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19

The Wheels of Poseidon

Around 6 p.m., Svetlana walked into the library. She could hardly control the excitement in her voice. ‘We think it may be human.’

Freya looked up in surprise. ‘Are you sure?’

‘It’s not flatworm or fruit-fly, and it’s not ape. So far we can’t tell any difference from human DNA. But there’s something odd. I don’t know if there’s an error in Tom’s computer code — where is he?’

Petrie hailed her from the gallery.

‘Tom,’ Svetlana called up, ‘if your code is okay, there’s something extra. Vash is finding dot patterns that stand outside the mainstream. Some bits of the helix may be labelled.’

‘Surely they’re just stray particles?’

‘Vash thinks not. Sometimes the patterns stand near particular genes and the same patterns are found next to other pictures, like maybe molecules. He thinks they’re markers — he calls them flags. He reckons there’s a breakthrough waiting to happen, and he says you need to get back to it right away.’

‘Tell him I’m studying for the priesthood. He’ll have to do his own decoding.’

‘And I’m busy in the kitchen,’ Svetlana told him.

‘Making more pyzy?

‘Doing overtime as a femme fatale. Hanning and I are cooking. And Charlie has a plan. He wants to talk to you all in the bar, now.’

* * *

Shtyrkov was standing with his nose pressed up against the steel mesh grill which protected the bar. At first Petrie thought the Russian was wondering how to get at the dazzling array of bottles; but then he saw the little reflections of chandelier in the polished glasses.

‘Vodka withdrawal symptoms?’ Gibson asked the Russian. Gibson himself, Petrie noted, was showing no sign of mental abnormality outside the envelope of a stressed-out scientist.

Shtyrkov turned and sat heavily in a chair, and Petrie and Freya sat on either side of him.

Gibson remained standing, a general briefing his troops. He looked at his watch pretentiously. ‘For those of you who’ve lost track it’s now six o’clock, Friday evening. Here’s the schedule. Tomorrow, Saturday, is our last full day on site. We’re out of here at noon on Sunday. We drive straight to Bratislava: I’ve booked us all on a six o’clock flight to London. At nine a.m. Monday we hold a press conference in Burlington House. Vashislav and Svetlana then fly to Moscow. After that, events will sweep us along.’

‘What about Hanning?’ Petrie asked.

‘I was coming to that. I don’t trust him. He knows we’ll be going for a public announcement but I want him told it will now take place next Wednesday. We just vanish on Sunday at noon.’

They had automatically adopted a conspiratorial tone, as if Hanning could hear through castle walls from the floor below. ‘Wisdom comes with age, Charlee. Not always, and in your case probably not at all, but meantime you would be wise to listen to Papa. And what I say is this. Don’t wait. Put the news out on the internet tonight — all the bulletin boards we can think of. And send a message signed by us all to the UN Secretary General. It will be midday in New York.’

‘No, Vash, we need the press conference first. There’ll be questions and we must be on the spot to answer them.’

‘You’re taking a grave risk, Charlee.’ Petrie had never seen Shtyrkov more serious; he wondered what was lying at the back of the Russian’s mind.

Gibson said, ‘Come on, Vash, this thing’s unstoppable.’

* * *

‘Come through, children. Let us hear what Tom and Freya have found. Bring your coffees if you wish.’ Shtyrkov was standing at the refectory door like a teacher summoning his pupils. There was a rattle of chairs.

Petrie had found a screen, an overhead projector and a heap of transparencies in a cupboard in the administrator’s office, and had heaved them up to the common room. There was a large Bible next to the projector. The scientists spread themselves around armchairs, and Svetlana killed the lights.

Freya sat on the edge of a desk, holding a scribbled transparency. The projector threw her face into harsh contrast. ‘They’ve been signalling us for centuries.’

Gibson gave a loud, sceptical snort.

‘Most of this has come from a journal called the Marine Observer. Look at this.’ She threw up the first transparency:

September 6th, 1977. The merchant vessel Wild Curlew, in the north-west Indian Ocean, approached what seemed at first to be a white sea fog. On entering the region it was found that the sea itself was glowing with a milky light. This light seemed also to hover above the surface of the water. It was so strong that it illuminated the clouds overhead.

Marine Observer, vol. 48, p.118, 1977

‘It’s what you saw in your lake. There are lots of reports like that.’ She thumbed through some papers: ‘… like sailing over a field of snow … gliding over the clouds … an intense white glow not unlike viewing the negative of a photograph…’

Gibson was shaking his head. ‘Come off it, Freya!’

‘I was in Micronesia once,’ Hanning said. ‘We went swimming in the dark, which maybe wasn’t a good idea in those waters. But I remember it well. The water lit up as we swam. We left a luminous trail. It was a wonderful experience.’

‘Exactly,’ Gibson said. ‘Simple bioluminescence. Plankton firing up.’

‘It’s not plankton.’ A stubborn tone was creeping into Freya’s voice. ‘This is from the Captain’s log, on board the merchantman Ebani. He’s in the North Atlantic at the time.’ She threw up the transparency:

March 18th, 1977. Spurious echoes have been appearing on the screen all day, like the echoes from small groups of fishing boats. Their behaviour is very strange. The echoes would close to within five nautical miles of us and then disappear. None of us has ever come across this before. Disappeared late afternoon.

2200. The echoes have returned. They came back, closed to within 5.5 n.m., and then spread out around the ship in a circle. The entire sea has taken on a milky appearance and there is a fishy smell. We are all quite unnerved by this.

2400. After 45 minutes, the milky sea disappeared, and the radar returned to normal.

Petrie said, ‘Plankton can’t generate spurious echoes in a ship’s radar.’

Gibson responded irritably. ‘I’m not persuaded, Tom. The dodgy radar could have been a coincidence.’

Shtyrkov snorted from a dark corner of the room. ‘Coincidence, the last refuge of the disappointed scientist.’

Freya said, ‘There’s more. Are you ready for this? August the fourth, 1977. In the Indian Ocean—’

Svetlana interrupted: ‘Five months after the Ebani report.’

Freya read aloud from the big screen:

The SS British Renown sailed into a large area of milky sea, which was glowing from within. So great was the intensity of this light that the deck appeared to be just a dark shadow. During the display, the humidity seemed to increase and’ — Freya ran her hand along the text — ‘the radio operator reported a decreased signal strength at medium and high frequencies.

‘Something is traversing the atmosphere, disturbing it electrically as it passes, and lighting up the ocean.’

‘Charlee probably thinks it’s another coincidence,’ Shtyrkov called over from his corner. ‘Right, Charlee?’

‘The hell with you, Vash.’

‘Throw up the Wild Curlew again,’ Svetlana asked. Freya did so. Svetlana said, ‘They’re saying the phosphorescence was above the surface of the water.’