“And with that in hand,” McGreevy finished, “I call upon the Discoverer, the person who made First Contact, to cut the ribbon and open the building.”
Jason stood up. They’d had four rehearsals before they’d invited the press and he could do it in his sleep. The cameras clicked loudly as he stepped towards the red ribbon, picked up a pair of silver scissors and snipped through the tape. There was a loud cheer from the crowd as it fell back, allowing anyone who pleased to enter the building. The Welcome Foundation had decided that one of the buildings would be always open to be public, allowing them to study the history of SETI on one side and drink in the promises made by the Federation in the other.
“Thank you,” the Secretary of State said. “And now we will proceed to the lunch.”
It was several hours later before Jason managed to get into his new office and sit down. The Welcome Foundation might be paying him, but they didn’t seem to want him to actually do anything apart from exploiting his status to promote the Foundation to anyone who cared enough to listen. Jason didn’t feel special at all; the Discovery had been nothing more than a massive stroke of luck. He wasn’t cut out to be a celebrity, rubbing shoulders with world leaders and the most eminent scientists on Earth. On the other hand, there would be more access to the aliens. Perhaps he could actually convince them to tell him more about their society, or their world. The chance to walk on an alien planet was something he wouldn’t pass up for anything.
There was a cough at the door. Jason looked up guiltily, meeting the eyes of one of the CIA agents he’d met in the weeks since the Discovery. Like pretty much everyone who had contact with the aliens, he’d been debriefed extensively after each meeting by a mixed committee of representatives. The ones who had bothered to introduce themselves were from the CIA, the FBI and the DIA. He had no idea which particular agency employed the others. They were literally nothing, but silent listeners.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” he said, not entirely truthfully. He’d been on the verge of dozing off. The agent, who was a brown-haired young woman who was remarkably intelligent, grinned at him. “What can I do for you?”
“There’s a meeting in a nearby building,” she said. She’d introduced herself as Daisy, but Jason wouldn’t have put money on it being her real name. “I think you might be interested in attending.”
Jason shrugged and stood up, retrieving his coat and donning it in one quick motion. One thing that had been made clear to him was that failing to cooperate with the intelligence agencies would carry very heavy penalties. Jason wasn’t sure what they could do to the man who had discovered intelligent life in the universe — apart from humanity, of course — but he didn’t want to find out the hard way. Surprisingly, Daisy led him down the back staircase to avoid the crowds and into an unmarked car waiting for them at the rear entrance. Jason frowned as the car headed through official Washington, the driver taking every short cut he could find, before it pulled up outside a regular office block. They were a long way from Langley.
“Come on in,” Daisy said. “I think you’re expected.”
The interior of the building was unremarkable, a simple suite of apartments housing smaller corporate offices in Washington. Jason noted that the security guard looked bored, as if he wasn’t paying any attention to what was going on about him, but there was armour plating on the walls and cameras everywhere. Security was a premium in Washington, yet it seemed a little excessive. But if the CIA had a presence in the building, or owned the whole building, they would want security. Daisy confiscated his cell phone, MP3 player and his watch, checking that he wasn’t carrying anything electronic with him. He was mildly surprised that they hadn’t insisted on a strip search before they entered the elevator and it took them down into a basement. Daisy held up a hand when it reached its destination and motioned for Jason to go ahead of her.
“I’ll be staying here,” she said. “Good luck.”
The elevator doors closed behind her before Jason could ask any questions. Puzzled, he stared around, looking for someone — anyone. A person was sitting in one armchair in a corner of a medium-sized room, waiting for someone. He stood up, revealing a brown-haired man with a shock of uncontrollable hair. Before Jason could say anything, he tapped his lips and beckoned Jason through a door and into a smaller meeting room. The door hissed closed behind them.
“I’m sorry about the cloak and dagger routine,” the man said. “Please allow me to extend my congratulations on your new role in the Welcome Foundation.”
There was something in his voice Jason didn’t like at all. “Thank you, sir,” he said, stiffly. He still hadn’t sat down. “Might I ask what this is all about?”
The man leaned forward. “Do you know where you are?”
Jason shook his head. “No sir,” he said, “and I don’t know who you are, either.”
“Nor should you,” the man said. He shrugged, expressively. “My name is Sanderson and I have tried hard to stay out of the public eye. I trust I can rely on your discretion?” He inclined one eyebrow at Jason, who nodded shortly. “You may be interested to know that this building is designed to serve as a secure facility for various intelligence services. Among other things, the basement is surrounded by devices intended to ensure that any surveillance devices carried into the building are unable to record or transmit while inside the premises.”
Something clicked in Jason’s mind. “That’s why Daisy took my cell phone,” he said. “You were afraid I was going to record our conversation.”
“Not you,” Sanderson said. He leaned forward, intently. “I’ve been reading your debrief records from your sessions following your meetings with alien representatives. In all of them, you express frustration at their reluctance to share information — even information that has no military value. You’ve even implied that they’re not being completely honest with us. Would you care to comment on that?”
Jason frowned. He’d come utterly unprepared to the meeting, but he’d never said anything that he no longer believed. Besides, it was a chance to express his concerns to someone who clearly possessed some form of political power.
“They seem reluctant to talk about anything,” he said. “Every single person who meets one of the aliens has asked where they come from, which star gave them birth. And they refuse to answer, or they give us a vague answer that could point to any one of a million stars. They won’t tell us about their technology, even the technology they want to introduce into our society. We’re going to have to buy the fusion reactors off them to power our cities unless we figure out how they work. And if there are other races in the Galactic Federation, where are they? We don’t know.”
Sanderson frowned. “What do you think about them?” He asked. “You’ve met more aliens than anyone else, I believe. What do you make of them?”
Jason hesitated, struggling to put his thoughts into words. “They look down on us,” he said, finally. “When I talk about SETI to them, they seem to view it as amusing, like a child playing with toys. They think we’re stupid for not advancing into space; they think we’re stupid for fighting wars all the time. And yet… there’s something just a little disturbing about it. I don’t think they think very highly of us.”
He shook his head. “But they don’t tell us anything about themselves,” he added. “We don’t know how they organise themselves, or how their government works. We don’t know if we’re talking to big shots who can organise things to suit themselves or relatively minor officials. We don’t know how many of them there are on Earth, or what they’re doing crawling all over our planet. And none of us, not a single one, has been allowed to visit any of their starships. We haven’t even been allowed to ride in their shuttles.”