“That will make me smile as the guys at Fort Meade get indigestion working out how I know without them even acknowledging it even happened,” David said.
“Accelerating as we cross the George Washington Bridge and down the coast,” Rafaello announced and Maria climbed again before rushing south down the eastern seaboard.
Maria turned west before reaching the Florida panhandle. Night quickly became day again as they crossed a narrow band of sunset in reverse and chased the sun ploughing west somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico. The sun rising again made David squint, despite Maria’s protective anti-glare. They were catching the sun and it was early evening when they crossed the west coast by the Baja Peninsula and flew on into the Pacific. They slowed again and cruised under perfect tiny fluffy white clouds, pastel skies above, baby blue seas below. How was it that the Pacific by day was so idyllic and vast, when the Atlantic was darker, colder? A short time later the sun climbed higher in the sky and they stopped overhead the silver domes of the Keck Observatory atop the dark lava fields of Mauna Kea volcano on the Big Island, Hawaii.
Rafaello took Maria out to the north-east between the Big Island and Maui and then descended towards the azure waters below. David was waiting for the flight path to shallow out above the surface. He called out in alarm as Maria continued on the same glide path, closed with the waves and plunged in without pause. The Pantuccis smiled at the theatricality of Maria changing from flight through air to water without slowing at all. David let out a long breath once he understood that the manoeuvre was for his entertainment and education into Maria’s capabilities.
They had penetrated the seas of the Maui Channel close by the edge of the Hawaiian ridge where the shallow waters plunged over the edge down to the Pacific ocean floor far below. These shallow waters held the volcanic peaks that emerged into the air as the Hawaiian islands. Maria could dive into the sea flying as effortlessly underwater as she had in the skies above. She raced up and down, into and out of the waves with the exuberance of the school of dolphins that soon chased alongside, eager to examine the large craft that could leap and dive like themselves. David saw the excited open-mouthed grins of the dolphins racing along on all sides and Maria relayed their calls through the interior. Maria analysed the calls of the dolphins and soon ripped out streams of clicks of her own, blending together like rapid Morse code. Maria was chattering with the dolphins who rode along her flanks rising and falling through the air–sea interface.
David turned to Rafaello and asked, “How does Maria communicate?”
“It is very difficult to explain, much easier to show you. Would he like to see Maria’s communications translated into the human sensory spectrum? We call it ‘MariaVision’.”
“Yes,” said David and immediately the viewing screens were transformed into massively more complex images and sounds. The blending shades of marine blue water fading into dark blue below were replaced by layered contours like a large-scale map each filled with individual solid blue. White spume and sky blue air layers like a painting by Hokusai animated by the movement all around formed a complex shifting image that overwhelmed the senses, shot through with metallic threads that were a visual manifestation of the clicks from Maria and the dolphins. David was immersed in this living artwork in flowing motion of the dolphins romping through this wonderfully immersive environment. It was now clear individual dolphins slid between the frictionless water layers of differing hues at fantastic speeds with mere flexing of their torpedo bodies. Just as David was accustomed to being inside the sensory world of the dolphins as presented to his senses by the Maria starcraft, a long trumpet blare and staccato blasts ripped through the water layers in sound and plates of silvery colour. A large male humpback whale hove to alongside bumping into Maria and parting the dolphin school.
The right eye of the whale peered into the craft and David felt that the leviathan was grinning at him personally. Not quite so obviously enjoying himself, with his downturned maw, as the dolphins with their smiling jawline, but more subtle, wiser somehow in its ways. The whale thrust down with both tail flukes so that the trajectory of its mass angled toward the surface; black curved body ridges lined with white along the belly accented the curve upward. Driving through the surface it broke free into the air where its forty tonnes had no purchase, wheeled onto its back with wafting front flukes and fell back into the enfolding sea in an explosion of water that cosseted the whale in a billion bubbles as it luxuriated back down into the Pacific where its fall was gently halted by the warm surface waters.
David ducked involuntarily as Maria blared out her own baleful reply to the whale in its own terms and then angled toward the surface. Like the whale, Maria plunged up nose first into the air at forty-five degrees, silvery hull not dissimilarly shaped to the whale, then cut drive power and crashed back into the water in the same manner as the whale. David could sense the waters breaking Maria’s fall back into the sea until she lay alongside the humpback that had now rotated right side up to critically regard Maria’s leap. In MariaVision the wailing conversation flowed in sound and shining vision between the cetacean and the starship.
“What are they saying?” David asked.
“We don’t totally know,” Rafaello replied. “There is a research programme running on Maria from one of our colleagues in Cambridge. He thinks whales can talk across the planet and well beyond into space. His programme has been collecting conversations for decades to decipher the language and look for behaviours that could transmit from Earth.”
David pondered that thought as the booming conversation tailed off in farewell and Maria powered back out of the waves. Rafaello plotted a near-vertical trajectory up into the stratosphere where they turned over at the apex to point west again at the sun. Down below through blue skies and the occasional cloud was the great curve of the Earth. The moon was a shining disc on the starboard side, major craters painting the fanciful face of the man in the moon, distinct in the clear air of low space. David was beyond the ozone layer now into the Mesosphere, and here was proof positive, if any more was needed, that Maria was no aircraft of earthly technological origin. They crossed the Pacific very high, the islands of the Philippines familiar as on a globe, then on to the South China Sea where a white pinwheel whorl of a lonely tropical storm threatened the coast of Vietnam.
There was little sensation of speed at this extreme altitude, merely the Earth rotating calmly under them where the long crescent line of dawn separated illuminated Asia from the darkness of Eastern Europe, Maria having overtaken the sun on its westerly track. Rafaello took Maria lower allowing David to identify the outlines of the countries of Central Europe, spider webs of light linking bright discs of cities far below. The night sky above was punctuated by the major stars and the more he looked, the more stars could be seen, and the longer he stared into the heavenly soup of stars.
“Are you ready to try out MariaVision again, David?” Rafaello enquired, seeing David gazing up and starwards.
David had not considered using Maria’s instrumentation for looking into space but he was like a sponge soaking up all this technical wonder, “Yes of course,” he replied.
“Do you have any phobias at all?” Rafaello continued. “Acrophobia perhaps? Agoraphobia? Vertigo?”
“I trained with 7th Para you know. Night as well as day drops. I never had any problems or phobias that I am aware of.”
“Very well, David. Just so you understand what is happening. We probably didn’t prepare you properly for our little dive into the sea back there. A long time ago we discovered there was an unplanned benefit when high definition cloaking film was invented. On the outside membrane of the craft the film passes light images across the craft so it makes the craft invisible viewed from the outside. When they tried out coating the inside walls of the craft with the same cloaking film they found it had a different effect. It is one of many discoveries with unintended benefits. There have been many unfor
eseen discoveries of this type; consider the recent discovery of Sildenafil by your medical science. It was originally intended to correct arterial hypertension, but trials soon found an entirely more interesting use, and was markedly more successful as a diamond-shaped blue pill for erectile dysfunction. The unintended effect of interior coating of cloaking film in a space ship is to render the walls invisible as viewed from the inside. And here we go… Voila!”
The walls and roof of the cabin shimmered and disappeared. David was suddenly flying through space on a visible floor with its attached furniture like a great magic-carpet ride under the vault of the heavens; an open-air patio deck racing through the clearest of night skies. David was shocked into silence by the drama of the change. Watching from the ship’s interior on screens was familiar from earthly aircraft; travelling through space al fresco was not. David reached out involuntarily for a seatbelt that refused to draw out. They were in stable flight now and the enfolding seat was retracted so they could walk about freely in open space. He clawed the seat arms protectively to anchor himself so as not to fly out into the star-spangled blackness. He looked across at Umberto who was lounging in his chair without a safety harness of any kind, regarding David’s discomfort with the indulgent smile of experience.
“There is no ideal preparation for the first time this happens, my friend. The screens we have been viewing earlier are mere windows soft-mapped on to the walls, they can be any size from panoramic, as now, to completely absent when not required. You are as safe as you were in the enclosed surroundings of a moment ago; the walls are still there, just invisible.” As if to prove his point Rafaello stood and walked across the deck to obtain a drink from the dispenser, then returned to his chair across the field of stars.
As in the seas off Hawaii, interesting areas of space were highlighted and defined. On the ground below countries and places were displayed across the floor that could be examined at any level of magnification. David looked down and he was informed he was looking into Budapest. As he concentrated on the aerial view Maria followed the focus of his eyes and magnified the spindle of land in the centre of the river Danube that was Margaret Island. David could sense the sleepy quietude of the city and when he focussed down further to view the streets at night, the few movements of people and nocturnal animals of the city could be seen individually. Pulling his focus back he could see Northern Europe as a sweeping curve spread below him. Still in MariaVision, he turned his view to the towering stars and there he was amazed. Webs of information displayed planetary colonies of life and their major communications lines in and amongst the stars. Can this be true… ? David thought. Life was abundantly displayed, everywhere.
“When we allow Maria to follow the workings of our eyes she can follow our focus then the whole ship can display the exterior overlaid with all kinds of additional information,” Rafaello explained. “So if I concentrate my vision Maria will focus in like so…” The small portion of the sky containing the Hyades and the Pleiades zoomed out to display detailed images ten metres across, each star cluster consisting of masses of stars with coloured spider webs of lines showing the main transport routes between interconnected cultures. The Pleiades star cluster was spectacularly bright. Hundreds of stars, some very brilliant roaming together as a ball through space, charting a common course across the Milky Way galaxy. “In Natural View we are seeing the star field as it appears to our eyes, seeing the stars as they were centuries old – 444 years ago to the Pleiades, to be precise. Maria can take this natural view and update it with all our current data to give you Real Time View; the heavens brought right up to date as of the last updates from all our current information sources. The Pleiades look as they are right now.”
Rafaello flicked his eyes and Maria changed the display. Skeins of blue and green tendrils of small nodes spanned the blackness of night. These shone most brightly from the expanded image of the Hyades and Pleiades star clusters. “Now habitable planets similar to your Earth are indicated in indigo; green highlights locations of known human colonies.”
Rafaello pointed into the most luminous expanded view of the Pleiades.“Our home,” he said simply.
David looked to where Rafaello was pointing and saw a massive number of planets in dense green webs, indicating they were home to populations of people.
“And here,” David indicated the Hyades where other great populations were indicated.
“That is the Spargar empire,” Rafaello responded sombrely. “A great star-faring people but an unhappy one. The biggest threat to the people of your planet Earth. One of the reasons we are here to help you. We would not wish that you fall under their iron rule uncontested.”
“Hard to believe we have been alone so long with this amount of life all around us,” David wondered aloud.
“Don’t forget the distances are massive. Look at the gaps in between; these are tens if not hundreds of light years apart. And there are rules that prevent growing new cultures being invaded in their early years. Spargar would prefer to simply annex all habitable planets but that would not be in the interests of the human race across the galaxy. There are rules that even they must be seen to uphold. Now you are one of very few humans from Earth who has this knowledge. Assuming you believe the evidence of your eyes and believe it to be real, then what would you do?”
“It would depend on whether I could count on your help,” David said, aware that he was receiving that help already right then. “Proving all this to one person like me just puts that person outside the body of accepted knowledge. A crazy maverick no one could believe. Proof would be needed on a grand scale to make all the people believe.”
“Of course, you will find that we are building to that objective at the present time. Our Travellers will provide proof enough when the time is right. You must manage what steps you take very carefully though. The knowledge you now have will not be easily accepted by your own people. If it is handled poorly then you face ridicule at best, personal danger at worst as you will find vested interests will rail against you at every turn.”
David was lost in thought. At least he had been readied for this role his entire career and should be the least surprised of all people back home. When he looked back on his early years, he had been fascinated from his childhood about life, stars, the universe and what it all might mean. As he pondered weighty issues, Maria pushed on into the north-west crossing the diagonal breadth of Germany at passenger airline altitude and out into the North Sea over the crenellated coast around Rotterdam. Maria descended and cruised lower to the sea heading for the brightly lit medallion of London at the point of the black wedge of the river Thames estuary.
Maria continued up the Thames with the lights on the banks on both sides growing closer. They overflew the QE2 road bridge just over tower-top height and then dropped lower to the river. Now they were entering the mass of London inside the M25 ring road, central London dead ahead beyond the towers of Canary Wharf. Rafaello took Maria over Tower Bridge and slowed as they approached Westminster Bridge next to the big wheel of the London Eye they had left earlier that same night. “Best we set you down here,” Rafaello informed David. “It’s possible we could drop you outside your apartment but if you suddenly appeared there and anyone was looking there would be difficult questions to answer.”
Maria curved forward to nose down and rotated so that she was alongside the long wall of Victoria Embankment. The seats gimballed as the craft rotated, keeping Maria’s crew and passenger comfortably aligned throughout the docking manoeuvre. When all was steady the seats unwrapped their passengers and all three stood and walked to the wall in front that opened to allow egress over the rail to the pavement on Embankment beyond.
“Thank you does not adequately cover what you have shown me this night, but it must suffice for now,” David said to the two Gayan Cavallos.
“This is just a beginning. You have not seen the last of us, I think,” Umberto replied brightly.
Rafaello smiled, “We may not decide the path, but you can be sure that it will be us Cavallos that will be here to protect you and to make it happen. Meanwhile if you need to make contact with us that can be arranged through Charlotte in Professor Kitteridge’s team.” Connections were making themselves in David’s mind. “Till we meet again then, Brigadier Harrier,” Rafaello and Umberto nodded and turned away together.
David checked both directions and stepped over the railing. The Embankment was quiet, just a few nocturnal vehicles going about their deliveries. London being the most filmed city on Earth a few closed circuit cameras recorded David’s sudden appearance but would not be called on to disclose their knowledge; too much information, too few scrutinisers. In any case David had the power to control the management reporting output of those cameras if that became necessary. He looked back at the amazing craft Maria but she was no longer there. The great illuminated wheel of the London Eye was across the river between the pontoons of the tourist boats. David turned away and mentally saluted the Battle of Britain Memorial before walking the short journey back to his apartment.
FOUR
The command centre floor atop the Spyre, highest tower in the Spargar capital city Braganza, was busy with activity as the Conclave of the Omeyns was about to commence. The local Omeyn in Attendance ceremonially opened the channels to her sisterhood spread across the Spargar Empire. Outside, a mist had descended to shroud the tall views across the city and bathe the interior of the room in a muddy ochre backlight, punctuated by the green glow of screens around the walls. The screens were attended by high-ranking Spargar agents ready to manage the network or seek information that may be required by the Conclave in session. The Omeyn in Attendance was dressed in loose flowing dark robes that covered her from neck to ankle; only her head and hands were visible. The high dome of her cranium was scythed with lines of tattooed runes inlaid with gems. On this occasion she wore a ceremonial Mohawk from a point high on her forehead over the bald crown and down to the top of her spine at the rear. The Mohawk was high and narrowly arched, made of rare metal filigree embellished with scintillating small arachnids that climbed amongst the metal tendrils, creating tiny rainbows.
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