by Ben Bova
Nobody using pocket phones, he noticed. The building must be screened against wireless transmissions.
The agents guided him through the maze of corridors to a door, finally, that bore an understandable title: CONFERENCE ROOM C-120. The shaved agent opened the door, and his younger partner shooed Tavalera inside with a brusque gesture.
Then they closed the door behind Tavalera, leaving him alone in the room. It held an oval table with eight plush-looking chairs arranged around it. The walls were featureless gray. Smart screens, Tavalera guessed. He didn’t see any security cameras but figured there could be all sorts of surveillance sensors behind the softly glowing ceiling panels.
Wondering if he should sit or remain standing, he stepped over to the small table at the far end of the conference room. It bore a stainless-steel pitcher and a stack of plastic cups. Tavalera took a cup and poured from the pitcher. Water.
“That’s real Rocky Mountain water.”
He whirled, nearly dropping the cup in his surprise. A slender young black woman stood in the doorway, smiling brightly at him. He hadn’t heard the door open. Before she closed it again Tavalera glimpsed his two agents standing out in the corridor, looking bored.
“It’s rather rare, you know,” she said, still smiling. “Without any snowmelt in the springtime, this area is drying out, turning semiarid.”
Tavalera nodded mutely.
“My name is Sister Angelique,” said the young woman as she walked gracefully to the head of the table. “Please sit down and make yourself comfortable.”
She was as slim as a newborn colt and almost Tavalera’s height. She spoke with a faint hint of an accent that he couldn’t quite place. Jamaican, maybe. Or some other Caribbean island. Sister Angelique wore a black clerical dress, nearly floor-length, its high collar edged with white. Over her slight left breast was the inevitable palm-bough symbol of the New Morality. But hers had a white cross inside the circle. Tavalera stepped up and took the chair to her right, close enough to smell the scent of fresh flowers she was wearing.
“You’re probably wondering why we asked you here this morning,” Sister Angelique said, her smile widening.
Tavalera had heard that old saw before but realized she was trying to put him at his ease, so he tried to smile back at her.
“Something about the Northern Lights, huh?”
Sister Angelique nodded. “Yes. About the Northern Lights.”
He waited for her to continue. Her smile faded and her face grew quite serious. Her dark brown eyes were large, almond shaped. They almost looked Oriental.
“The hierarchy has tried to downplay the Lights,” she began. “I thought that was an ill-considered decision.
After all, anyone can see them, can’t they?”
“In Little Rock the police are making everybody stay indoors from sundown to dawn.”
Sister Angelique shook her head. “Not very wise, is it? Bad for restaurants and other businesses. And even with modern surveillance systems, how can the police enforce such a measure?”
She had a habit of framing her statements as questions, Tavalera realized. Trying to get me to say something, he figured.
“You saw the Lights?” she asked.
“Night after night.”
“What do you think of them?”
“They’re beautiful.”
“But what’s causing them, do you think?”
“Damned if I know.” From the sudden flare of her eyes he immediately regretted his minor vulgarity. “I mean, that’s what I was asking my brother about.”
“You’re curious.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No, Mr. Tavalera. I am not curious. I’m afraid.”
“Afraid? Of what?”
She hesitated. “Some people fear that the Lights signify the coming of the end of the world.”
Tavalera made a face to show what he thought of that.
“But it could be just that, you know,” Sister Angelique said quite seriously. “Exactly that. The end of the world—as we know it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’ve spent the past several years in space, haven’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“You were assigned to the Jupiter station but somehow ended in the Saturn colony?”
He almost laughed at the perplexity on her face. “I was working on the scoopships. You know, they suck up hydrogen and helium isotopes from Jupiter’s atmosphere. Fuel for our fusion generators.”
Sister Angelique nodded uncertainly.
“We had an accident while we were refueling a habitat vessel heading to Saturn. I got stranded, and one of the guys from the habitat came out and rescued me. Saved my life. But I had to go with their vessel all the way out to Saturn.”
“And you stayed there?”
“Until I could get transportation back home,” Tavalera said. Silently he added, I stayed long enough to fall in love. But not long enough to get smart enough to stay on Goddard with her.
CHAPTER 8
Sister Angelique said, “So you’ve lived in space for several years, then? You’ve had experience on spacecraft?”
“Yeah, right. Is that important?”
“It’s . . . unusual, Mr. Tavalera,” she said, almost frowning. “We don’t have many people with your kind of experience among us. Most people who go to space never return to Earth.”
Can you blame them? he asked silently.
“We need someone with experience in space to help us deal with the problem—”
“What problem?” he snapped. “The Northern Lights? That’s a problem?”
She bit her lip, obviously struggling with a decision. At last she said, “Mr. Tavalera, I’ve got to ask you to sign a secrecy agreement.”
“Why? What for?”
Her smile returned, fainter this time. “I’m afraid I can’t answer your questions until you sign the agreement.”
“And if I don’t?”
She cocked her head slightly to one side. “If you refuse, you’ll be returned to Little Rock.” Before Tavalera could say anything, she added, “And be assigned to a different job, I’m afraid. Probably far from your home and family.”
Feeling the heat of anger rising in him again, Tavalera grumbled, “Damned if I do and damned if I don’t, huh?”
“I pray that you’re not damned at all, Mr. Tavalera.”
“You know what I mean.” He waited for her to reply. When she didn’t, he demanded, “Look, what’s this all about? Why do I have to sign a secrecy agreement?”
“You said you were curious.”
“About the Lights.”
“Once you sign the agreement we can begin to satisfy your curiosity.”
Tavalera gave her a skeptical look. But she simply sat there, smiling sweetly at him, with a hint of something in her eyes: expectation, maybe? They’ve got me royally screwed, Tavalera thought. If I don’t sign the agreement they’re going to send me to Alaska or Guatemala or someplace where I can’t talk to my friends. Goddamn New Morality runs the government, and I’m just a speck of dust to them.
“Damn,” he muttered.
Sister Angelique leaned slightly toward him. “Mr. Tavalera, the truth is that we need you. I need you.”
“You?”
“There are forces within the New Morality who are misusing the power God has granted us. Old men, for the most part. Tired, frightened old men. They don’t trust the people. They fear them . . . and the Lights.”
Now Tavalera felt confused. “You’re saying—”
“I’ve already said much more than I should. Please sign the agreement. Then I can be completely frank with you.”
He puffed out a defeated sigh. “Okay. Where do I sign?”
A panel of the conference table’s surface lit up before him, showing a dense block of small print with a dotted line at its bottom. The panel beside it slid open, revealing a stylus in its compartment. Feeling as if he’d just been talked into buying something he
really didn’t want, Tavalera picked up the stylus and scribbled his signature on the dotted line.
“Thank you, Mr. Tavalera,” said Sister Angelique, her smile at full wattage.
The tabletop went opaque once more. But the wall opposite Tavalera began to glow.
“Remember, Mr. Tavalera, that you have agreed to keep everything you see completely secret. You will not discuss it with anyone who is not an official of the New Morality with a documented need to know.”
He nodded impatiently.
She hesitated for a moment, her dark almond eyes searching his. Then she swiveled her chair to the glowing wall screen. “Initiate,” she said, like a princess giving a command to a servant.
A man’s face appeared on the screen. It was an impressive face, with a patrician nose and strong high cheekbones, a thick deeply black beard matched by an equally thick and dark head of hair. Piercing gray eyes. He seemed middle-aged to Tavalera: his face wasn’t wrinkled, but it didn’t have any youthful softness to it. All bone and skin tanned almost walnut brown. The fierce uncompromising face of an Old Testament prophet, Tavalera thought.
Then the man smiled warmly and seemed to become almost youthful.
“Hello. My name is Keith Stoner,” he said in a deep, resonant voice. “We’ve just returned from the stars.”
Tavalera rocked back in his chair. Sister Angelique froze the image.
“That message was received by the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico and every major astronomical facility on Earth, as well as the Farside radio facility on the Moon, slightly more than six months ago.”
“From the stars?”
“There is more to the message. The important point is that we have been unable to track its origin.”
“The guy’s a nutcase,” Tavalera said.
“Perhaps.” Sister Angelique turned back to the screen and commanded, “Continue.”
The image on the screen stirred to life once more. “We left Earth in the year 1985 of the Gregorian calendar. Thanks to time dilation we’ve been able to visit a number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy.” The bearded face grew serious. “We have important discoveries to tell you about. It’s vital that I meet with your best scientists and governmental leaders. Sooner or later, I’ll have to speak to the general public, but I’d like to see the scientists first.”
Again the image froze.
It took an effort of will for Tavalera to pull his focus away from those steel gray eyes and look at Sister Angelique again.
She said, as if reciting a report, “Twenty-two years ago, several government agencies reported observing an object that entered the solar system moving at a tenth of the speed of light. It slowed significantly as it passed the orbits of Neptune and Uranus, heading inward, toward the Sun.”
“Toward us,” Tavalera murmured.
“It orbited around the planet Saturn several times; then, as it neared the orbit of Jupiter,” Sister Angelique went on, “it disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Radar reflections stopped. Optical telescopes could no longer see it. We checked with several other national governments; they all reported the same. Even Selene, on the Moon.”
“It disappeared.”
“Like turning off a light,” she said, her voice quavering slightly. “For twenty-two years nothing more was seen or heard. The authorities could find nothing, and there were no more messages. It was decided that it was some sort of anomalous body, a comet, perhaps, that broke up from the strain of Jupiter’s gravitational field.”
“But it wasn’t?” Tavalera asked.
“About six months ago we received the message you have just seen. We have been unable to track its source.”
“A spacecraft?” Tavalera wondered. “A stealth craft?”
Ignoring his musing, Sister Angelique went on, “We checked all the files. There is no record of a crewed spacecraft leaving Earth for the stars or any other destination in 1985. Or at any other time. To this day, no one knows how to construct a spacecraft capable of reaching even the nearest stars.”
“He said his name—”
“There is a record for a Dr. Keith Stoner, however. He was an astrophysicist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s research center in Greenbelt, Maryland, working on the Hubble Space Telescope. He died in 1985 in an automobile accident.”
CHAPTER 9
“That’s weird,” said Tavalera.
“It’s . . . unsettling,” Sister Angelique replied.
Despite himself, Tavalera felt intrigued. “Astronomers saw this spacecraft enter the solar system? And then it disappeared?”
“The official explanation is that it was a comet that was observed back then and it broke up as it neared the planet Jupiter.”
“Twenty-two years ago.”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t believe the official explanation,” Tavalera said.
She shook her head ever so slightly. “Calculations have shown that the object never got close enough to Jupiter to cause it to break up.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And now there is this message. It’s too much of a coincidence to think that the two events are not connected.”
“Twenty-two years apart?” Tavalera wondered.
“Even so.”
“Okay,” he said. “So what’re you doing about it?”
Sister Angelique turned her back to the image of Keith Stoner, still frozen on the wall screen, to look directly at Tavalera. “In cooperation with the appropriate international authorities, we have kept the message secret. Even Selene is cooperating with us; they are just as concerned about this as we are, although for different reasons, of course.”
Tavalera asked, “Why’re you wound up about it? It’s a joke. A gag. Gotta be. Some bright wiseguy’s pulling your leg.”
“How could this person produce optical images and radar returns of a spacecraft moving through the outer solar system at a tenth of the speed of light?”
“Whoever rigged this message knew about the comet or whatever it was twenty-two years ago, and he’s using it to yank your chain.”
Angelique shook her head disbelievingly.
Tavalera insisted, “Aw hell, I knew dozens of scientists on the Goddard habitat who could probably fake something like that.”
“Probably?”
“Well . . . maybe. They’re pretty bright people, you know.”
“And why would they try to hoax us?”
Suddenly Tavalera saw the deep pit of a trap ahead of him. But there was an opportunity there, too.
Carefully he replied, “Some of those bright people have been exiled from their homes on Earth. Maybe they’re trying to get even by tying you up in knots.”
Sister Angelique seemed to consider this for a few moments. Then she said, “But if it’s not a hoax, if it actually is a spacecraft from the stars . . .”
“Driven by a guy who’s been dead for more’n a hundred years? Get real.”
“How can he make a spacecraft disappear?”
“Because it wasn’t really a spacecraft, in the first place! You’re falling for a joke.”
“Many people in the New Morality hierarchy feel pretty much as you do.”
“But not you,” Tavalera realized.
Again she shook her head. “This is much too important to dismiss as a joke, Mr. Tavalera. If it’s real, the technology involved in that spacecraft is far beyond our understanding.”
Tavalera had to admit to himself that she could be right. If it’s real, he told himself. Which it isn’t. It can’t be.
“I hadn’t thought about the possibility that this could be a hoax conceived by the dissidents in the Goddard habitat,” said Sister Angelique in a distant, almost wistful voice.
“Or maybe some wiseass here on Earth,” Tavalera suggested.
She gave him a frosty look. “Your vocabulary needs refinement, Mr. Tavalera.”
“Yeah, guess so,” he said a little sheepishly. “Bu
t the point is, you could be tying yourself into a knot over nothing more than some bright guy’s idea of a joke.”
“I wonder,” she murmured.
For several moments she sat in silence at the head of the conference table, her eyes focused far beyond Tavalera’s presence. He began to feel uncomfortable, fidgety.
At last he asked, “So why’ve you dragged me into this? What good can I do for you?”
She stirred as if surprised that he was still in the room with her. “Why, you’ve already made a contribution, Mr. Tavalera. We hadn’t considered the possibility that the Goddard dissidents might be behind this.”
Is she going for it? he wondered. Keep your big mouth shut. Don’t let her see—
“Perhaps we should send someone to Goddard to investigate the possibility,” she mused, her eyes on him.
Tavalera felt his heart leap, but he forced himself to remain silent, hoping his desire didn’t show on his face.
“Would you be willing to go back to Saturn, Mr. Tavalera?”
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
Then Sister Angelique smiled at him. “You want to go back to that habitat, don’t you? You applied for a return flight almost the moment you touched down on Earth, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” he admitted.
“So you’ve invented this idea of a hoax as a means of getting us to allow you to return there?”
“No! I honestly think it’s a possibility. I really do.”
She watched him for several long moments, still smiling, until he began to feel uneasy under her gaze.
“Look,” he said. “I want to go back, sure. But I really think that some of those scientists could have rigged this thing and—”
Sister Angelique raised a long, slim finger to silence him.
“I’ll make a deal with you, Mr. Tavalera. You can call Goddard and speak to the authorities there. Have them investigate the possibility.”