‘What the hell are you doing?’
The man turned. He was in his thirties, with brown hair greying at the edges, and a tanned skin which told of years spent someplace hot. Brown, slightly watery eyes assessed Petrie through wire-framed spectacles. When he stood up Petrie saw that the man was lean and muscular, the sort who ran four miles before breakfast. His voice was English public school and surprisingly deep: ‘Going through the signal. Mind-blowing, isn’t it? But it can’t be for real.’
Petrie, taken aback, asked lamely, ‘Who are you?’
‘Hanning, Jeremy Hanning. And you must be Dr Petrie.’ The man gave a carefully judged smile. ‘I’m an observer for the Cabinet Office. I have to see what you’re all up to and report to Lord Sangster by tomorrow evening. It’s that simple.’
Warily, Petrie asked, ‘How much of a briefing have you had?’
‘The story is that you’ve been contacted by little green men.’ He nodded towards the terminal and gave an isn’t-it-silly smile.
‘And you don’t believe it. Does Lord Sangster?’
Hanning ignored the question. ‘There are five of you here, am I right? Two British, two Russians and a Norwegian.’
‘Yes. The original team was one Brit and two Russians. Freya Størmer and I were co-opted.’
‘How do you get on with the Russians?’
‘Fine.’
‘No, ah … differences?’ The man was studying Petrie closely. One eye, Petrie noticed, seemed slightly larger than the other, but he thought that might be due to a cold.
‘None — why should there be? Look, how do I know you’re not a journalist or something?’
More laughter, a touch too brittle. ‘We’ll phone Lord Sangster up, shall we? Let’s use the video circuit.’
‘First let’s get the team awake. Forgive me, but I think we have to make a communal judgement about you.’
There was a long teak desk at the centre of the administrator’s office. A black computer sat at the head of this desk, and a large video monitor sat atop the computer, and a wide-angle camera sat atop the monitor. Sangster’s face appeared on the screen, nearly filling it, against a background of books.
‘Simon Sangster here.’
Gibson sat at the opposite end of the table, facing the screen directly. ‘Lord Sangster, this is Charles Gibson, principal investigator on the Dark Matter Project. Good morning, sir.’
Sangster returned the greeting with a nod.
‘I have a Jeremy Hanning here. He tells me that you’ve sent him out to oversee the proceedings.’
‘Oversee is too strong a word, Dr Gibson.’ Sangster’s face was expressionless; he was making no attempt to be friendly or encouraging.
‘First, would you confirm that this is in fact Jeremy Hanning.’ Gibson played with controls on a keyboard and the camera swivelled round to Hanning.
‘Well, of course it’s Jeremy. Who else would it be?’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Back to Gibson.
‘Jeremy will assess the situation and report to me at nine o’clock tomorrow evening by the British clock. The main thing is to confirm that this is not some dreadful error and that you really have received an extraterrestrial signal. Have you identified the source?’
‘We’ll be working on that today.’
‘And I understand you say the message contains information of a biological nature.’
‘Yes.’
Petrie had a momentary, startling vision of Sangster as a calculating lizard. He put it down to a slight exophthalmic goitre coupled with deep eyelids. His lordship was saying, ‘What sort of information?’
Gibson hesitated. ‘We’ll be working on that too.’
‘I look forward to hearing from you tomorrow evening. Meantime, of course, security is everything.’
‘Agreed.’ Gibson hesitated again, licked his lips. Then: ‘But I intend to make a public announcement on Monday, whatever stage we’ve reached in our investigation.’
Later, and many times over, Gibson was to wonder why he had said that. Perhaps, he would wonder, he was unconsciously striking a blow in an ancient battle, defending a culture of openness against one of secrecy. Even as he spoke he sensed that something was wrong. Hanning cleared his throat. Shtyrkov, across the desk from Gibson, put his head in his hands.
Sangster was silent for a moment. His tone was icy. ‘That’s not your decision, Dr Gibson.’
Gibson swallowed. ‘Actually, it is. I’m the PI here.’
‘The facility is, however, financed by Her Majesty through PPARC, which falls within my department.’
‘You may finance it, Lord Sangster, but I run it.’
Damn it, Charlie, shut up. This is a disaster.
‘You may think so, but the fact that I finance it means that I also run it. HMG has ultimate responsibility for work carried out on its behalf. And there are assuredly dimensions to this discovery going beyond mere scientific interest.’
Gibson said nothing, but his face was showing open hostility.
‘Let’s not dig ourselves into trenches, Dr Gibson. We must talk through the implications of this discovery before we make it public. It’s in everyone’s interests to get this right. Jeremy, nine o’clock tomorrow.’
‘I won’t be done out of this.’ Gibson’s face was black with anger. ‘I’m not having this discovery announced by some bloody government minister.’
Svetlana, next to him, touched his shoulder in a gesture of sympathy.
‘That’s what’s behind this,’ Gibson continued angrily. ‘Sangster wants to pre-empt the announcement.’
‘For once I agree with you,’ Shtyrkov said.
Svetlana said, ‘So do I, Charlie. The announcement has to be made by the discoverer.’
‘Which is me. PI’s privilege.’
‘But I put twelve years into this machine,’ Svetlana said. ‘I get a slice of the cake.’
‘You do, Svetlana, of course you do.’ Charlie looked across at Shtyrkov. ‘We all do.’
Nobody mentioned that Hanning was excluded from the ‘we’; it was too obvious to need mentioning.
Petrie said, ‘You guys have been on this for years; I turned up two days ago. I don’t deserve an equal share.’
‘Tom, that’s not right,’ Shtyrkov said. ‘Your contribution deserves full recognition. Without it, where would we be? Your name goes on as part of the team. So does Freya’s.’
‘I’ve contributed nothing yet,’ said Freya.
‘But you will.’
‘I agree with Vashislav,’ said Svetlana. ‘We’re in this together.’
‘I feel a bit of a lemon here,’ Hanning said.
‘Nobody asked your opinion,’ Gibson said in a sudden outburst of fury.
‘Charlie,’ Svetlana chided him gently.
‘Mr Hanning, I’m sorry about this…’
‘Jeremy, please.’
‘Jeremy,’ Petrie continued. ‘But I wonder if you would leave us for a few minutes?’
‘I’m here as an observer on the authority of the Cabinet Office.’
Petrie waited.
‘But I suppose in the circumstances…’
The moment Hanning left, closing the conference door behind him with a click, Gibson spoke quietly and rapidly. ‘Monday morning we announce this jointly. We follow the IAA protocols. I send e-mails to the Secretary General of the United Nations, IAU Commission 51, et cetera.’
Shtyrkov said, ‘We should put it out on the internet. It will be round the globe in minutes. Whatever your position, Charlee, the British government cannot claim jurisdiction over me. I am a Russian. But not Monday,’ he cautioned. ‘They’ll be expecting that. Maybe pre-emption is their game. Spring a surprise. Do it sooner.’
‘Maybe their game is suppression,’ Svetlana suggested. ‘Maybe they don’t want this information to get out.’
The anger in Gibson’s face became tinged with bafflement. ‘Why not? Where’s the sense in that?’