“They couldn’t have done it in another way,” Jane said. “There’s no way that they could have produced such data without a very sophisticated understanding of the human body. I doubt that they managed to obtain such information from the Internet or the crap we broadcast into space every day. I think that they almost certainly took a few people from Earth and studied them carefully. It would make sense for other reasons as well. They'd be worried about a biohazard, just like we were. Taking a few humans would allow them to ensure that no threat existed.”
“Important, if they mean to settle Earth,” Alex said. “Wasn’t there a movie about a planet that killed nine out of ten people who settled on it?”
“There are probably a dozen of them,” Jane said, dryly. “There is another implication from all of this, one I didn’t include in my report.” She held his eyes as she spoke. “I used to work in a biological warfare lab. We didn’t call it that, of course, we talked in terms of finding a defence against a biological attack. The problem with biological weapons is that an attack and a defence are often the same thing. In order to produce a defence, we have to produce the weapon and figure out how and why it does what it does – and what can be used to counter it. It’s not as easy as the media makes it look, Alex. A virus that is so deadly that anyone who catches it drops dead in twenty minutes isn’t going to spread very far.”
She ran her hands through her long hair. “The idea behind creating a biological weapon is to combine deadliness with delay, a weapon that will be contagious days – weeks – before it actually kills the host. The real nightmare is something that doesn’t show itself for a year, yet is contagious – start it anywhere and it will spread around the entire world before it strikes, killing the entire global population. Anyone who could produce such cures could probably produce a bioweapon capable of doing just that.”
“Jesus Christ,” Alex said. “Are you saying that the aliens might…?”
“I doubt He wants anything to do with this,” Jane said. “The aliens could certainly produce such a weapon. One could be being distributed now.”
“Oh, fuck me,” Alex said. “Is there anything we could do if we knew that there was such a weapon being deployed?”
“I don’t think so,” Jane said. She gave him a humourless smile. “We might have to blow up the world and call it a draw.”
Alex stared down at her. “They could just hold it over our head forever,” he said, finally. “That’s a very cheerful thought.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Jane said. “Shall we change the subject?”
“When I get out of here, I’m going to take you to the finest restaurant in Washington,” Alex promised. “You’ll love it.”
“It’s a date,” Jane grinned. “Remember – dinner and flowers. And you’ll probably have to get me drunk first.”
Alex laughed.
***
An hour later, he found his way back to the hangar that stored the crashed UFO. Like the entire team, he had clearance to visit everywhere on the base, apart from the mysterious bottom level, and he tried to visit the UFO every day. Just looking at it reminded him that the world had changed forever, even though the vast majority of the world’s population knew nothing about it. Their ignorance, Alex suspected, would come back to bite them on the behind. They wouldn’t be taking any precautions against alien invasion, but then, the United States Government wasn't taking enough precautions either. The vast majority of the military personnel involved thought that it was all a drill.
“Hey, Alex,” Neil Frandsen called. The advanced propulsion specialist waved at him from his position under the alien craft. Seven researchers were poking and prodding the hull with an entire arsenal of devices someone had brought in from research labs all across the country. Alex knew that several devices had been requested from Japan and Europe, but Jones and Colonel Fields were still worried about the secret getting out. “Come and see what we’ve found!”
Alex followed him into the craft and stopped dead. The hull had been blank grey metal before, but now it was covered in strange alien writing that seemed to be somehow translucent, as if it wasn’t quite there. He reached out and touched the hull softly and felt his fingers touching something almost rubbery. The skittering sensation from the outer hull was absent.
“Strange,” he said. “Can we have a word?”
Frandsen allowed Alex to lead him into one of the small offices attached to the hangar. “Sure,” he said. “What’s up?”
“A question,” Alex said, seriously. He rather envied Frandsen. He had useful work to do, while Alex…could only study alien invasion books and compose reports trying to predict what the aliens could do to the human race. “Have you found anything that could be used as a weapon on the alien craft?”
“Not yet,” Frandsen admitted. “We have been looking for a weapon or a weapons system, but we haven’t identified one. Given that we are dealing with alien technology we might not recognise a weapon if we looked right at it, at least until we manage to trigger it by accident. They might have everything from lasers to charged energy beams, but…
“I’ll tell you one thing,” he added. “That hull of theirs is capable of absorbing energy, so my guess is that they will have some kind of energy weapons in their arsenal. The defence doesn’t make sense unless they figure on facing an enemy armed with such weapons. I think that a missile would break it, yet we don’t know if they have force fields or other technology straight out of science-fiction. We’re still studying the drive, but we’re nowhere near figuring out how it does what it does.”
“Thank you,” Alex said. “Can you tell me…?”
“The data from the President’s trip was very helpful,” Frandsen continued, interrupting him. “We don’t have the slightest idea how they do it, but it looks as if they have some kind of gravity drive. The good news is that now we know that, we should be able to track them because of gravity distortions near their craft. It might also explain how they avoid creating sonic booms and other issues.”
“I see,” Alex said. Frandsen could get too enthusiastic if given half a chance. The level of technobabble was beyond his understanding. “You’d better work on finding out how to track the bastards. I have a nasty feeling we’re going to need it soon.”
Chapter Thirteen
Washington DC, USA
Day 12
“Thank you, Bob,” Abigail Walker said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
She put the phone down with a puzzled frown. Something was clearly up in official Washington, yet no one seemed to know what it was, or – if they did know – were willing to talk to her. That was unprecedented in her seven years of experience as a reporter, digging up scoops that were the envy of many other reporters; someone was always willing to talk. A Congressman or Senator could normally be relied upon to give out information – and, if not them, there were the hundreds of people who worked under them. It was very hard to keep something a secret in a modern society unless the number of people who knew it was very small…and this, whatever it was, seemed to encompass thousands of people.
The notepad lay open in front of her, mocking her. The handful of lines she’d written didn’t add up to anything, apart from a mystery. Thousands of reservists had been called up for an exercise – their employers were making a terrible fuss to their congressmen and getting nowhere – and the exercise itself, planned for several months, had been brought forward at short notice. Abigail knew little about the military, but she did know that exercises were normally planned months in advance, just to ensure minimal disruption. Bringing it forward had probably cost the government a great deal of goodwill. The other aspects of the mystery seemed even stranger. Last night, according to several reports, the President had transferred his powers to the Vice President and dropped out of sight. Officially, he had gone for a medical check-up, but the staff at the hospital claimed that he had never arrived there, or been seen by any of the doctors. It was possible that he had gone to a secret location �
� the Secret Service hated the President being anywhere publicly known – yet even that made little sense. Why would the President vanish for a few hours in the middle of an exercise?
And then there were the military bases. Security around America’s military bases was tighter than it had been in years – President Chalk was a firm believer in security – but their security had suddenly been enhanced, without explanation. There were thousands of reports of a possible terrorist attack floating around the net, yet nothing had materialised, as far as Abigail knew. The guard patrols had been enhanced, the security perimeters had been expanded and aircraft were flying patrols over all the major cities…for what? There had to be thousands – tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands – of people involved, yet no one had breathed a word of what was going on. That, in itself, was odd. Matched up with the rest of the data…
Abigail looked through the glass transparency into the World News Network office and frowned again. She would have preferred to work for Fox or CNN, but her asshole of an ex-husband – she’d known that it was a mistake the day after they married, even though they’d stuck it out for several years before divorcing – had taken the chance to badmouth her to his own employers at CNN, making it harder for her to find employment. She was a researcher, not some piece of candy to be stuck in front of a camera to read the news while taking deep breaths, and employment had been hard to find. The World News Network had hired her without hesitation – it had taken her a year to discover that the executive who’d hired her detested her ex and discounted everything he had ever said – and given her a new purpose. She liked to think of herself as having repaid their trust, but she knew that reporting was a harsh business. The day she stopped bringing in the goods was the day she would be out on the streets.
She caught sight of her reflection in the glass and pulled a face. At twenty-nine years old, she was pretty rather than beautiful, with long brown hair falling over a short body. Her husband had been heard to remark that she was too short to be a good reporter and she should leave the business to him, but she’d ignored him. The World News Network might not have the vast penetration that CNN or Fox enjoyed, yet it was building a reputation, fighting back subtly against the big boys by improving the quality of its reporting and carving out a niche for itself. They were growing more prominent, but the two big boys still enjoyed considerable influence and they wouldn’t hesitate to squash the interloper if they could. She needed to crack the scoop before one of their reporters – who were probably putting out for some congressman’s aide – broadcast it to the world.
Some reporters preferred to use computer records, but Abigail preferred to keep her private stash of contacts in a little black notebook she carried with her at all times. Over the years, she had built up an extensive network of people who would talk to her, on and off the record, a network she had kept to herself. Knowledge was power in the world of reporting. Every reporter with a gram of sense made their own contacts, whatever it took – Abigail had lost track of the number of times she’d taken her contacts out to dinner, or spent hours drinking with them in bars – and kept it private, even though it was a common joke that a source, once bought by one reporter, would often sell themselves to others as well. It was a little like prostitution, but dirtier. She had never slept with a contact, but she knew reporters who had, just to get a scoop. The bitches didn’t care about their professional ethics as long as they beat their competitors.
She’d encoded the names and numbers, although she had few illusions about what would happen if a code-breaking team from NSA – or even from one of her competitors – went through it. It was quite possible, if one played around with a number long enough, to discover that they’d found the number of a famous or connected person, yet an investigative team would probably not see it as a coincidence. She’d transposed the digits according to a scheme she kept in her head, using a common set of numbers she could easily recall, but the best defence was never losing track of the book. She kept it with her at all times.
Her fingers danced over the phone’s keypad, dialling the number of a prominent Senator. Senators, in her experience, would do almost anything to get into the media – and sometimes they came to regret it – and Senator Hamlin had been very helpful when she’d broken the story about two Senators and a Congressman who’d travelled to Thailand to sample the food and the sex industry. They’d lost their seats and had been jailed for years, a disgusted public turning against them in droves. She rather liked Hamlin. He might have been a Democrat, but he had few links with the power brokers in the party and tended to vote his conscience.
“Hello, Senator,” she said, when he picked up the phone. Every politician had a public line and a handful of private lines. The public had to talk to his staff before they could speak to the Senator, if they got to speak to him at all. Abigail had always had mixed feelings about that. The idealist in her wanted the Senator to talk to each and every member of the public who wanted to talk to him; the practical side of her nature knew that if the Senator talked to every one of them, he wouldn’t have time to do his job. “I’m sure that you recognise my voice.”
“Abigail, my dear,” the Senator said. His voice was warm and welcoming and she found herself smiling. Senator Hamlin was homosexual, something that displeased the more conservative side of the country, and charming. He would have had no difficulty picking up any girl he wanted, had he played for that team. “It’s been a long time.”
“Indeed it has,” Abigail agreed. “I’ll make this quick, Sam. I’ve been hearing rumours about something…unexpected happening and…”
The sudden change in the Senator’s voice was shocking. “What have you been hearing?”
Abigail hesitated, and then decided to be honest. “Very little,” she admitted. “I’ve just been hearing fragments from here and there, odd suggestions that something is going on, yet no clue as to what it actually is.”
“Good,” Hamlin said. “Abigail, take a word of advice from this old queen. Don’t push it any further. Leave the story alone.”
“But I…”
“I could offer you a dozen other scoops if you’re interested,” Hamlin continued. “I could tell you about a Congressman whose stance on a certain issue is at variance with those who put him in power, or a Senator who has his hand in the till, but not this. The Majority and Minority Leaders both warned us not to discuss the matter any further. Let it go.”
Abigail stared down at the telephone, wishing that she could see Hamlin’s face. “But Senator, the people have a right to know…”
Hamlin laughed at her. “You mean, you have a right to know,” he said, “and that is debatable. I’ve enjoyed your company in the past, my dear, so trust me on this. Let it go for now. Please.”
“I understand,” Abigail lied. “Thank you for your time.”
“My pleasure,” Hamlin replied. “When this is all over, I’ll take you to dinner somewhere and you can pick my brains then. I might even tell you something. Good day.”
She heard the phone click down and the line disconnect, trying to understand. She knew Senator Sam Hamlin fairly well and he was no pushover. He’d been in the Army before he’d been pushed out of the closet – no one had asked, he hadn’t told, but somehow the Army had found out in a way it couldn’t ignore – and had picked up several medals for bravery, and a Purple Heart. He’d joked about it to her – he’d told her that he’d forgotten to duck one day in Afghanistan – but it more than proved his bravery. He was a keen supporter of the military, a person hardly unwilling to challenge the President…and yet, he was silent. Someone – the Majority and Minority Leaders – had convinced him to keep his mouth shut. How had they done that?
It made little sense. Herding politicians was like herding cats, only these cats spat venom, and if the leaders annoyed too many politicians, they could be booted out so quickly their bottoms would be aching years in the future. If they had told a politician to keep his mouth shut, he might have blabbed about i
t at the earliest opportunity, just to teach the impudent leaders a lesson. Somehow, they had convinced Hamlin – and the others, she assumed – to keep his mouth shut. Hamlin; a Senator who called it as he saw it. Hamlin; a man of his word…
Understanding dawned. They hadn’t used threats or blandishments, they’d convinced him to keep his mouth shut. They’d told him what was going on, or a cover story they’d invented to provide concealment for something else, and it had been good enough to convince him to remain silent. The secret, whatever it was, had to be something really big.
She looked down at her notebook again, trying to see the pattern. Investigative journalism had a great deal in common with intelligence work – indeed, Abigail knew that footage streamed from reporters in foreign countries had been used by the CIA and the other intelligence agencies from time to time – and it was impossible to say which piece of information would allow her to pull the whole story together. One of the most famous scoops of her generation had come when a reporter had taken a very careful look at the hundreds of disparate pieces of information and realised that they added up to a secret deal between the US and Iran. There was a pattern in front of her – she was sure of it – yet without the key, she couldn’t pull it all together.
Perhaps I aimed too high, she thought to herself, and searched through her notebook for another number. She thought highly of the American military – when she thought about it at all – but she had no illusions about it. The vast majority of soldiers, sailors and airmen were proud of their service and did an excellent job, but there were always those who thought that they’d been given a raw deal. The man who thought that he had been denied promotion, the woman who felt that her sex worked against her, the rear-echelon mother fucker who thought that the troops on the front line were overpaid and oversexed, the volunteer who’d thought that he was volunteering for something else…there was no shortage of dissatisfied people.
Outside Context Problem: Book 01 - Outside Context Problem Page 12