudden death all this energy will be released, and once again our chance of survival will be remote in the extreme. It’ll be like being shut in a stable with a thrashing elephant, only incomparably worse – to use an Irishism. Finally and overwhelmingly, if the Cloud is killed and we are lucky enough to survive against all the probabilities, we’ll have to live permanently with a disk of gas around the Sun. And as everyone knows, that’s not going to be pleasant. So whichever way you look, it seems impossible to understand this business. Do you understand the psychology of it, Parkinson?’

  ‘Curiously enough I believe I do. As Geoff Marlowe was saying a few moments ago, you always argue logically, Kingsley, and it’s not logic you need now, it’s an understanding of people. Let’s take your last point first. From what we’ve learned from the Cloud we’ve every reason to believe that it’s going to stay around the Sun for somewhere between fifty and a hundred years. To most people that is as good as saying that it is staying permanently.’

  ‘It’s not the same thing at all. In fifty years there’ll be a considerable change of the Earth’s climate, but it won’t be the same overwhelming change that’ll take place if the Cloud were to stay here permanently.’

  ‘I’m not doubting it. What I’m saying is that to the great majority of people what happens after fifty years, or a hundred years if you like, isn’t of the slightest consequence. And I’ll deal with your other two points by admitting the grave risks that you’ve mentioned.’

  ‘Then you admit my argument.’

  ‘I admit nothing of the sort. Under what circumstances would you follow a policy that involved great risks? No, don’t try to answer. I’ll tell you. The answer is that you would follow a dangerous policy if all alternatives seemed worse.’

  ‘But the alternatives are not worse. There was the alternative of doing nothing, and that would have involved no risk.’

  ‘There would have been the risk of you becoming dictator of the world!’

  ‘Catfish, man! I’m not the stuff dictators are made of. My only aggressive trait is that I can’t suffer fools. Do I look like a dictator?’

  ‘You do, Chris,’ said Marlowe. ‘Not to us, you don’t,’ he continued hastily lest Kingsley should burst apart, ‘but to Washington you probably do. When a man starts talking to them as if they were backward schoolboys, and when it seems as if that same man possesses untold physical power, why then you can’t blame them for jumping to conclusions.’

  ‘And there’s another reason why they would never reach any other conclusion,’ added Parkinson. ‘Let me tell you the story of my life. I went to the right sort of schools, prep school and public school. In these schools the brightest boys are usually encouraged to study the Classics and, although it shouldn’t be I that say so, that’s what happened to me. I won a scholarship to Oxford, did reasonably well there, and found myself at the age of twenty-one with a head stuffed full of unmarketable knowledge, or at any rate unmarketable unless you’re very clever indeed, and I wasn’t that clever. So I entered the Administrative Civil Service, which course led me by stages to my present posit
ion. The moral of my life story is that I got into politics quite by accident, not by design. This happens with others too – I’m not unique and don’t aspire to be. But we accidental fishes are very much in the minority and we don’t usually occupy the most influential offices. The great majority of politicians are where they are because they want to be, because they like the limelight, because they like the idea of administering the masses.’

  ‘This is indeed a confession, Parkinson!’

  ‘Now do you see my point?’

  ‘I’m beginning to see through a glass darkly. You mean that the mental make-up of a leading politician is likely to be such that he couldn’t dream it possible that anyone could find the prospect of becoming a dictator wholly unpalatable.’

  ‘Yes, I can see it all, Chris,’ Leicester grinned. ‘Graft everywhere, executions just for the laughs, no wife or daughter safe. I must say I’m glad I’m in on this.’

  ‘In on it?’ said the Russian in some surprise. ‘Likely to get throat cut.’

  ‘Yes, Alexis, we’ll not go into that just now!’

  ‘Some things are getting a little clearer, Parkinson.’ Kingsley went on pacing. ‘I still don’t understand, however, why the prospect of us dictating to the world, ridiculous as we know it to be, should seem a worse alternative than this dreadful course they’ve actually taken.’

  ‘To Kremlin losing power worst thing,’ said Alexis.

  ‘Alexis puts it in a nutshell as usual,’ answered Parkinson. ‘Losing power, utterly and completely, is the most dreadful prospect that a politician can think of. It overshadows everything else.’

  ‘Parkinson, you shock me. I mean it. Heaven knows I think little enough of politicians but I cannot conceive of even the meanest person setting his personal ambitions above the fate of the whole species.’

  ‘Oh, my dear Kingsley, how you fail to understand your fellow men! You know the biblical phrase, “Let not your right hand know what your left hand doeth.” Do you realize what that means? It means keeping your ideas in nice little watertight compartments, never letting them interact and contradict each other. It means that you can go to church one day a week and sin away the other six. Don’t imagine that anyone sees these rockets as a potential extinction for humanity. Not on your life. It’s rather the other way round, a bold stroke against an invader that has already destroyed whole communities and brought even the strongest nations near to disaster. It is a defiant answer of determined democracies to the threats of a potential tyrant. Oh, I’m not laughing, I’m being quite serious. And don’t forget Harry Leicester’s “no wife or daughter safe”. There’s a bit of that in it too.’

  ‘But this is wholly ridiculous!’

  ‘To us, yes. To them, no. It’s only too easy to read your own state of mind into what other people say.’

  ‘Frankly, Parkinson, I think this business must have shaken you out of all good sense. It can’t be as bad as you think. There’s one point that proves it. How did you come to hear about these rockets? From London, didn’t you say?’

  ‘It was from London.’

  ‘Then obviously there’s some decency there.’

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Kingsley. It’s true that I can’t wholly prove my point, but I suggest that this information would never have reached us if the British Government had been in a position to join the U.S. and the Soviets. You see, we have no rockets to launch. Perhaps you realize that this country is less likely to suffer than others from your presumed rise to world domination. Whatever we like to pretend, Britain is sliding steadily and rapidly down the ladder of world power. Perhaps it wouldn’t be an altogether bad thing for the British Government if they saw the U.S., the Soviets, China, Germany, and the rest being made to toe the line by a group of men domiciled in Britain. Perhaps they feel that they will shine more strongly in your – or, if you prefer, our – reflected glory than they shine at present. Perhaps indeed when it comes to administrative matters they believe that they can hoodwink you into leaving the effective control in their hands.’

  ‘Strange as it may seem, Parkinson, there have been times when I’ve persuaded myself that I am over-cynical.’

  Parkinson grinned.

  ‘For once in your life, Kingsley, my dear fellow, I’ll speak to you with a brutal frankness that should have been exercised on you many years ago. As a cynic you’re a dud, a wash-out, a mere playboy. At root, and I mean it quite seriously, you’re a starry-eyed idealist.’

  Marlowe’s voice cut in.

  ‘When you’ve finished analysing yourselves, don’t you think we ought to give some consideration to what we ought to do?’

  ‘Like dam’ Chekhov play,’ grunted Alexandrov.

  ‘But interesting, and not a little shrewd,’ said McNeil.

  ‘Oh, there’s no difficulty about what we ought to do, Geoff. We’ve got to call the Cloud and tell it. That’s the only thing to do from every point of view.’

  ‘You’re quite satisfied about that are you, Chris?’

  ‘Surely there can’t be any possible doubt? I’ll put the more selfish reason first. We can probably avoid the danger of being wiped out, because the Cloud isn’t likely to be wholly outraged if we warn it. But in spite of what Parkinson has been saying I still believe that I would do the same thing even if this motive didn’t exist. Although it sounds queer and the word doesn’t express what I really mean, I believe that it’s the humane thing to do. But to be practical, this seems to me something that we ought to decide by agreement, or if we don’t agree, then by a majority vote. We could probably talk about it for hours, but I imagine we’ve all been milling it over in our minds during the last hour. Suppose we take a snap vote just for the hell of it. Leicester?’

  ‘I’m on.’

  ‘Alexandrov?’

  ‘Warn bastard. Will get throats cut all same.’

  ‘Marlowe?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘McNeil?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Parkinson?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘As a matter of interest, Parkinson, and in spite of a little more Chekhov, will you tell us why you agree? From the first day we met until this morning I got the impression that we were looking at each other from different sides of the fence.’

  ‘We were, because I had a job to do, and I did it as loyally as I could. Today, as I see it, I was released from that old loyalty, which was overwritten by a larger, deeper loyalty. Perhaps I’m opening the way for the charge of starry-eyed idealist myself, but I happen to agree with all you said and implied about our duty to the human species. And I agree with what you said about the humane course of action.’

  ‘So it’s agreed that we call up the Cloud and acquaint it with the existence of these rockets?’

  ‘Ought we to consult some of the others, do you think?’ Marlowe asked.

  Kingsley answered:

  ‘It may sound very dictator-like to say no, Geoff, but I would be against any widening of this discussion. For one thing I believe that if we consulted everybody and a contrary decision was reached I would not accept it – there’s the dictator for you all right. But there’s also the point that Alexis mentioned, that we could only too easily end by getting our throats cut. So far, we’ve flouted all the recognized authorities, but we’ve done it in a half humorous fashion. Any attempt to charge us with some legal offence would surely be laughed out of court. But this business is a very different kettle of fish. If we pass what I might call military information to the Cloud we’re taking an obviously grave responsibility, and I’m against too many people being called on to share that responsibility. I wouldn’t like Ann to have any part in it, for instance.’

  ‘What do you think, Parkinson?’ asked Marlowe.

  ‘I agree with Kingsley. Remember that in point of fact we have no power at all. There’s really nothing to stop the police coming and arresting us when they please. It is of course true that the Cloud might wish to support us, especially after this episode. But then
again it might not, perhaps it may cease communication with the Earth altogether. We run the risk of being left with nothing but our bluff. As bluff goes it’s an extremely good one and it’s not surprising that it’s been swallowed so far. But we can’t go on bluffing for the rest of our lives. Furthermore, even if we can enlist the Cloud as ally, there’s still a vital flaw in our position. It sounds all very well to say “I can wipe out the continent of America”, but you know perfectly well that you never would. So in any case we’re reduced to bluffing.’

  This view had a somewhat chilling influence on the company.

  ‘Then it’s pretty obvious that we must keep this business of warning the Cloud as secret as we can. Obviously it oughtn’t to go outside this meeting,’ remarked Leicester.

  ‘Secrecy isn’t as easy as you imagine.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘You’re forgetting the information given me by London. It will be taken for granted in London that we’re going to inform the Cloud. That’s all right so long as the bluff holds, but if it doesn’t …’

  ‘Then if it’s taken for granted, let’s get on with it. We might as well commit the crime if we’re certain to receive the punishment,’ remarked McNeil.

  ‘Yes, let’s get on with it. We’ve done enough talking,’ said Kingsley. ‘Harry, you’d better prepare a recorded explanation of the whole affair. Then keep broadcasting it continuously. You needn’t have any fear of it being picked up by anybody but the Cloud.’

  ‘Well, Chris, I’d sooner you did the recording. You’re better at talking than I am.’

  ‘Oh, all right. Let’s get started.’