“True,” Ted agreed. The weapon on the desk could exterminate the aliens — or serve as an incentive to make peace. “A stay-behind team could deploy the weapon if Earth and the rest of the settled worlds were to be destroyed.”
“Indeed they could,” Doctor Russell said. He smiled, clearly proud of himself. “We believe the weapon will spread rapidly, but it won’t become lethal for several months. There will be enough time for it to spread through alien-held space.”
Ted snorted. The problem with any form of biological warfare was that the weapons tended to mutate when released into the natural world. And the researchers were dealing with a completely alien biology, no matter how much they claimed to understand what they were doing. It was quite possible the disease would be instantly lethal, fail completely or be defeated by something the aliens had invented for their own medical care. If there were humans trying to improve the basic human form, why wouldn’t there be aliens trying to do the same?
And if the disease acted so rapidly it slaughtered an entire planet without going any further, it would be blindingly obvious to the aliens that it had been an attempt at genocide.
“I want you to keep all your research carefully sealed, Doctor,” Ted ordered. The researchers were already largely isolated, but they were allowed to talk to the ambassadors and their aides. As if the thought had worked a magic spell, he saw one of the aides appear at the hatch and start walking purposefully towards him. “And do not talk about it outside the cleared circle.”
“I have every confidence in my security precautions,” Doctor Russell protested. “I am no stranger to classified work…”
“Then do as I tell you,” Ted ordered, shortly. He turned to face Ambassador Melbourne’s aide. “I suggest we take this conversation outside.”
The young man - Antony DuBois, if Ted recalled correctly — looked irked, but obeyed. Ted wasn’t too surprised. He hadn’t met many such aides during his time on Ark Royal, something that hadn’t prepared him for meeting them after his promotion. The aides all seemed to think they had the clearances enjoyed by their political masters and that they had a right to know everything. In some cases, they might have had a point. This, Ted decided as he walked the younger man outside, wasn’t one of them.
DuBois turned to face him as soon as the hatch was closed. He was a short man, wearing a formal suit despite special permission to wear shipsuits or modified uniforms. His hair was perfectly coiffed, which suggested a streak of vanity or insecurity. Ted had no time to wonder which, not when he had a flotilla to command and a security crisis on his hands.
“The Ambassador’s cabin, Admiral, is much too small,” DuBois said. “We need to move him to a bigger one.”
Ted kept his expression blank with an effort. Aides derived their status from their superiors. A slight, however unintentional, to one of the ambassadors was a slight to their aides. But under the circumstances, the Ambassador himself had not complained. Had he wanted his aide to do the complaining for him or was his aide trying to do what he thought was best?
“The Ambassador has one of the largest sets of quarters on the ship,” Ted said. It was true; there were only two bigger suites on the ship and both of them were occupied. “He also only has to bunk down with his aides.”
“It isn’t suitable,” DuBois insisted. “He needs to make a show to the aliens.”
“I don’t think the aliens will notice if he shares a cabin or has a palace to himself,” Ted snapped, too tired to deal with the situation any further. “I suggest, Mr. DuBois, that you resign yourself to sharing those quarters until we make contact with the aliens.”
He turned and strode down the corridor, into the next section. Inside, the air was warm and moist, the temperature a reminder of the alien holding facility on the other side of the moon. Ted had visited, twice, since they’d brought the alien captives back to Earth, but they’d been as uncommunicative as ever. He pushed the thought to one side as he stepped through the second hatch and into Doctor McDonald’s working space.
“Doctor McDonald,” he said, feeling sweat trickling down the back of his uniform jacket. It was too hot to wear a formal uniform. “I was hoping you’d have time for a proper chat.”
Polly McDonald looked up at him. She was wearing a halter top and a pair of shorts that were so tight Ted couldn’t help wondering if they were painted onto her skin. He had to remind himself, sharply, that she was young enough to be his daughter as she waved him to a chair and reached for a bottle of water. Ted took it gratefully.
“I’m sorry about the weather, Admiral,” she said. “If I am to meet the aliens in their natural habitat, or at least on the shores of their worlds, I need to stay used to their preferred conditions.”
Ted hesitated, then removed his jacket and folded it over his lap. “Talking to the aliens is of prime importance, Doctor,” he said. “Can you talk to them?”
“Please, call me Polly,” Doctor McDonald said. She smiled. “I think talking to them without a voder is going to be damn near impossible; they might be able to hear us, but we can’t hear them speaking. Still, we have recordings from the alien cities your people observed and I’m fairly certain we can produce something the aliens can hear.”
Ted nodded. “Didn’t you try it on the alien captives?”
“Most of them were non-committal,” Polly admitted. “Their behaviour is odd, Admiral, at least by our standards. Sometimes they’re willing to try to communicate, at other times they seem to be sulking like children, even amongst themselves. We’ve tried to record their conversations, but we got nothing useful.”
“Nothing at all?” Ted asked. “Are we missing something?”
“It’s possible,” Polly agreed. “The aliens might combine sign language with their high-pitched voices, but I don’t see how they developed without some form of non-visual communication. All we hear from them is that they’re repeating the same sounds over and over again.”
“They could be saying something we can’t hear,” Ted mused.
“We might not be able to hear it,” Polly said. “But the monitors should be able to pick out pitches and changes in tone… even if we can’t hear it with our merely human ears. There doesn’t seem to be enough shift to suggest they’re actually talking. It’s more like they’re rehashing the same statements over and over again.”
She frowned. “I keep thinking of some of the weirder proposals on the fringes of science,” she added. “The aliens might have been deliberately modified to have a considerable level of intelligence, but a very limited amount of free will.”
Ted blinked. “Is that even possible?”
“In theory,” Polly said. “You could program limiters into the brain, perhaps ones making it impossible to tell the difference between someone’s own desires and orders from someone else. Or you could undermine their sense of self until it simply doesn’t exist. In practice… it has never been tried, officially. It would break the conventions on designing a humanoid slave race.”
“And unofficially?” Ted asked. “Weren’t there people who wanted to try?”
“It got shut down before it ever got off the ground floor,” Polly said. “Too many people reacted to the concept with absolute revulsion. But I’m starting to think the aliens need to work in groups to reach their full potential.”
“They also fly starfighters,” Ted pointed out. “I don’t care how advanced their technology is, Doctor, but they couldn’t fit more than two or three aliens into those cockpits.”
Polly smirked. “Even if they were prepared to be very friendly?”
Ted flushed, remembering a rite of passage for junior lieutenants. He’d been told to find out how many lieutenants he could fit into a standard shuttle. Unfortunately, there simply hadn’t been enough lieutenants on the ship to fill the shuttlecraft. It had turned out, afterwards, that he’d been meant to fill in the spaces with locals, prostitutes from the nearest brothel. They’d called it an exercise in thinking outside the box. Ted considered it an exercise in pointless hazing.