The Hercules Text

by Jack McDevitt

  “I don’t think I understand why you’d want me involved in this project.” Cyrus Hakluyt folded his hands carefully in his lap and watched an old, battered station wagon pass the gray government car in a storm of slush and dirty water.

  “We have in our possession,” said Gambini, “a complete physiological description of an extraterrestrial life form. Are you interested?”

  “Jesus,” Hakluyt said in a fragile monotone. If there was a single characteristic one might use to describe the microbiologist, it was the contrast between his feathery voice and the conviction with which he customarily spoke. His smile was weak and perfunctory; and his long spindly trunk ended in a set of narrow shoulders. He blinked behind heavy bifocals. Gambini knew that his visitor was only in his early thirties, and yet one would not have guessed. “Gambini, you are not joking?”

  “No, I’m not. Some of the material in the Hercules Text appears to be an attempt to describe genetic structure and broader biological functions. We think they may have tried to give us a comprehensive account of the biosystem of their world.” Gambini paused. “Unfortunately, we have no one here with serious qualifications.”

  “Where are we going now?” Hakluyt asked.

  “Goddard. We have a VIP apartment set up for you.”

  The tip of Hakluyt’s tongue touched his delicate lips. “That can wait. I want to see what you have first.”

  Gambini smiled in the dark. Hakluyt was a bit on the prissy side, but he was going to be good to work with.

  Hopkins had all but finished his research for the evening. But Rimford could see that he was looking for an opportunity to open a conversation. Casual acquaintances almost routinely tried to steal his time. It had been a problem throughout his career, growing worse as his reputation increased.

  He’d learned to turn away, to explain that he was busy, to say no. But tonight he felt paralyzed. Perhaps he did not really want Hopkins to leave.

  As the technician busied himself cleaning up his work station, he remarked offhandedly that it was an exciting time.

  “Yes,” replied Rimford.

  “Dr. Rimford,” Hopkins said suddenly, “I should tell you that I’m proud to be working with someone like you.”

  “Thank you,” Rimford said. “Soon you will discover that the personalities of all of us will be submerged by the event. But thank you all the same.” Rimford continued to mask his impatience. He allowed himself to be drawn into an extended discussion of Hopkins’s project, a statistical analysis of alphanumeric characters in the first six data sets. But he resented the young technician’s intrusive presence. And he was annoyed with himself. Hopkins didn’t even have a sense of humor. The poor bastard’ll never go anywhere, he thought.

  It was almost eleven when Hopkins announced that he had a few things to attend to at the lab and that his shift would be over at midnight.

  Uncertainly, Rimford watched him leave. When the door closed with the loud final snap of the electronic lock, he turned on the computer and instructed it to unlock the files. An amber lamp glowed and went out. Rimford removed DS 41A from its plastic jacket and inserted it into the port. Then he called up the operating menu. It was cold in the little room; there was only one heat duct, and it was inadequate. Nevertheless, he felt perspiration sliding down his arms, and a large drop formed on the tip of his nose.

  The computer memory, of course, was empty. I am doing the right thing, he told himself. No other course is open. And he loaded the empty memory onto the disc as a file replacement. In that instant, the data contained on DS 41A vanished. He repeated the procedure for DS 41B.

  That was the data set he knew to be deadly. But he dared not stop there. And one by one, he removed each disc from its transparent plastic jacket and wiped it clean. He grew numb during the process and tears welled in his eyes.

  At a few minutes after midnight he emerged from the storage room and checked out with the guard, who had waited patiently. It was hard to believe that the man could be unaware that some terrible thing had happened in the security area. Rimford had no doubt that his face had lost its color and that the conflicting emotions which tore at him were fully displayed across his broad features. But the guard barely looked up.

  Now the lab had the only copy of the Text. He left the library and walked, not wishing to drive on this night, toward it. And if his conscience had begun to weigh on him, he cheered himself by contemplating Oppenheimer, who had done nothing.

  But he was glad there was no moon.

  MONITOR

  HOUSING BIAS CHARGED IN SEATTLE

  City, 8 Suburbs Probed by U.S.

  GODDARD RIOT VICTIMS SUE U.S.

  Class Action Expected; 2nd Child Dies

  Schenken Fired as Security Director

  SOVIET SUB REPORTED TRAPPED IN CHESAPEAKE

  (Associated Press)—Informed sources revealed today that U.S. Coast Guard and Navy vessels had tracked a Soviet L-Class submarine into the mouth of Chesapeake Bay…

  BEAR KILLS CAMPER AT YELLOWSTONE

  Boy Tried to Save Lunch, Says Girl Friend

  CONGRESS APPROVES SPECIAL FUND FOR CITIES

  Police, Education, Jobs Programs to Get Help

  BOLIVIAN GUERRILLAS OVERRUN PERUVIAN POLICE POSTS

  Army Routs Rebels in Heavy Fighting near Titicaca

  LAKEHURST TERRORIST SUES GOVERNMENT

  Skull Fractured during Counterstrike

  Family of Dead Gunman Also Contemplating Action

  NORTH DAKOTA CURBS MEDICAL COSTS

  Under New Bill, State to Set Fees

  AMA Warns Quality of Medicine Will Decline

  PAKISTAN GETS U.S. MISSILES

  Pentagon Retains Control of Warheads

  PRAGUE DEFIES ARMY ULTIMATUM

  Workers Riot; Armored Corps Rebels

  Soviets Promise Aid

  NUCLEAR WAR “PROBABLE” IN THIS DECADE

  Club of Rome Resets Clock at Two Minutes to Twelve

  Pope Calls for Disarmament

  12

  AT APPROXIMATELY 3:00 A.M., Ed Gambini’s phone began to ring. He surfaced slowly through the insistent jangling, rolled over, snapped on the lamp, and looked at his clock. “Hello?”

  “Ed? This is Majeski. We have a problem. I think you ought to get over here right away.”

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed and rubbed his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “Baines wants to talk with you,” he said.

  “Baines? What the hell’s he doing down there at this hour? Put him on.”

  Majeski’s voice took on a plaintive tone. “I don’t think he’ll talk on the phone. You’d better come over.”

  Gambini growled, banged the instrument down, and stumbled into the bathroom. Forty minutes later, still seething, he stalked into the operations center. Majeski met him and pointed toward Gambini’s office. Rimford was asleep behind the project manager’s desk.

  “What’s going on, Cord?”

  “I don’t care who he is,” whispered Majeski loudly. “The dumb son of a bitch has gone crazy!”

  “Baines?”

  “Yes, Baines!”

  “What did he do?”

  Majeski held up two laserdiscs, so that Gambini could read the labels. They were parts A and B of DS 41, the cosmology segment that Rimford had been working on. “What about them?”

  “They’ve been wiped. So have the library duplicates. The whole data set is gone, Ed.” Majeski’s voice tightened. “The goddam text is gone!” He twisted the back of a wooden chair. “He’s got no right to do that, Ed. I don’t care what he says!”

  “Baines did it?” Gambini was incredulous. “Why? What’d he say?”

  “Ask him. He doesn’t want to talk to me.”

  Rimford was awake now, and Gambini was suddenly aware of his eyes through the glass partition. They were round and accusing and very large, and they drove Majeski’s angry whine into the perimeter somewhere. “What?” asked Gambini, as though he could be heard through the glass. “Wha
t is it?” He opened the office door, stepped inside, and closed it softly behind him.

  Rimford was crumpled and tired. “Ed,” he said, “destroy the Text. Destroy all of it.”

  Outside, Majeski and the six other people on duty were watching. Gambini remained standing. “Why?” he asked. “Why should we do that? What did you find?” He sat down, prepared to be reassuring. Actually, despite the loss of Data Set 41, he felt a curious frustrated satisfaction at having become a father-figure to Baines Rimford.

  The blue eyes blazed. “What’s the last thing you’d want to find?”

  “I don’t know,” Gambini replied desperately. “Plague. bomb.” His lungs were laboring. “How bad can it be?”

  “When I came in here this morning, Ed, when I walked through that door, I intended to destroy everything. I did destroy the library copies.”

  “I know.”

  “You should finish the job.”

  Gambini felt cold. “Why didn’t you do it when you had the chance? Weren’t you sure?”

  “Yes!” he said, striking the desktop. Pens, clips, and paper flew. “I was sure, but I couldn’t take that kind of decision on my own shoulders. Maybe that’s what happened before. At Los Alamos. I don’t know.”

  Gambini looked out at the circle of witnesses. He waved them impatiently back to their terminals. They went reluctantly, but still they watched. “Data Set forty-one is only cosmological in nature. What could you possibly find in it?”

  “A cheap way to end the world, Ed. You could do it with the resources of virtually any Middle Eastern nation. Even a well-financed terrorist group could pull it off. By any reasonable measure, I am now the most dangerous man on the planet.

  “Among other things, I know the specifics of spatial curvature. There are, under normal circumstances, in the area of fifty-seven million light-years to a degree of arc. That number varies considerably, of course, depending on local conditions. And if that seems too small a number, it’s because the universe is not the hyperbolic sphere I predicted and we all assumed. It’s a twisted cylinder, Ed. There is much of the four-dimensional Möbius in it. If you could travel around it and return from the opposite direction, you’d be lefthanded when you got back!”

  “And you destroyed all this?” A chill formed at the base of Gambini’s spine and expanded slowly.

  “You’re not thinking. Space can be bent. Within a finite area, the degree of curvature can be increased, eliminated, or inverted. It doesn’t require much power. What it does require is technique. Ed, we’re talking about gravity! I could arrange to have, say, New York City fall into the sky. I could turn the state of Maryland into a black hole!”

  Rimford got wearily to his feet. “God knows what else is in those discs, Ed. Get rid of them!”

  “No.” Gambini shook his head. “You know we can’t do that! Baines, the Text is a source of knowledge beyond anything we’d dreamed. We can’t just throw it away!”

  “Why not? What can we possibly learn from it that exceeds, in any substantive way, what we already know? Hurley, for God’s sake, understood that. They’ve shown us we’re not alone, he said, before we really knew they’d speak again. That’s what matters. The rest of it is detail.”

  Gambini’s face hardened. “If you wanted the Text destroyed, really wanted it, you’d have done it yourself.”

  Rimford was on his feet, headed for the door. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. He put on his coat. “I’ve got an afternoon flight, Ed. If you do erase the damn thing, you can tell them I advised it.”

  He walked out past Majeski and the others, nodding briefly as he went. Majeski stared after him.

  When he was gone, Gambini called Harry and, in cryptic language, explained what had happened.

  “We’ll have to replace the library set right away,” Harry said. “If Maloney hears about this, it’ll be another piece of ammunition he can use against us. Can you recover the DS forty-one discs?”

  “No. We’re not permitted to keep copies anymore. Any duplicates we make have to be wiped.” Gambini ground his teeth. “Damned fools! They’re getting just what they deserve!”

  “Forget that for now,” said Harry. “Have someone make up duplicates of everything. Of the entire transmission. You know how they were labeled? Put identical labels on. Make sure there’s a number forty-one set, too—just leave it blank; that’s all you can do. Don’t let any of the people on the day shift use the library. I’ll have a classified messenger at the security desk in your spaces at eight. Have the duplicates ready to go. Does anyone else know?”

  “Just the midnight shift.”

  “Okay. Let’s try to keep it in the family.”

  “Eventually we’ll have to admit we don’t have it, Harry.”

  “We can have an accident later. This isn’t a good time. We should bring Pete in on it. If you have no objection, I’ll call him. Can we meet this morning?”

  Wheeler was the last to arrive. He strode into Miranda’s, on Muirkirk Road, and joined Harry and Gambini in a booth. “Baines is right,” he said. “We should wipe the thing. I’m sorry he didn’t do it last night.”

  “Until now,” said Harry, “we’ve had no solid evidence that there would be anything dangerous in the Text.”

  Wheeler looked dismayed. “It amazes me that you’d need evidence. How could we for a moment think of turning a million-year-old technology loose on this world? We haven’t learned to handle gunpowder safely!”

  “This is the first time you’ve said anything,” rasped Gambini. “Why haven’t you taken a stand before this?”

  “I’m a priest.” Wheeler managed a smile. “Any action I take tends to reflect on the Church. And it’s difficult in a matter like this: we’re still trying to explain ourselves about Galileo. I’ve sat passively by; I certainly could not have acted as Baines did. But I can tell you that, whatever their motives, the Altheans have done us no favor.”

  “Why?” demanded Gambini. “Because Rimford could see a way to misuse some of the information? Hell, there are risks, but they’re damned slight, considering the potential for benefit. We need to just take it easy and not panic. I suggest we simply alert the investigators to our concerns and have them report anything that could create a problem. Then, if something develops, we’ll deal with it in a rational manner.”

  “I’m not so sure that we’re talking about things that can be identified all that easily,” said Wheeler.

  “Goddammit, Pete, there’s no way I can argue against that kind of statement. But I think we have to be reasonable about this. Has it occurred to you that our best hope for survival as a species may depend on what we can learn from the Altheans? If we get technological breakthroughs, maybe there’ll also be some ethical ones, some new perspectives. Harry, would you want to take the responsibility for destroying a source of such knowledge? Even Rimford, after what he found, couldn’t bring himself to do it.”

  “We need a political solution,” said Harry. “Which is to say, we have to temporize. We won’t know the real nature of the problem until we find out what we’ve got.”

  “I agree,” said Gambini. “But I think we need to know a couple of other things right now. Pete, are you going to stay with the project?”

  “Yes,” said the priest, his voice hardly a whisper.

  “Do I need to worry about the safety of the Text?”

  “No. Not from me.”

  “All right. Good. I’m glad we got that settled. Now, is anyone else having morality problems about this?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Harry. “Though I think we’d better start being alert to the possibility. Listen, we’ve got something else to talk about. You’ll be happy to hear this, Ed.”

  “Good news for a change.”

  “Yes. The White House is still getting a lot of pressure, so they’ve decided to set up an office to review what we’re doing here. They’re saying that they’ll release whatever they can.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear,” said Gam
bini. But after he’d had a moment to think about it, he asked archly, “Who’s going to decide what’s safe?”

  Harry kept a straight face. “Oscar DeSandre,” he said.

  “Who?”

  Even Wheeler grinned.

  “Oscar DeSandre,” Harry repeated. “They tell me he’s a top man in military high tech. And I guess he’s got a staff of experts, and they can always talk to us if they’re in doubt about anything.” They all looked skeptical. “I’d like to get a package out to him this afternoon, if we can. And then they’d like something once a week. We’ll set up a schedule of some sort.”

  “Okay,” said Gambini.

  “I think we’d be wise to police ourselves,” said Wheeler, “and not automatically ship everything out.”

  “I agree,” said Harry. “Ed, I’ll get you DeSandre’s phone number. I’d like you to call him today, try to give him some idea of the sorts of things he should be looking for. Meantime, we need to set up a mechanism to make sure that somebody we trust reads everything. And we need to get Cord, Leslie, and Hakluyt involved. Tell them what’s at stake, and ask them to red-flag anything that might create problems.”

  “It seems to me,” said Wheeler, “we’ve got three categories of information: material for DeSandre, stuff that can go only to Hurley, and stuff that shouldn’t get out of here at all.”

  Their breakfast came, and they ate in relative silence. “I’m not sure,” Gambini said, well into his meal, “but I think we’re talking treason. Harry, what the hell kind of bureaucrat are you?”

  “What do you think Rimford’s legal status would be if word of last night’s episode got out?” Wheeler asked.

  Harry smiled. “Most they could get him for is destroying government property.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get over to the library before the messenger arrives.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Switch discs. I’ll replace the old ones with the new set, and, except for number forty-one, it’ll be like nothing ever happened.” He shrugged. “Simple. Meantime, you two think things over.”

  “Harry,” said Gambini, “I’ll never agree to their destruction.”