The Hercules Text

by Jack McDevitt

  “It Could Have Blown,” Says Phila Mayor

  Hurley Accepts Responsibility

  DEATH PENALTY SOUGHT FOR NUCLEAR TERRORISM

  MISSILE REPORTED FIRED AT TWA FLIGHT OVER O’HARE

  FAA Investigating; 166 on Plane

  MERCHANTS EXPECT BANNER CHRISTMAS SEASON

  Major Retailers Lead Dow Jones Surge

  ANACONDA HAS BEEN MARRIED 2 YEARS

  Popular Rock Star Is Insurance Agent’s Spouse

  GENEVA TALKS STALLED AGAIN;

  TAIMANOV BLASTS U.S.

  Pope Pleads for Agreement

  BRITAIN IS BROKE

  Cleary Appeals for Aid to Meet Debts

  Bankers Seek Formula

  France May Be Next, Warns Goulet

  MARYANNE FOUND WEDGED IN WELL

  Rescue Workers Digging Second Shaft; Rain Continues

  10

  THOUGH ED GAMBINI made a few of the daily reports to the White House, the chore gradually became Harry’s responsibility. The project manager assigned Majeski to put together a summary each evening, which Harry found on his desk in the morning. He didn’t resist the procedure: Gambini was absorbed by events and clearly resented having to take time out to talk to a politician.

  Not that Harry actually got to deliver his reports to the President. In the beginning, Hurley himself had responded to the calls, but as the weeks passed and Christmas approached, the President was replaced more and more frequently by young, authoritative men who listened, acknowledged, and hung up.

  The reports were, of course, couched in general terms. When, occasionally, a matter rose that Harry thought might be considered sensitive, he took Gambini’s memorandum personally to the White House. And of course, like the good bureaucrat he was, he saw to it that Quint Rosenbloom routinely received a copy of everything.

  There was a growing sense of exhilaration about it all. Harry enjoyed his access to the topmost levels of government, where he was now known by his first name. It was a heady experience for a minor federal employee. If things went well, if he could avoid blunders and pinpoint the type of information that Hurley needed, he could probably reap an agency directorship. Consequently, he invested a disproportionate amount of his time in the Hercules Project. To his credit, Gambini never grew impatient with his questions. (Although Harry realized that the idealist in Gambini would never have looked for an ulterior motive.) And Harry found himself swept up in the excitement of the hunt for the elusive nature of the Altheans.

  The work of establishing the “language” of the transmissions was proceeding slowly and with moderate success. That it was proceeding at all, Rimford told Harry, considering the enormous complexity of the problems involved, was a tribute to Cord Majeski and his team of mathematicians.

  Harry brought his son out to Goddard on his visiting day. There’d been a delay at home because the insulin supply had run low and Harry had to take the boy to the People’s drugstore. That was always a depressing experience, rendered even more so by Tommy’s good-natured resignation to his disease.

  The boy loved to ride around at the Space Center, looking at dish antennas and communications equipment and satellite models. But in the end, he’d been most interested in the duck pond. There were still seven or eight mallards floating around on the cold water. Harry wondered when they would leave.

  Tommy was tall for his age, with his mother’s elegant features and Harry’s Oversized feet. (“That’ll change as he gets older,” Julie had reassured him.) The ducks knew about kids, and they crowded around him before he had a chance to get his bag of popcorn open. They were quite tame, of course, and when Tommy proved a little too slow, they tried to snatch the food from his hand. Tommy giggled and retreated.

  Harry, watching from a distance, recalled all the evenings he’d worked late, the weekends given to one project or another. The government had recognized his efforts with scrolls and cash awards, and last year he’d been inducted into the Senior Executive Service. Not bad, on the whole. But a tally of some sort was mounting, with his scrolls and cash on one side. And on the other?

  Tommy among the ducks.

  And Julie in the pump house.

  Later, they had dinner and went to a movie. It was a bland science-fiction film with a group of astronaut-archaeologists trapped in an ancient ruin on another world by a killer alien. The effects were good, but the dialogue was wooden and the characters unbelievable. And anyhow, Harry was near the end of his tolerance with aliens.

  Julie had moved into a condo in Silver Spring. When Harry returned Tommy Sunday evening, she took a few minutes to show him through the unit. It looked expensive, with hardwood appointments and central vacuuming and a scattering of antiques.

  But she seemed dispirited, and his tour was, at best, a mechanical display of rooms and knickknacks.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, when they stood finally alone on her patio, looking north on Georgia Avenue from the fourth floor. It was cold.

  “They’ve increased Tommy’s dosage,” she said. “His circulation hasn’t been so good. That’s why he needed more this morning.”

  “He didn’t say anything to me,” said Harry.

  “He doesn’t like to talk about it. It scares him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, Harry, we’re all sorry.” She closed her eyes, but tears ran down her cheeks. “He’s taking two shots now.” She’d thrown a white woolen sweater over her shoulders. Below, a police car approached Spring Street, its siren loud and insistent. They watched it angle through a jammed intersection and pick up speed until it turned into Buckley. They could hear it a long time after that.

  Gambini’s morning memorandum was strange: “We have the Witch of Agnesi.”

  Harry put it aside, went through the rest of the IN basket, and disposed of the more pressing business. He was looking at a new set of management analysis guidelines when his buzzer sounded. “Dr. Kmoch would like to see you, Mr. Carmichael.”

  Harry frowned. He had no idea what that could be about. Adrian Kmoch was a high-energy physicist on loan to the Space Center. He was working with the Core advisory group that functioned as technical consultants for the High Energy Astronomy Observatory elements of SKYNET.

  He did not look happy.

  Harry pointed him to a chair, but made no attempt at diplomatic niceties. “What’s wrong, Adrian?”

  “Harry, we wish to hold a meeting.” His German accent was barely noticeable, but he spoke with the precise diction that invariably marked the European foreigner. “I’ve reserved the Giacconi Room for one o’clock this afternoon. And I thought you might wish to attend.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “It is becoming very difficult to continue working here. There are serious ethical problems.”

  “I see. I assume we’re talking about the Hercules Project?”

  “Of course,” he said. “We cannot, in conscience, support a policy which withholds scientific information of this nature.”

  “Who is we?”

  “A substantial portion of the investigators currently working at Goddard. Mr. Carmichael, please understand that this has nothing to do with you personally. But what the government is doing here is terribly wrong. In addition, its actions are putting extreme pressure on those of us who seem to our colleagues to acquiesce. Carroll, for example, has been informed by his university that if he fails to speak out against the government’s position on Hercules, his tenure will be reviewed.”

  “What’s the purpose of the meeting, Adrian?”

  “I think you know.” Kmoch’s eyes fastened on Harry. His limbs were long, and he walked with a peculiarly stiff gait that, in Harry’s view, was rather like the way his mind worked. Kmoch was a subscriber to ideals and ethical systems, a man who took principles very seriously, no matter who got hurt. In all, there was much of the wooden plank in Kmoch’s thinking. “I am going to urge that we walk out.”

  “Strike? You can’t strike. It would be a violation of your con
tract.” Harry got out of his chair and came around the desk.

  “I’m aware of the contract, Harry.” Oddly, his tone grew more threatening with the use of the administrator’s first name. “And please don’t try to intimidate me. Many of us have careers at stake. What will the government do for us when we cannot continue to earn our livelihood? Will you guarantee me employment within my specialty?”

  Harry glared back. “You know I can’t do that. But you have a commitment here.”

  “And you have an obligation to us. Please keep it in mind.” Kmoch turned and stalked out of the room. Harry stared after him, considering his options. He could deny the use of meeting space, he could warn of sanctions, or he could attend the meeting himself and use it as an opportunity to present the government’s point of view.

  Harry knew there’d been some friction. Several of Gambini’s people had spoken of a growing coolness among their colleagues. He wondered whether he should alert Security. The unit was no longer his to direct, and he didn’t trust Schenken. The presence of uniforms or of the hard-eyed young men in snap-brim hats could well provoke the sort of trouble he hoped to avoid.

  He turned to the dictionary, looked up “Witch of Agnesi,” and smiled. It was a geometrical term, describing a plane curve that is visualized as symmetrical about the y-axis and asymptotic to the x-axis. Harry wasn’t sure what “asymptotic” meant, and after he consulted Webster’s again, he was still not sure. He understood that it was somehow tied to infinity.

  Harry added the Witch to the other principles the aliens were known to possess: Faraday’s Law of Electromagnetic Induction, the Cauchy Theorem, assorted variations of the Gauss Hypergeometric Equation, assorted Bessel functions, and so on. When, he wondered, are they going to tell us something we don’t know?

  It was obvious also that the White House was getting impatient. The reaction against the government was spreading. At home, few newspapers supported the President’s position; and three of the four networks had attacked him in editorials. The so-called Carolingian Movement, named for the unruly historians who had broken up the conference at Penn, now had chapters on most major campuses. They’d been writing angry letters to editors and applying pressure to legislators.

  American embassies were being stoned on a fairly regular basis; the State Department had protests from virtually everyone (among the Western alliance, only West Germany, Britain, and Sweden had refrained); and the government was pilloried daily at the United Nations. Japan threatened to cut off its exports to the United States, and there was talk of an oil embargo. And for all this, the President had little to show: a few well-known mathematical exercises, now augmented by the Witch of Agnesi.

  Harry had come to hate the daily report. There’d been a couple of calls from Hurley in which the President had tried to conceal his growing exasperation. Gambini also had received at least one. But he was unconcerned. “Serve the dumb bastard right. Maybe after a while he’ll figure out what he should do.”

  It had crossed Harry’s mind that Hurley had allowed himself to be placed at Gambini’s mercy. Obviously, he trusted the project manager, as did Harry, really. Still, Gambini would understand that a discovery of military significance would increase the chances of the project’s being taken from him and would certainly eliminate any lingering possibility that the government would do what he wanted: release the transcripts. Consequently, Gambini would be tempted to withhold any such discovery.

  Harry knew, and the President should have guessed, that Gambini remained under terrible pressure from his colleagues, most of whom would not welcome him back when his usefulness to the government had ended. A week never passed when some major figure did not use the press to assail Edward Gambini and urge him to refuse to cooperate with the “paranoid” policies of his government. Gambini never defended himself and never, in public, criticized the President.

  His secretary buzzed. “Mr. Carmichael, Ted Parkinson is on the line.”

  Harry punched the call in. “Yes, Ted?”

  “Harry, I think we ought to close the Visitor Center for a while.”

  “Why?”

  “Some of the people out here are turning ugly. There are more demonstrators now and college kids carrying Carolingian signs. We’ve had a couple of incidents today.”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “Not yet. But it’s just a matter of time. A lot of the kids are bringing alcohol in with them. There’s no easy way to stop it. The security people have been tossing them out whenever they see it, but that just tends to make things worse.”

  “I’d like to avoid shutting it down, Ted. That would look as if we’re going into a state of siege, and it’d probably just produce more demonstrators.”

  “It may be about to get worse, Harry. I got a call a few minutes ago from Cass Woodbury. She said that Backwoods Bobby and several busloads of his supporters are going to be here this afternoon.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “You ready for the kicker?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “He’s on our side this time.”

  “Yeah,” Harry said. “He would be. There’s no way he’d want the Soviets to get their hands on anything we have. Anyhow, he’s supported this President all along. They think alike. Hurley’s just a bit more sophisticated is all.”

  “I’ve let Security know.”

  “They may have their hands full out there this afternoon. What time is Freeman coming?”

  “About three.”

  “That gets the evening news. Freeman’s no dummy. He loves to see the investigators at one another’s throats; this gives him a chance to get in on the fun and grab some national publicity. I think we can count on him to do what he can to keep things stirred up.” Harry looked at his watch. “Okay, Ted. I’ll be over later. Freeman’s not likely to be interested in talking to us, but if he is, be careful what you say. He has a talent for twisting things.”

  “By the way,” said Parkinson, “I heard there’s trouble at Fermi. They’re meeting right now to decide what they want to do. The word I’m getting is that a strike is a foregone conclusion and that the only thing in doubt is how tough they’ll get with the government.”

  “Hell, they’re cutting off their own noses,” said Harry. “Who cares whether an accelerator lab in Illinois closes down? Certainly not the public. And consequently not the President.”

  It was 8:45. Harry had just time to go over and talk to Gambini. Maybe, at least, he could come up with something to break the long streak of negative reports to the White House.

  Cord Majeski could not have said just when he realized the strings of numbers constituted a schematic. He recognized the basic design of a set of solenoids and a transducer; there appeared to be heating and cooling elements and a timer, “And the rest of the stuff,” he told Gambini, “I can’t make out at all.” He’d drawn a rough diagram, but it didn’t look like anything Gambini was familiar with.

  “Can we build a working model?”

  Majeski blinked and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Maybe,” he said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t find any power specifications, Ed. What do you figure it will take to make it work?”

  Gambini grinned. “Start with house current. See if you can put it together, Cord. But give it a low priority. I’d like to get the translations completed first.”

  Majeski’s disappointment was plain. “You could be talking years, Ed. We’ve got a lot of material.”

  “Well, we won’t wait that long. Just put the thing aside for now. We’ll get to it.”

  He found Leslie nibbling thoughtfully at a tuna sandwich. She didn’t see him until he slid into a seat beside her. “Harry,” she said. “How are you doing?”

  “Okay. I didn’t know you were back in town.”

  “I got in last night. Just in time, apparently. I hear Bobby Freeman will be paying a visit today.”

  “Yes,” said Harry. “They’re expecting him at the Visitor Center
this afternoon.” He couldn’t make out whether she was serious or not. “Why would you be interested in Freeman?”

  “Harry,” she said, “he is a one-man study in mob psychology. He never says a word that makes sense, and yet two million Americans think he walks on water.”

  “Backwoods Bobby is living proof that you don’t have to have a brain to acquire power in this country. You can’t be ugly, but it sure as hell doesn’t matter if you’re stupid.”

  “That’s a little harsh,” she said, amused. “By what standard is he stupid? If you can get him off religion, he seems to be reasonable enough. In fact, given the parameters within which he works, he’s remarkably consistent. If the Bible were to turn out to be divinely inspired, I think he’d have a leg up on the rest of us.”

  “You’re talking nonsense,” said Harry.

  “Of course I am,” she said with a wink. “I guess you know they had a breakthrough of sorts yesterday.”

  “We’re not supposed to talk about any of that stuff in here,” Harry said acidly. “Secrecy is the order of the day. What happened?”

  “I guess we’re all prisoners of the age,” she said. “I can understand why they worry. I really don’t know what I’d do if I were in Hurley’s place.”

  “He’s looking for a weapon,” Harry said.

  “And Ed, I suspect, would like to find a congenial mind. Rimford wants to discover whether the Rimford Model will survive. And you, Harry? What would you wish for?”

  “An end to it,” said Harry.

  “Really?” She shook her head. “I’m disappointed in you. You’re on the ultimate adventure.”

  “I suppose. But all I seem to get out of it is a lot of bitching. The latest is a meeting this afternoon called by some of the contract investigators. They’re threatening to walk out.”

  “Anyhow,” she said, as though the possibility of a strike were of no consequence, “we’re beginning to get some sense of the structure of the language. But there’s something very odd about it.”

  “Hell, Les, there’s going to be a lot of odd stuff before we get finished.”

  “No, I don’t mean unusual odd; I mean irrational odd. It’s clumsy, Harry. It’s so clumsy that I hesitate to call it a language.”