The Hercules Text

by Jack McDevitt

  “You know,” said Rimford, “before the Hercules signal, I’d concluded that we were alone. The argument that a living galaxy would have filled the skies with transmissions seemed very compelling to me. If there were other civilizations, surely there would have been evidence of their existence.”

  Wheeler started turning the meat.

  “And it occurred to me, one night while I was driving through Roanoke, why there might be no evidence.” Rimford got up to see if the potatoes were done. “Is there a correlation between intelligence and compassion?”

  “Yes,” said Harry.

  “No,” said Wheeler. “Or, if there is, it’s a negative one.”

  “Well,” said Rimford, opening his arms to the skies, “that throws out my point.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Any society smart enough to survive its early technological period might discover that even the knowledge of its existence could have deleterious effects on an emerging culture. Who’s to say what such knowledge might do, for example, to the religious foundations of a society?”

  “That’s an old idea,” said Wheeler. “But you’re suggesting we might be listening to the only culture that survived its atomic age without acquiring common sense.”

  “Or compassion,” said Harry. “Baines, you don’t really believe that.”

  He shrugged. “Right now, I’m open to the evidence. But there is something else. We know that the Hercules transmitter is a product of extreme sophistication. What happens if we get a million years’ worth of technology overnight?” Rimford saw that Harry had finished his beer. He opened two cans, and gave him one. “Toward the end of the nineteenth century,” he continued, “some physicists announced that nothing remained to be learned in their discipline. It’s an interesting notion. What would happen to us, to all of us, if that indeed were the case? What, then, would be the point of our existence?”

  Rimford studied the digital clock atop the refrigerator. It was 6:13. “We may be about to discover the true nature of time. Except that we won’t discover it. The Altheans will tell us. I have to admit that I’m not as ecstatic about the Hercules Text as I used to be.”

  “Maybe,” said Wheeler, “this would be a good night to find something else to think about. How about putting a bridge game together?”

  “Thanks,” said Rimford, “but I’ve committed myself to an interview tonight. NBC wants to get several people together to talk about the transmission. They’ve set up a studio downtown.”

  “Be careful what you say,” observed Wheeler sardonically. “How about you, Harry?”

  Harry didn’t much like Friday nights anymore. The prospect of getting through one painlessly was appealing. “Can we get two more?”

  “I know where we can fill out a table,” he said. “There are always a couple of guys at the priory ready for a game.”

  “Six-twenty,” said Rimford. “I suggest we get our steaks and retire to the viewing room to see how the networks have dealt with us.”

  “There has been a second signal.” Holden Bennett’s concerned, magisterial demeanor was both somber and soothing. If anything explained his dominance of television news, it was his ability to couple a sense of crisis with the impression that he himself could see beyond its numbing daily impact into the green upland pastures.

  NASA’s recently adopted logo, a stylized representation of the original Space Telescope, with its energy panels spread like butterfly wings, replaced him on the screen. “In a dramatic press conference this morning at the Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, officials announced that another transmission has been received from the Altheis star system in the Hercules constellation. This time, however, there is an important difference.”

  The logo faded to an aerial shot of the complex. “The first transmission was nothing more than a sequence of numbers, which served only to alert us to the presence of a civilization in the stars. But now, they have actually sent us a message. NASA analysts have already made a start at reading the transmission.” The Space Center gave way to a brilliant, majestically rotating star system. “Cass Woodbury is at Goddard with the story.”

  And so it went.

  In all, the coverage was restrained and almost understated. The network, however, substituted artists’ renderings for the geometrical images. (“The originals wouldn’t have much impact on the small screen,” said Harry.) They reproduced the cubes and triangles and followed up with a ringed sphere whose identity as a world was no longer in doubt. But the final design: someone had sensed that there was where the story was, and the network allowed the image to take shape precisely as it had on the Goddard monitor.

  The effect was chilling, in a way that Harry could not have foreseen. A quick glance at Rimford and Wheeler discounted the thought that it was his imagination. “My God,” said Baines. “What did they do to it?”

  Harry could see no essential difference. The figure was simply clearer and larger. It looked alive.

  The Goddard story overwhelmed the news front for the day. Elsewhere, some Arabs had bombed a hotel in Paris, and another drug scandal was building in pro football.

  Addison McCutcheon closed off his Baltimore newscast with a scathing commentary. “At the conclusion of the press conference today, the government distributed two dozen copies of a part of the transmission they call ‘Data Set One.’ There are one hundred and seven other data sets, of which no mention was made other than that they exist. When he was asked about these, Parkinson said they would be released as they were translated. The translation of that particular piece of double-talk is that the administration intends to withhold this historic story until it decides that we can know about it.

  “We are once again looking at a government that is in the business of deciding what’s good for us.”

  The network announced additional coverage at ten—nine Central.

  When it was over, Wheeler put down his beer can. “That thing,” he said. “It is one of them.”

  The Reverend Rene Sunderland, O. Praem., playing against three no trump, startled Harry early in the evening by discarding a good ace of clubs on the opening lead. Moments later, when he got in with a diamond king, Sunderland trapped Harry’s queen and ten of clubs against his partner’s long suit. Down three.

  It was only the beginning.

  “They cheated,” Harry complained later to Pete Wheeler. “There was no way he could have known. They’re signaling each other. He’s made half a dozen plays where it just wasn’t possible to figure out the lay of the cards.”

  Wheeler and Harry trailed by more than seven thousand points by then. “If this were a Dominican house,” Wheeler replied, “you might have a case. Listen, Harry: Rene is very good. And it doesn’t matter who his partner is. I’ve sat opposite him, and he does the same kind of thing. He always plays as if he can see everybody’s hand.”

  “Then how do you explain it? What does he say?”

  Wheeler smiled. “He claims it’s a result of his devotion to the Virgin.”

  The second half of the evening was no better. Harry watched Sunderland’s partner, a creaky brother with vacuous eyes, for indications of furtive signs. But other than a nervous tic that seemed to occur at random, there was nothing.

  The community room was empty, save for the bridge players, a middle-aged priest reading a newspaper in front of a TV that was playing to no one else, and somebody bent over a jigsaw puzzle. “Everyone clear out for the weekend?” Harry asked idly.

  Sunderland had just completed a small slam. “This is pretty much the entire community,” he replied.

  Wheeler looked up from the score sheet. “Harry, would you like to buy a nice place by the bay?”

  “Is it really up for sale?”

  Sunderland nodded.

  “What’ll happen to you?”

  “Back to the mills, I guess. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have Pete’s education.”

  “Or his talent,” said the brother.

  “That, too. In
any case, this time next year, I expect to be teaching in Philadelphia.”

  “They should send you to Las Vegas,” observed Harry.

  “Pete,” said Sunderland with sudden gravity, “what’s going on at Greenbelt? Are you involved with these radio signals?”

  “Yes,” said Wheeler. “We’re both with the Hercules Project. But there isn’t really much to tell that hasn’t been made public.”

  “There’s actually somebody out there, though?”

  “Yes.” Harry picked up the deck on his left and began to distribute the cards.

  “What do they look like?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Do they look like us?”

  “We don’t know,” said Wheeler. “I doubt it.”

  Toward the end of the evening, Harry and Wheeler rallied somewhat, but it never got respectable.

  Afterward, they walked the clifftops, the priest and the bureaucrat, not talking much, but listening to the sea and the wind. It was cold, and they hunched down into their coats. “It’ll be a pity to lose all this,” said Harry. “Isn’t there any way the order can hold on to it?”

  The moon was low on the water, and when Harry caught the proper angle it vanished behind Wheeler’s tall, spare figure, endowing him with a misty aura. “It’s only real estate,” he said.

  Harry turned away from the bay, letting the wind push at his back. Looming over them, the two manor houses were gloomy and showed only an occasional square of yellow light. The dark forest beyond was in motion, whispering timelessly of other men on other nights. It was a wood that might have stretched to the edge of the planet. “This,” he said, “is exactly the sort of place where I’d expect to find the supernatural.”

  Wheeler laughed. “Rene does that to people,” he said. He pulled up his collar. “Well, whatever the spiritual characteristics of this place, we can’t justify the expense.” He shivered. “Want to start back?”

  They walked silently a few minutes, along the flagstone pathway. At its far end, Harry could see the wooden stairs that led to the lower shelf. “I wanted to thank you, by the way, for the invitation to bring Julie up here last weekend.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Anything we can do to help.”

  They reached the gravel walk, coming on it from a clutch of elms, and cut across into a rear entrance where the warm air felt good. “We had our problems,” he said. “We went walking along the cliff edge and got caught in a cloudburst.” He grinned. “We got drenched.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “We wound up spending half the night in an old pump house.”

  “Yes,” said Wheeler. “I know the place.”

  Harry’s mood lightened. “It’s a good place. It doesn’t look as if anyone’s been in there for twenty years.”

  Wheeler did not reply.

  “We used to talk about how it would be to live on an island, away from everything. And there’s a lot to that. I think if we could somehow shut out the rest of the world—” Harry looked back over his shoulder, but the woods were dark. “Anyhow, for a few hours, I had my island.”

  MONITOR

  You know, friends, yesterday afternoon I was going home after spending a few hours with some of the good folks at our hospital. And I got down as far as the lobby, where I saw a young man I knew. His name doesn’t matter. He’s a fine boy; I’ve known him for many years and his family for many years. As it happens, he had heard I would be there, and something was pressing on him, something he wanted to ask me about.

  Several of his friends were with him, but they hovered in the background, as boys will, pretending they were there for other reasons. I could see that the child was upset, that they were all upset. “Jimmy,” I said to him, “what’s wrong?”

  He looked at his friends, and they all turned away. “Reverend Freeman,” he said, “we’ve been watching the reports from Washington, you know, with the big telescope they have there and the voices they’re hearing from the skies. A lot of people say they shouldn’t be doing that.”

  “Why not?” I asked him.

  And he couldn’t tell me. But I knew what he was trying to say. Some people are afraid of what they might find out there. Jimmy isn’t the first to ask me that type of question, since those scientists in Washington claimed, a couple of years ago, that they had seen the Creation. You don’t hear much about that anymore.

  But I will tell you this, brothers and sisters: I encourage their efforts. I applaud the attempt to listen in on this great universe of ours. I believe that any machine that can bring us closer to His handiwork can only fortify the faith that we’ve protected now for two thousand years. [Applause]

  The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. [More applause]

  I have been asked, “Reverend Freeman, why is the universe so very large?” It is big, you know, far bigger than the scientists who profess to know so much could even have guessed fifty or sixty years ago. And why do you suppose that is? If, as the Gospel makes clear, man is the center of creation, why did the Lord construct a world so large that the scientists cannot even see its edge, however advanced their telescopes?

  When I was a boy, I used to sit out by the barn on summer evenings and watch the stars. And I knew them for what they are: a sign to us of His power and glory. But now I believe I know why He placed them so far apart. He understood the arrogance of those who pretend to seize His secrets and reduce them to numbers and theories. And I say to you that the size of the universe and the huge spaces between the stars and between the galaxies, which are great islands of stars, are a living symbol of His reality and a gentle reminder to us of the distance that exists between us and Him.

  There are some now who have begun to say that the voices whispering out of the skies into those government telescopes are devils. I don’t know about that. I haven’t seen any evidence to support that notion. The skies, after all, belong to God; so I would rather suppose they’re angels’ voices. [Laughter]

  Probably, the creatures we hear will turn out to be very much like ourselves. There is nothing in the Gospel that limits God to a single Creation. So I say to you, brothers and sisters, have no fears for what they might learn in Washington; and do not be concerned with their theories. They are looking at the handiwork of the Almighty, but their vision is limited by their telescopes. We ourselves have perhaps a better instrument.

  —Excerpt from a television address by the Reverend Bobby Freeman. (Transcripts are available without charge from the American Christian Coalition.)

  9

  GEORGE CARDINAL JESPERSON had come to the archdiocese as a conservative in a time of troubles. He’d earned a reputation as a forceful, outspoken champion of the Vatican and the “old” Church. His stand on the nagging issues of priestly celibacy, sexual morality, and the role of women had been brilliantly argued, and had not gone unnoticed in Rome. His great chance had come in the clash with Peter Leesenbarger, the German reform theologian, on the question of the authority of the magisterium. Leesenbarger had argued for the preeminence of individual conscience over the accumulated wisdom of the Church; and his runaway best-seller, Upon This Rock, had for a time threatened a second revolution among the American faithful.

  While orthodox churchmen argued that the book should be formally condemned, the Pope had wisely (in Cardinal Jesperson’s view) satisfied himself by directing that its imprimatur be withheld. And the Cardinal, carefully avoiding any reference to Upon This Rock, had contributed to the defense of the papal decision with a brilliant series of closely reasoned essays that were picked up even by those elements of the Catholic press that were traditionally hostile to the Vatican. Leesenbarger had responded in the columns of the National Catholic Reporter, which became the arena for an extended series of broadsides by both combatants. In the end, Jesperson had emerged a clear victor to all but the most partisan observers. He was declared the heir apparent to John Henry Newman, with Leesenbarger cast in the role of the unfortunate Kin
gsley.

  Unlike most other American cardinals, who were preoccupied with survival in an age of dwindling revenues and influence, Jesperson recognized early that the way to defend the faith in the United States had nothing to do with long-term loans, retrenchment, or conning the faithful with the guitars and spurious theology of Vatican II. He took the offensive. “We’re about Christ,” he told his priests’ council. “We have the New Testament, we have strong family ties, we have God on our altars. The issues that divide us are not trivial, but they are a question of means rather than ends…” But he had shocked his supporters in Rome by settling back to listen sympathetically to those who disagreed.

  And in that way he had, to a remarkable extent, defused the liberal movement within the American Church. To many of its leaders he had seemed, and still seemed, their strongest ally.

  But on this Friday evening, while the reports from Goddard continued to reverberate across the land, he faced a new kind of problem. So he gathered his staff, Dupre and Cox and Barnegat, and retired with them into the interior of the chancery. “Gentlemen,” he said, sinking into a lush leather chair, “we need to think about what’s coming. And we need to prepare our people so they don’t get any rude shocks.

  “Now, what is coming, I think, is a severe test of the faith. Certainly unlike any other in our time. We should consider, first, what the dangers are; second, how we may expect our people to react; and third, what approach we should take in order to limit the damage.”

  Philip Dupre was, by a considerable margin, the oldest man in the room. He was the Cardinal’s touchstone, the composer of the provocative comment that inevitably changed the angle of light. Generally lacking in creativity, he nevertheless had a good ear for nonsense, whether originating from the Cardinal or elsewhere. “I think you’re overstating the case, George,” he said. “There’s no real connection between the Goddard business and us.”

  Jack Cox struck a long wooden match and lit his pipe. He was the comptroller, a prudent investor, but a man who, in the Cardinal’s view, tended to think of salvation as a series of puts and calls. “Phil’s right,” he said. “Still, there’s ground for awkward questions.”