The Hercules Text

by Jack McDevitt

  “There’s nothing more to say,” he protested. “You know as much as we do now. Anyway, I’m not an investigator. All I do is make out the paychecks.”

  “What about the charge,” asked McCutcheon pointedly, “leveled this evening by Pappadopoulis that the government kept this quiet hoping to gain a military advantage from it?”

  Harry hadn’t heard that one before. “Who’s Pappadopoulis?”

  McCutcheon took on a condescending tone. “He won the Pulitzer a few years ago for a book on Bertrand Russell. He’s also the chairman of the philosophy department at Cambridge, and he had some very unkind things to say about you earlier this evening.”

  “About me?”

  “Well, not you, per se. But about the manner in which Goddard caved in to the politicians. Would you care to comment?”

  Harry was uncomfortably aware of the cameras and lights. He heard a door open across the street and got the impression that a crowd was gathering at the foot of his driveway. “No,” he said. “Pappadopoulis is entitled to his opinion. But we never got to a point where we were talking about military considerations.” Then, mumbling apologies, he pushed his way inside and closed the door.

  The phone was ringing.

  It was Phil Cavanaugh, an astronomer who had worked occasionally on contract at Goddard. He was outraged. “I can understand that you might not have wanted to put out any interpretations, Harry,” he said, his voice shaking, “but withholding the fact of the transmission was unconscionable. I know it wouldn’t have been your decision, but I wish somebody there—you, Gambini, somebody—had had the guts to tell Hurley what NASA’s responsibilities are!”

  Later, Gambini phoned. “I’m in a motel,” he said. “And judging from how hard it’s been to get through to you, I guess you’ve been having the same sort of problem I have. I think I’ve been excoriated by every major scientific figure in the country. Even the philosophers and theologians are after me.” His snarl dissolved briefly into a chuckle. “I’ve been referring them all to Rosenbloom.

  “Listen, Harry, I wanted to let you know where I am in case anything important comes up…”

  At a quarter to nine, Julie phoned. “Harry, I’ve seen the news.” Her voice was tentative, and he understood that this was a difficult call for her to make. “I’m happy for you,” she said. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.” Harry tried not to sound hostile.

  “They’ll be making you Director.”

  “I suppose.”

  Harry could see more lights in the driveway. “Tommy wants to talk to you,” she said.

  “Put him on.” Somebody knocked at the door.

  “Dad.” The boy’s voice quavered with excitement. “I saw you on television.”

  Harry laughed and the boy giggled, and Harry felt the strain of it through the phone. They talked about the Altheans and Tommy’s basketball team. “We’ve got a game tomorrow morning,” he said.

  When she got back on, Julie was subdued. “Things must be very exciting at work,” she said.

  “Yes.” Harry couldn’t get the stiffness out of his tone, and he wanted nothing so much as to sound natural. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Well,” she said, after another long hesitation, “I just wanted to say hello.”

  “Okay.” The knocking at the door became insistent.

  “It sounds like you have visitors.”

  “It’s been bad all night. TV crews and reporters. There’s been a small crowd in front of the house most of the evening. Gambini’s having trouble, too. He’s off hiding in a motel somewhere.”

  “You should do the same, Harry.”

  He paused, caught his breath, and felt his pulse begin to quicken. “I don’t like motels.” He squeezed the words out. “Listen, I have to go: I have to do something about those people outside.”

  “Why don’t you lock up and get out? Seriously, Harry.”

  He caught an invitation in the words; but he no longer trusted his judgment where she was concerned. “Julie,” he said, “I think a celebration’s in order. Would you join me for a drink?”

  “Harry, I’d like to, I really would—” She sounded doubtful, and he realized she wanted to be asked again. But he by God didn’t want to do it!

  “No strings,” he said finally. He was having trouble breathing. “A lot’s been happening, and I need someone I can talk with.”

  She laughed, the deep burgundy sound that he knew so well from better days. “Okay,” she said. “One-night stand. Where will we go?”

  “Leave that to me,” he said. “I’ll pick you up in an hour.”

  He had trouble getting through to Wheeler, who was obviously also deluged with phone calls that evening. In the end, he had to call a mutual friend in Princeton and send him over to the priest’s apartment. When the Norbertine called back, Harry explained what he wanted. “Try to stay off the phone,” Wheeler said. “I’ll set it up and get back to you. It should only take a few minutes. I’ll ring once and call again.”

  Harry used the time to shower and change. The phone rang several times. But Harry let it go until he heard Wheeler’s signal. “It’s okay,” the priest said. “There are two drainpipes behind the lodge. They’ll leave the keys in the one on the south side. You’ll need your own towels and stuff. They’ll put breakfast in the refrigerator.”

  “Pete, I owe you.”

  “Sure. Good luck.”

  Harry made it a point to be a few minutes late. Ellen opened the door and asked about him in an earnest voice that suggested she, too, had high hopes for the evening.

  Julie: she entered from the back of the house, in white and green. Her heels took her up to about six-three; she’d often joked with people that she’d married Harry principally because there was no one else with whom she could dress properly.

  In that moment, crowded with hesitation and regret, she was incredibly lovely. Her lips compressed briefly with confusion, and then she broke into a wide smile. “Hello, Harry,” she said.

  On the highway, they talked freely. It was as if they were old friends again, facing a common problem. The aura of tension and anger that had infected the weeks since her departure had dissipated. (Though Harry knew it would return when the interlude ended.)

  “Living with Ellen’s not bad,” she said. “But I’d prefer to be on my own.”

  “I sleep most nights in the office,” Harry admitted.

  “Some things never change.”

  Harry bristled. “I didn’t sleep over that often.”

  “Okay,” she said, “Let’s not get into it tonight.”

  They traveled the expressway east toward Annapolis. Harry turned south on Route 2 and pulled in at the Anchorage, near Waynesville. They’d been there before, but it had been a long time ago.

  The drinks warmed them. “You should be well on your way now, Harry,” she said. “You were right there with Hurley.”

  “I don’t think the President’s sure who I am. They were supposed to introduce me along with Rosenbloom and Ed. But I guess something happened. Either Hurley forgot my name, or he decided three’s too many. Hard to say. But it can’t hurt, I suppose. The only thing I worry about now is the possibility that someone’ll come up with an alternative explanation for the signal. If that happens, then I get to be one of the people who made the President look dumb.”

  The Anchorage was a fortunate choice. Besides being located on the road to Basil Point, it turned out to have a moody piano player and bayberry candles in smoky globes.

  Ed Gambini had checked in at the Hyattsville Ramada under an assumed name. He hated motels because they never gave you enough pillows and they always looked so distraught when you asked for more. So he lay in bed propped up on two, with the top one folded over, watching the specials on the news conference. All the major networks had run them, and he’d switched back and forth. On the whole, the coverage was intelligent. They’d stressed the proper facts and asked the right questions. And they’d seen throu
gh the administration’s effort to pretend that the incident was over.

  Later he watched an argument (he hesitated to call it a debate) between “Backwoods” Bobby Freeman, television preacher and founder of the American Christian Coalition, and Senator Dorothy Pemmer, Democrat of Pennsylvania, on the Coalition’s efforts to require a statement of religious belief from all candidates for federal office.

  The phone rang, and Gambini turned down the sound.

  It was Majeski. “Ed,” he said, “Mel’s on the line. Is it okay to give him your number?”

  It was the call that Gambini feared. “Yes,” he said without hesitation, and hung up.

  Mel Jablonski was an astronomer from UNH. More than that, he was a lifelong friend. Gambini had met him at the University of California, when they had both been undergraduates. They’d come a long way since then, but they’d kept in touch. And when Gambini had suffered his breakdown, it had been Mel who’d come forward, held off the wolves who wanted Gambini’s job, and offered time and money. “Ed?” The familiar voice sounded tired and far away.

  “How are you, Mel?”

  “Not bad. You’re a hard man to get through to.”

  “I suppose. It’s been a difficult day.”

  “Yes,” Jablonski said. “I would think so.”

  Gambini searched for something to say.

  “Did you really hear that signal back in September?” asked Jablonski.

  “Yes.”

  “Ed,” he said, sadly, “you are a son of a bitch.”

  At about the time Harry and Julie were turning off the expressway onto Route 2, Gambini wandered down to the bar. It was filled to capacity, and it was loud. He took a manhattan out onto one of several adjoining terraces.

  The evening was warm, the first decent weather Washington had had in a month. A clear sky curved over the nation’s capital. Hercules was on the horizon east of Vega, his war club held aloft in a threatening gesture.

  The home of life.

  In the west, he could see summer lightning.

  A middle-aged couple had followed him out. Silhouetted against the lights of the city, they were discussing in ponderous detail a recalcitrant teenaged son.

  Gambini wondered whether there would be a second signal. It was a doubt that he had been careful not to express to anyone. But even if no further communication came, the essential question was answered: we were not alone! Now we knew it had happened elsewhere. And the details of that other event and those other beings, their history, their technology, their experience of the universe, were of enormous interest. But for all that, they were only details and secondary to the central fact of their existence.

  Gambini raised his glass in the general direction of the constellation.

  The critical moment, for Harry, came when he edged off the Anchorage parking lot and signaled his intentions for the evening by turning south onto Route 2. Julie stiffened slightly, but said nothing. He risked a glance at her: she was looking straight ahead. Her hands were folded on her lap, and her face showed no emotion. If he knew her at all, she had a toothbrush in her handbag, but was nevertheless only now making up her mind.

  They talked about the Altheans, whether there was any reasonable likelihood that some remnant of them had survived; about Julie’s newest assignment, assisting in the design of a circular steel and glass annex of the Corn Exchange; and about how their lives had changed. The latter was a subject both had tried to avoid, but it was there, and maybe it needed talking out. Harry was surprised to learn that his wife was also not very happy, that she was lonely, and that she was not optimistic about her future. Nevertheless, through it all, she gave him no reason to suspect that she regretted having left him. “It’ll work out,” she told him. “It’ll work out for both of us.” And then she corrected herself. “All three of us.”

  Storm clouds were piling up in the west.

  Harry almost missed his turn. There was little to mark the road that Wheeler had directed him to watch for. It plunged left at a sharp angle into the trees. He passed an ancient, crumbling stone house and began a long, winding climb uphill.

  “Harry,” Julie said, “where are we going?” Her voice had the whispery quality of a shallow stream.

  This is where I take all my women now, he thought. And he damned himself for not having the courage to say it. “The property up here belongs to Pete Wheeler’s order. It has,” he said lamely, “a magnificent view of the Chesapeake.”

  They came to a pair of gates in a rock wall, on which hung a metal sign announcing that they had arrived at Saint Norbert’s Priory. Inside the wall, the road turned to gravel, and the trees fell away. They emerged beneath a pair of manor houses set on the lip of the rise that extended back down to Route 2.

  The buildings were similar in mood, possessing an idyllic geometry of stone and stained glass, cupola and portico. One had a widow’s walk. Behind them, and far down, lay the waters of the Chesapeake.

  “We’re not going in there?” she asked. “Harry, for God’s sake, this is a monastery.” She barely suppressed a giggle.

  “Not in there,” he said. The road arced out to an overlook, and dipped back into a screen of elms. Just inside the trees, there were lights. “There’s where we’re going,” he said, pointing ahead. Beyond the parking area, the land dipped sharply, so that his headlights swept over the tops of a cluster of trees. He shut them off.

  She didn’t move, and he felt the silence filling the car. “Wheeler!” she breathed. “Isn’t he a Norbertine?”

  “I think so,” Harry said guiltily.

  “He helped you set this up, didn’t he?”

  He nodded.

  “Sex in the seminary. I guess nothing’s sacred.” She turned serious: “Harry, I’m touched that you’ve gone to so much trouble, that you’d even want me now, after what’s happened. I’ll stay here with you tonight, and maybe we can make it like it used to be. But only for an evening. That’s understood: nothing has changed.”

  For a glorious, defiant moment, Harry considered laughing at her, packing her back down the road, and taking her home. But he only nodded passively and led her into a firelit front room. Someone had left two wineglasses and a couple of bottles of Bordeaux on a coffee table.

  “Very nice,” she said, standing on a thick hearth rug, “considering you pulled it off with so little warning.” Wheeler had been better than his word: bacon, eggs, potatoes, and orange juice were in the refrigerator; beds were made up; more wine was in the pantry, and some scotch; and, despite Pete’s admonition, there were plenty of towels.

  They reminisced a bit, and, tentatively, Harry kissed her.

  She tasted good, and her breath was warm against his throat. Nevertheless, there was something mechanical in the act. “A long time,” said Harry.

  Gently, Julie disentangled herself. “It’s warm in here. Let’s go look at the bay.”

  The lodge was situated at the peak of a ridge. On the downhill side, away from the manor houses, the slope was rocky and steep and devoid of trees. A footpath ran along the rim out to the clifftop, where it joined a flagstone walk overlooking the Chesapeake. Here, if one wished to turn away from the manor houses, it was necessary to descend the slope by a wooden stairway.

  They paused at the intersection of footpath and gravel walk. The lights of the manor houses were bright in the dark waters below. “Wheeler’s a genius,” she said, as they stood looking down. “He’s in the wrong business.” A brightly lit freighter was passing slowly south, toward the Atlantic, and its wake widened and broke in long luminous waves across the narrow rocky beach directly below. There were no stars, though Harry was not aware of that until he heard thunder.

  They descended the stairway. The long, jagged ridge that marked the western perimeter of the priory grounds appeared to be the result of an ancient cataclysm. Near the cliff, the more gradual slope of the hills had given way to vertical sheets of basalt. The forest reasserted itself and crowded them against the promontory edge.

&
nbsp; Harry noticed a small shack in the woods. It was dilapidated, and the windows were dark. As they drew nearer, he discerned something large and round crouching behind the structure. He peered at it, trying to make out what it was, and perhaps, like a child, watching for a sign of movement.

  “It’s a pump house, I think,” said Julie. “Or it was. There should be an old road back in there somewhere. This must all have been part of a single estate at one time.” Harry gradually recognized the lines of a storage tank. Two tanks. “They’d have used it back in the twenties to supply water to the main buildings, before they ran the county supply, up here.”

  “Why do you think there’s a road?”

  “Because the water would have been trucked in.”

  There was a smell of ozone in the air. Behind them, through the trees and out over the bay, he could see a curtain of falling rain approaching. “Julie,” he said, “we should start back.”

  “In a minute.” The walkway took them onto an outcropping, which supported a stone bench, an iron fence, and an antique lamppost. “How lovely,” she said. “That’s an oil lamp, I think.”

  Harry looked out at the vast dark bay. “It must have been visible a long distance.”

  “I wonder,” said Julie, “if anyone out there remembers when there was a light on this point.” She pressed her hand against the dark metal. “Harry, where is it? The source of the signal?” She was looking up.

  “There,” he said, pointing out near the horizon. The constellation didn’t look much like a man with a club, but then, Harry had never been able to make out pictures in the sky anyhow. “See the four stars forming a kind of box? That’s Hercules’s head. The pulsar is on the right side of the box, about halfway between the upper and lower stars.”

  “Harry,” she said, “I’m proud of you.”

  Lightning flickered overhead, and rain hissed suddenly into the trees. “Come on,” said Harry, pulling her back the way they’d come. “We’re going to get drenched.”