The Hercules Text

by Jack McDevitt

  FIRST CONTACT

  “I understand Hoffer informed you that the signal stopped altogether last night.”

  “Yes. That’s why I came in.”

  “It was down for precisely four hours, seventeen minutes, forty-three seconds.”

  “Is that significant?”

  Gambini smiled. “Multiply it by sixteen, and you get Beta’s orbital period.” He watched Harry expectantly and was clearly disappointed at his lack of response. “Harry,” he said, “that’s no coincidence. The shutdown was designed to attract attention. Designed, Harry. And the duration of the shutdown was intended to demonstrate intelligent control.” Gambini’s eyes glittered. His lips rolled back to reveal his teeth. “Harry,” he said, “it’s the LGM signal! It’s happened!”

  Harry shifted his weight uncomfortably. LGM meant little green man…

  This book is an Ace Science

  Fiction original edition, and

  has never been previously

  published.

  THE HERCULES TEXT

  An Ace Science Fiction Book/published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace Science Fiction edition/November 1986

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1986 by Jack McDevitt.

  Introduction copyright © 1986 by Terry Carr.

  Cover art by Earl Keleny.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,

  by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

  For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

  ISBN: 0-441-37367-4

  Ace Science Fiction Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am indebted for the technical assistance of Bob Neustadt, who knows about computers; and Mark Giampapa, of the National Optical Observatory, who knows about stars. Miscarriages of their ideas should be laid at my door.

  For John and Elizabeth McDevítt

  with love

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  INTRODUCTION

  by Terry Carr

  Every publishing venture is a gamble for a lot of people. Writers decide on plots, themes, and characters in hope that their resulting novels will be appealing enough to keep food on their families’ tables for a while; editors buy books hoping that sales will be high enough to keep them from being fired the next time their companies are forced into the game of editorial musical chairs; publishers print, package, and offer books for sale, gambling that enough people will buy them to net the profit to keep them in business; and readers buy books hoping they’ll be entertained.

  The original Ace Science Fiction Specials series was published from 1968 till 1971, when I left New York City and moved to California. The thirty-seven Specials in that original series sold well and won two Nebula Awards, the Hugo Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award; but when Ace hired me to edit a new series of Specials in 1984, more than a dozen years had passed and the science fiction readership had changed considerably. Could this new series of science-fiction-novels-for-adult-readers be successful enough to justify its costs? After all, we’d be publishing books by first novelists and paying those writers more money than anyone else did; though the authors had established their literary and imaginative credentials with excellent short stories and novelettes, most buyers of science fiction novels didn’t read the sf magazines and wouldn’t be familiar with their by-lines.

  So the New Ace Science Fiction Specials series was a larger-than-usual gamble for everybody in 1984—especially for the folks at Ace. I take this opportunity to thank them for their faith in the enterprise, which included a belief that many science fiction readers would be looking for new ideas and new approaches in the books they bought and that such readers would choose books for purchase because of their honest merits. That’s the way publishing ideally works, after all, but in truth it doesn’t always.

  The Ace Science Fiction Specials, both in their original late-sixties version and their early-eighties revival, have been devoted to novels that in most cases went beyond anything published before. Such innovation—even in the science fiction field, which prides itself on new ideas—has always been unusual and has ordinarily gone unrewarded, either by substantial sales or by awards. The New Ace SF Specials published in 1984 and 1985 managed to break this pattern, for they created quite a stir in the genre. Not only did those novels sell very well but they also received glowing reviews, and most of them were nominated for awards. William Gibson’s Neuromancer, a first novel by an author who had published fewer than a dozen short stories, swept most of the major ones, including the Nebula, the Hugo, and the Philip K. Dick Memorial Awards.

  Now, with The Hercules Text by Jack McDevitt, we continue the New Ace SF Specials series, and you can expect to see further Specials every few months in the future. The bases for the books’ selection remain the same: each is a first novel that impressed me as outstanding; and often, probably because they are first novels, they bring to the sf genre new ideas and new approaches in writing them. (This doesn’t mean these books are “experimental” science fiction. As a reader of sf for nearly forty years, I welcome literary experimentation, but I’m aware that most experiments in writing or any other endeavor prove to be failures; when experiments succeed, they’re hailed as innovations. It’s the latter for which I look in choosing these books.)

  The Hercules Text certainly isn’t experimental in its basic plot, which involves a project to search for messages from alien intelligences in the far reaches of space, and the detection of such messages from a very strange world in the Hercules constellation. In its basics, this novel is similar to many that have gone before, including most recently Carl Sagan’s bestseller Contact (though McDevitt wrote his book before Contact was published). But McDevitt adds quite a lot to what has gone before: he’s an excellent fiction writer (one of his first short stories, “Cryptic,” was nominated for the Nebula Award a couple of years ago) who brings to this book a smooth, matter-of-fact style and the depth of characterization essential to a first-rate novel; in addition, though he’s done his homework and gives us fascinating details about how scientists work and interact, his novel is concerned not merely with science but rather with the moral implications of the scientific discoveries he describes.

  Call this book a thoughtful extrapolation of our future and its meaning for humanity, if you must label it. But in truth the story McDevitt tells here transcends such categorizations: yes, this is a serious novel and yes, it has excellent characterizations and a strong theme; but at heart The Hercules Text is a novel written to be enjoyed. I’m convinced that you’ll enjoy it very much, and I’m delighted to present it to you.

  1

  HARRY CARMICHAEL SNEEZED. His eyes were red, his nose was running, and his head ached. It was mid-September, and the air was full of pollen from ragweed, goosefoot, and thistle. He’d already taken his medication for the day, which seemed to accomplish little other than to make him drowsy.
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  Through the beveled stained-glass windows of the William Tell, he watched the Daiomoto Comet. It was now little more than a bright smudge, wedged in the bare hard branches of a cluster of elms lining the parking lot. Its cool unfocused light was not unlike that reflected in Julie’s green eyes, which seemed preoccupied, on that night, with the long, graceful stem of a wineglass. She’d abandoned all attempts to keep the conversation going, and now sat frozen in a desperate solicitude. She felt sorry for Harry. Years from now, Harry understood, he would look back on this evening, remember this moment, recall the eyes and the comet and the packed shelves of old textbooks that, in the gloomily illuminated interior, were intended to create atmosphere. He would recall his anger and the terrible sense of impending loss and the numbing knowledge of helplessness. But most of all, it would be her sympathy that would sear his soul.

  Comets and bad luck: it was an appropriate sky. Daiomoto would be back in twenty-two hundred years, but it was coming apart. The analysts were predicting that, on its next visit, or the one after that, it would be only a shower of rock and ice. Like Harry.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “It’s not anything you’ve done, Harry.”

  Of course not. What accusation could she bring against faithful old Harry, who’d taken his vows seriously, who could always be counted on to do the decent thing, and who’d been a reliable provider? Other than perhaps that he’d loved her too deeply.

  He’d known it was coming. The change in her attitude toward him had been gradual but constant. The things they’d once laughed over became minor irritants, and the irritants scraped at their lives until she came to resent even his presence.

  And so it had come to this: two strangers carefully keeping a small round table between them while she inserted shining utensils like surgeon’s tools into beef that was a little too raw and assured him it wasn’t his fault.

  “I just need some time to myself, Harry. To think things over a bit. I’m tired of doing the same things, in the same way, every day.” I’m tired of you, she was saying, finally, with the oblique words and the compassion that peeled away his protective anger like a thin slice of meat. She put the glass down and looked at him, for the first time, it might have been, during the entire evening. And she smiled: it was the puckish good-natured grin that she traditionally used when she’d run the car into a ditch or bounced a few checks. My God, he wondered, how could he ever manage without her?

  “The play wasn’t so good either, was it?” he asked dryly.

  “No,” she said unsteadily, “I didn’t really care much for it.”

  “Maybe we’ve seen too many shows by local playwrights.” They’d spent the evening watching a dreary mystery-comedy performed by a repertory company in an old church in Bellwether, although Harry could hardly be accused of having made an effort to follow the proceedings. Fearful of what was coming later, he’d spent the time rehearsing his own lines, trying to foresee and prepare for all eventualities. He’d have done better to watch the show.

  The final irony was that there were season tickets in his pocket.

  She surprised him by reaching across the table to take his hand.

  His passion for her was unique in his life, unlike in kind any other addiction he had known before or, he suspected, would know again. The passing years had not dimmed it; had, in fact, seeded it with the shared experiences of almost a decade, had so entwined their lives that, Harry believed, no emotional separation was possible.

  He took off his glasses, folded them deliberately, and pushed them down into their case. His vision was poor without them. It was an act she could not misinterpret.

  Bits and pieces of talk drifted from the next table: two people slightly drunk, their voices rising, quarreled over money and relatives. A handsome young waiter, a college kid probably, hovered in the background, his red sash insolently snug round a trim waist. His name was Frank: odd that Harry should remember that, as though the detail were important. He hurried forward every few minutes, refilling their coffee cups. Near the end, he inquired whether the meal had been satisfactory.

  It was hard now to remember when things had been different, before the laughter had ended and the silent invitations, which once had passed so easily between them, stopped. “I just don’t think we’re a good match anymore. We always seem to be angry with each other. We don’t talk…” She looked squarely at him. Harry was staring past her shoulder into the dark upper tier of the room, with an expression that he hoped suggested his sense of dignified outrage. “Did you know Tommy wrote an essay about you and that goddam comet last week? No?

  “Harry,” she continued, “I don’t exactly know how to say this. But do you think, do you really believe, that if anything happened to Tommy, or to me, that you’d miss us? Or that you’d even know we were gone?” Her voice caught, and she pushed the plate away and stared down into her lap. “Please pay the bill and let’s get out of here.”

  “It isn’t true,” he said, looking for Frank the waiter, who was gone. He fumbled for a fifty, dropped it on the table, and stood up. Julie slowly pulled her sweater around her shoulders and, Harry trailing, walked between the tables and out the door.

  Tommy’s comet hung over the parking lot, splotchy in the September sky, its long tail splayed across a dozen constellations. Last time through, it might have been seen by Socrates. The data banks at Goddard were loaded with the details of its composition, the ratios of methane to cyanogen and mass to velocity, of orbital inclination and eccentricity. Nothing exciting that he had been able to see, but Harry was only a layman, not easily aroused by frozen gas. Donner and the others, however, had greeted the incoming telemetry with near ecstasy.

  There was a premature chill in the air, not immediately evident perhaps because no wind blew. She stood on the gravel, waiting for him to unlock her door. “Julie,” he said, “ten years is a long time to just throw away.”

  “I know,” she said.

  Harry took the Farragut Road home. Usually, he would have used Route 214, and they’d have stopped at Muncie’s for a drink, or possibly even gone over to the Red Limit in Greenbelt.

  But not tonight. Painfully, groping for words that would not come, he guided the Chrysler down the two-lane blacktop, through forests of elm and little leaf linden. The road curved and dipped past shadowy barns and ancient farmhouses. It was the kind of highway Harry liked. Julie preferred expressways, and maybe therein lay the difference between them.

  A tractor-trailer moved up behind, watched its chance, and hammered by in a spasm of dust and leaves. When it had gone, its red lights faded to dim stars blinking between distant trees, Harry hunched forward, almost resting his chin on the steering wheel. Moon and comet rode high over the trees to his left. They would set at about the same time. (Last night, at Goddard, the Daiomoto team had celebrated, Donner buying, but Harry, his thoughts locked on Julie, had gone home early.)

  “What did Tommy say about the comet?” he asked.

  “That you’d sent a rocket out there and were bringing a piece of it back. And he promised to take the piece in to show everybody.” She smiled. He guessed that it took an effort.

  “It wasn’t our responsibility,” he said. “Houston ran the rendezvous program.”

  He felt the sudden stillness, and sneezed into it. “Do you think,” she asked, “he cares about the administrative details?”

  The old Kindlebride farm lay cold and abandoned in the moonlight. Three or four pickups and a battered Ford were scattered across its overgrown front yard. “So where do we go from here?”

  There was a long silence that neither of them knew quite how to handle. “Probably,” she said, “it would be a good idea if I went to live with Ellen for a while.”

  “What about Tommy?”

  She was looking in her bag for something, a Kleenex. She snapped the bag shut and dabbed at her eyes. “Do you think you could find time for him, Harry?”

  The highway went into a long S-curve, bounced
across two sets of railroad tracks, and dipped into a tangled forest. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

  She started to speak, but her voice betrayed her, and she only shook her head, and stared stonily through the windshield.

  They passed through Hopkinsville, barely more than a few houses and a hardware store. “Is there somebody else? Someone I don’t know about?”

  Her eyelids squeezed shut. “No, it’s nothing like that. I just don’t want to be married anymore.” Her purse slid off her lap onto the floor, and when she retrieved it, Harry saw that her knuckles were white.

  Bolingbrook Road was thick with leaves. He rolled over them with a vague sense of satisfaction. McGorman’s garage, third in from the corner, was brightly lit, and the loud rasp of his power saw split the night air. It was a ritual for McGorman, the Saturday night woodworking. And for Harry it was an energetic island of familiarity in a world grown slippery.

  He pulled into his driveway. Julie opened her door, climbed easily out, but hesitated. She was tall, a six-footer, maybe two inches more in heels. They made a hell of a couple, people had said: a mating of giants. But Harry was painfully aware of the contrast between his wife’s well-oiled coordination and his own general clumsiness.

  “Harry,” she said, with a hint of steel in her voice, “I’ve never cheated on you.”

  “Good.” He walked by her and rammed his key into the lock. “Glad to hear it.”

  The baby-sitter was Julie’s cousin, Ellen Crossway. She was propped comfortably in front of a flickering TV, a novel open on her lap, a cup of coffee near her right hand. “How was the show?” she asked, with the same smile Julie had shown him at the William Tell.

  “A disaster,” said Harry. He did not trust his voice to say more.

  Julie hung her cardigan in the closet. “They did all the obvious gags. And the mystery wasn’t exactly a puzzle.”

  Harry liked Ellen. She might have been a second attempt to create a Julie: not quite so tall, not quite so lovely, not nearly so intense. The result was by no means unsatisfactory. Harry occasionally wondered how things might have gone had he met Ellen first; but he had no doubt that he would, in time, have betrayed her for her spectacular cousin.