Second Contact, page 56
part #2 of Not Alone Series
For once, no reply came Dan’s way. He saw slight movement on the Messenger’s typically expressionless face as its primate-like eyes widened slightly, as though it was now having to think rather than respond automatically.
“See! You didn’t even think of that, did you? Your genius Elders decided to let you destroy DS-1, an intervention which created tension within the GSC and set us back years… but for some reason they’ve decided that now’s the time to take a hard line against any more major interventions, even to undo the damage you did last time?”
The risk of unintended consequences is precisely why we intervene minimally, as a rule. However, given the unforeseen effect of the initial intervention, in this case…
In another first, the Messenger’s communication stopped mid-thought. It seemed to Dan almost as though it was again thinking in a manner the cable couldn’t relay, or perhaps that it was silently communicating with its companion.
“Hanosaan… neee,” it called out loud, disproving Dan’s suspicion of silent communication. “Manno plen… foom.”
In response to this comment, the second Messenger turned towards the craft and extended its hand, holding out its two thick finger-like appendages as though sending or receiving a message.
Fifteen or twenty long seconds later, it lowered its hand and replied in a slightly deeper but similarly melodic tone: “Babillo… vee. Yeptan saal… caloo.”
The Messenger in front of Dan then finished its earlier thought:
In this case… a corrective intervention, even one of some astronomical significance, has been approved. It is approved.
It was, now, Dan’s turn to be lost for words. How fast do these Elders operate?, he wondered to himself. If all of his facial muscles other than his eyelids hadn’t been frozen in place, his mouth would have been agape and his eyebrows raised. “So you’re going to stop it?” he eventually asked. “You’re really going to do it?”
Not stop; divert.
“I meant stop it from hitting us,” Dan qualified. “I couldn’t give a rat’s ass where else it goes!”
Yes. It is done.
In the face of this most casual confirmation that the Messengers or their Elders would indeed intervene to save Earth, Dan was almost too surprised to be pleased; too flabbergasted for the magnitude of what he had just been told to truly sink in.
“Slow down,” he said. “Rewind… I want to get this right: you couldn’t come here and show yourselves until humanity understood the full truth about what was real and what wasn’t? Is that right? For now I’ll even ignore all the reasons you gave me to think that you actively wanted me to keep quiet about the hoax, I just want to check that I’ve got this right so far…”
You have got this right so far.
“Okay. And directly influencing a comet is something you weren’t allowed to do… but you’ll be allowed to do it now that your leaders understand that a planet of seven billion intelligent and mostly peaceful beings would otherwise be wiped out, all because you destroyed its best chance of defending itself the last time you were there?”
Yes. Essentially, yes.
If it had been able to move, Dan’s head would have been shaking in disbelief. “So if I hadn’t told everyone about the hoax, you wouldn’t have come back? And even once you were here… if I hadn’t reminded you that our being so unprepared was pretty much your fault, your friend here wouldn’t have been able to make that case to whoever makes the ‘regulatory’ decisions, and they wouldn’t have said yes?”
Essentially, yes.
“And what about Emma?” Dan asked, immediately shifting focus with no time to celebrate.
Her condition does not seem serious. It is not a serious concern.
“That’s not what the doctors say!”
It will not be a permanent concern. She will recover. And Timo.
For some reason it surprised Dan to hear a name, even though he knew he was ‘hearing’ the Messenger’s thoughts in his own mental accent, and even though the Messengers had obviously been watching everything closely enough to know who was who. “But why didn’t you intervene before they got hurt?” he asked. “Did you know it wouldn’t be serious? Permanent, I mean.”
No. We did not know that, but the situation was not of the kind which merits intervention.
Dan didn’t like this answer, but in one sense he respected it; it would have been easy enough for the Messenger to lie.
“How early did you know that the comet was on course to hit Earth?” he asked, changing the subject.
Just before the Kerguelen bolide.
Dan was grateful to learn that they had started trying to warn him right away — as soon as they knew there was something to warn him about — but this really did settle it in his mind that the Messengers weren’t the supreme and all-knowing beings he once thought. And in light of the methods they had chosen to alert humanity of the comet, he reflected that — not entirely dissimilarly to himself — they had spent the last few weeks trying to understand a distant species which was equipped with vaguely similar physiology but vastly different psychology.
The Messenger could hear these thoughts, of course, and in reply it dispassionately defended its species’ abilities:
Our cross-cultural communications and understandings are continually improving.
‘Cross-cultural’ was another word that felt particularly inexact, but Dan knew what it was getting at. He didn’t give this much thought, anyway; his mind was now too busy considering the bigger picture.
His anger towards the Messengers for not intervening earlier had now turned to a more blameless kind of disappointment, but even that paled in comparison to the relief that was belatedly sinking in.
Thanks to the Messengers, Earth was safe. They weren’t all-knowing, and they weren’t perfect… but they were here.
They were here — they had travelled untold miles out of their way — and they were here for no reason other than to help. As Dan looked into the intelligent but emotionless eyes of the Messenger before him, he felt a sudden flood of gratitude joining relief in his body and mind.
A reply quickly came to this thought, which he hadn’t consciously shared but which the Messenger had picked up loud and clear:
When we can help, we do what we can.
Whether this was a perfect translation or not, it struck Dan as a perfect summation of a laudable philosophy.
We will now remove the cable.
“Are you ever coming back?” Dan asked.
Only if necessary.
This was better than no answer at all, but Dan pushed for more: “What would make it necessary? Nuclear war? Another comet or asteroid? Some kind of massive terrestrial disaster?”
Each instance will be judged on its own merits, but planetary independence and peaceful technological progress is greatly encouraged. I will now remove the cable.
“Are you going to take out or disable whatever it is that makes my neck hurt when you’re close? And Emma’s? And how come she didn’t feel it the first time? Is hers less sensitive than mine? Were you further away when you caused the Kerguelen bolide than you were for the other interventions, and she only feels it if you’re slightly closer?”
No answers came to these final questions as the Messenger moved behind Dan’s still-immobilised body; the conversation was clearly over, and there wasn’t a lot he could do about it. As soon as the cable came out, his body relaxed and he stumbled backwards before quickly catching his balance.
Then, very surprisingly, the Messenger extended its hand in a sign of peace… just like it had seen humans do.
So soon after being forcibly frozen on the spot, Dan wasn’t exactly feeling overly friendly towards the Messenger despite its promise of a better-late-than-never comet intervention. After glancing around at the concerned faces on those brave enough to have remained in the drive-in lot, however, he was aware enough of the world around him to know that everyone everywhere would see this moment, most of them live on TV and the rest before long.
Dan couldn’t have possibly imagined the messianic pedestal he would be placed on by some in the days and weeks to come, but he was conscious of the unprecedented position of responsibility he had fallen into as humanity’s sole point of contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial race.
He imagined Emma standing on the other side of the forcefield which was still keeping people on either side of the wide walkway, and he knew exactly what two words she would have been mouthing his way: game face.
With that in mind, Dan McCarthy stood up straight with his shoulders back, looked firmly into the Messenger’s eyes, and shook its hand.
Some people cheered while most continued to watch in stunned silence.
The Messenger turned away, beckoning its companion to follow its lead in setting off down the otherwise vacant walkway. A thinned herd of brave humans, still pressed as tightly to either side of that walkway as they could be, then watched on in awe as the Messengers reentered their craft without so much as a backwards glance.
Dan saw that Clark was no longer frozen, either, but he was still stuck on the other side of the forcefield. He no longer looked as concerned as he had at first since Dan was now free to move around, but he clearly wanted to reach him.
As Dan watched the alien craft take off, he suddenly felt extremely drowsy.
Intense stomach pains then hit, of a kind he vaguely remembered from when he woke up next to Emma after their shared contact experience at Lolo. Both had been physically ill on that occasion, and Dan thought that the same thing wasn’t far away now.
Next came a dull pain in his neck — not as sudden or intense as previous twinges, but a somehow heavier kind of sensation that forced him to his knees.
Now he felt sick.
He saw the craft flying away over his head, higher and higher in a steady ascent. A police officer in the crowd was yelling about how he, too, had been frozen to the spot, but few were looking in his direction.
Dan then looked back down and saw Clark running towards him across the now traversable lot.
But before Clark arrived, Dan lost consciousness.
In full view of countless reporters, most of whose cameras were naturally focused on the departing alien craft, Dan McCarthy lay collapsed in the centre of the Birchwood drive-in, truly exhausted in every sense of the word.
C plus 42
GSC Headquarters
Buenos Aires, Argentina
William Godfrey had no clue what the remarkable events in Birchwood would mean for his future as GSC Chairman, or indeed for the future of the GSC itself, but right now that seemed like just about the least important thing in the world.
Even for the power-driven Godfrey, the sight of two bona fide extraterrestrials not merely landing on Earth but communicating with a human being in front of the media’s cameras was one which transcended political concerns.
Despite the personal embarrassment of being so utterly bamboozled, Godfrey also couldn’t help but tip his hat to the machiavellian genius of Richard Walker’s elaborate hoax, which had, after all, taken in the rest of the world just as fully as it had taken in Godfrey.
In the few hours since the contact site had been cleared and secured by US federal agents, excited reports had come from lower floors of the GSC headquarters; the conclusion was understandably tentative given the huge distance and the short period of time involved, but the personnel responsible for tracking Comet Conte-Abate were insistent that the small orbital deviation they had already detected was unprecedented and highly significant.
If they were correct, the comet’s course had changed and would no longer carry it to a collision with Earth. If they were correct, the Messengers had indeed decisively intervened.
Godfrey gazed at the TV screen as it showed yet another repeat of the incredible moments when a statue-like Dan McCarthy had been connected to one of the Messengers by a metallic cable at the back of his neck. It was by now assumed as a fact that Dan and the alien had been conversing, and the data Godfrey was privy to but which hadn’t yet reached the media gave him a strong clue as to what had been said.
“Dan McCarthy,” Godfrey said to himself, a rare natural smile crossing his face, “… you beautiful bastard.”
C plus 43
En route
Destination: Unknown
An unknowable amount of time after losing consciousness at the drive-in, Dan McCarthy awoke with a pounding headache. With no real points of reference for this kind of feeling, all he could liken the sensation to was that of a murderous hangover.
He looked down and saw that he was positioned on a plastic stretcher with a thin pillow under his head.
What the hell?
Several medical sensors were stuck to his skin, hooked up to a screen full of readings, and he was definitely moving in some kind of ground-based vehicle. Despite these typically telltale signs, however, it certainly didn’t look or feel like any ambulance he’d ever seen.
Seriously… what the hell?
Fortunately, Dan’s acute panic dissipated when he turned around and saw Clark in the dim light, sitting on the bare floor next to the stretcher.
“It’s okay, man,” Clark said gently. “Just relax.”
Dan carefully pushed himself up to a sitting position and asked the obvious question: “Where are we going?”
“They wouldn’t tell me,” Clark replied.
“Who wouldn’t tell you? Who’s driving this thing? GSC guys?”
“It’s just the Feds,” Clark said, far more calmly than Dan could understand. “They closed off the whole drive-in, gave you some sedatives and did a lot of pathogen tests at the scene. Now they need to question us at this facility we’re going to. But listen, man, right now you really need to relax. You’ve been through a lot, but everything’s okay.”
“Okay?” Dan echoed. “Okay? What exactly is okay about being sedated and locked in the back of a van, without even knowing where it’s taking us?”
“Dan, I already talked them into letting me stay with you at all times. I asked if they wanted a mob of thousands of angry people outside every federal building in the country, because that’s what they would have gotten if I’d had to post something about you being taken away and held against your will. But listen to me: sure, these really aren’t the kind of people we can say ‘no’ to… but the fact that they let me stay with you at least tells us that they’re not our enemies. I’ll be with you the whole time, and they said it’s just a few more physical tests and then some questions.”
After glancing again at the readings on the screen next to his stretcher, Dan’s gaze suddenly shot towards Clark as his mind cleared. “How’s Emma?” he blurted out, patting his pocket for a phone that had long ago been confiscated. “When did you last speak to Tara?”
“Yeah, they took everything,” Clark said, watching Dan looking around for his phone. “But they let me call Tara before we left. Emma was awake; she’s going to be okay and she saw what happened at the drive-in. Can you remember any of that? Can you remember exactly what they told you?”
Dan was silent for several seconds. The news about Emma was music to his ears and he could remember everything perfectly — of course he could — but he knew that his every word was doubtless being listened to and recorded by whoever was driving the vehicle. With this in mind, he didn’t want to say too much until he knew what was going on and where he was being taken.
“I’m really tired,” he eventually said. “We’ll talk about it later.”
With these words, the vehicle drew to a gentle halt; surely, they both thought, this was no coincidence.
To confirm this suspicion, a man entered the rear section of the vehicle via a small and previously concealed doorway-like hatch connected to the front. The agent, who looked to be in his late forties or early fifties, had reddish blond hair, freckles, and features far less harsh than Dan would have expected.
“Mr McCarthy,” he said, before looking between the brothers and realising that this wasn’t much of a qualifier. “Um, Dan…”
“What?” Dan said, instinctively disconnecting the adhesive sensors from his skin and moving from the stretcher to the security of the spot beside Clark.
“Can you contact them again?” the man asked, a surprising straightforwardness that bordered on innocence in his voice.
Dan chose his words very carefully: “If they wanted to talk to you, they wouldn’t go through me.”
“Well, we would very much like to talk to them.”
“It takes two to tango,” Dan said.
“I’m sure it does,” the agent said, giving little away in his expression. “For now, Dan, if you don’t mind, I’d very much like to ask you some questions about what happened earlier today.”
Dan shook his head. “Me first. You answer my questions, and maybe I’ll think about answering yours.”
The agent held out an upturned palm to invite Dan’s questions. “Although,” he said, “I can make no promises that I’ll be able to answer them.”
“Where are we going?” Dan asked, wasting no time.
“Unfortunately I’m not able to—”
“What’s your job title?”
The agent took a deep breath. “Again, unfort—”
“Who do you report to?”
This time, the only reply Dan got came in the form of a weak sigh.
“You’re not very good at this,” Dan said.
