Freya nodded. ‘And the signal corrected for all these movements. It matched the lake’s speed through space with great precision.’
‘What’s your point?’ Gibson asked curtly.
Freya tapped her calculations. ‘Admit to error, Charlie. Whoever fired that signal knew about your underground cave and targeted it.’
‘Oh yes, of course they did,’ Gibson said, his face flushing. ‘Naturally they have telescopes that detect underground lakes from light years away and they even know we’ve set up an experiment under the water waiting for a signal. In fact, they knew we were going to set it up before we knew it ourselves — and if you believe this M51 rubbish, they knew we were going to do that before we even existed!’
‘I don’t claim to have any sort of background in science,’ said the Science Minister’s envoy, ‘but that would seem to be a problem.’
‘Indeed, Jeremy. And here’s another problem. How do I face the world’s press on Monday and sell them a garbage tale like that without being carted off screaming to the nearest paddy wagon by men in white coats?’
‘Jeremy?’
Petrie, in quiet conversation with Freya on a sofa, caught the unctuous tone of Gibson’s voice. He glanced across. The physicist was leaning over Hanning, charm oozing out of his face and looking like a benevolent frog.
Hanning looked up from his scribbled notes in surprise. ‘Yes, ah, Charlie?’
‘Time is short.’ The computer clocks were reading just after three o’clock. ‘I thought you might lend us a hand.’
Hanning glanced down at his notes. ‘Sangster is looking for a situation report at nine p.m. Still, I can spare some time. But be warned, I have no specialised knowledge, at least not in science.’
‘We need help with Svetlana’s viruses, if that’s what they are.’
‘There are thousands of them,’ Svetlana said without looking up from her screen.
Gibson pushed his spectacles back to the bridge of his nose. ‘There are also thousands of terrestrial viruses. I was wondering if you might like to try to match them up. There are pictures of them on websites.’
‘It’s a big job,’ Svetlana said. ‘For instance, there are things called pico-rna-viridae, and they’re divided into five genera — entero-, rhino-, aphto-, cardio- and unassignedo-viruses. If you take the rhinovirus it’s divided into human and bovine, and if you take the human it has a hundred serotypes. And these are just the small RNA viruses; there are thousands more.’
Hanning looked blank. ‘RNA viruses?’
‘Forget them,’ Shtyrkov called over. ‘They change by the year. Any signal representing them would refer to viruses which have evolved beyond recognition. In fact, this is a big problem, people. Any picture beamed to us from far away and long ago should refer to microorganisms which no longer exist. E. coli reproduces so fast it can mutate as much in a day as humanity does in a thousand years.’
Svetlana sighed. ‘There’s another problem. We’re all desperately ignorant about this and we’re running out of time.’
Charlie said, ‘So work harder. I want us to learn as much as we possibly can about this signal before we go public with it.’
‘I’ve told you about going public without authorisation, Charlie.’
‘I know.’ Gibson’s cheek twitched nervously. ‘You’re just being asked to match pictures. Any idiot could do it.’
Hanning said, ‘Have you ever thought about a career in the Diplomatic Service?’
‘I’m sorry, I—’
Hanning laughed. ‘Of course I’ll help. Let’s see if these things are earthly.’
Gibson sighed with relief, and promptly exited from his unctuous mode. ‘Svetlana, you still haven’t told me if that thing is human.’ He turned to Shtyrkov, who was lying back on another sofa, staring at the ceiling. ‘Vashislav, are you a waste of space or what?’
The Russian waved a dismissive arm in the air. ‘I’m meditating.’
‘What the hell use is that? And what about you two?’ Gibson wanted to know. Freya and Petrie were heading for the door. ‘Don’t tell me you people are meditating too?’
‘I’ll be in the theological library,’ Petrie said.
‘Good, good. More decoding, Tom?’
‘No, I’ll be looking for a Bible. I expect the theological library has one.’
Gibson’s face showed bafflement. ‘What in God’s name has the Bible got to do with anything?’
18
Visions of God
Petrie heard the footsteps hurrying behind him in the broad corridor. Freya. She caught him by the arm and sat him firmly down on the velvet sofa. ‘Don’t be so secretive, Tom. What are you up to?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s too embarrassing to say.’
‘Tell me anyway.’
‘Look, it’s too silly, Freya. Let’s just say I’m off on some eccentric tangent and leave it at that.’
She nipped his thigh viciously. Petrie, taken by surprise, yelped.
‘Tom!’
Petrie hesitated, then: ‘Okay, okay. Look at the position. There’s no way for others to confirm this signal — it’s a one-off. Hanning’s right, credibility is an issue. And if we make a wrong identification we’ll lose it.’
Freya nodded impatiently. ‘But we’re all agreed on that.’
‘Charlie’s fixated on the F star. The timing’s right, like he says.’
‘But Tom, it lies outside the two-sigma error circle. There’s only one chance in twenty that he’s right.’
‘You know that and I know that, Freya, but Charlie’s an idiot and he’s going to blow it.’
‘So, what is this silly idea?’
Petrie hesitated again. Freya looked threatening, and he said, ‘I might be able to disprove his timing argument. Suppose they’ve been probing us for centuries. Say they’ve been firing at us routinely, maybe even for thousands of years, to see if we’ve reached a level where we can understand and reply with our sticks and stones, like radio or lasers.’
Freya nodded.
‘In that case there might be evidence in historical records.’
Another encouraging nod.
In a burst of bravado he added, ‘Maybe even pre-history or mythology. Lights in the sky, things like that.’
Freya pursed her lips. ‘That is embarrassing. It’s unprofessional, like looking for flying saucers or something.’
Petrie flushed.
She grinned. ‘But brilliant. History should have a record of glowing patterns in water, maybe even in heavy clouds. I’ll join you.’
In the theological library, Freya made straight for the computer terminal and fired it up. Petrie started with an illuminated Bible on a lectern, its pages laboriously written in calligraphic script in some past century. Its preface began with an enormous letter, made up of little fantasy animals with a swastika-like cross in the middle. He could just recognise it as an uncial D, and barely make out the ornate lettering: Dominus Deus noster Jesus Christus …
He blew out his cheeks. This was going to take years. More prowling the shelves revealed more Bibles, all in Latin. His hopes rose with an illustrated book on Mirabili. Perusal showed that the book described miracles indeed, if two-headed babies, statues weeping blood and winged basilisks could be believed.
He clattered up the spiral staircase. After some minutes, tucked in a corner, he found a shelf of modest-sized Bibles, in assorted vulgar tongues including English. He guessed this was the modern collection, grudgingly acknowledging the existence of the last three centuries or so. He pulled out a St James edition; its leather binding, he thought, was less than a century old, but the font and the feel of the pages told of something printed maybe three hundred years ago. It had a musty smell and he playfully wondered if the plague bacillus could survive for three hundred years.