Second contact, p.28
Second Contact, page 28
part #2 of Not Alone Series
C minus 28
GSC Headquarters
Buenos Aires, Argentina
William Godfrey sat alone in his high office, where he had been sleeping as well as working over the last few days. The harsh ringing of his phone was an unwelcome sound in the early hours of an already difficult morning, but the voice on the other end of the line was a whole different level of bad news.
“Explain yourself,” was all the caller said.
“Valerie,” Godfrey said, forcing a smile in the hope it would come through in his words. “What a pleasant surprise.”
President Valerie Slater, battle-hardened by a brutal few months spent denying that there was any truth in Dan McCarthy’s leak and then humbled by the necessity of admitting that Richard Walker’s one-man cover-up had hoodwinked her along with everyone else, was not the same person Godfrey had prodded and mocked so relentlessly back then.
There was quite literally no other leader in the world who had ever survived anything close to the humiliations Slater had endured, and by now Godfrey was not alone in reluctantly conceding that she clearly had a lot more going for her than many had previously thought — that she maybe really was there on merit after all, rather than “because she ticks the right boxes for the diversity crusaders” as her long-term foe Richard Walker had once not-so-tactfully put it.
A year on from her darkest days, Slater was riding high in the polls on the basis of doing the basics well and overseeing relative economic and social calm.
She had drawn praise for making an open decision to avoid the kind of “petty, personal grudges” which had overshadowed high-level relations between certain other Western leaders of late.
She didn’t have to name Godfrey and Cole, much less the man behind the curtain in the shape of Jack Neal, but she had publicly stated that she would not be making any subjective comments on GSC-related issues for at least the remainder of her first term. The GSC was bound to have teething problems, she said, and there were bound to be serious complaints from formerly high-ranking personnel who saw their roles greatly diluted if not rendered obsolete by the fast-tracked merging of the world’s existing national space agencies.
Slater had serious reservations about both Godfrey as an individual and also some specific elements of the GSC’s charter, but the will of the people and nations of the world had spoken in clear support of a collaborative future for space research, spearheaded by the truly supranational Global Space Commission. Most certainly, the GSC was something she tolerated rather than supported.
“Explain yourself,” she repeated, with no time for Godfrey’s attempts at geniality.
“Well,” Godfrey exhaled deeply, “if you’re calling about the recent incident, I expect you already know that it wasn’t a meteor as the media are prematurely reporting.”
“Spare me the bullshit,” Slater blasted. “You’ve got three minutes to tell me why a Chinese spy satellite just burned up over Montana. Three minutes.”
“It was a junk satellite, Valerie. From what we can tell so far, an unexpected collision with a small piece of debris altered the expected entry point.”
“Two minutes fifty.”
“For goodness’ sake, will you at least listen to me here? We knew this was coming; we just expected it to happen a little while later. We’re talking hours rather than days. There really is nothing to worry about; this kind of thing happens with satellite re-entries from time to time. It’s not ideal, but it happens.”
“Oh, it happens, does it? Tell me, William, when was the last time an American spy satellite burned up over China?”
“Well, I could consult the records, but I expect your question is rhetorical.”
“What gave it away?” Slater groaned.
Godfrey didn’t reply.
“Well if you’re not going to say anything, at least listen carefully: when your impotence and inaction was threatening Billy Kendrick and a few seals or penguins or whatever else inhabits that godforsaken island, I was willing to stand back and tell everyone that you were dealing with it. But when you’re so obviously not dealing with it — when Billy Kendrick, Timo Fiore and Emma fucking Ford are stitching you up like they did in New York — that makes my life difficult.”
“Valerie, I—”
“I’ll tell you when I’m finished!” President Slater yelled. “Because you need to hear this, William: when you’re seen as incapable of doing your job and things start falling from the sky above my country, well, that’s the point when I can’t keep standing behind you and telling everyone that everything is fine! Okay…. you can talk now.”
“Have John and Jack been trying to get to you?” Godfrey asked.
“I’m not with them on this,” Slater replied. “Jack is a snake, and I’m not with Cole on anything. This is about the safety of the United States and nothing else. If you don’t step up and deal with this, don’t think we won’t pull out and do it ourselves. I can understand why someone like you might think that stability is more important than security, but that’s not a view shared by my government or my citizens. We need answers about what just happened over Montana, and we need them now.”
Godfrey said nothing. He had never liked Slater, but he would have long respected her a lot more than he did if she’d always had this kind of fight in her.
The GSC Chairman was loath to let anyone talk to him in the manner and tone that Slater had adopted during the call, but unfortunate political realities meant that he had to keep her sweet and tolerate her disdain in much the same way she had previously had to tolerate the obstinate and frequently belligerent Richard Walker. But while Slater had tolerated Walker to avoid unnecessary difficulties, Godfrey had to tolerate Slater to protect the very existence of his Global Space Commission.
It was no secret to anyone that the GSC’s headline achievement to date was fostering an unprecedented level of cooperation between American and Chinese scientists, and it was likewise no secret that the Commission’s life as a meaningful entity depended entirely on the continued support of those nations’ governments.
This unwelcome dependence was why Godfrey had choked out a statement which condemned “foolhardy Western tourists” and praised the “laudable restraint of our Chinese-born security officers” in the hours after an unfortunate clash at Lake Namtso, a mealy-mouthed comment which drew derision on both sides of the Atlantic and nothing more than a cursory nod from Beijing. That had been uncomfortable, but Godfrey liked Ding Ziyang a lot more than he liked Valerie Slater, and diffusing a potential powder-keg of a situation by any means necessary was a lot more palatable to him than listening to the barely concealed glee in Slater’s voice as she spoke to him like he was an intern.
“Valerie,” Godfrey sighed, “we’re not sitting here doing nothing. We are doing our utmost to get to the bottom of this so that we can issue some reassuring words before the media runs wild with its usual nonsense. Everyone at the GSC — everyone — is looking for the answers you want, because we want them, too.”
“Then look harder! Look smarter! With the budget at your disposal…” it was now Slater’s turn to sigh, very audibly. “Is it really too much to ask that you know what the hell is going on in front of you? Is it too much to ask that you know how to use all of the equipment we pay for?”
“Things take time, Valerie. It’s barely been an hour! As I said: everyone is working on this, all-out. You’ll have more details as soon as we do.”
“Oh, I’m counting on that. You’re going to give me a full report on this tomorrow,” Slater said, “or you won’t like where this goes next. Get to work.”
Abruptly, the line went dead.
Godfrey launched his phone across the room, acting out of full-blown rage rather than frustration or helplessness.
You’ll get your damn report, he thought to himself as he stood up to gather the broken pieces. And then you’ll get the rest of what’s coming to you.
C minus 27
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
Clark, having been on his way upstairs, stopped dead on the spot at Dan’s comment that they would all be looking somewhere else before Trey got home. “You really think the next meteor-type thing is coming in less than twenty hours?” he asked.
Dan nodded without saying a word.
“Any ideas where?”
Dan replied by holding his hands in the shape of a rudimentary triangle, thumbs touching and fingers diagonal. When Clark very evidently didn’t get it, he added some words. “I have some ideas. They showed me an equilateral triangle, remember? I still think that Kerguelen was the attention-grabber, not one of the points, but Lolo undeniably is the first point. So when they give me one more point — the second — I’ll know the third. I don’t want to get too technical with someone who doesn’t know what a light-year is, but obviously the third could be either of two possibilities, one on each side of the line between points A and B. I think one of the options will make a lot more sense than the other, like if one is in the ocean and one is in Colorado or D.C. or something like that, but the worst-case scenario is that we have to look in two places. With Timo’s money, we could look in two hundred.”
“You really still think the plaque could turn up in Colorado?” Clark asked. He more or less followed the rest and took Dan’s light-year jab in the intended spirit, but this part jumped out at him. “You don’t think that would be too, I dunno, easy-looking? Almost suspicious?”
“Walker has lived here for decades and more people have looked for the plaque in Colorado than any other state or country. Pikes Peak, all the old silver and gold towns, Argentine Pass… millions of people clearly already think it’s here, so it’s not like the idea is far-fetched. The devil is in the detail, and we saw how much attention to detail the Messengers paid in Salzburg. Maybe they’re going to lead us to another Heilig. All I know for sure is that they’re leading us somewhere, and we’ll be there a hell of a lot sooner than you think.”
“I hope you’re right,” Clark said, reaching the top step.
“When have I ever been wrong on any of this stuff?” Dan replied, speaking light-heartedly but with a firmness that left little doubt as to how certain he was.
“You should plug yourself in to your little robot charger and download a humbleness update while you’re installing that new emotion centre,” Clark jibed. He was gone before Dan could think of a suitable retort.
Dan then glanced up at the trend-ticker on his wall, which was currently scrolling through an immensely popular recent status update from Kaitlyn Judd, star of the fortuitously timed and record-breaking movie The Fourth Plaque:
“Okay guys… leaving aside the movie for now (just remember: I didn’t write it!)… WTF is actually happening out there? First Kerguelen and now Montana? It seems like the Messengers are trying to tell us something and we’re not listening. Why is Godfrey so quiet? Why is no one asking Dan McCarthy what he thinks? And how about this one… where the hell is President Slater? Like, hello… stuff is falling towards us from space. Maybe it’s time to do something?”
Dan knew that a massive spike in social media attention was coming his way, as it always did after a mention from someone like Kaitlyn. He hadn’t seen her latest movie and never would; Billy Kendrick, a consultant in the early stages, had given up a pile of money over what he called “typical Hollywood bullshit” and what he considered an unacceptable narrative decision to paint the Messengers as ambivalent to humanity rather than friendly. But despite having no interest in seeing it, Dan now very much wanted to know how the movie ended and what exactly was engraved on its eponymous fourth plaque.
He almost threw up in his mouth when he read that the movie ended with the fourth plaque, discovered after an action-packed and death-defying treasure hunt through ancient libraries and lush rainforests and every other clichéd location on the usual check-list, revealed itself to be a stark warning to humanity against emitting certain quantities of certain gases.
His issue was not with this bludgeoning heavy-handedness so much as it was with the movie’s proposed solution: the expansion of the GSC into a broader organisation capable of setting and, more crucially, enforcing limits on the offending emissions. After a few more clicks, Dan saw that the last few days had seen a full-on social media shit-storm surrounding The Fourth Plaque, with countless powerful celebrities and millions of ordinary users lambasting the GSC’s inability to handle its current mandate and openly questioning just how bad things would be if even more sovereignty was ceded to Chairman Godfrey’s bloated bureaucratic beast.
It had been a rough few days for the typically uncontroversial Kaitlyn Judd, who was highly charitable and had been almost universally well-liked before the movie painted her as a GSC shill and before the last few days of Godfrey’s inaction and lies had turned the GSC into the IDA resurrected in the public’s eyes. Kaitlyn had been kind to Dan during his appearance on Focus 20/20 when he’d been at the centre of his own storm, and she didn’t deserve this. He typed a short private message of support and almost sent it her way to tell her that everything would blow over soon when people realised that none of it was her fault, only stopping when he remembered Emma telling him that celebrities didn’t normally manage their own social media accounts.
Kaitlyn would keep a supportive private message from Dan to herself, but he suspected that her handlers wouldn’t be quite so discreet. He deleted the message before sending it and instead settled for silently sending her some good vibes.
When he gazed again at the ticker, its new scrolling message was a simpler headline about the geographic spread of sightings of the recent meteor event. Still, no one anywhere was talking about a second flash or a double happening, much less a low-flying alien craft.
The Messengers don’t make mistakes, Dan thought to himself as he turned out the light and lay down in the faint hope that some much-needed sleep would come soon if he closed his eyes.
He had a mental quirk too mundane and stupid to ever share with anyone else; one which involved mentally repeating any given short phrase over and over again in moments of silence, with a different word emphasised each time. In instances when this grew tiresome, which took longer than anyone would believe, Dan’s mind would then alphabetise the words if he was still awake, before sorting them by their number of letters and syllables.
As it had countless times over the years, the first part of this familiar mental sequence sent Dan to sleep after a few dozen repetitions. The last version in his mind before his consciousness slipped was the best one, with the emphasis falling in just the right place:
The Messengers don’t make mistakes.
WEDNESDAY
C minus 26
Ford Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
In the space of no more than three hectic minutes, Dan was roused from an unusually sound sleep by the basement’s intercom and quickly found himself standing next to Emma while Tara sat on her couch next to none other than Timo Fiore.
Emma whispered to him that Timo had just arrived and that she hadn’t realised Clark would have to leave for work so early, but Dan agreed that Clark’s presence wasn’t strictly necessary for this. He wasn’t missing anything pleasant, and he would probably thank them for doing it without him.
Timo rose enthusiastically to greet Dan, smiling as warmly as he always did upon seeing his good friend, but Tara remained rooted to the couch with the expression of someone who had just thrown up.
Given what he assumed Emma had already told her, Dan wouldn’t have been surprised if Tara actually had been physically ill; her face certainly looked far more worried and frightened than it did angry or upset.
“So it’s true?” she asked, her voice a quivering shadow of itself as she directed the question to Dan. “Everything was a lie?”
Dan briefly glanced at Emma, who gave a slight nod to encourage him to talk. “Everything Walker said was a lie,” Dan qualified. “We thought everything we were saying was true, right until the night of the DS-1 explosion when Ben Gold came to my house and told us it wasn’t. A few days later, me and Emma were standing in a spacecraft communicating with the real Messengers. Everything Walker ever said was a lie, Kloster did actually write the letter but his whole story was a lie, and neither the sphere that was found off Argentina or the messages on either of the plaques inside it were real. The message on the third plaque was real, and Emma more or less told the Messengers where they could dump it to calm everyone down without revealing that the rest was a lie. That’s what I really need you to understand, Tara: the aliens didn’t want to expose Walker’s hoax, they just wanted to undo its damage. Their big thing is ‘minimal necessary intervention’. There’s so much to tell you that I don’t even know where to start, but we have proof of everything and later today we’ll have irrefutable video proof that their craft flew over Montana last night, exactly where we met them. And I want you to know that we didn’t just keep this from you, we kept it from literally everyone. The guy who we sent to get the footage last night doesn’t even know.”
Before Tara could ask any questions, Timo excitedly blurted out two of his own: “What footage from last night? And who did you send?”
“Dan sent someone he trusts completely,” Emma said, stepping in to field this one. “He knew something was going to happen at a specific time, and he wanted someone there to record it. Seconds before the junk satellite entered the atmosphere and burned up, a craft flew across the sky directly above our friend’s cameras. He’s a professional, and he told us that this footage is incontrovertible.”
A barrage of questions then flew at Dan from both Timo and Tara, covering all of the expected topics from how he knew something was going to happen to what the Messengers’ recent return could mean.
