Besides, Toby thought, as the President motioned for them to be seated, none of them would have taken my advice.
His career had been an odd one, to say the least. He’d gone into politics to spite his father, only to discover that he was surprisingly good at understanding and shaping public opinion. He had no desire to run for office himself, but he had helped push Hollinger into the Presidency — and Hollinger would be good for the country. Four years of boredom would be better than endless scandals. And while he had never served in the military, his family background had given him the ability to understand it as well as anyone from the civilian side of the tracks could understand it.
“This will be brief,” the President said. He sounded as firm as he ever did. “I will be addressing the nation in one hour, perhaps sooner. General?”
Toby watched as General Elliot Thomas, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, rose to his feet. Thomas was a beefy black man who’d served in almost every conflict in the last twenty years before finally reaching the highest uniformed post in America. There were some who tipped him as a prospective presidential candidate for the next election, but Toby doubted that Thomas would run. He had no sense of compromise, of the give and take that kept politics moving reasonably smoothly. A virtue in a military officer became a liability in politics, which was — at heart — a popularity contest.
“There’s little to say,” Thomas said. His eyes swept the room, passing over Toby in a manner that reminded him of his father’s insightful stare. The General didn’t approve of political advisors and resented Toby’s near-constant presence next to his President. “Orbital monitoring stations have confirmed the presence of seventeen alien starships near the Earth. Several of them are occupying the gravitational balance points between the Earth and the Moon; others appear to be drifting in very high orbits around the Earth. There may be others, but we have no way of detecting them past a certain range.”
There was a long pause. “They have so far shown no signs of hostility,” he added. “If it does come down to war, however, they would have little difficulty in stomping us flat. They could just roll asteroids at us until we surrendered.”
“There’s no need to assume hostility,” Jeannette McGreevy, the Secretary of State, said. She was ambitious as anyone Toby had ever met, with a coldly ruthless streak that contained more than a hint that a sociopath hid behind her smile. “They may come in peace.”
“They may,” Thomas rumbled, “but their mere presence has caused chaos on Earth.”
Toby nodded to himself. Barely an hour after the news had leaked into the public domain and there was already chaos. Hundreds of thousands of people were fleeing the cities, buying guns and stockpiling ammunition, while others weren’t averse to using First Contact as an excuse to loot. The various state governments were already calling up the National Guard and all police leave had been cancelled. They’d heard nothing from other governments on Earth, but Toby would have been surprised to discover that the other nations weren’t suffering their own version of the chaos.
“In fact,” Thomas continued, “we are naked…”
There was an urgent knock at the door, which opened to reveal a harassed-looking officer carrying a portable laptop. “Mr President,” he said, his face showing the strain of speaking directly to the most powerful man in the world. Under normal circumstances, anything new would be passed up the chain of command until it finally reached the President. “We picked up a message from the alien ships. They say that they represent the Galactic Federation… and that they come in peace.”
Chapter Two
Washington DC
USA, Day 1
“We beat you to it!”
Jayne Rowling allowed herself a half-smile as Gareth Robertson smiled triumphantly at her. The veteran reporter had never adapted very well to the increasingly digitalised world of media production, distribution and occasionally manipulation. He would have been comfortable working in a newspaper office from the early 1950s — back when women knew their place and served only as secretaries — but the internet, blogs and even cell phones increasingly confused him. What kind of world was it, he’d wondered to her once, where just anyone could post their facts and opinions online for the whole world to see? And what kind of world was it where an embarrassing media mistake could be made on Monday, exposed by Tuesday and often forgotten on Wednesday? Too many careers had been terminated by online experts pointing out the mistakes of veteran reporters.
Robertson wasn’t even correct! True; CNN had been the first major media distributor to discover that alien starships were orbiting the Earth, but the internet had been buzzing with rumours ever since the first alien message had started to be picked up on the planet below. It had only avoided general distribution through the more reliable blogs and online websites because few of the reputable commenters had been willing to risk their reputations by adding their imprint to the impossible disclosure. The downside of the new media environment was that any number of distortions, conspiracy theories and outright fabrications could be given the same weight as an official broadcast from the American Government. And there were those who believed that nothing the government said could be treated with anything, but extreme scepticism.
Jayne herself tended to consider herself a reporter first, a commenter second. As a young student, she had found herself at the forefront of the new age of media distribution, a position that had allowed her to parlay her considerable experience with computers and online networks into a position in one of the foremost media corporations. It hadn’t lasted; she’d discovered that seniority was the rule and only a handful of the most talented newcomers could hope to climb their way to the top, toeing the official line as they served the organisation’s owners. Jayne had seen how both left and right-wing corporate owners had insisted on pushing forward one point of view while burying others… and then simply carrying on, trusting the public’s short attention span to ensure that any mistakes were quickly forgotten. The uncritical support her employers had given to a single presidential candidate had sealed her urge to go independent and she’d found herself working as a freelancer for the newly-formed Blogger Association Network. Individual bloggers were often frozen out by the big corporations; a network of bloggers, a vast distributed smart mob, was a much more formidable opponent. And online, where facts could be checked and rechecked by millions of independent experts, the BAN had rapidly earned a reputation for honesty, fairness and integrity. There had been mistakes, of course, but they had all been admitted by the network. Few media corporations would be so quick to confess error.
She settled back and surveyed the White House Press Room. It was heaving with reporters, with a handful of camera crews in the back filming everything that transpired and beaming it out live to the entire world. The media corporations had hated the thought of streaming their product onto the internet for free, but they’d rapidly discovered that the world was moving ahead anyway, despite their protests. Everyone would be sharing the same material, editing and reloading it for themselves. This time, however, the entire country would be watching the unedited live feed. The President was going to address the nation.