‘Thank you, Professor, but as a past Vice-president of the National Academy of Sciences I have some familiarity with power notation.’
‘Can you put that in layman’s terms?’ Bull asked.
I thought I had, the Stanford man thought. ‘Ah, what it means is that there’s absolutely no chance that the process has been duplicated anywhere in the Galaxy or even anywhere else in the Universe. The odds are far too great.’
The President opened a drawer and pulled out a cheroot. ‘That’s pretty persuasive to me, Hazel. We’re one-offs, God’s creation. His little fallen angels.’
Cardow, having found his tongue, was becoming eloquent. The President leaned back and puffed in the air, letting the Stanford futurologist talk.
‘Even if life did develop somewhere, the odds that it would evolve to an intelligent state are astronomical. Evolution has more twists and turns than you can imagine. It took three billion years even to get to the stage of sponges. Compound the improbabilities and you see it’s a miracle that we’re here at all. We’re alone in the Universe. We’ve been brainwashed, not just by NASA, but by Hollywood. There’s no drama in Star Trek movies where the crew never meet an alien.’
‘No drama equals no bucks,’ Bull observed.
Cardow turned the knife: ‘The public has been duped into the expectation that the Universe is teeming with life, and it suits a lot of people, from movie producers to Californian scientists, to feed that expectation. But it’s a falsehood. Otherwise the aliens would be here.’
Hazel looked over at Bull. The President had a satisfied look, as if he’d just had a big poker win. ‘Mr President, the world’s full of cranks with axes to grind. I’ve never heard of this man. I’m your Science Adviser, dammit. It’s me you listen to.’
A little wisp of smoke was drifting up from the President’s cigar towards the ceiling. ‘But I think you just lost the argument. Stanford here has given us a two-pronged, watertight case. First, even if you believe in evolution which I don’t, the odds are billions to one against intelligent life emerging from primitive bugs. Second, if there was alien life it would be everywhere including here and it’s not. The arguments fit like two gloves.’ Bull leaned back in his swivel chair. ‘There are no aliens, not anywhere. But you see, Hazey, I already knew that. Little green men with pointy heads are unBiblical.’
‘Mr President, the seabed’s littered with ships that were thought to be watertight. I don’t know what Professor Cardow’s hang-up is, but he’s just fed you some very bad advice.’
Cardow’s lips tightened like a prim old woman’s, and he blushed an angry red.
‘Uhuh?’ Bull gave his Science Adviser a long, thoughtful stare. With his slightly hooked nose, she had the disconcerting feeling of being watched by an owl. ‘You need to unwind a bit, Hazey, that’s what this place is for. Come over about ten, and you and I’ll watch a movie.’
‘Why thank you, sir. You know that as a woman I can’t deal with the heavy issues. But I do appreciate a nice pat on the head.’ Baxendale said it with a big smile to show that she was joking. She gave Cardow a look of pure venom as she left, and the futurologist blushed again.
Big snowflakes were drifting down when Hazel trudged her way through six inches of snow to the Aspen Lodge. Footprints had preceded her.
Warm air and Latin-American rhythm enveloped her as she stepped inside. Along the corridor to the living room, Jet, the President’s black Labrador, sniffed at her trouser legs.
‘Come on in, Hazey, you’re just in time.’ The President, tieless and with his shirt hanging out, was dropping ice cubes into a cocktail shaker. Logie Harris was leaning back in an armchair, Coke in hand. He gave a tense little nod to Hazel.
‘Cha cha cha.’ Bull was nodding to the beat while expertly rattling the cocktail shaker over his shoulder. ‘Paid my way through Harvard doing this. Law student by day, barman by night. Never forgotten how to do it.’ He added the contents to tall ice-filled glasses, carefully trickled a red liquid into the drinks and delivered a multi-coloured liquid to Hazel. ‘Tequila sunrise. Guaranteed to put a smile even on the grim face of my Science Adviser.’
Hazel took a sip and smiled. Bull wagged a finger and gave an I-told-you-so grin. ‘Hell, you look beautiful when you smile. You know Logie?’
Harris stood up and extended a hand to Hazel. ‘I hear you crossed swords today.’
Hazel said, ‘Yes, with another backwoodsman.’ Harris’s face froze.
Bull crossed to a light switch and to Hazel the room fell dark for a few seconds, until her sight adapted to the gentle red glow of reflected firelight. Now a screen was coming slowly down from the ceiling, and the President was removing a painting to reveal a small alcove with a projector. A white-haired steward built the fire up with seasoned logs, and Jet stretched out in front of it. Hazel shared a settee with the President, while Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis shared misadventures with Marilyn Monroe on an overnight sleeper. Bull and Harris chortled through the movie, the President occasionally laughing out loud and slapping Hazel’s thigh.
As the closing credits rolled, she said, ‘I ought to go, Mr President.’
‘Have a nightcap, Hazey.’
‘No, thank you.’ She stood up. What made her say it she didn’t know; it just came out in a surge of anger. ‘Mr President, I see this alien message as a turning point for mankind. You can’t handle the issue by cutting yourself off, surrounding yourself with these people.’
‘These people?’ Bull’s tone was suddenly frosty.
Harris, on his feet, adopted a combative tone. ‘I for one thank God for the President’s wisdom. I don’t doubt your erudition, Ms Baxendale, but only arrogance can make us believe that infinite knowledge is given us.’
She said coldly, ‘I can’t argue with that.’
‘Then surely you can see that the origin of life is a domain that belongs to the Creator, not to man? And surely, unless you are godless, you must accept that God’s intentions are revealed to us through revelation?’
‘Now it gets complicated.’
Harris pounded on, a preacher with a congregation. ‘And the Scriptures are clear: only Man is made in the image of God. Therefore the only possible life forms beyond the Earth cannot be creatures of God. We must pay no heed to their siren message. We dare not.’
Hazel sighed. ‘I’ll wish you both goodnight.’
She turned at the door, said, ‘Jesus H. Christ,’ and slammed it shut.
Despair was settling over her like a cloak.
The snow had stopped, and between the clouds were stars, sharp and crystalline. Her ears were beginning to hurt with cold, and her fingers were tingling. She trudged down the steps and made her way on to a path between the trees. As she walked she looked up at a cold and alien sky, utterly unlike the haze which overlaid Washington D.C., orange like the cheeks of a pantomime tart.
Somewhere up there. Somewhere up there.
Maybe that bright star, or that one, maybe one of the thousands of lesser ones, going as faint as the eye could see and no doubt beyond. Maybe, even, the signallers came from someplace between the stars, from some dark interstellar realm.
There were animal tracks in the snow; small, clawed creatures. Her breath was steaming.
Someone had lit a fire in Maple Lodge; she saw its flickering light, and the smoke curling up from the chimney. Again she looked up at the myriad lights between the trees, each one a prodigious nuclear furnace, many with planets orbiting around them.